RE: Language blog #001 or : How and Why I am trying to learn 6 Languages at once
I don’t know if I enter in the category unsuccessful learners with bad advice, but what it helped me was listening to music and translating the lyrics, watching series in English with English subtitles, reading and searching for the words I didn’t understand, with time the unknown words were less. Also lately I’m not translating words that are new, I moved to searching the words’ meaning in a dictionary, I guess it’s part of the process of thinking in the language.
All this language conversation has motivated me to start German and French again :)
So, here are the words you said in English, Spanish, German and French (just the ones I know):
More – Más – Mehr.
Please – Por favor – Bitte - S'il vous plait.
Thanks – Gracias – Danke – Merci.
Hello – Hola – Hallo – Bonjour.
Bye – Adios - Auf Wiedersehen – Adieu.
Again – Otra vez.
Sorry – Lo siento / Disculpa / Perdón – Traurig – Pardon.
Yes – Sí – Ja – Oui.
Okay – Isn’t okay universal?
No – No – Nein – Non.
And thank you for the baby duck, they are always appreciated :)
Buena suerte aprendiendo todos estos nuevos idiomas y alcanzando tus metas.
Translating music lyrics and watching subtitled series is my main method of immersion(until I start traveling again). I always preferred subtitled movies to dubbed ones. I had not yet come across 'Disculpa' only Lo siento, already learning something new :) The reason for having okay in the list is to differentiate between to formal and informal ways of saying yes. It also takes some experimentation with google translate to find words, for example google translates YES as 'si', OK as 'De acuerdo' and OKAY as 'bueno'
similar issues translating thanks vs thankyou. This is one of the things I have learned as a result of translating multiple languages at once, don't trust google :) as always gracias por el apoyo
I always wondered a few things with Ok/Okay. In Spanish we commonly use it as "ok" and it's to agree in something, like saying "de acuerdo" (agree), but in English is used as "okay" and it's to agree with something and also when someone asks you how are you, you can reply with okay as fine.
As for the story behind the word, once (when I didn’t want to know everything) I read that O.K. came to existence because during war times if the trope came back to the base without any death they wrote on a board 0.K. meaning 0 Kills, this morning I decided to check and… IT WAS ALL LIES!!! I lived in ignorance for many years!!! Good that I never repeated that information to someone else.
And yes, you are right, don't trust in Google, it lies.
De nada ¡Siempre a la orden! :)