Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Which Languages Are Easy To Learn And Sound Soothing? Where can I learn?


Chineasy which you can learn from books which you can buy from Amazon and Ebay and learn on YouTube.


Problem
Which languages are easy? Which sound good? I have started learning 12 languages online on Duolingo. The first page gives you an overview or pronunciation and grammar. I shall look at English first, then other languages in alphabetical order.

English
Upper class English sounds 'posh'. The Queen's speech is clear and easy to understand.

I speak what is sometimes called 'received pronunciation', neutral and clear.

A 'London' or cockney accent often confuses foreigners. The endings are dropped off words and words run together. 'Yes' becomes 'yeah', as in the Beatles song, 'she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah'. 'Isn't it' becomes 'innit'.

Other Languages

Esperanto
Simplified made up language with only 14 rules, entirely consistent. I am learning it on Duolingo. Esperanto is taught as a second language in Hungary. A town in England has a college founded for Esperanto speakers. You can attend an international convention on Esperanto, visit the museum of its creator, Zamenhof, and a museum of languages in Vienna, Austria.
I went to see the grave of Zamenhof.

France and Frenchundefined
Esperanto Flag. Source: Wikipedia article on Esperanto.

French sounds great. What about a French accent in English - some like it. But it's not my favourite.
Learn in Paris. The accents in Marseilles and Canada are different. (Oui for yes becomes Way instead of wee, like yeah for yes in English.)

German
Used in Germany, Austria and parts of Switzerland. On German wine bottles.

Latin
Used in plant names. Also in medicine. Handy for gardeners, doctors and nurses.

Greek
Easiest if you have studied maths and are familiar with letters such as 'pie' and eeta and theeta.

Italian
Italian is sing song. Used in opera.

Japanese
Japanese is all one tone. Each syllable is accented equally.

Korean
Korean is one tone, like Japanese. When I tried to speak Korean, just saying thank you in a Korean restaurant in South Korea, the staff started laughing.

Romanian
Uses lots of Italian. The word Romanian means from Rome, Italy being a nearby country.

Wales and Welsh
Welsh is sing song.

The quickest way to pick up the accent and vocabulary is to live in a country or take a holiday there or watch old films.

WHERE TO LEARN
You can take short language courses in local languages as well as foreign languages in most cities of the world, at private schools and at universities in their term times and in the holidays.

Popular places include:
UK
England
To learn English with a British accent:
London - crammed with culture
Oxford -
Cambridge - on the river with boating to see in summer.

Greek
Easiest if you have studied maths and are familiar with letters such as 'pie' and eeta and theeta.

Italy
Perugia in Umbria - beautiful hillside university city with Etruscan gate and and excavated and restored underground tunnels converted into a shopping area. See my posts on Perugia.

Hebrew
If you go to Israel they know you are unlikely to be able to speak and read and write Hebrew so immigrants are put into classes to cram up the language.
Around the world many synagogues teach Hebrew. Modern Hebrew is a constructed language, made from the ancient Hebrew alphabet found in the bible and prayer books and on old synagogue walls in the UK and Spain (where synagogues were converted into churches).
If you look at the Hebrew language in Wikipedia or on Duolingo you can see how some of the letters are used in Greek and Cyrillic (Russian and Bulgarian and other East European languages).

Indonesian / Bahasa Malay
Indonesian languages are almost interchangeable with a few vocabulary additions with islands in Indonesia adding and exchanging other languages such Dutch or Portuguese. (See Singapore below.) Plurals are created by repeating a noun. So if you see a double word in a sentence that is likely to be a noun.

Russian
Different alphabet, although some websites claim to be able to teach you the Cyrillic alphabet in an hour. Cyril and his brother borrowed letters from Greek and Hebrew to create their alphabet.

Singapore and Chinese (Mandarin)
You can learn Mandarin at many Community Clubs. Many courses won't let you start in the middle. , However, private schools are more flexible. They want your money! I taught in four private schools. I was supposed to be teaching Intermediate English. But people of lower and higher standards were put in my class because if they wanted to start a class on Monday the organizers said yes and put them in my class and I had to try to cope.

The Malay language appears frequently on signs and you can hear Malay on the trains.

Swedish
Similar to Norwegian and Danish. (Unlike Finnish which is more like Hungarian.)  A Swede who speaks English and has Australian citizenship from living there several years said to me that it's easier for a Swede to understand Norwegian than it is for an English speaking person to understand the English spoken in Glasgow in Scotland.

Wales And Welsh
Cardiff is the capital of Wales. Caerleon university on the hillside just across the border near Newport hosts lots of foreign language school, college and university groups in he summer holidays.

Author
Angela Lansbury. Teacher and trainer, English and other languages.

Useful Websites
duolingo.com

See my other posts on:
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2018/07/quiz-on-flags-with-stars-can-you-guess.html

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