As of this afternoon, I'm the proud owner of the electronic Van Dale Dutch/English/French/German large dictionary set! Yay! My uni uses these dictionaries and I love them, they are easy to work with and contain lots of extra information and idiomatic expressions. They have about 115.000 lemmas per language, I believe. I'm so happy! As much fun it is to leaf through my paper dictionaries, these will help me taking less than an hour on a few lines of text and there's something to say for that too :P


(I realize this sounds like a commercial but I'm just so excited! I'd never have bought them for myself because they're quite expensive, but I've been given them by my department as 'salary' for a tutorial I taught last semester. The Board didn't allow them to officially appoint a TA, but the department had the funds to let me choose a gift worth the pay I'd have gotten. I love how the department is doing everything possible to keep the students on their feet while the Board is ripping it all to shreds. No really, how's firing half the Linguistics staff while telling them to add to the curriculum and teach a 3-fold of the current student load a realistic and even good idea?)

Tags: dictionaries

Hi,

I'm looking for books/papers on the use of the diminutive in German and Dutch. I'm mostly looking for (recent) comparative studies on its current use in both languages, but I'd be interested in anything at all about the topic, including suffixes in different Germanic dialects, the popularity of the diminutive in given names, and even just random anecdotes. My uni library doesn't really seem to have anything useful, so... what would be a good place to look?

I hope this is allowed. If it isn't... sorry. DX

Hello, everyone.~

I was having a bit of a think about my (abysmal) learning strategies and methods the other day, and finally decided that I'd had enough of learning so slowly. So... if you don't mind, I have a few questions I'd like to ask so that I can improve the way I learn.

They don't have to be long answers if you don't want to write much; I just need all the help I can get, and I'm sure other people could benefit from your answers too. :)

1. Generally, how long do you study for, per day? Do you take breaks after set periods of time or do you just keep going until you get fed up or tired?
2. Do you learn exclusively from textbooks, take the immersion approach, both, or neither? (In other words, what materials do you use to learn?)
3. How do you go about learning evil grammar rules?
4. Lastly, how do you learn vocabulary (this is my biggest problem area!)? Word lists, flashcards, etc?

All answers are hugely appreciated. Thank you!

How would I write that in Japanese Characters? (working on a Christmas Present!)

 I've been using the "Integrated Chinese" series to learn Mandarin with relative success and I'm finishing up Level 1 Part 2 in the second (older) edition. I want to purchase Level 2, so should I get the older 2nd edition or the newer 3rd edition (Level 2 Part 1)? Which one is a better resource?

Tags: chinese

what is the meaning of "nothing ever promised tomorrow today"?
it's from kanye west song, heard them say.
thank you in advance

Tags: english

Hello everyone,

I discovered Josef Hader a few days ago (well, a friend introduced me), and although I'm german I'm really having trouble with his austrian accent. Can anyone help me?



( Here's what I got so far )

Danke schön!

i_hope_that
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diygifts
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