Language of the Month March

February's lom didn't go too well. One of my English papers was late because of being sick and work and other things...

Anyway, for the month of March I will be working on Gaelic, mostly Scottish even though Saint Patrick evangelised Ireland.

Language Group Meetup

I'm looking around for a language group to meet with, one that doesn't focus on just one language. I live in the South Hampton Roads area. I thought of setting one up, but I'm not really good at starting things u or being a leader.

Language a Month

Been a whie since I've been here. Stuff came up and I couldn't write much in the past six months. Especially being too tired to be coherent. I still feel like I might not be right now.

 

I've decided to try to learn as much of one language in a month. Read a whole (or half or whatever) of a book or website teaching that language and doing as many exercises as needed. And hopefully I can find some audio to accompany it.

 

This month I choose Swahili. But only because it's a library book. I was going to start with Gaelic because of Saint Valentine's Day. I think Gaelic sounds more beautiful than French or Spanish or Italian. Then I remembered I had the Swahili book.

 

So, third day into the month, time to start. Wish me luck.

Endangered Languages

I saw this website on facebook a couple a weeks ago. It's amazing! If you hit explore, a map will come up behind the featured language that you can move round. Click on the dots to see the language in that area; if there is a number, that means there are that many in a smaller area. They're still relatively new, so many languages don't have a lot of information and samples to them.

Foreign Language Classes at Tidewater Community College

Sorry I have been gone so long. Reasons why are posted on my other blog in this post.

I've started taking three foreign languages at TCC in Hampton Roads. My Russian teacher is from Saint Petersburg and very helpful with pronunciation when you can get it. My French teacher has spoken it for 60+ years and has been teaching for 40+ years. She decided to use a new book this semester and we ended up a day behind schedule. My Spanish teacher is American and likes to use a lot of hand gestures. He's funny.

I think they are all a little slow. I learn very quickly so I tend to get bored and start translating things from the books into other languages, especially if they have better translations into them. Like Me llamo in Spanish translates better to (I think 私は呼ばれています

(watashi wa yobareteimasu) in Japanese. (Sorry for the formatting. It's being weird.) Or I will translate verbs

into Latin because it translates better, or Gaelic just for fun.

I have already started going ahead, but have to force myself to slow down in class. XP The structure has helped

me continue in other languages.

Rocket Languages

I'm sorry I've taken so long. This type of writing uses a different style than what I am used to and it's difficult for me to find anything to write about that actually interests me.

I was reading the omniglot blog a few days ago and he had reviewed a new website for learning foreign languages-Rocket Languages. I decided to try it out. They offer Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Hindi, German, French, Chinese, Arabic, American Sign Language and English for Spanish speakers. I went with Hindi since it is the one with which I have had the least exposure to.

So far, I like it. It goes through a dialogue with each part of a lesson and teaches you some grammar points, like should something be changed by whether you are talking to a man or woman, or whether you are a man or woman? It tries to help you pick out familiar words in unfamiliar sentences, gives you extra vocabulary and a quiz when your done.

I highly suggest this for beginners of these languages. I think they may be getting more soon.

Language Joke: Double Negative

I saw this on Happy Catholic's blog and had to share:

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."


A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."