Polyglots On Facebook Found Another Language Learning Website

I was on the Facebook polyglots website reading posts by others who like discussing and learning lots of languages.

Somebody mentioned livemocha.

I have plenty to do on Duolingo. You might like Memrise if you want to record all your memory aids and see those of other users.

Useful Websites (alphabetically)
DUOLINGO
duolingo.com

LIVEMOCHA
https://www.livemocha.co/

MEMRISE
memrise
https://www.memrise.com/apps/

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

Quick Ways To Learn Chinese Words And Symbols

I can speak to ladies in the swimming pool or the ladies only sauna at a club. I can speak to taxi drivers. I ask them how do I say hello and goodbye.

Hello is the easy one. I learned this at a bilingual Toastmasters club in Singapore. I kept hearing the word which sounded like HOW? It means good. 

The word which sounds like knee is you. The greeting knee how which sounds like how are your knees is like how are you or hello.

The reply is how or good. This is written in the 'English' alphabet or Roman alphabet with accents, called pinyin, as hao with a dipped or u shape accent over the 'a' to show that your voice tone goes down and then up - a bit like saying the word 'really?'

So now you know three words, you, good, and hello.

So I can get into a taxi and greet the driver with knee how which is hello. I can smile at neighbours or strangers in the lift (Americans say elevator for lift). I can greet the ladies or the swimming instructor in the pool. I can nod to strangers on the bus.

Chinese Challenge - Pictograms

But what about those challenging Chinese signs which Duolingo is forcing me to learn?
The knee sound is drawn like a lower leg with a slanting knee cap.

The good sign (how) looks like two stick figure people having a good chat. I don't yet know the sign well enough to draw or write it.

(Like English letters you draw in a logical direction. In English you start the letter S at the top which eventually becomes automatic and seems logical and faster when doing joined up writing. However, when trying to write neatly on a board I sometimes draw a letter s in two halves.)

Duolingo Pictures

If you learn Chinese through Duolingo they force you to learn the picture signs. I have started this, left it and gone away, then come back to it.

Take A Break

When you come back to it, the lesson seems easier.
Useful websites and resources for travellers and linguists and aspiring polyglots (speakers of several languages):

Free Lessons

Free online language lessons to begin Chinese, European languages and English for foreigners

Memrize.com - online system where you can record your memory aid and keep it private (eg if it contains rude words or personal information) or share your memory aid words or picture
S or drawings and see other people's and choose which one is first on the list and visible on your screen as a reminder without scrolling.

Amazon - for new and old books and cassettes and discs

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

ebay.com
Duolingo.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and other languages, workshops for education and businesses, after dinner and keynote speeches.

Time Zone Converter

Time Zone USA from Wikipedia. 

Problem
The emails scream at me, the seminar is starting now. They mean now where they are. But when is now, where I am? Does it mean an hour or two's time? Or have ai missed it already?

This time the reminder carries a handy link to the time zone converter. It's not that I could not have hunted on Google myself. Whatever I am searching for, I will get half a dozen answers. I open the first three to check, and choose one of them as my favourite. But next time I need to know, I go through the whole check every website process again.

The secret of success and speed is to have just one favourite website marked, whether it is for converted currency, dress sizes or time zones. Where do I list them?

1 It could be in bookmarks.
2 It could be inside the front or back cover of my diary.
3 I could have a Useful Websites page, constantly updated, printed and stuck on the wall's pinboard each weekend. (I use recycled paper, printed on the back of something else no longer needed, of course.)

Here's the handy timezone website:

http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/

http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/what-time-is-it-in-la-chicago-new-york.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my other posts on time in the USA and worldwide. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.

Do you want to make a book of your travels?

Problem
You want to make a memory book of your travels. What are your choices?

Answers
1 PHOTO BOXES
Stick them in a shoe box with card dividers by date or country. I visited the head of a photographic society in new Zealand. He had a room the size of a library full of photos of his lifetime's travels. How did he keep track? He filed everything in date order. Everything was numbered by first the date and then consecutive numbers. So 1990's first photo was 1990/1/1/1. The first of January 1991. It was in the box kept in date order.

He kept a second index by subject. So photos ofMount Fuji or whales would be listed by the subject and date. For example, Whales 1990/1/1/2. The second photo taken on Jan 1st 1990 would be a whale. he could get out a dozen photos on a subject, and later replace them, and later still find them again.

Most holiday records will be for yourself and friends and family, a hen party, stag do, or club, about 25 people maximum, meaning printing about 25 copies, rather than selling to the public. You can also do a one-off book for yourself, as insurance against losing your phone or computer or website.

2 PHOTO CALENDARS

3 PHOTO BOOKS
Yesterday evening June 7th 2017, I sat with a friend looking at the prices of producing a book. We found:

On Lulu.com a paperback book, black and white photos inside (colour cover)
for 100 pages black and white photos inside would cost £2.95 to print.

For 115 pages black and white would cost £3.17 to order a printed copy.
A colour book for 115 pages would cost £16.98.

Postage was expensive. Depending on whether you wanted just royal mail, or were wiling to pay extra for tracking. The highest postage rate was for next day delivery plus tracking. Why would you ever be in such a hurry? You should order well in advance. What tends to happen is you decide three weeks before a conference that you need to print a bon You spend a week planning and writing. Then the book arrives. You diced to rewrite it or write a second book. Deadline approaches. To be sure of it arriving in time you have to pay extra for fast postage.

I went back through my gmail folder labelled Lulu to see the emails of offers I had been sent in the previous year. Offers included, 10% off. Then 15% off if you ordered one book. Thirty per cent off if you ordered five. Spend £40, save14% (that doesn't look right?) and get free ground shipping.

Save £40 on five or more books (five copies at 115 pages, for £16.98 is a toal of £85.90 but after the £40 discount it costs £45.90 plus shipping.

The next offer was save £40 on 25 or more books. 25 copies of colour at 115 pages would cost £425, with 40% off that is reduced to £169.80.

We also looked at ISSUU.
ISSUU

My friend wanted to know how I produced a book from Facebook.
BLOG2Print
Then we turned to Blog2 print which prints books from Blogger, Wordpress, Typed and Tumblr.

Not Facebook? Why was next?

BLURB
Blurb was charging Us dollars $14.99 for 20 pages and 20 centre per extra page. Going to a currency converter site we saw that was £11.57 for a twenty page book. Only 20 pages! Not enough. My friend had lots to say, as well as producing illustrations.

My Social Book
MySocialBook.com makes books by extracting your posts from Facebook or Instagram. The cost was £30.60 for 324 pages? with free shopping but covering only April to June of one year with was 2 months, at £10.??

We had been going to look at e-books but we had been going for two hours and stopped to go our separate ways and eat.

The exercise was sufficient to show my friend that if she wanted to produce a book to show to her club, she could display one book on a welcome desk, then tell people, perhaps through a flyer, that they could order the book on line. That reduced her expenditure to under 325 including postage and allowed the public to buy a reasonably priced ebook.

You could do the same kind of comparison exercise again for yourself. If you are taking notes in a lined book, I suggest you make four or five columns, to compare black and white, colour, 100 pages, 115 pages, one copy, 25 copies discount of 10%, and add shipping costs.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share my posts.

Idioms in Spanish

Here's a useful website. Just short enough to be read in one go.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Spanish/Idioms

A really big dictionary will have all the idioms under the respective nouns or verbs.

The best way to learn a language is not to translate from your language, but to listen to phrases used by native speakers and copy them.

You can also watch films you already know and like with the Spanish subtitles turned on.
Then films in Spanish with English subtitles. Then again without the subtitles. Then repeat every conversation aloud as you watch.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, English teacher and tutor.

Phoning good and bad news to another time zone

Time and date converter is so handy when:
1 Phoning family and friends at home from overseas
2 Calling businesses
3 Responding to phone ins which ask you to pick a time

I have no trouble remembering that America is behind London, England, and that Asia and Australia are ahead.

I did once make an awful mistake. I was searching through my late uncle's address book to find the address of somebody who had sent him a Christmas card.

I phoned the USA, and when the lady answered, I said, "I'm sorry to ring you with bad news, but I have to tell you that my uncle has died." After a long pause, she replied, "I'm sorry your uncle has died, dear. What was his name, again? Sorry to be so blank, but it's 4 in the morning here and I was asleep."

If only I had consulted the website below.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html


Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, 

Lavender Honey From France

At Singapore's Expo exhibition hall I stopped at the April food fair and was attracted by the honey stand.  They were displaying different kinds of honey as well as mustard. I tried various honeys but the one which attracted me most was Lavender honey.

I bought a pot for fifteen Singapore dollars, about seven pounds. The flavour was stunning. I believe that the lavender smells repels insects so if eating lavender money means I exude the smell of lavender that would be a bonus.

Their business card says Famille Mary French honey specialist since 1921. Their website popped up in French but if you click on the word Francais at the top left you can turn the site to Anglais (English).

The video shows their promises on the river in the Loire Valley of France. Displays explain bees and products to children. The shops and online shop offer products such as royal jelly cosmetics.

I had spotted that famille is French for family and that fr stands for France. But it wasn't until I saw the video and the male founder that I realised that the French name Jean is John.


www.famillemary.fr

www.abellie.fr

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