anna3101

Did you ever come across obvious translation mistakes - in books, on products or in a public space? Do you thing that people who discover such mistakes should inform the publisher/owner of the site etc? In a short period of time, I happened to see translation errors in an online shop, on my cat's food packaging and in book I was reading. It bothers me a bit. Is there any point in trying to report them or will the manufacturer ignore my email anyway... What do you think?

Hello friends, Today I would like to share some links with you, and if you have anything to add, please do. These are some unusual/fun sites, obviously language-related. Simple Write lets you type in some text and will mark all the words that do not belong to the most basic 1000: http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/ Interesting facts about words and language: http://mentalfloss.com/section/language Amazing site where you can find detailed information about the languages spoken in a particular country: https://www.ethnologue.com A word a day - the title says it all: http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/index.html And not strictly related to languages, but interesting nevertheless A project showing current world population and your life expectancy depending on which country you live in: http://population.io/ A world map that changes depending on the year you put in: http://geacron.com/home-en/?&sid=GeaCron472516 Have fun Ania

For those who are learning Russian, here's a test to estimate your Russian vocabulary size. Short and sweet, I enjoyed it: http://www.myvocab.info/

I've never been mocked and certainly never mocked anyone. However, I do have personal preferences when it comes to non-native speakers and their accents. I find some accents very likeable and others a bit ugly. But I would never say that out loud. That's about accents - but using wrong words or grammar structures is another story entirely. I had some people laughing to tears when I was starting to learn Polish

@Ogada Actually, I think many people started to passively learn English when the Internet became available And the same is true for PCs... when computers became popular in Russia (and affordable), there was no such thing as localization. DOS was English-only, first Windows (and a couple of subsequent ones) were also available only in English. People had to learn quickly if they wanted to use the computer (and later on, to browse the Internet). That's probably a good thing, although I'm not sure that English becoming a world language is that great.

Grammar is not really boring for me, but it is tedious sometimes. The only approach that really works is just sitting down and doing grammar exercises, until something "clicks" in my brain and I learn the proper construction. This takes time and, depending on the language and the grammar in question, can be tiring. But still I'm not sure I can call it boring. I'm learning languages mostly for the pleasure of doing it, so I like to keep the process fun and lively

Memory is a fascinating subject. When I think about it, a lot of my conversations with colleagues and friends touch upon in, and especially when it comes to learning languages. Think about the famous excuse - "My memory is no good, that's why I can't learn/progress in a language X". I am myself guilty of using (and abusing) it in daily situations. Oh, I forgot to buy tea - well, you know, my memory's kinda weak these days. What project did we work on two weeks ago? Hmm, really don't remember. I must be getting old. People often say "Oh, I wish I had a better memory! Excellent memory!" I've always thought that people who have "photographic" memory are really lucky to have such an amazing skill at hand. But I've changed my mind a bit after reading about Solomon Shereshevskii. I don't know if you heard about him - the man had a sort of perfect memory - he did not forget things. https://bgoodscience.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/neuroscience-cases-the-man-who-could-not-forget/ Well, it turned out remembering everything is not as great as it sounds. I guess the brain has the forgetting setting switched on by default because it is useful for us - and there are things we are much better off not remembering. What's your opinion? Do you think we are better off with a memory that keeps forgetting new words? Or should we try hard to improve our memory? And how do you judge if your (or someone else's memory) is "good" or "bad"? It seems that different people have different ideas about what it means to remember well.

Finally, science is confirming what we all already knew: playing games in English is useful for writing English https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160121093415.htm One more argument in the eternal discussion between myself and game haters who think that games result in nothing but killers and maniacs roaming the earth

That's interesting - I've met a French girl who said exactly the opposite "There are plenty of good French songs", she said. "I really prefer old ones. But please do not listen to Goldman - it's a disaster. Horror". I guess tastes differ

@Wanda Kaishin I'm pretty sure we can all get along just fine!We already have at least one thing we agree on: we are not fans of Benny

I couldn't help laughing out loud when I imagined that picture A couple that has been married for years bumps into someone who uses same function words with the same frequency as the husband/wife, and bang! Love at first sight followed by a quick divorce, all because someone uses "the" quite often

I can totally relate to that. Each language gives me a slightly different perspective, and sometimes I discover notions that I'd never have come across otherwise. While I know nothing about minority languages that are disappearing, I still find the trend disturbing. I am not against many aspects of globalization, but some are truly alarming. However much I like English, I wouldn't want to live until the day 90% of the world population speaks only that, and nothing else...

Hello Angelos, It's nice to see my native language appreciated Thanks for the link, I'm sure it will be useful for those who are studying Russian. Ania

Hello Ivan, I am myself in the process of learning (struggling?) with German and I find that blog very helpful: http://yourdailygerman.com/ It has been mentioned here on the forum a couple of times, and rightfully so - it does a great job of explaining the grammar (which, personally, is my biggest struggle). Otherwise, I guess the only way we, native speakers of those free-word-order languages, can improve German is by practising a lot I'm curious what other people here may suggest, as I'm also (always!) looking for more German-learning online and offline resources Good luck! Ania

I've come across this sad article in National Geographic: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/01/language_diversity_index_tracks_global_loss_of_mother_tongues/ It looks like the number of languages in the world is on a steady decline. I find that incredibly sad. Do you think this trend will stay and there will be even less languages in the future?