OmniHead

I  gave up with French because pronunciation was hard for me when I tried it. Later, further learning of English and improved pronunciation of this language made me realized that French isn't that hard when you have have dominated the English pronunciation, but  I had no time to take my course back, and while I still want to learn it, it would be until I feel confident with my German.

While I know it's possible studying two or more languages at a time, I prefer to do it one-in-one.

My language goal is arrive to December with enough German vocabulary to establish a fluid conversation with a native German speaker.

I'm still a long way of distance in this road.

Certainly the main problem with some languages and regional dialects is that there might not be enough posters to respond the many question we would like to make, or not many people interested in those specific regionalisms we could transmit.

However it's always nice to know that we can discuss about them under "Other languages"

In México, rap is often confused with hip-hop and reggaeton.

Personally I didn't know there was different sub-genres of rap, and frankly amazes me this rhythm is so popular today, when it was practically ignored 32 years ago, when the movie "Breaking'" came into the mainstream back in 1984.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_pzk83luwo

I believe to have reached such comfort zone once I learned enough English to feel confident with my knowledge, but eventually realized that it wasn't comfort at all, only that I lost the initial motivation that got me into learning this language.

Fortunately, life took me through a pathway in which I realized my knowledge wasn't enough, and there was still too much to learn, and I got myself trying hard to learn as much as I know now... Yet not feeling to perfect this knowledge though.

I can't stand having a conversation with someone who is always shortening the words, writing long texts without using line breaks or changing the spelling of the worlds to sound/look cool.

A bit of all the above it's okay from time to time, but when is done on a regular basis, unless you reply blindly or you waste your time trying to figure out what those shortened words mean, or finding the breaks in a lengthy text, it's truly a headache to me.

El pozole es uno de mis platillos favoritos de la gastronomía mexicana, pero el pozole al estilo Jalisco, que lleva carne de puerco y puede ser blanco o rojo. En otros estados de la repùblica mexicana, el pozole puede ser verde (usando tomatillos) y puede llevar carne de pollo e incluso carne de res, aunque también hay pozoles vegetarianos con carne de soya.

La birriia estilo Jalisco, tambien es de mis favoritas, igualmente,esta lleva carne de chivo, mientrás que en otros estados se usa con res. Aquí en la Ciudad de México es más fácil encontrarle echa con res, a menos que la compres en Garibaldi o sitios que vende comida típica de Jalisco. 

Finalmente las migas, es otro de mis platillos favoritos, pero en México se hacen de una forma muy diferente a como se conocen en España,cuya gastronomía también es de mis favoritas, siendo la fabada el plato que más me gusta, seguido por los callos a la madrileña, y la paella valenciana.

This is an update to language search engines with human translation support:

MyMemory, by translated net, reads like this:

Get a better translation with 1.327.313.129 human contributions

while in some way is similar to Linguee, this engine only focus in the input term you are looking for, without providing further examples of sites using that term or the closest translation. Even though, this is an alternative tool to find human translations.

Link is, http://mymemory.translated.net/

It's really nice to see we are not alone really, and also find each other in a forum in which we can talk freely about our reading preferences, without nobody frowning upon them

Hola chicos y chicas de México, de Florida y de todas las otras partes del mundo.

Yo nací en la Ciudad de México, misma a la que amo y en la que vivo. Yo estoy en la delegación Iztacalco y me gusta caminar y correr; justo frente a mi casa está la Ciudad Deportiva y desde aquí no sólo contamos con las áreas para ejercitarnos, sino que tambien podemos escuchar gratis todos los conciertos y eventos que ocurren dentro de ella.

Cuando es el Vive Latino, pues aquí tenemos 3 días seguidos de música en vivo, pero ahora que tuvimos la Fórmula 1, fueron 3 días de oir los motores de esos coches que por lo visto siguen corriendo algunos fines de semana, aunque ya no en la competencía que tuvimos esos días.

There are so many proverbs in Spanish that have no accurate English translation, that make me feel like English is poor when it comes to express the so-called "wisdom of the people"

Some examples of proverbs that make hard for me to find an English equivalent are:

- Donde manda capitán, no gobierna marinero

- De poquito en poquito, se llena el jarrito

- Al que buen árbol se arrima, buena sombra le cobija

And so many others 

I remember the Deutsche Well have complete downloadable courses in audio, not just German courses, but different languages available.

Long time not visiting such website, but I will look into to see if I can find this material for you

However, adding a bit more about what this article is about would help a lot too.

I'm trying to load the page but at this moment it says to have the server experimenting difficulties to get it load 

I will try in a few minutes again

The book that changed my life positively will sound weird to your ears; "Helping Yourself with White Witchcraft" by Al Maning.

I can't help it; I love metaphysics, occultism, witchcraft, spiritualism, ESP, and so on

6 hours ago, lingualbabe said:

My husband's professor told them that he drinks alcohol before going to a lecture or even before performing an operation. I was quite skeptical of that before, but this kind of confirms as to why he is doing that. He said that he is able to focus more and concentrate clearly on his task with just a bottle of alcohol in him. Not much, but just enough to make him focused. That's what he said, according to my husband, so my husband followed that. I don't know how effective it is for him because he drinks so much. 

That's a problem indeed because, while alcohol can contribute for good in some way with someone's actions, on the other hand there is always a risk to get hooked up in alcohol addiction.

I do believe to be possible what you say about your husband focusing on his work with just a bottle, but then after think of Ernest Hemingway that, being a great author, alcoholism eventually affected him. Hope your hubby learns to lower his alcohol intake.

I had issues learning German for the past decade due to such reform, being uncomfortable using double "ss" rather than "ß" or changing "Du" instead of "Sie."

Today that I'm taking back my German classes after believing to have digested such reform, I found myself that there is a movement or something to derogate it and return to the roots of the language.

Can't say for sure, I'm totally confused now.

More than once I have received games that come totally in Japanese. I have tried to play them, but I haven't succeed with them, particularly when they need to annotate keys to unlock the next level, but I don't understand the hints, LOL

I got once a Japanese copy of a game I had already in English and, yeah, I thought I could play it because having played the English version, I knew where to find just everything and how to unlock levels.

However, and to my surprise, the game I got in Japanese was a previous release of such game; a prototype game, and therefore nothing was in the places the items were found in the English version, but the worst part of it was not about not being able to play it, but having trade it for another game. I had a unique game and I let it go!!!

On 7/18/2014, 11:26:56, Cielosur said:

En cuanto a las series españolas, en estos momentos estoy obsesionada con Isabel pero solo he podido ver la primera temporada y creo que ya van en la tercera.  También me gustó mucho El Secreto de Puente Viejo pero no la he podido ver toda porque no tengo acceso a todos los capítulos y tengo entendido que la serie es muy larga.    También disfruto mucho ver las repeticiones de los programas de Chespirito como El Chavo del Ocho y El Chapulín Colorado.  Es un humor muy lindo y muy sano.

Hablando de series españolas, este fín de semana he estado viendo los capítulos de una serie muy popular en los 90's; "Los Ladrones van a la Oficina", protagonizada por el gran Fernando Fernán Gómez, José Luis López Vázquez y Manuel Alexandre.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcJBh20s8W0MN4gme3xvdNT8ORToXIagd

Whenever in doubt about pronunciation, I use Google translate to listen the word or phrase, then repeating it until I have the correct pronunciation in mind... or at least the closer if Google is not that good with this.

There are also some speech engines online that help but synthetic voices may not compare with natural speaking clips.

Definitely, I love the complete works of William Shakespeare including comedy, history, tragedy and poetry, and therefore would be hard for me just mention one.

I have a favorite website on Shakespeare works that you may like to visit:

Quote

 Welcome to the Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This site has offered Shakespeare's plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993.

For other Shakespeare resources, visit the Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet Web site.

The original electronic source for this server was the Complete Moby(tm) Shakespeare. The HTML versions of the plays provided here are placed in the public domain.

This is the link to visit such site, http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

This question brought to mind an old episode of The Simpsons TV series, in which Bart is sent to a language exchange in France and can't talk a French world despite he was trying to learn the language, and he was listening to the family he was sent with to learn from.

If someone never watched this episode, the French family Bart lives with is the abusive kind, and rather than teaching, they treat Bart really nasty.

One day Bart sees the opportunity to denounce them when finding a cop on his way down the French streets, but the police doesn't understand him talking in English (or the local language the series are translated into according the countries in which the program is aired) 

The fact is that, in desperation, Bart starts talking in French to explain, and therefore rescued from the abusive family. 

It was an extreme need what pushes him to make use of what he was learning, and a prove that listening to someone talk in a different language than yours may eventually contribute you learn this way from them. It might be easy or hard based on your willingness to learn, but that you learn it is true, and usually called language "absorption" or language "immersion".

This is an excerpt of an interesting reading on the topic, published by the Harvard Medical school;

Foods for memory

If saturated and trans fats are the food villains, then mono- and polyunsaturated fats may be the heroes in the dietary battle to preserve memory. In particular, the Mediterranean diet, with its menu of foods that are high in healthy unsaturated fats (olive oil, fish, and nuts) has been linked to lower rates of both dementia due to Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment (MCI)—the stage of memory loss that often precedes dementia.

The Mediterranean diet includes several components that might promote brain health:

• Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, and olive oil help improve the health of blood vessels, reducing the risk for a memory-damaging stroke.

• Fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which have been linked to lower levels of beta-amyloid proteins in the blood and better vascular health.

• Moderate alcohol consumption raises levels of healthy high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. Alcohol also lowers our cells' resistance to insulin, allowing it to lower blood sugar more effectively. Insulin resistance has been linked to dementia.

Sample Mediterranean diet Breakfast: Whole-grain muesli with fresh berries and almonds OR 6 oz. Greek yogurt topped with blueberries Lunch: Greek salad with grilled chicken OR Whole-grain pita with 2 tbsp. hummus and tomatoes Dinner: Roasted salmon with tomato-olive tapenade, sauted spinach with pine nuts and raisins, poached pears OR Broiled chicken with garlic and lemon, asparagus

Full article is here, http://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/boost-your-memory-by-eating-right

And there is another interesting reading on foods that strengthen learning abilities over here, https://www.southuniversity.edu/whoweare/newsroom/blog/Foods-That-Strengthen-Learning-Abilities

Never heard of Michel Thomas before until @Wanda Kaishin is telling us more about his courses.

I'm actually learning German and certainly I need a boost not only with my vocabulary, but also my pronunciation and maybe his course might help me for improvement purpose.

I have found Linguee very useful because it returns at least a dozen of possible translations to a phrase, but from professionally, human translated sources (mainly) what means you can always find accurate, or close to accurate results when it comes to translate an existing phrase, or none at all when you introduce a poorly, already translated phrase that has not exact matches because yours is wrong, in which case it shows how commonly what you may pretend to say should be translated.

One good example on how this works is using Linguee to translate or check your own translation for a local proverb that in your language makes sense, but which loses it when translated, or there is a different, non-literal way to say the same in other language.

Well paying for translations is the best way to get accurate results, people most be aware that not all "professional" translation services  really are.

Some of them use automated translations mixed with human translation performed by people knowledgeable in the target language, but not necessarily a native speaker of a qualified translator.

Before paying for human translations, make sure to review what the credentials and qualifications of a site and its translators are to avoid waste your money in a human but poorly translation service.