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Before the present day Vietnamese writing system, Quoc Ngu, based on the Latin alphabet with diacritic marks for vowels and tones, there was a writing system based on Chinese characters called Chu Nom. Chu Nom, like Japanese kanji, used Chinese characters with localized pronunciation and original meaning. But this was more or less just a […]
Curious how speakers in other countries including non-native speakers pronounce English? Check out the Speech Accent Archive.
Sure, it’s natural to make fun of someone’s accent. But what makes someone’s English sound non-native? From a linguists point of view, this site breaks down various speakers accents and makes generalizations about their phonology, how they mispronounce things.
For example, […]
One of the more difficult aspects of learning Japanese as a foreign language is learning the writing system especially the thousands of kanji characters necessary to be considered literate. One must strive to practice reading the characters one has already learned and attempt to learn new ones. In Japan manga is popular for people of […]
A Japanese-speaker learning Vietnamese or a Vietnamese-speaker learning Japanese will both notice that a lot of words in the other language seem to correspond with words in their native language. And both the Japanese-speaker and Vietnamese-speaker ought to know that the corresponding words (cognates) are part of the Chinese-derived vocabulary that make up about […]
The Foreign Service Institute of the Department (FSI) of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for a number of languages based on the length of time it takes to achieve Speaking 3: General Professional Proficiency in Speaking (S3) and Reading 3: General Professional Proficiency in Reading (R3). The list is limited to languages taught […]
I find that I can learn a language much more rapidly once I’m able to read in that language because it allows you to subconsciously pick up grammar and contextual vocabulary and you can sometimes pick up the meaning of a word you don’t already know without having to look it up in a dictionary. […]
I recently ran across a new web site for learning languages called Mango Languages, which like every other web application on the Internet right now is in beta. But that doesn’t mean it’s broken or useless. Quite the contrary. And it’s totally free. The courses they currently offer are Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Greek, Italian […]
Learning French is much easier if you already know another Romance language such as Spanish or Italian. Even already knowing English helps a lot since so many words were borrowed from French and English. Is there anything similar for Chinese? Well, actually, many Asian countries that were once under the influence of China […]
Have you ever wondered why the Japanese calendar system has seven days just like we have all over the West and why the meetings of Sunday and Monday seemingly match up (”sun” day and “moon” day) while the rest of the Japanese days are so different from what we use in English or in any […]