anna3101

I love listening to French songs, from old ones to the latest pop-hits. And also musicals. I also have a huge collection of songs dedicated to Paris, I've been gathering them for years and I really enjoy listening to those

Ok, so I tried three tests, and here's what they say. 1. http://my.vocabularysize.com This one is adapted to one's native language (by the way, I found numerous mistakes when it comes to Russian translation of the site, and it makes me wonder...) You are given a bunch of English words, and you must choose 1 correct Russian translation out of 4 definitions. This is a serious drawback when it comes to evaluating if you really know the words or not: some I wouldn't know how to use but I have heard them somewhere (or I know them from other languages), so it's easy to choose the correct definition. I got "You know at least 20 200 word families" as a result, which is a bit too high. Besides, I most definitely do not think that this is "better than 50% of the native speakers taking this test". 2. http://testyourvocab.com Here you have a list of words where you just tick those that you really know. Probably this is more accurate, and I got my vocabulary size estimated to be about 17 400 words. Definitely more plausible. I also like the statistics you get after the test, and according to this site, native speakers have about 20 000 - 35 000 words in their vocabulary. Yes, I definitely like this site better! 3. http://vocabulary.ugent.be This test shows you a range of real and fake English words, you must mark those that you know for sure to be real. I've first seen this testing method in Dialang (my favourite language testing software), and generally it works quite well. It says I know "69% of English words". I've heard English has more than a million words in it, so I'm guessing they mean I know about 69% of the most commonly used? So what, around 30 000? However much I'd like to believe that, I don't think it's true - or will ever be true in the course of this lifetime. Maybe in my next life, when I'm born as an English native speaker, I'll be able to use that many words... but certainly not now. All in all, I think site nr 2 - testyourvocab - gives the best results in terms of their truthfulness. Let me know if you find any other places on the web where people can test their vocabulary size. It was fun I'd like to try more tests!

Oooh. Mon Essentiel, I love it too! And 'être à la hauter'. The musical was quite fun, a lot of nice songs there.

Hello, I haven't been studying German for many years, and now I wonder about the effects of the language reform in 1996. How widely spread is the new spelling? Is it the accepted standard now or do some people still write in the "old" way? The last time I had contact with German was back when the reform was only starting, so everybody used the old spelling. How much have things changed since then? If anyone knows, please tell me. The information on the Internet is mixed - some sources say the reform was a failure, others say it was a success and everybody writes in a new way now. Thanks in advance! Ania

I have recently finished playing Ein rätselhafter Auftrag, and I have to say it was absolutely great. A lot of spoken German with subtitles helped me learn a bunch of new words. If anyone here knows other German games or educational apps, please let me know. I'd love to continue in that direction

I use one set per language until I finish it (student's book + workbook + teacher's book), as I find it hard to concentrate on two courses at the same time. I actually don't take the author or publisher into consideration, all of mine are different but that was not something that I specifically had in mind while buying the books. I chose them based on their usefulness for me, ie: - well-structured lessons (no jumping from one thing to another without any connection between them) - progression from easy to difficult neither too slow nor too fast - vocabulary that's relevant for me - grammar well-explained and many exercises for each grammar point - all or at least some part of the texts and audio are authentic - decent paper quality and nice pictures (but not to the point of having more images than text) - audio and a good workbook with additional exercises are both obligatory - not too many activities requiring a group or a partner (I mostly study by myself) - the whole thing should also be appealing and motivating It takes some time to browse various books to find "the one", but once I have it, learning is pleasant and I'm making some progress, even if I don't study regularly.

Dear friends, Let's share some online resources that are handy for translation work. I've already seen some people mention certain sites, but it would be great to have it all in one place and not in many threads. For translations into and from Russian, I can highly recommend Multitran - it helped me with some really difficult technical words many times: http://www.multitran.ru/ For German-Polish and vice versa Pons online dictionary has been surprisingly helpful: http://pl.pons.com/t%C5%82umaczenie/niemiecki-polski For various language pairs, these three are all very good resources: bab.la wordreference.com linguee.com If you know any other useful dictionaries and sites, please share them here! Thank you all! Ania

Hello Federico, Bienvenido a nuestro forum! Espero que sea util para ti. Hay mucha gente aqui que aprende espanol, incluendome Saludos, Ania

I wonder if any one you know a (more or less) plausible test to roughly evaluate how many words you know in a given language? Have you ever tried such tests for English or other languages? If you know any sites or books that you can recommend, I'd be very grateful. I'd love to know a (very) approximate amount of words I know in several languages but I don't know which source can be reliable in this respect. Thanks in advance!

What I really like about my native language (Russian), is that word order is flexible. There are no strict rules where to put which word. You can say "I talk to my friends" or "To my friends I talk" or "Talk I to my friends", and all of them will be grammatically correct and perfectly usable, although obviously the emphasis will be a bit different. Another flexibility that I enjoy a lot is word formation. There are multiple ways to make diminutives out of any noun - and here once again while the basic meaning stays the same, you can add nuances to the word. There is a huge amount of prefixes and suffixes that you can use with various verbs, adjectives etc, and all of this really gives you the freedom to adjust words to what you really mean.

I prefer the good old paper coursebooks for my language learning. Of course, I do use the Internet but mostly when I need a dictionary - or when I want to bring in a bit fun by playing a game in a foreign language. Most of my learning is done offline though. I have a coursebook + teacher's and workbook for each language and at least one grammar book with exercises to practise difficult grammar issues. When I'm feeling sufficiently fluent to be able to talk, I also try to add Skype or real life conversation to the bunch.

Oggi sono nel ufficio Normalmente, mi piace il mio lavoro ma dopo le vacanze non voglio fare niente, tanto meno alzarsi presto e lavorare Che fai per ritrovare la motivazione per il lavoro o il studio?

It seems like a good idea. I've always found that explaining/teaching something to other people clears things up in my own head. However, creating and maintaining such a site would be a lot of work. Are you sure you'll have enough time and motivation to do that?

That's an interesting topic indeed. I am not sure how much of the "brain food" is really influencing brain and how much is just placebo effect. There is no doubt that nuts or fresh vegetables are incredibly healthy but I don't think they "act" immediately. You need to eat healthy for some time to feel the benefits. For me, the best food for concentration is tea or coffee. Supposedly they are stimulants but I believe in my case it has more to do with the psychological effect: I have my cup of coffee -> this means I need to work -> I go and work/study. I've come to associate hot drinks with work and concentration, so even if the "coffee" is made from chicory and tea is in actual fact frozen cherries with hot water, it still has exactly the same effect

@KittenErnst Hello Ernst, Welcome to the forum, hope you like it here! German is hard indeed, I'm also going to concentrate on it this year. Good luck to us both Ania

By the way, if you like playing games, I found a really fun one for learning Dutch. It's called "Lost In" and you can learn a lot of new words in there. It's more for beginners, obviously, but maybe you'll find something useful in there.

Good luck, I'm sure you'll do fine. Nothing is as motivating as the need to get a job And now that you are in the Netherlands, you can practise loads.

Grazie Mameha, e un buon anno nuovo per te! Io ho preso un rafreddore esattamente il 31.12 Avevo febbre e non potevo bere il champagne.. Ma ora sto meglio e andro al lavoro lunedi'. E tu, come stai?

Once I can speak fluent Spanish, I'll try to read books in the original and I'll look for ways to implement this knowledge in my daily job.

Ciao, Per Natale ho preparato una zuppa "bianca" (tipica polacca), una insalata con formaggio e uova, un'alta insalata con barbabietole e aglio, una composta, un tiramisu e una torta di mele Abbiamo mangiato troppo come al solito Domani comince'ro a cucinare per il capodanno! E tu, come vai? Che farai 31.12? Ania

Muchas gracias por corrigirme, Trellum! Disculpame por no escribir con los caracteres espanoles. No puedo utilizar el teclado espanol porque es dificil encontrar donde estan las letras Mi nivel no es alto, creo que es A1 o A2. Efectivamente, es mucho mas facil escribir que hablar. Hay google, wordreference etc etc Puedo buscar las palabras que no se y tengo tiempo para corrigir errores (si los veo, naturalmente ). Uso il diccionario todo el tempo...cualquiera puede hacerlo. Pienso que para poder escribir, no es necesario de saber una lengua. En estos dias, con toda la tecnologia, diccionarios online, sitios como verbix etc todos pueden escribir mensajes simples en ingles o espanol He empezado de estudiar espanol cuando tenia 16 anos. Lo hacia durante un ano, y luego no hacia nada durante dos anos. Y despues habia tres anos de espanol en la universad pero fue algo de horrible. Brrr. Nuestra profesora ha matado mi entusiasmo por el idioma espanol He recomenzado de estudiar espanol hace algunos meses. Espero que un dia podre hablar con fluidez

@Kangoo Salut! Moi, je vais fêter Noël comme d'habitude, c'est-à-dire à la maison, avec mon compagnon et notre chatte Et c'est la même chose pour le Novel an. J'ai préparé des tas de choses, des plats traditionnels polonais ainsi que nos favoris, et pour le Nouvel an je vais faire des plats russes. Et puis on va regarder quelques films, jouer aux jeux de société, ouvrir les cadeaux et parler

I think B2 is the minimum I'd need. I hope to pass it, it's not vocabulary or grammar that I'm most worried about - I'm more anxious about any tricky punctuation questions. But it's only for next year so I'll worry about it later

Gefeliciteerd met het behalen voor je exam! Ik ben erg onder de indruk van jouw examenresultaten

If you ever want to practise French together, do let me know I'm always looking for people I could chat with. Just this night I had a nasty nightmare in which several of my most favourite French singers came to visit me - and I couldn't talk to them properly because my speaking skills were so rusty, I forgot every second word. Brrr. I do need to practise more.