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Everyone has a language story – whether it's a tale of high school French class or of an attempt to speak Italian on a family vacation in Florence. At Living Language, we exchange our own language stories every day, and we're eager to hear about your experiences too.
The first ten people who share their language stories with us will win a free Living Language In-Flight program in the language of their choice. Pick from 22 different languages. Email livinglanguage@randomhouse.com with your personal story today!
Please note that Living Language reserves the right to reproduce and distribute these personal stories in our newsletter and on our website.
This month's story
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.
…For example, I was surprised to see one of my professors say "hi" to me repeatedly, every time she saw me, several times in the course of the same day — could she have possibly forgotten that she saw me five minutes ago?
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Pronouncing Arabic
As with most languages, one of the most challenging aspects of learning Arabic is sounding like a native speaker, or developing the skills to reproduce specific sounds. Everyone faces this issue, but it is even more difficult if you're learning a language (like Arabic) that doesn't have the same linguistic roots as your native language.
For example, it is difficult for Arabic speakers to perfect the sound "p" in English, since the letter doesn't exist in Arabic. Similarly, for native English speakers, the Arabic letter Haa is often very challenging since it has no English counterpart. (Pretending to clear your throat with an "ahem" would get you close to producing the sound.)
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(And listen to free audio of Arabic pronunciation!)
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Do animals have language? That probably depends on how you define language, who you ask, and which animal you're talking about. Believe it or not, there seems to be such a thing as monkey syntax
— the ability to combine different calls in order to convey different meanings. But, on the other hand, cows don't seem to have dialects.
Also on the blog this month:
"Obama" and its variations. The word "Obama" enters the English language.
Marion Cotillard breaks the language boundary.
The Academy awards a top prize to a foreign language film.
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 The hardest language
It's common to hear people arguing over which language is "the hardest" to learn. The answer is: all of them — and none of them. People are often scared to learn a language that is vastly different from their own, and this makes certain languages seem more difficult than others.
You may fear learning Chinese simply because it has few sounds similar to our own, and because it has such a different writing system to the English alphabet. But did you know that, in Chinese, you don't have to worry about plurals or verb conjugation?
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