The subtle art of tongues
Source: kidscientist.com
As the latest challenge posted to me applies to a special timeframe (Valentine’s Day) and given that I decided to accept it even if it therefore sets a time limit, I figured I should get started as soon as possible on getting these 14 translations.
Without further ado, here’s the list!
French: “Tu es belle”Polish: “jesteś bardzo ładny”; phon.: “yestesh bardzo whad-na”Mandarin: 您很漂亮 ; pinyin: “nín hěn piào liang”Japanese: “anata wa utsukushii desu”Spanish: “Eres Hermosa”Maori (New Zealand): “koe ātaahua”Innu-aimun (Inuit): “minushkueu”Russian: “Ты такая красивая”; phon.: “Ti krasIvaya”Swedish: “Du är vacker”; phon.: “Dew air vuh-kerr”Portuguese: “Você é linda.”Swahili: “U ni mrembo”Arabic: أنت جميلة ; phon.: “anti jamila”Italian: “Sei bellisima”English: “You’re beautiful”Note: There is no official country in Antarctica, and thus no official language. I’ve read about some old language called “bus”, but couldn’t find any reference to it whatsoever.
I will need to practice pronunciation, some of them being tricky.
This brings me to the topic I’d like to touch today: tongues!… err, languages, yes.
Source: popgivings.com
As a native francophone, I am often asked where I learned English and how I managed to make it so good. Some also note my not having an accent, which I daresay I’m rather proud about.
IT ALL STARTED on a dark and quiet night… A star twinkled and a beautiful fairy went flying around…
Eeerrrm wrong story. It actually started on my first year of high school, in an enriched English class with me not even able to blabber the tiniest of sentences without tripping on my own tongue, let alone finding the right words. And the whole class was happening in English. NO french words allowed (though of course we all crossed that rule at least once, if only to bug the teacher).
After the first few disastrous results came in (I’ve always had a profound sense of attachment to my grades), I knew I needed to crank it up, and fast. I worked hard (I wasn’t even used to do that yet), and at the end of the year I ended up among the best of the class. First milestone achieved; I was proud indeed.
I still wasn’t that very good, though, but in the following years I used many tools to help me get constantly better:
- TEH INTERNETS (countless websites, chat rooms, gaming)
- Also on the Internet: Text-based role-playing. That helped a HUGE lot to build vocabulary, as we were constantly describing settings and characters and interactions)
- Learning song lyrics by heart
- Some TV shows and gradually whole movies (also did that for japanese, with decent results)
- Meeting people
- And finally, what nailed down my speaking: Working mainly in English on a day-to-day basis. It played the same role as immersion does.
Source: chinasmack.com
Granted, I was blessed with accessibility for many of these tools. I can even confirm it looking at the other languages I started learning (Spanish, Russian, Japanese), for which the level never got close to what I’ve done with english. Japanese was well started though, but I decided it took too much of my time at some point. Ideally, I’d need to live or work in these languages to get better.
On a side note, I’m started learning Mandarin Chinese in the hope that I can actually go and work or study in China someday. It would really be awesome. For uh, career of course. And tongue exchange. On a completely unrelated note, Asian cuties are hot.
So what I realize is, if you’re going to learn a language, you better also have a plan to use it soon, or you’ll lose interest. To learn a language you need to feed it constantly.
Source: itchmo.com
