The Greek alphabet has only 24 letters many of which are very easy to recognize and we happen to have borrowed an awful lot of letters from the Greek alphabet for our needs. Whether you want to learn how to read the alphabet to read some Greek signs or remember the names of the letters to impress your friends, it’s easy and worth doing. Here’s how you do it.
Author: Linas
Do children learn languages in a fundamentally different way than adults?
On one hand, it seems that languages are very different in their level of difficulty in when starting to learn them from scratch: anywhere from Riau Indonesian to Finnish. On the other hand, the general linguistic consensus seems to be that children need the same time to learn the language and they speak them by four. I have been thinking how to reconcile those two and then I thought maybe that’s because children and adults learn languages differently.
How Much Time Is It Realistic to Learn a Language in?
There are many guesses and people suggesting you can learn a language in a night, a week or similar short periods of time. Let’s be realistic for a bit. Let’s look at some data and see what it can tell us for if people in general need a certain time to learn the language, let’s not assume that it can be done way faster with some magical woodoo-learning methods. Here’s what the data tells.
Learn The Chinese Tones in 1 Minute!
If you have ever read about the Chinese language, you will probably know that all the variations of Chinese have tones. Tones are ways to pronounce words so for example if you say dā (with an elongated sound) it means “to hang” while dá (with a rising sound) means “to answer” even though it would feel like the same word in English. All Chinese words have a tone (in one way or another)! Mandarin (the most-widely used variation of Chinese) has four tones + one neutral one. In this post, I’m going to attempt to teach you how to pronounce all the 4+1 Chinese tones in a minute. Let’s start.
Week Two of My Greek Learning and Goals
Here I share my plans and goals for learning Greek.
How Fluent in Greek Do I Want to Become in Six Months?
I talk about the Common European Languages Framework and define my goal to achieve a B2 level in Modern Greek in 6 months of study.
First Week, Review of Pimsleur Greek and First Impressions
I have officially started learning Greek since March (to make it a nice six month mission). Technically speaking, this is not exactly true because I have used a couple of days in February to begin learning some but I deliberately missed my first days in March so that evens it out. Anyway, I have now… Continue reading First Week, Review of Pimsleur Greek and First Impressions
Fluent In 6 Months – Perfect Combination
There are blogs such as Fluent in 3 months where Benny attempts to get fluent in languages in three months and Fluent every year where Randy tries to achieve the same goal in one year. Here’s the breaker: I will join them! I am going to be choosing a period in the midpoint of 3 months and one year – exactly 6 months, take on a language and get fluent in it as well. They learn the languages they didn’t know before that are distant to them and so will I. Moreover, I will have this as a side project on the blog and not even quit doing the rest of the stuff I am doing. If you want to know how I plan to do this and what language I will be learning, read on.
How To Learn Languages Fast? Answer: Teach Them!
I once read a blog by a guy who wrote that at the start of his new job in his boss gave him a task to learn how hybrid security works in the stock market and give a lecture on that to a group of his co-workers. This blogger told that he really liked these… Continue reading How To Learn Languages Fast? Answer: Teach Them!
Latvian is Easier Than Lithuanian!
I know Lithuanian. I have been learning some Latvian lately. If somebody asked me “Which one is easier: Lithuanian or Latvian?” I would now answer “Latvian”. Latvian is easier to learn for both English-speakers and speakers of other non-Baltic languages. Here’s why.