Polish lessons are loaded

Thanks for strumien for translating the lessons file to Polish. The job is done very thoroughly and now we all can enjoy a new language in Internet Polyglot: Polish.

Poland is a country in Eastern Europe with a long and great history. A nice article about Poland can be found in Wikipedia's article on Poland.

Please welcome the new valuable addition! Joanka, great job!

Polish lessons on Internet Polyglot can be found here.


Roots of the Polish Language



From a historical point of view, Polish is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavonic group. The first Slavonic tribes settled in most of Central and Eastern Europe, occupying the lands between Elba to the west, the Balkans to the south and the Volga river to the east. From hereon, the tribes started constantly building their own identity, forming the three main groups of Slavonic, based on geographical delimitations.



Truth be told, neither of the three Slavonic groups has evolved to a state where it is completely different from the others. The three have a shared cultural subset and most importantly a lingual one. Polish is no exception and even though a Serbian for example, might not fully understand what a Polish speaker is saying without proper study of the Polish language beforehand, it is a lot easier for them to learn the language. If we were to make a comparison, Polish probably resembles Czech and Slovak the most and inhabitants of these countries can easily understand each other without too much trouble. Subsequently, if you learn Polish, you will be able to understand and learn Czech, Slovak as well as most of the other Slavonic languages a lot easier, becoming a polyglot of the Slavonic world.



What are your options for learning Polish?



Same as with most other languages, the Internet is a good place to start searching if you want to take up the task of learning Polish by yourself. Free Polish lessons online can easily be found and used, some being more useful than others. It will be your call to decide which ones of these courses you take upon as well as whether or not you complement them with a practical exercise book or a “Learn Polish” course. This combination usually does the trick for language starters, so you might as well try it out.



One way of doing things is to start by improving your vocabulary through constant text reading. Even if you don’t understand all the words and phrases yet, take up some Polish texts from the Internet or from local books and start parsing them. Whenever you hit yourself to a word that you don’t understand, look it up in a dictionary (make sure it’s used with its intended sense though!) and memorize that word.



Once you manage to improve vocabulary a bit and can handle yourself through the Polish language, you can start up on learning grammar rules and structure, which are relatively easy to understand from the point of view of most Western languages. Don’t neglect your vocabulary increase during this period though. Either keep up reading new texts in order to memorize words, or play some vocabulary games to help you do so. Regardless of which method you choose, what counts is that at the end of the day, you are a few words richer.





Articles about Polish in different languages:

Roots of the Polish Language (in English)
Lengua polaca (in Spanish)
Langue polonaise (in French)
Polnische Sprache (in German)
Lingua polacca (in Italian)
Poolse Taal (in Dutch)
Корни польского языка (in Russian)
Língua polonesa (in Portuguese)
جذور اللغة البولندية (in Arabic)
Radacinile limbii Poloneze (in Romanian)

We're getting the word out

About two days ago, I was looking around for some Arthur C. Clarke stories in the library, and I was still wearing my backpack, which has this sticker on the front that says www.internetpolyglot.com. So this guy comes up to me and taps me on the shoulder, and says,
"Hey, you know about Internet Polyglot, too?"
"Well... yeah, I'm actually one of the co-founders of the site!" I replied, surprised by the question.
He said, "Oh my gosh! That is so cool! I went there, and studied some of the latin lessons just a few days ago!"
"Well, thanks for coming, I hope you liked it."

Apparently, Internet Polyglot gets around without me having to tell people about it. I hope this will start to happen more and more often as our site grows and flourishes. If anyone gets such an experience, please, post it on the forums of Internet Polyglot, linked:

http://www.internetpolyglot.com/phpBB2/index.php

Etenim,

zhukant

The site is translated to Turkish

The site has been translated to Turkish by one of our very active users Albina!

So if you are from Turkey it must be much easier for you now to plunge into the exciting world of language learning even without learning English in advance.

For those who are interested in looking at the site how it looks like in Turkish here are the instructions on how to configure your browser:

In Firefox 1.0.x: Tools -> Options -> Languages -> Add Turkish and place it at the top of the list; press OK; go to http://www.InternetPolyglot.com

In Firefox 1.5.x: Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Edit Languages -> Add Turkish and place it at the top of the list; press OK; go to http://www.InternetPolyglot.com

In Internet Explorer: Tools -> Internet Options -> Languages -> Add Turkish and place it at the top of the list; press OK; go to http://www.InternetPolyglot.com

These instructions are probably a bit outdated but you have to get the idea, right? :)

Welcome to Çevrimiçi Bedava Dil Öğrenme Dersleri! And huge thanks to Albina for making this effort!

Romanian Lessons Are Loaded

Romanian lessons are now available online! Huge kudos and thanks to Monik and Mihai who made it happen!

As you may already know Romania is a East-European country and you can read about it a nice and very useful article from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania.

So please please visit Romanian lessons on Internet Polyglot - enjoy the new language!

And, as usual, if you see any discrepancies and incorrect translations - shout out loud here or on the forum.


History of the Romanian Language



At the beginning of Christianity, the land that is now the country of Romania was occupied by settlements of Geto-dacians, an indo-European family of tribes. With the Latin expansion from Central Europe and the Greek influences from the South, the Geto-dacians would make contact with the two great civilizations through trade and of course, wars. Roman writings attest that geto-dacian traders around the Danube were polyglots, being able to speak several local dialects, Latin and old Greek. It’s from this combination of cultures that the Romanian people and language were born, although in today’s language the predominant reagent is Latin.



Actually, of the old Geto-Dacian dialect only around 100 words are left, the others being either assimilated by the Latin language or simply replaced. The Greek influence can be seen mostly in the lower part of Romania and is not very large, but mentionable. At the same time, other nomadic influences can be spotted in the Romanian language, most of which are attested to the Goths.



Learning Romanian



Learning Romanian is as easy (or well, as hard) as learning any other Latin based language such as Italian, French or Spanish. Actually, if you already know any of these languages, learning Romanian will most likely be a walk in the park, since they have several shared words, grammar structures and pronunciation rules.



Although you won’t find them with the abundance you would for English, Italian, French or some other languages, “Learn Romanian” courses and books can be downloaded from the Internet, or bought from local libraries in case you thought of starting learning by yourself. Another great source of learning material can be found on the many sites that offer free Romanian lessons online all across the World Wide Web.



And if these aren’t enough for you, feel free to try and improve vocabulary through the numerous Romanian vocabulary games that can also be found online. These vocabulary games will help you memorize words and improve your spelling and pronunciation skills. Although you can’t simply learn Romanian by yourself through simple vocabulary games, they’re a great addition to any free Romanian online lessons or “How to Learn Romanian” courses that you might be following.



From a grammatical point of view, Romanian shares the same set of rules as Italian (after all, both languages are considered to be the direct descendants of Latin). Romanian nouns for example are inflected by gender (feminine, masculine and neuter), case (nominative/accusative, dative/genitive and vocative) and number (singular and plural). The articles, as well as most adjectives and pronouns, agree in gender with the noun they reference.




Articles about Romanian in other languages:

History of the Romanian Language (in English)
Lengua Rumana (in Spanish)
Langue roumaine (in French)
Rumänische Sprache (in German)
Lingua rumena (in Italian)
Roemeense Taal (in Dutch)
Língua Romanian (in Portuguese)
Istoria limbii Romane (in Romanian)
История румынского языка (in Russian)
تأريخ اللغة الرومانية (in Arabic)

Again About Google Rank

It has been several days already when I see all these high ranks for this blog as well as the site Internet Polyglot. The blog is rank 5 and most of the main pages in Internet Polyglot are having rank from 4 to 6.

Next goal is trying to make it with Alexa. So if you have some free time - please go to Internet Polyglot page on Alexa and write a review on Internet Polyglot. Please make the review as objective as possible though a positive review will be much more useful for the site.

Waiting for Romanian Lessons

It's coming very soon! Get prepared!

The Romanian lessons are almost, almost ready. The translation is done by a very good friend of mine and his sister and soon, very soon it will be loaded to the database. As soon as it is done I will post here about it.

Romanian language is one the most interesting blend of Latin and Slavik language families that I have met so far in my life. Having most of the derivatives from Latin it has so many Slavik-based words it makes me very curious. Talking with my Romanian friends about our languages and common things in them is very enjoyful process.

So - a couple of days and the Romanian lessons will be loaded into the site in all their beauty.

Audio Astronomy

That's too exciting not to put it here in the blog. Take a look at this link http://www.stichtingwerkgroepurgenta.nl/stuff/polyglotter.htm
and enjoy Baggeroli's audio presentation for the new possible feature of Internet Polyglot - having audio files associated with words.

We've been sitting tonight all our family fascinated by Dutch sounds in Baggeroli's performance. Is it Dutch or is it his voice - it made us wanting to start learning Dutch definitely.

If we make it work - it's going to be a huge breakthrough.

Polyglot or Poliglot

Many people who I talk with about the site are not native English speakers (well, for them learning English is going to become easier with Internet Polyglot). And after I tell them about the site I tell them what is the url of the site. OK, they say - I'll visit your site.

What was the surprise when some of them were calling me and asking 'where is your site? why is it not available?'. I am going to check and see that the site is fine, available and looks good. Only after multiple painful interactions I understood that many of those people type POLIGLOT with I instead of POLYGLOT with Y. Well, I had to go and register a new domain www.InternetPoliglot.com and redirect it to the main site.

Moral of the fable: Dear polyglotters! The word 'polyglot' is spelt with Y, not I. Not that I know for sure how to spell all English words. Not at all! Can you call yourself a fan of Internet Polyglot if you can't even spell it? Hardly!

Now that you know how to spell 'polyglot' you can become a real fan of Internet Polyglot! For a limited time it's free! Just kidding, it's always going to be free On the right side of this blog there is a text input box where you can enter your email and press "Subscribe me!" button. After you do that you are bestowed a life-time title of the "Honorable Noble Fan of Internet Polyglot", you are entitled to call yourself "Sir Honorable Noble Fan of Internet Polyglot" and you may require others to call you accordingly and address you with all possible respect that is germane to this title. As a n Honorable Noble Fan of Internet Polyglot you will also receive new posts of this blog as soon as they are posted.

This Blog Gets Gogle Page Rank 5

What?! What?!

I don't believe my eyes! I have just posted my previous post and went to check how it looks. And what I see? I see that:


The page rank of the blog is 5! I can't believe it! Please tell me if this is a glitch of my browser or this is a true thing. Are you seeing the same?

This is exciting as well as frustrating! Surely it's great to have such a high rank. But this blog is just a by-product of Internet Polyglot, which has been with Page Rank 2 for quite a long time already.

Cernatinly this is the result of Google's love of text. What they want is text, text, text. Do YOU, my dear readers want only text? Woudn't you be more excited with someting more interactive and usable like Internet Polyglot's games? I am sure you would. But this is the current reality and we should more focus on the bright side of this event - InternetPolyglot.blogspot.com has gotten Page Rank 5.

P.S. Oh, and it strikes me now - Blogger is owned by Google. So it pfigures!

My Blog Gets Reprinted

Hmmm, how interesting. It looks like I start gaining not only more and more users of the Iternet Polyglot but also true admirers of my talent as a writer. Take a look at this one: http://dailyindia.com/show/14096.php. And find two differences from that one: "How I Learned French. Part I". Seemingly my article touched some souls in India. Unless it was done by some mindless bot-scrapper. In any case please enjoy re-reading the perls of this blog and play-play-play with Internet Polyglot - increase your vocabulary in the world languages!

Latin Lessons are on the first page in MSN Search

Take a look at the results of MSN Search on "Latin Lessons" - Internet Polyglot's Latin Lessons are 5th on the first page! That is great actually. Surely it would be even greater if these results were yielded from Google search. But patience, my dear readers, patience. :)) Either Google will move them up in its SERP (Search Engine Result Page) or MSN Search will bite off a bigger piece of the Google's pie. Anyway, congratulations with this great result!

As a side-note. How ironicall it is that nowadays Microsoft is the one who stands up against the Google's monopoly. Yahoo simply surrendered, Altavista is almost defunct and only MSN brings us hope that it is still possible for such small sites as ours to make it eventually.

Japanese And Hindi Lessons

Today I have loaded a new huge bunch of lessons: long awaited Japanese lessons and Hindi lessons.

Japanese is one of the most popular languages in the world. Besides, Japan is one of the most advanced economics so learning Japanese will be beneficial for anyone who is going to work with Japanese customers or partners. Don't miss the most important, though fun lesson: Greetings, Request, Welcomes and Farewells. Just working with this lesson will tremendously help you if you go to Japan even for a couple of days.

Hindi is a language spoken by enormous number of people. India is a very large country in South Asia with more than a billion people. Not all those people speak Hindi, there are very many local dialects though Hindi is one of the official languages in India. Nowaday it is very popular among western businesses to outsource some of their development and production to India so no harm in learning Hindi. And this is the link to the Greetings, Request, Welcomes and Farewells in Hindi lesson.

Please enjoy learning Japanese and Hindi. If you see any discrepancy or incorrect translation - shout out loud.


Tongue of the Rising Sun



Japanese culture holds a very strong fascination potential for the rest of the World because of its uniqueness and beauty but also because of the country’s economical power. This has lead many people in pursuing the study of the Japanese language for either business reasons, career improvements or simply to satisfy their own curiosity regarding Japan and its language. And let’s face it; the awe-factor from your friends and newly met people is a lot larger if they hear you talking Japanese than say, French or Spanish, which are more common languages. If you do manage to learn Japanese (which to be honest is not the easiest of tasks) then the other languages will prove to be a breeze and you’ll be regarded as a true polyglot in no time.



Difficulties in learning Japanese



From a Westerner’s point of view, learning Japanese is quite difficult because of the rules that the language enforces in terms of grammar, politeness rules, writing (using a combination of three scripts – Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana) and so forth. These rules are not that hard per say, but it’s quite hard for us to put aside the system that we normally take for granted and replace it with something radically different.



Another showstopper when it comes to learning Japanese is that the language is an agglutinative one. What this means is that it’s a “synthetic” language where each affix represents one unit of meaning rather than have the root of the word change. This concept is not easy to understand, or at least not until you get used to it. Most “Learn Japanese” courses try to avoid making a comparison between Japanese and any other Western languages, simply for the fact that doing so would do more harm than good to the learning process.



Learning Japanese Online



Although the recent craze for learning Japanese has brought forth a lot of institutions and companies that set up organized Japanese courses, you can also learn it online, at your leisure and usually without spending too much money in the process. There are virtually dozens of companies offering free Japanese lessons online and these are a great way to start learning. Another option would be to try out some vocabulary games, despite the fact that they won’t be as useful as a full lesson course. Still, you can try them out since you might memorize words with more ease and improve vocabulary over night.



Last but not least, if you already have a basis to work with, you could try reading translated texts and making a correlation between the two versions to spot new words, determine politeness forms and so forth. After a while, combining all these methods will dish out a noticeable vocabulary increase and you’ll be awing your friends with your Japanese language skills in no time.




Articles about Japanese in different languages:


Japanese: Tongue of the Rising Sun (in English)
Japonés (in Spanish)
Langue japonaise (in French)
Japanische Sprache (in German)
Lingua giapponese (in Italian)
Japanse Taal (in Dutch)
Língua japonesa (in Portuguese)
Limba Japoneza (in Romanian)
Язык Восходящего Солнца (in Russian)
لسان الشمس المتصاعدة (in Arabic)

Hindi – history and properties



From the perspective of the number of its speakers, Hindi is considered the third language in the world (next to English and Mandarin Chinese) with a rough count of 600 million speakers worldwide. Although Hindi has several hundred dialects, most of them resemble one another, similar to the main Chinese dialects. Most of the Hindi speakers are concentrated in South Eastern Asia, although the Hindi Diaspora is also quite well developed.



From a historical point of view, Hindi is considered the direct descendant language of Sanskrit and is a part of the Indo-European language family. Several lingual influences have been made throughout time on the Hindi language, the most important ones coming from Persian, Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese, Turkish and of course, English, which brought a huge vocabulary increase. All these have left their mark to create the Hindi language spoken today and they helped tighten up the resemblance between it and other languages in the area such as Urdu (official language of Pakistan) for example. So if you’re planning on becoming a South Asian polyglot, learning Urdu or any other language or dialect in that particular geographical area, it will be of great help if you already know Hindi.



From a learning perspective, Hindi has some very interesting properties. Hindi pronunciation is quite easy, since the letters are always pronounced exactly the way they are written, unlike most of the western languages. Most “Learn Hindi” courses will start off by saying that there are no particular difficulties in the study of the language other than maybe the slightly harsh grammar rules.



Learn Hindi at home



If you don’t have time or the possibility to participate in organized local “Learn Hindi” courses, you’re probably considering doing so on your own, at home. You have several options, from buying a Hindi language course book, getting some free Hindi lessons online, paying a video conference Hindi teacher or even by playing vocabulary games, either online or offline.



Hindi vocabulary games can be extremely fun and they can very well prove to be a great learning method. Not only will they help you improve vocabulary and memorize words, but they can be a great alternative to the stressful, “serious” lessons out there. Still, vocabulary games can only do so much for you and some of these serious lessons will be required as well. If you manage to complement the two and balance out the learning process between sweat and fun, you’re well on your way to becoming a future polyglot.



In conclusion, whether you’re trying to learn Hindi for business means or simply because you’re fascinated with the language, feel confident that it’s not as hard as it might first look and that there are hundreds of sources you can learn from. As with all other languages, make sure you keep practice constant and you dedicate at least 3-4 hours per week to studying this beautiful language.




Articles about Hindi in different languages:


Hindi – History and Properties (in English)
Hindi (in Spanish)
Hindi (in French)
Hindi (in German)
Hindi (in Italian)
Hindi (in Dutch)
Hindi (in Portuguese)
Hindusa – Istorie si proprietati ale limbii (in Romanian)
Хинди. История и факты (in Russian)
هندي - تأريخ وخصائص (in Arabic)