Denis Hard

What of the Manchester accent? I always thought it sounded a lot different. . .

. . .of course it doesn't come close to being as distinct as Welsh, but well. . .

While it's mostly used to console lovers who've been ditched, it also does work when you lose an opportunity and someone wants to remind you that if you lost something, there are plenty of other opportunities out there in the rough cold world. . .

I've been reading some articles about Catalonia seeking to secede from Spain because

they feel Catalan and not Spanish

The residents of Catalonia speak Catalan but since it's part of Spain I'd like to know if it's a Spanish dialect or an entirely different language.

When traveling abroad or meeting people whose language you don't speak [or are learning] it's at times suggested that you should arm yourself with a dictionary to look up words you don't understand. I don't see how this can work since no one will wait around for you to check the meaning of a word before continuing with the conversation and in any case you may not even know the spelling of the word.

So, should you or shouldn't you? And if you have, what were your experiences?

Naturally one will think in the language they use most.

But then people relate more to real experiences so your best memories would also dictate the language you think in if you're one of those fellas who dwell on the past. So I guess if you speak more than one language, your mind can use any of those languages [to be precise, the one which best suitss the purpose].

And. . .

Big fish - an important person.

[be] neither fish nor fowl - something that has characteristics of two things being compared

                                    but has differences that make it entirely different from both.

Plenty more fish in the sea - used by a spurned lover to show that there are many more

                                      people who can love him out there.

Cold fish - someone who always stays aloof. 

For me the fun of it comes from earning making money from being a translator. It can pay quite well. I remember earning $45 in an hour in 2008 for a small translation job. So well. . .since $$$ can buy you fun, heck. . .I might as well learn with the intention of making money from translations.

They encourage students to be lazy because you can always guess the answers and if it's your lucky day you'll pick the correct answer even if you didn't know the answer. And since such questions tend to be drawn from certain sources [teachers are that lazy] anyone who has seen the questions before will most likely get most of the answers right.

To accurately assess a student's learning progress, a test shouldn't have any answers.

I'd go for a hybrid between repetition and writing. Learn the word and use it in many sentence. The act of writing it [the new word] continuously fixes it in your mind. But that doesn't mean you can't forget it. To really master the words you have to practice using them from time to time.

I don't use chrome or any translation add-ons for my browser. Because of that I manually copy the text I want translated and use Babylon to get it translated. It's really tedious if you ask me.

It wouldn't be OK to re-post what has been posted in another thread. There's a kind of detailed explanation here if you'd care to take a look:

http://linguaholic.com/english-lounge-conversations-in-english-only/english-practice/15/

Well. . .

There are several areas in which British and American spelling are different. The differences often come about because British English has tended to keep the spelling of words it has absorbed from other languages (e.g. French), while American English has adapted the spelling to reflect the way that the words actually sound when they're spoken.

From the same source:

British English words that end in -re  often end in -er in American English:

And

British English words ending in -our  usually end in -or in American English:

Finally

Verbs in British English that end in -yse  are always spelled -yze in American English:

But that's just the tip of the ice-berg. For more about differences [in spelling] between British English and American English read this Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences

"Try" definitely is the right word to use. I did attempt to read some of Chaucer's work but had to give up because I just didn't like the way he wrote. He may have been a great writer but just as Shakespeare was a great playwright, I don't read his any of his work either.

It's just. . .a matter of taste.

Here we go:

True homonyms:

Bank - where you keep your money.

      - sloping land on the side of a rive.

      - have confidence in someone.

Change - modify.

          - replace with another.

          - put on a new set of clothes.

Deck    - get struck down.

          - decorate.

And other homonyms:

Days- quite obvious.

Daze - what you experience when someone whacks you on the head.

      - the feeling you get when she tells you "it's over between us."

I'd give a rating of 8/10. That I understand is because the are hardly any native Spanish speakers in the town where I live. Many times I have to write lines of dialog and read them out loud as a way to practice speaking the language. Yeah, learning a new language can be really,  really hard.

In some languages, dialectical differences are only noticeable in the different pronunciation of words, the tempo the language is spoken [at] and probably a number of variations in the spellings. However, within the same language group, there could exist other dialects which may be quite difficult to learn.

In the U.S for example, there's standard English and AAVE. Someone who hasn't been exposed to black vernacular [for a long time] will have difficulty in understanding it. Speakers who use AAVE predominantly experience the same problem when they have to talk to those who speak standard American English and actually find learning it to be as difficult as learning a foreign language [when they learn it in school].

So I guess sometimes learning a dialect [of some language] can be like learning a new language.

My choice is influence more by emotion [and bad, past experiences] rather than just a love for the sound of the idiom itself.

My favorite idiom is: green-eyed monster.

The reason:

One of the women I loved of most had green eyes. When she betrayed me, I found that each time I thought of her it made me feel real bitter. And in conversation I literally found myself referring to her as the green-eyed monster. Just picture something, shapeless, slimy, with green refulgent eyes. . .it helped me ascend from the abyss I'd fallen into.

A few more:

To the hilt - do something to the limit.

Cross swords - to have a dispute with someone.

All's fair in love and war - you can use any means fair/foul to beat someone in a competition.

War of words - a long [bitter] argument between. . .

Let's take the example of a class with 10 students. They all have different abilities. Some can learn fast while others learn the same things slower. So if you're taking a language course in some institution it means that the pace of learning would be determined by the slowest learner right?

If that is a fact, should people opt to learn languages solo?

It may or may not work in some cases. The reason I hate French so much is because it was forced onto me. I was forced to learn French as a kid [in the boarding school I was in]. The teacher would teach in French and all of us kids would be like WTF!

Those lessons didn't help us at all.

So, it's much better to teach a foreign language using a language the learner knows. Once the basics have been mastered, a switch to teaching primarily in the target language won't be so bad.

Unless there's a way to connect the brain to some machine like they do in Naked Space [the most disgusting movie I've ever watched] so that your thoughts can be recorded by the machine then displayed on a monitor or spoken [depending on your preferred or default output unit] such technology would be something to look forward to in the new millennium.

It's easier to learn something if you have fun doing it. For example, a kid learning to swim with friends will enjoy the activity and learn it faster than another kid who is obligated to learn because they have to learn it [for safety] or because they're being forced to by their parents.

Are there 'fun' ways to learn a language, like say playing a word game for those learning English?

1. "However" can modify a sentence/clause [whatever] or it can be used just like any conjunction to join two clauses. However, when used with a comma at the beginning of a sentence can be equated to using the word "nevertheless." That's if, there's a preceding sentence and it [ the sentence which follows] is a continuation of a thought/idea/subject matter that is inconclusive in the previous sentence. To avoid confusion, it's always better to use this form of "however" in the middle of a sentence.

'We might have lost the battle," The City Manager said, "however, we shall win the war."

Most consumers prefer cheap products. However, such products are always of a lower quality and therefore don't last long.

2. "However" when used without a comma.

However bad the weather is, we'll still have to take our dog for a walk.

However mean and rough he looks, he's the kindest man you'll ever meet.

In such instances "however" is used to contrast an impression against what's in reality the truth or whatever, depending on the context.

People can learn anything they set their minds on at any age as long as they have the ability [it'd take centuries to teach a mentally handicapped person anything] and their willingness to learn. But I suppose once people get to that age, they just don't want to learn anything else anymore. That attitude would be what holds most middle-aged people from learning languages.

Knowing more than one language is hardly the best means of gauging someone's intelligence. There are places in the world [especially in Africa] where everyone as to learn English because all their educational material is written in English. But you find that these people speak their native languages and also another language that's widely spoken in the region [it could be some of form of pidgin] a hybrid of the local languages. . .whatever. But fact is most of them speak no less than four different languages. Does that prove they are very intelligent? It doesn't.

Intelligence varies from person to person regardless of their linguistic abilities.