Hi, Olivier. I’m not concerned that I cannot understand all of your French recordings–I did not expect to, as I am way out of practice. Actually, I never was much in practice, listening to French. I can only read it. But I do hope you realize I’m not ignoring the recordings. I’ll work through them, slowly and to the best of my ability, when I am not listening to Russian.
It’s very nice that you met the person whom you made the recordings for. Perhaps it will be the first meeting of many. And, thanks for asking, my wife and I had a very nice Valentine’s Day dinner. She especially, as she therefore did not have to cook. Although I can happily say that the dinner she made the next day for us was far better than what we had at the restaurant
You learn languages so well. How do you go about it? Have you described your methods anywhere, perhaps online?
Hi Ernie ! In fact, I don’t think I have any “big” secret for learning languages. For example, I can understand German fluently for I daily listen to German radio (and thus I could talk in German to the women who accompanied the blind man I made). Of course, I can take an advantage from my linguistic knowledges when the matter is to learn a language related to a one I already know. And maybe practising Sambahsa everyday through translations helps too, as it is based on Indo-European and contains words found in many languages.
In sum, language learning may be a little like cooking : your wife knows better what you like than the restaurant’s cook
Just to add to that: Olivier’s English has actually improved substantially since he first joined Auxlang (a mailing list for auxiliary languages) a few years ago, simply due to a constant interaction with the other members of the list. Olivier’s ‘method’, as far as I can tell, is to 1) have a deep interest in the language itself and how it relates to other languages, 2) use it all the time with real people, 3) translate tons of content from one language to another.
Avete ! I have translated into (slightly modernized) Latin and adapted into a short story the beginning of the gamebook “Objectif : Apocalypse” : Scopus Apocalypsis | PDF
This Latin version is about the twin brother’s failure, while his sister’s story was translated long ago in Sambahsa…
