anna3101

JasleenKaur, I hope that conversation didn't end in a fight

I think making up new words is what keeps the language alive. After all, somebody created those we use now, right? The more the merrier

I certainly hope paper books will stay with us! I mostly read ebooks because I can fit thousands into my small phone, and they don't weigh a thing. But whenever I come across something really good, I buy the paper version so that I could someday reread it at home, touching the actual pages. One of my biggest dreams is to have my own library room someday

Thanks for the link, Czarina84! British Council is a good place to start. They have plenty of course books, some of those are really excellent!

That's a very good question, Penaber. I've seen a lot of people struggling with word order. I am one of those actually - German and Dutch are a nightmare for me. I believe the only thing that really helps is a lot of practice. That's what I do whenever I have tutoring tasks - I subject my poor victims to a huge amount of grammar exercises, starting from the simplest ones. Round Up books are great for that purpose - it's pure grammar with a lot of repetitions of the same but presented in a lively manner and with some humorous examples. Murphy is also not too bad, although personally I'm more in favour of Round Up After the students get a hang of a certain grammar point, they have to endure yet more exercises with constant repetitions, this time oral ones. Tough but quite efficient!

Hi, I'm sure I've seen the subject of word games like Scrablle discussed somewhere on the forum but I haven't seen anyone share their thoughts about writing games. Do any of you like these? Any good ones you can recommend? I'm a big fan of creating stories from given words. These days I use story cubes but before I bought them we would just pick 10-15 words at random, and each person had to write a story, incorporating all the words inside. It has never ceased to amaze me just how how different those stories always are, even those they are inspired by exactly the same words. Another nice game is creating poetry - each person adds two lines, and finally, as a result of hard group work, some funny poem emerges. Then there's also writing in different genres - one title is chosen for everybody, and each person must write their own piece of work: news report, detective story, horror, romance, memoirs etc. This one is also very fun. I really enjoy trying to write in a foreign language and combining learning and pleasure. Please let me know if you like similar games, I'm always on the lookout for more of those! Maybe we could play some here, inside the English subforum...? Ania

Hello all, I'm sure you've come across products that had labels/ingredient list/user manual translated to several languages. What puzzles me is that occasionally I find very strange differences between these. I mean - labels are not poetry or drama, so the parallel translations should basically be the same, for as long as the language vocabulary/structure allows it. But then I look at a packet of dried apples in the supermarket. It's a German brand and it has at least 10 languages on the back of the package. It says "Ingredients: apples, sulfur dioxide" - in German, in French, in English, in Spanish.. and then suddenly it's just "Ingredients: apples" in Polish. What? Isn't that giving false information to consumer? Another example - we have a microwave in our office, and on its top there's a long label with "Warning: surface may be hot" in at least 7 different languages. I can say for sure that it's this and nothing else for English, German, Italian and Spanish. But then in French, all of a sudden, it says "Warning: surface may be hot, make sure young children are not allowed near". Hmm. Why is that? Don't they care about German-speaking "young children"? Or do they think French mums are much more likely to leave their poor little ones near a blazing hot device and then just go away?? And it goes on and on. Just today I've discovered that one of my shirts has a long label inside, with most European languages in there, and for all of those I know it says "Distributed by an Italian-based company X". However, in Russian all of a sudden it's no longer "distributed" but "manufactured", and that's a blatant lie - the shirt was manufactured in India. Does anybody know what's all that about? Thanks! Ania

Hello Elimination, Nice to have another Spanish native speaker with us I hope you like the forum! Ania

Lynda.com, to learn a language? Are you sure? They have some brilliant programming courses but as far as I know, they don't offer any language learning. They surely never did before and it's not in their profile, so to speak.

Thanks a lot for your recommendations, Elimination! I normally don't listen to metal or alternative music but I find that Rammstein is somehow much "easier" and more pleasant to my ears than other bands. I'll try out some of those you've mentioned and see if I can understand any lyrics.

Hello Penaber, Welcome to Linguaholic, I'm sure you'll learn new exciting things here Ania

Hello Mameha! And welcome, good to see you join us! Now let me think... whom will I bother with questions about Italy and Italian now? I hope you like it here! Ania

You didn't hurt my eyes It actually sounds fun. I've seen people attempt to replace swear words with their own equivalents, and I think it's hilarious. Some of those newly invented swear words are so creative and fun, I wouldn't hesitate to use them myself.

For me, the best exchanges happen over a coursebook and on Skype. Then you have some units with certain topics, like "Food", and plenty of exercises of "discuss/answer questions/talk to your partner" type. "What do you eat for breakfast? Do you think fast food is bad? What's your opinion of GMO crops" and so it goes So I just open the book, turn on Skype and we start going through such exercises, answering questions in turns, or discussing and sharing our experiences about whatever the unit wants us to talk about. Sometimes we deviate from the main subject of course. But it's always fun and also a good way to know someone better. And learn language on top of that. We look up new words as we go, and if there are grammar issues, we sometimes arrange to make additional exercises from the grammar book for our next session. Hope that helps.

Please, don't even mention presentations That's when all of my vocabulary and grammar disappears in a blink of an eye. I start to make extremely stupid mistakes, noticing them myself, feeling deeply ashamed and then making yet more of them. And my carefully prepared speech turns into "Erm... yeah... well, the thing is... ekhm... let's look at this chart. Here. This chart. Hmm. Well." Sometimes I wish the floor would just open up and swallow me away!

Has travelling helped you in any way with your language learning? I don't mean going to some country to live there or study but just a short travel experience (from several days to several weeks). Have you already been in the native country of the language/languages you are interested in? If not, do you plan to go? As for me, I'm not a big time traveller. I've visited only a small handful of European countries - the Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, Spain and Greece. Being, even a very short time, in the countries where people speak the languages I'm learning - French, Spanish, German, Dutch - has been very beneficial for me. However, not in terms of practice, because you can only get so much of that during a week or two (although still it's much better than none). It has given me a lot of motivation to further learn about the language and the culture. Also, it has been either a confidence booster (wow, they can really undestand me and I can understand them) or a kind of wake-up call (hmm, seems like there's a lot I don't get and a lot I need to work on). I've never been to an English-speaking country, and also, haven't been to Italy yet. I would really like to visit UK and Italy in the future. For now, I just don't have enough money for that but I hope to earn more in the future and be able to afford the trip. What about you?

L'âge d'une personne est important, mais ce qui bien plus important pour moi, c'est son caractère et ses intérêts. De temps en temps on peut rencontrer quelqu'un qui est beaucoup plus vieux ou plus jeune mais s'il a les mêmes hobbies que moi, l'âge n'a plus d'importance. Ce qui m'embête un petit peu, c'est que certains gens utilise leur âge comme excuse pour ne pas changer les choses dans leur vie. "Je ne peux pas pas apprendre cela, je suis bien trop vieille pour ça", "Tu sais, à mon âge, c'est vraiment inapproprié de faire ça", "Moi, je suis bien trop vieux pour essayer de nouveau" etc etc. Mais ce qui encore pire, il y a les gens qui se sont des juges autoproclamé de toutes les personnes qui, selon eux, ne se comportent pas selon leurs âge. Comme si étudier à l'université était réservé une fois pour toutes aux jeunes, et tricoter était selon pour les grand-mères. Je ne supporte pas cette sorte de préjugés.

I've never intentionally invented a single word in my life, but some just kind "happened" along the way. Often those are pet names for members of my family, they sound more special when I know probably no one has made them up in the same way that I did. I have a special word for "thank you" when I talk to my sister. Both of us are studying French, so one day someone mixed up Russian and French by accident, and mersibo just stayed with us. A couple of others appeared because I couldn't find the right word for them in Russian (like, feeling cold, hungry and miserable at the same time ) so I've made them up on the go once and well, they also stayed. Of course, I only ever use such words with people who are close and know what they mean. I wonder if anybody here also has their own words? If so, what is the reason for their creation?

Oh, good old Muzzy! It was shown on Russian TV back when I was a girl and I loved it Now I'd be happy to use it myself as a teaching tool for some of my friends. As Tombo rightly said, you are never too old for Muzzy. I find simple videos very useful - both for teaching and learning. And they are fun!

Hello, Do you celebrate or have ever celebrated one of the language-related festive days? I found quite a lot of them browsing UN's site and some other resources on the web. If you know of some other days, please let me know! Here's the list: February, 14 - International Book Giving Day February, 21 - International Mother Language Day March, 4 - National Grammar Day in the USA March, 20 - International Francophonie Day March, 21 - World Poetry Day April, 20 - Chinese Language Day April, 23 - World Book and Copyright Day + World English Language Day June, 6 - Russian Language Day 2nd Saturday in September - German Language Day September, 26 - European Day of Languages September, 30 - International Translation Day October, 9 - Hangul Day in South Korea October, 12 - Spanish Language Day December, 18 - World Arabic Language Day Personally, I've only ever had some "celebration" of a kind for Francophonie Day because French authorities always prepare some interesting contests and events for this day. I also celebrate my very own "holiday" in February - a particular day when, some long time ago when I was a schoolgirl, I decided to seriously study languages and use them in my future work. What about you? Do you have some special days of your own? Do you ever celebrate the ones I've mentioned above? Also, do you have any ideas how one could spend such a day best? I'd like to commemorate some of these days next year and I'm looking for ideas Thank you all in advance. Can't wait to hear your thoughts! Ania

Mostly Polish and Russian are pretty direct, there's a word for "no" and a word for "yes". There may be some subtleties, like saying "thank you" meaning "no" to an offer - that's something I was surprised to hear in Poland. In Russian, if you only reply with "thank you", it means in 99% that you said "yes" to the offer of something. Then there's also a way to say "Yes?" in Russian which equals to a very doubtful "Oh really?" in English. But in general no is нет, yes is да, and those are quite straightforward.

I actually envy people who can differentiate the book from the author. To me, they are far too close to each other. If I don't respect the author, I simply cannot look at his work without seeing him/her behind it. I used to like Tolstoy before I've read some parts from his diary and the memoirs of the people who knew him. I was so disgusted and disappointed that simply couldn't go on reading him any more. It sounds like hypocrisy to me when the author is preaching, say, humility and kindness in his novels but in real life behaves in exactly opposite manner. Being a woman, I'm unfortunately also not very tolerant to authors who think women are inferior to men and should spend their lives in the kitchen

Actually, when I read a book and there are notes about certain concepts, I love that. It makes my experience reading the text so much richer. Take Wodehouse's books, for example. I've read most of them in Russian translation. If it were not for the translator's comments about the origin of various quotes Jeeves makes, the word play (often untranslatable into Russian) or some cultural references from that time, I'd lose a whole lot of meaning from the book. Sure, it would still be fun to read - but much poorer. A translator is not omnipotent, and I really appreciate it when he/she can admit that certain things are impossible to translate properly and give us, readers, a chance to look at the original word or literal translation.

I'm not sure I know the reason for starting to learn French. Somehow I always knew I would - my mum says that when I was very little, when people asked me what I'd do when I grow up, I replied "I'll learn to speak French!". I got down to it when I was 14 and I've been in love with this language ever since. There are so many exciting things about France and its culture - and I was able to discover it all only when I started to learn French. I guess some things you cannot really explain. Just as it was with my first visit to Poland: when I came here fist, I knew it was the right place for me to be, even though I hadn't met my partner back then.

Hello Miya, I'm glad to meet you here. Welcome back! Ania