And that’s true. There are no such words as ‘madam’ or ‘miss’ or ‘senora’ in the Russian language. You won’t believe it, but Russians like to have long and boring discussions about not having a proper way to address strangers instead of coming up with one. So what do we have now? Things are a bit saner in the Russian language when addressing male strangers. (далее…)
Have you happened to hear a common Russian phrase «да нет, наверное»? In word-for-word translation it means Yes no maybe in Russian. Russians love using this common phrase as much as they like making fun of it. We can also ask each other ‘So which one do you actually mean?’ Well, the Russian common phrase «да нет, наверное» derives from «да нет». (далее…)
Today we are going to talk about Thai and I will tell you what bits the Thai language has that English and Russian doesn’t have. Of course there are many more of these things but let’s divide the new knowledge into portions, shall we? Here are a few interesting facts about languages that I have been learning: Russian, English and Thai. Here are five of them. (далее…)
Hello guys! This is going to be a long article. I truly believe that the best helper in language learning is passion. I don’t mean you should be passionate by nature; what I mean is that you should find something that you are very passionate about, that you truly like. Let me tell you my own story. When I was 17 I was a linguistics student. I studied English and German (frankly speaking, only English). (далее…)
I bet you ask yourself this question when you are at an early stage of learning a language. Actually, you are wondering how long it will take you to learn A LANGUAGE. At least that is what I mean when asking myself these sorts of questions. You see, I am totally against the ‘learn-five-words-a-day’ scheme. Why? Just imagine: yesterday you had a headache and failed to learn these five. (далее…)
Once, in Thai class we were talking about reading rules in different languages and a Russian guy said, ‘My kid is 6 and now he is trying to learn to read Russian. Gosh, you should have heard him!’ That reminded me of myself 24 years ago, when I was learning to read. Though I was 5 I still remember what a nightmare it used to be for both my mum and me. (далее…)
Hello my dear students! Have you ever experienced loss of language learning motivation? No? Then maybe you felt like dumping a studying process because it was no longer fun – maybe just once? What, no again? Ok, no more doubts: this article is definitely for you because this is a very practical guide on how to stop wanting to learn a foreign language! (далее…)