Archive for March, 2010
Mar
Mar
Il futuro semplice – The simple future tense of Italian
After one month, I found I was already able to say a lot in Italian, but I lamented that it was all in the present tense! Last week, we started to fix that by learning il passato prossimo, the most common way to form the past tense in Italian. Now, it’s probably time to learn how to use the future tense.
Mar
Mar
Noun declension demystified
Category: General · Tags: accusative,dative,genetive,instrumental,nominative,noun declension,nouns,prepositional
The declension of nouns is often a scary topic for native English speakers, but it doesn’t have to be. Just because most of our nouns don’t change (some still do!) it doesn’t mean that we don’t still have those grammatical parts in our sentences. Understanding these grammatical parts will be much more important — in some cases, absolutely essential — in other languages.
Mar
Mar
Why should I learn a foreign language?
It seems I am constantly being asked why I learn foreign languages. Every time I chat with somone online in their language, their first question is why I learned it. Every time someone finds out about my web site, they want to know why I’m doing it. If you think it’s hard explaining one language, try explaining a new one every year! Although I have a feeling it will make a handy conversation starter at the holidays.
Mar
Mar
Italian question words
It may be a little late in the game for discussing these, but it’s still worth covering the topic of question words in Italian and looking at some ways they might be used which aren’t immediately apparent.
Mar
Mar
Changing the way you think
Perhaps one of the biggest sources of difficulty for English speakers when learning a foreign language is the fact that modern spoken English is rich with slang expressions — especially in the US, where our language is so heavily influenced by pop culture. Thinking in slang and hyperbole can be a steep impediment to overcome.
Mar
Mar
My first impressions after learning the Arabic alphabet
Last weekend I decided to learn to read Arabic. I’m not talking about learning any words, building any vocabulary, or even being able to communicate or understand anything. I just wanted to learn how to read this strange-looking language.
Mar
Mar
Esperanto, a first look
Since choosing to become an active member of the language blogging community, I have started seing Esperanto mentioned a lot. While I have had some basic understanding of what Esperanto is, I didn’t really know any details about it. After seeing it mentioned a few times in response to last week’s post about reasons to learn Spanish, I decided to take a little time to discover what Esperanto is about.
Mar
Mar
Fluent in one week? The Esperanto challenge!
While looking into the rudiments of Esperanto on a bit of a weekend whim, I tweeted, somewhat jestfully, that I could imagine someone being able to acheive fluency in Esperanto in one week. That remark was met with a friendly challenge and even a starting point, and so I’ve decided to give it a try.
Mar
Mar
Prepositions, prefixes and suffixes – the power of Esperanto!
Saluton esperantistoj! Today I will outline the concepts of prepositions, prefixes, and suffixes — essential concepts in the language of Esperanto.
Mar
Mar
Asking and answering questions in Esperanto
In addition to understanding the agglunative way vocabulary is formed in Esperanto, I’m also going to need to know how to ask and answer questions if I have any hope of becoming fluent in one week. So today, we’ll look at Esperanto’s table of correllatives.