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Thursday, February 25, 2016

Language learning online : Chinese, European languages, Hebrew?

If you want to just listen whilst doing something else, such as sewing, a good easy to understand course is Eagworms. The basic courses come in two discs with a booklet. You can buy disc one with the booklet, disc two with the booklet, or both sets together. I have found them to be ordered online.

In London I have French, Rapid Italian volume 1, Rapid Russian Volume one (lovely alliteration), Spanish discs one and two.  I thought I had it overseas. Or I could have left it in a car, somebody else's car when I was a passenger on a long trip as I don't have a player in my little car.

If I did, I would not risk listening as a driver. Ah - maybe that's why drivers never seem keen on letting me listen to my language courses on long journeys.

Now, with two homes, I need to keep lists of what is where, so I don't search for something that isn't there, or end up ordering a second copy.

I just searched for Chinese disc and up popped free language courses online. I found a system I liked, simple for beginners.

http://www.travlang.com/languages/

I'd been looking for Arabic or Urdu (isn't Hindi more or less the same as Urdu?). The stumbling block with Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese and Russian is that I can learn to speak it but not to read it. I can recognise one Chinese name from signposts to a city, several Greek letters, a few Russian letters, some of the Hebrew - and the Arabic must be similar.

Regarding speaking, I enjoy listening to Welsh but struggle with the letters, although I have mastered LL and c h l, a click followed by the L.

I tried the Hebrew and they have the transliteration (what it sounds like) so you don't need to understand the language, as you often need to do in a dictionary.

They have quizzes so you can test yourself which are fun to do.

http://www.travlang.com/languages/

This year my New Year's resolution was to learn Spanish.

Angela Lansbury, English and French teacher, author and speaker.

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