Giving back

I was on Twitter earlier this morning checking out someone who recently followed me. My first response was “why did this person follow me? I tweet so infrequently and have nothing of value that I contribute”. That got me thinking about this blog and my general recent usage of social media, and how there used to be a time several years ago where I tried to both partake of and contribute to the stream of consciousness that is social media. Yet for the past 1-2 years or so, that hasn’t been the case.

How to determine your level in a language

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CEFR, language goals

For anyone who has been learning languages for a while, you are probably familiar with the Common European Framework Reference: a set of guides for self-determining one’s level in a language. If you are not familiar with it, you can find the Wikipedia entry on it here.

Korean

Wow, it’s been 4 months since my last post! So what have I been up to?

Why did the Celtic population of Great Britain switch to English following the Saxon invasions?

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Angles, Anglo-Saxon, Britain, Celtic, Cumbric, historical linguistics, history, Jutes, Latin, linguistic change, Old English, Pictish, Pritenic, Proto-Cornish, Proto-Welsh, Quora, Romans, Saxons

I recently came across this question and the following answer on Quora. The responder, an assistant professor of linguistics, does a marvellous job explaining what could possibly have happened. Further, he explains the various aspects that sometimes bring about linguistic change.

What I’ve learned the most along my language journey

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Anki, learning styles, study habits, tips

Someone recently commented on one of my posts from 2014 about my studying 20 languages simultaneously. They are studying 2 languages, and are interested in learning from my experiences.

How to Use Duolingo to Learn Two languages at Once [Repost]

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Duolingo, language learning, repost

I found this great article on another blog post by a fellow language enthusiast called Eureka Language Bits. Below is the article about using Duolingo to learn two languages at once.

If you have recently tried to learn a new language, you are probably already familiar with Duolingo, the free app that can help you learn as many as fifteen languages if you are an English speaker.…

Source: How to Use Duolingo to Learn Two languages at Once

Verbs

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English, French, grammar, Hittite, mood, tense, verbs

I recently spent a bit of time studying Portuguese verb conjugations. I was using this site that focuses on Brazilian Portuguese verb forms.

That got me thinking about verbs and how different they are across different languages. It also got me thinking about the different parts to verb conjugations – time, aspect, mood, transivity, voice, modality, etc. Let’s look briefly at each part and then at how verbs across several languages work.

Language level growth

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CEFR, French, language learning, language level, Portuguese, Spanish, test

I decided to do some of those free online CEFR tests for FSP (French/Spanish/Portuguese) to see if my levels had progressed.  Before I tell you my results, a disclaimer about these types of tests:

My Language Journey Update

It’s been a few months, but I haven’t forgotten about this blog!

2015 in review

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yearendreview

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 500 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 8 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.