OddVisions

Thank you both for your opinion, and I think you're right. I hadn't even considered the thought that it could be someone complaining when they probably had nothing much to complain about. I should've realized that implication sooner. I think I can understand now about why it's being used in such a way around my home and town lately.

I'm certainly not going to be able to take any safari trips or anything like that. However, the few swahili words I do know always seem to just roll off the tongue. If there's a way, I'd like to maybe learn a word or a phrase every few days or once a week. That is of course if you're still interested in this after so long.

To be honest? I'm obsessed with foreign languages. Language itself evolves and grows in every part of the globe. For many people it surrounds their daily lives as part of something that is simply just understood by those around them. I want to explore those languages and those cultures to see the world in a different light, a better light. In some ways, through language comes unity. I suppose, in a sense, I study the languages because I love to learn them.

I love Kanjidamage. It makes the harder to remember words much easier to remember with it's humorous way of teaching the kanji it has listed on the site to those wishing to learn it. If I remember correctly, this is how I remembered that the word for detective looked like a duck with a walking stick. I don't think that's the description they used for it though.

Thank you. I knew there were at least two kinds. However, I did not know there were four kinds of kanji. I think you are on to something about learning it too. I remember a lot of kanji by using the method involving derivatives.

I don't know in what other ways learning to hand-write kanji might be useful but I often use it as a way to quickly write down what I'm learning. I'll use paper to do definitions and the old 5X each technique my English and Spanish teacher were always fond of. In that regard, it's helped me out a lot.

As of today, I'm back up to remember 30 or 40 kanji thanks to wanting to know a few mystery-related ones. I didn't relearn all of the kanji I'd originally forgotten though. Instead, I learned things like the kanji for detective. It looks kind of like a little duck with a walking stick, which is how I remember it: 偵

I agree with the teacher that the sound or word would be harder to pronounce for a person of those descents. However, I wouldn't call it impossible based on their mouth structures alone; it's just more difficult for them to learn the word or sound than someone whom is not of either of these descents. That goes vice-versa for other descents too that are trying to speak the opposing language.

There is no real set date for how long it actually takes to learn a language. Some languages will take less time than others while some languages will be learned quicker depending on the student learning it. To fluently speak a language takes dedication. To be fair, nobody ever stops learning a language. Our languages evolve and am mend as we do.

My favorite foreign language word would be "C'est la vie", which means "That's life".

I've heard this phrase a many time down here in the south. It's one thing to hear this constantly. They also like to shout 'sacrebleu' at the top of their lungs when their very mad sometimes. I'm not sure if their copying the guy from the Disney movie since kids are usually around or they truly are angry enough to be yelling in French.

mal- meaning 'bad' in Spanish.

I learned this word when I had a bad tummy ache in high school. On my way into the class, the teacher said something that ended with mal. It was one of the first few days and we hadn't covered the word yet. At the time, it seemed like such an odd word but now I almost slip it into my English by accident that I'm so used to it.

Thank you both for the help. I will try to use these properly in a sentence as soon as I can. There is someone teaching me the little bit of Tagalog he knows but he doesn't know as much as others would and all he could teach me in this regard was 'mahal kita'.

I knew of a few words, but I didn't really start learning until a day or so after joining Linguaholic and realizing it was a language I wanted to learn. So, I suppose I started learning the basics to everything here. However, I'm still also using apps to assist with my continued learning of the language as well as this subforum.

Thank you for the phrases. I'll be sure to use them when practicing speaking Korean or writing Hangul. In addition, what is the Korean phrase for thank you? I think I saw it somewhere on the forum but forgot where. Thus, if you could help me remember the phrase, I'd be very thankful of it.

I know Mahal Kita means I love you. It's a beautiful phrase. However, is there something a little more personal than this to say to someone like a spouse? I like using 'mahal kita' but it often feels like it's used in every instance, both for family and close friends.

I remember a teacher doing something akin to this in high school with our vocabulary worksheet. To this day, I will never forget the Spanish word for cow 'vaca' thanks to that. I agree it's a good idea to help teach a lot of the more easy to learn words in other languages this way.

I'm not sure what constitutes poor grammar in other languages but I do know of a few things that shape up bad grammar in the English Language. The main issue with poor grammar is the misspelling of words. The second most prominent issue is one that even I have difficulty with: punctuation. It's hard to tell when a comma needs to go here or if that period should be a semi-colon. There's also people using a word that sounds like it should be there but where a different word should be. For instance, here are two sentences:

1. I can't read very good.

2. I can't read very well.

Both sentences mean the same thing but the second sentence is the grammatically correct sentence.

As far as this thread though, I can't really see anything poor about your grammar.

Gangnam style was never too weird of a song to me. It just reminded me of someone having too much fun with a Sims game. On the other hand, I didn't know what the words meant. I'm happy I have a proper translation to look at now.

One of the most used Filipino words in everyday life, "basta", can't really be translated. I can't really explain it in English but it's close to "whatever". I tried using Google Translate but it translated to "packing".

So, it's more like when someone says 'meh' or 'eh' and are being all chilled out about something? If that's the case, this is my new favorite word in Tagalog.

I'm not a native speaker, I just have a friend teaching me a few words in Tagalog. However, when I learn a language then I don't like to mix up the sentence with a different language when I speak. I don't know why it gets to me but I just don't like to do that. The water sentence would probably be annoying to me too if he constantly said that yet knew the word in it's original language.

I wanted to try another holiday haiku. However, I also wanted to do something funny. I thought I would share this; a haiku about black Friday:

Holidays are here

Black Friday is dangerous

Shop at your own risk

I thought it was a cute little haiku to share with everyone who might be going out during all the 1st Friday of the Christmas seasons sales.

I'm a native English speaker and I've come across this saying a few times in my life. However, I've never really understood why it's constantly used as a reply to someone complaining about their problems or if they're talking about coupons for a store. My understanding of the phrase is that it means the following:

a bird that you have caught already can be cooked and eaten. There's no if's-it's a fact that you have the bird. Two in the bush means that you can try to attain the other two but you might not get them. The allusions are there but I feel confused about why people would use them in the two settings I mentioned.

I could help out every now and then as well if you like. Though, I do admit I can be very strict when it comes to teaching anyone about anything.

I'm new to the written language too! Don't worry though! It seems that, as long as you can speak it, you've already got the hard part covered. From what I know of it, the alphabet is made up of letters either represent a vowel sound or the shape of your mouth when forming a consonant. There were a lot of helpful posts here in the forum too that helped me out when I decided I wanted to start learning Korean.

I'm using a free app on my phone right now to go ahead and learn the basic alphabet and sounds of Hangul. I can't remember the name of it, but it's possible to get it through Android and there's an icon of what looks like a red goblin with a long nose on it. It's really been helping since some of the vowel-sound words seem really similar to me. Like 'ah' in 'tah' and the 'a' in 'ba'.