czarina84

I would recommend Reaggaeton, if you are into rap.  They sing very fast and use idioms and slang.

I have always loved "home is where the heart is".  We moved around a lot as kids, so I found comfort in this.  "The lights are on, but nobody's home" is another one that I remember for someone who is distracted or when someone isn't very intelligent.

I have never heard of him before.  What exactly is his method?

Very cool.  Thank you for the video and the explanation.

I understand what you are saying, but as a dyslexic, I can honestly say there are things that honestly do make a language harder or easier for people.  I took French in high school, because everyone else said that French was harder to learn than Spanish and I wanted a challenge.  French was so easy for me!  I scored no less than a 90 on my tests and I only got the 90 because I was out with the strep throat for over a week before the test.  Spanish is more difficult.  I don't know why.  But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up. Easy and hard are real things, but you shouldn't allow them to discourage you.  If you want to learn a language, do what you can to learn it.  It may be hard, but you will have such a sense of accomplishment when you have conquered the beast.

I like to translate things on my own and just have someone correct it.  I find it helps me remember because I'm using my own brain to do it and just finding out if I'm correct.  I'm usually right, sometimes I make minor mistakes (or major ones!), but this method helps me.  I especially like to translate songs.  My whole life is music: chores, cooking, showering.  So it's what I'm most exposed to.

"Lovely weather for ducks" refers to a particularly rainy day.  To "keep a weather eye" open or on something is to watch it very closely.  To "weather out" something is to endure it until it is over.  To "get wind of" something is to hear about something that is not knowledge to the general public.  Example:  I just got wind that they may be giving us a bonus for Christmas.

I know this is for teachers, but I want to share something as a student.  I have always been interested in foreign languages, so I never needed much motivation.  However, I had many classmates speak to me about a teacher we once had.  They told me he made learning French enjoyable when they thought they would hate it.  They only took it because they were forced: their parents wanted them to take it, no room in Spanish, language requirement, etc.  But they left his class with such a love of the language that they would sometimes use it outside of class or ask me to help tutor them.  He used to make games for the class, like he would say the name of a character or actor or some very specific object and we would have to flip through our French books and find it/him/her.  The we would have to say the page number.  He wanted us to say it in French.  If we didn't know how, we could say it in English and he would tell us in French and have us repeat it until we said it properly.  He had one big rule that resulted in big trouble if broken:  DO NOT MAKE FUN OF ANYONE.  You could gently tease or make jokes to put the person at ease, but you couldn't be mean.  That resulted in a peaceful class where everyone got along and helped each other.  He would also make little ungraded quizzes to see where everyone was and fashion lesson plans around what the majority didn't seem to know. 

I've never heard of Linguee before.  I'm going to have to check it out, especially with all of the comments raving about idioms.  That is by far the hardest part of a language for me, since I can't always recognize them.

I like both.  I enjoy the feeling of handwriting, especially cursive.  However, my penmanship is atrocious.   I mean really, really terrible.  So, I usually write important things on the computer, unless it's something I think of spur of the moment, then I use pen and paper, because you don't have to wait for those to boot up. 

Reading the headline, I thought at first it was something that tests your current knowledge and fits the curriculum to that.  I'm going to have to check it out.  It seems really cool from what you described.

On ‎11‎/‎11‎/‎2013‎ ‎11‎:‎30‎:‎23‎, Mizali said:

I love palindromes, especially the phrases.  Some of my favorites are:

 

Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas

Mr Owl ate my metal worm

Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?

 

 

There's also the joke phobia aibohphobia, the fear of palindromes.

I've never heard that one.  It's funny...and clever.  I caught the joke, it's subtle.

I just checked out the site.  It looks so great.  It's customized to the specific needs and looks to be a decent price, depending on what you need.  I'm not a French student, but it's good to know there is a site like that since I know some people who have kids in school.

8 hours ago, agentzero said:

Can we make human-like androids though? I haven't heard of those. I don't know how the wizards of programming function and how they create their programs so I don't think I can add anything of use here, but I still feel like you can cut them some slack. 

Yeah, we can.  They are still in the prototype stage.  I researched them when I was writing a short story.  I can't comb through all of my research now.  I think I may have deleted it anyway once my story was finished.  There is one android who can feel the full range of emotions. There's another who has the personality of a man's deceased wife.   

I think the reason that mostly people find it easier to write languages than read languages is that pencils have erasers and mouths don't.  When you write something, a letter, for example, you can erase and re-write before you send it.  With speech, once it's out there, it's out there.

I don't think there's a "wrong way" to learn anything if it produces a good outcome.  If you find a method that works and you are learning the correct syntax, vocabulary, etc, go with it.  As long as you learn the language properly, do it.

"The heart wants what the heart wants" means that you can't choose who you love.  "Heart's desire" is kind of self-explanatory.  It means what you truly want.  "A man/woman after my own heart" means someone who likes what you like or is similar to you in personality.

On ‎9‎/‎28‎/‎2014‎ ‎12‎:‎35‎:‎00‎, KeepYourChinUp said:

I know the alphabet already and yes you're right. The letter changes shape depending on where in the word they occur but once you practice a bit it's not that hard although writing it is another story all together.

So, it's really just similar to listening to a different language.? Once you know what to look for, you can usually pick it out.  I just got a job with an Israel-based company.  I saw some websites in Hebrew.  The letters (characters?) were enlarged.  I wonder why they don't  do that for Arabic as well.

On ‎12‎/‎18‎/‎2015‎ ‎8‎:‎07‎:‎21‎, Mameha said:

I was wondering about this: In which countries english is spoken in daily life in addiction to the native language? I mean, here in Italy schools teach basic english, but i don't really think it is so important. Obviously if you are going to find a job a requirement is "good knowledge of english language" but not all can speak it fluently (actually almost no one), it is not used daily, we speak only Italian and its dialect. If you are Italian and you go to a store and start to speak english fluently, people may not understand what are you saying and probably watch you with the eyes wide open  I'm not so fluent and good in english but i had a friend at school who couldn't speak a word of it, in fact we had to help her doing english homework at university. I don't think this is really good, i dare to say that is absurd not to know a word of english nowdays. I'm not saying to speak it fluently, but i think that knowing some basic notions, basic conversations, words etc, would be really helpful. What about your countries? How much is english used and how it is considered?

I want to say that you may not think you speak English well, but I do.  I especially want to remark on your use of "its".  That is great.  You would not believe the amount of native English speakers here in the US who spell that "it's" and then argue that they spelled it correctly because it is "possessive".  They also confuse "they're, there, and their".  So, bravo on your command of the English language.  I think it's great.  I also agree that since there are so many languages out there, you should learn them based on your needs.  I'm not the type of person who thinks that everyone everywhere needs to learn English; I think language learning is a personal choice.  However, if you move to the US, you may face ridicule if you don't know at least the basics. 

12 hours ago, agentzero said:

What do you expect? It's Bing.

I think this is more of a programming issue though. There are a lot of idioms that need to be translated in a lot of languages and there are even words that don't exist in every language so I think that can be hard to figure out. I know it would be hard for me to figure it out  

Yes, but they are also made up of more than one person.  I wasn't saying that the people who run the search engines were lazy; the search engines themselves are lazy.  Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to do cute.  I just meant that we are living in the age of technology.  If we can make humanlike androids, we can certainly update a translator to recognize idioms.  After all, there are online dictionaries that do the same.

I will say La Bamba.  I have many Spanish language songs and artists that I love, but La Bamba holds a special place in my heart.  It was the first Spanish language song I ever heard and kickstarted my obsession with them.  Also, when my newborn daughter wouldn't calm down, I started singing La Bamba for her.  She stopped crying and fell asleep in my arms!  It worked every time. 

Gefeliciteerd!   I hope that's the right word.  Congratulations!

I think search engine translators are just lazy.  I think if they had the right tweaks, such as recognizing idioms, they could be effective.  Maybe people just haven't sent in suggestions on what to fix.

On ‎12‎/‎18‎/‎2015‎ ‎7‎:‎58‎:‎32‎, Blaveloper said:

@czarina84 My advice is to just set up the US International keyboard, it's a keyboard layout that's already available in all modern operating systems.

All you'll need to do is this:
" + o = ö
~ + n = ñ
^ + e = ê
' + a = á
` + u = ù
Right alt + s = ß
And so on.

I can imagine you will find this annoying as a native English speaker, but it'll become very convenient over time.

It's not my English-speaking side that will find it annoying, it's my technophobe side that will.    I grew up without a computer so I'm still trying to learn about them. 

On ‎12‎/‎18‎/‎2015‎ ‎7‎:‎49‎:‎34‎, watangaboy said:

Haha, yes! It was a bit unexpected to me and couldn't answer properly. Maybe I needed to explain myself further; he must've thought I was making fun of him (which I wasn't, I was just making a joke). I wish I was a quick thinker like you but I tend to block myself, like "should I laugh or be serious?"

I'm not so much a quick thinker as much as an embarrassing moment magnet.  Through experience, I learned how to turn them around.  If you keep things light and non-judgmental, most people will understand and be more open to learning from their mistakes.  Plus, I used to non-officially tutor other kids in school.  That helped me learn that most anger is just insecurity.  Disable that and you will have a better life.