Leer Spaans met Lau
For learners of Spanish, here's a nice set of videos that covers Spanish in an easy to understand way.
Nouns are Harder Than Verbs
If you think nouns are harder than verbs in your language learning efforts, then you could well be right. Wordnet lists 117798 nouns versus 11529 verbs. So, not only do the number of possible nouns dwarf the number of possible verbs but research also suggests that even English speaks pause longer over nouns than verbs.
The University of Zurich conducted research into the amount of time we pause when constructing sentences and using nouns and verbs. It turns out that we purposely use interjections such as "um"or "uh" or subconsciously slow down in order to give us time to make the choices needed in a sentence. That concept, in itself, is fascinating because it implies that even as a native speaker of a language, we don't form full sentences all at once and still put work into building th...
Learn Dutch with Niels
Whilst not chock full with videos, "Learn Dutch with Niels" is a great challenge that gives explanations of some of the more tricky Dutch grammar concepts.
5 Ways Not to Suck at Learning Languages
You imagine yourself speaking another language fluently, laughing with the natives as you order another beer. You make a throwaway comment about how the beer is better than in your country. "Oh. I didn't know you weren't from here", says the barman, "You speak the language so well". "Thanks, it's not perfect but I try", you reply as you secretly make plans to sell all your grammar books on the internet that evening and use the funds to buy a t-shirt with the simple slogan "bilingual" on it.
You've had a dream like that, right? And then you tried to learn a language and remembered that learning a language is a bit like running a couple of marathons backwards, back to back, in fluffy panda slippers.
Unless you're just enjoying the shape of the various straight and squiggly lines on you...
Say it in Dutch Podcast
Something that I originally found on Apple Podcasts, but that is also available here on Soundcloud, is the "Zeg het in het Nederlands" podcast. This is a podcast spoken in slow Dutch. It also includes clips from the radio and TV that are played at normal speed and then explained in slow Dutch. This is often by repetition and use of synonyms to help you understand words.
Because of this there is, in my opinion, a certain level requirement. I feel you should be around a B1 to listen to this. But because of the inclusion of and explanation of natural content from TV and radio, it's also very useful for people of higher levels.
Playing with the Drops App
Having heard about the language drops app, I thought I'd give it a try. I'll save a full review for later, hence this being a blog post, but I'm initially impressed. This appears to be an SRS type learning system with a nicely designed app with nice little games/exercises. The free version limits you to 5 minutes play per 12 hours. Realistically this means that if you want to stick to some sort of schedule then you're going to end up doing 5 minutes per day. That's pretty minimal for my liking but I thought why not try it and see. There actually seems to be a version for each language in the store, which is great. That means I can do 5 minutes per language (by installing multiple apps).
I've decided on this selection:
Spanish - which I've been studying for two months. So far the word...
Duolingo Crowns Update – Is it Simply About Money?
I recently started to think about Duolingo Crowns and the crown levels. I'm a fan of Duolingo and recently started learning Japanese and Spanish with it. But it wasn't long before I heard that Duolingo would be changing their system to the Duolingo crown system. They'd been beta testing it. I'd read complaints on the forums and I crossed my fingers that they'd hold off release until my challenge was done. No such luck. In this article I want to take a look at what the update is, what Duolingo say it is, and what it might mean. In particular, I want to delve deeper into the potential commercial aspects of Duolingo and this update.
Duolingo and Making Money
The original idea behind Duolingo would be that it would be a sort of crowd sourced translation bureau. In return for teaching you...
Lingodeer
I was studying Japanese on Duolingo when I first heard of Lingodeer. As I got nearer and nearer the end of the Duolingo course, the numerous bugs and problems started to get to me and I wanted to switch. LingoDeer was a breath of fresh air.
Firstly, whilst Duolingo is more a collection of sentences that have been organised into topics, Lingodeer is a designed course that's organised according to topics and grammar. Further, Lingodeer actually explains the grammar as well. In every category that's a full(ish) grammar explanation before the lessons themselves (although you do have to kind of look for it as it's not immediately obvious that it's there).
For me, the difference between Duolingo Japanese and Lingodeer Japanese was like night and day. Where I often sat before Duolingo think...
What is the Easiest Language to Learn?
People learn languages for all sorts of reasons. It could that you have a specific purpose for learning a particular language, or it could just be that you want to learn one as a hobby. In the latter case you may decide that you want to start with a language spoken by a large number of people in order to maximise your gains, or you could simply decide that you want to learn the easiest language possible to start with.
Defining how easy a language is to learn is, however, a difficult problem. First and foremost it depends on where you are coming from. An asian language, for example, is easier for a speaker of another asian language to learn. Because of that we need to set the base from which we're learning from. As you're reading this article in English, we're going to assume that you're...
Do you Really Understand 80% of a Language if you Learn 1000 Words?
I read this a lot, learn the most frequent 1000 words (or 2000, it depends on the source) and you understand 80% (or 90%, it depends on the source) of the language. It's a statement that is so deeply embedded in language learning that it appears everywhere: from Duolingo's old fluency percentage to Lingvist's pretty little graph. Even the good old BBC push this theory.
But It's not about Words, it's about Meaning
So let's start with examining the problem with this idea. Language is about communicating something. But if we consider it on a word level then we're highly restricted in what we can communicate. Say, for example, that I walked up to you and said:
Water
Now you might guess that I want water, right? In fact, the fact you guess that without thinking about it is very importan...