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For those who are learning Turkish: audio is ready. Go to any Turkish lesson, like this http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lesson-4904301145 , scroll down to the list of words and click on the "Play" icon next to any Turkish word.

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5 Ways to Improve Your Vocabulary

I won’t give you the whole “each word in a language’s vocabulary is a brick that works towards building up the entire structure” kind of speech again (I did it in another post on the blog), but I have to emphasize on the fact that without a proper vocabulary base, it’s a lot harder to learn the other components of a language: grammar, syntax and even spelling and pronunciation. Since a lot of modern courses and exercises (including some that you can find on www.internetpolyglot.com ) focus on vocabulary so intensely, I thought about making a list of 5 of the most important techniques that you could use to increase your word count and make your vocabulary in a foreign language flourish.

Repetition

Our memory can be quite a rudimentary process at times and the only way we can get things (literally) in our head is by repeating them over and over again. Repetition can be helpful for assimilating harder words that you wouldn’t be able to pick up from context in a sentence, or if you’re using the phonebook method (having a list of words that you want to learn and trying to memorize them top to bottom).

Contextual Assimilation

Whenever you read a text in a foreign language that you’re studying and you find a word that you don’t understand, try to pick up its meaning from the context it’s placed in. The same process can be put to work when watching a TV show in that particular language.

Personal Relevance

Our memory, again, works in very mysterious was sometimes. It seems that the memory has an internal parsing process that blocks out information that is not personally relevant. For example, if you’re not especially interested in koala bears, watching a show on Discovery about them won’t allow really get you a lot of information, because the subject is not personally relevant. However, seeing Rex Hunt’s Fishing Adventures (with you being a huge fishing fan) will stock in a lot of information on the subject because, you guessed, this time it’s personally relevant. If you can make words personally relevant, you’ll also learn them better. This is where association and mnemonics kick in.

Visual Imagery

We store information a lot faster if it is transmitted to us via a visual signal than if it’s written or heard. Some may argue that in fact writing makes use of visual memory, since the characters you use in writing are graphical symbols. True, but it’s better if you associate words with objects that can be traced with more ease. Use flash cards if needed with this learning technique.

Word Games

Did you know that children learn words almost 30 times faster than an adult? That’s because children, at an early age, are actually “forced” to learn new words, in order to communicate. Obviously, as an adult, this need slowly fades away, which also degrades the word assimilation process. In order to hasten up your language learning, you could try and go back to being a kid and play some word games. These include puzzles, translation games, scrabbles and many others. You can find a lot of these fun word games at www.internetpolyglot.com .

Best Languages to Learn as an English Speaker

I’ve read some authors that bragged about how they can learn any language they set their minds to, regardless of cultural background, in a matter of months. While this seems unreasonable solely on the fact that it’s impossible to actually KNOW a language in that short a time span, the most outrageous fact that they claim is that they can learn languages at the same pace, regardless of what they’re actually learning. This means that in a few months, you could learn French and in that amount of time you could also learn Chinese. This is a rather silly thing to say come to think of it, since any language that isn’t at least related to English, not to mention having its own alphabet, scripts and specific grammar rules, will be tough as hell.

Ok, so we’ve established that languages like Chinese, Japanese, Russian or Arabic are hard to learn because they don’t use many of the values that Western languages abide by. But which languages are easiest for an English speaker to learn, in contrast? Let’s take a looksie…

German

German is by far the easiest language to learn if you’re already familiar with English, since the two are closely related, having the same Anglo Saxon ancestry. Many German words are very similar to English ones (haus – house, maus – mouse, etc) which makes it a lot easier to understand the German vocabulary and also pick things up from the context they’re placed in. However, one of the biggest problems with learning German (actually this is probably the ONLY problem) is the word combinations that are usually formed in conversational German. To give you an example of what I’m talking about, here’s one of the longest words in German and its meaning:

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz means “Beef labeling oversight transfer law”. Admittedly, it will be hard to spot the actual words in there (beef = rind, fleisch = meat, etikettier = label, etc) but believe it or not, for a German that actually makes sense. I could hurt your eyes even further with worse examples, but I’ll just keep it at that.

French

Well French is considered a language that’s easy to digest by many cultures, not just by English speakers. French has a lot of influences from English but in turn, it influences it back. The numerous wars between France and England throughout history sparked this cultural exchange. Although English has an Anglo-Saxon background and French is mainly a Latin language, there’s still a lot of resemblance in the two, as they share the same language layer created by nomadic tribes like the Celts or Gaels.

Spanish

Spanish might not have that much in common with English as the above mentioned languages, but it’s easy to learn because it’s an international language that can be picked up from the TV, music and newspapers. In addition, if you’re an American, you’ll have a lot of Spanish-speaking neighbors that you can engage in conversations with and that will help you out when learning this new language.

How to Learn French the Easy Way

French is one of the easiest languages to learn as an English speaker. Is it? At least that’s what all the experts are saying, but on the other hand, not everything that applies in general is bound to apply to you. Some have it easier learning Japanese than French, simply because they can’t stand the language’s “softness”. If that’s not your cup of tea, then I suggest that you step off the French course and hop on to a Russian or German one, as those languages are definitely tougher and more rigid.

One of the first things you need to do in order to learn French properly is immerse yourself in the language. By spending more and more time reading in French and listening to French words, your brain will automatically try to mimic the informational input that it’s getting. Just like a baby, you’ll need to adapt to the new language, memorize the words and try to reproduce them. Can you say Ma-Ma? Don’t worry, you’ve been through this process before when you were a child and although adults lose their ability to learn languages as they grow older, you’ll still have the advantage of being there before.

From a grammatical point of view, French is not all that much different from English or any Western culture language (Latin or Anglo Saxon). Just like with German, French and English have several look-alike and sound-alike words, called cognates. Admittedly, the number of cognates in French is not as big as in German, when relating to the English language, but still, the few that are there make for a good building point.

One of the biggest problems that English speakers stumble upon when learning French is word pronunciation. Like I said earlier, French is a “smooth” language, words are pronounced in a much softer way than in English. It’s usually rather difficult for an English native to adapt to these pronunciation rules, so you’ll require a lot of practice. And don’t be content with the fact that you’re listening to French words being pronounced; you should also voice them out yourself. Don’t worry; no one will think you’re crazy if you talk back to your TV, if it’s for the purpose of learning French.

My suggestion is this: find a great online French course to work with, try it out for a couple of weeks and see where your starting point is. Are you a complete French newb that needs to take things slow in order to understand things? Or are you the type of learner that can skip a few chapters and still learn the language properly. Once you’ve settled this out, you can start with increasing your vocabulary (you can find several methods to do so at www.internetpolyglot.com ) . Good luck!

Accents in Romanian

A quick update: some our users pointed out that Romanian lessons don't have accents in Romanian words. Now they do! Tudi did the corrections and I uploaded them today to the site.

The 100 Crucial Words

Reading Tony Buzan’s book, “Using Your Memory” a while back, he mentioned something that I found strange: people only use up to 100 basic words in conversational speech, the rest of them being fillings. The number seemed awfully low, but as the author explained his reasons for reducing this to 100 words, it started to make sense. Truth is, we could get a conversation going with just these words, although not a very good one. These 100 crucial words do not include technical words, adjectives or slang, obviously.

When you’re starting out with learning a new language, these 100 crucial words should be your base point. From there on you can build up on your vocabulary, work on your grammar and polish out your pronunciation, slowly eliminating all the mistakes that can affect your language learning process. But what’s the most efficient method of memorizing these words? Does the phonebook method actually work? Or is it better to try and learn them in context. I’d say both techniques work and both have advantages and disadvantages:

Phonebook Method Pros and Cons

The phonebook method basically has you learning words from a vertical list, just like you would learn the numbers from a phonebook. Each word should have its corresponding translation on the same line and you should read the list by focusing on each word and its translation at a time, for around 10 seconds and trying to push it in your memory.

Usually, language specialists recommend against using the phonebook technique when trying to learn vocabulary, because if you’re dealing with a large list of words, by the time you manage to actually go through the list, you will have already forgotten the words at the beginning. However, seeing how we’re only dealing with a list of 100 words, the phonebook might just work.

Contextual Learning Method Pros and Cons

Learning words by deducting them from their context is a great way to improve vocabulary, but when you’re dealing with such a small word base as the crucial 100, it might be harder to create the context needed. Instead, what you could do is take sentences consisting mostly of words from the 100 list and try to contextually understand the OTHER words.

Both methods work quite well with the list and some people even prefer combining the two for great results. Personally, I find that both have flaws and tend to try and learn vocabulary through more diverse means, but if you think traditional learning methods may apply to you, then the above mentioned techniques should hold most of your focus, at least for the first 100 words.

The CUTE Way of Learning Languages

In a guide written by Greg Thompson and his family, they talk about 4 main principles that make learning languages a lot cuter. The CUTE technique is called so because the acronym stands for 4 of the most important elements that come into play when learning a new language:

- Communing
- Understanding
- Talking
- Evolving

Let’s see what Greg was talking about and how you can benefit from these CUTE principles.

Communing

Communing refers to working with others towards learning a specific foreign language. This principle is based upon the belief that a language is not something that can be studied scientifically, but something that can be grown organically and only in collaboration with other flesh and blood people.

I agree that a foreign language cannot always be learnt by reading textbooks. However, while learning organically does have certain advantages, you can easily go overboard and get used to a lot of common mistakes that people usually slide by in conversations.

Understanding

This might seem like a no-brainer (and it is!). Of course understanding what people say will help you learn a language faster. The trick is to “understand” words that you don’t actually understand. Confused yet? What I’m talking about is picking up new words from sentences that you understand and deducing them from their context. For example, if someone says “words are harder to remember because they are long” you will have learnt a new word, by deducing what adjective means from the context. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Just make sure the context processing mechanics are well in place for when it does work.

Talking

This third principle is actually a third step in language learning. After understanding and being able to “think” in a foreign language, it’s time to start talking. You’ll be surprised to find out that it’s actually harder than it sounds in your head. Many times, when you’re faced with the need to speak in a foreign language without prior practice, you’ll think that it won’t be a problem, because in your head, you can “talk” perfectly. Your mouth and your brain will think otherwise when you’re actually going to start talking.

Evolving

This is not necessarily a requirement in learning a language, but rather a requirement if you want to keep up with that language and where it’s heading. A language is organic in nature, it changes, it adapts to current social standards, and it metamorphoses along with its speakers. Knowing how to evolve at the same pace with the foreign language you’ve studied is important, although not as CUTE as the other three factors I mentioned above.

Obviously, these principles need to be backed up by months, if not years of practice, exercises and studies. A language can’t be learnt in 10 days, despite what all those crappy language guides say. At least not if you’re serious about it and want to have control over that language, not just learn the basic vocabulary and be off to something else.

5 Ways NOT to Learn a Foreign Language

Yes, I know it’s a weird title to use, but bear with me, I’m trying to make a point. I often talk to people trying to learn a new language and they complain that they’re using some popular methods and are not getting the results they paid for. They got the “Learn Russian in a week” book and, oh my God, after a week, they’re still at basic vocabulary (if at all). This sparked the idea to create this article, where I’ll talk about 5 very “popular” ways of NOT learning a foreign language and messing up your language assimilation process:

1. Playing by the rules with a blindfold – I’m not at all against popular learning methods, in fact we promote quite a few of the tried and tested ones on www.internetpolyglot.com . However, I do believe that not all learning programs are suitable for everyone. A lot of people will just buy a book, or get an online language course and wait for the cherry to drop right in their mouth. Truth is, you’re better off thinking for yourself than letting someone else do the thinking in terms of what’s good and what’s bad for you. Did you try some word games and they were fun and you felt like you learnt something in the process? Then continue to try them, despite the experts saying that they’re useless. Did all the language gurus tell you to study after a stepwise plan but it’s not working for you? Then simply take off the blindfold and study with the help of the methods that you feel are right.

2. Grammar obsession – This is so common it’s becoming tragically funny. People are perfectionists and they’re trying to get everything right from day one. I agree that works with many fields in life, but language learning is not one of them. Learning a language is something organic, something that can only be grown through experience. Being obsessed with getting the grammar perfectly from day one is a serious time waster, since you’re going to assimilate all the grammar rules naturally, while reading, listening or talking to someone. I’m not saying it’s not ok to learn the basic rules and think them through, just don’t overdo it.

3. The “I Must!” Theory – Setting yourself up with a learning plan from day one is definitely great: “1 hour per day, from 8 to 10 PM, I will study” is a solid statement. However, this doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to skip a day or two, or you need to use those specific hours. If you study just because “you must” do it, you’ll probably not have explosive results. Studying when you’re not tired, when your attention span is maximized and when there aren’t any distractions is the way to go. Being too obsessive about your language learning schedule is definitely a great way NOT to learn that foreign language.

4. Lack of Reviewing – Every now and then, you should test what you’ve learnt so far, or you might end up having more lose strings than you can handle. Learning for a whole year without reviewing what you studied every now and then is awful. You’ll think you know a particular subject, because, after all, you studied it, but when you’re faced to use it in “real life” you’ll notice that there’s no shortcut on the desktop for it. Constantly reviewing and testing what you learned is the key here.

5. Lack of Diversification – This is also related to point 1. If you find a method that works for you, great! But don’t focus strictly on that one. Try to diversify your language learning, make your exercises fun, try reading, listening, talking, writing or a combination of the above. You can very well learn a language without diversifying your techniques, but when you’re faced to do something that you didn’t study for, you’ll be in trouble. For example, you can definitely learn a language just by reading and writing it down, but when you’ll be faced with actually talking it, you’ll have wished you diversified early on.

Hopefully you’ll be able to avoid these mistakes if you start up on learning a new foreign language. Although there are other traps and mistakes you should worry about, I feel it’s the above 5 that have the greatest negative impact on one’s learning process.

Finding the Time to Learn a New Language

I can’t stop smiling every time I browse the Internet or visit a local book shop and see those “Learn Chinese in 10 days” types of guides. It’s just silly, but people still fall for it, because learning a new language is a rather time consuming project and we’re all looking for ways to make it shorter. But seriously, 10 days? Anyway, if you’re looking for methods to cut down your learning to a couple of weeks, simply don’t. There are none. Your best bet is to try and structure your time so that you can learn over a longer period of time.

I’m a strong believer in online learning (obviously, otherwise we wouldn’t have started www.internetpolyglot.com ) and from the perspective of time consumption, it’s probably the best you’ll get. Sure, face to face language courses can be very useful, but they require you to relocate and for the most part, you can’t set your own time schedule. It’s difficult if you have to go all the way to a course when you’re feeling down and you’re not in the right move to learn. With online learning, you can simply put down the mouse and pick up from where you left earlier when you’re in the right mood again.

My suggestion is to break down your learning session in short chunks, over a longer period of time. Instead of hauling all that new information in your head 6 hours each day for a month, you’re better off taking smaller bites, say 1 hour each day, for 4-5 months. If taken in smaller chunks, information can be stored more easily and you won’t have to worry about learning saturation, tiredness or information overload. Don’t subestimate this aspect, having fun (or at least not feeling stressed out) during the learning process can do wonders.

At Internet Polyglot, we also focus on the fun aspect of language learning as a means to get information across and stored. Anything that’s fun in learning can be done in 10-15 minutes, such as playing a short word game, vocabulary quizzes, using some flash cards or playing language related puzzles. If you don’t have a lot of time at hand or if you’re just not feeling in the mood to start with an online course, those 15 minutes of playing during your lunch break will still be helpful. Obviously, the learning frame will be longer, but then again, it’s not like you put a lot of work into it :).

The only disadvantage of Internet language learning from a time-wise perspective is the many distractions that can appear on a computer. Instant messaging, online flash games, social networking sites and whatnot. They can all be very time consuming and they can easily redirect you from learning to wasting time. My suggestion is that whenever you start learning, regardless if you plan on doing it for 15 minutes or 1 hour, you turn off everything that can be a distraction. Close all tabs of addicting websites and try to fight to urge to “just check up on them” for the next hour. Close MSN, Yahoo Messenger or AOL so that no one bothers you. Myspace, Facebook and hi5 won’t miss you if you’re gone for an hour either :)

How to Learn the Vocabulary of a Foreign Language

A language’s vocabulary is its foundation, each word being a brick that can help you build vertically towards your goal. Unlike other concepts in the language learning process, such as grammar structure, pronunciation or spelling, learning vocabulary is not a one-time thing that you can study for a couple of days and understand. Your vocabulary in a foreign language will expand organically as you talk, read, write and listen. Let’s take a look at some popular methods that can help you improve your vocabulary in the language that you’re studying.

Keeping a Word Log

This is a tried and tested method that can help you out in the long run. What you need to do is this: each time you learn a new word, write it down in a log (a journal, a notebook, just make sure it’s something you don’t lose over time). Don’t explain the word, don’t give it a definition and don’t associate it with anything, just write it down. Now, every once in a while (2-3 months) go through the log and read each word and see if you remember what it meant. Chances are some of them might have been lost on you, especially if you haven’t used them again since you logged them, so get a dictionary and again, find out what they mean. This is not so much a method of learning new words, but one of storing the new words better in your memory.

Learning Words in Context


This technique is extremely beneficial and it can mostly be done through constant reading in the foreign language you’re studying. This is how it works: when you already have a basic word base, reading a sentence like as their smell is divine> will usually allow you to logically deduce the word from the context. This will help you create association links between words, helping you understand new concepts quicker if they are next to already known ones.

Read. Listen. Write!

Reading and listening will be your main channels of vocabulary improvement. They can get you a solid word base to use, but it’s also important to use that word base every now and then! If you don’t write and use what you’ve learned it might as well be lost on you. Talking can also help out, but writing is better purely from the vocabulary’s point of view (writing something down rather than saying it gets stuck better in your memory, because of the visual stimuli).

Hopefully these techniques will be helpful throughout your language journey. If you need more similar techniques, word games and useful (and practical) vocabulary improvement methods, try out www.internetpolyglot.com . You’ll find a vast base of exercises that have helped thousands of people struggling with a new foreign language.

Top 5 Reasons to Learn Spanish

With around half a billion speakers world wide, you wouldn’t expect Spanish to be the subject of a “Why learn” type of article. Still, numbers aren’t always everything and some of you might want some more specific advantages of learning Spanish. Personally, I had great advantages from my Spanish language skills and throughout time, I noticed that a few patterns apply to people who learn this language. Most non-native Spanish speakers are people who travel a lot. Some of them learn it because they want to, others learn it due to necessity. But let’s assume you’re learning for fun, for the time being. What would be the main 5 reasons that could convince you to start up on Spanish? Let’s see:

1. Spanish is Easy – No, seriously, it is. It’s actually one of the easiest languages to learn for native English speakers. Spanish is quite common throughout the World and ever since you were a child, you were exposed to the Spanish language on TV, radio or, in some parts of the United States, in the community. This makes it a lot easier to learn the language later on, since you already have the “ear” to learn it.

2. Spanish opens the door for other languages – it’s true, once you learned Spanish it will be a lot easier to go for another language with a Latin substrate. Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, anything that’s related to Spanish will be a walk in the park. These languages can be learnt using the same language patterns, so once you got the hang of how Spanish needs to be assimilated, you will find it quicker to adapt to its cousins.

3. Travelling – Obviously, if you travel to South America or Spain, you’ll need to speak Spanish fluently if you want to make it a pleasant stay. Otherwise you’ll be going to your hotel room with your arms aching every night, due to the extensive body language that you used throughout the day. People in Spanish countries aren’t particularly keen on learning English and you can’t ask that from them anyway. It’s you who’s visiting their country, so it’s you who has a duty to perform in learning their language.

4. Business Opportunities – Regardless if you’re from Europe or North America, there are some very rich neighbors standing right next to you. Mexico for the US and Spain for Western Europe are two markets that need to be tapped, because they offer huge potential. If you want to conduct business in Spain, Mexico or any other Spanish speaking country for that matter, you’ll make a great first impression if you can speak the language of the persons you’re dealing with.

5. Cultural Understanding – The Spanish culture has been incredible throughout history and Spanish authors have left behind hundreds of thousands of books filled with interesting information. However, information is lost during translation, so if you really want to enjoy a book from a Spanish author, you’ll learn the language and read the book the way it was meant to be read: in the Spanish language.

I hope I made my point with these advantages of learning Spanish. If you need a starting point for your language efforts, visit Internet Polyglot and start the ride!

5 Advantages of Being a Polyglot

I read on someone’s blog a while back a few journal pages where the owner made a sort of wish list for the next 5 years. Her main wishes were to learn 5 languages in the next 5-10 years, including Arabic, French, German, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. When someone commented on the post, asking why she wants to be such a big polyglot, she simply replied: to be a citizen of the World.

I agree that the only true way we can be citizens of the World is by knowing each other, our languages and our cultures but I’m sure there are many other reasons an individual would want to learn a foreign language or two and become a polyglot. Here are mine:

1. International Business – I-business is more common than ever nowadays, with the Internet allowing us to outsource, freelance and close deals overseas without too much trouble. Being a polyglot and being able to speak in the language of the person you’re working with, or the person you’re working for weighs heavily in how the deal will end. Remember, not everyone knows English and you shouldn’t expect others to speak your language if you don’t put at least some effort to speak theirs. Check out these free online courses if you’re planning on learning a new language.

2. Travelling Opportunities – How many times have you thought about travelling to a remote, exotic country, but worried that you’ll have a hard time there due to lack of communication? It happens everywhere, regardless if you’re going to a country in Africa, or somewhere in Europe. If you can’t talk their language and they can’t talk yours, you’d best learn body language. Or, you can take up these free language courses.

3. Personal Impression – Let’s face it, when you hear a foreigner coming to YOUR country and speaking YOUR language, I’m sure it tickles your ego a bit. The same thing would happen if you would travel to another country and the natives would hear you speaking their own language. It can really bump your image (positively) in a native speaker’s eyes.

4. Social Status – Does making a lot of money automatically make you a great person? No, because money can be the result of luck or theft. Does knowing 3-4 different languages earn you this social status? Yes, because being a polyglot is clearly the result of some hard work and you can tap in on that aura that you’ll be surrounded with, regardless if it’s simply to gain an edge in society, in business or at work.

5. Explosive Learning – Learning a new language is a tough process that involves both short and long term brain cells to work full time. The reason the first language is hard to learn is that we’re not used to the learning process itself. Most polyglots will find that it’s easier to learn their 3rd or 4th language than the first ones, because by the time they reach number 4, their language learning process is already in full motion and is capable of assimilating information much quicker, through the patterns you already established with the other languages.

Are these reasons enough to become a polyglot? I hope so. But even if it’s for one of the above reasons, or just for the heck of it, becoming a polyglot is a great achievement and something that is heightening for any human being. So if you want to become a better human and a true citizen of the World, start by learning a few languages to back you up.