Easy Ways To Learn Languages - And Made Up Languages

 

 Flag of the international language, Interlingua. From Wikipedia.

Now German sounds like English

Italian sounds like Spanish

And Latin sounds like Greek

Although some old words vanish

Brand name bring them back

To remind us of words we lack

A gurtel is a girdle

A krawatte is a tie

So many words like English

Have you ever wondered why?

We have words which come from Latin

And words which come from Greek

And the French say le weekend

What a helpful way to speak

Some words are international

I'm sure you know them well

There's computer, and taxi

And menu, whisky, and hotel

Interlingua is a language

Made of words which are well known

But Esperanto sticks to simple rules

Is widely spoken, better known

I want to be bilingual

So I practise every day

At least I can understand and nod

On my next holiday.

-ends-

Useful Websites On International Words

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

Esperanto

Duolingo.com

ends-

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Let's look at the easiest languages

 Navajo

Can I see in Duolingo how many lessons?

At the end of level six it sets a test to see if you can jump. Unless you jump you cannot see how many lessons are ahead. Can I cheat the system by using google translate to fill in correct answers. (This would speed me up, and I would still be learning.) No. Google translate has dozens of languages, the common ones and obscure ones, but not Navaho.

Google Translate

This is ridiculous. I could add half a dozen words to a dictionary. Would that be valid? 

No. Because I am not a native speaker. But it could be in a not yet published system waiting to be checked by native speakers.

Google translate's algorithms would check whether my answers are correct. At one point I was invited to join an online panel correcting English translations on Google. They ask a dozen people who have signed up as native speakers (passing a spelling and grammar test), and when all agree they add the result.

Esperanto 

Esperanto is another easy language. Easy for some. it has regular rules. No exceptions. But you have to learn them. i don't find them easy to remember or say. Easy to read. And lots of speakers. Used by Hungarians. 

Interlingua

I like Interlingua. But nobody speaks it or uses it. It's what you use if you are a polyglot in a desperate situation, like I was trying to warn a group of laughing Spanish girls that they needed to evacuate Euston station in London in the year 2000 because of a bomb scare. You picks words which are the same in several languages and add the most common endings, such as s for plurals, o for male, a for female. Similar to Spanish.

I like this because it says what it is. I think every flag should have its name in English or at very least in its own country's major language.

Interlingua seems to use salute for hello, saluta, for say hello, bon die for hello/ good day, salute mondo for hello world.

Useful Websites

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

Translation English to Interlingua

https://glosbe.com/en/ia/hello

Please share links to your favourite posts

Language Teachers & Learners - Interlingua Exhibition in Germany is Online

I was emailed about the Interlingua exhibition in Germany. 23-26 November 2022. They have stands from language schools, Esperanto, all sorts of people. Linking up with them led me to other places, such as Interlinguo on Facebook and Esperanto on Facebook.

Esperanto or Interlingua

I found Esperanto first. The idea is that it follows rules.

Interlingua 

The idea is that it takes words which are already common in many languages so it is immediately understood if you know a romance language. No diacritics (those little tags and hats and dots on letters).

In theory diacritics like punctuation are designed to help you, with pronunciation. I find them easy in French, but scary and confusing in Swedish and Chinese (Mandarin). They should help speed you up in reading and saying a work. However, I find that they slow me down.

Useful Websites

Wikipedia (in Esperanto and several languages)

duolingo.com

translate google

https://www.transparent.com/language-resources/

https://www.facebook.com/polyglotclub.world/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/polyglot.group/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Constructed_languages

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

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

Do you want to make up an international language

Do you want to make up an international language? Don't bother. It has been done already. Don't reinvent the wheel.

You have plenty of choice.

My favourite made up language in theory is Interlingua (which uses root words which are common to several languages). Unfortunately, not many speak it.



Then Ido (which is an improvement on Esperanto).

Finally, Esperanto, which is an entirely regular language with simple rules and remains the most popular.

 I learned Esperanto from Duolingo. An Esperanto group in Reading has gone online. They have annual conferences in different countries (except when Covid 19 prevents travel). 

Useful websites
duolingo

wiki

Author
Angela Lansbury, teacher of English and other languages

Useful websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_having_different_meanings_in_American_and_British_English
https://context.reverso.net/translation/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/polyglotcommunity
https://translate.google.com/

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

I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a travel writer and photographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a language evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am Immediate Past President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting on Zoom the first Wednesday of the month but  the third Saturday afternoon and occasionally on other Wednesdays our workshops are on app learncool.sg 

Incoming president Faith from July 1st 2020 could change dates and platforms so please contact the club.

learncool.sg

Or quicker to type and easier to remember: 

 tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

For language lovers:Useful Websites

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

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

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

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-say-thank-you-in-several.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-yourself-in-english-spanish.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/01/second-set-of-portuguese-words.html Please share links to your favourite posts
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
translate.google.c

How To Make Your Posts and Pictures Popular. Why Should You Read And Update Your Old Posts?

I looked at the numbers of readers of my posts and which posts they were reading. I found that an old post on Esperanto was still relevant and attracting lots of readers.


Esperanto flag. Photo from Wikipedia.

 I keyed into blogger.com (the page for creating posts, blogspot is for reading posts) the search word on Esperanto. My search brought up all my posts on the subject. I thought, let's have a look at the popular post.

I took a set of steps to improve my old posts:

1 Correct Spelling And Typing Errors
When I read my old posts I spotted one or two typing errors.  (I am getting typing errors as I type this post. I just corrected 'of' to 'or' in that sentence I just typed. Then I started the next sentence without a capital letter. The word 'sentence' keeps coming out as sentance. You have to keep correcting as you type if you type fast as I do.)

2 Correct Grammar
So, step one was correcting the spelling and punctuation.

As I read through, I found that I had sentences using the word they, which could refer to either the speakers of a language or the words they spoke. Oops - I had to change 'they' to 'speakers' or 'words ' for clarity.

Wikipedia
The Wikipedia entry was not clear. I changed it, although I left in the acknowledgement, and pointed out that I had changed the text for clarity. So my post was not just repeating but improving on the original.

I love Wikipedia. It gives me copyright free photos.

Grammarly
The next check was for correct and understandable grammar. I use Grammarly. Some writers type  their posts elsewhere, in Word, do a Grammarly spelling and grammar check, then load up the corrected version to the blog.

3 Add Transitions
Finally, in my post's text at the end I had jumped suddenly from learning the language to places to visit. it was like reading two unconnected posts. I needed to add a transition or bridging sentence.

Time Spent Updating
I had now spent 15 minutes, 30 minutes, changing an old post, rather than writing a new one for today.

4 Ideas For New Posts
However, I had a new subject for a post. The language Ido, I had mentioned but not in detail. A little known artificial language. A totally minority subject. 

5 Note Relevant And Popular Subjects
I then considered my method in updating. What is gratifying is that when I look back at old posts, I find the content still relevant. Been there, done that. I know it all, but new readers are finding it interesting.

6 Add New Skills In Creating Posts
Why rewrite, or write another post? Because my grasp of what to do to make a post interesting is improving.

So after writing the text of this post, I add photos, references to other websites, and references to my other websites.

7 Add Keywords For Text
In blogger, they are called labels. As I edit and save I add keywords.

8 Add Keywords For Photos
Click on your photos. Up pops options including the boring word properties. This is really very exciting. It is labels or keywords to help photo searches find the photo in your post. So adding the word bagel to my picture of bagels will send readers interested in bagels to my post on buying bagels from Brick Lane in East London, England.

9 Link Your Posts
Link your earlier posts to later posts.

10 Focus On The Reader
I know to focus not on myself but on what the readers want. So I shall end this post with a focus on you. I hope this helps you as a writer of your own posts and reader of my posts.

11 Focus On Readers You Want
I can see that I have lots of readers in the USA, Russia and Italy. I can go through all my posts ensuring that I mention these three area of the world, to keep my readers interested in other posts and becoming regular readers.

On the other hand, supposing I have only a few readers in Singapore. I could add a post on Singapore. Or link each post on Singapore to another. Or refer to Singapore in posts on other subjects. Add labels or tags to Singapore. Add flags of Singapore.

Here are some links to subjects I have mentioned in this post and often in my posts.

Some of My Popular Posts And Esperanto Posts
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/01/how-to-learn-esperanto-easy.html

Useful Websites
Duolingo.com


About The Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and other languages.

Makaton and A Multi-language Course Idea

I am very interested in learning languages and sign languages. I watch the sign language in the safety instructions on Singapore airlines and can follow fasten your seat belt and plane taking off with a diagonal movement. When I looked at the languages, I learned that American and British sign languages are different. Oh, dear. However, I just had some good news for language learners, general knowledge - for quizzes, who knows?

Makaton - what is it?
Makaton - an easy sign language system - first I had heard of it in 2019 from a BBC website.

Makaton is a simplified sign language for those with learning difficulties, so they can communicate with family friends, and teachers. The idea is to learn to make a new sign for only one word every day.

Makaton can also be used to communicate by people who cannot speak because of a throat operation, or a stroke. it is easier and quicker to learn than sign language, using simple signs per word instead of spelling out words.

Sign For Fish
I already learned from a website the signs for giraffe and fish. The sign for a fish is your right hand held horizontal, palm facing you, thumb up to show the fin.

The first words taught are useful everyday words. So, the sign for fish would be useful for eating fish, as well as seeing fish in an aquarium or pond.

Very good. This and sign language should be on Duolingo and the O level syllabus. In fact, I would like a general languages paper at GCSE and O level and the Bac, like general science. I would have pupils learn the letters of four languages (eg Greek - useful for modern and ancient Greek and maths, Hebrew like Latin which is the basis for Romance languages, Hebrew is the basis for Cyrillic and Greek and Esperanto, Cyrillic used by the Russians and Bulgarians, Esperanto) and 100 words in 12 languages. All as practical as possible, 100 words in modern daily use and any specialist words.
One would be a sign language, English sign language, American sign language or Makaton.

For A level or second level Bac, or college course for linguists, translators and communicators, I would have a polyglot paper for 12 languages.

My 12 language options would be one from the American continent, American or Spanish as spoken in Mexico or a S American country or Brazilian Portuguese, One from Europe, British English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or German:

1 English
 (British or American), International English (vocal from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, S Africa, USA Canada, Australia, New Zealand); all over the internet, on holiday, old Hollywood films, used by pilots

Chinesasy from Wikipedia.

2 Asian Chinese or similar
Chinese (Mandarin) or Cantonese or Taiwanese or one of the dialects, or Japanese (same symbols) a General Asian languages paper,

3 Spanish Or Similar to Spanish
Spanish or Italian or Portuguese.

German flag.

4 German or Similar to German
German, Dutch or Swedish or Norwegian or Danish - German common surnames such as Kleinman means small man, eine kleine nachtmusik, a little night music or evensong

5 Indian Continent Language
Urdu or Hindi or Tamil or Sansrkrit.

6 Cyrillic Base Language
Cyrillic or Russian or Bulgarian or all three.

7 Greek
Ancient or modern,  including mathematical signs alpha beta gamma fi psy omega (for angles), omicron, pi circumference etc

8 Latin
Latin including plant names, on Roman gravestones, some religious services, prayer books, hymns.

Israel flag.

9 Hebrew, Arabic or Similar
Hebrew (used in religious services) or Arabic (classical or modern) or Aramaic (language of Jesus, still used on Jewish wedding certificates), or Samaritan language spoken today.

If you can recognize that Hebrew and Arabic are written right to left, your can recognize the word kosher on a packet of matzoh (crackers) in the kosher section of a supermarket or many products sold worldwide with a Hebrew translation.  Look for three Hebrew letters. The word kosher is written backwards, riht to left, and looks like rshc or kosher backwards. The letters are without the vowels, like text language. the c is back to front. The SH letter looks like a W. The r is back to front. Simple.

Cyrillic, used in Russia, devised by two Bulgarian priests, uses Hebrew letters.

10 Asian Language
Korean, Thai or Vietnamese - fiendishly difficult, but at least we know the words karaoke

11 Sign Language or Braille
A sign language, American or English or Makaton. Or Braille.

All too difficult? I gave up and tried the easiest language, Esperanto.

 
12 Esperanto or Devised Language
I would like to see Esperanto. I would also like to see Ido (updated Esperanto, made even simpler without the diacritics or dots to show that c is ch).  Interlingua is even easier, specifically choosing words common to several languages instead of creating new words from a root. ideally I would like to see a general paper on all three recently invented languages.

You can probably read the Esperanto on this monument to the man who designed it. Authoro is author. De is of. La is the. Internacia is international. Lingvo is language.

Hof, incidentally, is German for court, courtyard, yard, farm, halo. I think of the hof as the hat or halo drawn on a map around a home.

13 Free language
Instead of one of the above, or in addition, a minority, ancient or modern - your mother tongue or any other, from native American to Icelandic to Swahili to Maori to Gaelic, Welsh, Yiddish, or an old language such as ancient Greek or Latin or ancient Egyptian symbols language.

A four year course with three terms a year, or a summer holiday crash course, or one week crash course all day for twelve weeks in a long summer holiday This would suit students, teachers and academics, and drop-outs and those who cannot afford the time or money for a long course. Just as the British council promotes English, each country could be asked to provide scholarships or books and resources. The course would be useful to potential tour guides, and the hospitality industry hotels and restaurants. the students could work on translating government documents into other languages.

Of course, the place to learn a language is at school in that country.

Even just a visit will help teach you languages.

Useful Language Learning Websites
Multi Languages
duolingo.com
Chinese
https://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/dictionary.php
Makaton
https://singinghands.co.uk/about/what-is-makaton/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makaton
Explains how the system was developed in a school for the deaf where children had additional challenges.

Useful Translation websites
https://www.interglot.com/dictionary

Useful Travel Websites
visitbritain.com
visittheusa.co.uk

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

Which languages are easiest to learn - and spoken where and by how many?

It seems that if you know  a couple of Romance languages, and I know Latin and French, and a small vocabulary from Spanish and Italian and German after doing Duolingo courses, you get the gist of many texts in romance languages.


Spanish flag.

Spanish is one of the easiest languages to learn, according to the number of hours you need to spend, as reported in sources quoted in Wikipedia. I started Spanish.


Italian flag, green, white and red. Tricolour.

Then dropped Spanish in favour of Italian because I was going to Umbria in Italy.
My next trips were to Romania, where the language is a bit like Italian.

Madeira, side track into Portuguese, which does not have the musicality of Italian. And I prefer opera to Fado. And more Italian restaurants are in London and Singapore than Portuguese restaurants so I get less practise.

I tried Russian, difficult. Then Korean. The latter was a total loss of time.

I wanted something easy. Esperanto. I am now half way through the basic course.

Interlingua is my new favourite.

Esperanto flag.

Previously I was learning Esperanto with Duolingo. Esperanto was my first choice because of its history with the Zamenhofs. I visited Zamenhof's grave in Warsaw in Poland. I clambered around in the snow to see it. It is also spoken and learned more widely than interlingua.



Flag of Hungary.

When I read that Esperanto was taught in Hungarian schools I was under the impression that it was an almost mandatory second language. Not so, according to a Hungarian on the Facebook Polyglot page. Apparently it is offered in Hungary because many Hungarians find English and German difficult.

But I find the Esperanto diacritics (dots over letters) hard doing. Although I can cope with French symbols above and below letters, I keep forgetting that the dot over the c in Esperanto is for the sound ch instead of c or s. When I am learning using my mobile phone I often leave the sound off in public places such as trains or when with others who are working or concentrating on tasks. When I switch the sound on again to check the pronunciation, I find I have mis-learned the word as car instead of char. Also I have not yet managed to type the diacritics.

Ido flag.

Ido
Ido was an attempt to improve Esperanto. However, it has not caught on. Purists prefer to stick to the original system started by Zamenhof.


An Interlingua flag.

To me this is too similar to the European flag. I prefer the other version.



Interlingua
Interlingua takes not one but several languages, and picks a word root common to them all for the basis of vocabulary.

Zamenhof's system uses a series of rules. So cold is malvarma, not-hot, a construction immediately obvious to those who have taken the trouble to learn Esperanto. However, Interlingua would take caldo and fredo having the roots such as freezing in other languages as having a recognizable root similarity to a large number of readers, writers and speakers.

Esperanto is marginally easier, for those from countries in Asia and elsewhere which do not have the basis for romance languages. IT is logical and easy to pick up and pronounce, encouraging because you make fewer mistakes and faster progress, which encourages you to go on and learn a real language, with an already familiar vocabulary.

I shall shortly be finishing my Esperanto course and will be pushing the authorities at Duolingo to introduce Interlingua as a follow-on language. It is in my opinion even easier than Esperanto.

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_Esperanto_and_Ido
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_Esperanto_and_Interlingua
duolingo.com





































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