Comments for Language Bubble

Comment on German Log: 10-hours by Sean

Sean — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:32:33 +0000

Hey David,Glad you like the blog. In regards to my Anki deck, I could, but I’m not going to. I’m not being diulicfft, let me explain: I don’t use multiple decks for my different languages. Regardless of what language it is, when a card is due, I want to review it. So, I just have one big language deck, with German, French, and (a little) Russian in it. Secondly, I never really intended to release my Anki deck to the public, so naturally, I didn’t worry about whether my cards would make sense to other people. Many of my cards have abbreviations in them that make sense to me, but probably not to other people; many cards also have personal cues, such as the type of cabinets that we have in our kitchen ; helpful for me, but baffling to anyone who hasn’t been in my home! Lastly, I think making your own deck rather than using a premade one is inherently more useful. Even if you’re just typing in the words from a list in a book, something I’ve done quite a bit of, you’re *still* interacting with the material you’re reading it and typing it! I think writing out words by hand is better than typing them, but typing them is still better than just reading them. So the act of making your own deck is, in itself, making you learn. I hope my response makes sense; please don’t think I’m just being greedy with my deck. If I thought it would genuinely be helpful, I’d throw it up on the site, but I don’t really think it would be. I think most people who would try to use it would end up becoming frustrated with it, and move to making their own decks anyway.

Comment on The Truth About Arabic by Ananda

Ananda — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:04:24 +0000

Arabic is one of the most diffucult lugnaage in the world, i am Turkish and i used to go how to read Quran-ı Kerim and i could not learn even the letters of Arabic but most of Arabic words are familiar to me by the way: you are such a beautiful girl, and i can understand why people pf West are so surprised when they see such a modern Arabic and Muslim girl

Comment on Talent For Language by Joja

Joja — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:24:43 +0000

Just what I need! Thank you for this post.

Motivation + Effort = Talent, so true.
It’s just how we discipline ourselves to keep the motivation and to keep on making efforts to learn.:)

Comment on The Truth About Arabic by admin

admin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:09:51 +0000

Thanks for the information Raphael — it’s great to have someone with your experience comment

Comment on German Log: 10-hours by admin

admin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:09:09 +0000

Listening used to be the most difficult thing for me too. I drastically changed my study methods to try to get over this when I realised how much of a burden it was to not understand anything sprouted back at me.

Comment on German Log: 10-hours by Mike

Mike — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:29:24 +0000

My problems in learning languages has always been in the listening. I have a hard time distinguishing sounds and often hear things a bit muffled. Makes it difficult to learn new languages.

Comment on The Truth About Arabic by Raphael

Raphael — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 06:23:59 +0000

Hi,

I studied MSA and then Egyptian Arabic and then some other dialects. So I will try to answer your question based on my experience.

1) If your purpose is to get around the Arab world, do business, watch / read the news… then MSA may be the only dialect you will ever need.

2) HOWEVER, if you are looking to communicate on a very personal level (i.e. more than just business), and the person you speak to chooses not to speak to you in MSA (because after all it is an effort for Arabs to speak MSA instead of their own dialect), then you may not understand everything they say, but they will understand you.

3) Of all the dialects, Egyptian is the mostly widely understood because of the great popularity of Egyptian movies and soap operas. A good knowledge of Egyptian arabic also allows you to understand quite a lot of lebanese, syrian and jordanian arabic.

4) I highly recommend learning MSA because as it is the modern form of classical arabic, and therefore it is the basis for all other dialects. Once you feel comfortable in MSA, buy a phrasebook of egyptian arabic, morrocan arabic, iraqi arabic… and flip through the pages to understand the differences with MSA..

good luck

Comment on About by Andee

Andee — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:38:27 +0000

Thanks for the comment Philip and sorry for the slow reply. I go in bursts… well, since I spend most of my time working toward my PhD and other research, I find it hard to post consistently – not enough hours in the day or something like that…

Comment on About by Philip

Philip — Sun, 29 May 2011 20:12:32 +0000

Hi Andee,

Even though I’ve been reading language learning blogs for a while, I only just stumbled over yours. It’s ashame, because you like I are married to a Korean woman! Anyway, I’ll be sure to check out your blog more often.

I’ve recently started my own blog “Thoughts on Language Learning”

http://www.learnclick.com/blog

In this blog I write about my quest on seeking for ways to improve my
language learning, especially with the use of modern technology.

You might be interested to pay my blog a visit. And maybe we can do a
link exchange.

Thank you.

Philip

Comment on Size Matters: Vocabulary by Philip

Philip — Sun, 29 May 2011 20:06:10 +0000

That sounds like a fun and interesting activity to do! I just wished I had a paper dictionary. All my dictionaries are electronic, because it is very convenient. But I realize that having a paper dictionary also has some advantages…