„A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.“ William Arthur Ward If nothing works, smile! Normally that helps. This morning I asked a guy to clean my shoes on a square around the corner. He smiles at me, pointed to my shoes, made hand gestures to show that I had to put the other…
It’s now been over a year since I started learning Tunisian Arabic. A year with many interruptions and various difficulties, but a good year, all in all! A breakthrough has not happened yet: everything is slow. That being said, I can’t work more than 10 hours a week on language learning because I just don’t…
French learning commercial:
What is culture shock? A summary Culture shock is the result of the confrontation with a culture that is different from our own, so that a person falls into some kind of “shock.” Shock may be the wrong word. We are confused because rules we had known may no longer apply, and we do not…
“He has his hands behind his back” – in German or English, I could also say: “He has the hands behind the back.” I do not need to refer to the subject. In Arabic, this is not possible, “his” is mandatory both times. Maybe it’s because Arabic needs no explicit subject, so that the reference…
In language learning, we have a concept called “false friends”: Words that both languages have that sound or look alike, or sound a bit similar but with completely different meanings. These words are found particularly in languages of neighboring countries, for example: Dutch and German, or Spanish and Portuguese. And they are very annoying! You…
Does she imitate them – or does she know … ???
I have now done 60 hours of language learning with my language helper. That means that I have probably heard another 60 hours of my recordings. My vocabulary in Tunisian Arabic might be around 500 words. But, that’s difficult to know as the number of words I can say is far smaller than the number…
In the first six articles we have seen how culture shock can be defined, how it progresses and what you can do to moderate, accept and overcome. The main problem is to recognize the culture shock. The situation is not always so clear that I automatically deal with culture shock. Very often, the employer has…
She speaks seven languages … ???