Category: Language Learning
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Useful Words English Doesn’t Have
Anyone who’s ever started learning another language has come across words that just don’t translate into English. My favorites are ‘saudades,’ from Portuguese (meaning a feeling of longing, melancholy or nostalgia), and ‘gezellig,’ from Dutch (meaning a nice atmosphere, but also belonging and time spent with loved ones). Today, Slate published an excerpt from Lost…
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Is it a Language or a Cultural Problem?
“A speaker of variety A who is dismayed or annoyed because speakers of variety B do not talk like the folks back home does not have a linguistic problem but a cultural one, which can only be solved if one is genuinely willing to work to develop the ability – which does not come naturally…
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Surviving a Language Immersion, in 3 Steps
I write about languages because I’m interested in them. So yes, this post is kind of a general interest post, rather than a writing post, but I will start by putting in a plug for writers to learn a little of the languages of the countries they are writing about. After all, you wouldn’t want…
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How to Learn Languages
Why do we do it wrong? Knowing another language is a “good thing.” People love to emphasize this to the kids complaining about having to learn French/Spanish/whatever in school. Languages have frustrated and confused travellers and students ever since the Tower of Babel, and being able to communicate with other is always a useful skill.…
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Un Bon Mot – Language Learning is Hard…
No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself. – Tolkien, English and Welsh I’m thinking this is true, as my Spanish and Portuguese “fluency” languishes… It’s tough to learn languages, and I…
Hmm... 