More Albanian - needs on arrival and getting about

 

Flag of Albania.

I made lists of words I thought I would need to use or recognize when travelling, common words and useful words.

Words which are the same or nearly the same are hotel and farmaci.

Common words

and - dhe

danger - rreziku

the -të

or - ose

you - ju

warning -paralajmërim 

dhe - and të - the ju - you

ose - or paralajmërim - warning

rreziku- danger

You may need 

Linking words English - Albanian

at/beside - në/përkrah

from - nga

to - te

right/left - djathtas /majtas

yes/no po/jo

please/thank you - ju lutem/faleminderit

hello/goodbye - përshëndetje / mirupafshim

boy/girl - djale vajze

man/women - burrë/grua

Albanian - English (alphabetically) 

burrë/grua - man/woman

djale vajze - boy/girl

djathtas majtas - right/left

ju lutem/faleminderit - please/thank you

në/përkrah - at/beside
nga - from

përshëndetje / mirupafshim - hello/goodbye
po/jo - yes/no
te - to

Countries

Albania/Albanian

England/English

America/American

London/Londoner

Germany/German

Shqipëri/shqiptar
Angli/Anglisht
Amerikë/Amerikane
Londër/Londër
Gjermani/gjerman

Albanian - English

ajo - she

ju - you ( similar to the French tu, two letters, but more like d'you, to remember the j, I think you juvenile)

bar/snack bar/coffee shop/bistro/cheap restaurant/fine restaurant/local style restaurant/national food

From Maps

bridge - urë

cafe - kafene

car park - parkim makinash

city - qytet

drinking water

drug store - farmaci

entrance - hyrje

exit - dalje

free - falas

hotel - hotel

urë - BRIDGE
kafene- CAFE
parkim makinash - CAR PARK
qytet - CITY
ujë i pijshëm - DRINKING WATER
farmaci - pharmacy (UK) drug store (USA)
hyrje - entrance
dalje - exit
falas - free
hotel - hotel

Useful websites

wikivoyage

Start Albanian with ling app

Flag of Albania. Wikipedia.

The Ling app course on Albanian started with the alphabet, not too difficult. Then it progressed to pictures of a man, women, boy and girl. You matched them up with pictures and written words.

English - Albanian

you - ju

boy - djalë

he - ai

girl - vajze

man - njeri

she - ajo

Woman -- gruaja

please - ju letem (my memory aid is it is two words like por favor, in Spanish, ju is you, think if you let me,  or do you let me ju letem)

Now you can use translate google

and - dhe

thank you -faleminderit 

hello - Përshëndetje - (more challenging)

goodbye - mirupafshim

Albanian - English

you - ju ( similar to the French tu, but more like d'you, to remember the j, I think you juvenile)

Well, folks, that's all. faleminderit, dhe mirupafshim.

Useful Websites

 https://play.ling-app.com/learn/unit/1/lesson/1

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Albanian_phrasebook

Help with from Facebook on learning Swedish on Duolingo

 I reached a certain level of my Duolingo Swedish course and the system asked me if I wanted to share an announcement on Facebook about my achievement. I did.

The Duloingo system put up a picture not saying the language but listing words I had learned.

This forced me to check whether I could still remember them. I could, six out of eight, and in context I can turn them into English. But the word endings were a puzzle. Was it book or books? To laugh, I laugh? I went into translate Google to check the Swedish English and turn the results back English to Swedish and again reversing. Here are the results.

Swedish - English

1 flicka - girl

2 morgon = morning, like the German, morgen

3 bocker looks like bok which is book - is bocker books?

Yes. Add two dots over the o and add two letters of the alphabet and you have the plural, books.

4 Kommer looks like come and sounds like come. It translates as comes. 

5 fragar with a circle above the first a, ask?

fraga is ask. fragar (with a circle above the first a) is questions

6 skrattar - laughing

7 hastar with two dots over the first a is horses

Simple Wiki explains the pronunciation

There are three characters in the Swedish language that are not used in English. These are å, ä and ö. The letter å is a vowel sound between [a] and [o], similar to the English word awe. The letter ä is a vowel sound similar to [ɛ], like in the English word bed. The letter ö is a vowel sound between [o] and [ɛ], pronounced [øː] like the u in the English word burn. These characters are also used in the Finnish language, while Norwegian and Danish languages replace ä and ö with similar characters æ and ø.

Swedish also has some important differences in grammar. Definite articles are suffixed onto the end of their nouns, so ett hus (a house) becomes huset (the house). Also unlike English, Swedish uses two grammatical genders called Common and Neuter. Nouns of the Common gender are sometimes called "en words", and many words for living (or once-living) things are "en words". Nouns of the Neuter gender are sometimes called "ett words".

Swedish	English
Ett/En	One
Två	Two
Tre	Three
Fyra	Four
Fem	Five
Sex	Six
Sju	Seven
Åtta	Eight
Nio	Nine
Tio	Ten
Ja	Yes
Nej	No
Jag	I
Du	You
Mig	Me
Han	He
Hon	She
Vi	We
De/dem	They/them
Jag är	I am
Sverige	Sweden
Hus	House
Hem	Home
Väg	Way
Björnar	Bears
Hjälp	Help

Basic Swedish Expressions

God dag/Hej	Good day/Hello
Hur mår du?	How are you?
Jag mår bra, tack	Very good, thank you
Tack	Thank you
Tack så mycket	Thank you very much
God morgon	Good morning
God eftermiddag	Good evening
Hej då	Goodbye

Useful websites

Swedish and other languages to learn

duolingo.com

Swedish language in Wikipedia

Please share links to this post and your favourite posts.

Further Spanish words - my name, wife, son and so on

People
English-Spanish

the boy - el nino

the girl (is) - la nina ...

English

my wife

my husband

my son

my daughter-in-law

his fiancee

my name is

his name is

her name is

Spanish

mi mujer (Mujer is woman, which is apparently the ok translation for wife in economical Spanish but in English it sounds rude to call your wife 'my woman'.)

mi esposo (The Spanish word esposo sounds like the English word spouse. Note that o for man and a for a woman.)

mi hijo

mi nuera

su prometida (like the English word promised)

Me llamo

se llama

su nombre es

I picked out a series of sentences I wanted to say in Spanish and ran them through Google Translate (which is translate google in the search).

I laboriously copied each translated word. On returning to a set which I had not yet matched up, I found it interesting to test whether I could translate back from the Spanish to the English and vice versa. So I have decided to leave the untranslated version so that you can read down and go back and try doing this until you know every word or most words.

About The Author

Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, blogger, author of 20 books including an ebook on Improve Your English, from Amazon, and teacher of English and Business English and other languages to individuals, colleges and companies. For more information on learning languages see the previous posts. For information on sites to see in Spain and Portugal see the other posts. Please bookmark your favourite posts and share the links with your family, friends and colleagues.

A New Way To Learn Malay With Pictures And Speech

In Singapore the undersground railway (MRT) station, Botanic Gardens, is Kebun Bunga in Malay. Kebun is garden; flower (the adjective) comes second. My memory aid, bunga like bulb. The initial letter b of botanic and the initial letter b of bunga are similar. The G of garden and the k or kebun sound similar. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Emergency exit advice in Singapore on train. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Put the words  individually into Translate and this is what they mean.

Pintu - door

keluar - exit

kecemasan - worry

di - in

sebelah - next

hadapan - presence

dan - and

belakang - back

kereta - train

api - fire

However, run the words consecutively and you get the result:

The exit of anxiety before the front and rear of the train

Building works warning sign in English and Malay. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Translation of sign on building works in Singapore  Malay - English
bahaya - danger
jangan - do not
dekat - close (adjective not verb)
Jangan dekat - Do not get close (in other words keep away)

Problem
I am learning to recognize Malay words from signs in Singapore, but not how to hear them.

Answer
I signed up for the free introductory lessons in Malay. The first lesson shows you pictures of man, woman, boy girl, bicycle and ship.

I noticed something I had read earlier on Duolingo, that nouns start with a pre-fix SE. Malay is logical, easy, although sometimes longer.

For example, plurals: two or more boys, instead of remembering the plural, which in English often adds an 's', but could be 'es' as in wishes, or a total change as in wolf and wolves, child, children, in Malay you simply double the word, so anak for child, for children becomes anak-anak.

The modifiers (words which modify or change or add to the information in the noun) go first in English, but second in Malay. (French also has adjectives after nouns. Moulin rouge is red windmill.)

If you translate word by word as you think into another language, the structure come out wrongly. This applies with a translation from a translation device and when you are thinking.

That is why it is good to learn phrases instead of individual words. You get the phrase right. Your brain gets a feeling of where the adjectives and nouns and verbs should be positioned in a sentence in another language.

Malay
Malay can be simple, at other times it looks long and complicated. For boy, you have three words" person (orang), male, small/young. The same for girl, person (orang). Orang as in orang utan. Before you even start learning Malay, you know one word.

Cross the bridge to the border from Singapore to Johor Bahru and you will see more Malay language signs. Or go up to the towers featured in the film.

Malay is one of the four languages in Singapore.

Useful Website
https://l-lingo.com/webapp/#/onboarding?product=mly&referer=https:%2F%2Fl-lingo.com%2Fen%2Flearn-malay

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtogapher, author and speaker. If you want a an entertaining and infomative and encouraging talk or workshop on learning Malay and other languages, please contact me. Share links to this post with your friends and colleagues. 

How to Remember Basic Brazilian Portuguese Words

Problem
It's easy enough to see that o menino is a boy and mulher is mother when I am reading, but how do I remember the Portuguese when I want to say something?

I learned these words six months ago. It's a lot quicker this time. But I still have to remind myself the first time I do the exercise and get it all wrong, or take ten second to think. When you are talking, you want the words to flow out automatically, not keep people waiting whilst you hunt for words and construct a sentence.

Answers
At first I had trouble remembering which endings went with which word, feminine and masculine. But it's pretty easy. The prepositions and adjective match the nouns. Think of it like matching colour on a string of beads. All the blues for boys on one side for one bracelet, all the pinks for girls on the other side for another bracelet. One you have got an o or a ending for the first word, the next word matches it.

o menino - boy , like the Buddy Holly song, "Oh, boy, oh boy ..."
a menina - girl

Oh - boy.
Ah - a girl. Girl may be written with the letter I, but the sound is a or er.

Portuguese - English
o homen - man ( I remember: Oh, ho, men. No just one man.)
a menina - girl
o menino - boy
a mulher - woman (looks like mother, every woman is a mother, but how do I remember U L? You love every woman?
voce - you (like the French vous which is you plural or you formal to a stranger)

English - Portuguese
boy - o menino
bread - o pao
girl - a menina
man - o homen
milk -
woman - mulher

you - voce

STOP - I haven't finished this post or put in the accents. I'll come back later. Go to next post!

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

Serbian Language Secrets revealed, the Cyrillic alphabet, sounds and colours

Problem

A colleague of mine is employing some people from Serbia to do work for him online, helping with his news website. He says it's cheaper than employing people in the UK. If he writes to them, no problem. 

But speaking to them on the phone or on Skype would be a problem. So would going to meet them. He can't pronounce their names!

How often would you meet people who speak the Serbian language? Even if you are not planning travelling to Serbia in the near future, you might meet Serbian speakers in Bosnia, Croatia, the Czech Republic or Romania. Wiki says:

Official status
Official language in	Serbia  Bosnia and Herzegovina  Kosovo[a]
Recognised minority language in	Croatia  Hungary[3]  Montenegro  Slovakia[4]  Czech Republic[5][6]  Macedonia[7]  Romania

Serbian Letters

Cyrillic Latin IPA value А а A a /ä/ Б б B b /b/ В в V v /v/ Г г G g /ɡ/ Д д D d /d/ Ђ ђ Đ đ /dʑ/ Е е E e /e/ Ж ж Ž ž /ʐ/ З з Z z /z/ И и I i /i/ Ј ј J j /ʝ/ К к K k /k/ Л л L l /l/ Љ љ Lj lj /ʎ/ М м M m /m/

Cyrillic Latin IPA value Н н N n /n/ Њ њ Nj nj /ɲ/ О о O o /ɔ/ П п P p /p/ Р р R r /ɾ/ С с S s /s/ Т т T t /t/ Ћ ћ Ć ć /tɕ/ У у U u /u/ Ф ф F f /f/ Х х H h /x/ Ц ц C c /ts/ Ч ч Č č /ʈʂ/ Џ џ Dž dž /ɖʐ/ Ш ш Š š /ʂ/

How do you remember them? You'll have to make up some memory aids. Here are some of mine:

The b looks like a Big B written in a hurry so it's like a small b and the small b looks like a b written in a hurry of a number 6. Six bees. however the B shape is like v. I think of the word believe. When I see the letter b, which is at the start of the word believe, I go to the end of the word believe and find the V.

The Gamma is next. (Alpha, beta, gamma). It looks like a pointing r. Revving up. Go go go! Get the Gamma.

The D or delta looks like a door.

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

http://mylanguages.org/serbian_alphabet.php

Serbian Latin Alphabet

From Wikipedia; credit author Albatalad.

Serbian Names

Once you have managed to read the names, you need to know how to say them. I found a helpful website which gives names in both a Latin and a Serbian lettering plus a recording of the sound.

How do you get to hear the name? You see a wide oblong with the triangle on the left. At first I kept clicking on the oblong or on the teeny symbol alongside the triangle. I would tap several times and eventually hit the right place by chance. I thought the site was slow or not working. Then I wondered if it was me.

You have to be sure to click on the triangle, not just anywhere in the oblong.

The girl's name Anna looks like AHA in the Serbian script. (I remind myself, 'aha - it's Anna! But the vowel is pronounced more like u n n a , or uh-ha.

https://www.hearnames.com/pronunciations/serbian-names/serbian-boy-names/

https://www.hearnames.com/pronunciations/serbian-names/serbian-girl-names

https://www.hearnames.com/pronunciations/serbian-names/serbian-surnames

I decided to try to learn a couple of words. I went onto another website and chose colours. At first I could not see the icon for play. Then I realised I had to download flash player in order to see the bar which starts with the triangle pointing forward for go.

My next problem was that the words didn't match up with the colours in the columns. then I realised you read the two words on each line horizontally, zig zagging down the page. The words which sounded almost the same as English were Orange and Brown.
http://mylanguages.org/multimedia/serbian_audio_colors.php

If you go to Serbia, what is there to see? The Nikola Tesla museum. It is in Belgrade, the capital city. Belgrade is known as the White City, The White Castle, and The city which never sleeps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla_Museum
http://www.nikolateslamuseum.org/web/index

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English, public speaking, and learner and speaker of other languages. Please share links to my posts.

Second Steps In Learning Norwegian

Problem
How do I tell male from female.

Answer
Look at the letters and match them with the English.

Norwegian - English
en - a / an

Gutt - boy (he's a good boy)
(en) kvinne - woman  (the v looks like a w, the letter n is an both k v i n e and woman I Know she is a woman)
en jente - a girl (a gentle little girl, j and g sound similar)
eple - apple (looks very similar, last three letters the same say e p l e and it sounds like apple)
er - is (pronounced like are!)
han - he (letter a like the word Man or Mann)
hun - she (pronounced like the word wOman)
ikke - not (looks like icky - not what I want)
Jeg - I (capital J looks like I)
og - and (but don't pronounce the g)

English - Norwegian
a/an - en
and - og
apple - e p l e
boy - gutt
girl - dente
I - Jeg
not - ikke

However, the words are not pronounced the way they are written. You must listen to the words on
duolingo.com

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and learner of other languages. Please share links to my posts.