Archive for the ‘Languages’ Category

Language can be defined in many ways, but what comes first, for most of us mind the following definition, “a body of words and the usual for their application, a person of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition. ”

Even small nations, several languages ​​that only people can talk in this area and / or understand. Imagine how many languages ​​there are in the globe!

According to the Bible after the flood, there were people who came from the East, and spoke in a tongue (language). When God saw this and said: “. They are a people and have a language, and nothing is withheld from them that they do this” So God scattered them on the face of the earth and confused their language.

If not for the trips to foreign countries that did our ancestors, we would not have learned or even of the many languages ​​that exist today belongs. In fact, even a short vacation in a foreign country is enough to buy a dozen new words, which we may have never heard. Simple words such as “Hello “, “thank you” and “good-bye” is good, with, as they used to start from country to country.

Many people who learn a second language mistakenly believe that they do not learn languages ​​beyond. The opposite is true – learning languages ​​easier.

The first language you learn – your native language or language – is the hardest. You learn by trial and error for the first years of your life, and learn out of necessity – a pretty good motivator. Some people are born in several locales, but most learn additional languages ​​by attending school or self-study in later life.

We anticipate that required by the time and effort to learn a second language, we will not really have the opportunity to learn more languages ​​later. We learn languages ​​other than later in life, we did as a child, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As we begin our second language study, we begin to learn and hone a set of skills that we do not fully utilize the other aspects of our lives. As we get better on our second language, improve learning ability. The phrase I like is – “we can learn how to learn languages.”

This brings us to the learning of several languages. There are a few tricks to learn several languages, no matter whether you are learning at the same time or sequentially in a row.

Relationships – It is often a few words in a language you learn that words have in common with English or another language, you know. This is because languages ​​are related to each other or at least borrow from each other. Use this to your advantage. If you have a language course, look for a list or collection of related words begin. This will not only help you get started on expanding your vocabulary, you will begin to recognize patterns of spelling and pronunciation, which are peculiar to this language. A nice bonus is the fact that your list is growing of the potential relationships with any language. For
As an example, I learned “ayer” in Spanish, I did not realize assigned in English, French, but the word for ‘yesterday’ is’ here. “It is almost identical if you change for the small difference in the debate.

Language families – concerns that many languages ​​are connected to other languages ​​and have many features in common. If you already know to learn some Spanish, Italian or French is much easier. You’ve worked hard, learning many of the grammar features that do not occur in English unless you studied Spanish, like gender, agreement between nouns and adjectives and complex verb conjugations. Well, if you start to learn French, we say that these functions are second nature and will not require nearly as much study time and effort to learn. In addition, much of the vocabulary to be similar as in the example used. Learning a language you really save time to learn.

Grammar – even if you do not learn a language, you already know, you can begin to see how languages ​​behave. This is partly what I “learn learning languages.” Under You begin to understand how languages ​​”handle” different things. You can not know the grammatical terms for parts of speech, but you will find patterns within a language, and from one language to another (although I start to learn it, it will recommend to help you). Basically, all human languages ​​operate on the same principles. With every language you learn, you will pick up
more and more of these principles.

Time – this is your greatest advantage when learning a language. If you need it immediately, you can spend the whole time you out for years and years. The biggest jumps in the learning will occur first. After that, curb the curve, but the core knowledge that you are working first fully entrenched. The longer you have it and continue to use, the more drops to now, when you learn another language, related to some interference between the languages, especially if they contain the name, but as long as you maintain your other language that core understanding will always be there and it will grow in time. It does not replace one language with another. If you need back to this other language, it is still there and it comes back quickly.

Remember that learning a language is a lifelong process – no one really stopped learning. So if you start learning another language, you can not study your active earlier, but you’re still learning them, if you uncover on their use, or “hold” can.

Objectives – Set your goals carefully for each language. You may find that adding another language is much easier when you know that you do not really need to be fluent in it. You may just want to read the language. Then you need not concentrate on speaking and listening skills. Or do you just want to know a few greetings and basic conversation. Forget heavy grammar. Concentrate according to some conversation and study.

Maintenance – For me, this is the real trick to learn several languages. With knitting, I mean, it’s important for your long-term success, and I mean also that it is difficult to achieve. Once you learn a language, at least the basics, you need to get it upright. Use or lose, they say. It is also true here. If you learn a new language, you have to expose yourself to the other languages ​​you know. As a general rule, I would say 15 minutes a day. Read something, please e-mail letter or two friends, a movie or TV show once in a while, listening to music, etc. Then when you need
Language for something substantial, the vocabulary and grammar and pronunciation is not so far away from you. If you do not, it had to be used at all for 6 months or 6 years, I can assure you that it is not again so easily.

Of course the problem with this, for every language you know that 15 minutes less time to study your new friends. I think ultimately that’s what brings a limit to how many languages ​​we can learn effectively. There is nothing to prevent us from learning more, but without this knowledge regularly and keep it fresh, it tends away from us. Then “replace” we are a language with a fresher one. I do not think that what we have in mind when we learn a language.

For myself, I have a short list of priority 1 Languages ​​that I focus on the following. I expect that this is a life long hobby, so I’m not rushing. I also have a much longer list of languages, each with different goals. I doubt that I ever met my goals in all these languages, but I’m sure I will hit my goals in at least some of them.

Given that over 800 million people have Chinese (Mandarin) as their native language, followed by 450 million people speaking Hindi and around 320 to 350 million earth inhabitants who have Spanish or English as their mother tongue it comes as no surprise that today’s school rate a second, third or even fourth language as important.

Children learning languages

Having learned to speak 6 languages, you might think this came easily due to growing up with a mother whose mother tongue is French and a father whose mother tongue is Italian. It might come as a surprise to hear that they did not teach me those languages. Growing up in the Swiss speaking part of Switzerland my parents decided to stick to one language, being the one that was spoken all around us to avoid confusion in their children’s brains. Knowing now how easy it is for children to pick up different languages I would have happily opted for all three at the same time! Growing up I always heard different languages spoken in my family so I was used to the different sounds and I guess that makes the brain wired for them in the first place.

Languages in School

In school at the age of 6 we were taught to read and write in German. Both of those languages, Swiss and German, are part of the Germanic languages and therefore relating to each other. Given that Swiss is a spoken language only and written material mostly comes in German it is an obvious and logical choice. Swiss can be written but there are no rules and numerous spelling options due to the vast number of different dialects.

Switzerland has four recognized national languages: Swiss, French, Italian and Romanish. In the past when I went to school it was expected to at least speak one other language spoken in Switzerland, so we learned French. Now they have come to understand that the rest of the world and especially the computer world do communicate in English, therefore the third language has been replaced by English, starting as early as grade two at the age of seven. If I think about that it slightly shocks me to remember that at my time English was an elective in year nine! Luckily I enjoyed learning languages and opted for the world language.

By the age of 15 I was already speaking 4 languages. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Not necessarily if you realise that Swiss, German and English are all part of the Germanic languages and therefore interrelated. French was the first Romanic and non-phonetic language and therefore a bit of a challenge being used to Swiss and German being phonetic. Phonetic languages represent the sound of the speech with a set of distinctive symbols, each designating a single sound and therefore easy to spell.

In year 11 I choose another elective: Spanish. I literally avoided Italian, probably in an attempt to punish my father for not teaching me in the first place. Spanish is yet another Romanic language and therefore closely related to French. In the end I learned Italian when I was at University and the only challenge was distinguishing it from Spanish as they literally sit next to each other on the language family tree.

Keys in learning a language

From my experience as a German teacher at Sydney University I found that this is one of the keys in learning a language: willingness to experiment, to speak out loud, to imitate and to immerse yourself in the language, be it with tapes or in the country itself. If you allow yourself to imitate other accents you are well on the way to mastering languages.

Back in high school or college, their teachers is all of the time written to remember them, dot the cross the jersey. Be the importance by grammar in the transmission by a clear and consistent content that can not comprise stressed enough. Afterward altogether, English grammar check by rules that address the language arrived at. Students and professionals accept an eye as details in authorship to avoid abashing grammar mistakes. Compose to the atrocious grammar has it has consequences, the painful departure and the credibility of an company, less employ opportunities to job quipsters or declining sales as the company.

He can’t give to write essays, accounts or letters without interview with the errors and the enforcement by judgments, and bailiwicks and verbs agree. Even whenever the grammar perfectly, they are hard to achieve, at that place is ways to arrive at your literary genre less belike to comprise incorrect. Ask help on the review by the document by grammatical errors? The adept, the technology accepts enabled the authors by the documents, which is almost without grammatical errors get. A test program by english grammar package is designed to find errors and correct alternate solutions, the lyrics wrong.

Additional words or aspects can comprise used to arrive at the text cleaner, many understandable and lower burdensome. These online creature detects and grammar checker, not but, but as well the errors by importing and punctuation. These are a computer control, the clearness and precision accomplished in altogether their documents. Consequently, you could write easily and on assurance, acknowledging that the document empathized along readers.