Words which look and sound the same in Italian - travel words for money, shopping and finance

Every day and every year it becomes easer to learn Italian. I just walk down my local high street in London and see the word costa on the caffe. I think of the words for food and drink and place names. 

If you speak English, French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese, you will have a few words from the other languages which are the same, based on, derived from the root language Latin. Spanish is the simplest language. After learning one other language, learning the third one is easier. You know you can learn another language. You recognise vaculary and grammar. The fourth language is easier still. And so on The more languages you speak, the more often you meet people who can help you by speaking to you in that language. .

Americans find it easy to learn Spanish. Spanish is the easiest language. Wikipedia tells you how many hours it takes to learn each language. Language schools know this. Charities and the military which send staff abroad will send their employees on courses, and the time and cost of each course is known. 

You can travel to a country to practise speaking and listening and reading. But we are lucky nowadys. We can do it all on the intnet. Here's a little lesson for today.

 Italian - English

arrivo - I arrive

autobus - bus

bolleta - bill 

costo - cost

credito - credit

finanza - finance

(un) gatto - a cat

maggioranza - majority

molta - a lot of (like multitude)

molte ore - many hours

offerta - offer 

ora - hour/time

posto - place

risorsa - resource

ristorante - restaurant

servizio - service

studiare - to study

ufficio - office

English - Italian

(I) arrive - arrivo

bill - bolleta (I remember the bill would have bowled me over, like a bad letter)

bus - autobus

(a) cat - (un) gatto (c and g sound similar)

cost - costo

credit - credito

finance - finanza

hour - ora

a lot of - molto, molte (reminine plural)

majority - maggioranza 

offer - offerta

office - ufficio

place - posto (I think, his place is at his post)

restaurant - ristorante

resource - risorsa

service - servizio (pronounced sair- vit- see- oh - play the sound in an online dictionary)

(to) study - studiare

time - ora

Useful Websites

Duolingo

Translate google

wikivoyage phrasebook Italian

Please share links to your favourite posts on my blog.

I have several more posts on Italian and learning other languages.

Learn ten Portuguese words from famished to fish

Portuguese - English
x is pronounced sh as in the Chinese place name Xian
I think I shall go to Portugaal to teach English. In Portugal a teacher is called a professor. I shall feel really important.

aluno - student (a loony alumni)
artista - artist

credito - credit
professor - teacher

modelo - model
ovo - egg

peixe - fish
quarto - room (think of the word quarters)

rei - king (like reign)
secretario - secretary

English - Portuguese

artist - artista
credit - credito

egg - ovo (like ovulate)
fish - peixe

king - rei (first three letters the same as reign, the same first two letters as rex and regicide)
model - modelo

room - quarto
secretary - secretario

student - aluno
teacher - professor

Bonus word
hungry - (like famished) com fome / faminto

Useful Websites
https://www.visitportugal.com/en
http://www.visitmadeira.pt/en-gb/homepage
http://visitbrasil.com/en/
https://www.duolingo.com/course/pt/en/Learn-Portuguese-Online

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

How to remove your own shadow from a photo, fix parallel lines, create silhouettes

Problem
I photograph an object on a table and the shadow of my mobile phone and my head is on the lower half of the photo.

Answers
Practise Eliminating Your Own Shadow
Practice with the phone in your hand before taking a photo.

Practise Indoors
1 Practise on your kitchen table.
2 Practise looking through the window at your own garden ready to snap a bird or fox.

(NB Americans simplify spelling, following Webster's dictionary, and use the same spelling for the noun and verb. In traditional British English, to verb uses S, 'to 'practise', but the noun has c, the usual practice'.) 

Outdoors
You won't have time when photographing a moving or living object such as an insect or passing car, so practise in advance likely situations.
1 Stand at a window watching traffic. Practise taking photo through a window to avoid getting your reflection or the street behind you when photographing through shop windows when window shopping or taking Christmas displays.

2 Go into the garden or park to photograph objects on the ground such as snails, or on a pond.

Indoors
Turn off the overhead light.
Move and photograph near a window which creates light all over the object.
Lean forward so your shadow covers enough of the object to leave just a small lighter contrast at the top of your photo which you can crop out.
Ask somebody else to hold an umbrella above you to mask out the overhead light. A white umbrella will cast light. The bigger the umbrella, the more options you have. When buying an umbrella, remember a white one would be handy when taking photos. In a studio a large white umbrella is used to create even light on a portrait. The umbrella is fixed on a tripod and can be tilted.

Light, Dark and Silhouettes
However, you might deliberately cut out light, for example, to create a silhouette. If standing with your subject's back to a window, their face is all in shadow, which is no good. However, if they stand sideways against the light (in French called contre jour) you get the profile of the forehead and nose and lips which can be interesting.

Ask an expert in your family. I did and was told:

Parallel Lines
Move the camera to one side or away from an object on a table. However, this may distort the picture by changing the parallel lines.

Edit distorted parallel lines with an option called perspective.

We bought a photo from a professional who took photos of the interior and exterior of Guildhall. Using a camera tilted up (to get the tops of buildings, columns, rooftops and spires), everything was leaning.

You might choose to leave a photo like this. Alternatively, you might leave it or do it deliberately to create a sense of being small and dominated by buildings looming over you.

Buying and Editing
Your own eye sees this but with a camera it is distorted. We paid for the photo we liked the most and downloaded it. Afterwards, having downloaded the photo we have paid for (which now has the watermark removed) we can correct and edit it ourselves.

Credits and Conditions
When loading up you might wish to check what the conditions are. Wikipedia has various conditions chosen by the original photographer, which may be free use including giving them credit, or simply using it, either allowing you to edit photos as you like, sometimes not changing it because you might distort it and this could reflect badly on the reputation of the photographer who created the original image.

Credits For Photographer and Editor
I generally put, 'photo taken by ...' (name of photographer), edited by ... (my name). This gives me credit for improvements. However, the photographer might disagree that my version is better, in which case to protect them and protect myself I have made it clear that there's another version by the original photographer.

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

Malay and Indonesian - practical words from school to sea

Problem
I pick up leaflets in a Singaporean Community Centre. By mistake I have picked up the Malay version.

Solution
Later I find an English version. By comparing the two, or copying words from the Malay leaflet into Google translate, I can find words on subjects which interest me and are practical.

Spelling and Pronunciation
Double words are plurals. For example, anak is child and anak-anak is children. There are no double letters. Every vowel is pronounced.

Malay - English
a i r / a y e r - water
anda - your
bank - bank
dan - and
i n s u r a n s - insurance
 j a n u a r i - January
Kredit - credit
laut - sea
p o l i t e k n i k - polytechnic (looks like polite  - k - nik !)
p r o f e s i o n a l - professional
p r o g r a m - programme
sekolah - school
skim - scheme
u n i v e r s i t i - university
w a n i t a - woman

English - Malay
and - dan
bank - bank
credit - K r e d i t
Politeknik - polytechnic
programme - p r o g r a m
sea - laut
university - universiti
water - a  i r / ay e r
woman - w a n i t a
your - anda

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

German words which are clear and confusing - in banks

Problem
1 How do you remember words? In a bank you may want to check your bank account, and ask how much money is in it.

Answer
Look for similarities. Similar letters or similar sounds.

German - English
Kreditkarten - Credit card
Finanzierung - credit, financing (looks like finance)
Frist (eine Frist) - deadline (a deadline)
Geld - money (originally it would have been gold with gold and silver coins)
Konto - account

English - German
account - Konto (German nouns begin with capital letters, unlike English words, where only p r o p e r names have capital letters) (P r o p e r was turned into paper by automatic spell correction.)
credit - Finanzierung
deadline - Frist (I think of rush to be first past the post before the race is over and you've missed your chance, like the hare and the tortoise)

Tips
Watch out for in the account which is auf - in this context meaning in, not from.

To test yourself, use Duolingo website which can be used on a laptop or as an ap on your mobile phone. You will have to go through the course from lesson one onwards in order. Unlike a paper textbook, or phrase book, you cannot skip around from one chapter to another.

Angela Lansbury, author and teacher of English and languages. Please share my posts.

Photo Credits: why you need to credit a photographer

Problems
1 I have written a post on another blog on blogger.com and the pictures and layout are all in HTML which I do not yet know. In the olden days, until earlier 2016, I could see the pictures in my draft text in the create box on the create and edit page. So I could know which picture was where and move it up and down into the right part of the page to match the text. Now, when I create my blog post, when I am creating I cannot see how big the photo is until I see the preview.

2 Why do you need to credit a photographer? (Why not? because it's a nuisance if you move photos around. You might forget to do it. The speaker is more important to you and the reader than the photographer.) Who should get the credit for the picture of one of the speakers? Often the photographer will say they don't need a credit.

3 TripAdvisor rejected our photographer's photos with his copyright symbol on them.

Sometimes I think that a post is so out of focus that I don't want a credit.

Answer
I need to credit each picture, especially if I have more than one photographer to avoid confusion if somebody wants more pictures of an event. And give credits for photos. Some professional photographers (me and my husband) insist on it.

Story
The websites are increasingly asking if it’s your photo. You have to state author’s own work or public domain. Wikipedia is getting tougher - you must only use your own photo and can’t even have a church or shop signboard with text because it’s somebody else’s copyright unless it’s in the far distance. or if you have permission to use it. You tube rejects videos which have you playing a piece of music which is copyright, even if its your piano, clarinet. Happy birthday has only just been make public after repeated court cases in the USA.
I need at least couple of hours with my husband to do the HTML and I’ll do it this evening or at the weekend.

Tip
Make a drawing or mind map of each post.
Introduction, paragraphs 1, 2, 3 with the suitable photo. Add the photo to each section not at the end. If you have to add photos later, do your blog post in pages outside first and then load it up with the photo captions in the correct place in order.
When copying a photo from Wikipedia, include the dete of the photo and the author in your Information caption, or the details. That way you can find a Wikipedia

Action
1 Create a fold for draft blog posts.
2 On a non busy day or in the evening after your important daytime tasks are done, add captions to pictures including names of photographers or authors of photos.
3 Superimpose your author name on all your photos to protect copyright.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
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