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June 2009 |
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| In Thai, speak for yourself | |||
You might already know that in many languages, you have to change pronouns and adjectives depending on whether you're speaking to a man or a woman. But did you know that in Thai you have to be aware of your own gender instead?Thai uses different first person pronouns to mean | |||
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I or me depending on whether the speaker is male (pho:mˇ) or female (di`-chanˇ). However, in the third person, Thai uses the same word (khauˇ) to mean both he and she. |
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Fresh 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?!" I repeated my request three more times, finding it incredible that a Parisian taxi driver didn't speak French. Do you have a language story that you'd like to share? Submit your experiences to us at livinglanguage@randomhouse.com. We'll pick our favorites and post them in this newsletter. 
Writing in Hindi
Learning a new language is difficult enough, and often it seems like a new or different script just complicates matters. However, writing in a beautiful script can be one of the most enjoyable aspects of learning a language. Hindi, for example, is written in an elegant and eye-catching script called Devanagari. This script is actually quite easy to learn, and once you learn it, you can pretty much pronounce any Hindi word you see. Aside from a few exceptions, Hindi is phonetic. Here are a few basic letters to get you started with Hindi script.
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The game's afoot … It's generally hard to escape any kind of sports fervor, and this month I've been even more attuned to sports metaphors in everyday language. There are the easy ones: he took a shot, slam dunk, hit a home run, etc. Then there are the ones that baffle, a recent favorite being heat on the fastball.
Also on the blog: 
 
Living Language is now on Twitter! It's always fun to pick up words and phrases in a new language, and now you can do just that with Living Language on Twitter. Simply sign up for our Spanish or French Twitter feed and we'll bring you key phrases, verb conjugations, and more! For example, our Spanish feed has featured the Spanish words for sending e-mails and attaching documents, and our French feed has looked at how to talk about likes and dislikes in French. This kind of casual introduction to words and phrases is a great way to brush up on a language you've already studied, or to introduce yourself to a new language. |
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