Brand management is pernicious

Sup?

It seems that, UC Davis, a Californian university pepper sprayed students some time back. Don’t worry. It happens. Students. Seat of learning. Pepper spray. These things go together like strawberries and cream.

For some reason, the university is now trying to hide references to the incident. I wonder why?

Quoting from this article in the guardian : “Multiple contracts were with Sacramento-based IDMLOCO, which was awarded its first six-month contract, in June 2014, for the amount of $82,500, for “search engine results management” that involved creating new content to push “negative” results lower in searches”

This is online brand management, and happens all the time.

So why is this relevant to language learning? Well, why do you think that certain big name learning products are always linked to positive success stories?

Could it be … Could it be .. that they are all absolutely brilliant, and will bring you fluency … quickly … effortlessly … and so on and so forth.

Unlike the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, I don’t always believe six impossible things before breakfast.

This, my friends, is often the result of using ‘Brand management’ to manipulate search engine rankings (perfectly legally) to return the information that THEY want you to see.

Sure I’m paranoid. But am I paranoid enough?!

Besos,

MF

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Improving my Italian with Alice nel paese delle meraviglie

Sup?

I’m listening to Alice nel paese delle meraviglie ‘Alice in Wonderland’ while I walk my dog – who incidentally has just undergone the yearly nasal spray experience. (For those who don’t have a dog, yearly vaccinations include one which is sprayed down the snout of said animal. It is not an enjoyable experience)

So why, you may ask yourself is the famous Moonface, purveyor of fine software,  listening to Alice nel paese delle meraviglie. Isn’t it a story for children? Well, apparently, it is. It is also brilliant, funny, easy to listen to and I’m learning useful words like bruco, giro, riccio and so on.

And full of useful insights:

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” (said Alice)

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where-” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

Besos and baci,

MF

 

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Organisation is key

Sup my friends?

Yet again, I’ve made an organisation related resolution. On the RHS of this post, under the rather pompously named ‘My language journey’, I’m going to add details of :-

My

Language

Journey.

Yeah! Name and shame. Public accountability.  Instead of putting such vital info. on this blog, I’ll scatter the pages throughout Surface languages, and reserve the blog for more trivial matters.

Such as the meaning of Calcatrix.

Baci,

MF

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Entre chien et loup

You have to hand it to the French. They have some brilliant expressions.

I’ve just come across ‘entre chien et loup’, a phrase which describes the time of day which in English we call ‘twilight’.

Twilight is the time of day, early morning or late evening,  when the sun is not directly visible and the light (such as it is) is merely sunlight reflected in the upper atmosphere.

Digressing slightly, the word ‘dusk’ is the darkest part of twilight. The minutes or seconds before the last rays of the sun (bouncing about in the upper atmosphere) disappear and all becomes inky black. Or not if you live in a city. Dusk only refers to the evening twilight.

‘Entre chien et loup’ or in English ‘between dog and wolf’ is the time of day (or night) when we can make out the outlines/shadows or silhouettes or objects but can’t exactly distinguish between them.

Is that a wolf? Or maybe my hound?  Or a monster …

Besos and baci,

MF

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Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth

I like this expression and use it in English a lot. It happened to be todays expression (from 365 Days of French Expressions), so I thought I’d learn it in Spanish and Italian.

A cheval donné on ne regarde pas les dents

A caballo regalado no se le mira el diente

A caval donato non si guarda in bocca

Besos, bacis y pax.

MF

Posted in Idioms | 2 Comments

French progress. Feb 2016

Sup?

Well one of my goals was to improve my (rubbish) French and reach a B1 level by the end of the year. The year hasn’t started particularly encouragingly, mainly because I’ve been very busy with work and you know stuff.

But, but, but it is very important to learn something new every day and maintain some sort of momentum. I haven’t done so as yet, but yesterday in a bid to do so, I bought a book for my kindle called:

365 days of French expressions 

(There  is a related website by the author  Talk in French which seems filled with all sorts of useful material).

There is a new expression for you to learn each day for … 365 days, and this really appeals to me. So for the days when I don’t do any other French related activity (most of them so far), I can learn a new expression.

I started today :-

The expression is de cochon and there is a sentence illustrating its use (as there is for each phrase or expression).

Il avait une haleine de cochon. ‘He had smelly breath’ or ‘the breath of a pig’.

Besos and baci,

MF

 

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The elephant in the room. Comprehension

Sup?

The ‘elephant in the room’  is an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is either being ignored or going unaddressed.

With languages, this is comprehension, and this blog post says it better than I could, but the gist is you can learn to speak a language relatively quickly, but there is no such thing as fast comprehension.

This is so true.

Anyway, with my French (and my resolution this year was to reach a B1 in spoken French), I’ve spent my time so far listening (using Lingq) and reading.

I’ll continue in this way for the next few months.

I read another interesting post on the polyglot dream which (among other things) explains why the author (Luca lampariello) stopped learning Greek. His reasons pretty much mirror my own for putting (for now) Polish on hold.

For anyone who is interested I’ve added a cloze test to the foreign languages sentences. Helpful comments appreciated.

Besos & baci,

MF.

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What next for Surface Languages?

Sup?

Here is a list, in no particular order, of what I would like to do or add to on Surface languages over the coming year.

Improve the look of the homepage.

Add five hundred sentences in Catalan, French and Russian.

Add a cloze test to the sentence tests.

Add two arcade learning games to the language learning pages.

Add two more languages.

For you polyglots,  I intend to add some number games – to test your knowledge of the numbers from one to ten in different languages – and the same with hello.

Remember, bis vivit qui bene vivit 😉

Besos & baci,

MF

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A new year. A new me. French!

Sup?

This year I’d like to think that I will be more productive than the last, or in fact any previous years of my life. The fact that I’m writing this at 10.32, so far having achieved nothing today, suggests that this is unlikely.

Well, we are what we are, and we must work with what we are given. I thought I would analyse my early morning mistakes which caused such a drop in productivity, to avoid them next time.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Our dog needs to be walked, and this is how I imagined that the morning would begin. I would listen to French podcasts for an hour while walking him early (leaving the house at 7.30). An excellent use of time, and I would arrive home at 8.30, ready for work, fresh and invigorated  after listening to French and exercising said pooch and myself.

The productivity gurus couldn’t ask for more. New year. New me. More productive.

Back in the real world, it was dark and raining and so I didn’t leave the house until 8 which wasn’t bad going considering the weather. I then got distracted, listened to De Pelicula for 30 minutes, met a friend for coffee, chatted for a while, forgot about French podcasts and arrived home about 9 o’clock.  My fault.  But then my dog yakked up when I cleaned his paws (he does this for reasons unexplained). This doesn’t happen in any article about productivity I have ever read, and is quite disconcerting.

After the necessary shower and change of clothes, I ate breakfast and made coffee, and arrived at my desk ready to start my day at 9.45.This leaves 47 minutes unaccounted for. The internet, my puppies, the internet.

Hmmm.

Mental note. Must try harder.

Besos, Baci, and pax for 2016.

MF

 

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Language Goals 2016

I know it is slightly early, but  New Years Day is not normally a good day for resolutions (or thinking about such), due to it being the morning after the night b4 and all.

Last year, I was trying to improve my Italian from B1 to B2 on the CEFR scale. This had also been an aim from the previous year, which I hadn’t managed to reach.

You will be relieved to know that I’ve finally arrived at B2 (as judged by a tutor), and aim to carry on (piano piano) improving. To reach this level, I do a weekly language exchange, have had sporadic lessons, read a lot in Italian and listen to the radio. Awesome success.

Cool.

I also wanted to reach a B1 level in Polish.

Instead, I’ve stopped entirely. I love the sound of Polish, and I like the way the language hangs together, but that wasn’t enough to keep me motivated over a longer period. I need a reason to continue with a language, and I didn’t find it with Polish. I’d like to think that I will return to the language some day. Epic fail.

I wanted to reach an A2 level in reading Russian. I started but again didn’t have the hook to make me continue. Epic fail.

Instead, I read a book in Afrikaans. Modest success.

I wanted to maintain my Spanish. I’ve done this with a weekly language exchange and listening to podcasts. Success.

So, chaps, what am I going to do next year?

I’m going to focus on French.  I would like to reach an B1 level in spoken French by the end of the year.

I intend to spend 30 minutes a day, five days a week, studying, and by that I mean actively learning French. In other words, a mere two and a half hours a week. I’m not really big on formally sitting down and learning ‘stuff’ nowadays so that is probably about my limit.

I’m also going to do what has worked for me in Italian, that is reading a lot, listening to podcasts and finding a teacher using iTalki or similar for an hour a week of conversation. At a later point (when my French is good-enough) I’ll look for a language exchange. My experience of language exchanges is that to be effective you need to become friends, and for that to happen you both need to have conversational ability to some degree.

I’m not starting from scratch as I learnt some French at school, and can to a degree read it. However, I can’t speak to save my life. I mean I can say ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ and so on, but I can’t put a sentence together, and due to horrendous memories from school feel like a total numpty whoever I try and say anything. I’m not going to name names, but teachers who criticise (and my French teacher) was one of these, cast a long shadow …

I need a plan, which will no doubt, change from month to month, and I will outline in good time, but for now I’m going to ease myself into the process of learning  French by reading and listening to music.

I’m going to start by reading French Short Stories for beginners by Olly Richards which I came across the other day. The stories are suitable for beginners from A1-A2 which suits me perfectly.

Besos and baci

MF

 

Posted in French, General | 2 Comments