Starting to learn Polish

Visit 

Flag of Poland

Recognizing The Flag

The flag of Poland is easy to recognize and remember. Just two colours. White above and red below.

A little like the flags of Indonesia and Singapore. 

Singapore, being Chinese speaking as well as speaking English, Malay and Tamil as national languages, has the lucky red above, plus a crescent, reflecting its origin in Malaysia. 

Why visit Poland? 

Polish is becoming the most spoken second language in the UK. Polish restaurants and cafes and shops are all over London. 

Let's get the sad facts about the past out of the way first. For a long time I did not want Poland because I thought its sad history would diminish the enjoyment of a happy holiday. (Although the same can be said about history in practically every country.)

 Poland was our ally in WW2. Due to an earlier agreement, Britain went to defend Poland when it was invaded by the German army, and the Polish exiles operated from the UK.

That's past.  Why not visit Poland?  I went there to accompnay my husband who was on business.

We visited assorted museums . Warsaw has the Warsaw ghetto, a recently established Jewish museum.

 The second city is very pretty Krakow. The city centre has a grand cathedral on a fine square. Take a trip to Auschwitz and Birkenau, and end on a slightly happier note at Schindler's factory museum.

Now let's look at the happier things and end on a bright note.

1 Amber. In Singapore I made friends with two lovely ladies who were promoting the Amber Museum. You can buy amber items from shops all over Warsaw and Poland. (And more amber, indeed, from other Baltic states with seaside and beaches bordering the Baltic sea.) Seaside Gdansk has an Amber museum.

2 Polish cuisine. Borsht, beetroot soup, the best. Thick. The way it is served in Jewish style restaurants in London such as B & K in Hatch End in London.  (Contrast with the thin Russian beetroot soup which I sampled in Bondi Beach in Australia.)

Dumplings. In soup. In main courses. With those snowy winters, you need hot filling food to warm you up.

3 Warsaw is historic but modern and clean. Like several cities in Northern Europe, old paintings and diagrams have been used to rebuild buildings with cellar restaurants in romantic, traditional style, but clean and modern with the modern benefits of lighting, plumbing, heating and cooling and so on.

The language used to be a challenge. Books with small print. Huge dictionaries. Impossible pronunciation. Mysterious. 

Nowadays we have at least 3 quick online sources

1 Google translate Polish

2 Wikivoyage Phrasebook Polish

3 /wiki/Talk:Polish_phrasebookWiki Phrasebook Polish. (Discussion on pronunciation.)

Useful Websites

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Talk:Polish_phrasebook

https://languagetsar.com/polishpod101-review/

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

What Does Portuguese Language in Madeira Sound Like?

Flag of Madeira.

Problem
I hear people speaking, what sounds like Russian or Polish. Sh sounds. What language is this?

Answer
It is Portuguese with the accent of Madeira. My friends who live in Lisbon find it hard to understand. I start to recognize the Sh and M word sounds.

However, it is very easy to read.

Signs everywhere are in English and Portuguese, on litter bins and signposts. That helps you to pick up the Portuguese. Sometimes signs show four languages, including German and French. The Portuguese are not so keen on Spanish. Spanish and Italian are similar to Portuguese, so that makes it easier to pick up Portuguese if you already know another European language.

A Portuguese lady happily tells me that Portuguese spoken in Madeira is distinctive, different. She grins as she tells me that Brazilian Portuguese is different again, and the most beautiful, very sing-song.

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flashcard_software

duolingo.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, learner and teacher of English and other languages. Meet me on Toastmasters International. I am VP PR for BHA broadcasting from Singapore on Zoom. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Polyglot Groups in Singapore and Learning Languages Worldwide

Problem
Where do I find others keen on learning languages, or bilingual?

Answers
1 Polyglot clubs on meetup
2 Toastmasters International

Now on June 3rd 2018, (postponed from Sunday May 27 because of low take up rate) in Singapore meetup tells me there's a meeting of Speakeasy Language Learning and culutral Exchange at B1-20/27 Food Republish, Capitol Piazza, 13 Stamford Road, Singapore, 3-6. pm. The nearest MRT (train station) is City Hall which is about 3 minutes away. Exit B.
See their Facebook page.

Toastmasters International has numerous blingual groups. You can get their manuals in several languages, so you can use the English and foreign language manuals alongside each other to translate what is going on.

For example:

Singapore
A Tamil bilingual group.

Francophone is all in French, but usually one of two people speak English and you can speak to them in French or English after the meeting or in the interval.

Several Mandarin speaking groups exist, if you are already fluent in Mandarin and want to keep up the language.

London, England has a French-English group, a Polish group and several others.

USA
The USA has a Spanish speaking group which has bilingual newsletters. I use the newsletters as a language aid, comparing the English and the Spanish.

Useful Websites
Duolingo.com Brush up on your languages for free online with Duolingo and their Tinycards.
Meetup.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtographer. I have several other posts on Toastmasters International and their languages and on learning languages, plus Esperanto. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Learning languages And Listening to Words Being Spoken

Problems
Tinycards and Pronunciation
I just started trying to say hello in 50 languages, suggested by Duolingo's Tinycards. I had been using Duolingo's free ap to learn Spanish and decided to use the free Tinycards ap on Spanish fruits. The two systems are differnt. Duolingo gives you short sentences. So you learn to speak. The Tinycards are handy if you have a short attention span, it's late at night, and you want a few words of one type such as foods such as fruit to read a menu or labels in a supermarket.

Duolingo and Sounds
I have started learning twelve different languages, at first just three, Spanish, Italian and German, Welsh for a weekend in Wales, the Russian, Greek and Hebrew languages because lesson one is the alphabet and I know two or three letters from each alphabet and would like to know the whole alphabet, and others such as Portuguese, to see how it differs, and Romanian because I was hiking there.  The Duolingo main system gives recordings most of the way through.

Tinycards Without Sounds
The tiny cards don't have recordings, just one word on each side of the card, often with a picture. You click to reverse the card two or three times and then answer the question.

Learning Words For Hello In Fifty Languages
I was doing all right on the French word bonjour, which I would normally translate literally as good morning. But when I got to the second set of cards the words were Polish, cseść for hello; and Lithuanian sveiki. Firstly, no point in learning to say the wrong thing. Secondly I was stumped as to how to say it.

Accented letters
I tried Google translate which gave me the Polish.
ś=sh The accent is like adding another letter, turning the s into a sh.
ć=ch
cz is ch as in the Czech word for Czechoslovakia.
i=sounds like yeh (e as in bed not ay as in bay)

Lithuanian
But the Lithuanian isn't there. I presume no Lithuanians have yet volunteered to help.

I didn't know how the recordings were done. In a forum on one of the languages, I leanred that words have an occasional blip because in on-line dictionairies you don't have a native speaker reading every word.

Earworms
You do have a native speaker saying every word, a native speaker who is introduced and who gets the credit on the CD cover, in systems such as Earworms. That is the short version of Berlitz with background music which does all sorts of magic things, simultaneously keeping you focused whilst helping you relax.  About 200 first easy words for conversation on the plane and conversating with the flight attendant, the person sitting next to you, asking for directions, and asking the price or thanking the taxi driver.

Commputer generated voices work best when there's only one way to pronounce a word.

Let's come back to my problem, the Lithuanian and Polish prounciation.

To find the Lithuanian, I did another Google search.

YouTube
First I found a Youtube video.

Omniglot
Then I found omniglot which has a slide bar you click on to hear sounds.

Berlitz
Berlitz has schools in many countries where you can sign up for lessons.

MONEY OFF
I just went to one of their websites and they offered 30% off if I signed up by the end of this month (October 2017).

If you don't want to sign up for a course with a human teacher, you can buy their books and discs.

http://www.berlitz.de
www.earwormslearning.com
https://www.duolingo.com
https://www.tinycards.duolingo.com
https://www.omniglot.com/soundfiles/lithuanian/hello3_lt.mp3
https://www.googletranslate.com

You can also learn English and other languages from films with subtitles or set the TV to show subtitles.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-41516251 Can you learn English from Eastenders? (How one boy did so).

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

Why You Should Check Addresses, Timing of Arrival At A New Place For Dinner

Problem
A friend has moved to a new home and invited us for dinner. Where is it? What time? How do I prepare for travelling to the event?

Answers
Check the address.
Check how critical is our arrival time.
Estimate length of journey.
Check we have items to take with (drinks, new home gifts, birthday anniversary gifts, flowers, alcoholic drinks, anything promised) maps and printed directions; keying postcode into sat nav, checking parking.

Story
Last time we visited her we spent longer than expected walking down a long road from the tube station. Then we had trouble finding a basement flat in terraced housing where many of the houses had no number.

By the time we arrived, we had delayed her two flat mates who were both going out to different evening events. She wanted us to meet them. (Shared interests included running marathons, wine, the flatmates' home countries, ou recent travel trips to their countries.

We were all able to eat cold starters together. The main course was overdone. Our fault for being late.
The evening did not last as long as we had expected. We thought at a weekend, no work, we could arrive late because we could sit up late. However, she had an early morning start with a group sports training, for a marathon and a triathlon (even involving three different sports, running, swimming and a third.)

I just tried googling the address and street view lands me on a roundabout! (At the main road end of a long street with 13 entry points). 

As I shall be front seat, back seat driver, arguing with Satnav, I asked her,

 

"Can you give me an indication of which side of the road and where to park?" 

Also your phone number. 

What time arrive and leave?"

 

(Is that flexi time, (eg arrive 6.30 pm - 9 pm, Polish/Arabic/Jewish, social not before time - in case you are not ready; or be prompt, New York style, 6.55-7 pm and no later, 'not after' time - if cooking a soufflé or other guests or flat mates have to leave for somewhere else after meeting and eating. Do you have to finish by 10 pm be up for a sports event at 6 am, in which case arriving at 9 pm allows no time.

Story

Once, years ago, we travelled from North London to Hampstead. Both of us assumed the other one would have the address. We missed the evening and lost touch with our friends who were bidding us farewell on the point of moving away. We never found their new address.

The moral is, you can't be too careful in getting full directions, addressed, phone numbers, timings, well in advance.

PS If travelling to a business meeting at an office, have personal phone numbers, not just the name of the person you are meeting. Large buildings may have several companies on each floor. In Singapore, I have gone to meetings, not at my friend's office address, business company's head office, listed on the board and building directory under the name of the holding company.  

A first name is not enough. Even a surname could be the same. You might have several people called Mr Jones in Wales. I went to meet a pupil whose surname was Patel in Wembley. Houses had no numbers. I located a Patel family. No such person. Luckily I had the introduction letter with my pupil's full name. Even so, the street had at least three families all called Patel.

At one time there were two people I knew of called Angela Lansbury. Then four. Today I tried to find myself on LinkedIn. I discovered to my horror that LinkedIn had thirteen people registered with my name. Facebook and Internet searches produce as many results for most of the names I checked.

That's why you need to know:

Address, building name, floor, the name of the person, other people listed on the doorbell, or company name on the floor listing, street directions, parking places. Event timing - start time and end time. Journey time. Allow extra time for delays during journey, and last minute panics when setting off. As the scouts say, be prepared!

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

Language Pronunciation, French, German, Polish and Czech

When you visit a hospital or public building in the USA you might see signs in both English and Spanish. In Canada in the capital, Ottawa, you you meet people in government offices who are bilingual in French and English. (But the accent is different from France.) In Belgium you see street signs in French and Flemish (Dutch).

In England at an NHS hospital I was surprised to see a sign not in the 12 languages of the European Union but several others.

Problems
1 What do foreign looking words mean?
2 Assuming you can read the letters of words in the same alphabet as English, how do you pronounce them?
3 Can I learn a language where the pronunciation and writing are the same - it would be easier to speak?

1 You can put individual words or short phrases, whole sentences of paragraphs from books or copy whole pages and columns of words into Google translate. Locate the language. On many websites a small flag you can click on will translate. Your computer also has a flag symbols and you can click on it and turn on another language. The same apples to many devices such as smart phones and satnavs.
2 Having identified a written language, hunt for pronunciation. This is on the first page of most phrase books and dictionaries. You can hear the words spoken by touching the loudspeaker or ear symbol in Wikipedia, and language courses such as duolingo.

Story
I went through the above sign in Northwick Park Hospital. I found:

1 Bom-vindo (Portuguese for welcome - like bon for good in French)
Soo dhawow (or dhawoow) is Somali for welcome.
witajcie is Polish for hello

2 Pronunciation
FRENCH
The diagonal up accent is rising, whilst the downward diagonal is falling. So the word élève, meaning secondary school pupil (high school pupil for Americans), would be pronounced ay as in pay, lev as in levitate.

The French emphasis is on the last syllable. They pronounce Paris, ignoring the last consonant, as Paree.

The French have difficulty with the English letter H. They are told to add the H, so they add it randomly. Our au pair girl once said, "you 'ave no air", when she meant "you have no hair", and "you have no hair" when she mean "you have no air".

GERMAN
Watch out for interchanged V and W.

SPANISH
Watch out for interchanged H and Y and J.
Watch out for C and S and TH.


Tips
MALAY (same as Indonesian)
Malay is phonetic - sounds like it is written. What you see is what you say.

CZECH is also phonetic.
Here's a handy guide to Czech pronunciation.
http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/csms/czpronounc2.html

(More to be added later.)

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher and turn of English and other languages. See my other posts, profiles and blogs in blogger.com, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTuber. Please follow me, like my pages and share your favourites. Look at my books on Lulu.com and Amazon

Learning Languages: Tips on Spanish and more

I was sitting in a sauna and as usual I chat to everybody I meet.

Romanian
A Romanian girl spoke good English. I asked her where she had learned English and if it's hard or easy for a Romanian and if Romanian is easy to learn.

Romanians, Italian, Spanish and Latin.
She told me that Romanian is similar to Latin. So for her it was easy to learn English, Italian and Spanish.

Missing Subject
One difference in sentence structure is the lack of subject. English sentence structure goes: subject, verb, object. Romanian is like Italian. And Latin. You can drop the I because the end of the sentence is enough to tell you who is speaking.

Romanian, Russian and German
Romanian, unlike Russian and German, has the same present continuous tense. I am walking is different from I walk.

Subjunctive
Another similarly is the subjunctive. If I were you ... If I were is not the same as if I was. I were is future, likelihood, possible. Was (in conjunction with I)is past tense.

So Romanians don't have problems learning it and understanding the concept. They don't have trouble using it. They just translate directly.

Romanians and Romance Languages
Surely there must be some difference between Romanian and English? Yes. Romanian is like French and other European languages regarding adjectives coming after the noun. In French you would say Moulin Rouge. The English is Red Windmill. In English the adjective is before the noun.

Learning Spanish
Her other useful tip was about learning Spanish. I said that I had gone back to German on Duolingo, rather than making Spanish my first choice of language if I had five minutes to spare, because I had trouble with Spanish pronunciation particularly rolling my r.

Latin American and Mexican Spanish
She said that it is easy to learn either Latin American Spanish or Mexican Spanish. The pronunciation is easier. That applies to the r and the th.

What's more, if you watch films from Argentina or Mexico, you will find them easy to follow, and helpful in learning conversation.

The Romanians learn Russian in school. I started Russian on Duolingo. Russian lacks a and the. No wonder people speaking other languages have trouble using a and the in English. Foreign speakers don't drop the a and the because they can't decide which to use. They are translating directly from their own language, so they have no a and the.

I must go - off to Duolingo to practise my German and revive my Spanish - the Latin American sort.

I might take a peek at Romanian, too. And why not peep at Polish? The first page of the course on any language in Duolingo gives you an overview of the grammar, pronunciation and spelling. A useful quick guide and an entertainment.

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

Best way to learn languages through memory aids

I wrote to my friends on Facebook that I was studying languages, four languages, through Duolingo. You can get  a free look at an example.

Tony Winyard Duolingo is very good. Take a peek at Linkword which for me is even better http://www.linkwordlanguages.com/

Linkword Languages - The Easiest Way To Learn A Language

LINKWORDLANGUAGES.COM

Like · Reply · Remove Preview · 6 June at 10:11

Angela Lansbury Thanks. It is brilliant. But at £20 for the first course, then another, for French, Spanish, German, Russian, Mandarin Chinese - actually not so bad. Especially if you pick one language, for a birthday present. Or get your employer to pay. Or can take it off tax. They do Polish and Hebrew but not Arabic, Hindi/Urdu/Persian which I understand (from the ladies in the sauna in Harrow) are similar.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I looked at the cost. You would pay another £5 or so to have the disc. I would invest in the disc. Every two years or so you find you laptop is corrupted, or out of date and replaced, or the memory is full and your downloads are replaced or put onto a backup and lost. If you are using a language course to get started and then become fluent and never need it again, then you don't need the disc. But if you want to refresh a year or two later, the disc is useful. Especially when you buy a new device and not everything is copied.

Travel the world at London Toastmasters Clubs in England

LONDON TOASTMASTERS

In London you can go to six foreign language toastmasters clubs:

1 Experience French, meets at Fitzrovia Centre near Goodge Street station.

http://experience-french.org

2 London Italian -almost reached the 20 members needed to start a club

3 London Portuguese

4 Polish your Polish

5 Russian—English

6 Spanish Speakers 

- at the Plumbers Arms, 5 minutes from Victoria station, upstairs

It's easy to translate their welcome page using Google translate.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker.
ACG Advanced Communicator Gold

B & K Salt Beef Bar, Restaurant, Take Away and Deli

Filling, satisfying, just like mother used to make. I think most of it is made by the owner's mother.
Chopped liver (not chicken liver, ox liver).
Latke (potato cake).
Loaf of rye bread.
Cheese cake.
Lokshen (noodle) pudding.
I popped in for the chopped liver for a surprise starter for a family dinner from the deli counter by the door. (We've eaten here many times, for years, also their other branch in Edgware. We usually eat in and get some take away food to take home.)

While there I was tempted to buy a portion of latke, a grated potato cake, similar to Swiss rosti, or American hash brownies. I resisted.

At home I asked the family, should I have bought apple strudel? The verdict was no. We have plenty of apples from trees in the garden, ours or a neighbour's.  I thought to myself, let's make strudel.

Some desserts are harder to make at home. Such as lokshen pudding. When I mentioned 'unhealthy' lockshen pudding, I heard a resounding, 'Yes'.

So I donned my raincoat, changed into rainproof shoes, found a raincoat, selected an umbrella and trotted off like Mary Poppins, my heart singing in the rain, to buy lokshen pudding for dessert.

 How could I resist rye bread, also hard to find. While I was buying bread, why not potato. I could not resist the roster style latke.

The baked cheese cake is another of my favourites. How I hate the jelly like excuse which cons you into thinking you are getting cheese cake. Nothing like a cake. You can get proper baked cheese cake in the New York style delis worldwide, huge portions, for larger prices.

By now my spare change was dwindling and my calorie count and weight were increasing. The B & K staff kindly cut in half the cheese cake. You can ask for the food hot or cold. They do outside catering.

Here's the lokshen pudding which we combined with fruit. As you see, the lokshen pudding is almost solid, enlivened by sweet sultanas. (See my previous posts on B & K if you are a devotee of B & K or lokshen pudding or Polish style Ashkenazi food.)

Lokshen pudding and fruit. Photo by Angela Lansbury

Angela Lansbury, B A Hons, travel writer and photographer, author of the Jewish Travel Guide.

Kindertransport statues on stations in UK and Europe

I'd read about the statue on a London station showing the Kindertransport children and Winton who organised the transfer of endangered children to London, from 1938 to the eve of WWII in 1939, saving the childrens' lives. When I went to check for a photo on Wikipedia I discovered photos of statues at stations all over Europe. 

Frank Meisler Kindertransport memorial (2006) stands outside Liverpool Street Station.

From Wikipedia, whose caption says it's a tribute to the British people for saving children from Nazi terror. Who were the heroes who helped? Nicholas Winton who organised the transport. But he did not do it all alone. Who else? The Quakers, the members of Parliament, the people who raised the £50 per child required, a lot of money in those days, so the children would not be a burden on the state, the welcome committee who met the children and found them hostels, then the kind and generous families who took in the children, not just for a few days, or weeks, or years, but because some of the parents of the children died, for life.

Gdansk statue at station. Gdansk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast.

Winton's Prague memorial created by Flor Kent.

The Kindertransport is one of the good news stories to come out of WWII.

The children ranged in age from the smallest to teenagers. Some went on to Canada and the USA.

December 2nd, the date of the first transport, is celebrated as Kindertransport Day.

I have just shown the statues you can see on stations when you travel. For details of statues and the history of the Kindertransport see the Wikipedia article on Kindertransport.

Bilingual Toastmasters Speakers' Clubs Worldwide

UK
UK London FRENCH
French in London
Experience French
City Temple Conference Centre
near Farringdon
www.experience-french.org/
Irritating site - easy to find when Toastmasters was founded back in the USA in 1924, but impossible to find the date, time and venue of their next meeting or the phone contact details. Maybe I should go back and read the French.
http://www.meetup.com/Speed-Public-Speaking-en-Francais/

UK London RUSSIAN-English 
Canary Wharf
London UK
NW8 8QR
tel:07768720417

http://whatwhere.me/london/education/russian_english_speakers_toastmasters_273755919348001


UK London SPANISH
website page in Spanish
ww.meetup.com/SpanishSpeakers-Toastmasters/

There should be  a German Toastmasters club in London, UK, last heard of in East London, UK. 
Contacts who might know of a club or help start one:
Ilke (who started English speaking club Harrovians in NW London UK before she joined a club in East London).
Somebody at Excalibur, advanced speakers' club in London, UK. 
My searches direct me to a German club in London, Ontario in Canada. That's why I keep adding UK after London when I mean the UK. Other German speaking but non-Toastmasters clubs in London where you can practise German, or learn German, including the Goethe Institute, so you can follow when you go to a German speaking Toastmasters club elsewhere in the world.
You can get the manuals in other languages from the Toastmasters website, specific page mentioned below near the end of this post.


UK
Polish in London. Club with most meetings in Polish language only. Occasionally meetings in English.
www.polishyourpolish.org.uk

SPANISH
a) In UK

Public url for this Club

http://spanishspeakers.toastmasterclub.org

b) In Spain
Bilingual Spanish and English club in Barcelona meets Wednesdays.
www.bcn-toastmasters.com/

c) In USA
Spanish-English speaking club meets in Ventura, California.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Los-Amigos-Bilingual-Toastmasters-Club/473434029371186

AUSTRALIA -Mandarin and English
Meetings in Mandarin and English and you can give speeches in either language.
http://toastmasters.wikia.com/wiki/Chinglish_Bilingual_Toastmasters_Club

USA - Spanish

 Los Bilingues in Tualatin, Oregon.

BELGIUM
Brussels German:
www.blackforest-toastmasters.com/about
meets 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month

Armada English-Spanish
Atomium English-Dutch
Barlaymont English-French
Claddagh English-Irish
Club des Orateurs (French)

CANADA

Inspiration Bilingue in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada; 

SWITZERLAND
Bilingual German and English club with both languages in the introduction to their website about the founding of the club which meets in Basel, Switzerland.
http://baselmultilingual.toastmastersclubs.org

CHINA
Bilingual clubs include: Shanghai Humor Bilingual Toastmasters and 1st Bilingual Zhangjiang, both in Shanghai, China. 

JAPAN
Bilingual club.
Tokyointernational.org
Meets in Tokyo.


SINGAPORE
Most clubs are English-speaking and everybody whose first language is Mandarin or Hokkien or Cantonese is very keen to practise their English and learn English and give the role of Grammarian or evaluator to a visiting native English speaker, whether from England, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa.

Mandarin in Singapore
Two or three clubs are in Mandarin and one in an Indian language, probably Hindi, but since their websites and answer phones are in foreign languages it's hard to work out if you will meet anybody who speaks any English, and whether they are meeting, or changed their venue, or cancelled because of a religious or cultural holiday.

I went to a Mandarin speaking club but nobody spoke any English except one girl.
I had hoped to learn a few words. No luck. I had hoped to see a bilingual manual. No.

I asked my translator to write down a greeting in Mandarin and thank you in Mandarin.
I gave a speech in English, pausing between each sentence, thanking them for their welcome, and smiles, and food, and saying they seemed very successful, part of a great organisation, and wishing them well.  The agreeable young girl who spoke some English translated into Mandarin - sometimes much briefer than what I said, sometimes much longer! I'll never know whether she understood any or all of what I said, and whether she translated any or all of it, or gave the gist and elaborated some parts more courteously and politely, or summed up.

I should have done a lot more investigation and translation of Chinese (which means Mandarin) in advance. 

ISRAEL
I understand there is an English speaking Toastmasters club in Israel. Most Israelis speak Hebrew as a first language plus a second language, either Arabic which is similar to Hebrew, or English or a European language such as Spanish. (Especially if Sephardi which means of Spanish origin - or they will know another Latin language such as Portuguese or Italian) or French.  German, at least a few words, is likely to be understood if their extended family knows some Yiddish. A few will speak Russian.

BAHRAIN
Filipinos in Bahrain
Filipino Toastmasters Club in Manama, Bahrain.

MANUALS
asters.org/MainMenuCategories/Shop/ManualsBooksVideosCDs_1/MANUALSBOOKSVIDEOSCDs.aspx?Mode=1
Manuals are in Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, German, Japanese, Spanish. The publications include the first ten speeches manual, the leadership manual, the club kit, and advanced manuals.

More from Toastmasters International website
www.Toastmasters.org/findaclub 

I'll add more to this post when I find more information.
Angela Lansbury
Member of Harrovians Club, London, England; member of HOD Club, London, England. Former member of YWCA club in Singapore. Has visited clubs in Shanghai and Beijing, China; Singapore; Thailand; and International convention in Las Vegas USA.
Author of Wedding Speeches and Toasts; Quick Quotations; Who said what, where, when? (Lulu.com) For more about Angela Lansbury, public speaking, spelling, grammar, performing with puppets, comic poetry, and Toastmasters, see Youtube, LinkedIn, Facebook.

Polish? Yes, you can understand Polish!

Polish Language
    Take a bus ride around London and you'll see Polish shop signs. On the ride from Heathrow airport in the west towards Harrow and on into London you will see food shops. A local landmark for routing car drivers is the Polish war memorial.
You can see a picture of the war memorial on Wikipedia.

  Poles nowadays arrive by plane. They also arrived by ship in the southern port of Southampton. An area there is known as Little Poland.

alkoholu - alcohol
delikatesy Polskie - Polish delicatessen
Nie means no, not, negative, don't. (Like the Russian niet.)

  Now let's visit Poland. Warsaw is the huge capital with old areas rebuilt with cobblestoned streets in old style but clean.
   Krakow, a former capital, a very pretty little town with a historic main square.

My powerpoint/keynote Speeches

I have speeches on these subjects:
Good Grammar
Inspiring Lives
Harrow Celebrities
Polish Heroes
Speech Disasters
Spelling Is Simple
Perfect Pronunciation