Author: morausky

We are a lot of animals on planet Earth to be equipped with one body, one mind, two eyes, two ears, one larynx and one tongue. Some animals display two sets of eyes; some have long tails, sharp teeth, strong carapaces. Some others are capable of seeing in the dark quite well or of uttering […]

I must tell you from the start that I am not going to drop you any name ! Because there are none in fact. It’s true that Juan Pablo de Bonet, a Spanish priest, published in 1620 the first known signed alphabet. It’s true also that in the second half of the 18th century, Charles-Michel de […]

For those who are wondering : no, I don’t speak all the languages mentioned below. I just happen to have an unfortunate tendency to feel like learning all languages at the same time … Let me declare it very solemnly : my favorite method to begin learning a language is by far the With Ease collection of […]

This long word list locked behind opaque doors Passive vocabulary are all those words that we understand when we hear or read them, but that we don’t use. It’s logically opposed to active vocabulary that we understand AND use. When we are beginning to speak in a foreign language, we often find ourselves in the […]

What is a lingua franca ? A lingua franca is a language people of a region usually use with one another when their respective first languages are not the same. It’s the language everybody speaks, the one you try a few words in when you meet a person who doesn’t seem to understand your own […]

Here is a conjugation sheet to be filled out and printed or to be printed and filled out (as you choose !) PDF I made it very simple so that you can use it as it is or modify it easily in Excel or OpenOffice. Use it for verbs in French, Russian or in about any […]

Are you learning the Arabic language ? Then don’t forget to write it down ! No, not that you’re learning Arabic, but Arabic itself, the letters, you know ? Starting from the right of the first line and going to the left, put the Arabic letters down on paper, write them down or you’ll have a hard time […]

A single drawing being worth a thousand words, please look intensely at the one below. Thank you very much … Alphabets Alphabets are composed of letters representing the simplest sounds possible. Although the letters of the Arabic alphabet you can see a sample of above have little names, they really are only the little names of […]

(This above took me hours and hours to make, just saying …) A mystery up until the 19th century, Egyptian hieroglyphs were given birth to shortly after cuneiform writing. Then followed Chinese characters around the years -1,400 to -1,200 and the Phoenician alphabet around the years -1,300. (It is to be noted that from the […]

I don’t really look like the woman in blue above, but I have been in that exact situation ! I live in Spain and the vet of my dog asked me if I was “constipada”. Just imagine my shock ! I answered that no, I wasn’t, and then, of course, felt quite irritated at myself for having […]