Language Trainers Blog

I recently stumbled across Digital Dialects, a website providing vocabulary-learning games for not just one, but 60 different languages.  These range from Afrikaans to Zazaki, a few of which I hadn’t even heard of (including the latter, which is spoken in eastern Turkey).   The games are simple and focus on basic word categories like numbers, food, and animals.  Each game has images and many have sound, as well as options such as choosing to read a word or listen to it.  Each language has a different combination of games depending on the vocabulary, and I think they would be suitable for both children and adults at a beginner level.  All of the games are free to use.

Whether you are just starting out in a language, want to pick up some useful vocabulary before a trip abroad, have a child who is studying, or just want to know how to count to 10 in as many languages as possible (I met a kid in Cambodia who could do this in at least 10 languages), check it out.

Recently it was announced that the rules of Scrabble were changing, and players would in future be able to use proper nouns in the game, which has never been allowed before.  The change would mean that previously-illegal proper nouns, including celebrity names, brands, and company names would be acceptable.  The justification from game company Mattel was that they wanted to attract players from younger generations, and thought that allowing players to use names would achieve this end.  I was a little bit unsure of how I felt about this, because I’m sure I’ve had occasions where I wanted to play a proper noun as my word, but there’s definitely a difference between playing ‘Vatican‘ and ‘Beyonce‘.

Just after I read this, I read another article that said that the rules would remain the same, and that the news of the rule change was an exaggeration of the truth, which is that Mattel is planning to release an entirely different game called Scrabble Trickster, where anything goes, including proper nouns and words spelled backwards.  I’m not sure if this was just all a big marketing ploy, but I think a sigh of relief may have been heard throughout the Scrabble-playing world.

I’m also not sure if changing rules like this would justify an entirely new game.  Surely you could just play different rules with the same equipment?  Which reminds me of this cartoon, which made me giggle.

Does Scrabble matter to you?

I’m not really a fan of acronyms like LOL (laugh[ing] out loud), so I tend to stick with the written representations of laughing sounds, and the ones I usually use are hahaha (that’s funny!), hehehe (that’s kind of mean!), and hee (cute! squee!).

I’ve always thought the Spanish versions - jajaja, jejeje, jijiji - were really cute, but I have a tendency to read jajaja in a German accent, so it says ‘yes yes yes’.

Here are a few more ways* to show your humour in other languages:

Chinese
哈哈 / ha ha
嘿嘿 / hei hei
呵呵 / he he

Russian
ха-ха-ха (hahaha)
хи-хи (heehee)

Malaysian
kahkahkah (hahaha from comic books)

Turkish

eki eki (used in comics, as the older way of laughing)
muhaha (evil laughter)
nihaha (evil laughter)
puhaha, uhaha, zuhaha (used if something’s really funny)

German
hnhnhn, hmhmhm, chrchrchr (giggle)

My favourite at the moment is a Chinese coworker’s use of hohoho.  I don’t think she really means to sound like Santa Claus, but it brightens my day.

*Many of these examples are from WordReference Forums.

I’ve already mentioned how confusing business-speak can be, both to the language learner and the native speaker.  How often have you heard someone give a presentation and had no idea what they were actually talking about?

The Business Sentence Generator is a fun little application that uses a standard sentence structure and combines it with business-speak phrases and buzzwords to randomly create sentences worthy of the flashiest, most content-free business presentation in the world.

Here are the first four sentences it gave me.   It’s a little disconcerting how genuinely corporate they sound.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen…

From a historical point of view, the recent re-engineering necessitates supply chain integration.

Although…

In pursuit of unique opportunities, our burn rate is further compounded by considering a novel quality vector.

However…

Given the undue reliance on derivative materials, a transaction-enabled platform stabilises a tangible return.

In conclusion…

To proactively manage profit, our contingency schematic embraces our exceedance of standards.

Thank you for your attention.  Please sign here to allocate funds to my project…

As it’s my birthday, I thought we could widen our viewpoint on language and communication, and look at something that combines audio input and visual output to create something potentially beautiful. It’s also fun and may make people think you’re a crazy person.

Ze Frank has invented a drawing tool that is controlled by volume input from your microphone. A low volume turns anticlockwise, a medium volume draws a straight(ish) line, and a high volume turns the line clockwise. It’s kind of like a vocal Etch A Sketch. I was never very good at those, either.

This is one of Ze’s, as mine are ‘abstract’ at best.

It hasn’t even officially been launched (just try to find a link on our homepage), but already the Accent Game has proved a huge success among those with a finger on the virtual pulse.

The makers of the game asked native and non-native speakers of English to read two lines of a poem, and now it’s up to you, the player, to determine where the speaker is from.  If the excerpt was read by a native speaker, you also get the chance to earn bonus points by picking the city they come from.

Do you have a lot of friends from all over the world?  Do you think you have what it takes to pinpoint an accent’s origin?  The concept is deceptively simple, but the challenge itself can be a lot more difficult than you’d think.  I got just over half of the countries the first time I played.

Give it a try, and then challenge your friends to do better!

If you enjoyed playing the game, think you have an interesting accent, and have a desire to participate in the next one (and potentially be world-famous!), upload a short video or audio file here, and we will let you know if you make the cut!

Games are one of the best ways to become familiar with and practise the language that you’re learning.  From simple word-matching games using flashcards, to crosswords, to popular board games.

Recently I’ve come across a new product from the makers of Scrabble® (the popular lettter tile boardgame).   It’s called Scrabble® Scramble and it involves a much-smaller version of the board, 12 letter dice, and a one-minute timer.  Instead of choosing seven tiles from a bag, the special shaker rolls seven dice for you, and you have one minute to place your word.  Generally the rules are the same, but a maximum of two words remain on the board at any one time.  The advantages to this version are that it is fast (an average game will last about 20 minutes, depending on the number of players), any number of people can play (as long as they are prepared to wait their turn), it is tiny and portable, and you can use the dice to play a lot of other word games.

I’m not usually one to plug (promote) specific products, but I’ve found the letter dice to be especially helpful in my classes, and have improvised (made up/invented) quite a few ways to use them to keep my students learning in an enjoyable way.  They also seem to be fascinated by the timer, and one minute turns keep things interesting!

Variations with letter dice:

• Roll seven dice and see who can make the most words from the letters (words must be three or more letters long).
• Roll two or three dice and see who can make the most words (or who gets the first/longest word) containing all the letters.
• Use the dice to decide who will go first in games (closest to a particular letter wins).
• Use the dice to play category games (see who can name one word in each category [e.g. animals, fruit, countries] that starts with the letter rolled).