czarina84

 I agree with reverserewind.  I don't teach, but the teachers that I have learned from used everyday objects, as opposed to textbooks, to help us learn.  One used songs; the other used games.  The only time that my French teacher used the textbook was for a game where he would say an object in French and we were to find what page it was on and say the page number in French.

What exactly do you mean by "babble"?  Is it speaking gibberish or just going on and on, sort of like rambling?

There's a post that speaks about some of the basics of Hebrew, however, there's nothing about pronunciation.  I was wondering if anyone on here speaks it.  I know very small amount of pronunciation, like how the CH has that very specific sound, but beyond that I'm stumped.  Are there any tips you can give someone with near nonexistent exposure to the language?  I'm mainly concerned with pronunciation of the words.

This is probably a silly question, but is there pop music in Hebrew?  It doesn't have to specifically be pop; it could be rap or r&b or even some kind of music that is unique to Hebrew. 

I noticed you mentioned Ashkhanzi and Sefardi; are there different types of Hebrew?  Different dialects as there are in other languages, like Chinese has Mandarin, Cantonese, Han and so on?  I'm interested in learning it because I just started with a transcription company that is run by people who are Orthodox and they all speak Hebrew.  They do speak English as well, but still, I would like to learn and it would be nice to learn the right one. 

On ‎2‎/‎6‎/‎2016 at 0:05 PM, Trellum said:

My country is not known for their R&B inspired genres, but some neighboring countries from Latin America are know for their own   There is a genre that is R&B inspired and that is the ''Reggeaton''.   I never liked it to be honest.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Actually, I have already heard of Reggaeton.  I love it.  My favorite is probably the Kumbia Kings.  I also like Daddy Yankee. 

On ‎2‎/‎18‎/‎2014‎ ‎11‎:‎07‎:‎31‎, linguaholic said:

Well, I am not sure about it but I think I heard people saying things like: "This beat is murder", meaning that this beat is really great/good. I wonder if other people can actually confirm this use of 'murder' or not.

 

 

I have heard murder used like this before.   For example, "These heels (high-heeled shoes) are murder on my feet" or "killing my feet", meaning that they are making someone's feet hurt.  They are making it more difficult to walk, dance, etc.  I think the murder one is more commonly used in England than the US, though.  Here we say killing instead.

Where I live, you are lucky to get French and Spanish, much less languages like Hindi, Greek or Russian or anything else.  It's terrible the lack of access you have to languages without the internet.  What a wonderful invention to bring us together like this.

Wow.  These replies are great.  I have so many new artists to look up.  Keep them coming.   DivaDee, I completely understand.  I am also from the US.  We used to have a college station that played the underground stuff, but that's been replaced by a classical music show.  I also dislike most mainstream.  I'll listen to some of it occasionally, but I'm more for the "worked my way up, struggled and this is how" kind of stuff.  One of my favorite artists is Angie Martinez.

On ‎12‎/‎16‎/‎2015‎ ‎11‎:‎21‎:‎42‎, watangaboy said:

Here in Uruguay we have a lot of underground artists. I don't particularly enjoy most of the musicians in the hip-hop scene but I support the movement and any type of music/genre. The most famous one (in the country) is called LaTejaPride* (La Teja is a neighbourhood in the city of Montevideo) and I think they are good. They talk about life, the streets and I think they try to give a really positive outlook on life. Their genre would be more of a blend with old school hip-hop, with a DJ, and modern hip-hop (newer sounds and technology).

There is also a really famous band which is more on the side of Rap Metal that is called Peyote Asesino ("Killer Peyote"), similar in sound to Molotov (mexican band). They don't have a positive vibe and are really aggressive in their lyrics and music. They are known in south america but are not active anymore.

They both sound very cool.  I enjoy many types of music, real hip-hop (not just about drugs and sleeping around, but actual story-telling) is just the type I like best.  I will see if I can find these artists.  Thank you.

I see a lot on here about experts in Spanish on YouTube, but how can you tell if they are teaching you properly?  How can you tell who are the experts versus people who are just trying to make a YouTube video to get hits?

"March to the beat of your own drummer" has always been my favorite.  I means to be unique instead of conforming.  To be yourself despite what is "normal".   "Stop the music!" means to quiet down and pay attention.  "Chin music" is basically talking or chatting.

I haven't gotten to Japanese yet, but it is so wonderful to hear these kanji stories.  I had no idea that they were two pieces. I always just thought it was one picture represents one word.  I didn't realize that each part of the kanji represented a different part of the word. Very cool, indeed.

I am confused by this word.  In the Spanish dictionaries, it is always defined as dark hair or skin, so I thought that it was either a brunette or a Latina.  Someone told me that it is used to describe women with dark skin and hair.  If this is true, then what is the Spanish word for a Caucasian woman with dark hair, be it black or brown?

On ‎1‎/‎13‎/‎2016‎ ‎11‎:‎47‎:‎58‎, Blaveloper said:

It's not possible to even get a very rough estimate on your vocabulary size.
In every language (even my native ones!) I keep discovering new words each day and besides that, not even one resource got every single word for any language.

If you really want to test it, you could find news articles in the language you want to test and keep reading until you find a word you have likely never heard about.
My rule of thumb is, once you can understand nearly everything (like 8 out of 10 articles or more/less, depending on the difficulty of the articles), you're good to go.
But don't go with anything too easy, because you could only trick yourself.
And don't go with anything too hard, because most native speakers don't understand super advanced stuff any way.

I completely agree.  I am a native speaker of English and I'm either teaching other native speakers new words or learning them myself. 

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2013‎ ‎6‎:‎18‎:‎02‎, MyDigitalpoint said:

Spanish and Italian are very similar, but Portuguese also has many similar words and can be easily understand it by Spanish speaking people and vice versa, though Italia is best understood.

 

Reason is that these languages share a same Latin root, which also comprises the French language despite this has none resemblance with any of the above.

I don't know about that.  I agree that Italian and Spanish have more in common, but I have been able to figure out some Italian because of words that I knew it both Spanish and French.  Granted, I completely agree that French is a bit removed from the others, but some simple words, like, no, non, et cetera, are pronounced the same way, even though they are spelled differently.  I wonder how French ended up so different when it is also a Romance language.  However, look at English.  It's a Germanic language and pretty different from Eastern European languages.

That "old chestnut" means a joke, idea or story that has lost its novelty due to many retellings.    "Lead up the garden path" means to make someone believe something is not true.  "Off the beaten path" means somewhere secluded, isolated. 

On ‎12‎/‎4‎/‎2015‎ ‎5‎:‎56‎:‎10‎, Yessica11 said:

I actually just finished up a research paper about pronunciation and accents for my graduate program.

The relationship between accent and pronunciation is completely inseparable.  For English, the two most taught accents are Receive Pronunciation (Queen's English) and General American.  Typically learners like to focus their English studies on a popular accent and learn that pronunciation.  It's hard for someone who is a NS of English to not teach towards their own accent, but I think it's important to expand your students' input in the classroom from one general accent to others.  Perhaps the other accents could include some fluent NNSs and other NS accents.  If you don't expose them to these other pronunciations, could it harm their learning? That's not necessarily proven, but it's good to walk into a classroom with the concept of English being an International Language and not one that is bound to a certain group just because that's where you learned to pronounce it.

I'm geeking out over here.

I get what you are saying about expanding the students' learning, but how could you possibly teach all of the accents in a language?  Let's take American, for example.  We have Mid-Atlantic, Bostonian, Southern, Midwestern and New England, just to name a few.  Most of them have not only their own accent, but their own words, as well.  I'm not sure how you can fit all of that into a curriculum.  Mentioning it to them so that they are aware is one thing, but I have no idea how anyone would have the time to teach/learn all of that.

18 hours ago, Wanda Kaishin said:

You are right to look elsewhere for learning pronunciation. But his pronunciation isn't so bad to the point where it isn't understandable. 

Okay.  I just say the part where you said that he was criticized for his pronunciation not being correct.  I didn't realize you meant that his accent just interfered.  I thought you meant he was giving the wrong intonation.  Like saying dove (bird), instead of dove (past tense of to dive).  Obviously not those exact words, but an example of what happens when you pronounce something incorrectly and change it's meaning.

18 hours ago, Blaveloper said:

@czarina84 I could perhaps recommend you to find random YouTube videos in your target language.
They may perhaps not be intended to teach you languages, but real world videos are still the best way to learn the right pronunciation, as long as you 'shadow' their pronunciation.

Each time I learn a new language, I make sure my pronunciation gets as close to a native speaker as I can get, I'm therefore very specific with this (I speak Australian English, so I try to copy an Australian person as closely as I can).
Copying pronunciation correctly will be hard at first (especially since you hear yourself differently than other people hear you), but the good news is, you can get used to it pretty damn quick.

Thank you.  I would appreciate that.  I was thinking of it before, but in the world of YouTube, it's difficult to tell sometimes who knows what they are talking about versus who just wants to be on the internet.

Nope.  At this point, I'm lucky if I'm conversational.  The good news is that I can pick words out of conversations.  The bad news is that with two jobs and a two-year-old, it harder and harder to find time to learn.  Any downtime that I have goes to learning, but sadly, I don't have that much downtime. 

I forgot "to take it on the chin".  It just popped into my head.  It's derived from boxing.  It means to take the full brunt of something or to not succumb to adversity.

On ‎1‎/‎12‎/‎2016‎ ‎7‎:‎26‎:‎52‎, Wanda Kaishin said:

A bit of a warning here. While Michel Thomas's accents aren't bad, they aren't native. He has been criticized for this, and for giving pronunciation tips that aren't correct/helpful. I believe he's a native Polish speaker. This doesn't affect me, because I learn my pronunciation elsewhere before ever listening to his course. I like to compartmentalize my learning, so I'm only trying to get grammar out of them.

Thank you for the warning.  I was not aware of that.  I will look elsewhere for pronunciation, as well.  If the pronunciation is wrong, that could anger a lot of native speakers, or in some cases, change the meaning of the word. 

Did you ever get this problem resolved? 

I would have to say that it depends on the language.  For the most part, pronunciation has not really been a problem for me.  I can overcome most obstacle with that.  In some languages, like Spanish, for example, sentence structure and idioms have me hung up.  I have a lot of trouble with the syntax.