Although I had thought the Canadian dialect is only “eh” at the end of the sentence, one of my blog readers told me about the Newfoundland English.
The red part is “Newfoundland and Labrador”, the easternmost province of Canada. It reminds me of the breed of dogs with the same name. Yes, they are from this province. It seems that their accent is very similar to the people of the west of England and the southeast of Ireland, because Newfoundlanders originally came from those areas. Some examples are “a vine summer” for a fine summer, “tree of dem” for three of them, “helbow” for elbow, “eel” for heel fromNewfoundland English.
Even in Japan, there are many dialects despite it being a small country. English has a larger variety of accents worldwide. I feel that dialects are very interesting, but can be difficult to understand. This is a funny video. The comedian, Mark Critch, is lovely.
I wrote about a chat on the last post. Here is another story about it. One day, I had a text chat with a man. At first, we were carrying on a normal conversation, but suddenly he asked my age. I said “Don’t ask my age.” Then, he asked me again “ Are you sexy?” I replied “ I have two children.” and he said “Are you around 40? Sooo cooooool!!! Sooo seeeeexy!!!” Whoa, yuck! I answered, “Unfortunately, I’m not sexy at all.” and cut the line. On another time, as soon as I said I have two children, a man cut the line. How rude!!! There exist these kinds of guys in any world. Be careful. It seems that some guys use the language sites for a dating purpose. Some women might enjoy it though. Recently I don’t do text chat much because I feel like it is a waste of time. I prefer voice chat, but there are times where it’s hard to catch what they said. So both chats have merits and demerits.
Aside from a chat, I’ve heard of a spammer. You should be careful when you send an e-mail. Once you reply to a spammer, a bunch of mails will be sent to your mailbox. I can sometimes see the warning on websites too. Therefore I suppose those incidents actually happen.
Today, let me introduce “English Central”. I think English natives don’t need this information, but interviews or speeches of famous persons are interesting to me.
As I mentioned before, I decided to study English on Lang-8 and LingQ. Still, I keep the other accounts active to help Japanese language learners by correcting their sentences and pronunciations, answering questions and so on. Besides, I started to study Chinese on LingQ and LiveMocha.
As for Chinese, I exchange messages with a little Chinese girl these days. She lives in East China, not Beijing or Shanghai. She is very good at English. She is busy with school on weekdays, so she sends me messages on weekends. The other day we talked on Skype too. She spoke briskly and smartly. Don’t you think she is amazing? The face that a girl who is just 13 year-old can communicate overseas with people makes me realize how different times are now. I’m wondering if there are such junior high students in Japan?
Incidentally, my first text chat was with a Kurdish woman living in Turkey. It was very impressive that I was able to talk with Kurdish, who I’m not familiar with. I heard of Kurdish on the news, but I don’t know much about them. Turkey is the home of the belly dance which I am learning. So, I asked her about it, but she didn’t know. She said, “What is it?” While I was thinking how I should explain it for only about 7,8 seconds, she complained my answer was too late. What an impatient Kurdish! She said Japanese has beautiful sounds, especially the word “arigatou” which means “thank you”. I don’t understand the feeling, but it’s interesting.
Furthermore, my first voice chat was with a Bosnian man. I felt his sincerity from his voice. Since he asked me where I live, I answered “Kyushu, south Japan”. Then “Saga?”he asked. Saga is a name of small prefecture in Kyushu. How does he know such a small area??? He said “I know Saga by watchig Oshin”. “Oshin” is a famous Japanese TV drama which was broadcast in the 1980’s. I am surprised that people overseas still watch it even today. He liked Saga dialects. lol It was a shame that my voice was so echoed with time lag that I couldn’t speak a lot. I want to talk with him again, but I can’t find him.
My story will be continued. Here is LiveMocha video. Interaction on LiveMocha is very active.
As you read on the previous post, the founder of LingQ is Steve Kaufmann. He is a Canadian who speaks more than 10 languages. LingQ reflects his learning method that is focused on reading and listening. He shares his experiences and tips for learning languages on his YouTube channel. I recommend language learners watch his videos. They must be beneficial because he, a multilingual himself, proves the effectiveness of the method.
Here is one of his videos. (I uploaded his Japanese video in my Japanese blog. He speaks Japanese fluently)
I wrote about Lang-8 in the previous post. I really like LingQ as much as I like Lang-8. LingQ is a language learning site which deals with 11 Languages. The site has abundant contents that are very useful for listening and reading. It is no wonder because materials can be imported from any other page on the internet. After setting the LingQ button on a bookmark bar, you can easily import any text of interest by pressing it. It is very convenient that the meaning of your unknown word shows up by clicking the word. You can also create your own word list. Since the sound can be downloaded into mp3 player, you can listen to it anytime and anywhere. It is also possible for you to create original material by recording voices and typing texts. I want to try to create a Japanese one in the future. For example, “A conversation of married couple’s fight” would be nice because such a situation isn’t common on most teaching websites . lol If you pay some, you can talk with a native speakers on Skype or have your writing corrected. While I don’t need my writing correction thanks to Lang-8, I have speaking lessons with Americans. By chance, I found two female Americans on the LingQ news feed who live in the suburbs of Chicago where I lived. It is a lot of fun to talk with them. It is also interesting that their teaching methods are different. I wrote things about LingQ, but I still have lots of unknown matters on the site. Here is the promotion video.
Have you noticed something different with my posts recently? To tell the truth, I have published the posts after getting corrections by natives. In February, I was motivated by Yumi’s blog and decided to study English. She is a porcelain artist and studying English on the internet to fulfill her dream. It is boring for me to study English by using a textbook. I thought if there were any social websites for studying English, I might be able to continue learning. Then I searched for language learning sites. After all, I created nearly 10 accounts. Wow!
Out of them all, my most favorite is Lang-8 since it provides specialized services for writing. After submitting your journals in almost any language, some other users kindly correct them for free. (they are not always corrected though) Of course, you can also make friends, leave comments and send messages. As I wanted to do something for my English which has many grammatical mistakes, Lang-8 is just what I needed. The corrections by native speakers help me learn a lot about English grammar. Also, it’s just fun to correct foreigners’ Japanese journals. Please refer to http://lang-8.com/happyuan/correction_logs/sent I feel like I have become a teacher. lol
Surprisingly, a young Japanese man, Ki Yoyo 喜洋洋 started up this site when he was 23 back in 2007. He is amazing. The site he created helps a lot of people all over the world. Please read the article.
Incidentally, 喜羊羊 is a name of famous anime character in China. Both have the same pronunciation”xi yang yang”in Chinese. The sound seems to have a happy and hilarious image in China. Referent:http://bitex-cn.com/teaching_materials/126/show10112301.html
The next posting will be about another favorite site.
My Fun Life 