How I Learnt French..

Lemme juz narrate you a bit of my childhood. It was my favorite summer season and my last working day before summer vacation. I was in Kindergarten. “Where are we going for the summer vacations? What will be our plans???” Some exciting questions that were popping-up in my mind, when I was on the way back home from school. I stayed with my family in France, my father was posted there in one of the government concerns that manufactured carpets in the year 1986. As soon as I reached home, I saw my mom sitting on the sofa with all our luggage packed.

Fascinated by the new language that I have been learning in school for a while, there were some common sentences that I had definitely managed learning. Since my maid was also French, how I learnt French was not a difficult task for me, I interacted a lot with her. I asked my mom,” Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé à vous?”, which means what happened. She said that we were shifting to India because of Summer 1992 riots in England. We basically belong to India. As French was an all new exciting language for me, so was Hindi.

But soon I grasped the new language and forgot the one I had learnt as a toddler. Days passed, so did the months and years. I had completely forgotten how to speak French. But do you know, one can never forget how to write any language that you have once learnt, throughout your life. Inspite of our settling down in India, I had always dreamt of going to France, listening to the tales and lovely time, my parents had spent in abroad. What wine, what high-fashion, and what art? How I learnt French? My mother always missed France. 

And finally I had made it. ISA offers the Carlos Castaneda Memorial Scholarship. This scholarship was awarded to me based on the academic achievement. To be eligible for it, the students must have some knowledge of the foreign language with good ranking. By the grace of God, I had both. My little knowledge about French had minted me a great opportunity. As soon as I reached Bellegarde - Vouvray Aerodrome airport, I came across several advertisement boards with French written all over them.

I tried putting up the alphabets together. It did work. From words I learnt phrases and from phrases, I made sentences. In a few days, I was almost through with the basics of French language. To add on to this, a brand new app has come up on iOS, that teaches you alphabets of the world. Phonetic is also a wonderful feature of this app. With the app and my little knowledge almost as a toddler, I had really made my dream come true and also got back the time my parents had longed for. How I learnt French so easily was sometimes even surprising for me. Today they were coming to spend entire week with me and cherish the memories.

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Romantic Rich Herzlich Zurich Trip

My friend betrayed and cancelled the last minute plan. But it was comfortable traveling alone. Finally I boarded on a fine coach for Zurich, the cosmopolitan yet cultural city. My seat was adjacent to a hunk. OMG! We exchanged names and soon realized the fact that we could only use gestures and smiles. Roger did not know English and i was poor at German. Going through my android smartphone and came to know about a language learning app that made things easy. I downloaded the app and looked in for German language translator. Greeting Roger in his language surprised him.

I showed him the amazing app and he downloaded it too. We could now exchange at least basic stuff. Roger told me that he had come to pay a visit to his uncle’s place and thought of exploring Zurich. Roger was more than excited when he came to know that i was also there for the same purpose. Not to a surprise, we decided to have fun together. Attraction was natural. We decided to visit five places.

 Rietberg Museum

The Rietberg Museum is a paramount cultural institution in Zurich. Rietberg Museum comprised of Non-European art. I was just about to trip off the train, when Roger yelled, “achten”. According to the app it meant careful. And i replied, “I am fine”. He too scrolled his phone screen and gave a little smile. It was a sweet beginning of a yet sugary journey.

Zoo

With over 3,000 specimens, zoo is a great place in the city for education and fun. We clicked a number of photographs and also shared our Facebook accounts. Snake section was very fascinating. He exclaimed “schön” which means beautiful.

Fraumünster

The old church had exotic glass design work by Marc Chagall, reflecting the rich heritage of the city. We silently prayed and then went for lunch. The menu was in English. Using the help of lingual app, he decided to have pizza. We enjoyed pizza and pasta with cocktail.

Lake Promenade

Zurich has a lake and lush green scenery galore. All of a sudden Roger told, "kann ich deine Hand halten?", it means can i hold your hand? We took a walk hand in hand by the lake. The feeling was enticing . It seemed as if butterflies were flying in my stomach.

Lindenhof

It was the time of dusk and the romance was oozing. Our last destination was Lindenhof. Lindenhof is the historic home of a Roman castle and fortress. It consists of a hill and section of old Zurich. 

 

My flight was at 2:00 A.M. We would part after that, not willing to tell goodbye. He dropped me to the airport. Boarding on the plane, i saw the last message on my cell, it was Roger’s. It said, “ich liebe dich”. Our short love story had begun through apps, shortly i replied, “ich liebe dich auch”. Understand the emotions, it does not require any language translator.

Lingual Logics

Learning a new language brings many funny instances. You never know it meant something else in some other languages. And if they have an entirely unrelated meaning, it becomes a bigger source of pleasure. Let me tell you some words I came across:

I used to watch Shinchan, the cartoon series with a Japanese kid, with my nephew. The name of Shinchan’s dog is Shiro. I thought its just another meaningless words for pets like tommy and all. Whereas, to my amusement, Shiro in Japanese means white in English. And it struck me that yes! the dog was white. Quite justifiable, but amusing.

Mandarin, as we know, is a language used in China, is also a word used for citrus fruits in English. I mean what would the following sentence imply “Mandarin has a flavour of bitterness.”

‘Shove’ (pronounced as shuv) is a word in Hindi that means corpse. I wonder how would we take this sentence - “That shove was necessary to make things possible.“

Hell in German means Light. So next time, if you yell at someone saying “Go to hell”, be sure that you specify which ‘hell’ you mean.

Hose means trouser in German. So next time you see a fire, grab a ‘hose’ and... wear it! You will need to run.

See, what fun you can have while learning languages! I opened the word-stock I had. What about you?

Rendezvous with non-English speakers

Being an English speaker among English-speaking natives, I had never imagined the fun of being with non-English speakers. I was in Switzerland for an official conference, when I started experiencing the effects of lingual change. Let me tell you some of the legendary moments I can still giggle on.

I decided to delight myself in a French restaurant. The menu card in French looked like a crossword puzzle. But, somehow I managed to make noodles out of Nouilles due to a small graphic after the name. The French serveur, who was almost on skateboard all the while, stood by me for at least 10 minutes to absorb the details of my order. I explained him the whole procedure of making noodles to escape any kind of bad experiences. With my loud actions and mimes, I was able to tell him that I do not want non-vegetarian touch in my Nouilles. After a while I was served with delicious looking noodles to raise my temptations, which brewed away as soon as I sniffed. It was cooked in FISH OIL!  

Next morning, I had to reach a conference via public transport. I googled about the route options that would be available to me. I had to take a train to Paradeplatz, for which I had to hire a taxi to reach the station. I had to hurl from one taxi to another with one word on my tongue Paradeplatz. I asked to every taxi but all I was getting was a perplexed look. I showed the spelling I had jotted down last night to a driver who pronounced it differently with some silent consonants and different vowel sound. Pa -ra -da - pla - z (with T silent) or t(with Z silent) Huh! I should have known that!

When people around you, suddenly start talking in their native language while looking at you, certainly they ought to be discussing you, suspense reaches the climax. You try hard to recall all your kinesics’ lessons to make out what their body language is saying. Soon I realized that it is far more difficult to understand the language of whole body without the language of tongue. And, I kept running my thoughts to try and catch some context. That is a very awkward position to be in, believe me.

Next day, I happened to meet a native speaker in the strange land who, like an angel, ebbed all my hitches with single sway of LingoDiction. With LingoDiction, an offline app for iOS, I got to know all the frequently used words with their audio pronunciation. Then, I faced the same bunch of foreign language speakers with my armours ready to their attacks. I pretended that I cannot understand like before but I could atleast make out the context of their conversation which, to my embarrassment, wasn’t related to me at all.

One more thing I and that angel native did. We reversed the trick on non-English speakers. We make them suspect our topic of conversation, which made them self-conscious. We had a furious laugh before and after the act. Cheers to LingoDiction!

             

You don’t have to be “gifted” to learn a new language, but you do have to be smart about how you learn it.

We all know the use of knowing different languages. It brings the power to read different literature's, the ability to start conversations with people from different geographies, to understand cultures, and what not. On top of all, knowledge of multiple languages lets you make more friends. Isn’t it what today’s Facebook Generation has been chasing?

The need for knowing a new language gets multiplied when you’re touring some place not very known to you. Traveling is all about exploring far off regions, which in turn meeting more natives and facing the linguistic crunch again. You not only lose on making new friends, but there are chances of you being duped into various awkward situations.

Having said that, we all know how difficult it is to learn a new language. You can’t practically learn a language right from the scratch every time you go for a sojourn.  Does that mean you should suppress your desire to explore new places? Or stay conscious while you’re actually in that region? Or shelling out money on guides and escorts to ensure a safe, pleasing voyage?

Well, absolutely not as long as you have a smartphone in your hand. There are several language apps currently available in the apps marketplaces to rescue you out of such situations. But, it’s not as easy as it seems in the first place. This is because the marketplace is oozing with language apps sporting heavy price tags. Not just that, most of these apps are too bookish in nature, which implies giving too much time to become conversant in a language of your choice.

All these problems are now nightmares of past. Get LingoDiction on your iOS or Android-powered smartphone. LingoDiction isn’t just any other language app, but it’s a “smart communication builder” which lets you set off conversations in many language just like that.

Currently available for iOS and soon to be launched on Android, LingoDiction comprises of some of the most commonly used words and phrases from different walks of life. With LingoDiction on your smartphone, you can convey your needs to the natives of most of the popular regions. It has audio capabilities too with which you can actually let your device speak out for you. There are region specific packages to make your exploration of any specific region.

Another important reason to get LingoDiction on your iPhone is its price tag. Each package of LingoDiction has five languages of a particular geographic region. So you’ll have five languages at significantly lesser the amount you’d otherwise pay for one language.

These are just few of the many reasons for how LingoDiction can be that Language Trainer you’ve always been aspiring for. We have a sample package incorporated with the app to give you a feel of its features and content. Download it today and figure it out yourself.

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