Language Trainers Blog

To make your language studies fun there are various games you could play with them. One possibility is to pretend you’re foreign and don’t speak your native language. You could speak on your phone or with friends in the foreign language near to people who speak your native language, while listening to what those people are saying. If they makes comments about you assuming that you won’t understand them, you could surprise them by switching languages. This is a kind of ‘garden pathing’, which involves leading people to expect one thing, then giving them something else, is often used in jokes.

Another possibility is to recreate Monty Python’s Hungarian phrasebook sketch, or at least to use elements from it. The sketch involves a Hungarian bloke using a badly translated Hungarian-English phrasebook to ask for things in a tobacconist with phrases like “my hovercraft is full of eels”. You could use strange phrases like that in a shop appearing to get them from a phrasebook, or actually use random, unrelated phrases from the phrasebook. Then later on you could go back to the same place and talk normally. If the shop keeper is surprised, you could pretend that nothing is out of the ordinary, or explain that your phrasebook is faulty.

If you’re learning a language on your own and don’t have people to help you with pronunciation, you could use text-to-speech programs such as this one or this one.

You can put any sentence or piece of text in a language you’re learning into programs and they will read it out for you in that language. They do not always sound entirely natural, and they seem to read seems texts better than others, but they do give you a good idea of how the text should sound. You could also make recordings while the programs are reading your texts and listen to them as many times as you want.

The recordings provided with many language courses don’t necessarily include all the text in the course, but with text-to-speech programs you can fill the gaps. You can also use any other texts you find and hear them spoken, which is helpful, especially if you’re learning a language with a different writing system such as Chinese, Japanese, or Arabic. I find it useful to read texts in foreign language aloud, and if I have a recording of the text, it’s even more useful to listen that as I’m reading.

Another thing you do with text-to-speech programs is to put in a text in one language, and to have the program to read it out in a different language. This doesn’t help with your language learning, but is just a bit of fun.

One language that has become more and more popular in recent years is Chinese, specifically Mandarin Chinese, which has official states in China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore, and is spoken in quite a few other countries. Mandarin has more native speakers than any other language, even English, and significant numbers of second language speakers. The strength of the Chinese economy and the sheer size of the Chinese market are two major factors which attract people to the language.

Many people are put off by the Chinese writing system, thinking that it’s impossible or very difficult to learn, and perhaps assuming that the language is also difficult. It is true that it takes a lot more effort is required to learn to read and write Chinese than other languages, and that practice is needed to retain that knowledge, however it is possible. The only other aspect of learning Chinese that can be challenging is the vocabulary, which has nothing in common with any European language, but the same is the case if you’re learning Thai, Turkish or Hungarian.

Chinese grammar is very straightforward compared to European languages. You don’t have to worry about genders, cases, tenses or other grammatical baggage because there aren’t any. Instead you just have to get the words in the right order, add the odd particle here and there, and use time words to indicate when things happened. This means that once you learnt a verb, for example, you don’t have to learn endless conjugations – the verbs don’t change. The same is true for other words.

There are numerous websites offering online Chinese lessons and other resources for learning Chinese. One I came across recently is Popup Chinese, which has lessons, a dictionary, a handy tool for practising to write Chinese characters, and various other useful materials. The basic materials are free, but you have to pay to access some parts of the site. The same seems to be true for quite a few other language learning sites.

A good way to learn or improve your knowledge of a language is to spend time in a country or region where it’s spoken. A week or two at a language school will help, but to become really fluent you’ll probably need to spend more time abroad. Some language schools offer discounts to students who stay for longer, or have special long term courses. If you can’t afford such courses there are alternatives.

You could try finding a job that gives you plenty of opportunities to use the language. Or if your native language is English or you’re a fluent non-native speaker, you could teach English. Some English language schools pay for their teachers to have lessons in the local language, and some even pay for your airfare to the country. So rather than paying for language lessons, you could get them for free while earning money and acquiring useful work experience. Courses such as the Cambridge CELTA and the Trinity Cert TESOL provide intensive introductions to teaching English and are offered in many parts of the UK and in other countries.

Translation, writing, web design and similar work can be done via the web, so you could theoretically work anywhere, as long as you have a computer and web access. Such work could enable you to spend time in foreign parts learning languages while earning a living.

English has absorbed vocabulary from a many different languages over the course of its history, including quite a lot from Arabic. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, list more than 900 Arabic words that are used in English, some are obscure and rarely used, while others are more common.

Some words have come directly from Arabic, others have arrived via other languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, Latin, Turkish, Urdu or Persian. The pronunciation of these words often changes in the course of transmission from one language to another so many don’t resemble the original Arabic versions. Their meanings have also changed, for example algebra, from the Arabic لجبر al-jabr, originally meant “bone setting”.

In recent years quite a few new words of Arabic origin have entered the English language, including imam (leader), al-Jazeera (lit. “the peninsula”), al-Qaeda (lit. “the base”), jihad (lit. “struggle”) and hijab (lit. “curtain/cover”).

Some Arabic loanwords in English start with the Arabic definite article, al (sounds like el in Spanish), which has become attached to them. These include albatross, alchemy, alcohol, alcove, alfalfa, algebra, algorithm, alkali and almanac.

Others, which aren’t so easy to spot, include: apricot, arsenal, average, azure, barbican, calico, carat, cheque, cipher, cotton, elixir, gazelle, giraffe, henna, jasmine, mattress, monsoon, marzipan, orange, saffron, sugar, syrup, tabby, tariff and zero.

If you are taking lessons in a foreign language and you only study in class, you will make progress, but this depends on your teacher, the course, and how much you remember. The teacher will decide on the style and content of the lessons and on the books and other materials you use. If you don’t want to worry about such things yourself, that’s fine.

Another way to approach lessons is to see them as a starting point for your own studies, an opportunity to ask about things you’re sure about or don’t understand, and to practise what you’re learning on. Some teachers will be happy to answer your questions, others might prefer to stick to the curriculum and might tell you that you don’t need to know or worry about the answers. For language learners who like to understand how languages work this can be frustrating, but there are plenty of other sources of information – dictionaries, grammars, websites, native speakers, etc.

It’s great if you can find a teacher and class that suits the way you like to study, but if you can’t, try to make the best of what’s available. The same applies to textbooks and other language learning materials – it’s unlikely that you’ll find one that is perfect for you, but you can get useful information from whatever materials that are available.

The key is to decide what you want and need to learn, then use the resources available to you as best you can. You don’t have to learn everything included in textbooks and lessons, but rather focus on the parts that are most useful and interesting to you.

Believe it or not there are quite a few people in Moscow who speak or are studying Irish, according to this article. Some have been to Ireland, but many have not. Most got interested in Irish through Irish music, and see the language as a way of understand and accessing Irish culture.

Moscow State University offers degrees in Celtic studies which can include modules in both modern and old Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Breton and even Gaulish, and quite a few other universities outside Ireland offer courses in Irish and other Celtic languages. For example, you can study Welsh and Irish in Prague, Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh in Oslo, or Irish and Welsh in Utrecht.

Speakers of minority languages like Irish often face criticism, insults, hostility and/or mockery from others in their country who believe the minority language and culture are worthless, useless, nonsense or gibberish. Many such people may have been taught the language at school and really did not the experience at all, and may have absorbed negative attitudes to the language from parents, friends and/or the media. Sometimes it can be helpful to see a country, language and/or culture through the eyes of others.

When those with negative views understand that other people with perhaps no family connections to the country are learning a language through a love of the culture and/or language itself, and they see the immense enjoyment such learners get from speaking the language, singing the songs, etc. they might possibly be inspired to learn or re-learn the minority language themselves.

One friend from Wales, for example, rejected Welsh when she was growing up and had no interest in Welsh culture. After leaving school she went travelling in Eastern Europe and on discovering that she was from Wales, many people who she met asked if she could speak Welsh. She saw that these people spoke and were proud of their native languages, even if they were minority languages, and became determined to learn Welsh. Within a year of returning to Wales she was fairly fluent in Welsh, and she is since won the Welsh Learner of the Year award at the National Eisteddfod and has become a Welsh tutor.

Today’s word, prisa, is the Spanish for hurry, haste, speed or (a sense of) urgency. It is used in quite a few expressions, including:

• tener prisa / estar de prisa – to be in a hurry
• darse prisa – to hurry (up), or literally, “to give oneself hurry”
• dar/meter prisa a uno – to hurry someone else up
• voy con mucha prisa / tengo mucha prisa – I’m in a great hurry
• temporada de más prisa – busy period
• a prisa / de prisa – quickly, hurriedly
• a toda prisa – as quickly as possibly
• ¡date prisa! – hurry up! get a move on!
• sin prisa pero sin pausa – in an unhurried way (without hurrying but without pausing)

Interestingly the word for hurry in Welsh (prysur) sounds similar to like the Spanish word prisa. You never know when you might find unexpected connections between languages like this.

One effective way to learn a language is by immersing yourself in it as much as possible. Ideally this will involve spending some time in a country or region where the language you’re learning is spoken. If you are in such a place, you will make more rapid progress if you try to use the foreign language as much as possible and avoid using your native language, except when absolutely necessary.

Many people who live abroad try to learn the local language. Some succeed, others only acquire a basic knowledge of it. The latter group tend to spend a lot of time speaking their native language with people from their own country, or from other countries that speak that language. They might also make friends with locals who speak their language. While it can be tempting to do this, if you want to learn the local language well, you need to use it as much as possible. One way you could do this would be to try speaking only the local language for a certain period of time – a week, a month or longer. Even if you struggle to express yourself in that language, make lots of mistakes, get frustrated and feel tempted to fall back on your mother tongue, it’s worth persevering as the more you practise using the language, the more your proficiency will improve. It helps if you seek out people who don’t speak your native language as you have to use their language to talk to them.

The key is to keep practising and focus on communication. Don’t worry too much about making mistakes or looking foolish, but ask people to correct your worst mistakes and learn from those corrections.

One problem many language learners have is overcoming their inhibitions about speaking their foreign language. They worry about make mistakes and making a fool of themselves. This is normal, but if you want to be able to speak a language well, you need to practise speaking it as often as possible.

Some people believe that they speak their foreign language better after a few (alcoholic) drinks, and research has found this to be true, at least to some extent. Alcohol tends to suppress your inhibitions, so you become less worried about making mistakes. However this effect diminishes the more you drink, and the effects of alcohol might also make you think you’re more fluent even if you’re not.

What if you want to be fluent at other times, or if you don’t drink alcohol? One possibility is to rehearse what you want to say in advance, or at least to make sure you know the words you might need. You could practise conversations with yourself, and/or read aloud from books.

Alternatively you could view each opportunity you have to speak as a performance with you as an actor. If you are a shy, retiring type, or feel that way when trying to speak in a foreign language, you could try imagining yourself and acting as a confident, exuberant person with a good command of the language.