#learning foreign languages

And what breaks me the most is that she is considered ugly only because she has different facial features, a different skin colour and a different type of hair from what's typical in that foreign country. In her homeland she's a typical girl. A beautiful girl.

Here's an extract:

I despise Spanish as a subject. The language is beautiful. But as a subject I hate it.

I could never learn it no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I studied, no matter the amount of notes I wrote.

Now, years later, I have tried learning German. It’s much easier for me, as a native English speaker, than Spanish.

English is a Germanic language, and shares a lot of things with German. Two of the biggest differences between the two languages is that German is much more literal than English, and that the sounds in the English language are much softer than those in the German language.

Even still, I struggle. I’ll be asked to construct a sentence in German, and provided with it’s English counterpart, but even though I know the words, I often get it wrong because I don’t know how to correctly structure the sentence.

Learning foreign languages

Dracula BBC, Blood Vessel

Conversation between Valeria, Grand Duchess of Augsburg and Count Dracula from Walachia (historically known as Vlad the Impaler, ‘Son of the Dragon' in medieval Romanian). 

COUNT DRACULA:  Forgive me. My German is very rusty. Would you excuse me for a moment?  (leaves the room and ‘drinks’ the Bavarian sailor  on the stirring wheel)

.........…....................................…...........

COUNT DRACULA (comes back):  Es tut mir leid. Hat etwas länger gedauert als erwartet. Es ist eine wunderbare Nacht und ... ein schöner Mond.  (I’m sorry. It took a bit longer than expected. It’s such a wonderful night and ... a beautiful moon.))

GRAND DUCHESS VALERIA OF AUGSBURG:  Aber Sie sprechen ein ganz wunderbares Bayrisch!  (But … you are speaking most excellent Bavarian!))

COUNT DRACULA:  Ah, you‘re too kind. I … I s-seem to have remembered more than I thought. It’s good to refresh oneself. 

(For anyone who wants to hear Count Dracula speak Bavarian, I can recommend the german dubbed version. It’s absolutely exquisit! :)))

Sherlock BBC, The Empty Hearse

Mycroft Holmes! What have you done to absorb the Serbian language so quickly???

Middle age comes to us all … Really?  Is it ‘MIDDLE AGE’ or rather …. ‘MEDIEVAL’ …. (sparked by a fivehundred years old warlord) that has overcome brother Mycroft?  :)))))

Additionally ….

Etymology of ‘blud’ (x x):

Multicultural London English: BLUD is of Jamaican origin and used as an informal adress to a male. It means "Mate (from blood brother)"

In Czech etymology it means … delusion

In Serbo Croatian etymology it means … bawdry, carnality, fornication

COUNT DRACULA:  “Blood ... is not … nothing! Blood is testimony!”

January, 2020

WORDPLAY

我三点一刻下汉语课 

Wǒ sān diǎn yī kè xià hànyǔ kè

I FINISH CHINESE CLASS AT 3:15

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And with this, I wish you Good Night.

Hi. I’m Aubane and I need help for a presentation in my master’s degree. I’m currently learning to be a french teacher in a non-french-speaking country.

 If french is not your mother language and you learned it at school or anywhere else, reblog with : your level in french (A1? B2? I can provide a way to help evaluate your level if needed), what sound that doesn’t exist in your language did you find hard to pronounce, what is your mother language and if you would be available for more questions on the matter.

我住在中国 /Wǒ zhù zài Zhōngguó/ I LIVE IN CHINA

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Pretty self explanatory I think :)

Just one thing - when words are written in lower case, it means that they don't represent a proper word - for instance 日 /rì/ is a component “sun”, “SUN” - as a proper word - is 太阳 /tàiyáng/.

刀 /dāo/ KNIFE can be both, it can be a component like here but it can be used as an independent word as well - and because it can be used as an independent word, it is “A KNIFE”, not “a knife”.

It is a small detail, but it will make your life easier as you will encounter post like this one more often. 

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Interactive vocabulary and interactive audio sentences HERE

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