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Tips, tutorials and resources to aid you on your path towards fluency.

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    • Category Archives: Book Reviews

    On the Tagalog/Filipino language (and a book update)

    PhilippinesMap3-1Tagalog is the newest member of the language resource section, and it’s a pretty neat one.

    From the fascinating history of the language to its ridiculously easy pronunciation (English: Economics –– Tagalog: Ekonomiks) to its fairly wacky system of in-fixes (like prefixes and suffixes, just in the middle of the word: graduate + um = grumaduate), it was a fun article to write and research, and it should be a fun article to read, even if you’ve never thought about learning the language.

    And…one last reason you may wish to peruse the Tagalog resource page, even if Tagalog’s not your thing: this is the first resource page that matches the content of my book.

    Continue reading →

    Hungarian book reviews and resources!

    Budapest

    BudapestAfter finally finding a grammar book that I can actually recommend, I’ve finished a Hungarian book reviews section. Just because not many people study it, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t get some love. For those of you who might be shopping around for a new language, Hungarian is not as hard as everyone says. I think it’s just a rumor Hungarians like to spread so that they can talk amongst themselves without being understood in trains. The language is extremely orderly - the spelling is as easy as Spanish, once you get a hang of it, the dreaded case system is much better behaved than Russian, there are no noun genders, and the grammar is just cool. Check this out:

    a feleség (the wife) – a feleségem (my wife) – a feleségnek (to the wife, as in “He gave flowers to the wife”) – a feleségemnek (to my wife, as in “He gave flowers to my wife”). Awesome.

     

    Modern Hebrew book reviews and resources done!

    I’ve finished the Modern Hebrew book reviews/resources section! That means we currently have resource pages for the top 11 modern languages studied in the US (4 of the top 15 languages are American Sign Language, Ancient Greek, Ancient Hebrew and Latin). Eventually, I might include those, but not before I really have good recommendations for the main spoken languages!

    Hebrew proved a bit difficult; there really aren’t many good pronunciation resources for the language, and the textbook selection isn’t fantastic either. But I’ve found some good books hiding at Amazon, and if you happen to have some recommendations, let me know and I’ll add them!

    Foreign Language Dictionary Reviews (Part 1: Pronunciation)

    This is some early bookstore research for a bunch of foreign language dictionary reviews. I went to two large bookstores (The enormous Half Price Books and the equally enormous Barnes & Noble in Dallas) and wrote down the names of pretty-much every dictionary they had in every language they carried, and also noted whether they included pronunciation information (and if so, whether it was IPA, some formal system (pinyin, romaji), some random system they invented, or some terrible English approximation [Bawn-JOOR]). I’ve tried to provide Amazon links to as many dictionaries as possible.

    Continue reading →