Saturday, November 15, 2014

Wine label, Workplace and Language Flashcards - Read or Make Your Own

I am studying for level one of the WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust) exam and I've been creating a set of slides in Keynote (apple equivalent of Powerpoint or Mosaic) about wine and wine label/menu languages in French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. I find learning from pages of vocabulary is tedious, whilst reading a wine bottle or chocolate label or clothes label is more interesting because you have a purpose and the word has an importance, telling you about quality, or safety.

The terms on wine labels make it easy to remember, but they are not quite same as the word in everyday language. It's easy to remember that vinho verde means literally green wine, but in context of wine this could mean white wine or young wine. Casa means house, but in the context of wine it could mean wine from a single vineyard, not blended wine.

I'd filled in a few Portuguese terms but needed more so I googled Portuguese wine terms. Up pops a site which has flashcards of Portuguese wine terms. The same page has links to other languages, (everything except French), Spanish, and Italian.

http://www.cram.com/flashcards/wine-portugal-glossary-of-label-terms-1889822

I then went back to the home page looking for French and German, the home page labelled Flashcards. Up pop pages of languages, everything you could think of, right the way from Afrikaans and Arabic down to Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh, Yiddish and Yoruba.

If you don't see what you want, you can create your own in any language, from a book, the internet, from signs you pass when travelling, or for example sitting on a bus or plane, talking to somebody from a foreign country or reading a menu in a restaurant.
cram.com is create and share online flashcards
http://www.cram.com/language

You can make flashcards for your phone to revise on the bus, and make flashcards for any subject, not just languages, but any subject you are studying, for exams, for holidays and travel, or a glossary of terms used at work, for example, computers, law enforcement, medicine, the military.

You could also print them off and use them for a Xmas quiz on Xmas and New Year greetings in foreign languages for a Xmas dinner or Xmas party.

http://www.cram.com/flashcards/create

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