The Linguist - Page 2 of 71 - For people who love languages, or would but were discouraged...

11Feb

11 Feb 2020

Learning Cantonese: How I Went About It

I lived in Hong Kong from ’68 to ’70, two and a half years, but my main task for the first year there was to learn Mandarin. Thereafter I worked at the Canadian High Commission, mostly in English, or in Mandarin on my visits to China for the twice annual Canton Trade Fair. Also, although […]

04Feb

4 Feb 2020

Tips for Learning Russian

Learning Russian

I wanted give some important tips for learning Russian. First I'll explain about the writing system, then some interesting things to remember about Russian verbs of motion, aspects of verbs and cases.

28Jan

28 Jan 2020

Reading May Be the Secret of My Success in Language Learning

Learning Techniques

Breaking News –Special Report: A new way of recording and transmitting information has been discovered, even more convenient than mp3 technology. It’s called reading, yes, writing things down for others to read! Someone commented on one of my recent YouTube videos where I said, in Japanese, that Japanese people who are learning English might […]

21Jan

21 Jan 2020

How Long Does It Take to Learn Spanish?

Learning Spanish

How long does it take to learn Spanish? How long does it take to learn any language? I hear these questions quite often. There is no simple answer. It is really up to you. The US Foreign Service Language institute published some numbers about how many hours required to learn different languages. For Spanish the […]

14Jan

14 Jan 2020

The Swedish Language: How I Went About Learning It

Learning Swedish

I was born in Sweden. I lived there until I was five. I imagine that I only spoke the Swedish language for that period. I have no recollection of transitioning from Swedish into English after we moved to Canada. My parents decided we would speak English in the house. My parents were actually from Czechoslovakia, […]

07Jan

7 Jan 2020

How to Learn Chinese: My Top 6 Tips

Learning Chinese

I studied Mandarin Chinese 50 years ago. It took me nine months to reach a level where I could translate newspaper editorials from English to Chinese and from Chinese to English, read novels and interpret for people, I did this in the age of the open-reel tape recorder, long before the age of the Internet, […]

31Dec

31 Dec 2019

Can We Sound Like a Native?

Techniques

Today, I’m going to talk about speaking like a native, sounding like a native, because it’s a discussion that showed up sort of in response to my latest video, which I did in Japanese. Sometimes I study on LingQ using the computer. Mostly, however, I use my iPad because it’s more comfortable […]

24Dec

24 Dec 2019

How To Learn Portuguese

Learning Portuguese

Many of us are watching the Olympics in Brazil. Despite all of the bad reports that we always get in the lead up to any Olympic Games – some British newspaper called the 2010 Vancouver Winter games the worst Olympics in the world ever, then there were all the problems with toilets in Sochi and now pollution in Rio – it looks like actually things are proceeding swimmingly, so to speak. People [...]

17Dec

17 Dec 2019

Interview with A.J. Hoge of Effortless English

Q&A

Successful language learning doesn’t depend on the study and grammar nor writing tests like TOEIC and TOEFL, although these are popular in Japan. What is needed is sustained engagement with compelling and comprehensible input, as well as a little encouragement. This is what A.J. Hoge of Effortless English provides. Here is an interview I did […]

10Dec

10 Dec 2019

How Long Should it Take to Learn a Language?

Learning Techniques

Language learning depends mostly on three factors, the attitude of the learner, the time available, and learner's attentiveness to the language. If we assume a positive attitude on the part of the learner, and a reasonable and growing attentivenes...

I speak 20 languages