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In the previous post I mentioned a main word list for students wanting to comprehend English, the General Service List. A sister list to the GSL is the Academic Word List (AWL) which contains a further 570 words which are important to university students and aren’t contained in the GSL. At that Wiktionary link, the words […]
Once you’ve learned how to pronounce Vietnamese and have a handle on the relatively simple-to-learn grammar, learning Vietnamese is mostly a matter of picking up vocabulary. What you’ll learn in books is the the tip of the iceberg, and may even include a lot of words that aren’t so frequently used.
For English, there is the […]
Recently I came across the question of translating the word “unlock” into another language. In Vietnamese the word would be translated “mo khoa” or “open lock”. This got me thinking why they didn’t just use the word “lock” with another word that means to undo, the same function as “un-” in English.
When I thought about […]
One of the many reasons that Vietnamese and other foreigners need a teacher that can speak the language is because it is difficult to read English words and pronounce them correctly without first having somebody read them to you. This is because English orthography, the spelling system, is very inconsistent and contains many words […]
“Tufala i stap yet long Betlehem, nao i kam kasem stret taem blong Meri i bonem pikinini. Nao hem i bonem fasbon pikinin blong hem we hem i boe. Hem i kavremapgud long kaliko, nao i putum hem i slip long wan bokis we oltaim ol man oli stap putum gras long hem, blong ol […]
I find that I can learn a language much more rapidly once I’m able to read in that language because it allows you to subconsciously pick up grammar and contextual vocabulary and you can sometimes pick up the meaning of a word you don’t already know without having to look it up in a dictionary. […]
What language do they speak in Belize? Well, the simple answer is that they speak English and are the only English-speaking country in Central America. And if that’s the language you speak and I assume it is since you’re reading this then you can get by just fine in Belize. But of course in Jamaica […]
I recently ran across a new web site for learning languages called Mango Languages, which like every other web application on the Internet right now is in beta. But that doesn’t mean it’s broken or useless. Quite the contrary. And it’s totally free. The courses they currently offer are Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Greek, Italian […]
Have you ever wondered why the Japanese calendar system has seven days just like we have all over the West and why the meetings of Sunday and Monday seemingly match up (”sun” day and “moon” day) while the rest of the Japanese days are so different from what we use in English or in any […]
Deep within the podosphere resides a mysterious writer known only as Grammar Girl. Hailed as the defender of the sacred comma, orator of the mysterious grammar way, and deliverer of practical tips, she strives to restore fun to a desolate, imaginary world called Grammaria.
Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing is a podcast […]