Learning Chinese, Japanese and Malay From Railway Station Signs: 6th Avenue!

Picture from Wikipedia showing numbers in various languages. (English, Urdu, Roman, ending with Chinese / Japanese.)

Look at the numbers in the bottom line of the picture. They are Chinese signs for zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Six looks like a standing or seated man: head, two arms, two legs, invisible pavement or invisible seat.

Problem
How do you learn and practise a language every day, effortlessly?

Answer
Learn to recognize station signs. You see them every day as you pass.  Learn Chinese signs and you have also learned Japanese. The reverse benefit applies. Learn Japanese signs and you have also learned Chinese!

Railway Station - Botanical Gardens
For example. I was sitting at the Singapore station Botanical Gardens which is a point of interchange from the blue Downtown line. I looked at the three Chinese signs for Botanical Gardens and said to my companion: "I wonder which of those signs means garden?"

Translating Photos And Text
We took a photo of the sign with our phones. However, you cannot put a sign into Google translate. So we tried the other way round. We could not type in the word garden in Chinese. So we typed in Garden, in English, and looked to see if we had a match with the word which came up and our photo.

Sixth Avenue
Another stop on the Downtown line is Sixth Avenue. I was looking at the English words Sixth Avenue when the Chinese signs alongside jumped out at me.

Hey - the middle of the three signs is a number I recognize! I learned the numbers one to ten last week. That's the number six!

It's not where I would expect it. The number six is the middle of three signs. It so happens that six is one of the Chinese numbers I found hardest to remember. One, two, and three, are easy to remember because they are simply horizontal lines, one line for one, two lines for two, three lines for three. Four is a square with two curves inside like a curtained window. But six bears no relations to anything.

However, now I shall be able to remember six easily. From just once glance at it on the railway station the number six is instantly ingrained in my memory. It will be reinforced every time I pass through that station. The sign shows a man on Sixth Avenue station standing or sitting waiting for the train.

You are likely to see Chinese signs if you live in or holiday in Singapore, Hong Kong, or China. You will also see signs on Chinese restaurants in Chinatown in large cities. More are in any country with borders with China or large numbers of Chinese investors or visitors. I saw signs in Cambodia, which has a lot of investment from China in Siem Reap, the city around the temples of which the famous one is Ankor Wat, Wat meaning temple.

Happy hunting with Chinese and Malay and French and other signs.

In Singapore I was a volunteer at an English enrichment programme at Crescent Girls' School. We helped girls who had failed mock O level to pass the exam. They all passed (except one who was in hospital).

Every day I receive reminders from Duolingo and Duolingo Tiny Cards to keep up my Chinese. Even if I did not use their system (and I do use it every day) the daily reminders would be invaluable.

Happy learning. Thank you (for reading). 'Shay shay', which means thank you in Chinese, is what I hear on every train journey at the end of Chinese announcement. I also hear the Malay ones ending Terimah Kasih (thank you in Malay) and 'Mandri' (thank you in Tamil).

But my top triumph is spotting the number six in the sign for Sixth Avenue.

 Multilingual signs everywhere.

Multi-lingual signs on trains - and local people will help you to translate.

Stations and bus stops - whilst waiting around, time to learn languages.

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

Road Accidents In Romania, Deaths, Daily Life and Wonderful Wildlife

Problem
In Bucharest, capital of Romania, we hired a left hand drive car from Thrifty which is the budget branch of Hertz. We realised the two were related when we were directed to a Hertz shuttle van to take us from outside the arrivals hall of Bucharest International airport to the car parking area (Americans say parking lot) where we collected our hie car. Apart from driving on the left, we had no knowledge of diving conditions, vehicles we would encounter, or parking conditions, animals on the road.

Problems and Pleasures
1 Driving in Romania is a delight. Arriving in Bucharest is wonderful. Pictures of palaces, castles, mansions, museums are inside the airport. Driving from Bucharest airport into the centre of Bucharest, you approach through a wide avenue or as the French might say, Boulevard, huge trees,  huge embassies and museums and giant circles with multiple exits.

Directions
We had no Satnav in the car. However, thank goodness for Google maps verbal directions from a mobile phone perched on a shelf in the front of the Skoda. Once or twice the directions were after we had heard no directions and had already chosen an exit.

Pedestrian crossing in Romania. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Pedestrians and Pedestrian Crossings
Bucharest and the second city we visited, Brasov, and the smaller villages, have lots of pedestrian crossings, a few with lights, but mostly either black and white zebra crossings or red and white crossings. Occasionally there were speed bumps or narrower rumble strips to slow cards as they approached pedestrian crossings.

As in England, pedestrians often walked across listening to phones. Sometimes another car or pedestrian would beckon a pedestrian. Occasionally the pedestrian would be beckoned into the path of a second car overtaking the stationery car.

Romanian words P E R I C O L (danger) DE (of) ACCIDENTE (accident). Photo by Angela Lansbury, copyright. 

Warning Signs
Signs in cities warn you to slow, or accident black spots, danger.

Countryside
Signs in the mountains and countryside warn of slow to a certain speed in kilometres, slippery road, hair pin bends, danger, donkeys and carts, cows on road.

Animals, squirrels, birds
We encountered herds of cows. First one cow sees you, then several more. Cows were being driven downhill. Later another driver in our group saw the cows being milked.

Sheep on the road. Flocks of goats.

Birds hopping across. Some creatures, such as owls, play dead in the face of danger.

Coming around a bend we saw a baby squirrel, which made the driver brake and slow to a halt, to the consternation of the car behind. I can't remember whether the driver hooted the squirrel. I tried to look back and see if there was a mess on the road, meaning another road kill like others we had seen, saw nothing, but then we were round the next hairpin bend.

Accidents In Villages and Cities
The first accident we saw was on the main motorway. The potholes were atrocious. Cars and lorries and buses and coaches were weaving between giant potholes, often crossing to the wrong side of the road to avoid potholes. On one occasion a section of deep drop road was cordoned off sending traffic suddenly veering into oncoming traffic.

Upside down car on Romanian road. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

On two lane road we passed an upside down car. One of our UK passengers thought that the Romanian accident rate was higher than the British accident rate.

From the motorway across flat fields with conical hills in the distance, we ended up on the beautiful road to Brasov, up through forested mountains, climbing on hairpin bends. We met a traffic jam approaching one of the tourist town festooned with Cola signs, huge ads, chalet style hotels with steep rooftops, like Disneyland meets Blackpool (for my American readers, Coney island or Disney land - a combination of delightful buildings, immaculate scenery and crowds of jolly pedestrians and souvenir shops).

You hear the sirens and see flashing lights. The word for police in Romanian is almost the same but looks a bit like Political.

The word for ambulance looks the same but again add a T.

Finally we round the cause of the traffic jam. Two written-off vehicles, head on collision. That was the second accident we saw.

Pedestrian Accient
The third accident was a pedestrian. On the outskirts of the town, onto the motorway, a very fast two lane road, a few houses to the right, a vehicle parked half way across the edge of the road and slightly into the road. We saw the flashing lights. Our driver slowed down because of the vehicle partly in the lane ahead and people milling about.

Then we saw three of four people lifting somebody onto what looked like a stretcher. Good, I thought. Help on its way. Alas no.

Then we saw the helpers zip up black around the body. A body bag.

A dead pedestrian. Later, over dinner in our hotel, another of our group of thirty said their driver passed the scene earlier and had seen attempts at resuscitation by pumping on the chest. Obviously, alas, not successful.

More photos on these accidents, and warning signs, later.

We were struck by the number of accidents, three in our first week in Romania. Then we saw another major accident involving two vehicles and an upside down car at S t a n s t e d in the UK. (See previous post.) Still to come: articles on Romania, Dracula, and Romanian wines.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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How streets, roads, and avenues are different

I thought I knew most of these, such as avenues having trees. I was not aware that the American Beltway is what in England would be called a Circular Road (like the North Circular).

North and South Circular
In London, as you drive around the North Circular, it disappears and you are on the South Circular, same road. This once confused me, when somebody said they lived on the North Circular, and they were actually a few streets into the South Circular, but hadn't thought to tell me that the street changes names and carry on until you reach their house.

Oxford Street
Americans should watch out for the fact that you must use the word street after a street name. In London one of the main streets is called Oxford Street. Why? Because it eventually goes to Oxford - at least it used to do so. However, if you are looking for Oxford Street, and you ask for Oxford, you may get sent to the nearest railway station instead.

Parkway
In America a Parkway has nothing to do with parking. It was originally or is still a road with a park or green garden-like area alongside.

Median (Strip)
What the Americans call a median strip, in England I would call a central reservation.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

French words of the day: blasé; Champs Élysées;

Reading an article about an exhibition in Paris, I immediately focus on French words which are familiar to speakers and readers of English.

French - English
alliance - alliance, joining an ally, partners in peace or business or a club
Alliance Francaises - club of French speakers in countries such as London, England and Singapore, usually a building housing a French restaurant or café, library or bookshop, meeting rooms
amour - love

blasé - nonchalant (there's another French word!), could not care less
nonchalant - non is no, c h a l e u r (oops - must separate the letters because spellcheck turned this word into cholera) is warmth, lack of warmth - could not care less, indifferent
capable (pronounced cap ah bull) - capable (pronounced cape -a-bull)
Champs Elysses - you recognise the name of the French street.
Champs - fields
avenue - wide street usually bordered by trees
boulevard - grand street
entente cordiale - cordial or friendly understanding (a political alliance)
exhibition (the t is pronounced like an s) - exhibition (t is pronounced like sh)
faux - false, as in faux pas, flash step or mistake
finesse - finesse, as in fine - ness or skill
metre - meter in English is measure
kilometre - thousand metres
restaurant - restaurant
restaurateur - restaurateur or restaurant owner or restaurant manager
suede - from the French gants de Suède, gloves from Sweden, soft matt kid leather
tableaux - pictures
voyeur - watcher, onlooker

I have read two sentences and already recognise six French words. You know more French, and use more French than most people realise. (realiser?)

It will soon be lunch time and I have to resist the temptation to drink a kir royale.  Royale is royal with an e on the end.

Angela Lansbury, author, tutor, speaker.