Albanian learned on Memrise 30 words

 Memrise made learning Albanian easy. 

My words today are

1 I - une with two dots above the e. Like the royal we in the Queen's ENlgish, one. One does not I = une

2 ti is you, second person singular.(Like the French tu)

3 ai is he

4 ajo is she

 Annoyingly and confusingly the feminine seems to take the letter o at the end.

5 Ju is you plural.

6 ita is they masculine but ito is they feminine.

7 dite ending with double dots on the e is day. D for day. date in the day.

8 nite, again two dots on the e, is night, n for night, and t, almost the American nite.

9 Mire ending with double dots over the e is good (I think of admire)

19 keq is bad (I think he is so bad that I want to kick, but the last letter is q)

20 JO IS NO. like oh, no john in the old song. Not po but Jo.

21po is yes

22 gjuhe (accent on the final e) is language

23 shqip is Albanian language

24 mirupafshim - goodbye (gone in a puff of smoke)

25 miredita good-day

26 mire-dita good afternoon

27 mirembrema good evening

28 miremengjies - good morning (when you rise with energy)

29 si - how

30 jam to be

21 Albanian language shqip like equippeed (Not pig)

Useful Websites

https://app.memrise.com/aprender/learn?course

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_self-study_programs

How to remember 23 Portuguese words - or any foreign language

Problem
I am learning Portuguese. I need a working vocabulary of about 300 words, which I can do in a month if I learn ten a day. I need to practise every day or I will forget the words.

Answer
The simple solution is to keep the word list on a page in my diary. I write the foreign word first, then the English translation.

Alphabet Letters
I list the letters of the alphabet down the left hand side. How many lines do I have? I have 26, enough for one line per letter of the alphabet. (In theory if I know there are few words, an few I need to know, starting with x, y, z, or any letter that language does not use, I could drop that letter or put two on one line, leaving space for a uch use letter, such as c in French or S in English.

I started with the letters of the alphabet at the beginning of the line, but I was short of space. So I wrote over the letters, making the initial letter in the margin. When I started the next page, for German, I had the system more condensed.

Margin
Now the initial letters are in the margin. I write as close as I can get to the edge of the page.

Saving Space
I started by repeating the letters, leaving the inital letter seaparte. However, now I use it to start the first word.  So instead of
A agua - water
b boa / bom - good
c carta - letter

I write
agua - water
boa / bom - good
carta - letter

Save Space With Dots
The hyphens between the Portuguese and the English were taking up too much space. I changed the line for a dot.

agua.water
boa.good
carta.letter

In this blog post I am not so short of space. I also want to make the words easier to read. Therefore here I am sticking to the hyphens.

If the word is the same in English I write the letter s in brackets.
pizza (s) 

Why Not Capitalise Initial Letters?
I could write
Agua
Boa
Carta

However, I have been trained as a sub-editor to use small letters to start words in dictionaries. That way the reader knows when a word always starts with a capital letter.

Folding
The page is narrow and I need all the space I can get. I fold the page in half vertically and then in half again. So I now have four columns.

Four across by 25 down makes space for 100 words on a page.

Here are my first 23 Portuguese words with my memory aids:
(Only 20 are listed in this blog post under labels because the limit is 20 labels)

agua - water (like aquaduct)
abacaxi - pineapple (P and B sound and look almost the same. AP - pineAPple - apple pine, pine apple, cut it down with an axe - ee! I might not remember translating from English to Portuguese, but I am well on the way to remembering it when I see it written on a menu in Portugal or Madeira)
boa / bom - good (As in Bombay. Good bay. How do I remember it's good and not beautiful. If it's beautiful it's good.)
carta - letter, a carta or uma carta is a letter. (How do I remember 'a carta', feminine? I visualise a lady writing a letter.)
com - with / to / by
de - of
é - is
ele - he / him / it
eles - they
eu - I
falamos - we speak
gosto - (I) like
jornal - newspaper (o / um jornal) (like the French journal but drop the u, just as the Americans drop the u from British English c o l o u r and make it c o l o r.)
lê - you read
leio - I read (I remember: Add i for I, + O for I as in Latin Amo amas amat meaning I read, you etc)
livro - book
menino - boy (I remember men, but little ones, o as in boy for masculine)
mulheres - women
nós - us / we
um - a / one / some
você - you (I remember vous with v in French. V looks like Y.) 

Other useful posts:
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/port-and-portuguese-wine-labels-and.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/how-to-ask-for-food-and-drink-in.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/learn-your-first-ten-words-in.
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/how-do-you-say-please-in-portuguese-is.

visitportugal.com

visitbrasil.com

http://www.visitmadeira.pt/en-gb/homepage

duolingo.com

earwormslearning.com

http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/polyglot-poem-by-angela-lansbury.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, learner and speaker of many languages (a polyglot). Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts. I have several more on Portuguese, Spanish, German, Chinese, Hebrew and other languages and countries.

German language false friends and memory aids

Problem
I still get confused by the words Die Ärzte and think it means the arts when it means the doctors.

Answer
I already have my memory reminder: the doctors' arts.


German - English
die Ärzte - the doctors
Die Künste - the arts
(den) Mond. - (the) moon.
die Welt - the world

English - German
the arts - Die Künste
the doctors - Die Ärzte
...(the) moon. - ... (den) Mond. (here den for the is the object and end of a sentence - den like the English word them, rather than they, m at the end of the sentence)
the world - die Welt (Note that German uses capital letters for nouns)

Tips
Berlitz discs with an accompanying booklet cost about £20 on the internet for one or two discs, new or second hand on ebay. The Berlitz Earworms system has soothing music which is supposed to aid retention - at very least it means you enjoy the lessons and are more likely to continue listening.
They supply and speak about memory aids. The Greek word mnemonic is perhaps too hard for those who are listening.
If you are looking for something cheaper, or free, try Duolingo.
I began with the Earworms and later added duolingo to my daily language learning routine.

Angela Lansbury
Travel writer, photographer, author, language and public speaking teacher.
More about and by me on languages, spelling, grammar, travel and etiquette on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter. Please like follow and share your favourite posts.

Learning and remembering Italian Verb endings

I was having trouble remembering which verb ending means I, which means we and which means they. All of them end in o and I kept thinking whenever I saw an o ending that it meant I. Then I started to remember that the o m o ending was we. After not which means we. But the ending for they is o n o.

I now have a memory aid. o on its own at the end means I, alone. o m o means mean and you, we. o n o means another group of people, they.

succedo - (I succeed Oh!)
succediamo - we succeed (I am - oh!)
succedono - they succeed (oh no!)

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