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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Languages

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

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

French sounds great. What about a French accent in English - some like it. But it's not my favourite.

Learn in Paris. The accents in Marseilles and Canada are different. (Oui for yes becomes Way instead of wee, like yeah for yes in English.)

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

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

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

Italian
Italian is sing song. Used in opera.

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

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

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

Wales and Welsh
Welsh is sing song.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Useful Websites
duolingo.com

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

Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.

Comparing Portuguese in Portugal with Portuguese in Brazil

Oi - that's hi or hello in Portuguese. It sounds a bit rude in English, a bit like, 'Oi -you!' Hoewever, if that helps you remember it, well and good.

Comparing Brazilian and Portuguese Portuguese:
The best place to find out the difference is on Youtube. You will get several suggestions for videos popping up in the right-hand column. Watch this lovely lady:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GrrrJWkEpM

Main differences:
PORTUGUESE SPOKEN WITH BRAZILIAN ACCENT
In the 'word Portuguese, the 's' ending is pronounced like the 's' in Brazil.

PORTUGUESE SPOKEN WITH PORTUGUESE ACCENT
But like 'Sh' in Portugal itself

RIO ACCENT - CLOSER TO PORTUGAL
However, in Rio, the Brazilian capital, the pronunciation of the s is like the 'motherland of Portugal.

SCOTLAND
A man who lives in London, England, and worked in Scotland, tells me that to him this sounds similar to the case in Scotland. In Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, the English accent is closed to the received pronunciation of London, England, or what the people in Edinburgh would call 'poncy' posh or pretentious, high faluting) English.

TU and VOCE
The Portuguese use tu, which sounds like the British you (although in England we dropped the thou used in thou shalt not).
But the Brazilians use voce, which is closer to the French plural Vous, which is formal.
The intonation in Portugal is more monotone and closed mouth. In brazil the accent is more sing-song, open mouth, emphatic, flamboyant, more like Italian.

LATIN
I learned Latin at a Grammar school in England. Mostly Latin is not much use to me, except for the etymology (linguistic origins of words) and reading gravestones in Roman Museums. However,  Portuguese looks even more like Latin than Italian.

Another video on Youtube has a charming, erudite young gentleman explaining with maps that Portuguese is based on the spread of the Roman spoken language.

YOUTUBE VIDEO LINKS
I find it irritating that the titles of YouTube videos are all in odd numbers and letters and not the English language titles, unlike links to Wikipedia and tourist board websites where what you see is what you get and you know instantly if you are on the right subject and even which country the website is based in or aimed at.

MEETING BRAZILIANS
Is learning Portuguese from Duloingo, with Brazilian vocabulary and accent a waste of time if you are not going to Brazil any time soon? No. You might meet Brazilians on a plane or in another country, such as on a plane from the USA to any country in South America.

Where Will You Meet Brazilians and speakers of Brazilian Portuguese?
I had thought the learning Brazilian is a waste of time if you live in Europe or the Far East because you are never going to meet anybody who speaks the Brazilian style of Portuguese.

However the man on the video informed me that Brazilians are huge in number, 200 million.  The pleasant surprise was learning that I could well be talking to somebody from Brazil. Just as you meet Americans worldwide in English-speaking countries, you are likely to come across Brazilians outside Brazil, working as waiters or other staff in Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries.

I suppose I had better say goodbye in Portuguese. It sounds and looks close to the Italian ciaou.
TCHAU!

See you later - Até logo!

visitportugal.com (Official site)

http://visitbrasil.com/en/

https://www.roughguides.com/destinations/europe/portugal/

http://duolingo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language
https://translate.google.com/

https://www.visitportugal.com/en/destinos/madeira
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/madeira-wine-two-hundred-year-old-found-fortified-cellar-new-jersey-liberty-hall-union-a7835881.html
http://www.kean.edu/libertyhall/about/history

duolingo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira

http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/port-and-portuguese-wine-labels-and.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/how-to-ask-for-food-and-drink-in.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/learn-your-first-ten-words-in.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/how-do-you-say-please-in-portuguese-is.

visitportugal.com

visitbrasil.com

http://www.visitmadeira.pt/en-gb/homepage

earwormslearning.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English, learner of 12 other languages.
Please see my other travel blog:
http://www.luxurytravelforless.co.uk

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtographer, author and speaker. I have many posts on Portuguese. Please read more posts and share links to your favourite pages.

Some Travel Statistics - how are tourists counted, and recognized?

Problem
I've just read that Europe is the world's top travel destination. But how are they counting that? By flights, hotel rooms booked, people employed, numbers of hotels and restaurants, money generated, restaurant meals, museum and attractions entrance fees?

Who says? A European.

These statistics are being collected all the time. We are being counted. Advertisers want to know how many people will see an advertisement on a railway station, by a bus stop, overlooking a motorway junction or the city center.

London, England

AMERICA
When we lived in America we travelled constantly, every weekend. We drove in a car. Our car's numberplate identified where we were from. When we spoke, our accent identified us as English.

You can also be identified by your clothes.

Story
Year's ago I was with my parents, who lived in London, on holiday in Marbella, Spain. As we walked around the shops, my father would say of a nearby or passing couple, "They're British!"

I asked, "How do you know? Did you hear them speak?"

"No," replied my father. "They were wearing national health spectacles." (My father was an opthalmic optician.)

The inter-city railways need to know how many return tickets they have sold to calculate the numbers of trains and coaches in each direction, the numbers of replacement buses when there is an accident or breakdown, the numbers of train drivers, ticket inspectors, cleaners, snack sellers with trolleys, dining cars, the demand for overnight couchettes (sleeping bunks).

Analysing Statistics
When numbers don't tally, they look for a reason. How many people going through turnstiles went the wrong way because they were lost, jumped over the barrier, used a free staff pass?

Some were employees on their way to their job. Did any use a stolen card or re-use a card? How many expected travellers were missing because they missed the last train?

Safety
Did somebody jump off the platform? Only one - but maybe several each year), and that caused hundreds of commuters to abort their journeys.  missed their connection, fell off a train or cruise ship, went into hospital, came down with seasonal flu, got drunk?

Maybe some overslept, or stayed the night in the city with family or at a hotel?

Successful Marketing
Reduced prices attract travellers and tourists. Those in the travel trade are watching us travelling. We, in turn, are watching them, watching us.

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

Welsh Pronunciation

Problem
How do I pronounce Welsh?

Answer
Watch a video and hear the accent for north and south Wales.

Tips

Welsh dragon. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

If you lose it, type in You Tube welsh pronunciation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb8Bps3bG84&list=PLz6oFM0_IszwxmU7dMcGQClZ5zMwX2EdY&index=2

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

Tips on Speaking French and where to Practise It

French flags. Photo from Wikipedia.

Problem
How do you get a real French accent?

Answers
1 The first thing to notice is that the French do not accent the first syllable, which is British, but the
s e c o n d syllable. So an English speaking person would say PARis, emphasis on the first syllable. A French person would say, ParEE.

2 Often the French do not pronounce the last letter. For example, Paris is parEE.

3 Notice when translating that adjectives come second. Moulin rouge. Cafe Rouge.

4 Accents are easy. An accent going uphill from left to right on an e sign is pronounced ay.  But coming down it is er or e as in get. I remembered when I was learning French by looking at the word for schoolchild, élève. (ay - lev.)

Tips
You can hear a French accent by watching old films made in France on the internet. You can tune into French broadcasts on the radio and TV.

If you want to remember French names, you will find that large numbers of French women have a name which starts with Marie and has another name attached. For example, Marie Antoinette. many of the men have the name Jean, for John, attached to the front of another name. For example the film director, Jean-Luc Godard.

Note that in Canada the accent is different, more like in the south of France around Marseilles.

Where can you practise reading and writing French?
Belgium
Canada
France
Saint Martin in the Caribbean.
Switzerland

If you are bilingual, the international Mother Language day is February 21st.
The UN French language day is March 20th.

Clubs Where You Can Practise
Many embassies and clubs and other organisations hold events and film festivals. For example:
SINGAPORE
French Francophone Toastmasters Club in Singapore. First Friday of the Month at Cairnhill CC. The international toastmasters International organisation has speech manuals in French.
LONDON, ENGLAND
Experience French Toastmaster International speakers club, meets on a Monday, in London, promotes its meetings on www.Meetup.com
Charles Peguy Centre in London.

Useful Websites and Resources
www.duolingo.com Free French course on the internet.
https://www.rocketlanguages.com/french/lessons/french-accents

Author
Angela Lansbury, teacher of English, French and other languages. I have many more posts on France and French food and speaking French and other languages and restaurants. Please follow me, bookmark your favourite posts and share them with your friends.

Me A Model? At My Age? Maybe Yes. Maybe No. Agencies in Australia, UK, Singapore

Australian Model Agency 

I have a friend, William, who appears in TV serials in Australia. He is signed on with an agency. They got him work on TV. Great success.

UK Work
Film Extras
I once answered an ad for extras in a film in the UK. We sat around all day in a church as part of a crowd at a wedding. We had to come with a hat. Most of the time you did nothing except sit silently.

No Pay
We filled in a form at the beginning. Everybody was asking everybody else, 'How much are you getting paid?' People were reeling off lists of film shoots they had been in earlier that month. I was at first too embarrassed to admit I was not being paid.

Payment
However, when I finally said I was not being paid, one of the older men who I thought would sneer at me instead was very kind and protective. He was indignant on my behalf and told me to say I came from his agency because I would then be paid a small sum of about £20. That was not much for four hours (plus travel) but a lot better than nothing.

Spotlight
I was asked to join Spotlight after my late uncle died. I had phoned them to cancel his subscription and to explain that he had died and they asked if I would like to join. This would have been really right for me a couple of years earlier when I would have loved to be featured in a professional listing. Unfortunately, at the time when I was in touch with them it was not a sensible use of money because I was a full time, on call, carer for my late father and I did not want to work, to be away from home. 

You had to pay an annual fee for membership which included a listing in their directory. If I remember rightly, to be listed you had to supply a professional photo or two, ideally one face close up and one full body.

Now I'd like to fulfil my dream and be a character actress. My favourite actress was the little old lady in The Ladykillers. She was in the film with Peter Sellars, and Alec Guinness.

Singapore
I passed a sign for a model creation agency in Singapore. I thought I'd go in and find out if they had any opportunities for an English voice over.

I filled out a form and was told to come back for an appointment. Because I had other engagements that day, I made an appointment for the following day. Meanwhile, I checked them out online.

It then transpired that I had to pay about 600 Singapore dollars - the sums were quite complicated, so much for the photographer, plus the make up artist, and the hairdresser, and that included so many photos for them to send out, plus several for me to keep, but after the first mailing out another set of photos would have to be printed, but I would not have to pay for these, it would come out of my first salary.

What if I did not ever get a job? Would that be a debt? I was told I would not have to pay the second sum. However, nothing in writing. I can't prove to you what was said, and that was what put me off the whole deal.

Apart from the actual cost, I was concerned that they could not give me any written account of the sums involved, just wrote it out on a piece of paper. To me that did not seem professional. The sums might increase. I had no way to be sure of the total.

They admitted they had very little chance of finding work for a Caucasian of my age, except for occasional government ads which features people of all races when promoting services for the retired.

I asked why I could not use my own photographer and they said it was a question of copyright, as well as having suitable photos of the kind they needed.

I looked at reports online for scams. One website I looked at said that any agency which insisted that you use their photographer was a scam.

CV and Portfolio
I would still be interested in putting together a portfolio including professional photos. If you look at online agencies you can see what is required. 

Some charge a monthly fee to reveal job ads. The ones I looked at required one face photo and one full body shot. If you a modelling any other part of your body, such as hands for nail polish advertisements, you are advised to include those. Some sites have a minimum number of photos. Others have a maximum.

Another promotional activity is to have a showreel of yourself, demonstrating your skills such as accents or singing or clips from previous amateur or professional productions.

Your CV will include age, height, weight, vital statistics (bust, waist, hips), language, accent, race, maybe shoe size. So if you don't know your weight and hip size, you might want to find out.

First, the photo. You need a professional photo (with copyright, meaning permission to use it by printing it or online for self publicity without paying the photographer for every use). It should be in focus. Ideally several shots, serious, smiling, assorted expresions. Clear background. Also any unform you may have (with permission to wear it).  

Angela Lansbury, travel writer

Popular Subjects For Conversation - impromptu answers you should practise about your travels

Problems
How do you find a ready answer for commonly asked questions about your travels?

Speaking to a taxi driver is easy. He (occasionally she) is likely to ask:
1 Where are you from?
2 Where are you going?
3 What do you think of my country?

Answers
I have a list of good things about the country. Alternatively on a first trip, I have a list of the places I hope to visit.
If not I can ask for advice. Where can I find an expensive restaurant? What is the one local dish I should try? Where can I buy clothes and shoes and hats? Are there any landmarks I should see?

At a Toastmasters International speakers' meeting we practise impromptu speaking, selecting 'table topics' from the table or a bag or envelope. Popular subjects include travel. I decided to listen to other people's answers and write out my own.

Stories
Questions I have heard recently included:

Which country would you most like to visit?
One girl said, unexpectedly, she would most like to go back to her home country and visit her home, which she had not seen for a long time. (Classic case of homesickness?)

The name of her town was one nobody knew. After she finished her two minute description of how much she wanted to go back and see the people and places, we, the listeners, were still mystified as to where it was, or any reasons why we should want to go there, or anywhere which had similar emotional pull on ourselves.

One of the first questions to ask yourself is, what's in it for my listener? What can I tell them which will be useful to them? They are all thinking: What's in it for me?

The table topics master was sufficiently intrigued or puzzled to prolong the meeting by asking her, after she should have finished: 'Which country are you from?' 'Where is the town?'

The answer was five miles north of - some other place nobody knew. (We still did not recognise it.)

He asked her: Is it in the north or south of the country?

I thought about where I would like to visit. What popped into my mind was: in which continent? Listeners at that meeting were from Asia. Would they like to hear about a nearby country which they might visit? Or somewhere in Europe or the USA?:

Burma -
but I know so little I can't talk about it interestingly for even two minutes.

Vietnam - likewise, I know too little to talk about it extensively.

I love the white national dress, introduced by communists and about 100 years old, seen in paintings and photos, but they all wear jeans now. I often visit the Vietnam Toastmasters club in Singapore. The club meets conveiently at Cairnhill Community Centre near Newton MRT station.

My husband says the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, is in the north. Saigon is in the south. Also in the south is the Mekon delta where you take boat trips through the peaceful countryside and lunch on freshly caught fish. The famous Khu-chi tunnels outside Saigon where the Communists built underground cities to hide from American bombing. The tunnels get smaller as you go lower underground, very claustrophobic.

Iceland - likewise, I know little. It has ice; ancient history; strange stories about mystical creatures.
Ukraine - where an ancestor of mine came from. When I researched it for my novel based on family history I discovered that one of its local characters from history was Masoch whose books inspired Sado-masochism.

My Answers
Which city would you most like to visit?
Ukraine
I would most like to visit Ukraine. One of my ancestors came from there. When I tried to describe the city in a novel based on my family history, I had to research it.

A more usual question to travellers is: Where are you from?

I remember when I had an au pair girl from Yugoslavia, she recited many times what she had obviously been drilled to say about her country: Yugoslavia is .. with ... and ... (Numbers of people, languages, landmarks and so on.)

Population Statistics
It helps to know the population of your home city, county, state, country, continent. Maybe a comparison:
Population of:
New York ...
USA ...
London, England ...
Great Britain ...
Singapore ...

My table topics question
At the Toastmasters meeting I was asked: What have you learned about yourself when travelling? (Or: Is it true that travel teaches you about yourself?)

My answer was:
At home in your own country you are just like everybody else. You don't realise how different you are from the rest of the world until you travel.

When I was a teenager living in England I didn't feel particularly English or British. I just spoke English like everybody else. Then I went on holiday to Greece with a group of French youngsters. An English girl who I would have had nothing in common with back home became my bosom friend on holiday and we found we had so much in common. We shared jokes about the food. What no baked beans for breakfast. What I fancy is baked beans on toast. We could speak to each other in English.

It wasn't until I visited America and Singapore that I made another discovery. Not only was I an English person who spoke English, I discovered that I spoke British English. Singaporeans often ask if I am from America, or Canada or New Zealand. To them a person with blonde hair and a fair complexion who speaks English could be from any of those countries. I now know that I speak British English, not American, Australian, nor Singaporean English.

(If I were to exaggerate for a humorous speech, I would say, I speak Singaporean already, no more British English, la. I am not American (like some of you guys, from near Noo York; y'all know I'm not from the south, with a Dolly Parton drawl, Texas and the south.)

See population statistics in next post.

Author
Angela Lansbury author, born and bred in London, lived in Rockville, Maryland, also a Permanent Resident of Singapore.
Please like and share my posts.