Day: December 17, 2010

Questions on the Goldlist methodology for university students

"Arabic Language" in the Arabic Al-B...
When studying Arabic or Hebrew using Goldlist, it is probably more comfortable to place the target language column to the right of the vehicle language column.

The following is a discussion that started with a PM on another forum, but the software in that forum baulked at something in my answer, but I was able to save it here, and I have the person’s permission to publish the correspondence. Which in a way is just as well as here it will benefit more people. The rest is the correspondence.

Hi, I’ll try and lace my answers in with your questions.

— Previous Private Message — Sent by :****** Sent : 16 December 2010 at 8:42am Hello, Sorry for bothering you with some trivial questions, but given that you have created the Goldlist method and learnt Russian, I thought you would be the best person to ask. I study Russian (and Arabic) at university, and although this forum is very good for methods on how to teach oneself a language, I find there aren’t that many resources for university students.

Fair comment. There seems to be less and less for University students, but only more taxes for them to be paying later on. I don’t know how Clegg looks at his face in the mirror.

My first question would be about the extent of the vocabulary I should ideally acquire at university. Indeed, I’m now on my year abroad (3rd years), and will shortly start using the Goldlist method, however, I’m a bit lost regarding the amount of vocabulary I should learn to reach a good degree level, and to some extent, fluency. Continue reading “Questions on the Goldlist methodology for university students” →

ICMTSU #2 Grim multilingual Christmas corporate cards

I really can’t MTSU, this time. I’ve seen some dire ones over the years, but this one is downright scary. I’ve changed the logo of the Firm who sent it as it is a legal firm and so I might get sued, and I did make a very slight adjustment to the lead partner’s face, just to emphasise a certain aspect I noticed about it.

A very scary Christmas to you, und Du, et vous...

Not only can nearly none of them (with the worthy exception of the one speaking Italian) manage to crack their faces into a smile or any appearance of happiness while launching into their multilingual greetings in Polish, English, Italian, German, Russian, French, and, for some inexplicable reason, Taiwanese Chinese, but also the greyscale photos seem to lend a depressed air to the whole effort.

With regard to the Chinese one containing half characters that most Chinese people outside Taiwan wouldn’t recognise any more, I assume they went into the Google translate thing and saw that they could have “simplified” or “traditional” and they probably thought that “traditional” would be better for a Christmas card.

I’m also far from sure some of these people speak the languages that are bubbling out of their mouths. I did check their website, and it says what languages they actually claim to speak. Hanyu is not included among them, as you may guess, but the guy speaking German here is in fact a real German.

As a marketing effort this is such an epic fail I can only put it here under the ICMTSU section. If you know any worse ones, please include them in the comments!