Why & How To Speak To Time - In Your Local Club, Venues Away From Home Or Overseas

Why be early? You might find that people who arrive early are given a free drink. Or get first go at the buffet food.

You might miss the deadline for a contest. They might award a prize to those entering early.

Should you speak to time? Should a meeting start on time?

It helps to know the culture of a country. Some countries keep strictly to time. Eight a clock means start at eight and not one minute later. Eight means eight prompt, not after eight. 

In other countries time is elastic, rubber time, and eight means not before eight. Rubber time is also called Arabic time, Jewish time, and Polish time. 

In the USA, Californian cities are more relaxed, summer or holiday time. East coast USA, especially New York, is more businesslike, on time.

To clarify for attendees, it would help to say, doors open at 7.30, for a prompt start at 8. Alternatively, specify: doors open for 8, for a start around 8.30, when all speakers have arrived.

You also have to know whether proceedings will be delayed for latecomers. For having the majority present. To allow for the later arrival of an essential person, or VIP. 

Advantages Of being On Time

It is easier to list the disadvantages of running late. Some clubs and cultures start at the stated time. Why? For the benefit of those who are being collected on time, catching buses, last trains. Taxis might charge double after midnight, or be unobtainable. Other audience members need to get home because babysitters plan to leave on time. (The babysitter might charge double for an extra half hour, leave a baby or child alone in an empty house, or never work for you again). 

If you are a member of Toastmasters Internation fulfilling a 5-7 minute speech project, in theory it should be kept to time. However, occasionally the timing is absurd for the subject. Why is the speech on blogging only 3 minutes! You have to spend the first minute explaining what a blog is. After writing 8 posts, you are left with two minutes to talk about blogging.

However, as a general rule, the timing is a good discipline. In a contest if you are one minute over time, you get disqualified.

If a real life if a venue closes on the hour, you could upset the caretaker. You might be deliberately or accidentally locked in.

Outside Toastmasters, you have to know whether it is possible to go over time, or not. When I used to speak about travel on the radio, my section had to finish before the news which started on the hour. If I went over time, my microphone was cut off and the newsreader came on!

Solutions To Lateness & Absence

If you are running late, it is a courtesy to phone the organizer - also any others who might need to know.

If you fall ill, you could give a speech or slide show to somebody else to present.

Getting People To Turn Up To Your Conference, Restaurant Event Or Meeting

Harrovian Speakers Club. Angela in red on the right of the photo. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

I visited my home club, Harrovians, in June. One third of the people in the picture were visitors. That's great. But where were all the members?

I was able to give a last-minute speech, replacing somebody who dropped out.

Every restaurant has no-shows, people who promise to turn up but don't, people who can't come even if they paid and remembered, because they are stuck overseas, or a relative fell ill, they double-booked by mistake, they are working late, or so busy working that they forgot, their babysitter cancelled or some other minor or major mishap.

Poiticians take great pains to get voters to the polling booths. They remind everybody.

There's a lesson in that. If it's important to you that people turn up, make sure they do. Do what politicians do. Organize transport for the elderly and infirm or anybody who asks for it. Phone up to check people remember the date. Assure them that their presence matters.

So simple. For event organizers. Phone them up.Remind them of the date. Make them feel important, valued.

I hear you saying - I can't phone them all.

Yes, you can.

But it would take all day. There are too many people on the list!

Two solutions:
1 Divide the list and get all your committee members or commited members to phone. Ask everybody to phone the next person on the list.
2 Make a mailing list and send everybody a reminder.
3 Create a what's app group and send a reminder.

Some people only turn up if they have a role, such as a speech to deliver. get as many people as possible on the agenda.

Our Harrovians agenda lists a "Reserve Speaker".

To attend a toastmasters meeting anywhere in the world, go to Find a club. Singapore has about 200+ clubs.

The clubs where I am a member and which I recommend are:

Harrovians
HOD

About Toastmasters
16,600 clubs in 143 countries.
Number of Toastmaster Clubs
Worldwide: 16,600+
U.S. clubs: 8,800+
International clubs (not including U.S.):
7,800

Useful Websites
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club

About the Author
Angela Lansbury is a member of four Toastmasters International Speakers clubs, two in London, England and two in Singapore. Need a speaker in a hurry - call Angela.
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Learning languages - for the student, widowed, divorced, unemployed, bored, introvert or extravert

Problem
How much time can one spend learning languages? How much progress can one make? Can you do it free or cheaply?

Living In Europe Makes Learning Easy
I remember hearing that my sister-in-law's father spoke eight languages. He died and now he's the legend and the first thing I think of him is that he spoke eight languages. He was born in a country surrounded by others who did not speak his language. Every year, even every weekend, he could take a trip to another country and practice a language.

French For All
The French word for thank you is merci, and that also works in Romania and Bulgaria.


Living In England - it's easy
Wait a minute - did he have an advantage which you and I don't have? If you live in England, you can drive or hitchhike up to Scotland and learn Gaelic and Scottish or west to Wales. Or cross the channel to Belgium where they speak French and Dutch. If you did that every year, you and your children or widowed grandparent could pick up a few words of another language easily.

But you don't have to travel. London is full of foreigners. You could teach English to somebody else in exchange for them learning your language.

Look on any bus, not just in summer. You are surrounded by people who speak other languages. Lots of them would love a free English lesson from you, in exchange for teaching you a few words. In London, you have cultural centres for the French, German and Polish speaking groups. Toastmasters International has clubs which are bilingual in French and English, or are for those who speak or want to learn Polish.

USA
If you live in the USA you could cross to Canada and pick up or brush up your French, or go to Mexico and learn Spanish, or just spend a weekend reading Spanish signs from bilingual notices and learning Spanish. The USA has an online Spanish-English club. Look at their website for bilingual announcements.

Religions - Spanish, Hebrew or Arabic
If you are a church-goer, you could attend services aimed at or attended by speakers of Spanish or Portuguese.

Are you Jewish or would you like to learn Hebrew? Pop along to a synagogue or if you think there might be a security problem, phone them up and ask if they run Hebrew classes. Look in a Jewish museum or Holocaust museum or online for books on learning Hebrew. Go to an Israeli restaurant. Look for a bagel shop. A kosher shop. Read the labels on the kosher goods in your local supermarket.  You'll soon pick up the reversed c, the SH, and the reversed r for kosher. That's three letters of the Hebrew alphabet already, without any time or much effort.

Is Arabic something you would like to master? Try a local mosque, or the attached cultural centre or bookshop. Go to a halal restaurant.

Asia
It all looks a mystery doesn't it, Tamil, Korean, Vietnamese, hopeless! If you have nothing else to do, take a language class. Instead of doing flower arranging, or calligraphy, take a language class. Or if you would really prefer to do flower arranging and calligraphy, in the break ask the teacher or a fellow pupil to teach you a few words and write them down in a dedicated notebook so you can read them on the way home.  Tell the family, or your colleagues, ostensibly only to enlighten them, but actually in addition to reinforce your own memory.

Singapore
In Singapore, at first, it seems hard. You have Chinese which is impossible to understand or read, the same goes for Tamil. If you learn Chinese, then you find yourself have lunch in little India where Chinese is of no use. Tamil is not used in most of Singapore amongst the Chinese speaking people.

But if you lived in civilised Singapore, you hear the Chinese, Malay and Tamil announcements on the train system (MRT) every day. Malay (which is the same as Indonesian) is the easiest.

Join Meetups (free for you, the organizers of meetings pay to be listed). In Singapore in July 2018 I was notified of Meetups for English, French, German and polyglot (multilingual) social gatherings in coffee shops, bars and hawker centres (food courts).

Toastmasters International has meetings in all-French or all-Mandarin or all-Tamil and a small number of bilingual clubs. An Italian-Chinese club has been proposed by an Italian-Chinese couple.

Chinese and Community Clubs
You could join a Chinese class at a Community Club to meet local people. Alternatively, go to the YMCA, to meet more expats and those friendly to expats.

Mosques and Arabic
Again, there are the mosques for Arabic.  Many halal restaurants and food packing.

Synagogues and Hebrew
Singapore has synagogues and the synagogue shop for Hebrew or kosher food. Security is tight in the beautiful Orthodox religious buildings, so check in advance, be prepared to send details of your identity, and be prepared to show your identity documents to security on arrival. All over Asia, you will find outreach orthodox groups who have Sabbath meals.

All over Asia and the world, you will find little groups of Liberal Jews, mainly Americans, sometimes with a visiting rabbi for festivals, meeting in homes.

Polyglots
If I were to spend just five minutes a day, I could pick one the three other working languages of Singapore, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. Fifteen minutes a day, and I could pick up all three. Three hundred words a year would be a great start. After two, three, or four years, I could have a go at all the languages. by the end of ten years I would be fluent in all three. When I die, my family and friends will be in awe of me as a person who spoke four languages. (As I speak French already, that would be five.)

How To Make Time
So what can you do? Are you really so short of time? Do you have any other plans? Do you know anybody who is bored or depressed or could start on this programme, with you, or on their own?

Busy, working people, may have time at airports or on public transport. Students, the widowed, the divorced, the bored, the lonely, could find a new interest and join a club and feel proud and confident at learning a new skill.

Saving Money and Earning Money
In Europe you can take a one-week or one-month intensive course in learning a language or training to be a teacher of ESL (English as a second language).

If you don't want to spend the time and money, with a little determination, you could do the same at home. If you have a week to spare, or a year to spare, and you are a student, unemployed, or retired, you could spend a six-hour day starting a language.

You could spend 12 hours over a two-day weekend. You could spend 18 hours over a three day weekend of Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

You could spend 24 hours over a four-day long weekend. You could spend 30 hours allowing three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon, to teach yourself with a free online course.

Job-hunting
Maybe you need to get a job. You have studied long enough. If you are between jobs, job-hunting, allow one-hour first thing in the morning to send out applications. Or spend the morning on your job applications. Postpone until the afternoon or evening time for the languages. Then start learning.

Or run off a CV (resumé) to drop into local businesses. Use the fact that you are learning a language to get into conversation with the receptionist or shop or business owner. Then spend the rest of the day learning your language. If you get an interview you have a topic of conversation which makes you different from the rest and shows you are keen to learn new skills.

It takes your mind off worrying. You make use of your time. You have something to say at a job interview.

If you don't get a job that week, at least you have done something with your time. By the end of the year you will be able to look for jobs using somebody who speaks the language.

Parents and Grandparents
What if you are not working, stuck at home with children? As parents or grandparents, you could teach your children or grandchildren, or help them with their homework, listen to them reciting numbers, singing nursery rhymes, or watching language programmes.

House-sitters, Babysitters and Dog-walkers
As a babysitter, you can sing a lullaby to a baby in their own or a foreign language, entertain a toddler, keep them in one place out of trouble learning languages.

If you are walking a dog, the dog won't mind if you practise your languages. Or you can listen to a language tape, whilst still watching the dog whilst it runs around with other dogs in the devoted doggie corner of a park.

Esperanto and Hungary
If you are stuck at home, ill in bed, no good at languages, you could take up Esperanto and find a penpal. Esperanto is simple compared to other languages, only 16 rules. It's a language taught in schools in Hungary.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. If you want an entertaining and inspiring talk about learning languages, for a club or college, please contact me. If you want to learn a new language, I can give private lessons in person or on Skype. Make a note of my name in case you ever need it for yourself or a friend. 

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Starting to learn Chinese Greetings - words, translations, pictures, memory aids, reminders

Problem
What's the quickest, easiest way to learn Chinese, which costs little in case I drop it, but will keep me going?

Answer
Duolingo. Why? At the moment the beginners' courses are all free. It is on both a laptop and a mobile phone, although the phone version seems restricted, in terms of the languages available and functions available. The system sends you daily reminders. I might ignore them if I am busy for a day, or a week, but eventually, I will go back and there are many stretches of a week or more when I work solidly and consistently.

Even if after a lapse I have to start at the beginning again, the second time around goes quicker and more easily.

Chinese starters
If you take a tour in China your guide will often teach you one or two phrases, most commonly the greeting equivalent to hello, which is ni haou. (Pronounced 'knee how?' I think of it as greeting granny and asking her, 'how are your knees?')

I went to a bilingual Chinese-English Toastmasters international meeting where the Chinese speaking Toastmasters of the evening kept asking Ni haou and getting the reply haou. In the interval, I asked what that meant.

The answers were, 'You good?'
'Good!'

So far, so good!

Then the system asks you to pair up the Chinese characters with the spoken words.

Recognizing the written Chinese proved harder. You have to find your own memory aid and create an image or picture using one of more of the strokes.

Ni haou is a longer word in Chinese spoken and more characters.

Ni haou sign starts with what looks like a diagonal tray balanced on a stick lower leg or knee, a big like the letter t with a broad horizontal, diagonal.

I used to be a home tutor. Half the job is leading the pupil through the steps. Half the job is simply being a homework babysitter. The duolingo website does that for you. It breaks the lesson down into small steps. It reminds you daily (like a Herbalife coach or Slimming world weekly lesson).

So now we know three words:

Chinese - English
'how' (haou) - good
'knee' (ni) - you
knee how? - how are you?
'how!' - good (equivalent to 'Good', 'Great!' or 'Very well, thank you')

English - Chinese
you - ni (knee)
good? - how? (haou)
knee how / how are you - ni haou?
good (very well, thank you) - how (haou)

Useful Website
duolingo.com

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