Today we’ve got a guest post from Lucia Leite, a Portuguese native speaker who has a degree in English and German. At the moment she’s taking a Master’s degree in English as a second language for young learners, while improving her Spanish and French. I’ll leave you with her now…

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Listening is an important first step in learning a new language.  Some call this the silent period – when you listen to the spoken language to reinforce vocabulary structures and learn speech patterns.

When you are studying a second language it is a good idea to find examples that you can listen to from podcasts and television shows to movies and music.

Listening, believe it or not, is a skill that needs to be practiced.  Listening and hearing are not the same thing.  You may hear a television on in the background but you are not actually listening to the dialogue that is being spoken.

Listening is an art and one must hone their skills to be good at it.  Active listening requires you to focus on the speaker to distinguish words, tone, and meaning.

If you listen to a language before you try to learn to speak it you will have a much better grasp of the pronunciation.  If you start out pronouncing words incorrectly it can be difficult to try to fix the error later on.

It does not matter if you don’t understand what you are listening to at first – the first stage of listening is to get a feel for the rhythm of the language and how sounds are pronounced.
You will learn new vocabulary as you continue on your learning journey.

Listening to music when you are learning a second language can help you as a learner.  It can increase a listener’s ability to distinguish specific sounds in the spoken word.

One thing to remember is that listening to music activates more of the brain than language does so singing something can help you to remember it more easily than simply saying it.  Remember when you used to study for a test and you would make up a little song to remember details?  The same thing applies for learning a second language!

Look for music in the language you are learning that appeals to you.  You Tube is a good place to start and you may even find music videos with subtitles so that you know the meaning of the lyrics as well.

The lyrics will help visual learners by stimulating another sense rather than just auditory.

Using song lyrics to help build your language vocabulary is helpful too.  When you listen to a song repeatedly you will start to pick out vocabulary words related to the story of the song.  This is much easier than trying to learn vocabulary words from a list with no particular relation or meaning.  When you learn vocabulary words from a list they do not tend to transfer to long term memory the way they do if you hear words in context.

Another way to use music in language learning is to put phrases you need to remember to a familiar tune.  Choose a simple song such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star or Do-Re-Mi and substitute your phrase for the song lyrics.  Then you can sing the phrase over and over and it will be locked in your memory – the same way a catchy television commercial jingle stays in there forever!

Music also elevates your mood and we all know that learning is more fun when you are in a good mood and enjoying what you are doing.

There have been studies that show how music enhances creativity and also helps build vocabulary and writing skills – maybe that’s why musical parodies are so much fun!

Research has shown that adults who learn a second language by incorporating music speak the language twice as well as those not using music as a learning tool.  Singing when learning a language helps take advantage of the link between music and memory.

Those who sing when they learn a language have a better long term memory of the words and phrases that they learn.

The post Music as a Learning Tool: Sing Your Way to Fluency! appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.

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Sometimes we reach a certain level of a foreign language and we just want to keep going. Maybe we’ve lived and worked in the target country for a long time. Maybe we work academically or professionally in the language. Maybe we haven’t gotten as far along as we would like to in the target language and we have long-term goals for a particular language. It may be that we need to pass a proficiency test in the language for a variety of reasons.
When we want to improve in a foreign language, it makes sense that we need to practice our writing skills. Chiara posted in Runaway Daydreamer that improving our writing skills was one reason to keep a language journal.

In the Disqus comments below Chiara’s blog post, one of the readers named Lu added that keeping a language journal helps us see our limits, while another named Dylan mentioned it was boring to keep a journal. If we recognise the value of keeping a journal as a way to improve our writing and if some find keeping a language journal boring, then how could we make it more interesting so that more people would find a reason for keeping a language journal or diary?

How about focusing on writing about things you’re already passionate about? That way you can share your interests with others. Just imagine the excitement of being able to talk about things you already are passionate about in your target language as well as in your native language.

In addition to keeping a physical handwritten language journal, there are a few ways to practice your writing skills on the Internet as well.

My Top Tips for Writing in a Foreign Language

You can try a new app called HiNative where you can write a short sentence and ask a native whether it sounds natural.

If you’d like to write a couple of sentences or a paragraph, you can use lang-8.com where natives will be able to correct your writing and provide feedback.

If you have a longer entry, of 500 words or more, you could post it on yozzi.com to receive feedback on your writing skills.

What are some other ways language learners have their writing checked? At the Polyglot Berlin Gathering in 2016 I was able to talk to about 50 avid language learners about how and why they improve their writing skills in foreign languages. After getting their feedback, I posted this article on Medium that shows the top nine ways language learners have their writing corrected.

Some of the attendees at my presentation didn’t think they’d have anything interesting enough to write about. That got me thinking that we all have something interesting to share with the world, so I made an article with some suggestions on what to write about.

If you are not advanced enough in your target language to write an article, then consider writing short paragraphs about things you do in your daily life and what you want to do the following days, weeks, months, or years. Post them on lang-8 to get corrections from native speakers.

If you are more advanced and able to write an article of 500 words or more, submit it on yozzi.com and then send the URL of your post out via email or social media to people who know that target language better than you do. They can then use yozzi.com to provide feedback on your writing and you can check out what recommendations for improvement are being made. Look at the feedback and make a list of the kinds of mistakes you’re making. Then create a new article using the kinds of grammatical structures and expressions that you’ve been struggling with in order to gain more opportunity for practice and to internalise the improvements.

Since yozzi.com is a new site, I’m looking for a test group who would be interested in being the first ones to post guest blogs and try out the editing system to help others improve their writing. You’d be able to provide feedback on the look, feel and user friendliness of the site. 

It surprised me when I asked about 50 language learners at the Polyglot Berlin Gathering how they get feedback on their writing in their target language. The second most common answer was that they don’t seek any feedback whatsoever.

Your Turn

How about you? Do you like to have your writing corrected? How do you get feedback on your writing ability in your target language?

The post Writing in a Foreign Language: How to Do It and Why appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.

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What is the best way to learn a language? I’ve tried various methods with varying degrees of success over the years. My spoken Italian came on pretty quickly from six months of immersion, whilst my German is nothing less than scheisse after a year and a half of university lectures, and I have no words for how inexcusably poor my Dutch is after a few months of now-abandoned Duolingo practice; at least, no words for it in Dutch.

This year, I had my first opportunity at trying what Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger termed “Docendo discimus” – learning by teaching.

A word of caution: this technique doesn’t work with learning a language from scratch. Rather, it’s useful for fine-tuning and developing a language with which you have some fluency, but not complete mastery.

The Hebrew Challenge

I spent this year as a teaching assistant in Italy. Technically I was an English assistant, but there were three students who wanted to learn Hebrew, and nominally Hebrew is my mother tongue (although very much my second in terms of fluency). After a year, I’m still not sure exactly why they wanted to, but then again, many people ask me “why Italian?” and I don’t have a good answer for them either, so I just accepted it.

The problem is, while Hebrew is, as I mentioned, my mother tongue, I learned it from hearing it as a child, and later as a new oleh [immigrant] to Israel aged 13.
As a result, I simply never bothered with most of the grammar rules, which are unnecessarily complicated anyway, preferring instead to just learn by rote.
English is similar; if you ask most English people to explain the “past perfect” or “present simple” they would have no idea what you were talking about, even though they use them all the time. It’s automatic.

Back to Hebrew grammar though, and to take just one example of the complexity, Hebrew doesn’t have vowels. Instead, it has a series of dots and dashes under the letters to indicate which “vowel sound” they make (so for example, to indicate whether a “d” should be pronounced “do”, “du” or “da”).
Written Hebrew though almost never includes these dots and dashes, because they are only used to teach children, and are then removed in grown-up literature.

To a foreigner, this makes learning to read like one of those fill-in-the-blanks psychology tests. Imagine trying to teach someone a basic phrase in English without vowels… “hll, my nm s Jhn, nc t mt y” It’s more cryptic crossword clue than reading practice.

Learning by Teaching

The most valuable gift that learning by teaching gives you is making you think about not just *what* the correct way of saying something is, but *why*. Every language learner will, at some point, have come across the teacher who, when questioned about why something is the way it is, replies “that’s just the rule”.

The fact is, the “why” is the single most important question for development, hence why small children learn by asking it all the damn time. Once you understand the why, it’s like finding a master key instead of needing a large keychain; it opens up every other word that follows the same rule.

Another side-effect of learning by teaching is that you find the quirks in your language. In Hebrew, for example, the plural form (masculine) is formed by adding the letters “im” to the end of a word. So et [pen] becomes etim [pens], or kadur [ball] becomes kadurim [balls].

Yet words that have no plural at all in Hebrew, also often have “im” at the end of them. Why, for example, is our word for life, chayim, in the plural, even though it is only ever singular?

These quirks which we take as read raise all sorts of questions, such as: why does the verb lehagid [to say] have an infinitive and a future, but no past or present (there is a synonymous verb, lomar, that is used for past and present)?
These are questions I had never considered, but learning the answers helped to improve my own Hebrew. And every language has them, once you start exploring.

As I said at the start, a certain level of fluency is required for this. But it can work even without, by learning in pairs or in a group. Learning with a friend, for example, where you take turns being the teacher and teaching new concepts to the student (where the “student” has to rely solely on your explanations), is one way of making this work.
Who knows, maybe if I’d been forced to teach my friends German instead of learning it in a dreary classroom far too early in the morning twice a week, I could be blogging in German today. I consider it a missed opportunity… schade.

About the author:

Sahar, better known as The Wandering Jew, is a writer and blogger who loves travelling, and tends to divide his time between Italy, Israel and the UK. He has written for the Jewish Chronicle of London and the Jewish Week of New York among others. Follow him on Twitter @WanderJewBlog, and he’s just added a Facebook page too, so like the page here: www.facebook.com/WanderingJewBlog/

Don’t forget to tell him that Chiara sent you!

The post Learning to Teach, and Teaching to Learn appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.

She is studying Business with Marketing and working in the marketing department at Livety.com – a young startup whose purpose is to help students from all around the world find the best and most suitable accommodation in the UK.

Over to you Samanphy!

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Once you have secured your hard-earned degree, a great way to enhance your skills is to learn foreign languages. This will enable you to work in your chosen field virtually anywhere in the world, opening up exciting travel opportunities. When it comes to choosing which languages to learn, here are the top 5 that will help your career to reach new heights.

1. Don’t be shy, learn Mandarin Chinese
This language may seem daunting. However, when you consider that it’s the world’s number one language with 870 million people speaking it as their mother tongue, you can see why learning Chinese is a smart move. The International Monetary Fund has ranked China’s economy as the second largest in world markets by nominal GDP and the largest according to its purchasing power. It’s not surprising, therefore, that mastering Chinese will give you many different career and business opportunities. As for the alleged difficulty in learning the language, don’t be put off as experts say it’s not as bad as it seems!

2. Speak sparkling Spanish
There are 21 countries who class Spanish as their official language and Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world after Chinese. Speaking Spanish will open many doors for you to work in Spain, South America and anywhere in the world where a company needs a Spanish speaker to join their team. An estimated 10% of companies posting jobs online are looking for bilingual or multilingual applicants and having Spanish as part of your language portfolio will not only look good on your CV but will also stand you in good stead in the jobs market.

3. Learn eloquent French
Across the world’s 500 continents, more than 200 million people speak French and there are 68 states and governments who belong to The Francophonie, which is an international organisation for countries who speak French. Those who learn a foreign language choose French after English, as it’s relatively easy to learn and ranks ninth in the world’s most widely spoken languages. If you can speak French, you’ll have a distinct advantage when it comes to applying for international jobs. Prominent French-speaking countries include parts of Canada, Belgium, Switzerland and, of course, France itself. You could even apply for a job in North or sub-Saharan Africa! France is ranked as the fifth largest world economy and is in the top three countries favoured by foreign investors. It’s plain to see why learning French is such a good idea and will enhance your career options no end!

4. Master romantic Italian
Italian is a beautiful Romance Language and being able to speak it has many benefits for graduates in all industries. An estimated 80 million people speak Italian and more than seven percent of foreign language jobs require Italian speakers, which helps to explain why it’s the fourth most chosen option when it comes to studying a foreign language. Italy is leading country in many prominent areas, including cooking and fashion and is considered as an important world cultural and business centre. Nobody does it quite like the Italians do!

5. Be smart and study German
German is in high demand when it comes to learning second languages and almost a quarter of foreign language jobs advertised on online recruitment sites ask for those who speak German to apply. Germany has the largest European economy and is also the continent’s most widely spoken language. The country itself is famous for some premium brands such as Aldi, Audi and BMW and studies show that those who speak German can potentially attract higher salaries than those who don’t. All the signs are showing that the demand for German is likely to grow, so jump on the bandwagon and learn German now!

The post 5 foreign languages to learn to boost your career after graduation appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.

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Learning Mandarin Chinese has become an increasingly popular endeavor in recent years, with more people undertaking the challenge every day.

There are as many different reasons to learn Mandarin Chinese as there are people who take up the language.  Some people learn Mandarin Chinese in order to get a new job, a promotion, or a raise.  Some are planning a trip to China or another area where the language is widely spoken.  Some people take up Mandarin Chinese just because they love learning new languages, or perhaps because they enjoy the sound of Mandarin.  Many people take up learning Mandarin Chinese for a combination of reasons.

Just as there are many different reasons for learning Mandarin Chinese, there are many different ways to go about it.  Some people like the flexibility of online classes, while some like the personal interaction of traditional classes.  Some people choose tutoring, while others learn on the go from audio files.

Our mission is to help you learn to speak better Chinese.  We hope these ten do’s and don’ts will help you familiarize yourself with the Chinese culture and provide you some insight into how the culture shapes the language.

It is our opinion that gaining some insight into the Chinese culture will help you deepen your understanding of the Chinese language.  We hope that a greater understanding of the issues relevant to Chinese culture will help improve your understanding of the language.

We hope these tips will spark your interest and get you looking for more tips on how to learn Chinese, or to talk with someone who has been down the road you are now travelling.

Happy learning!

Profile: Yang is a serial web entrepreneur whose latest website is www.learnmandarinnow.com. Yang is passionate about learning new languages and cultures.

The post Improve Your Mandarin Chinese with These 10 Cultural Tips appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.

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A common observation shows that most people take a foreign language course because it’s one of the hobbies they want to pursue. But it’s amazing to know that learning a foreign language can do so much benefit for the brain. The following article lists some benefits that learning a foreign language can bring.

So, you thought you could do with one language for your entire life? Well, it is not impossible to do so, but the number of benefits that you could get from learning a foreign language are many. Adding your language skills to your CV is one of them, but there are cognitive advantages that develop you as a whole. It is found that these cognitive benefits are found  mostly in people who have the ability to speak multiple languages regularly.

Here is why having an access to a foreign language is more important than you think.

#1 Boosts Brain Power

How does it do that? Foreign language in itself is a vast subject that has distinct rules, meaning and etymology. With such complexities, learning a foreign language puts the brain to task by recognizing the new structure of the foreign language. The activity of the brain that is involved in working out the meanings and the use of this new storage of the brain helps boosting reading, problem-solving and negotiating skills.

#2 Develops the Ability of Multi-tasking

Not everyone has the skills to multi-task. People who are not used to it, find it extremely stressful. Learning a foreign language helps a person in developing multi-tasking skills. A person who can master the skills of juggling between two or more languages develop fine skills of multitasking. This is because learning languages requires the brain to finely distinguish between them so that the tongue can perform its task well. So, the brain gets the ability to distinguish things at the same time you want to work with all of them.

#3 Helps You Improve Your Memory

You do a number of things that help you improve your memory. Add learning a foreign language to your list. Memorizing the rules and learning the vocabulary helps strengthening the mental muscle. The overall exercise improves memory which implies that people with bilingual skills have better abilities in memorizing sequences and lists.  They are also better in remembering shopping lists, directions and names.

#4 Improves Decision Making Ability

It is observed that people who are learning foreign languages have better decision-making power. Apart from vocabulary and rules, there are nuances and vernacular expressions that a student is required to judge for appropriate meanings. Hence, this helps in making the decision making ability more wise and sharp.

#5 Sharpens Observing Skills

You become more perceptive and more observant about your surroundings.

Now you know where Sherlock Homes got his skills from?

#6 Makes you more flexible and open

Learning a language is a gateway to other cultures and hence learning it gives a person the ability to have a broader understanding of the culture or a particular race. It makes you more appreciative and more flexible about ways of looking and doing things. This valuable tool of seeing the world from different vantage points is something that you can develop from learning languages.

#7 Expands Career Potential

Well, it is one advantage that you can materialize for yourself. Learning a foreign language definitely gives you a competitive edge over others. Not only it adds to the column of languages, but develops you as a person and gives you the ability to communicate in different languages and cross all cultural barriers.

Also, mastering a foreign language gives you an added self-confidence with all those skills that you develop. The openness and the ability of being interactive makes polyglots quite attractive.

Final Words

You may not expect the entire list when you embark to learn a new language. But, as a matter of fact, understanding a foreign language helps you in self-discovery. It enriches your viewpoints about varied cultures and have more appreciation of your own and makes you come in terms with yourself too.

Learning a foreign language gives you cognitive and mental benefits that are apparent in polyglots. It is easier to inculcate all the above mentioned skills in children, so learning a foreign language at an early age is beneficial. On the other hand, even learning it at a later stage is equally worth it.

Author Bio

Akansha Arora is a professional writer and blogger who loves to pen down her views on a number of topics that interest a reader. She writes keeping in mind the current   scenarios and wishes to keep her readers well informed. You can follow her on google.com/+AkanshaArora2112

The post Why Should You Make the Effort of Learning a Foreign Language? appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.

But “like” is more than a meaningless filler that indicates stupidity. In fact, the word “like” has evolved to take on a variety of uses that are not only useful, but also semantically rich. Moreover, the word “like” fills lexical gaps in the English language, conveying sentiments that its alternatives simply can’t express. Let’s review some of the uses of the word “like” to show that it’s not so bad after all.

The characters in the movie “Clueless” often use the word “like” to achieve a comical effect. Image via Mentalfloss

The Many Meanings of “Like”

1. I’m like, “It’s a really versatile way to quote people.”

One of the most common uses of the word “like” is a quotative: it can be used in lieu of words such as “say”. However, rather than indicating a direct quotation, “like” expresses the general feeling of something that was said. For example, in the following quote, we understand that the speaker is paraphrasing or summarizing:

– What’s that famous scene in Romeo & Juliet when Juliet leans out a window and is like, “Romeo, where did you go?”

This takes the pressure off the speaker to provide a word-for-word transliteration of what was said. It also allows us to editorialize: we can imbue our quotations with our own thoughts or feelings about a given situation, as in the following:

– I can’t believe I’m failing physics. I tried to talk to my professor about it but he just looked at me and was like, “I’m literally a demon and I feel no remorse for ruining your GPA.”

Finally, “like” is extremely versatile, and can be used outside of the realm of speech. It can express a variety of non-verbal situations, such as somebody’s internal, unspoken thoughts:

– It was so hard to keep quiet during his speech; the whole time, I was just like, “Are you kidding me?”

You can also use “like” to express gestures, or even sounds produced by non-human entities like animals or even inanimate objects:

– When she said that, I was just like [speaker rolls eyes].

– This random cat walked up to me and was like, “Meow!” so I decided to pet it.

– My friend’s car accelerates really fast — when I put my foot on the gas pedal, it was like, “Vroom!”

2. It’s used to indicate approximation, like, fifty percent of the time

Sometimes you want to convey a sentiment similar to the one expressed by the word “approximately”, but you want to avoid uttering a five-syllable word and sounding like a calculus textbook. In this case, “like” is a great option — it’s exceedingly common to use the word to offer some kind of approximation, as in the following examples:

– I think the library is, like, ten or fifteen miles from here.

– The Earth’s surface is, like, seventy percent water.

3. It’s, like, the best word ever to show exaggeration

Another popular use of the word “like” is to exaggerate. Speakers use “like” to indicate that what they’re about to say is going to be an exaggeration or a hyperbole, often for comedic or dramatic effect. Here are some examples:

– I would go to the party, but I have a paper due tomorrow and it has to be, like, fifty million pages.

– I want to buy my own apartment, but I have, like, no money at all.

– When he said that to me, I, like, died.

4. Sometimes it just, like, fills the silence

So far, we’ve seen that “like” has a variety of semantically meaningful uses — it can be used as a quotative, it can express approximation, and it can indicate exaggeration. Alas, the people who lambast “like” for being a meaningless filler are at least partially correct. The word “like” can be used interchangeably with “um” or “uh”, as a mechanism for filling silence or buying time to plan your next words, like in the following examples:

– So, like, what do you think?

– Like … I don’t really know how to put it into words.

When did it all begin?

Strict grammarians may frown upon unconventional uses of the word “like”, but its popularity persists. Image via Pixabay

Grammar purists tend to dismiss these unconventional uses of the word “like” as a recent phenomenon, perpetuated by young, bubblegum-chewing whippersnappers intent on destroying the English language. However, it can be traced back almost one hundred years, when it appeared in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel Kidnapped: ‘What’s like wrong with him?’ said she at last.

It was also prominently featured in a 1928 New Yorker cartoon, in which two women discuss a man’s workplace, accompanied by the following test: “What’s he got — an office?” “No, he’s got like a loft.” Thus, non-conventional uses of the word “like” have been around, like, forever.

Is “Like” Really So Bad?

Language is a touchy subject — when it comes to how we speak, humans have the tendency to be staunch traditionalists. Whether it’s the use of “impact” as a verb, the popularization of “legit” as an abbreviation of “legitimate”, or saying “literally” to mean exactly the opposite of “literal”, almost everyone has at least one qualm with the directions that the English language has been taking in recent years.

Unfortunately, our petty complaints don’t change the simple fact that language evolves, whether we like it or not. Indeed, the next generation of English-speakers will grow up to think that “literally” means “figuratively”, regardless of how harshly we criticize them for it. Similarly, English speakers will continue to use “like” in unconventional ways — even as a filler! — despite admonitions from their grandparents.

However, is that really so bad? I don’t think so. Of course, we should probably keep “like” out of formal writing, such as academic papers, lawmaking, or, like, directions for performing a surgery (indeed, instructions such as “Make an incision that’s, like, an inch deep” could result in some problems). But to those who condemn the use of the word “like” simply because it’s not traditional, I’m like, “Get used to it, because language evolves, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Paul writes on behalf of Language Trainers, a language tutoring service offering personalized course packages to individuals and groups. Try their free foreign-language level tests and check out their website for other language-learning resources. Visit their Facebook page or contact paul@languagetrainers.com with any questions.

The post In Defense of “Like”: It’s, Like, Actually a Pretty Great Word appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.

Here are two excellent French-language songs that will help you tackle some of the trickier aspects of French grammar.

Photo via dianaros2015 / Wikipedia

Cracking Conditionals with Diane Tell: Si J’étais un Homme

The grammar point: Second conditional = Si + imperfect + conditional

Especially for English speakers, memorizing the conjugations involved in the several different conditional tenses can be a struggle. Luckily, French-Canadian singer Diane Tell is there to help us. Her 1981 hit “Si j’étais un homme” (“If I Were a Boy”) earned her international recognition, and to date, it is her most popular song. In it, she talks about what she would do if she woke up and found herself transformed into a man. Specifically, she says:

Ah ! si j’etais un homme / Oh! If I were a boy

Je serais romantique… / I would be romantic

Thus, we encounter an instance of the second conditional, which is used to describe impossible or hypothetical situations (like waking up as the opposite gender). In French, it’s formed by using the imperfect first-person tense of “être” — ètais — to indicate that the situation described is not real. Then, in the subsequent clause, the conditional form of “être” — serais — expresses the same meaning that “would” does in English. The song is filled to the brim with more examples of the second conditional — have a listen below.

Memorizing the Future Tense with Celine Dion: Je Chanterai

The grammar point: Future tense = main verb + future ending (-ai, -as, -a, -ons, -ez, -ont)

In English, the future tense is relatively easy to express: you simply use the modal will and the base form of the verb. In French, however, the future tense comes with an entire set of conjugations, which differ by person and number. French-English bilingual Celine Dion, however, is not fazed by the future tense, and uses it with aplomb in her popular song “Je Chanterai” (“I Will Sing”). In it, she proudly proclaims:

Quand l’amour aura d’autres goûts que la passion, le désir / When love has tastes other than passion, desire

Je chanterai, je chanterai / I will sing, I will sing

Et je t’aimerai, je t’aimerai / and I will love you, I will love you

Indeed, the song has plenty of examples of the future tense in action. Celine Dion is singing about her own emotions, and therefore she uses the first-person conjugations. But make sure that you also know the rest of the conjugations, listed below:

First person singular: Je chanterai

Second person singular: Tu chanteras

Third person singular: Il/elle/on chantera

First person plural: Nous chanterons

Second person plural: Vous jouerez

Third person plural: Ils/Elles/on joueront

These two songs are great examples of great French-language tunes from which you can extract both musical and grammatical value. Given that French is a language whose grammar is as rich as its musical culture, you can find important grammar points in almost all French music — have a look at other French-language songs for learners, and listen to your heart’s content.
Add them to your iPod when you’re taking the metro on your way to work, when you’re riding your bicylcette down a streetlamp-lined Parisian road, or when you’re simply at home with a bottle of champagne, dreaming about France.
And don’t forget to sing along — that way, you’ll get in some valuable speaking practice, too!

Paul writes on behalf of Language Trainers, a language tutoring service offering French classes in Montreal, as well as other language classes all over the world. You can check out their free French level tests and other language-learning resources on their website. You can visit their Facebook page or contact paul@languagetrainers.com with any questions.

The post Brush Up on Your French Grammar Through Music appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.

I’m thrilled to announce that Paul Martin will be Runaway Daydreamer’s first ever Guest Editor.

Paul is an English teacher currently living in Buenos Aires and he will take over the blog for the current month.

He agreed to write a series of articles and in-depth features for us.  I shall leave you in his capable hands. Enjoy!

If you’re learning a foreign language, you’ve likely had this experience: you feel like you understand the language pretty well, but when a native speaker talks to you, their speech is so incredibly fast that you don’t have the faintest clue what they’ve said. Indeed, it can seem amazing that native speakers can understand each other given the rip-roaring pace at which they speak! But just how fast are languages actually spoken? Are some languages really spoken more quickly than others? Read on to find out — the answer may surprise you!

This conversation could be very fast or very slow, depending on what language they are speaking! Image via Clairity / flickr

The Research

To investigate the speed at which languages are spoken, researchers at the Université de Lyon had speakers of seven different languages — English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese — read several different identical texts, which were translated into each language. The researchers then counted the number of syllables in each recording, and divided that by the overall time in seconds to find the speed at which each language was spoken, in syllables per second. 

The researchers also calculated what they call grammatical density, which refers to how much information is packed into a single syllable. For instance, the word “bliss” — which refers to a very specific, intense type of happiness — has high grammatical density, as it conveys lots of linguistic information. In contrast, a less semantically rich word like “of”, which does not convey very much information, has low grammatical density.

The Findings

Here’s what the researchers found: indeed, some languages are faster than others! English and Mandarin were spoken most slowly, at a turtle-placed 6.19 and 5.18 syllables per second, respectively. Spanish and Japanese were the speed demons of the group, spoken at the breakneck pace of 7.82 and 7.84 syllables per second. 

They also found that there was a significant correlation between the speed at which a language was spoken and its grammatical density. That is, languages that had high grammatical density — who packed a lot of information into one syllable — were spoken slowly, whereas languages that had low grammatical density — that didn’t pack very much information into one syllable — were spoken more quickly. 

Therefore, even though the speed of languages differs, the amount of information conveyed in a given timeframe by each language remains constant: languages with low grammatical density, such as Spanish, simply have to produce more syllables per second in order to convey the same amount of information in the same amount of time. Therefore, speakers of Chinese take their time, whereas speakers of Japanese have to rush their words, but they end up conveying the same amount of information in a sentence.

Implications for Language Learning

What does this mean for language-learners? Are learners of Spanish and Japanese doomed to feeling overwhelmed and confused whenever native speakers talk to them? No! In fact, Spanish routinely finds itself at the top of the list of the easiest foreign languages to learn for English speakers. Indeed, the difficulty in learning a foreign language depends a lot more on how similar that language is to your own than to how quickly it is spoken. 

For instance, German is one of the easiest languages to learn for English speakers, as the two languages have almost 60% of their vocabulary in common. In contrast, it is much harder for an English speaker to pick up on a language like Vietnamese, which has very little overlap with English in terms of grammatical structures and vocabulary. (But of course, you can learn any language with motivation and hard work!) 

Readers — Do you speak a fast or slow language? Can you hear the difference?
Try taking the same listening test in Chinese and Japanese to see if you notice that the Japanese speakers talk more quickly — comment below with your thoughts!

Paul writes on behalf of Language Trainers, a language tutoring service offering personalized course packages to individuals and groups. You can check out their free language level tests and other language-learning resources on their website. Feel free to visit their Facebook page or contact paul@languagetrainers.com with any questions.

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Today’s post is by Yang who will give you the encouragement you need to pursue your language learning goals. 

Enjoy!

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Many people think that learning Chinese has to be incredibly difficult for Westerners. This is a misconception that has spread by both native speakers and others. In fact, it may well be easier for a native English speaker to learn proper Chinese that it is for a native Chinese speaker to learn to proper English.

Before we talk about the reasons why learning Mandarin is relatively easy, there are two main issues that many people encounter when learning the language.

Pronunciation

When learning any new language, you need to learn how to pronounce the words.  But learning to pronounce words in Spanish or French is fairly straightforward as they use many of the same sounds as are used in English.  This is not the case with Chinese.  The Chinese language uses many sounds that are difficult for the ear of the Westerner to distinguish.  Add to this, the tonal nature of the language, and it’s not really surprising that Mandarin seems hard to learn.

Vocabulary

Just like with pronunciation, there are many words that are very similar between English and other Germanic and Romance languages.  There are no words in Chinese that are similar enough to their English equivalent to help simplify your vocabulary building.  Learning Chinese vocabulary must be done from scratch, it’s impossible to learn Chinese by focusing on similarities with English.

But it still doesn’t have to be all that tough!

Hong Kong

Pronunciation and vocabulary are basic building blocks of any language, so what exactly makes Chinese easy to learn?  One word: Grammar.  Simply put, when learning most languages, you have to learn to conjugate verbs, decline nouns, and learn noun genders, essentially learning several different forms of most words.  Chinese grammar is so much easier to learn that it makes up for the difficulties with pronunciation and vocabulary.

The easiest thing about Chinese grammar is the lack of inflections.  A verb is expressed the same way in the past, present, or future, singular or plural, and nouns are not gendered.

To make things even easier, the line between parts of speech is fuzzy.  Most words can be used appropriately as noun, verb, or adjective without changing the word in any way.  This makes your new vocabulary quite flexible.  The same is true for written Chinese.

Don’t take this as meaning that Chinese is easy, it is quite difficult.  The difficulties just happen to be different than the difficulties you might encounter learning many other languages.  Don’t feel inadequate if you have trouble learning the language, or if it doesn’t click into place right away.

Reading and writing Chinese present their own unique challenges, and it can take much longer to learn than speaking and listening.  Still, the Chinese language isn’t necessarily all that much harder to learn than many other languages.

You are welcome to visit Learn Mandarin Now to find out more tips to learn the language.

Niaochao National Stadium in Beijing

The post Mandarin Chinese is easier to learn than you think appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.