THE ALPHABET EXPLAINED: The origin of every letter, and which countries will help you to be bilingual

I knew some of this about the origin of language. Very effectively presented. The presenter has a lovely, attractive English accent with perfect pronunciation. A pleasure to listen to him.

I have been studying Chinese (Mandarin). Chinese combines the earliest form of writing, pictograms. diagrams of natural objects, with signs representing sounds.

He shows how the modern Roman alphabet was derived over time. 

What he does not explain is how the Cyrillic alphabet was constructed at one point in time by Cyril and his borther. Just like Korean was invented by one person.

He has another video exaplining how German is easy to read if you can see how some letters in German are equivalent to others in English. 

Useing the existing Roman alphabet, the language Esperanto was devised to help Europeans who spoke several langagues, to speak to each other in a commong language which combines parts of each of the main languages, but kept to a regular structure with only 14 rules, quick to learn. 

If you are interested in languages you might be interested in these places:

SINGAPORE

In Singapore the four major official langauges and English Chinese (Mandarin), Malay (which is mostly the same as Indonesian) and Tamil.

Go on the MRT (underground railway) and you will hear announcements in four languages and see signs in four languages.

CANADA

You will hear English in Toronto and French in Montreal but in the capital all government empolyees are required to speak both languages. Most hotel and restaurant staff are also bilingual.

BELGIUM

You will see signs in two languages, French and Flemish (Dutch).

SWITZERLAND

A chance to practice three languages, French, German and Italian.

Sholom Aleichem and where to see his memorials in Netanya in Israel and in the Ukraine

Sholom Aleichem created the characters such as Tevye featured in the film (movie) Fiddler on the Roof.

 USA

Ukraine

Israel

Sholom Aleichem statue in Netanya, near Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo from Wikipedia.

Sholom Aleichem memorial in Bohuslav, Kiev province, Ukraine

Netanya, near Tel Aviv, Israel. 

Picture from Wikipedia article on the man.

Sholom Aleichem In Hebrew

Sholom Aleichem was his pen name. It means peace be with you in Hebrew and Yiddish. Sholom, like salaam in Arabic, means peace. The capital city of Jerusalem also contains the word salem. The consonants are s, l, and m. The vowels change with time and place. 

The Moustache Fashion

I like to see the portrait of the man which shows the moustache which was the fashion of the day. Then clean water was not so abundant and people were poorer and could not necessarily afford to visit the barber and did not have electric razors. 

The clean shaven look came in during WWI. Then soldiers had short hair and not beards nor moustaches because they had to wear helmets or gas masks in the army. 

Later beards and moustaches became the bohemian, artistic look. Writers, songwriters, musicians, singers. Then in the nineteen sixties, the hippy look. 

Later still associated with primitives. On the one hand, this can be associated with good, simple, healthy and virtuous and honest, or uncultured. It could be associated with orthodox, traditional religious - or violent, aggressive terrorists. But in his era, it evokes a look which is artistic and romantic.  

Now let's look at the text. It is Cyrillic. Best known to most people outside Europe as Russian, which is almost the same as the lettering used in Bulgaria, I discovered on holiday in Bulgaria.

Unlike the earlier language of Hebrew, Cyrillic, named after Cyril, a priest, combines Greek and Hebrew letters. 

What looks like a W is the sound for Sh in Sholom. 

Once you recognize the Sh, it is easy to see the letters Sh-M A-L is his name, Sholom and Aleichem. 

The L looks a bit like you are starting to write a lower case l, in cursive or italic with an upward curve. Then you come down as if about to write a capital L, but you can't be bothered to finish it with the line across the bottom as you already have a line across the top, and Hebrew and Cyrillic have lots of letters which seem to be upside down or back to front or left to right. (Of course, our writing came later, so we are the ones who changed it.) 

The X is the sound like clearing your throat, like the Scottish ch in loch as in Loch Lomond.

I am a teacher of English and other languages, which I am always learning when I travel. 

Tel Aviv

Whilst I am on the subject of language, the word Tel Aviv means hill of spring, or springtime. You will see the word Tel on modern maps of the middle east. Aviv or Aviva is a girl's name. Like the word April, for the month, and the girl's name, April, for girls born in the month of April.  Tel Aviv has the old city up on the hill, and the suburbs spread along the sandy beach. The city was founded in 1909. 

Tel Aviv's Art Deco

Architecturally, many modern buildings, now historic, are from the nineteen thirties, which to me looks like art deco (deco short for decorative), but which is strictly speaking called Bauhaus. Haus is German for house.   

Netanya

Netanya is north of Tel Aviv. It is named after Nathan, the co-owner of Macys department store. Nathan's brother died on the Titanic. 

Useful Websites

How to learn and remember the Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Russian alphabets

Flag of Russia, bordered, from Wikimedia Commons.
 

For years I have been wanting to learn the Russian alphabet (along with Greek and Hebrew). Cyrillic is name after Cyril, a monk, who, together with his brother, devised the Cyrillic alphabet used by Russia and with variations by Bulgaria and Ukraine.

Here are my memory aids.

Tilda

The tilda or wavy line in Spanish turns the n into a ny as in a Spanish or Spanish American canyon. In Cyrillic the tilda goes a step further and means the sound is y.

The p becomes an r, but not just any r, a trilled or thrilled r as in Spanish and Italian and Indonesian.rted t

H

The H looks like the lower half of the H.

The l looks like you started to write the lower case l but got called away in the middle when a letter fell through the letterbox.

B and V

The b is a v. But a real b has a little line like a shelf over a radiator across the top, or the tiny tray on top of a half tester bed. B with a line for b as in bed.

Memory Aid Recall

If you want to record your own memory aids and go to see other people's there is a system called memrise. You records your memory aids and choose whether to share them.

Useful Websites

duolingo.com

https://duolinguists.wordpress.com/2022/03/01/ukrainian-alphabet-uk-grammar-portal/

https://app.memrise.com/signin?next=%2Fdashboard

Learning Greek for and from trips to Greece and Cyprus

 

I started learning Greek on duloingo.com 

I copied the alphabet from Wikipedia.

Some of the letters were also familiar from Hebrew and Russian. Russian and Bulgarian are very similar to each other. Bulgarian is like modified Russian with only a few different letters. Cyrillic, invented by Cyril and his brother, used letters from the Greek and Russian alphabets.

For many English speaking people, the Greek alphabet is challenging. My husband knew theta from mathematics. (His first degree was in mathematical physics.)

On a trip to mainland Greece, I started to recognize the signpost word for Athens. 

I still muddled up the two letters which looked like a circle. On my recent trip to Cyprus in May-June 2022, I saw many motorway signs in Greek and English. I started getting familiar with the letters. I discovered or created a key to remembering which is which.

These are my memory aids

P and R in BULGARIA & GREECE & CYPRUS

The Greek R is written as if they and you are either lazy or in a hurry. The R is half written without the last downward stroke, so that R looks like P. I just keep saying PR, the abbreviation for public relations. I see P and say PR and know that a P is R.

 Another reminder is the name Maria which in Greek looks like MAPIA. Look at it and say PR, and you know it is MARIA. 

I remember my joy in finding that worked in Bulgaria. We were looking for a landmark building, Saint of Maria something. We looked at two imposing buildings on the right and left of the pedestrianized street where we were standing with our maps. I then realized that the building bearing the sign MAPIA was the church of Maria. 

L which I learned CYPRUS

In Cyprus I devised a way of remembering the capital letter L. I thought of it as Italic or joined up lower case L. You make an upward stroke and then come down to the line. Don't think of it as an upside down V because that will muddle you. As I kept reading the signs for Larnaka and Lemossos, each time they started what looked like my imaginary lower case l.

G like a gun

The letter G is an upright like an arm held above your head and a line to the right like pinting a gun. G for gun.

Useful Websites

Duolingo

https://www.duolingo.com

Duolingo Greek

https://www.duolingo.com/skill/el/Warm-Up

 Wikipedia

European Languages Pocket book Berlitz

Please share links to your favourite posts.

The challenges of Greek, Hebrew, Russian and Cyrillic

 

 As far as I'm concerned the Romans did one good thing for us. They gave us the Latin alphabet. I have been struggling today with a message in Russian on Facebook. 

I went onto Wikipedia thinking it's time I put up the Greek, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic alphabets where I can see them easily. For example, on a pin board or wall behind my computer screen.

Greek

Is Greek 'all Greek' to you? Until you have learned every letter of the alphabet you can only read a few simple words, which use about 5 common letters.   For example, I recognized Athens on a road sign and Exit in the aeroplane. 

My attempts at learning go back so far it is embarrassing to recognize and admit how long it has taken me - without finishing!  I started seeing the Greek alphabet in school, in mathematics. In my late teens as a student I first went to Greece. I took more holidays in Greece as an adult.

Much later, I was in Singapore and as Area Director of toastmasters International speakers' training clubs, I had to visit at least twice in six months a Toastmasters group called Toastmasters in Christ. I was astonished to find the well educated leader giving an analysis of bible texts, explaining the meaning of Hebrew words. at a Christian Toastmasters speakers training clubs. Oddly, Christians who train to be priests learn Greek for the New Testament and Hebrew for the Old Testament. 

From Greek To Hebrew

Why do I need Hebrew nowadays when I am not in nor visiting Israel? Looking at packaging of chocolates and wines in supermarkets. For myself, or when buying gifts. Also in prayer books at funerals.

When would I need Cyrillic? On holiday in Bulgaria.

It is almost all Russian. What about Russian?

Today I had a post on my Facebook page? What did it say?

I need to translate.

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet 

About the Author

Angela Lansbury teacher of English (advanced and English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language, French and other languages, aspiring polyglot.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Member of many toastmasters  speaker training clubs and speaking contest judge.

Angela Lansbury, the author of 20 books including Wedding Speeches & Toasts, and Quick Quotations, has lived in the USA, Spain and Singapore. 

She  has several blogs and writes daily on at least two of the following:

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

 Please share links to your favourite posts.

Which countries have English-speaking or bilingual people reading my posts? Where can I learn their languages?

Why is my post on learning Spanish so popular? Spanish is one of the top five foreign languages learned. More people on Duolingo are learning Spanish than any other non-English language.

You can use your Spanish is Spain, Spanish speaking islands such as Majorca, Minorca, Tenerife, all over South America and central America, Mexico, and signs in the USA. What's more, Portuguese and Italian are very similar so Spanish. Latin is also helpful. So if you already know any of those languages it helps. And if you want to learn another language after Spanish, you will have a head start.

The readership of my travel blog posts.varies wildly. When the day ends an the new count begins I have 650 readers yesterday but only 6 today. But I have nearly 24 hours to build up the readers.

So I look at where are my readers and why? I check by week, day and now. I check by country of origin of readers, which is listed in descending order of numbers. Then I check which posts they are reading.

I would expect my readers to be in the English speaking countries of the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

What about the other countries? Presumably these countries either have lots of expats or if I travel there I shall meet lots of locals who are keen to speak to me to practise their English.

I look for keywords. Which posts mention the USA or Russia or Italy?

The same goes for China, Singapore, England, Scotland, Wales, Singapore, Portugal.


Flag of the USA.

Often the top of the list is the USA. They have the high population high literacy, the most English speaking readers. Also they want to learn Spanish.

In Europe I have many readers in Italy. Is that because I refer to the Roman alphabet, or pizza and Italian food, or learning Spanish?

I have lots of readers in Russia, sometimes more in Russia than in the USA? Why? Because I mention learning Cyrillic, a Russian keyboard, and a Russian chocolate festival.



To my amazement I find that over the course of a week, my post on learning Spanish attracts readers way beyond the other posts. I check under 'View' and find that nothing succeeds like success. When I go to view which is what the public sees, Google is promoting my post on learning Spanish first.

Do you want to visit these countries and practise your languages? Or practise your languages ready to visit these countries?

London is great for British English, Polish, Cantonese in the Chinese restaurants.


Welsh flag showing the distinctive red Welsh dragon contrasting with green and white horizontal bands.

Welsh
Drive along the M4 or take the train from Paddington to Wales. Cross the border into Wales the the signs on the stations are all bilingual. I enjoy the sing-song Welsh accent when they speak English. I like to hear them speak Welsh, especially the lovely Welsh songs sung to harp music.


The USA is great for American English and Spanish.

Canada, especially Ottawa, is great for English and French written like in France and spoken with a Canadian accent.


Flag of Bulgaria.

Russian and Bulgaria are great for picking up Cyrillic.

Greece is great for Greek.

Israel is great for Hebrew.

Belgium is great for both French and Dutch.


Singapore has leaflets and MRT train announcements and MRT station announcements in English, Chinese (Mandarin), Malay (similar to Indonesian) and Tamil.

China
Easy to pick up the signs with Chineasy.

Japan
Spoken Japanese is easier than Chinese. No tones. All monotone. The written language is pictures and simplified pictures (which is how our sound-based Hebrew-Greek-Roman alphabet started). Think of the sign for no smoking, a cigarette with a cross through it, or road signs, or washing labels on clothes, symbols common to several countries, although they would say the words differently.


Korean
To impress your friends, learn Korean.

Too difficult?

Try Esperanto.


Esperanto Flag
Can't cope with languages? Start with Esperanto. Only 16 rules. Esperanto means I hope. I hope you like it and find it easy.

Useful Websites
Travel
singaporeair.com
Comfortable and efficient, lots of films with subtitles, and free languages to learn online onboard. Member of Star Alliance if you are gathering miles or wondering where to spend them.

Languages
duolingo.com
Simple to use on your phone, multiple choice questions. Very good for languages where the andwer is more or less obvious, such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, German.

memrise.com
Enables you to save your personal memory aids, and see those created by others. Handy for the harder languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean.



About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Teacher of English and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts. 

Cyrillic made Easy the first six letters, ABVGDE.

Map from Wikipedia article on where languages are spoken and written. Cyrillic speaking and alphabet areas in red. Greek in green. The Roman alphabet in blue. 

Why bother learning Cyrillic? Why not Greek? Why Greek? You can get around England, Britain, most of Wesern Europe with the Roman alphabet.

Flag of Greece

Greek
Most British travellers would travel to the warm Medietteranean for a summer holiday, before the cooler cities of Russia. Yes, the Greek alphabet is useful in Greece, the area Green on the map. Also Greek speaking Cypruc, the island. G for Greece, g for green.

However, the Cyrillic alphabet, shown in red, covers a much larger area, many more countries. Bulgaria as well as Russia. R for red, R for Russia. As a traveller, learn Russian, and you can see a lot more cities where you can read the signs, road signs and station signs, newspaper names and headlines and restaurant names and menus. Add reading Russian to your skills.

Brothers Cyril and Mehodius and the alphabet they devised. Picture in public domain from Wikipdia article on the brothers.

Now, even better news. The Greek and Cyrillic alphabets overlap, because Cyril and his brother devised their alphabet using some letters from the Roman alphabet, some from the earlier Greek alphabet and some from the even earlier Hebrew alphabet.

Those annoying extra dots and mini lines and wavy lines above and below which look like extra things you have to learn are there to help you. Unlike English, which perplexes learners because a word spelled the same way can be pronounced differently, the little squiggles, called diacritcs, tell you how to pronounce the letter.

Here's the alphabet in Cyrillic.


I was struggling to learn the letters until I devised some English words which helped identify the differences between similar symbols.

For example, I muddled up the D and the P and the R.

Now, I imagine I am a traveller, alert for suspicous characters and unusual buildings.

The word alphabet is composed of the Hebrew letter aleph, a, and bet, b.

AB - the first two letters of the Bulgarian or Cyrillic. Sound the same, but look different. It's really easy.

A
First, the alphabet is similar to English. It starts with A. Same letter. Hurray, we know one letter. Next comes b.  We start our journey full of hope.

B
How do you distinguish the b from the British or English or Roman b? Then the confusion with the similar looking letter which is pronounced V?

Those bloody Bulgarian letters and really nuisance Russian letters are just contrary. We have to learn the contrary letters, and like foiling a pickpocet, you have to look at those cheating letters and tell yourself, you can't fool me.

The b with the cap, a suspicious letter, unlike a real b, has come to burgle you. He has a forard facing cap. But you can't fool me with your added line at the top, facing forward. That\s a letter b.

V
Now we come to the Cyrillic letter B. A big bully pretending to be a B but is actually a quiet shy V. Yes, it's actually a V. You can't fool us. When we see a Cyrillic B we know it's a shifty character, really a V. That big bastard b is a Very shifty character, a V. Stand up to that written B and tell it, you can't fool me, you 'B', you are really a very little v. You B - you are a V!

G
Next comes a character which looks like a small r but its actually a great G. Written in such a hurry that the lower half of the angular G is missing. Great. Gr-eat. Before we try to say r we must remember the word Great. That letter resemlbing a small r is really a G. A bit like a C. ABC. But Cyrillic instead has ABvG. The Cyrillic alphabet, devised by devious Cyril, smuggles in a confusing v, very secret. But we know. Let's be positive.

Maybe Cyril was shy. Maybe he knew he was great, devising a whole new alphabet. Instead of C, the initial letter of his name, he used G for Great and Good.  Good, we are learning the Cyrillic alphabet.

Cyril - who?  Never heard of him. Forget the c.

Ah - Bulgarian is great, very Great! AB(V)G.

D
The letter with the line at the bottom like a doorstep is D. As soon as you see the horizontal line at the bottom you think doorstep, D.

E
The e is e. That's easy. Same as english, English. The E is the same as English E.

Think of the word video. We should take a video of the first six letters. VgDE.

That's enough for one lesson.


Let's look at the alphabet again.

Where we have five English letters ABCDE, Bulgarian or Cyrillic as an extra letter.
Remember ABv G
DE


Now we can recognize A B V G D E. It is slow going. But we have got over our fear.  We are nearly a wuarter of the way through the alphabet. Or we will be after the next two. But we are lazy. We stop at E and take things easy. We go back and revise.

Look out for the next post on Cyrillic. I also have previous posts on Cyrillic.

You can learn Russian through Duolingo. The alphabet is almost the same as Bulgarian. duolingo also adds the spoken sounds, spoken. Duolingo is free.

Useful Websites for travellers learning languages
Duolingo.com

Memrise uses mnemonics (memory aids) to learn vocabulary.

Memrise.com

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, blogger, teacher of English and other languages. I can teach anything. I have written for enecyclopaedias for adults and children. I also give workshops for businesses. Less time and more money.

See next post on Cyril and Methodius.

How to remember the Cyrillic alphabet letters for Russia, Bulgaria

In simple Wiki it all looks a mystery.

I have been trying to learn the Greek, Hebrew and Russian alphabets for years and never reacher the final goal of knowing the whole alphabet but now I think the end is in sight and I want to share my tips with you to save you time. (And also to remind myself of my memory aids so I don't have to keep starting again.)

I was struggling to learn the Cyrillic alphabet until I went to Bulgaria. On the walking tour, the clutural tour, (they have several tours) we were given a card with the letters of the alphabet written on the front and on the back the suggestion that we try writing our own name in Cyrillic.

I now have the card by my bed and look at it every night and every morning. After a year I should know the letters just by familiarity.

Other ideas for learning:
1 Put the alphabet on a card on the wall opposite the toilet. (Or above the bath or the shower or wash basin.
2 Put the alphabet on a card beside the kettle, microwave, sink, or on the table so you can read it whilst waiting to be served, at home or in a restaurant.
3 Take the car with you to the lift at home or in the office. read while waiting for the lift.
4 Read at the station or airport.

However, right now I am using memory aids for the letters.

The letter A is the same.

I used to muddle up the b and the uh.
Now I remember them together.
b with the line facing forward to the right. Uh is backwards.

More later.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teache rof English and other languages.

Bulgaria for beginners

Maps of bulgaria sold in the UK show the placenames in both Bulgarian (Cyrillic) and English.

A Bulgarian Phrase Book and Dictionary

We bought our copy from Stanford's map shop in Covent Garden in London, England. You can also look on Amazon and Ebay. I like ebay because you sometimes get a range of options and the possibility of a bargain if you are not in a hurry. Ebay is a UK new and second hand goods and buy now or online auction.

Cyrillic Alphabet

Created by Cyril and his brother, a couple of priests. Their alphabet has a lot in common with the Rusian alphabet. A bit of Greek, a bit of Hebrew.

Duolingo, the free online language learning website, doesn't have Bulgarian. However, it does have Russian.

Bulgaria - where?

Bulgaria is south of Romania. Bulgaria has an East coast on the sea with popular beaches.

Capital - Sophia

We used to muddle up Romania and Bulgaria.  The capital of Romania is Bucharest. the capital of Bulgaria is Sophia.

Another great city is Plovdiv.

Bulagarian Flag
Three equal horizontal bands, white on top, green middle, then red.

Useful Websites

Wikitravel - the old wiki travel with advertisements added, which can be handy if you are ready to buy.

Wikivoyage - the old people from wiki I believe sold off Wikitravel then decided to return to the original idea of a guide without advertising. 

Tripadvisor

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Bulgarian Basics In A Hurry

UK flag

USA flag

The Bulgarian flag is three horizontal bands of white at the top then green and red an the bottom.

I am trying to learn Bulgarian to read or speak for a trip, mainly to read, signs, especially road signs when driving, and menus when stopping in restaurants and coffee shops. 

I tried learning the Cyrillic script from the Russian in DuoLingo. Unfortunately DuoLingo does not yet do Bulgarian.

I tried with the aid of Google translate two or three useful words:

Hello

goodbye

see you soon

your sincerely

Здравейте

Довиждане

ще се видим скоро

....

искрено твой

Zdraveĭte

Dovizhdane

shte se vidim skoro

iskreno tvoĭ 

I looked at Wikipedia and found the Bulgarian alphabet.

I went onto the polyglot page of Facebook and asked fellow polyglots for advice.One perso suggested Pinsleur. They seemed to have a huge number of languages but not Bulgarian. they have a free lesson to try their system and I chose German. It was very good. Pimsleur does what no other system does, breaks the words into syllables so you can hear it clearly and practise.  they repeat the phrase you are learning many times with pauses to allow you to repeat. And the sound is clear. (Unlike Duolingo when the voice is sometimes fast with four words run together and indistinct.)

I found amazon and Ebay had various items for sale: phrase books; dictonaries; discs with Bulgarian - but mostly downloads. I wanted a physical book.

Why not online? Because I want to use it at my destination and whilst travelling there. I don't fancy spinning up and down a small phone, increasing roaming charges, using up memory.
the options offered in actual books included
Lonely Planet

USEFUL LANGUAGE WEBSITES

Language discs
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Learn-to-speak-BULGARIAN-COMPLETE-LANGUAGE-COURSE-CD-MP3-AUDIO-PDF-TEXTBOOKS/182839547448?_
books

Travel Websites

visittheusa.co.uk
visitbritain.com
visitbritainshop.com

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Esperanto - Daily Dose of learning A Language - what you can achieve

Esperanto flag.

Time Target
I am continuing with my daily dose of Esperanto. I had initially opted for a target of five minutes a day. I thought that was easily reachable. If I missed a day or two, not too hard to catch up.

Now I have changed to a target of twenty minutes a day. Most of my train journeys allow for at least ten minutes in either direction.

I have only finished one course of the twelve I have started. That was German.

So many of the others, like Korean and Chinese (Mandarin) and the Russian Cyrillic alphabet were not making fast progress. So I opted for Esperanto. Pretty easy. The answers to the multiple choice questions are mostly obvious or you can work them out by a process of elimination.

I looked at when I could finish the course. I had more than 40 sections to finish. Each took about twenty minutes. I could either finish in about forty days, two months time, or get to the end of the year and still not have finished.

Short Courses
I like quick results. You can either learn a language one hour a week and complete a course in a year. Or do an intense holiday course (or at home), with several hours a day for three weeks and finish a new language in less than a month. Obviously, being sent overseas as a spy or a diplomat or head of a company, or just taking a new job, you might be forced, or choose to do the short intense course.

If you are young and single you might do an intensive course, especially if your workplace is funding it.

For the retired, fulfilling a lifelong ambition to learn another language, or two or three, language learning is possible. Unlike singing, painting, or playing the guitar, writing a best selling novel, you can simple devote a certain number of minutes or hours a day to learning a language and you get certain results.

Useful Websites
duolingo.com

https://www.facebook.com/Hyperglots/

Author
Angela Lansbury, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages.

Learn a letter from the Russian Alphabet - the Cyrillic alphabet

Russian flags from Wikipedia. Credit Kremlin.ru

I made a major breakthrough which I'll share with you!

 A pair of mis-matched letters in Russian and English which puzzled me for years.  RUSSIAN N looks like English H.

Today I got a breakthrough.

What looks like English capitals HET is Russian for no, nyet. (I remember the song sung by Goldie Horn in a movie.

The song went: 'Nyet, Nyet, nyet, nyet, not any more  ...'

So, now we can look at HET, HET, HET and recall that it stands for nyet, nyet, nyet . Any time we see H we can remember Het is nyet.

Very handy if you are in Russia or planning to go there and grappling with the alphabet. Also useful if you are trying to teach the Russian alphabet to somebody else or several other people.

Cyrillic is also useful if you go to Bulgaria.

Handy Websites
Letters C and S
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2018/07/learn-one-new-easy-letter-in-cyrillic.html

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2018/08/modern-souvenirs-to-wear-from-russia.html
https://www.duolingo.com/course/ru/en/Learn-Russian-Online
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2018/07/which-flag-is-which-first-fun.html

Angela Lansbury

travel writer and photographer 

Learn one new, easy letter in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian and Bulgarian)

Problem
How do you learn another language?

Answer
Sometimes you struggle and sometimes it just comes easy. I was looking at some traditional foods on the Wikivoyage travel page when a word caught my eye and arrested my attention.

TOCT (toast).

That is so easy to recognize. The c is pronounced s, like our English words police and palace. In English we usually place an 'e' after the 'c' to soften the sound, make it s. However, it is easy to remember that c can be pronounced s.

I can visualise the word for toast, TOCT, only four letters, two the same letter repeated in the start and end of the word in both languages. Just one letter to remember, C is S.

Useful Websites
Travel
https://free.mytransitplanner.com/index.jhtml?partner=%5ECAO%5Exdm229&s1=1064973256&pkw=bulgaria
Languages
memrise.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of languages, after dinner speaker and workshop leader.

Toast photo by Rainer Z ... in commons.wikimedia.org

Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian - help - are they the same?

Flag of Croatia

Flag of Serbia

Flag of Bosnia

Problem
I just spent time learning Croatian spelling and pronounciation. Do I have to start all over again with the other nearby languages, and when I drive a few miles north-south or east-west?

The good news is that Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are written more or less the same. Know one and you know the others. The only difference is that Serbian can also be written in Cyrillic. (Pronounced like Cyril - easy to remember Serbia and Cyril start with the same sounds.)

So if you don't know Cyrillic, you have to look for the words written in the Latin alphabet. However, be generous, for those who grew up reading Cyrillic, or anybody who has just lerned it and wants to practise it, in Serbia you have two alphabets.

Go back to my post on Croatian. Much simpler than you think, once you analyse it.

Say:
"Show me the church,"  š=sh  č = ch
"Er, it's my pleasure." r = er ž=s as in sure or pleasure or shall
"Sh!" š=sh
"It's full of cats. This is a joy, you know."  ć=ts dž=j
"Thanks a million." j=ly

"D'you know how to pronounce the d with the line through it?"
"Yes, dy."

You have now pronounced all the sounds. You can read and speak Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian.
(If you want to learn the Cyrillic I have a post on that.)

Useful Websites For Languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_standard_Bosnian,_Croatian,_Montenegrin_and_Serbian


TRAVEL
CROATIA
Tourist Board
croatia.hr
Independent Information
wikipedia (detailed including history)
simple wikipedia
wikitravel (with ads)
wikivoyage (without ads)
Travel Advice for your nationality and from your home government

Tour operators (Often for specific regions, or types of travel, such as budget or luxury)
Outgoing operators
Outging (usually show flights from your country of origin). If you are researching on holiday in Italy, the tickbox allowing them to know where you are will give flights from where your phone or laptop is physically, which is handy if you are planning on ongoing journey, no good if you want to go home and start from here later in the year.

Incoming
After you have booked your flights, these operators arrange tours within the country. It's worthwhile comparing which combination gives the best deal. For example, some airlines will give you a reduced price hotel room for a stopover.

Why The Reduction?
The airline might own the hotel or have some deal. I imagine that's an incentive from either the hotel, or the tourist board giving a subsidy or reducing tax to get visitors because the spend per day in the country (there are tables for figures on how much visitors from each country spend, broken down by age groups, time of year and all sorts of things - they know from the VAT they collect. The visitor's spend will be higher than the reduction on the room.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I can offer you courses, one to one online or in person in the UK and Singapore, and workshops or entertaining after dinner speeches for clubs and businesses in the UK, one-off or a series. This can be worldwide anywhere if you can organize a ipad or screen connection by whatsap, Skype, visual conference call or something better, or fly me to your destination.
Please share links to your favourite posts. I have posts on learning many languages.

How To Communicate Clearly In Bulgaria: yes, no and the Cyrillic Alphabet

Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Problem
Confusingly the Bulgarians shake their heads for yes and nod for no. Street signs are in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Answer
Say da for yes and ne for no.

Other easy words, mersi for thank you (like in France and Romania) and ciao for goodbye, like in Italy.

Bulgarian - English
ciao - goodbye
da - yes
mersi - thank you
ne - no

English - Bulgarian
goodbye - ciao
no - ne
thank you - mersi
yes - da

Please. 

Моля. (moh-LYAH)

Thank you. 

Благодаря. (blah-goh-DAH-ryah)

You're welcome. 

Моля. (moh-LYAH)

Yes. 

Да. (dah)

No. 

Не. (neh)

Десерт (desért) = Dessert[edit]

• Сладолед (sladolét) = Ice cream

Тоалетна (toalétna) = Restroom

Useful Websites
https://wikitravel.org/en/Bulgarian_phrasebook
https://www.skyscanner.net/flights-to/bg/airlines-that-fly-to-bulgaria.html

http://www.bulgariantouristboard.com

https://wikitravel.org/en/Bulgarian_phrasebook
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/russian-alphabet-made-easy-b-v-go.html
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/learn-bulgarian-in-three-minutes.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

TripAdvisor offers to Plovdiv and Denpasar? Where are they? Why go there?

Problem
Tripadvisor keeps sending me offers of cheap flights from London to places I don't know. However often I do those quizzes on Duolingo on the capitals of Europe, up comes another offer. By the time I get around to checking the country, two days later, the offer will be gone. Anyway, let's check out today's offers. If they sent me a feedback form, I would tell them to add the country.

Answers
Plovdiv - second city of Bulgaria.
BULGARIA  - WELCOMING!




Here's the flag, horizontal stripes of white, green and red.

On the map of Europe, it is East of Italy, beyond Greece, bordering the Black Sea, south of Russia.

Plovdiv - BULGARIA
Plovdiv is the second largest city. Bulgaria is on my list. I like to add a new country. I am working on learning the Cyrillic alphabet through Duolingo.

You can see from the map of Europe that Bulgaria is on the inland sea so it has beaches.

The Ethnographic Museum, Plovdiv, Bulgaria. 

The Synagogue, Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

PLOVDIV
1 Greek Names
Originally Philip's town, in Greek Philippolis (Philip - polis meaning city, as in the modern English words politics and political - matters affecting the governing of the entire city). Incidentally, the name Philip comes from Philos, as in Philadelphia, meaning love, and lipos meaning horse. A lover of horses would have been a wealthy nobleman. When you look at the map and see Greece is close by, and so is Macedonia, the invasion by Philip of Macedonia is not so surprising. Plovdiv is in the south west of the country, not terribly near those beaches on the East coast, more of a cultural trip unless you have time for a two-centre trip or some travelling.

Meanwhile, what's to see nowadays in Plovdiv?

2 Roman Ruins
After the Greeks came to Bulgaria alon came the Romans and the city has major Roman remains to see.
 Wiki says: preserved ruins such as the ancient 
Plovdiv Roman theatre, 
a Roman odeon, 
a Roman aqueduct, 
the Plovdiv Roman Stadium.

3 Russian Alphabet
The Russians up north brought the Cyrillic alphabet, which two priestly brothers, one called Cyril, created using letters from the Hebrew and Greek alphabets. From the Bulgarian point of view, creating a script using the alphabet from nearby neighbour Greece seemed a handy, obvious idea, good for travelling or if you already spoke the neighbouring language.

Catch up on the Cyrillic alphabet using Duolingo, and you can use it again later if you ever go to Russia, as well as reading captions on monuments and railway stations in photos of Bulgaria and Russia.

4 Bulgarian Balkan Backdrop
The city is surrounded by seven hills. Plovdiv in Bulgaria is called The City of Seven Hills. You can see that in photos.

5 Modern

For Denpasar in Bali see next post.

These offers have probably gone already. But next time around, I'll be in the know and ready to click on the link.

I am adding a top one, three, five, seven or ten sights or types of sights to see in each country:

Useful Websites:
GENERAL TOURISM
http://tripadvisor.com.sg

BULGARIA
http://bulgariantouristboard.com

BALI, INDONESIA (See next post.)
http://balitourismboard.or.id

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

Easy Russian Alphabet

Problem
How do I learn the Russian alphabet. I keep trying and get half-way but I don't finish it.

This website is brilliant. I copied the link but it says it is creative commons so you and I are free to copy it. So I have copied it in its entirety and you can copy it too.

Want more? If you haven't already, learn to read Korean in 15 Minutes!

http://www.ryanestrada.com/russian/index.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.