We’ve just got back from a Surfside Beach, SC Family Vacation and haven’t been doing a lot of posting lately. I think I’ll be aiming for a monthly posting (give or take a bit), which should give me more time to work on the pages, which are where the real content of the site is.
Translating dictionaries can be almost priceless in learning a new language. I have several translating dictionaries at the house and a few that are only in my target languages, but it seems I can always run across a word in something I’m reading that I can’t find in any of my dictionaries. Online translating dictionaries have been a great help (wordreference.com is a really good one.) But I still run into some of the same problem of not being able to find words.
dictionary.reverso.net has a good set of translating dictionaries online between English, Spanish, Chinese, German, French, Russian and Italian.
About.com has a good walk through of Spanish verbs that change meanings when they are made reflexive. Some of the changes are subtle and are almost obvious (once you have the idea of what a reflexive verb is….) But, some of them change the meaning of the verb subtly (i.e. take off vs. take off suddenly), others make for a dramatic change in meaning.
About 6 years ago I set out to improve my Spanish language knowledge and skills. I had taken Spanish in High School, but what little I learned there had faded and my understanding of spoken Spanish was minimal (at best.) I set out with several approaches to learning and now in retrospect I see what I SHOULD have been doing. To start out, here is what I DID at the time. I started reading to pick up vocabulary. I forced myself through books that I was familiar with in English after completing some early dual language readers. I didn’t let myself stop and look up every single word I just forced myself to keep going and the ones that were more common I would look up. Here’s what I should have done.
This site has some good 1st hand comparative difficulty of the more common Romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. It seems as though there’s an ongoing debate over whether French or Spanish is an easier language to learn. I’ve seen and heard arguments each way. One argument is along the lines that Spanish has easier orthography (it’s easier to learn how to pronounce a word from it’s spelling and spell from hearing it.) But, the subjunctive tense is more challenging. French pronunciation is more complicated, but once you get past that the advanced stages get simpler.
Here’s what I think….
Not too long ago I noticed some visits to this site for the search term New Language and got to looking at Googles Insights for Search to find out that every December there is a big spike in searches for the term New Language. The only thing I could figure out is that people are thinking about what their New Years Resolutions might be. The end of one year and beginning of another is a great time to analyze where we are in our lives and where we want to be. If learning a new language is one of those things you want to do, then make sure you set realistic expectations for yourself. There is no “magic formula” to learn a language overnight. It takes time and effort and that time and effort depends on the individual. If you’re thinking ahead to your summer travel plans, now is a good time to start getting into a “crash course” to have some basic travel phrases before summer vacations. Either way, good luck and please bookmark this site to come back as we’re adding more information here all the time!
I just found this fantastic listing of free language courses online. It covers the “big” languages as well as the less well known… from Abenaki to Xhosa. For many languages there are multiple entries.
I’m not quite sure what to think of this idea. I was checking out traffic logs and saw visits from a [new languages] search, so I did a google search for [new languages] and along the with sites I saw a sponsored ad for esata…. Here’s the ad text:
Esata - a new language
a personal international language
close to English close to the world
www.beginnersgame.com/esata
So, what is it? Well….
One of the things about the internet is that it makes almost any language available to you. It’s possible to study some of the more obscure languages from any internet connected computer. But how should you choose a language to study? I think the first language you study should be one that will be most useful and the easiest to work into your day to day routine.
What does this mean?
I don’t recall what I was searching for now… I think I was looking for information about foreign language content on joost.com. Anyway, I ran across this great PDF on using foreign language web content for language learning (Post title here is the same as the article title. It’s adapted from her Masters thesis which was available in full at http://www.ineedpractice.com/thesis.pdf, but now that domain seems to be unreachable. There are a few good links and comments on the several kinds of online media we now have access to. Radio, TV, newsprint available in many languages. The great thing about news is when you do have stories that get reported around the world you get a similar context to try and view the language you’re studying in relation to. Anyway, thought it might be of interest here.
Bookmark this site now by pressing Ctrl+D
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