What Impressed Me at a Singapore School?

Problem
We have a meeting at a school. I imagine it will be run down and depressing. Hard to find and reach?

Answer
Not at all. A bus stops outside. We are out in the rain between the gatweay and the front entrance. However, the covered path from the front entrance to the school building at the back has open sides but a roof as protection against sun and rain. Along the side of the open-sided corridor created, is a wavy line with historic photos and cpations explaining the history of Singapore and the school and all the inspiring pioneers and people and pupils.

Upstairs in the corridor is a panel of grammatical tips for good English, tongue twisters, common errors by Singaporeans, sentence structure.

Photo by Angela Lansbury.

In the audiotrium, the seats have swivelling trays so you can rest your notepad and pencil. The stage, of course, has a screen for audio-visuals. Up the side aisles, on the walls, are posters with inpsiring messages and sayings, quotations, from famous people.

Outside, turning in the opposite direction another wall has the history of common objects.

The school was in the East of Singapore near Bedok MRT (railway station).

What an inspiration. Not just artwork, but fascinating facts.

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

CHINESE: Chain Ideas For Learning Chinese, learning to speak without pauses, learning number four

Problem
How do you remember sounds, words, phrases and sentences in another language?

Let's look at how I remember the numbers one to four in Chinese.

Don't Translate Every Word
I am always saying and thinking that advanced speakers of English should not be translating word for word from their own languages because the sentence construction is different.

Pausing - Positive or Negative?
One friend of mine pauses constantly mid-sentence. Yet I am always telling people to slow down and pause.

You should pause because you want listeners to grasp an idea. You don't pause because you are seeking the translation for the next half of the sentence.

There's no good way to pause when you merely look and sound lost. If your voice lifts anxiously and hesitantly, ending like a question, the listeners think you have finished the sentence. Too many high note question-like ending make you sound confused, anxious, nervous.

You don't know where you are going. The listener doesn't know either. If I, as an English speaker find it difficult to piece together all the fragments to make whole sentences, another listener whose first language is not English will find it even harder to decipher the meaning.

On the other hand, if you come to the end, apparently, by lowering your voice, at the end of incomplete sentences, the listener has the same trouble with lots of disconnected bits. It's like a series of sentences in a traffic jam. You keep putting on the brakes. Just as the listener thinks you have finished, maybe the speech is over, you launch off again.

Following a pause with the word and does not help, but hinders. The listener doesn't know whether the 'and' clause is attached to the previous sentence, cuddling up, twinned, on the same theme.

Or is it an additional point, a different point, a more important point, like a sentence starting 'Furthermore ...!", an idea like a police car driving up behind in a slow convoy on the same theme, trying to overtake the previous idea?

The reader or listener gets tired. Otherwise the series of sentences with so many mid-sentence pauses that you cannot identify the ends of sentences is just a series of fragments.

A speech should be like a page, neatly divided up into three sections with sub-headings.

Now let's go back to learning.

When you start to learn, you hear lots of unidentifiable sounds and see lots of symbols on a page.
First, you want to learn some letters, or words, easy ones, which can link to ideas you already know.

The Chinese are good at linking sounds to objects. They links words with high tones and low tones to different words. A bit like Pitmans shorthand, where a dot in the air has a different meanting to one on the line of below it.

After you have learned two or three words, a couple of nouns, or names of people, or animals or objects, you can create a simple sentence.

Learning Vocabulary, one word at a time
Yet when I am learning a foreign language I am learning each word with its translation, one by one, seeking a link.

Is my first idea wrong? Is my second idea wrong? Or is there a time when one should transition and make the great leap forward into thinking whole phrases and sentences in another language?

Some words are 'false friends. The word for four is so similar to death in Chinese that you don't use the written number four as a house number or in a motorbike numberplate or in a gift because it is unlucky.

I used to have trouble remembering the number four in Chinese. The first three numbers were easy.

The written symbols for one and two and three are easy. They are parallel horizontal lines, like Roman numerals on their side. The same number as the numbers they describe. One two three. A single is in one, and part of the word for Monday. Two lines for two; three lines for three, like a pile of three pieces of paper, or books.

Then I remembered 'four' sounds like death. The symbol for four looks like a curtained hospital bed. The symbolic meaning is: Dying and death in hospital. The sound is similar to: Will you sue? Yes, sir. The number? The four sides of a square. Sentence to remember the four numbers, (w)e err, san(itorium), (sue), Sir. The Japanese numbers for one to four or five sound similar.

• 1: 一 (壹) yī
• 2: 二 (Traditional:貳) èr
• 3: 三 (Traditional:參) sān
• 4: 四 (肆) sì

Author
Angela Lansbury

Learning Languages: Tips on Spanish and more

I was sitting in a sauna and as usual I chat to everybody I meet.

Romanian
A Romanian girl spoke good English. I asked her where she had learned English and if it's hard or easy for a Romanian and if Romanian is easy to learn.

Romanians, Italian, Spanish and Latin.
She told me that Romanian is similar to Latin. So for her it was easy to learn English, Italian and Spanish.

Missing Subject
One difference in sentence structure is the lack of subject. English sentence structure goes: subject, verb, object. Romanian is like Italian. And Latin. You can drop the I because the end of the sentence is enough to tell you who is speaking.

Romanian, Russian and German
Romanian, unlike Russian and German, has the same present continuous tense. I am walking is different from I walk.

Subjunctive
Another similarly is the subjunctive. If I were you ... If I were is not the same as if I was. I were is future, likelihood, possible. Was (in conjunction with I)is past tense.

So Romanians don't have problems learning it and understanding the concept. They don't have trouble using it. They just translate directly.

Romanians and Romance Languages
Surely there must be some difference between Romanian and English? Yes. Romanian is like French and other European languages regarding adjectives coming after the noun. In French you would say Moulin Rouge. The English is Red Windmill. In English the adjective is before the noun.

Learning Spanish
Her other useful tip was about learning Spanish. I said that I had gone back to German on Duolingo, rather than making Spanish my first choice of language if I had five minutes to spare, because I had trouble with Spanish pronunciation particularly rolling my r.

Latin American and Mexican Spanish
She said that it is easy to learn either Latin American Spanish or Mexican Spanish. The pronunciation is easier. That applies to the r and the th.

What's more, if you watch films from Argentina or Mexico, you will find them easy to follow, and helpful in learning conversation.

The Romanians learn Russian in school. I started Russian on Duolingo. Russian lacks a and the. No wonder people speaking other languages have trouble using a and the in English. Foreign speakers don't drop the a and the because they can't decide which to use. They are translating directly from their own language, so they have no a and the.

I must go - off to Duolingo to practise my German and revive my Spanish - the Latin American sort.

I might take a peek at Romanian, too. And why not peep at Polish? The first page of the course on any language in Duolingo gives you an overview of the grammar, pronunciation and spelling. A useful quick guide and an entertainment.

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