How to learn to roll your r in Bulgaria

I have been trying to roll my r in Bulgaria for several days. Today I think I finally cracked the secret. As I walked along a mountain path, people said good morning or good day in Bulgarian. I recognized the word, although I had never used it. The third or fourth time I started saying it back. Dobre, dobray, dobray.

After I had passed the person, who said it with a rolled r, I kept repeating it. Eventually I found msyelf saying dob thre (as in three). As I panted I could not say the thr sound properly. I was pulling my tongue back quickly, hardly touching the roof of my mouth. I kept saying it, again and again. I was getting closer and closer to saying it correctly. Somethines I missed. But I just kept on trying. Until I met the next native speaker. Again I bid them good day.

Do it like a toddler. Keep repeating it. What I did was ideal. Instead of tiring one person, I tried it on several. Nobody got tired of me or impatient.
So, take a walk in a foreign country, and reapeat a phrase using the sound you cannot pronounce. By the end of several hours, you will stop worrying about it and start saying it closer to the correct version.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and speaker, teacher or English and other languages.

How To Sign Certificates For Contests Neatly

Problem
You are attending a contest and somebody has to sign a certificate. Who should sign? Who has the best handwriting?

Answers
Eight ways to write names neatly on certificates:

1 Print names of contestants / participants on certificates in advance.

2 Chief judge brings two rulers for base line and top line of writing to ensure writing is level and even. 

3 Or mark two horizontal lines in pencil and rub out afterwards, gently, holding corners of paper with white paper to avoid fingermarks, using very soft rubber - putty rubbers about £1 from art shops / Wilko.

4 Ask all judges to submit a sample of John Smith while you are out of the room and ask judges to vote which writing is neatest and get that person to sign.

5 Bring scrap paper and Italic pen and ask the person signing to practice writing neatly, three times, copying a printed version of the names with correct spelling.

6 Insist that anybody signing a certificate writes their own name neatly and with every letter clear, not just a squiggle.

7 If you are chief judge/president, practise writing all the names in advance and your own.

8 Create a letterbox template large enough for the longest name so that the signature kept within it looks neat.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

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.

How To Practise the French Language (or any language)

Problem
How do you keep up a foreign language. (In my case French.)

Answers
1 THINK IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE
As you look up from your desk, or around you on a bus or train or plane, describe the scene in the language you need to practise.

2 READ LABELS
Read the labels on goods and food. When you see the foreign language, read it aloud, slowly then faster.

3 SPEAK FRENCH TO ACQUAINTANCES
When you speak to friends and strangers, tell them that you speak French (or other languages). If they are a native speaker or speak that language, immediately start speaking in that language.

4 KEEP A LANGUAGE NOTEBOOK
Do what I did to expand my vocabulary when I was learning French at grammar school for A level. I bought a small notebook. I folded the pages in half vertically. On the left I headed the column English. The right hand column was headed French.

Every time I came across a new word in French I noted it down with the translation, or I looked up the translation later. When I thought of an English word and didn't know the translation, I added the English word and looked up the translation later.

5 TRANSLATE TRAVEL PAGES & WEBSITES
Look for the French version of websites. Start with the French, and note the words you don't recognise. Then read the English. Then go back to the French. For example, when reading about the bull fight and fair in Dax, France (described in my previous posts) I went onto the website for Dax, which was in French, started reading the French, got tired, looked for the English, then went back to the French.

I thought I spoke French pretty fluently. However, I had a hard job at first telling the difference between a matador and a picador and a toreador in English, never mind the Spanish and French.

Sometimes I can't find the translation symbol on a website. I think to myself, there's no flag showing either their country or mine, but it's a tourist website, so they must have the translate symbol somewhere. I started clicking on all the tiny double letters. Eventually I found that English appeared when I clicked on the letters EN. (I had been looking for UK or GB.) After I read the English, at least skim read it to get the gist of each paragraph, I was encouraged to go back and try reading the French again.

I also read several paragraphs in Spanish, although my knowledge of Spanish is minimal, so many words are similar to English. However, some sentences made no sense because I missed just one word, the subject! Miss that one word and the ten word sentence is incomprehensible. Translate or learn that one word and you can translate a whole sentence, or have the courage to continue reading an entire paragraph.

6 START A BLOG IN FRENCH
Blogger is blogueur.

Story
This week I was in a sauna and spoke to three women who spoke English as a second language. They were initially speaking to each other in Arabic. One was from Egypt, another from Iraq, a third from Morocco. I addressed them in English and they replied in English. When I was left alone with the woman from Morocco, we discovered that we both spoke French as a second language and both wanted to keep up our French. So we started talking in French.

I told her about Duolingo. That free internet language learning website currently has about 12 other languages for speakers of English. I use Duolingo to learn languages other than English and French. But she could use Duolingo to improve her English and French or learn Spanish.

TIPS
www.duolingo.com
https://offqc.com/2013/05/09/clear-up-doubts-about-words-related-to-blogging-in-french-602/ (A French Canadian site)

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

Auteur
Angela Lansbury.

I was going to translate only the signature.

Google translate gave me:
Écrivain et photographe de voyage, auteur et conférencier.

I can translate the whole post.

Here is what I got from Google Translate

Problème
Comment maintenez-vous une langue étrangère. (Dans mon cas français).

Réponses
1 PENSEZ EN LANGUE ÉTRANGÈRE
Lorsque vous regardez de votre bureau, ou autour de vous sur un bus, un train ou un avion, décrivez la scène dans la langue que vous devez pratiquer.

2 LIRE LES ETIQUETTES
Lisez les étiquettes sur les produits et les aliments. Lorsque vous voyez la langue étrangère, lisez-la à haute voix, lentement et plus vite.

3 FALER LE FRANÇAIS À DES ACQUISTIVITÉS
Lorsque vous parlez à des amis et à des étrangers, dites-leur que vous parlez français (ou d'autres langues). S'ils sont un locuteur natif ou parlent cette langue, commencez immédiatement à parler dans cette langue.

Quick Ways To Learn Welsh for: new, school, hat and more

Problem
I am already learning Welsh on Duolingo. How can I go faster?

Answer
List the words - with a memory aid. Then practise.
Go back and redo the lessons every couple of days to reinforce them.

Here are today's words:

English - Welsh
(Spaces inserted because automatic speller keeps changing my words.)
belt - g w r e g y s (memory aid - Good Wide Regulation Yellow Strap - visualise a Japanese obi or a martial arts belt)
blouse - blows
clothes - d i l l a d (I think of don't DILL y DA l l y, put clothes in cupboArD. d i l l a d.)
coat - cot
half slip - p a i s (letter h A l  f  S l I P - PA IS)
hat - het
new - n e w y d d
scarf - s g a r f f
school - y s g o l
suit - s i w t
tie - t e i
trousers - t r o w s u s

Welsh - English
blows - blouse
c o t - coat
d i l l a d - clothes
g  w r e g y s - belt
h e t - hat
n e w y d d - new
p a i s - half slip
s g a r f f - scarf
s i w t - suit
t e i - tie
t r o w s u s - trousers
y s g o l - school

Tips
Free learning on the internet:
www.duolingo.com

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several posts on learning Welsh and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Photographing Groups So All Are Seen - including the photographer

How do you photograph a group so everybody can be seen, with VIPs in the middle?

First take the VIPs or prize winners alone. Then the committee. Then photograph the whole group.

You can't ask visitors or ordinary members to stand at the sides. But you can ask the VIP such as the mayor or president, or visiting speaker to stand in the middle.

You can't tell one person to move back. You can ask the smaller people to stand at the front. Or ask the VIPS or prize winners to sit on chairs at the front holding their trophies.

Sometimes the VIP or President is the person keen to have a photographic memento and also the person with the clever camera or the camera kept handy. In order to get them in the photo, somebody else should swap places with the photographer to take another photo including whoever took the first photo.

An alternative is to use a tripod and a time lapse. The photographer then sets up the camera, on time lapse, makes sure there is a place to stand in the group, warns the group the countdown and dashes into place - reminding everybody to smile.

If you are planning to do this for the first time, practise taking time lapse photos of a group of chairs and rushing into place.

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