Watch Your Language Blog

America’s Next Top Language Learner

Today at Living Language, we spiral into the world of television gossip to report that in last week’s episode of America’s Next Top Model, the girls were “forced” to speak Italian. What was most interesting to me in watching the episode was to see how the models interpreted the “phonetics” that were given to them on cue cards. Those who read the phonetics straight from the page seemed to be speaking gibberish, whereas the models who used mimicry — interpreting the script with an over the top Italian accent to match the film crew eagerly feeding them lines — tended to get it more or less right. I never thought I’d use a televised modeling competition as a jumping off point for a language learning tip, but if that isn’t proof of the benefits of “listen and repeat” right there, then, well, then I must be a top model. (SUZANNE)

Tags: Italian
April 25, 2008

 

Having trouble memorizing vocabulary?

You obviously need to learn new words in order to speak a language. Even though that may seem straightforward compared to learning how to actually put those words together in sentences, it’s really not as simple as it appears. Memorizing words is difficult, even just memorizing words in the short term. But long-term memorization takes a lot of practice and repetition. There are a few different ways to “lodge” a word in your memory, and some methods may work better for you than others. The best thing to do is to try a few until you find the one that works best for you. ... More

Tags: flash cards, language learning, newsletter, tips, vocabulary
April 25, 2008

 

Treating customers just like family

I learned English in a formal setting. As with many other students, my pronunciation still needed to be improved. After finishing my studies in English, I got a job working with tourists. I used to greet women by saying, “Good morning, madam.” After I helped them with their concerns, the women would leave politely, often with a smile on their faces. I felt like I was doing an excellent job at customer service.... More

Tags: English, language, newsletter, pronunciation
April 25, 2008

 

Chinese characters

In last month’s Did you know?, you learned that Chinese is not quite as difficult as it might seem at first. After all, it doesn’t use plurals, articles, gender, or even verb conjugation. Of course, even with that in mind, Chinese can still be pretty intimidating, especially when dealing with the writing system.... More

Tags: characters, Chinese, language, newsletter, radicals
April 25, 2008

 

Learning English, the CRAZY way

The New Yorker has a great article on Li Yang and his method of learning English through shouting. There’s still some debate about whether his methods are linguistically sound, but without a doubt, he is quite an interesting language teacher.

China intends to teach itself as much English as possible by the time the guests arrive, and Li has been brought in by the Beijing Organizing Committee to make that happen. He is China’s Elvis of English, perhaps the world’s only language teacher known to bring students to tears of excitement.

... More

Tags: English, language learning
April 24, 2008

 

Starting Out By Listening Up

Every once in a while, when the work day is slow (a seemingly rare occurrence these days), my colleagues and I enjoy talking about different aspects of language. One topic that has come up before is how it sometimes feels as if our personalities alter a bit when we switch to a different language. I swear that whenever I start speaking Latvian or Russian I become a feisty teenager, instead of a lackadaisical thirty-something. But it’s also fascinating to experience not just how we change, but how the world around us changes when we hear it through the ears of a different language.... More

Tags: Chinese, Italian, language learning
April 18, 2008

 

Getting Started in Trading

The New York Times has a graphic on the hand gestures used by traders on the floor of the stock exchange, a spectacle that has always fascinated and baffled me (Question No. 1: Who are they gesturing to?). And now it mystifies me slightly less. (SUZANNE)

Tags: sign language
April 9, 2008

 

Semantic Antics

Sol Steinmetz, author of SEMANTIC ANTICS, was on NPR last weekend talking about how and why words develop new meanings. Many times, a change in meaning is due to the influence of foreign models. For example: ... More


April 7, 2008

 

The Colorful French Tongue

While searching through videos for yesterday’s little leg pull (which I’m sure most if not all of you figured out before you even got to the video - the Association for Preventing Redundancy In Languages and Finding Original Orthographic Linguistic Sources? It took three of us to come up with that…) we came across something that tickled us pink: a spoof of our language courses from The Leslie Uggams Show in the late sixties. (Yes, we’ve been around since long before French maid costumes were considered comedy.) I couldn’t wait another day to share it with you, so you get two videos in a row this week. (SUZANNE)


April 2, 2008

 

Amazonian tribeswoman speaks language similar to English

Anthropologists and linguists are baffled by the recent discovery of an Amazonian tribe of women who speak a language remarkably similar to American English. In order to investigate this linguistic anomaly more closely, they have flown one of the women back to the United States to conduct more experiments in the sound studios at MIT’s Association for Preventing Redundancy In Languages and Finding Original Orthographic Linguistic Sources. Click below to see the scientists’ footage of the tribeswoman and her remarkable language. ... More


April 1, 2008