Vuoi imparare qualcosa?

Do you want to learn something....but can't because you have some obstruction to learning?

I think I have the answer.

I am in the process of trying to make all these things accessable to everyone.

While trying to learn several European languages at the same time...I have accidently found keys that open up these languages. After investigating my findings...and not believing what I thought I had found... I can honestly say that I have trully found the keys that will unlock the pathways to the understanding of language and language learning.

No tricks ....... nothing new ......... just the things that the language teachers cannot tell you because they do not know themselves!

Learn the keys to unlock the language you want to learn.....learn to understand, speak and write any language you want to learn...all using nothing but your knowledge of English.

No European language is all that different from any other.... (including English) ...so don't memorise it...learn it!

Learn how it works!

Learn to learn.......that is the key......learn how the language works .... and you can speak it!

It is really that simple! A revolution in language learning.

Saying Really Stupid Things

Some people just have a knack of saying really stupid things. I know some people like that.

I mean…we can all say dumb things from time to time…but some people just keep it coming time and time again.

One guy…I have to say that I really don’t know him…although I have met him so I know he is real…. Gave us the wonderful saying that subsequently lead to the acronym that inspired designer logo…YGWYG.

Now it just so happens…that this very same idiot has done it again. Recently…I am reliably told…he hastened an end to a business meeting … the stated reason….. “I have to go and cut the grass”.

Filling Up On Chinese

I know I said I was going to boycott the Olympics…and mostly I have….but due to a lack of anything else on any of the six million channels that I pay through the nose for…and in an attempt to make full value of my high priced new wide screen HD TV…last night I watched a bit….and have a few things to say about what I saw.

Firstly…it is obvious that everyone must really want to see the swimming. This is obvious to me because no swimming was actually shown…but the announcers repeatedly announced…”The swimming will be on soon”.

Seems that the TV stations…like the banks and Telstra….have worked out the secret of true commercial success…find out what people really want and avoid giving it to them for as long as you possibly can. In he case of the banks and Telstra… they never end up giving their customers what they want…so I suppose we can be at least thankful that the TV stations…. presumably… and I say presumably because I didn’t actually see it….put the swimming on at some point during the night. It might have been at three o’clock in the morning when most of the long suffering viewers had shuffled off to bed after being bombarded by endless commercials … but…the swimming would have come.

Instead of anything interesting or anything that anyone actually wanted to see…they had on thing like men’s synchronized diving, gymnastics and women’s weight lifting.

The weight lifting really got me thinking because I have noted …..with very little interest at all……that the Chinese are very good at certain sports…..coincidentally…they seem to be the same ones where competitors would benefit most by the use of anabolic steroids….weight lifting being a prime example. I watched with disinterest as this very large and fairly unattractive Chinese woman smashed world record after world record by lifting tons of steel weights above her head…..all the time looking as though she was about to burst at any minute. My attention was really only attracted fully when they announced that that was the end of the woman’s clean and jerk …and that the next event on the program was the woman’s snatch!

It was at this point I turned off…. feeling that what I was about to witness might be something akin to a video Frank might email you.

I also see that the Chinese are very good at shooting….as you would expect….and reports even suggest that one Chinese competitor so impressed the judges with his form that they awarded him valuable points in spite of the fact that he failed to actually hit the target…..which was a small detail which they were not bothered by. And fair enough I say…they give you points for trying in Rugby and missing in football…so why not shooting. Anyway…he probably was not used to aiming at clay targets…and probably unaccustomed to having to shoot without the rest of the squad to make up for any poor aim that he might have from time to time. Anyway…they have tanks…what do the guns really matter anyway? Just give him the gold medal and let’s just move on!

I have also noticed the lack of spectators. Funny how in a country that is packed to the brim with a billion or more people…they sadly can’t get a few of them to turn up and watch….or at least photo shop in a few for effect… It must be the corporatisation of sport. Hey….why not give a couple of million political prisoners day release to make up the numbers…or would that be too much like torture for them?

And after the smoke and mirrors of the opening ceremony…we all can’t wait for the closing ceremony….I am told that it is being produced by Pixar and that there will be special appearances from Woody and Buzz from Toy Story and that Shrek will be the MC.

Thanks so much China for all you contribute to the world right now…after your proud history it is just so sad to see what you have become. At least you are showing your true face to the world…albeit…unintentionally.

Voulez-vous couche avec moi ce soir?

So the French lessons have begun. In about an hour…I learned about 1300 words of vocabulary and gained and insight into verb conjugation and sentence structure.

I have to admit that I had a bit of a head start…I did do French at school…then took some lessons before travelling in my early twenties…spoke French in France… pretty badly I expect…and then worked for a French company that gave me twenty minutes of French lessons every Tuesday morning. But without a great teaching method …like I have had tonight....this would not have been possible.

Most of what I had learned before……I had forgotten through a lack of use…and other stuff I just got confused with Italian. ( the words do come out a bit mixed…French and Italian) But it was very easy. I was surprised how much …especially the verbs…are almost the same as Italian.

If French is the language of romance…then Italian is the language of passion. Love them both but have to admit a preference for Italian. You don't speak Italian...you sing Italian! The passion is always there and I love that. I suppose I am a passionate person....and love to see that in others.

So …I really need to assess my goals…. The reasons I want to go back to French are:

My children are learning it and I want to be able to help them and speak to them in French when they want.
I am hoping…and I think it does…that it helps me to understand the Latin based languages better…ie : Italian
I think that if I can get a grip on Italain and French …then Spanish is almost a given…(Spanish has to be the best language to learn because if is the second most spoken language in the world)

I have no real desire to gain any real fluency in French ..or even close…but I have been a bit blown away by just how close it is to Italian…and therefore how easy if has been for me to learn again…even more strange…if that when I have been asked to translate an English sentence into French…. I have tended to translate it first into Italian and then into French!

Some verbs..as an example:

To come …Italian = venire - French = venir
To eat…….Italian = mangiare - French = manger
To speak Italian = parlare - French = parler

English: I would like to know where you want to go to eat tonight.

Italian: Vorrei sapere dove vuoi andare a mangiare sta sera.

French: Je voudrais savoir ou voulez-vous aller manger ce soir.

Both the verbs and the structure here are very close. They are sister languages and learning them...it is easy to see that.

I now know why you say ..parlez-vous …and not vous parler…when asking a question…..to begin to actually understand this stuff is amazing!

French is a beautiful language…and I would love to just wake up one morning and be able to speak and understand it…but when you get older…and I got my classes today so at least I can read the text books but makes me know that I am getting on a bit now!….it becomes very difficult….and so I think I will stick with Italian… as a serious thing……but to know a bit more French would be great and expands my knowledge and understanding of English too.

Plus…if I can speak and hopefully encourage my girls to want to learn and therefore have a lifelong skill that they can enjoy without too much effort..... that would be great...I wish I had had that head start!

Fa Brutto Tempo Oggi

I am just totally over this weather. I think that I kind of hibernate over winter as it is…days like today make me wish I could do it for real. Not that I don’t like that we have four distinct seasons…just that winter is too long.

The Italians put it well…they say “brutto tempo” ….. ugly weather

To make matters worse…today…I braved the freezing air and rode the “Vespa” to my parents house who have just returned from Europe…and summer. Seeing their photos just made me want to book a plane ticket right away.

One place I will not be going is China. I tried to watch a bit of the games over the weekend….. given that it is pretty much TV watching weather… I didn’t see too much because was totally boring…although you have got to admire the strength and the skills of the gymnasts…but it got me thinking…why did they even get the stupid games? I mean a communist dictatorship with a human rights record approaching that of Nazi Germany?….at least the Germans got the Olympic before they did all the really bad things! What were they thinking…ohh….the money of course…sorry.

Anyway…I don’t think its right I am not all that interested anyway…so I won’t be watching. This is my mini boycott.

And what is going to happen when the standard of living rises in China to a point were the billion strong Chinese refuse to get paid a bowl of rice a week and demand real wages and respectable working conditions? Where will we get all the cheap crap made then? Botswana?

Buying all this cheap Chinese made stuff is just supporting the exploitation of workers in my opinion…and screwing our manufacturing industry at the same time….god…I will be calling people “comrade” soon…very left wing opinions for me…but I am a protectionist!

So..is it the weather…or the fact that I have been feeling old this weekend that has got me down? As of today…I have a teenage daughter…and yesterday…I went and ordered reading glasses…what’s next? A hearing aid…a walking stick…inconstancy pads….maybe Viagra?

The Laws of Public Transport

It has taken me a while…but I think I have finally worked out the laws of public transport.

They are difficult and confusing at first…but like anything…when you work out the basic principle of how it all works….then things just seem to fit into place can you can pretty much predict how various scenarios will play out.

They are also very strict rules…as are the laws of nature….very hard and fast…in Australia that is…not overseas…. Different rules apply overseas and I will touch on that a bit later. I have only been able to gain the insight I have because I have travelled widely throughout Australia and used public transport…believe me …this really is an Australian thing…and very consistent.

And…… just like Newtons laws ….the laws of public transport all tend to have an equal and opposite reaction.

Law 1: No two services ever connect.

This is no accident…it is a plan contrived by cunning and bitter people within the public transport department who are so disgruntled with their lot in life that the sole satisfaction that they gain from their job is to delight in the inconvenience of others…I know people like this!

To prove this law…all you have to do is look at any timetable and you will see that the services are cleverly timed to only just…ever so slightly…completely miss connecting with each other.

The optimistic traveler may be forgiven for stupidly hoping that the service they are on will be running just slightly early…and the service that they are misguidedly hoping to connect with might be just a little bit late…and we are talking simply a matter of seconds here….but it never happens. If fact….a converse rule applies here…this is known as the converse complexity paradox of the first law of public transport.

The converse law paradox states that the more likely you are to benefit from a service running late…the less likely it is to actually occur. Conversely…the more likely you are to benefit from a service running early…the less likely it is to actually occur.

Given that very few services actually run on time…you would therefore predict that…on average….you would benefit either way about half the time. But the converse law paradox shows that this is sadly misguided logic.

Example: Tonight….the service I was hoping to travel on had 3 services between 6pm and 7pm….on average….a service every 20 mins…therefore..it is reasonable to assume that if you arrive at any random time between 6 and 7…you would not have to wait for about 10 – 15 mins for that service. But sadly…the converse law paradox comes into play. The 6.23 service ran 3 mins early…which I missed…..meaning that my wait was 17 mins…the next service was 3 mins late…this meant that I arrived at the exact time …and picked the exact services that would make me wait 23 mins. At no other time could you arrive at any time during that hour and have to wait longer than a theoretical 20 mins…but I waited 23!

This is only one case study….and if it was an isolated example…then it could be fobbed off as being the complaint of a pissed off commuter. But I can sight many examples of exactly this type of thing happening all too often,….way to often to purely be a matter of chance.

In fact…try to miss a bus by 2 mins knowing that there will not be another one for 20 mins….and I bet you couldn’t do it one time out of one hundred on a random basis!

This confirms the converse law paradox.

Law 2: Everything is as Inconvenient as it Could Possibly Be

You think the guys down at the public transport department had some fun with the first law…..well…they must have been rolling around the floor with tears of laughter with even the thought of what they could come up with here. And boy…they do have some fun with this!

The basic principle is…just make every little thing as difficult as it could possibly be for the travelling public.

For instance…. Given that you will be wanting to travel somewhere…. At some point you will need a ticket….incidentally…it is quite likely that public transport would be totally free to everyone except for the existence of this law…you see…just having to buy a ticket opens up so many possibilities in respect of this law…that it simply could not be resisted by the public transport guys.

So….okay…now you have to buy a ticket…a seeming simple thing to do …right…yeh….right! So where do you buy the ticket from? You can go to a newsagent who inevitably will not have the type of ticket you want available…..you can go to the railway station where you have two options…buy a ticket from a machine that gives no change…does not accept notes...has no instructions….. and is broken…or …you can join the mile long queue for the ticket window which is being serviced by an illiterate Pakistani who has no change and cannot speak English and does not know where Flinders Street station is…all this taking on average about as twice as long as the train trip you are about to make. This assumes that you even have an open ticket window or that the station you are at even employs anyone at all…which many don’t.

In fact…..for a laugh….on Sundays the train people have a special deal….you can travel anywhere all day for $2.90….but sadly..the stupid ticket machines that they have are not even smart enough to know that it is Sunday ….. and you can only buy one of these ticket from the ticket window….they have a poorly hand written note advising passengers of this which is sticky taped to the broken ticket machine…..this actually serves two purposed….one….it totally screws everyone around by making them wait in queues unnecessarily….and two…. it also gives the railway employees the perfect opportunity to practice their newly acquired skill of speaking English.

Or maybe…you could board a tram where you have no option other than to have the exactly correct fare in change ….again…no instructions or information as to what the correct fare might be. Or…catch the bus where you will be verbally abused if the required change is more that about 10 cents…it just goes on and on with this one!

Over and above all of this…the fares are so convoluted … that if you actually manage to buy the correct ticket….assuming you are able to get one at all….is highly unlikely.

On top of all of this…they have developed specific strategies which relate specifically to the type of transport they provide….but they also conspire…..

Let me share this with you…..the trains are incredibly tropically warm….in fact...on a cold winters day…you could get in a train…fold out a banana lounge …strip down to your underwear and imagine you are holidaying on a pacific island…..a good thing?...well…you would think so….but fill that carriage with people dressed for an arctic exploration…and turning up the heat suddenly becomes as bad…sweaty…smelly reality. Added to this…when leaving the train…you then have to cope with the winter blast on the platform….the newly formed sweat on your brow quickly turning to icy cold dampness…they have got you!

The buses….they have a different strategy…firstly…they have this thing where …if beginning the route…assuming you have to wait for the bus….which you will…see Rule No 1…..the bus will actually wait about fifty yards from the waiting travelers…not wanting to provide any relief from the elements at all…then…when the driver finally allows you to board the thing…it is colder than it was outside. I am sure the drivers have heaters at their feet that keep them nice and warm…but the passengers freeze!

Trains especially…have perfected inconvenience … most trains leave from the most inaccessible platforms…Ringwood station is a doozy…not only do you have to climb a mountain of ramps to get to any platform…but once you have overcome that hurdle…you then need to negotiate the platform buildings to actually get to where the trains leave…you have no hope if you are in a hurry!

Law 3: There is a weirdo Freak or Nuff Nuff on Every Service

Where ever you go ..this law applies. It is a total constant. In fact …often there is more that one. I used to get a bus that took about 20 nuff nuffs to work. It was actually okay…you just have to get used to the idea…and they were nuff nuffs..the weirdos and freaks are way worse.

Now…it is important to note that this is a very constant rule…..so…if you get on a public transport service…and cannot see a freak ..a weirdo or a nuff nuff….then sadly…you are it!

So be a little bit grateful when they are about…..you are not the freak on that trip!

Doing My Head In ...In a Dozen Different Ways....

The timing of things is aways interesting….for example…why did it have to happen that I decided to learn a foreign language at almost the same time that I was asked to be on the JDE team?

Talk about having your head done in in a dozen different ways…and that is just JDE!

Then…my first attempt at learning my chosen language was at traditional classes.... professionally run. Within a few weeks…things were going pretty well…I started dating my teacher!

I have to say that this was not a really clever move….although it seemed like a really great idea at the time....but I will not even attempt to expand on that story…….just now….except to ask…have you ever sat in any class at all…knowing that within about two hours…you and the teacher up the front of the class…would be lathed up in a hot tub …a glass of wine in hand…doing unspeakable things to each other??? Not a good learning environment!

That tragic relationship over….I had to move school…but at the new school....I got the same teaching methods….but I didn’t date the teacher…..it was okay and a bit of fun….although it was not as much fun as the hot tub… It was hard going…but trying to learn a language outside of the country it is spoken always is very difficult…and I knew that….as did the rest of my class.

Class members came and went….some stayed…some were better than others…some more serious that others…some went off to Italy…others just kept up the classes….the bottom line…..at completion of level 5….which took about 18 months….all of us had learnt a lot of words…memorised dozens of verb conjugations….. learned about past and present tense.... and could pretty much say nothing of any use at all ….and certainly none of us could construct our own sentences with any confidence.

Then …for me at least …came the learning revolution. I stumbled upon a teaching method that was totally revolutionary. It didn’t teach vocabulary much at all…but relied on English vocabulary and just taught structure and concentrated on verbs and their use…verbs being the backbone of any language….this seems to make a lot of sense if you actually want to speak and understand it.

After a few weeks of this…and remember…I was building on what I had already learnt outside the hot tub…secondo me…adesso posso farmi capire in italiano. (I thought that now I can make myself understood in Italian)

Months down the track…I am doing pretty well when I find myself on a train with a couple of dozen Italian tourists….out in Australia for the Pope thing. So…I start talking to them…I was reasonably confident…but soon found myself struggling to answer the most basic of questions….at least I understood the questions…and was able to answer most of them…but it made me realise just how far away from fluency I really am…and just when I thought I was making some real progress.

Then!!!! ….if you have read the library thing…you will know that I have a new set of lesson…lesson One….I could not understand a single word! I know it is a pretty advanced course…but please….start me off easily!

Then I read in the course notes that they expect that you have to spend about 10 hours per lesson! Does this learning a language process never stop? I suppose not…I am still learning English after all these years….

So…here I go….diving into another set of courses…but if I can learn something from this one ....then I think I can really say that I have advanced.

It might be easier…and I might learn a lot more…to just to go to Italy and speak to people…because I know that is what I really need…to use the language…but …since I now have this amazing TV…that is not likely to happen any time soon. Cosa ci posso fare?

What I thought would take about 3 or 4 years…is on track at least…after about 2 ½ years..I can at least hold a basic conversation and I have come to know that my spelling and knowledge of correct grammar is somewhat better than friends I know who learned to speak the language because of their parents…so it has not been a total waste of time…I also now see English in a different light.

And to think...in about 2 weeks…the French course starts!!!