Sep
16
I have just come back from my stay in Greece where I tried to learn Greek (more on the results of that in my next post) and that experience got me thinking about: those of you who go to foreign countries and try to learn the local language will know that learning it will not come by itself: you actually have to put a lot of work in; and even then sometimes it’s very hard. In this day and age of English as the international language, speaking opportunities are scarce and even then conversations end prematurely due to your low level of the language or you just don’t seem to be able to discuss difficult topics. At the end of the day, you end up staying in the country and not learning much if any of the local language. That’s where I got an idea.
Aug
24
I just had this random idea reading a site on the Internet. Isn’t the best way to learn a language discussing in it? Here’re a few reasons why it might be.
Aug
12
Just a couple of tips that I think are helpful to learn languages while you are living in the country (like me in Greece). I assume most people should know them but I get surprised by how many times they don’t. Here we go.
Aug
12
While learning Greek, I have discovered a number of resources along the way. I will list all the free resources here so that you can use them if you are learning Modern Greek. They will help you achieve the task. Here they are.
Jul
22
I’m over 50 days already in Greece and I have gotten a little bit used to the Greek language. I’m nowhere near good so this might contain errors but I thought I would give you all a small representation of the Greek language and what you would experience if you were around to learn it. I’m going to write mostly in Roman letters so that everybody can read it and keep it simple. Here goes…
Jun
18
There are quite a few dialects of Arabic. The question is: which dialect of Arabic should you learn if you want to communicate with as many Arabic speakers as you can? I attempt to give a summary of this question.
Jun
14
Since I am almost done skimming my Greek grammar books except for a few more (but I don’t think I will do those because they look boring), it is essential I hear more Greek. That’s why I’ll be listening to podcasts in Greek. I excluded all of the podcasts using English automatically since even though I believe that it is beneficial to use English in the beginning of your learning (hence the labs), I have had people in Greece answer me in English enough already. Thus even if I do not understand, I’ll still to the Greek version and soon I will understand (hopefully). I’ll tell you how I will use the podcasts and I’ll also tell you what other ways I still use to learn. Here are the podcasts…
Jun
11
I have posted a while ago how to become educated even if you have finished school (and have fun in the process). This time I want to talk about something yet unrelated to languages, yet very cool: star gazing. It is something I have done only for the last few nights yet but I have thoroughly enjoyed and I want you to try it: watching at the night sky and identifying the constellations. Here’s what it’s all about.
Jun
9
I am in Greece, learning Greek and I will try to post more often from now on. I want to show you three ways how I have recently (in fact, only this week) started making use of my iPod Touch to help me learn Greek fast. If you try enough, you can apply virtually all of these or at least most of these to any language you are learning.
First, I have started using flashcards‘ software. In other words, I have …
Jun
1
I was planning to work more during the second half of my Greek challenge. Did I? Well, no. I basically did virtually no learning and then did a quick readup during the last few days. Practically a month and a half wasted (in terms of learning Greek, at least). I did a lot of other things so that kind of explains it but that’s still not an excuse. This happens a lot, though. Not only to me. You know what… …
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