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Griha PraveshI used your Living Language Hindi course to learn some Hindi before going to my friend’s wedding in India.... More Tags: Hindi, India, newsletter
Unusual Item for SaleAfter graduating from high school, some of us traveled abroad for a year to gain international work experience. I worked retail in France, and had to use my high-school French to get by and sell items to customers. ... More Tags: France, French, newsletter, story
Not Quite the Hair Color I Was Looking For …I went to France when I was 21 to study at the Université de Touraine in Tours, France. The transition from the French I had learned in the classroom to the French that was actually spoken in France was not always a smooth one, and I often found myself struggling to understand and be understood. Sometimes, out of sheer embarrassment, I would just nod my head and act like I understood rather than admit that I had no clue what was being said.... More Tags: France, French, hair, newsletter
Buy One Mirror, Get One Marriage Free!I was staying in Guatemala with a host family. The family spoke zero English, and I knew only a few words of Spanish.... More Tags: newsletter, Spanish, story
¿Hola? No, ¡Ola!This didn’t happen to me, but rather to my high school Spanish teacher. One day in class, my teacher told us about this time she went swimming in the sea in Spain. She was getting ready to come out of the water when she noticed that her friends were all waving and yelling ¡Hola! (Hello!) to her. ... More Tags: homophones, newsletter, Spanish, story
A Chance EncounterWhile traveling through Europe a little while ago, I caught a nasty flu. I was especially bummed because it manifested itself when I arrived in Berlin. I celebrated my first birthday in Germany and my family lived there for nearly three years, so I really wanted to have some sort of affecting experience.... More Tags: Berlin, Farsi, newsletter, travel, travel story
When You’re REALLY Grateful You’ve Studied the LanguageA few years ago, I studied abroad in Florence, Italy. At the end of the semester, my parents came to visit and I traveled by train with them down to Naples. The original plan was to pick up a rental car in Naples and then drive directly to the town of Ravello on the Amalfi Coast, a spectacularly beautiful coastline in southern Italy.... More Tags: Amalfi Coast, Italian, Italy, newsletter
Hôtel de ville: a tourist trap?A British tourist spent the night stuck in the Hôtel de Ville in Dannemarie, after mistaking it for an actual hotel. Our very own LL_French Twitter feed sets the record straight: In French, hôtel de ville means city hall, NOT hotel. Poor woman! The hapless female visitor arrived in the Alsace town of Dannemarie on Friday and tried to find a bed for the night. Spotting the impressive-looking “hotel de ville”, the tourist popped in to use the toilet before trying to check in. But as she was in the convenience, officials finished a meeting, left the town hall and locked its door. The solitary traveller, said to be in her 30s, ended up with the inconvenience of spending the night on chairs in the building’s lobby.
That’s One Way to Learn GermanA while ago, I was traveling alone in Germany. When I first left my hotel, I memorized the word on a nearby sign: EINBAHNSTRAßE. I reasoned that it would serve as my landmark for getting back to the hotel. Plus, as I started walking, I noticed a lot of other signs pointing my way to it, so I figured it must be a very important street. That was a relief, since I would therefore always be close to a sign directing me back to that all-important road.... More Tags: German, newsletter, travel story
That “Aha!” MomentLanguage learning can be hard work, with plenty of frustrating times when you just feel like you’re not making any progress at all. But every once in a while, you have what we like to call an “aha!” moment, when something just clicks, and you know you’ve actually crossed some threshold, large or small. Here are two examples:... More Tags: France, French, newsletter, story, Zulu
Signor Domani Mattina (Excerpt from La Bella Lingua)When I arrived in Italy for the first time in 1983 I knew only one Italian sentence: “Mi dispiace, ma non parlo italiano” (“I’m sorry, but I don’t speak Italian”). In my first minutes in the country, I repeated it half a dozen times, with ever-mounting panic in my voice, interspersed with pleas of “Stop this train!” Other passengers responded with concerned looks and torrents of incomprehensible Italian. Only the weary conductor followed my gaze as I pointed to my forlorn black suitcase, which the porter had left behind on the platform in Domodossola.... More Tags: book excerpt, Dianne Hales, Italian, La Bella Lingua, newsletter, travel story
Just off the plane and ready to fightFresh out of college and on my first trip to France, I hailed a cab at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport and said, in my very best French, “Please take me to the train station.” The driver gave me a look that I understood to mean, “WHAT?!”... More Tags: French, newsletter, pronunciation
Prisoners of pronunciationThe funny and bizarre mistakes teachers hear in language classes must fill many, many notebooks. I studied French in high school. One year, my French teacher asked everyone in the class to give a presentation on a current event. This was just after the first Gulf War, so many of the presentations had to do with war situations.... More Tags: class, French, newsletter, story
Little fire gives hot waterI sometimes travel to Barcelona on business, and over the years I’ve managed to pick up enough Spanish to get by (awkwardly, at least) in most situations. My plan is simple: I string basic words together to express complex ideas, and hope that something other than gibberish comes out.... More Tags: newsletter, Spanish
Did you declare ALL of your personal items?I had just returned to Bahrain from a holiday in the UK. I was taking a taxi through the causeway connecting Bahrain and Saudi Arabia when, at the Bahraini end of the causeway, I was stopped by a customs official. After examining my passport, he asked me to step out of the taxi. ... More Tags: customs, newsletter, pronunciation, travel story
There’s no such thing as a free roomI had come to the U.S. for the first time and was trying to check into my hotel. “Do you have a room free?” I asked the person at the front desk. She looked at me in total surprise and replied, haltingly, “Sorry, sir … we don’t have free rooms here.” Needless to say, I was puzzled in return.... More Tags: checking into a hotel, English, French, newsletter
Lost in interpretationMany years ago, I traveled to Brazil to give a keynote speech in São Paulo before about 200 people. It was for a conference on computer-aided design (CAD) and I was going to talk about “strategic technology planning.” Since I don’t speak Portuguese (and I most definitely couldn’t give a detailed business talk in the language), the venue provided an interpreter.... More Tags: Brazil, interpreter, newsletter, Portuguese, story
Crossed wiresIt can be tough enough studying just one language, but once you start studying more than one, your head begins to feel a bit full. When the languages are similar, they bleed into each other at times. But even when they’re drastically different languages, a Slavic language and a Romance language for example, crossed wires can occur. ... More Tags: French, Latvian, learning more than one language, newsletter, Russian
Some Americans DO speak several languages!During my junior year abroad program in Tours, France, I did the typical college student thing and got myself a Eurail Pass. This brought me to Luxembourg, among many other places. I arrived late in the afternoon, chomped on a baguette and cheese on a park bench, and then made my way to the youth hostel.... More Tags: American, French, German, Luxembourg, Luxembourgish, newsletter, study abroad
Guess and check dining in JapanMy eyes carefully scanned the row of triangular sushi snacks arranged on the refrigerated shelf of the Japanese 7-11. Two days before, I had tried the one whose wrapping sported a red border and a Chinese character that looked like a radiator. It had turned out to be stuffed with some sort of small, orange fish roe. I’ve never been a fan of roe, and that day, I learned to stop buying sushi with red-bordered packaging.... More Tags: hiragana, Japan, Japanese writing, kanji, newsletter, story, sushi
Making the right language choiceI had always wanted to learn Polish, since it’s the language of my grandparents, but never had the opportunity. So in college, I studied Russian, as it was the language closest to Polish. While I was a senior in college, I took a polka band tour of Poland with my elderly aunt and uncle. I was one of five people under 65 years of age (two others being the polka band guy and his drummer).... More Tags: newsletter, Poland, Polish, Russian, story, travel
The international language of burgersSpeaking in a foreign language can be intimidating, sometimes to the point where you lose sight of common sense because you’re so wrapped up in the differences in speech. Case in point, my dad and I once made a trip to a McDonald’s in Paris. I know, I know, what were we doing at a McDonald’s when we were in Paris? Well, it’s a valid point, but McDonald’s is actually ridiculously popular in France (I mean, so popular that some of their locations are literally overflowing with people), especially among the younger generations.... More Tags: French, hamburgers, McDonald's, newsletter, Paris
A pineapple by any other name tastes just as sweetFor one summer in high school, we volunteered to host a student who was visiting from France. When we picked up François at the airport, he seemed nervous. His English was fine, but I think he was a bit stunned by the idea of suddenly coming to a new country, living with a new family, and trying to fit in.... More Tags: French, language, newsletter, pineapples
Don’t lose sight of the forest for the treesEven in a place where there aren’t many trees, like Iceland. My boyfriend and I were visiting Reykjavik, and since I was studying Icelandic at the time, I made a point of asking people to speak to me in Icelandic, even though it would have been much simpler for everyone if I’d just let them speak English. But no, I was determined.... More Tags: Iceland, Icelandic, language, newsletter
Treating customers just like familyI 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
Translating “personal space”I came to this country as, I thought, a fairly proficient speaker of English, but, naturally, I soon realized there was much more for me to learn. What I did know was vocabulary and grammar, but I was rather ignorant about the rules of everyday conversation.... More Tags: Croatia, culture shock, customs, newsletter
When finding your car requires divine intervention.My husband and I had taken our daughter on her first trip to Israel several months after her Bat Mitzvah. After visiting the Ein Gedi spring near the Dead Sea, an excursion she enjoyed, then hiking under the blazing sun to tour ancient ruins, which she did not appreciate, we decided to make our way back to our rental car. We didn’t know how to get to the parking lot but fortunately chanced upon a local on our way back... More Tags: Hebrew, language, newsletter, travel
Take my shower… please!Studying languages is often an exercise in embarrassing yourself. You have to make mistakes in order to learn. I lived with a family in Latvia for a year between high school and college as an exchange student. While I prided myself in being a quick study, I would sometimes find myself latching on to phrases before I knew their true meaning. Other times, it seems I got ahead of myself trying to put phrases together on my own. There was one bathroom in the apartment where I lived, with the shower, sink, and toilet all in one room. When I wanted to take a shower, I would warn the rest of my family in case they needed to use the facilities. ... More Tags: language, Latvian, newsletter, study abroad
Yes, but does it protect Sweden?I spent my Junior Year Abroad in France, which means that it was a year full of heroic linguistic triumphs as well as embarrassing (but funny) linguistic gaffes. ... More Tags: France, French, newsletter, story
Mac and cheese in Hindi, doodh!About a year ago I spent a month travelling through India with my wife and 3-1/2 year-old son. Very quickly it was established that my son, Ivan, had an intense distaste for Indian food. ... More Tags: Hindi, newsletter, story
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