South America is the linguistic powerhouse

Did you know that in the South American continent, there are thirty four language families and over a dozen isolated stocks with about one thousand individual languages? Wowza. It looks like the Amazon can brag about biological and linguistic diversity. This represents the highest level of diversity as compared with any other continent. All of Africa, Asia, and Europe combined have twenty one language families. Africa, for example, the single family Niger-Congo has 1436 languages while Bantu has over 1000. 

So how did this happen? Native Americans migrated from Asia in three separate waves over 10,000 years.  It is important to have a good sense of time, and with that, a good sense about how long it take a language to evolve to the point that it would not be recognizable by ancestors going back five, six, or ten generations. It is amazing when you think about it. 

With each large migration of Indians, spanning that huge chunk of time, they all would have been foreign to each other. Imagine the second or third wave arriving, and seeing Indians who arrived three thousand years prior. They will not have a common language. Their cultures may be very different from each other. 

Incorporating the Holidays into foreign language learning

One of the best ways to build vocabulary is to make the information personal to you in some way. As we have entered my favorite time of year, I have been thinking about how we can incorporate our holidays and seasons into language learning. I would like to than the contributors from Learn Any Language in helping me gather these words. It was a lot of work and could not be done without them. 

What makes this trick unique, is that within each culture and language, the holidays are expressed differently. There may be some holidays and celebrations that we are not accustomed to. It is a good opportunity to expand our holiday vocabulary, while learning about new traditions.

Again, I would like to thank the forum members for helping me with this list. I am putting together more lists from other languages. 

Kashmiri Language Study

Hello Readers,

I never studied Kashmiri, Hindi or anything remotely close to these languages. However, I know that many of my readers do. In this blog you will find several images, kashmiri language, basic kashmiri phonics, sentence structure and grammar. Feel free to use these images. 

Wikipedia: 

Kashmiri (कॉशुर, کأشُر Koshur) is an Indo-Aryan language and it is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in Jammu and Kashmir. There are approximately 5,527,698 speakers throughout India, according to the Census of 2001. Most of the 105,000^{[citation needed]} speakers or so in Pakistan are émigrés from the Kashmir Valley after the partition of India.They include a few speakers residing in border villages in Neelum District.

The Kashmiri language is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India, and is a part of the Sixth Schedule in the constitution of the Jammu and Kashmir. Along with other regional languages mentioned in the Sixth Schedule, as well as Hindi and Urdu, the Kashmiri language is to be developed in the state. Some Kashmiri speakers frequently use Hindi as a second language, though the most frequently used second language is Urdu. Since November 2008, the Kashmiri language has been made a compulsory subject in all schools in the Valley up to the secondary level.

Dwadling aling in Mandarin - III

With my computer problems lately I was able to organize my I-POD. A few days ago I finally was able to load all of my Chinese Living Language Lessons onto my IPOD. I take the boys to the library every week for story time. It is a good forty minute walk. While pushing the double stroller, getting much needed exercise, I listened to the Lessons. The beginning was just nuts and bolts, words, and phrases.

I went through six full Chinese lessons in Pimsleur. Pimsleur requires repetition, and anticipation of answers. The method is slightly different from Living Language. What made me very happy was when I started to recognize words. It felt like it was coming together and sentences were starting to roll from my mind with a certain, ease, or naturalness that I have not experienced in awhile. Of course, I am still in the nuts and bolts rudimentary stages of Chinese. I must admit that trying this language was a great decision. I am glad I did it.

I will keep you posted on my progress.

Vietnamese Alphabet and Writing System

Vietnamese Alphabet

Grandparents -

When I started learning Swedish two years ago, I learned that they make a distinction between paternal and maternal grandparents. This is not something we do in English, French, Italian or Spanish. Allow me to Illustrate

Swedish    Mormor and Morfar ( maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather)
                  Farmor and Farfar    (paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather)

Yesterday while walking with the boys, I started listening to Living Language Mandarin Chinese. I moved from Pimsleur to Living Language this week. So I started at the very beginning. They went over many words that I already knew, and then added some words that I do not know. (Remember that I always recommend using more than one language program.) I learned that the Chinese do the same thing as the Swedes. They make a distinction between paternal and maternal grandparents. 

Chinese  
                    
    祖父                      gong gong                         (informal) father´s father, paternal grandfather

外公

wài gōng

(informal) mother's father; maternal grandfather

外婆

wài pó

(informal) mother's mother; maternal grandmother

奶奶

nǎi nai

(informal) father's mother; paternal grandmother

It is a delicious idea, - some cultures find it necessary to make these distinctions while others do not. Some cultures find it necessary to be specific while others do not.  If you would like to know how your target language addresses grandparents, check out this blog Name Nerds. 

Russian Maps

One thing I have always loved doing is looking at maps. Today I made a collection of different maps of Russia. I looked at physical, political, ethnic and many more Russian maps. They are linked below for your viewing pleasure.