Category: Languages

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 […]

I only learn a little every day Even someone who loves learning languages as I do will from time to time have a hard time dealing with procrastination. Let me tell you what my tactic is to learn a little about quite a few languages every day. Maybe this tactic could work out for you […]

Grammar represents the building blocks, the structure of the language. Don’t listen to people who tell you you shouldn’t learn it. What you shouldn’t do of course is to learn the rules by heart and have to recite them in your head before being able to get a sentence out. Grammar exercices, lots of them, […]