Guest Reading: La Nacion

This week's guest reading was recorded by Paulino Brener, a native Spanish-speaker from Argentina. Paulino lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where is is a school teacher, a performer, and a champion of Latin-American culture, among other things. He is also a good friend.

Paulino has chosen to read a bit of political news from La Nacion, regarding events in his home country.

Paulino reads from La Nación

Randazzo: "Cristina va a asumir el desafío de profundizar el modelo"
El... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

How can you learn when all you do is study?

I recently saw a comment on a friend's Facebook. He was at a coffee shop and saw an old man seated nearby with a Spanish workbook, a huge Spanish-English dictionary, and one of those giant books of 500 Spanish verbs. He guessed this old man was in his 80s, and he found inspiration in this scene. The Facebook comment was, "I hope I'm still learning languages like this when I'm 80."

Yes, it's inspiring to think that you'll still be passionate about the things you love when you get old. But unfortunately,... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

The Turkish past tense

Last week, I talked about several things we can learn in Turkish just by looking at the login page from Yonja, the Turkish social network. I mostly talked about vocabulary, and showed how we can learn to understand a word's meaning and its use just from a login page.

I also mentioned the activity stream at the bottom of the page. That is what I want to look at further today, because it seems to have provided us with everything we need to learn a new verb tense!

If we look at some examples... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Guest reading: Greed is good

Have you ever heard Gordon Gekko’s famous speech “Greed is good” in Latvian? I bet you haven’t so take a few minutes and listen to my Latvian version of this speech!

In case you’re wondering who I am, my name is Robby and I’m a Latvian chap living in Ireland. I also happen to be a blogger and my blog is called English Harmony As you can probably guess it’s got something to do with the English language, and that’s completely correct! Having struggled with spoken English for... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Polish, for Russian speakers

A large part of the reason for my ability to rapidly pick up on Polish was the fact that it is a Slavic language, and as such, it shares a lot of similarities with Russian, a language which I already know quite well. I had already overcome many of the most difficult aspects of learning a Slavic language, such as noun declension and verb aspects. There are still many differences, and plenty to be learned — I myself hope to become fluent in Polish soon — but there's no denying that being... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Yonja: the Turkish social network

As you know, social networks are a large parts of my learning strategy. They're very useful to the learner because they involve realy people using the language in real ways, rather than the formulaic dialogs and robotic vocabulary memorization that you find in books, flashcard systems, etc.

Today, I'm only going to look at the welcome page — there is already a lot that can be learned just from that. Later, I'll go through the process of joining, and I'll write more about how you can actually... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Just get interested, the rest will come

When I was a kid, I remember how excited my family got around the time of the Super Bowl. If you're not from the United States, or just are not into football, you might be able to relate to a similar excitement with the World Cup, or the Stanley Cup, or the Olympics, but the Super Bowl makes a really good example because of the complex rules involved in the sport.

I remember understanding the excitement when the home team crossed the goal line, and the frustration when the other team did it,... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Guest reading: O Rádio Apaixonado

This week's guest reading comes to use from Lucas L Carvalho, a native Portuguese speaker. Lucas is 24 years old, a lawyer, and a singer/songwriter with a few songs available on MySpace, so check those out. Lucas loves the English language, and is also currently studying French and Spanish.

He reads us a short story called O Rádio Apaixonado, by Moacyr Scliar, a respected Portuguese author who recently died.

O Rádio Apaixonado
Rádio de carro aumentou volume sozinho até pifar, afirma... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

What does it mean to learn a language?

What does it mean when you say you want to learn a language? What do you expect to be true before you have learned a language? And what is happening when you are learning a language? That phrase is pretty powerful, and yet pretty vague. Apparently, everyone understands it differently.
A little controversy
A few weeks ago, I made the bold statement that I had learned Polish in just 8 days. I admit that I chose these words because they would be a bit controversial, but they were not untrue.

Upon... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Big goals and long drives

I've done a lot of flying in the past year, but prior to that, most of my travel was done by car. I've made several road trips all over the US, and many of them at night.

When you drive at night, you can't see much. Sometimes you drive through a city and you can see everything around you. Sometimes you are among traffic and you can see all the lights on all the other vehicles around you. But often, you're completely alone, and the only thing you can see is whatever is illuminated in your headlights... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Guest reading: Moab is my washpot

Hey, guys. I'm Roman, a fellow language addict and aspiring traveler, eager to explore the cultures of the world we live in. The first language I acquired was English. It came sort of naturally to me, and only recently I realized what an amazing skill I have, because it allows me to communicate with you all. I really started appreciate the beauty of it when I introduced myself to the works of Stephen Fry. Today, I want to read to you a small passage from Stephen's autobiography called Moab Is... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Turkish progress report - 3 months

It's been 3 months and so it's time for a progress report on Turkish. Since this year's mission involves learning in a completely new way, my usual quarterly targets don't really work. But progress is being made, and therefore it can – and should – be measured!

So where am I at with my Turkish? I'm certainly not as far along right now as I would have expected to be at this point in a normal year. I've only recently learned to make basic conjugations, and at the moment I can only form the... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Learning to hear differently

Did you ever find yourself several months into learning a new language, able to read and write quite well, but still strugggling to understand the things you hear? Even when, and hearing them repeated, you realize you knew all those words?

It can be quite frustrating. But you might be relieved to learn that it's not just the accent that's throwing you off, and it's not that your brain can't process sounds in another language.

In fact, it might be something you've never thought about before,... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Guest reading: from Revista Unidiversidad

This week's guest reading comes to us from Carlos, a native Spanish speaker in Mexico City. Carlos is a translator, among other things, and he has recently started an interesting blog called Overwhelmingly Inspired which I recommend you have a look at.

He reads a fragment taken from Revista Unidiversidad. February, 2011.

Carlos reads Revista Universidad

Materiales. Texturas. Líneas y colores. También ruidos y susurros de tierras y fibras vegetales, aunque a menudo no los escuchamos,... continue reading at Fluent Every Year