sayitwell

I am really surprised that anyone uses the "lighted" form.  I wouldn't even think to do so.  I guess the environments that we grow up in determine what kinds of words we use.  We probably copy our parents and siblings use of language more than our teachers, unfortunately.

I am motivated to learn new words and manners of speech just because of the pure breadth of words out there.  I imagine that I'll still be learning in my 70's and beyond if I am alive then.  I just love to learn and find new ways to communicate and express my thoughts and feelings.  Language is art.

I would also like to recommend the flash card strategy.  I used that while learning french words.  Draw a picture of the action/item in question on one side of the flash card and write the name of the action/noun etc. on the other side of the card.  It is a little time consuming but works for the "problem" words that you run into.

I feel like I am mastering French or I was at one point and it took 6 years of study to do so.  I am starting out with Spanish nowadays and it seems to be much easier.  English was obviously my easiest because it is my native tongue.  I wonder what the average length of time is to learn a language?  5 years of consistent study and use?

I am going to begin my quest to learn Spanish soon.  Is this an application for a smart phone?  Can I play it without a smartphone?  I like the name: Mindsnacks.  How quickly do you think I can learn Spanish with the help of Mindsnacks?

Really cool.  I'll have to try this game out when I get out of work.  I think I'll score lowly as I've only learned 2 languages inside and out.  I'm about to start my third though I have heard others speak it in the south (Spanish).  I'll try to remember to post my score in this thread.  Thank you.

I didn't realize that both versions are acceptable.  I would have thought that "lighted" would be the incorrect word.  I thought it would always be "lit".  Oh well.  Thank you for the tip though.  Now we know!

I don't like the word "irregardless" either.  I don't think I've ever used that in a sentence but I have also seen it used in print by others.  Shame.

It is "an" ear.  Not "a" ear.  The word ear starts with a vowel so you use "an" instead of "a".

There will be some more interesting responses.  This is a good topic.  I learned in a class room setting with about 20 others.  That was in middle school, high school and college.  It is fun to hear others struggling to speak, read and write while you do too.  Extra encouragement.

Thanks for posting that video.  I wonder how accurate that really is.  Probably fairly accurate.  It does sound sort of like I imagined it would.  I wonder if Shakespeare will even be read in classrooms across the world beyond the next decade.  That old english does not appeal to young people in my opinion.

I wouldn't stray beyond your native tongue until the child is in at least middle school.  Otherwise, they will be confused with spellings of words.  They'll mix up the proper way to spell words because they'll confuse the words from each of the languages. 

Well i really enjoyed my pen pal experience in high school.  I was surprised at how well my pen pal from France could communicate in English.  He had a strong curiosity about American culture, especially American youth culture.  I am even more grateful for my experience considering that most people never have the opportunity to have a snail mail pen pal from another country.

There was a point where I began reading books and the Internet aloud in order to maintain my phonetic abilities.  That was a long time ago in a very lonely time in my life.  Things have changed since then.  I guess I am a little more anti-social than most people.

It has become less important to me over time.  When I was a student, grammar and punctuation meant a lot to me.  Since I left the academic realm it has lost its importance to a large degree as I see how few people have proper grammar outside of academia.  I still try to maintain proper grammar as much as I can (remember).

Great job finding all those words above.  I had never heard of any of them.  Thank you for the information!  Did you have to look them up or did you really know what they meant etc?

What kind of games do you mean?  Like words with friends?  How about a scrabble game or something like a crossword puzzle or live hangman?  That would be cool.

We had pen pals from France in my high school and middle school French classes.  I thought that was pretty cool.  Did you also partake in this?

Should colleges demand that students take a certain number of credits in a foreign language?  What do you think?  My vote would be no.  The student should want to learn it himself and decide to enroll.

"I laid my head on his shoulder" is how that would be written out.  If you want to use it as an active verb it will look like this: "I was lying my head on his shoulder".  I differs by tense.

I know two and I am trying for my third which would be spanish.  I used to live in Texas so I picked up some spanish from the locals while there.  I do not see the point in learning more than three languages unless you travel extensively.  I mean we only live around 80 or 90 years, why spend so much time learning the intricacies of various languages? 

To the first respondent, tell us more about your month plus of not speaking.  I find these experiments to be incredibly interesting.  Once I begin speaking at length after a prolonged period of time without using my voice I almost feel as if it isn't me talking.  Like I almost do not recognize my voice.  It makes me smile to think about that.  I wonder if one could completely lose his phonetic ability if he stopped speaking for a very long period of time.

When Ariel Castro hanged himself I heard a lot of media personalities say "hung himself" when they should have said "hanged himself" or so I was taught in school.  When someone commits suicide by hanging themselves do you say "hanged" or "hung"?

I did read a few SHakespeare plays in class throughout middle school and high school but I did not enjoy them at all.  Macbeth was alright but the old english style does not appeal to me at all.  I don't remember any of my classmates enjoying those plays either.

That is a good quote limon.  English does use a lot of words from other languages when I think about it.  Kind of like the whole melting pot idea.  Now imagine if English ends up as the one global language.  Would people be happy with it?  I mean it does borrow elements from most other romance languages.