MyDigitalpoint

When someone is a non-native English speaker the best option to look at is regular English books.

You can find many books edited specially for non-native speaker but this is not the best way to assimilate a language and use it like if it were you mother tongue.

Reading and English book released for an English speaking audience could be harder to read, but in the long run will provide many personal satisfactions once you are done with the reading.

I would suggest a visit to the Gutenberg Project to find a reading of your preference, http://www.gutenberg.org/

In many cases the problem is not the language at all when it comes to market a product or service, but the company itself.

Medium to large companies use to have proofreaders for their labels to avoid grammar mistakes, and the same department use to handle the names for the same product when marketed abroad to avoid any chance to get the word confused with, let's says "erection" cited first in this thread.

It's a shame that a world-famous company like Starsbuck would not detect the impact of the word "latte" in the German market, where other company would obviously change it for something more appropriate.

Google translate has improved since this service was launched, but it's still very bad in grammatical construction.

A native language speaker can easily pick those obvious errors that Google translate makes, and many it is unable to recognize when one same word is a substantive or a verb.

Google translate could be useful as a foundation stone for a second language learner to find the words need to put together a sentence, but yet needing to review grammar and make manual corrections.

Actually Spanish is the second most widely spoken language around the world.

Some sources cite it as the third language after English and Chinese but, let's face it. Chinese has millions of speakers who are mostly the same Chinese people and not because it is popular as a second language.

Spanish however, is the main or the second language in many countries around the world, and a must for people living in the USA, where French used to be the second language to lean many decades ago.

True! But certainly having some knowledge about synonyms and antonymous for a word is certainly helpful to expand our vocabulary and make our writing and speaking less repetitive using alternate words that mean the same or the opposite.

Both words are correct. However, I prefer to use "Cancelled".

Indeed! This is much about what type of English you are talking about.

In British English it's common to duplicate the consonant in verbs that end in "L" such as to travel (traveling/travelling) and to cancel (canceled/cancelled)

So grammatically both are correct, but the choice depend on the context you need to write the word down.

"Pennies" is a funny (if not the funniest) English word for me.

You know why. Haha.

True, and the curious thing of this word is that it is funny in several languages where the world pennies does not refer to cash money but what you are mean by this, LOL 

I believe Spanish, Italian and French are the most romantic-sounding languages, probably because all of them share the same Latin root, and people who talk these languages are usually best known to be passionate compared with other people around the world.

When I just started surfing the web I found a sign language script that I thought was worth to setup as one of my first websites because I thought it could be helpful to understand this language and communicate with people using it.

However I later found the traditional sign language consisting of finger positions to get vowels and consonants seems not to be longer in use.

Watching the news on TV there is a section where a woman appears "translating" the news into a sign language and rather to make those vowel/consonant combinations, she seems to make symbolic reference of things that all of understand whether we know about this language or have no idea about it, but we all can understand.

Or at least most of what this woman "says" with her hands.

Correct grammar is important not just when learning a second or new language, but also your own.

If you can't spell correctly your own language and realize about grammar and style of your written words, you may find hard to achieve writing properly any other language.

To me grammar is truly important in my own language and the second one because much of my job depends on writing correctly words, phrases and sentences.

I don't have a favorite beautiful English word, but I have like a dozen of words that sounds terribly not just to my hears but to my pronunciation.

These words include obnoxious and awkward, which are the worst to me.

While this resource sounds interesting, it brought to mind something that many of us having told once in life when leaning another language; the word of the day.

According to some language teacher, if you learn a single new word every day, you will soon develop a good vocabulary in the chosen language.

In fact, there are sites like the Free Dictionary that does not only provide with a Word of the Day feature, but also have a widget that webmasters may add to their sites, so their visitors can learn.

But being honest, how may of us does really lean a word a day to improve their vocabulary in a foreign language?

These aren't certainly "weird idoms" but sayings and proverbs that make sense in Spanish, might not in other though.

However for many of the Spanish proverbs, there is a matching English one, but said with other words, as there must be a matching pair in other languages.

More examples of these you refer are:

Cada cabeza es un mundo

each mind is a world unto itself. (lit.: each head is a world; i.e.: everyone thinks differently, despite the uniformity and conformity that seem to exist)

Cada día que amanece, la suma de tontos crece

each day brings more fools. (lit.: each day that dans, the number of fools grows)

Cada oveja con su pareja

birds of a feather flock together. (lit.: each sheep with its mate)

More of these sayings and proverbs can be found here, http://www.languagerealm.com/spanish/spanishproverbs_c.php

Browsing the forum I found that nobody else has posted yet Spanish Literature resources, so I thought to start this forum with a text that being a bit outdated, is still valid to understand modern Spanish

Spanish literature in Mexican languages as a source for the study of Spanish pronunciation (1934)

Author: Canfield, D. Lincoln (Delos Lincoln), 1903-; Hispanic Institute in the United States

Subject: Spanish language; Indians of Mexico; Mexican literature; Spanish literature; Indians of Mexico

Publisher: New York, Instituto de las Espñas en los Estados Unidos

Possible copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT

Language: English

Digitizing sponsor: University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries

Book contributor: University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries

Collection: univ_florida_smathers; americana

Scanfactors: 6

This text can be downloaded here, http://www.archive.org/download/http://archive.org/details/spanishliteratur00canf

Another useful resource is the Argentinian Digital Library Project, where you can download free Spanish text from renowned Argentinian authors.

This project is Spanish-only, http://www.biblioteca.clarin.com/pbda/autores.htm

Project Gutenberg, is the largest source for classic literature in many languages.

You can browse Spanish-only literature straight right here, http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es

If you know other Spanish Literature sources, please add them below this thread

I like how German sounds, particularly German from Germany, which is stronger that Swiss German or Austrian German, this latter probably the softer.

However there are many German dialects inside and out Germany and all other German-speaking countries and aggressive tone may come from the wording they use.

I wanted to learn a second language when I was about 10 years old and in love with a singer who doesn't speak my own.

It was a child's dream and a self-didactic startup. I used to write him letter using the paid-post cards that came in Popular Mechanics, my father's favorite magazine.

It was funny because I was so fool to believe this type of cards would be delivered to the addressee just by changing the address by myself, and then the "love letter" was constructed with the aid of a dictionary.

I never thought that I needed to conjugate verbs, make structural phrases and the like, so it was a sort of Tarzan language instead.

However the motivation to write a letter to this singer helped me too learn his language with easiness once that I reached 12 and started with it at secondary school.

While it's exciting learn languages through music I would not trust in either grammar construction and pronounciation.

I remember myself listening to the old band Creedence Clearwater Revival, have you ever heard how John Fogerty's (lead singer) wording?

Even today with a successful solo career he doesn't pronounce words, he destroy them!  :grin:

But this is only one of the many examples of paying attention to music towards learning, which is not bad at all because help you to understand that a language has different accents based on regions, ghettos, and so on.

Every new word that you can understand in a song that is not in your native language, it's a step beyond in your learning journey

I will post this in English to make possible all the members understand me.

I can read and understand Portuguese because it is very similar to Spanish (as Italian too) but I cannot talk Portuguese because my vocabulary is limited and although I always try to learn each new Portuguese word that I don't understand but seek its meaning, I can't say to be fluid on this language.

Sadly, I have not longer time to learn other languages that ones I know today, and seek to perfect instead.

I think there are two factors to take into account when it comes to speak and think of English even when you are not in an English context.

One is having forcing yourself to "live in English" in your daily activities. Listen to the radio paying attention to the lyrics of English songs, find the local information that you need but seek in the English section rather than in your regional version, and so on.

Then practice the language with someone who speaks English, preferably a native person. If you don't talk to someone, you cannot apply what you have learned and it may be pretty hard to assemble phrases "on the fly" and sounding natural.

In this matter, having a native English speaker talking to you helps also to correct your pronounciation, although you can also achieve this my using the speaking option on Google to hear how a word is pronounced.

I believe the confusion with the article before "ear" comes from the verb "to hear" that are both involved with perceiving the sounds.

Ear starts with a silent vowel, hence "an" here, but in the case of "hear" the initial consonant sounds like one (not silent like in many Spanish and German words) hence "a" would fit before "hear" and derivative words.

In example, "getting a hearing aid that looks fashionable with make an ear look great!"

More than funny Spanish idioms, these are common Spanish sayings that sounds funny if you translate them to English literally, or that being the same idea is not exactly the same.

In example, "Matar a la Gallina de Oro " it¡s a saying that means someone ends with something that provide him/her with wealthiness.

The English saying for this is "To Kill the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs."

However you find many Spanish speakers that translate the saying literally as "To kill the hen of the gold eggs" that sound rare to English ears.

What it's really hard to translate from Spanish to English, and it's really funny, are those slang expressions in both languages.

In fact, slang is translated into Spanish to as "caló," "caliche," "modismo," "calandria," "pachuco," and many other street terms.

Photo is Spanish is "foto" and is pronounced exactly the same. What makes a difference in grammar an pronounciation is photography and fotografía

My most embarrassing moment was when I applied to my first job. I made a career in the tourism industry and was usually endorsed by my professors who were proud to say I was the best English student in all college.

When I went to my first interview I made the most elemental mistake with a phrase that I was taught since kindergarten.

It was supposed that I was a hotel clerk asking a guest how old she was so I came up with this absurd question

"What is your age?"  Perhaps used in some contexts by native English speakers, but not in a hospitality industry setting.

A friend of mine married with a German man being herself native French speaker but while both understand each other languages, they adopted English to talk to at home and Spanish to talk out there in real life because they live in a Spanish speaking country.

When my friend got pregnant with twins she had language concerns, but all readings said the babies would learn naturally with not hassle nor mixing and matching, and they did.

Today, her children are about to turn 3 years old and speak the four languages fluently and she has been encourage to teach them other languages while they are still this young.

I believe the guy in this video had to have a similar formation, though it is obvious that some of us are more skilled to learn a second (third, etc) language than others.

The BBC is another of the famous and most effective places to learn Spanish (as well as other languages) http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/

Don Quijote is also a good learning place, particularly if you plan to travel abroad to learn at a native location, http://www.donquijote.org/

I would say that practice makes perfect and if you take some  of the free course and get you involved in Spanish speaking communities like the one at WordReference and our own Liguaholic community, you will soon master the language.

A bonus resource  I would recommend is usting Linguee, http://www.linguee.com

This is a one-of-a-kind online translator because you can introduce a word, term or phrase  to get serveral examples on how your idea could be expressed in Spanish.

This way you can realize the different contexts of a given world and even compare the phrase against Google's results to find how popular (and accurate) the usage could be.