Problem
I joined a language meetup group in Singapore after meeting one of their members at a Toastmasters club. I am an amateur polyglot. I am learning the Greek and Russian and Hebrew alphabets, and keep looking at Chinese.
I also had a go at Korean, but I found Korean hardest of all, although it is supposed to be the quickest language to learn, with fewest letters. It's all circles and squares and bears no relationship to anything I know. I don't speak a single word of Korean. Yet, if I look at a page of Malay, or Spanish, or Italian, or German, I can usually pick out a few words which I can identify or remember.
Looking at the Singapore meetups, some of them are for fluent speakers who want to keep up their languages. Frankly, I have spent several evenings with the French-speaking Toastmasters club, Francophone, and find that a challenge, even though I can speak and read French fluently.
Once they used the French slang word for tipsy. An entire five-minute speech made to sense because I was missing one vital word. My friend was equally lost. She was teaching multiple languages at a Singapore polytechnic.
The group's site is full of warnings. You should turn up so as not to disappoint the organisers, nor take up a place which could be used by somebody else. You are not to use the group to sell anything. It is not a dating organisation.
What is stopping me attending? I suspect it's a bit like Toastmasters. You get interested and there are so many meetings, so many opportunities, but it can take a while for the right group and the right date to materialise along with your enthusiasm to get up and go out to meet new people at a place you do not know.
Learn English
The learn English group, with a free demo lesson sounds interesting. The Russian group with a reading of a short story would be good, but I don't know sufficient Russian and will have to wait for a lesson where they are learning the alphabet - or put more effort into learning the Cyrillic alphabet.
I am corresponding with an American woman I met at a hotel in Singapore. I was thinking of sending her to a meet-up group. If she goes as a native English speaker, with no intention of having to learn another language, she would get to meet people from all over Asia.
You can start your own group, anywhere in the world.
The cost of some of the Meetup language groups is five Singapore dollars for a drink for ladies.
How does that compare with Toastmasters? Toastmasters meets the first three Mondays of the month at the Sheraton Towers near Newton MRT and charges about $20 which includes a snack buffet. The meeting is large, with an evening of speeches, with socialising before and at the interval.
Other Toastmasters groups cater to speakers of Mandarin, Tamil, French, Malay, and a bilingual English and Mandarin club is starting shortly.
A bilingual Chinese - Italian group is being started by a couple from Braddell Heights Advanced. The wife, Jade, speaks Chinese. The husband is Italian.
Useful Websites
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
https://www.meetup.com/TheLanguageLovers/
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I joined a language meetup group in Singapore after meeting one of their members at a Toastmasters club. I am an amateur polyglot. I am learning the Greek and Russian and Hebrew alphabets, and keep looking at Chinese.
I also had a go at Korean, but I found Korean hardest of all, although it is supposed to be the quickest language to learn, with fewest letters. It's all circles and squares and bears no relationship to anything I know. I don't speak a single word of Korean. Yet, if I look at a page of Malay, or Spanish, or Italian, or German, I can usually pick out a few words which I can identify or remember.
Looking at the Singapore meetups, some of them are for fluent speakers who want to keep up their languages. Frankly, I have spent several evenings with the French-speaking Toastmasters club, Francophone, and find that a challenge, even though I can speak and read French fluently.
Once they used the French slang word for tipsy. An entire five-minute speech made to sense because I was missing one vital word. My friend was equally lost. She was teaching multiple languages at a Singapore polytechnic.
The group's site is full of warnings. You should turn up so as not to disappoint the organisers, nor take up a place which could be used by somebody else. You are not to use the group to sell anything. It is not a dating organisation.
What is stopping me attending? I suspect it's a bit like Toastmasters. You get interested and there are so many meetings, so many opportunities, but it can take a while for the right group and the right date to materialise along with your enthusiasm to get up and go out to meet new people at a place you do not know.
Learn English
The learn English group, with a free demo lesson sounds interesting. The Russian group with a reading of a short story would be good, but I don't know sufficient Russian and will have to wait for a lesson where they are learning the alphabet - or put more effort into learning the Cyrillic alphabet.
I am corresponding with an American woman I met at a hotel in Singapore. I was thinking of sending her to a meet-up group. If she goes as a native English speaker, with no intention of having to learn another language, she would get to meet people from all over Asia.
You can start your own group, anywhere in the world.
The cost of some of the Meetup language groups is five Singapore dollars for a drink for ladies.
How does that compare with Toastmasters? Toastmasters meets the first three Mondays of the month at the Sheraton Towers near Newton MRT and charges about $20 which includes a snack buffet. The meeting is large, with an evening of speeches, with socialising before and at the interval.
Other Toastmasters groups cater to speakers of Mandarin, Tamil, French, Malay, and a bilingual English and Mandarin club is starting shortly.
A bilingual Chinese - Italian group is being started by a couple from Braddell Heights Advanced. The wife, Jade, speaks Chinese. The husband is Italian.
Useful Websites
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
https://www.meetup.com/TheLanguageLovers/
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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