One way to start learning Hungarian

SimonTrew wrote:

.....but for example there is a picture with the caption "Gorbascov, Reagen és aelenöke id, George Bugh a New York-i governors islanden, 1998 deember 7-en"

You can probably asready work out how the three people in the picture are.. and work out what bits mean. Behind them is the Statue of Liberty and that is a bit of a bizarre translation of "island" which would be "sziget" in normal Hungarian but

That's because it's a name - Governors Island.

Therefore it doesn't get translated. Proper foreign names are not translated.

Statue of Liberty is on Liberty Island.

So maybe check the angles on that picture to see if it lines up and it's to scale.   The two islands are 1.5km apart.

fluffy2560 wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

Behind them is the Statue of Liberty and that is a bit of a bizarre translation of "island" which would be "sziget" in normal Hungarian but

That's because it's a name - Governors Island.

Therefore it doesn't get translated. Proper foreign names are not translated.

Statue of Liberty is on Liberty Island.

So maybe check the angles on that picture to see if it lines up and it's to scale.   The two islands are 1.5km apart.

So...... maybe not so great a way to learn Hungarian unless you also know the rules of proper names and some local Geography...... 

Hello
My name is Sarah Smith and i really want to learn hungarian, so thanks for this man.

BTW, try Duolingo on Android smartphones. It's quite good. Download in Play Store.

One way to learn is to fully emerce yourself around nothing but native speakers.
The one and only person my husband said who was not a native speaker who actually spoke Hungarian without an accent and pronounced everything perfectly was his old bosses American wife.
She had an I.Q. off the charts, learned to fly a plane at the same time she learned to drive a car.
If their tv set or pipes broke around their house, she would fix them herself even though they were super wealthy. She liked the challenge.
Her HU MIL would come to the US every year for over 6 months and teach her Hungarian, they only spoke it at home and their 2 children also learned Hu without any mistakes or odd accent.
Even some so called professors on HU tv who were on talk shows and had been in Hu for over 10 years had heavy accents where one had to try to figure out what they were trying to say.
Other then that one lady he says no one has actually learned to speak Hungarian without anyone knowing they aren't native speakers.
Not sure what to say about that, sort of a bummer.
Don't feel bad though, he says many born in Hungary don't even speak proper Hungarian either.
We used to stay in Hu with my MIL and she would speak HU to only. Learned a bit from her since she spoke slowly and like she was talking to a 3 year old.
Learning the correct way to pronounce HU and really studying hard each day is a must.
I'm lazy, gave up a long time ago, not because I don't think I could learn, should of by now but not interested in it since being married to a HU man, they really do not like to have their wives talking to strangers in public.
No reason to learn if I won't be using it much.
I can get around in a store, buy just about anything I need to without conversation.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

....
Even some so called professors on HU tv who were on talk shows and had been in Hu for over 10 years had heavy accents where one had to try to figure out what they were trying to say.
Other then that one lady he says no one has actually learned to speak Hungarian without anyone knowing they aren't native speakers.
Not sure what to say about that, sort of a bummer.
Don't feel bad though, he says many born in Hungary don't even speak proper Hungarian either.
...

I met a British guy once who worked here as a translator. He had arrived here during the communist period quite a few years before the fall of the wall.  According to Mrs Fluffy, he spoke Hungarian flawlessly and without an accent.  His kids had accents.  My own kids have accents, particularly the youngest one. 

I also met an interpreter who was Hungarian but spoke American style English and Spanish absolutely perfectly. I had no idea she was totally Hungarian. 

Both of them would have made great spies or sleeper agents!

Not impossible to learn but not easy unless one is willing to be serious about it and has a natural talent for languages.
My husband hates the way he speaks English, in Hungarian he can make clever twists and turns and jokes with double meanings, basically can show his style in his native language.
Most other HUngarians take him to be college educated and very smart when he speaks, they often use terms like Sir etc. when talking with him at length.
In English he comes off as Ok but is slower getting his meaning across and just feels like a half human or so he says.
He learned English himself, only went to language school for very short time in NYC but after a long day of work and wasn't really into it after being so tired.
He always says he feels a fool in English and isn't himself.
Like having 2 personalities.
He scares me off from even wanting to learn, when he teaches me a HU phrase he goes to long explanations  to teach me the formal and proper way.
Gets so over my head so fast that I tune out.
He says he doesn't want to teach me the common low class way to speak,  I'm not getting the posh version at all.
Easy is my style, he makes it all so hard.
In any case even if by magic I understood what was going on, it would take many years to be able to have a real conversation of worth in Hungarian. It's easy to learn a few simple phrases and words but to have a real conversation would take forever.
My eldest sister knew conversational Spanish but these days she has forgotten allot because she never uses it. My father and step- dad used to  speak a dialect of Slav together just so they wouldn't forget what they learned as children.
Had a HU friend from the states who has moved to Budapest, she wanted to teach me but no, would take the rest of our lives for that to happen.She used to be a school teacher here in Budapest in the 70's.

klsallee wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

SimonTrew wrote:

Behind them is the Statue of Liberty and that is a bit of a bizarre translation of "island" which would be "sziget" in normal Hungarian but

That's because it's a name - Governors Island.

Therefore it doesn't get translated. Proper foreign names are not translated.

Statue of Liberty is on Liberty Island.

So maybe check the angles on that picture to see if it lines up and it's to scale.   The two islands are 1.5km apart.

So...... maybe not so great a way to learn Hungarian unless you also know the rules of proper names and some local Geography...... 

Heheheh,.,, Also if I hadn't this silly miniature Hungarian keboard and could actually type properly

I genuinely didn't know it was called Governor's Island which is kinda one of those absurd things, I am not American, but you think you should know and then are astonished that you don't.... Like I know where the Statue of Liberty is, obviously, since it is French, chap called Eiffel designed it if I remember rightly and shipped it over in bits and pieces..... he also (or rather one of his apprentices) designed Nyugati Railway Station here in Budapest which is a complete pile of  merde if you ask me, not one of his better days when he had that on the drawing board.... but that these kinda "obvious" facts that you realise you don't know and wonder why you don't know them.

I suppose that it doesn1t get translated for the reason stated above but then it is kind translated is that they haven't put "Governor's Island" but "a governor-island.-i" or whatever, I don'T have it to hand right now. But the point stands true  I think - just get a story you already know, Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie or whatever and then your battle is half won that you are not battling the story now, only the language.

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

Not impossible to learn but not easy unless one is willing to be serious about it and has a natural talent for languages..

Weill I do have a talent for languages I suppose because as well as some Hungarian I speak Spanish (both Spanish Spanish and Mexican Spanish), Italian, French, some Latin, some Japanese, ay bit of Arabic, Braille, British Sign Language and even a bit of American

I think it helped that I was taught French in Cairo at an English school that the staff were Arabic so that were constantly switching languages from the age of about twelve and your brain kinda gets wired to learn languages --- not perfectly by any means but just absortbs and soaks up things. Also did a course in machine translation at university many years ago (well before the days of Google Translate, indeed before the days of Google) so would spend hours studying parallel texts etc etc. Now, people throw it into Google Translate and are surprised --- as they should not be --- at the baffling results. Translation, and especially simultatneous translation,. is hard work, and people think jusdt vbecause you speak more than one language you can act as interpreter or translator. Yes, I CAN, but my brain has to "switch" (Forditni in Hungarian, to translate also to switch) between different languages so please don't try to speak four to me at the same time, can you try doing them once at a time.

At my local corner shop they play Retro Radio which is a Hungarian station that plays "classics" like this evening when I went in it was "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles. This was very comical actually as I was doing the simultaneous translation (as if you could translate "Twist" in any sensible manner) while singing and doing the Twist while the young girl behind the counter - who knows me well enough to realise how stupid I am - was also dancing along and then well just basically pissing herself laughing.

It is another good way to learn, take a song that"everyone" knows the words to and try singing it translating as you go along. Best to do this on your own at home or in the car whatever not uin the local shop because something usually has to give --- either the grammar, the tune, or the lyrics --- normally all three tend to collapse at the same time somewhere in the third verse. But the results are usually amusing. "eh Judit, nem rossz csinalod", (Hey Jude) and so on (and I am well aware that Jude does not refer to anyone called Judith but  to Julian Lennon, we assume, but as I say, something has to give if you want to keep up)

I know a lof old cockney singallong tunes and you take something like "My Old Man said follow the van" and go "en régi ferfi a beszeled something a kamion".... as I say that is absolutely appaling Hungrarian of course but gets it a bit into your head a few words. The following line "don't dilly-dally on the way" is a tricky one, there is not really a good translation for "dilly.dailly", to hang or wait about, apart from "be a Hungarian".   So of course it is absolutely rubbish Hungarian but you think "Hmmm,. I don't know this Hungarian word", and then look it up when you get ottohonon. Idioms in any pair of languages are especially hard, that sometimes you get a "free ride" that you have the same idiom, but usually you don't, you will have the same idiom but a completely different expression for it, and what are called "false friends" that words or expressions that seem similar but mean entirely different things, you always have to be wary of them. (For example a Japanese "t-shirtsu" is not a T shirt, but a dress shirt),.

I wonder how these "learn Spanish in an hour" courses or whatever get away with it. Learning a language is hard work. But again, as my English local council's slogan is  "Niet Zonder Arbeit". That is old Dutch and means "Nothing without Work": Family slogan of Cornelius Vermuyden.....

SimonTrew wrote:

.....

I suppose that it doesn1t get translated for the reason stated above but then it is kind translated is that they haven't put "Governor's Island" but "a governor-island.-i" or whatever, I don'T have it to hand right now. But the point stands true  I think - just get a story you already know, Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie or whatever and then your battle is half won that you are not battling the story now, only the language.

I didn't know there was Governers Island but as soon as I saw it I knew it was a foreign name.  Google Maps and the situation was even clearer.  Surprisingly there are lots of islands around there, even a bit further away and it looks almost like wilderness.

I learnt Dutch at one point and I was told that I was good enough to read a novel in Dutch. I chose - randomly -  The Boys from Brazil or De jongens uit Brazilië.   Easy to understand the spirit of those words.  Not used Dutch for years but it was good for learning German.

Over the years I've had a lot of interpreters and translators and  they've always told me that they do not literally translate but often just get the spirit of the idea or message because there are no direct translations.   I actually noticed that in The Boys from Brazil, it wasn't about literal words but flavour of the text.  Over the years, I've adjusted my writings for translation to be easier to understand and shorter simpler sentences and therefore easier to translate.

My kids are obviously in a bilingual household from the moment they were born.  I've had discussions with older people who think it must be "hard" for them, like work or tiring.  But actually it isn't.  It's just normal for them. I hesitate to even call it switching as I believe in the bilingual person's head, the languages are actually the same (as at least my kids report). I think it must be more subtle than switching.

fluffy2560 wrote:

Over the years I've had a lot of interpreters and translators and  they've always told me that they do not literally translate but often just get the spirit of the idea or message because there are no direct translations. .

It very much depends on what you are doing, doesn't it Fluffster. If yxou are doing electrical diagrams yxou are not going to translate it in a kinda roundabout way (well ok bad example, hopefullyx if you have a circuit it IS going in a roundabout way) but if you are doing more literary translation - I would not say take liberties but yes have to take the spirt of the words rather than the literal words,. which would make no sense at all. I could literally translate "to have one's bee in one's bonnet" into Hungarian and that would make absolutely no sense to a Hungarian, and I imagine (I have not even trtied) Google would think a bonnet is the front bit of a car, what Americans call a hood,  so why would a bee be in that. (Obviously a hood is also a type of hat, like Little Red Riding Bonnet, but you catch my drift).

With pretty much any complex translation it becomes more difficult - that you are NOT translating the actual words but also the meanings behind them. For example my translator at when we signed contracts to buy this place (we are both bilingual but of course needed official stamp)  had never heard of the term "joint and several" so as she was translating to me, I had to prompt her. She knew the Hungarian term but not the English one.

People somehow think translation is easy or just because you are multilingual you know every word in the language. For example, the films that inspired the "Minions" are just called "Gru" (Grue?) in Hungarian. And again, how do you translate "Minions" .---- I imagine there is a literal translation for what a "minion" is it but it would be meaningless, wouldn't it.

I think one of the harder ones with Hungarian is to then step aside and try to work out - is this Hungarian or not? As so many products are either in English or in German. IS THAT THE HUNGARIAN... you can do it sometimes written but in speech you are going hmmmm.... is this an import word, a loanword --- or what would the Hungarian Academy have to say: For example am I typing on a komputer or computer or a számitogép?

Then you also have all kinds of trouble with regional dialect - around the West Midlands of England an "island" is a traffic circle, a roundabout. That is confusing where to everyone else in the UK a "traffic island" is a space where you can cross half the street, wait, before crossing the other half. So even in British English you have genuine confusion before you even start talking in someone else's language,

Then you also have all kinds of trouble with regional dialect - around the West Midlands of England an "island" is a traffic circle, a roundabout. That is confusing where to everyone else in the UK a "traffic island" is a space where you can cross half the street, wait, before crossing the other half. So even in British English you have genuine confusion before you even start talking in someone else's language,

Like I had trouble today, and please escuse me if this sounds at all racist as it is not, that apprently at the Polus Center (spelled int he American way) on the north of Budapest there is an ice cream shop that sells "Black American Ice Cream". (feketer amerikai fagyi). Now it won't be proper fagyi anyway, it will be jegcrem, but what the hell is that? Do they make it out of Black Americans? I have lived in America and have never seen black ice cream so i think it is just their marketing gimmick.....as I doubt they import it from the US etc it is jut a posh plaza/mall that I hate going to for exactly that kind of reason would rather go to local market as indeed we did... but even the missus whose English is good enough to beat me about fifty fifty at (English) scrabble asked have you ever heard of that? Since I certainly haven't.

And then you have trouble with very simple things that obviously exist but seem to have no words. Bit of batten.  Half a pound of japanned inch eights.

Kola Kubes or Rhubarb and Custard sweets what the hell am I talking about? Jelly babies? Six foot of two by four? What the hell are you on about.... I have never quite got the hang of metric=SI in daily life well i use it at work all the time bit it is kinda separate in my head so at home I am saying well we need about twelve foot of how's your father....

She ordered or rather we did some new curtains/drapes and they said they will put lead weights in the botom (in Hungarian) and afterwards I said to her I very much doubt that will be lead, the metal, Pb, they will put something heavy in there but lead is very poisinous and not quite buit nearly banned, I don't kow the exact rules. It has certain purposes but  I doubt weighing down the bottoms of your curtains is one of them. But she is convinced it is going to be real lead, plumbum, because that is the word they used (or rather the literal Hungarian translation). I iimagine they use some steel or something rather than lead, these days but we shall find out soon enough,. These constant battles with -- not that you don't know the words but do you mean what I think you mean -- that is a struggle when you live and work in Hungary.

And of course I also speak Roma.

I just stuck a bit of money in the kitty... but he was not happy about it....

SimonTrew wrote:

....
It very much depends on what you are doing, doesn't it Fluffster. If yxou are doing electrical diagrams yxou are not going to translate it in a kinda roundabout way (well ok bad example, hopefullyx if you have a circuit it IS going in a roundabout way) but if you are doing more literary translation - I would not say take liberties but yes have to take the spirt of the words rather than the literal words,. which would make no sense at all. ....

Yes, I know but I didn't want to complicate my posting.  I was writing for the audience, not just me and thee.  But yes, technical stuff does get translated  mainly because there are accepted phrases and abbreviations - sometimes both provided to make sure.   But that's a lot easier to systematically organise than a paragraph of narrative to accompany it or a page out of a manual with nuanced language.   

I might have mentioned my discussions with someone over "dumb terminal" which ended up literally as "stupid terminal" or something. In the end we went for "non-intelligent terminal".  Not exactly what I meant and impossible really to translate.  I could have used dumb terminal with technical bods but some management  people wouldn't have understood.

SimonTrew wrote:

....
With pretty much any complex translation it becomes more difficult - that you are NOT translating the actual words but also the meanings behind them. For example my translator at when we signed contracts to buy this place (we are both bilingual but of course needed official stamp)  had never heard of the term "joint and several" so as she was translating to me, I had to prompt her. She knew the Hungarian term but not the English one..... hmmmm.... is this an import word, a loanword --- or what would the Hungarian Academy have to say: For example am I typing on a komputer or computer or a számitogép?

I dunno about those language institutes.  I mean, it's going to evolve even with them trying to make up words to replace the ones kids start using on the street, school and playground - then become everyday parlance.  And in the meantime, so old fuddy duddy committee decides what the correct yet made up word is.  It's a losing battle. They might as well just give it up and go with the flow. Almost infantile King Canute behaviour and mind control.

BTW, while I'm here waffling,  "Joint and several" is a common law term, not known in this civil code system.   I was doing something recently where that came up.  It was surprisingly complex (and unfamiliar) to find out how  similar effects could be worked into Civil Code jurisdictions.

fluffy2560 wrote:

BTW, try Duolingo on Android smartphones. It's quite good. Download in Play Store.

whatever. I worked for several professional machine translation companies for many years, and I tell you once and once again, translation is not easy. as a pocket dictionary to go on holiday, fine, but it is not easy.n

i get - and i am being mild here  - fed up with people who think that  translating or being muitilingual comes at the drop of a hat. Nobody I imagine would notice I just quoted Eliot, "I tell you once, and once again,. Macavity's not there": let alone also referencing Flanders and Swann. I can do that all day and night if you want me to but I think you are a little out of sorts to suggest that rather than people learn a languagte, they just use some machine tool. I have turned DOWN jobs from some of the software companies who make this stuff. I can probably imagine which is behind it. It is not a bad company to work for if you like to earn lots of money but don't have a clue what you are talking about and that the boss is a completely self-centred ----. but go ahead. They always have vacancies. A good company should have very few vacancies. I have been offered three times from them and refused thrice TO them.

fluffy2560 wrote:

I might have mentioned my discussions with someone over "dumb terminal" which ended up literally as "stupid terminal" or something. In the end we went for "non-intelligent terminal".  Not exactly what I meant and impossible really to translate.  I could have used dumb terminal with technical bods but some management  people wouldn't have understood.

It wasn't to me I think ever. I know what a dumb terminal is I used to use them. Amazingly at my local shop they still use some kind of dumb terminal on the top of their EPOS system, these things never die they are (of course I don't quite look at their screen or rather just out of the corner of my eye) have some kind of terminal emulator on it. But again how wuold you possibly translate "dumb terminal". Of course there will be it, I have the best hungarian dictionaries forints can buy, but what you [i]can't[/] do is take "dumb" and "terminal" and do it separately. For example you have where the last stop is on public transport, végallomas. I don't know how to "translate" that into English. Last stop, terminus, how do you translate it? Termius terminal obviously the same Latin root but Rachel Appleby who does the Engléish translations for BKK does not say "piss off everyone, bus driver going for fag break" does she?

And again i think BKK, the Budapest public transport provider, is excellent - but they must make compromises with their excellent English because it is not just for native English sspeakers but so that it is comprehensible to people for whom it is not their first language and are listening above the noise and traffic in rush hour. So to get off a bus I would say "alight" but Rachel says "Please Step Down" or something like that, because no doubt that is clearer to someone  who hasn't learned the english for "alight" or that she thinks they are asking them to set the bus alight etc etc....

Again I am DELIBERATELY not looking it up even though  have the best translation dictionaries money can buy, but then Google Translate will catch me and suddently "allegro vivace" will be translated as "like shit off a shovel". It watchesm, you know it watches, and it gets translations from how people speak. I know several words in Google Translate that are DEFINITELY my hand because without adding them myself it has picked it up from something I said. DO NOT TRUST MACHINE TRANSLATION TOOLS. FINE FOR A FIRST GUESS. DO NOT TRUST THEM. I CANNOT EMPHASISE THAT ENOUGH,

I gave up editing, translating, on Wikipedia in Hungarian, French, and English and Latin because pe9ple were consdtantly just chucking in machine translations and I had to do the hard work to correct it. I do NOT need to be told how to do, or not do, translation.

SimonTrew wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

BTW, try Duolingo on Android smartphones. It's quite good. Download in Play Store.

whatever. I worked for several professional machine translation companies for many years, and I tell you once and once again, translation is not easy. as a pocket dictionary to go on holiday, fine, but it is not easy....

Download and try it and then pass judgement.  It's free to use in the simplest form. 

It's not machine translation - it's just self-paced computer assisted learning.

My eldest is using it to learn Spanish - 5 minutes per day.

And  ok say "dumb terminal". Now let's try to translate "dumb" - first there are two senses of it, rouhgly speaking, "mute" (not being able to speak) and "stupid"). Now you show me the etynology of which one "dumb" comes from in that sense.... because I don't know. On an IBM 3270 they were certainly not mute because they actually had a key to turn ON the clickers and this was done by a f- great big relay so that people COULD hear their typing. I also touch type even though I mistype because my eyesitght is not so good, but I can hear and feel when I hit a key more than I actually can see it. I watch the screen not the keys, I have never had a qualiication in it but at eighteen years old my boss called me "lightning fingers" I am not so agile now but can still touch type as can my wife. Nowadays everyone wants there bloody touch screen smartphones that is no good for me I want my fingers rested on the F and J so I  can touch type. It doesnt matter for casual sites like this but if I want to type an essay I am not going to use a smartphone having to piss about with that when I can touch type this, I just measured it, in thirty three seconds. (Oh, I also wear a watch rather  than look up the time on a smartphone)

SimonTrew wrote:

....
It wasn't to me I think ever. I know what a dumb terminal is I used to use them. ....But again how wuold you possibly translate "dumb terminal". Of course there will be it, I have the best hungarian dictionaries forints can buy, but what you can't do is take "dumb" and "terminal" and do it separately. For example you have where the last stop is on public transport, végallomas. ....

Well I forget to whom I tell what these days.   I'm going to have to start hanging around in bus stops.

Stupid terminal is what you get when you get a water cum pumping engineer to translate your documents.  Great bloke otherwise with plenty of war stories - knew a lot about pumps in Russia which is handy somewhere.  At least the translators came and asked so it never got to non-technical management as "buta terminal".

No-one buys dictionaries in paper form now do they?  I use the one on my phone.

I think the végállomás thing is misleading.  It's easy to breakdown - vég-end and állomás-station.  Nothing to see there, same kind of thing you get in languages like German or English, just a compound word like say "chainsaw".   

On the other hand, remiz is a fine word worth knowing.  Still not sure where that comes from (I know what it means btw).   Sounds French but I don't think it is.  Might be Russian or German. 

Someone will say.

fluffy2560 wrote:

[My eldest is using it to learn Spanish - 5 minutes per day.

And? Fluffster, I know we have our disagreements but to me you are starting to sound like an advert. I tried to put it with my size eleven boots a bit subtly but please don't make yourself sound like an advert. If that is the way your child learns, no problem .- absoltely great to get sounds and different speech systems into your head, Jr Fluffster will forget all the words and that is no problem, vocabulary is not the problem. if. Jr Fluffster has only spoken English and Hungarian, now Jr has not a notion of grammmatical gender and so has to learn that. In spanish it is pretty regular, anything that ends in an o is likely to be masculine, in an a ,feminine. It is a very easy language to learn. FIVE MINUTES A DAY IS NOT GOING TO GET ANYONE ANYWHERE: YOU HAVE TO SIT DOWN, READ BOOKS, PRACTICE AND STUDY,.

Unless somehow Fluffster Jr. is the next child prodigy..... and please don't take this disrespectfully  just pissedoffedly, you do not, nobody, learns a language for five minutes a day. Takes a lot lot lot longer than that. I do not like you kinda misleading people into thinking it is easy,. You also have to learn different vowel system, for example "LL" in Spanish is not the same as "LL" in Welsh is it and I can do both. Someone here is extracting the urine and it is not me.

i tzhink we wwent across each other in replies there so that is a bit cross posted. I just got out my VAX 11 Software Handbook to smack you around the chops with   front cover has got lost somewhere along our journeys over the years, another thing "permanently borrowed" from British Wasteospace.

There used to be a technical library there, and you could also borrow any book or journal you wanted but of course you were on a ciricular so that you got it three months after you needed it. I DID get from them, and the proof is in the stamp, three first editions of Knuth's seminal "Art of Computer Programming". Yes, I know they are still in print. I have them in FIRST editions, thank you, and stamped by British Aircraft Corporation Library which kinda PROVES it. I am not going to sell them but they are probably worth a bit. A boseller would look at the flyleaf and say "oh, that has a stamp I can't sell that" or something. BET i CAN. I sold three books to a bookseller in Cambridge for sixty quid, damaged biographies of Orwell, I only have about two thousand books now because I gavbe some to charity etc. I would not consider myself at all a well read man, not at all, but I have a rather strange collection of books.

One book I do have, is a very old and not valuable or anything Book of Common Verse, a pocket edition. I always keep it in my suit pocket. I am not particularly religious, I am C of E, but it is my guide and my comfort. Also you can't beat the Bible for a good murder, better than any Agatha Christie. They are always murdering each other, in the Old Testament.

SimonTrew wrote:

fluffy2560 wrote:

[My eldest is using it to learn Spanish - 5 minutes per day.

And? Fluffster, I know we have our disagreements but to me you are starting to sound like an advert. I tried to put it with my size eleven boots a bit subtly but please don't make yourself sound like an advert. If that is the way your child learns, no problem .- absoltely great to get sounds and different speech systems into your head, Jr Fluffster will forget all the words and that is no problem, vocabulary is not the problem. if. Jr Fluffster has only spoken English and Hungarian, now Jr has not a notion of grammmatical gender .....

Unless somehow Fluffster Jr. is the next child prodigy..... and please don't take this disrespectfully  just pissedoffedly, you do not, nobody, learns a language for five minutes a day. ....

That particular Fluffyette is 29 and doesn't speak Hungarian.   

The smartphone learning thing is set up for those social media addicts who have an attention span of about 5 minutes which is a comment in itself.    Works quite well.

Other media would be and is being used to back up the learning experience including night school.

I also use Persil and eat Marmite.  People should eat more Marmite.