How Repetition Helps You Learn Languages

 

When I do my daily exercises on Duolingo I make a list of the words. I used to write them in alphabetical order on each notebook page for myself, Then I wrote the words in a blog posts which I have done alphabetically below for the convenience of myself and you.

Later I started keeping the lists in my notebook, noting the numbers of words per page. My A notebooks have 25 lines per page.Each A5 notebook has more than 150 pages. I will have pages for an index and other useful information, and other languages. After a while, the words are repeated. This is not a waste of space. I need to repeat the words so that I remember them.

If you are on Duolingo, it gives you a reminder of the number of words you have learned in each section. It tells you that you have learned  or ten new words, completed a certain number of exercises with 80% accuracy. 

Some people find this irrtating. You might find it irritating at first. Then you realise that you need the motivation to keep going. The encouragemnt helps. Some features can be turned off or modified. 

For example, you might be unable to speak in a public place, on a train. Background noise might step the system from hearing you speak and registering correctly. The system allows you to click on  the words informing it that you are unable to speak, so it moves on. 

You can catch up later by doing an exercise which is entirely or mostly devoted to listening or speaking.

Italian - English

arrivo - I arrive

bolleta - bill 

costo - cost

credito - credit

finanza - finance

(un) gatto - a cat

arrivo, arrivo, arrivo.

costo, costo, costo.

credito, credito, credito.

gatto, gatto, gatto.

Useful Websites

Duolingo Italian

Wikivoyage Italian phrasebook

Please share links to your favourite posts.

How to Learn Languages Quickly And Easily - lessons from bilingual Americans and multilingual schools

 There are four ways we learn languages.

Hearing Wrods, Rhymes & Songs 

We hear them and recognize sounds and groups with order (grammar). Children hear nursery rhymes and speech.  Adults hear songs and films and conversation. 

Motivation

The motivation could be to speak a language on holiday, to impress people socially, communicate with or understand your family, your boss, your customer. 

Multi-lingual learners of languages are motivated. They go to live in a country and listen to the radio, read newspapers to practise, engage in conversation. They devote a certain number of hours each day. 

Chinese Speech Contest Winners Secrets\

The Chinese winner of the International Speech Contest had been detemined to win. The contest was held in English. She spoke Chinese. She first had to learn English. 

What was her secret? She told us at a club meeting.

TV Programmes Help

She learned English by watching the Americn TV series, Friends for three hous every morning. It took her two years. 

Toastmasters International Clubs Help

In addition, she went to English speaking clubs. She went to Toastmasters International speakers' club meetings to listen to English and practise speaking. Toastmasters International meetings have a language evaluator who teaches the word of the day and gives a report on the good usese of language and suggests improvements. 

The groups welcome guests. Many meetings are online. New clubs are keen to have listeners and potential members. Some people join for networking, so the more the merrier.

Toastmasters has clubs which speak Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, French and other languages and has manuals in several languages.

Searching For Patterns

Your brain recognizes patterns. If you hear something twice, that could be coincidence. Hear someting three times and the brain starts to record a pattern.

Learning Names By Repeating

Americans learn names by asking your name and repeating it three times. So when I meet an American who knows this system the conversation could go like this. 

His, my name is Kaylie. What is your name? Angela Lansbury - like the actress Angela Lansbury in Murder she wrote. Are you related to the other Angela Lansbury? Do other people ask you if you are related to the actress Angela Lansbury? Are their other people called Angela Lansbury on LinkedIn and Facebook? Will I find you on social media under the name Angela Lansbury?

Useful Websites

https://www.toastmasters.org/magazine/magazine-issues/2023/may/bilingual-clubs-cross-borders#:~:text=In%20other%20cases%2C%20bilingual%20clubs,%2C%20Tamil%2C%20and%20Traditional%20Chinese.

Please share links to this post.

Words which look and sound the same in Italian - travel words for money, shopping and finance

Every day and every year it becomes easer to learn Italian. I just walk down my local high street in London and see the word costa on the caffe. I think of the words for food and drink and place names. 

If you speak English, French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese, you will have a few words from the other languages which are the same, based on, derived from the root language Latin. Spanish is the simplest language. After learning one other language, learning the third one is easier. You know you can learn another language. You recognise vaculary and grammar. The fourth language is easier still. And so on The more languages you speak, the more often you meet people who can help you by speaking to you in that language. .

Americans find it easy to learn Spanish. Spanish is the easiest language. Wikipedia tells you how many hours it takes to learn each language. Language schools know this. Charities and the military which send staff abroad will send their employees on courses, and the time and cost of each course is known. 

You can travel to a country to practise speaking and listening and reading. But we are lucky nowadys. We can do it all on the intnet. Here's a little lesson for today.

 Italian - English

arrivo - I arrive

autobus - bus

bolleta - bill 

costo - cost

credito - credit

finanza - finance

(un) gatto - a cat

maggioranza - majority

molta - a lot of (like multitude)

molte ore - many hours

offerta - offer 

ora - hour/time

posto - place

risorsa - resource

ristorante - restaurant

servizio - service

studiare - to study

ufficio - office

English - Italian

(I) arrive - arrivo

bill - bolleta (I remember the bill would have bowled me over, like a bad letter)

bus - autobus

(a) cat - (un) gatto (c and g sound similar)

cost - costo

credit - credito

finance - finanza

hour - ora

a lot of - molto, molte (reminine plural)

majority - maggioranza 

offer - offerta

office - ufficio

place - posto (I think, his place is at his post)

restaurant - ristorante

resource - risorsa

service - servizio (pronounced sair- vit- see- oh - play the sound in an online dictionary)

(to) study - studiare

time - ora

Useful Websites

Duolingo

Translate google

wikivoyage phrasebook Italian

Please share links to your favourite posts on my blog.

I have several more posts on Italian and learning other languages.

No Rain in Spain, But England, Enjoys Rain Everywhere, Mary Poppins Umbrella Statue, Umbrella Shops & Umbrella Repair

 I don't know about rain in Spain on the plain. But I get rain wverywhere. Rain fals and makes trees and grass grow. So you get rain and wonderful scenery and waterfalls aon the side of the mountains with the most rain. So there's rain in Ireland, the Emerald Isle. Rain in the Lake District of England. Rain in Wales - hence the book title How green was my valley. Sunny places may be sandy, although you get plam trees on beaches offering welcoming shade (They dangerously drop coconut as they get larger in the season). Also cork trees in Portugal.

London is also Green, hence Green Park near Buckingham Palace. In London you will find umbrellas sold everywhere, in department stores, supermarkets, popular shops.

People come to London to buy umbrellas and get umbrellas repaired at the James Smith shop. 

In leafy London on a sunny day you can photograph the statue of Mary Poppins with her umbrella in a green corner of Leicester Square.

Mary poppins Statue, Leicester Square London. From Wikipedia.

Singapore Shopping Sheltering Rain-free

In Singapore you can buy umbrellas. It tends to rain in the afternoon. All day in rainy season. To escape the rain, when it's hard to get a taxi, yuo can go into the underground streets of shops along Orchard road from Orchard station in the centre, as far as Somerset station. You can walk along Basement one or Basement two. See the fountains at Basement level under the Ngee Ann city building containg Japanese Takshimaya department store.

Or take the train to Little India where you can spend all day in the multi storey Mustafas' department store which is open 24 hours and sells everything from umbrellas and suitcases to food, clothes for all seasons and all sizes and gold jewellery.

World Environment Day

 

June 5th World Environment day. Rain in St Albans., England, UK. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

What are you experiencing? What changes? Global warming? Wet weather?

 What have you done, seen done? In my lifetime I have seen the changes in cities, more traffic, changes, to more vehicles, diesel, electric, hybrid. Pedestrianisation.

What more would you like to do? What has been a success?

 Planting food?

UK

Disposing of food. Composting, an old idea.  In London we have added brown bins for garden waste. Black food bins and smaller black kitchen tabletop bins.

Travel

I have moved back and forth, between Singapore, and London, taking long distance flights. I now know flights are bad for the environment, if we allow too many. 

Tourism

I have seen the growth of hotels, also home swaps for holidays.

What do you know now that you did not know previously? 

Walk Around London & Other Cities For Free - Guided, Self-Guided, Grimsdyke

Names in London suggest its history. Shepherds Bush. That's in the centre. Back in the days when one walked around what is now central London.

Now we have a new initiative to get Londoners and visitors walking more around the city. London already had maps showing walking times between some central stations. So did Singapore. Now London has issued some walking maps. 

They are only for the centre. However, out at Hatch End station on the Lioness line, Euston to Watford, you will see a map on the platform by the ticket office, showing you a walking route called the London loop, around London, linking landmarks in the countryside of outer London. 

London Loop sign. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Grimsdyke Road

Near Hatch End station is a road called Grimsdyke, running from the main street, a wide street with wide pavements, accurately named the Broadway, parallel to the railway line.

Why Grimsdyke?

An Indian friend of mine from Toastmasters meeting two Monday evening each month near Harrow on the Hill station, erroneously mispronounced it as Grim's Dick. Very funny, since in English dick is slang for male organ.

I was able to enlighten her that the pronunciation is dike, rhyming with Mike. A dyke was originally a border, build up like a dam exaggerated with a shallow from the dugout earth. Keeping people, animals, wanderers, friends and foes, to know where one area started and another ended. Perhaps it was like the camber on a road, helping to keep rain on the crops and off the walking and riding areas.

Grimsdyke Hotel

The loop runs along the original dyke, which passes Grimsdyke Hotel, which was home to Gilbert, who wrote the words, the librettos, for the popular Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. 

Angela Lansbury with Map In The Entrance To Grimsdyke Hotel. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

The house is now a hotel which has afternoon teas in summer, magnificent trees and plants, the historic timbered interior, and operattas seasons. A good place to start or end your walk. (Or for those who would rather sit than walk. Park granny or grandad with a gammy leg there, while you take your walking enthusiasts off for a walk.

London, like many British cities, also offers free or paid for walking tours around trails, such as historic, ghosts, Shakespeare, the Beatles.

If you take the train from central London across to Europe, many European cities offer free walking tours. Sometimes the free tours are run by companies which offer other paid for tours. They hope that after taking the free tour you will sign up for a second tour with the same guide or another guide. You are given a free city map which lists all the tours. Sometimes a few, some or most of the walkers give the tour guide a tip. The tour guide might be practising their foreign languages. Or they might be promoting their city. Or getting a free drink from a cafe where you stop for a break. 

Or running their own paid for private tours on the side. They might even have to pay the company to take the tour, rather than being paid!

Photograph Maps

If you want to be sure of a free tour, just take a map and guide yourself. If you don't want to waste paper, photograph the map on your phone. If you have a foreign phone and cannot link to the local network without running up a charge, you can photograph the map on the phone of somebody else who had a phone with a local connection.

We did this in London. My husband returned from a trip to Singapore and accidentally took his Singapore phone with us into central London. I downloaded the TFL tube map, and he was able to photograph it onto his foreign network phone for no charge.

If you are out hiking, and cannot be sure of a WIFI connection in the mountains, photograph the local map, or download it when you have a connection in the local hotel, or your home before your travel trip. Then you can see it in your photo gallery. Or share it with others in your group.

Useful Websites

https://harrowonline.org/2025/06/03/new-tfl-walking-maps-aim-to-get-londoners-out-of-the-tube-and-onto-their-feet/

http://grimsdyke.com/history/

Please share links to your favourite blog posts.

Flowers and fish decorate postboxes in London - or DIY your own downloading patterns

 On a lovely sunny day in London, bright sun and blue skies. Post boxes are decorated with flowers and fish scenes, made by groups keen on knitting and crochet. For a jolly start to June.

Red post boxes with red rabbits and squirrels. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Americans call post boxes mail boxes. In London post boxes which are this shape are also called pillar boxes.

Websites

On Etsy you can buy patterns for postbox toppings as digital downloads. Designs include flowers and Xmas.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/market/post_box_toppers_patterns

I have other posts with pictures of pillar box toppings. Please share links to your favourite posts.