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- This gave me a good laugh tod…
This gave me a good laugh today! Who else can relate?
#14 in particular :)
http://www.buzzfeed.com/sirajdatoo/18-things-youll-only-get-if-you-studied-a-foreign-language-a
41 Comments
Hmm, how about Kató Lomb? She was not only conversational in a lot of languages but worked as a professional translator and interpreter in 16 of them :) She wrote a book (something with 'Polyglot' in the title) on her method of learning languages that she made available for free on the internet. I don't know whether it still is accesible, though.
It is! http://www.cc.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/tesl-ej/ej45/tesl-ej.ej45.fr1.pdf
Thanks for the tip. :-)
2311
Haha, #11 and #12 really got me. I also give that "Yeah, I know, right...?" whenever people compliment me on my language command. :P
Thanks for sharing!
Brilliant! #11 to #16 are certainly most relatable :) I'd never forget the feeling of elation I got when on my first trip to germany, the officer at the airport asked "Sie leben hier?" and I answered "Nein" feeling like "Wow, this is easy. I am the king, kiss my ring!", quickly followed by the feeling of deflation when the other officer wanting to check my bags, unleased german in all its grammatical glory on me. Didn't get a single word! It's been two years since then and I still get that feeling of deflation often.
I do that as well! :D With no side intensions, of course. Practice is all I want. :)
To the facepalm moments: That happens quite easily! :) When I visited the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, I was addressed by a foreign tourist whether I could speak German. I could but it was quite funny to find out that she was from Slovakia and I from the Czech republic, and thus there was no need to communicate in German. [Czechs and Slovaks understand each other very well since it was not until 1993 that Czechoslovakia split up into the Czech republic and Slovakia.]
*Dear English (native) speakers, feel free to correct my mistakes if there are any. :)
You don't need to worry about your English mate. It doesn't sound 100% natural, but its perfectly understandable. Your phrase for the day: "Ulterior Motive" http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ulterior_motive (which is actually from French/Latin...)
I think what I really want is 13's feeling. Hehehe, they won't know I understand but I do.
I feel like I'm learning at a snail's pace because I have to redo lessons several times before I can remember them. I know there's a few lessons now that I have gone through countless times and I still fail them :-/. I'm committed though! I'm trying really hard to learn and I'll eventually get it.
I think the key is to learn the basic structures of the language in Doulingo and then start consuming real cultural objects. Listen to real songs, read articles, watch subtitled movies and participate in every forum or chat room you can find (online gaming is great for this). That's how I learned english (except for the Duolingo part, it wasn't around at that time).