Bilingual English And A Polyglot Club - and 7 easy words in Swedish

I am planning to start a polyglot club. I am on the Facebook Polyglot page. Singapore has four official languages and you see signs in four languages and hear repeated messages in four languages on the underground train stations (MRT - mass rapid transport).

Chinese is difficult. For an English speaker the easy languages are Spanish and Swedish. I started learning German on Duolingo and finished the basic course. I started the Spanish. I am now bowling through the Swedish on Duolingo. There are 50 units, each of which has about six to nine projects lasting about 5 to 10 minutes. When I am bored, on the train, waiting for a meal, in bed but too stressed to sleep, instead of reading bad news, I do another lesson. 

Duolingo is positive. It keeps telling you how wonderful you are for completing each lesson and project, with little animations. It also keeps track of how many words you learned and how many hours you have spent and how this compares with last month.

Easy Swedish

English - Swedish

1 age - alder (the spelling looks like older but starts with an a like the English word age)

2 day - dag (starts with the same two letter, ends with a letter with a tail, sounds like the German)

3 du - you (similar to the French tu, or remember how do you do)

4 February - februari 

5 June - juni

6 sugar - socker

7 We - vi

Useful Websites

DUOLINGO

duolingo.com

WIKIPEDIA

wikipedia/swedish language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language

https://myswedish.medium.com/orthography-in-swedish-8fb4ef13a26b

Months

https://www.speaklanguages.com/swedish/vocab/months-and-seasons

Chinese - Easy Peasy websites and stories about confusing Chinese toilets

Flag of China.

Years ago I went to a Chinese speaking Toastmasters club in Singapore after I saw somebody had written on Facebook that he went to a Chinese Toastmasters club to learn Chinese.

Singapore flag.

Chinese Challenges In Singapore

 I could not understand a word. 

In the interval. I had enormous trouble finding the toilet in the interval. I tried pointing to my groin and miming hand washing. Eventually somebody showed me the floor with the toilets and left me. I did not know which toilet was which.  

Now I have learned the sign for women from the Chineasy flashcards, with their explanation that the old-fashioned idea was that a woman is kneeling, I prefer to think of it as a woman in the ladies toilet, maybe a Japanese woman, adjusting her hair with a hat pin or adjusting her hat.

I know that men is the other sign. To me it looks like a man running, maybe running to the toilet.

 At the end of the meeting I had trouble explaining that I needed a taxi or railway station to get home. If you are a complete beginner, your best bet is a bilingual club. 

I went to a bilingual club and I kept hearing 'knee how?' followed 'by how!' After somebody who was bilingual explained to me that Ni is you and hao is good, and ni hao, you good? ia a greeting, wo which the reply could be simply, hao, meaning good, I had that ingrained for life.

In China I thought I had learned the toilet signs. I copied the sign outside the ladies toilet. An hour later I passed a toilet, recognized part of the sign and thought, that's it, the Ladies. 

However, I went in a saw men's backs. I retreated fast.

Downstairs I found the guide and insisted that the guide come up to the toilets to look at the sign and compare it with what I had written down. The sign I had copied was indeed over the ladies toilet. What was wrong? I had not copied down the sign for ladies. I had copied down the sign for toilet.

Now I have learned the signs for men and women. The woman sign looks like either a woman with breasts or the classic drawing of a kneeling woman.

Useful Websites

Chineasy Flashcards

Thamesandhudson.com

Chineasy Book

Earworms disc and language book

earwormslearning.com

Foreign Workers and Domestic Helpers Language Guide from Mighty Minds

mightyminds.com.sg

 https://www.livinglanguage.com/languagedemo/chinese/2501/essential-essential-expressions

www.livinglanguage.com

To learn Mandarin Chinese, here are some websites for you: 

Youku(优酷),

Tudou（土豆), 

CNTV, and 

Slow Chinese. 

Some good apps are (alphbetically)

ChineseSkill, 

Duolingo, (better on your laptop than on the phone)

Hello Talk.

Memrise

About the Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, brought up British speaking British English. Has lived in the USA, Spain and Singapore.