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December 2008 |
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25% OFF all Living Language online courses! |
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| For a limited time only, Living Language online courses in Spanish, French, German, Italian, and English are available at a 25% discount. Our online courses include downloadable audio, natural conversations, interactive exercises, culture notes, and both real-life and internet-based activities to bring your new language to life. | |||
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Living Language online courses are available for different levels of language proficiency*. They are also customizable and allow you to tailor your program to suit your specific interests. They’re ideal if you want to learn for travel, for business, for school, or just because you have a general interest in a language. Start learning a new language today with Living Language online!
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It 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. My freshman year of college, I signed up for a French culture class taught entirely in French. I had enough French under my belt to get by in this class, and thought I'd enjoy the subject.
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. 
Make mistakes!
This probably sounds a bit counterintuitive coming from a language learning tip, but it's actually a very important, and difficult, lesson to learn. One of the things that can prevent you from improving your language skills, particularly pronunciation and conversation skills, is the fear of looking silly, or being embarrassed by making a mistake in public. |
Speaking with an accent I knew I had made it as a speaker of English as a second language when a fellow traveler in the Zurich airport, stuck there with me waiting for the fog to lift, identified me as an American. True, this happened because he, like me, wasn't a native speaker of American English, and hence, did not pick up on my foreign accent. Regardless, I was proud, in Professor Higgins's words, of having (almost) conquered "the majesty and grandeur of the English language."
Also on the blog this month: 
Arabic script Did you know that the Arabic alphabet is one of the most widely used alphabets in the world? It has been adapted by many languages, such as Farsi (Persian), Urdu, Punjabi, etc. One of the most important things you need to know about Arabic script is that it's read from right to left. Also, there is no distinction between capital and lower-case letters in Arabic. The script is always cursive, whether typed or handwritten. There are many different forms of cursive writing in Arabic, and Arabic calligraphy is often considered an art. |
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