Russian deserters?
That still leaves +10k.
I often get ads with confused localization, but this may take be the most confused yet:
Polish at the top, Russian on the image, Latvian in the description, English in the interface. And I got this after a French lesson in Duolingo. And none of it makes sense: the Polish title is about “the best national parks”, the Russian promises a bonus for opening a chest, and the Latvian wants to tell you all you need to know about taxes. I did not click to find out what language is used by the malware.
This story brought up something that students in my conversation groups struggle with while watching foreign films or listening to music - the vernacular:
It’s one of the reasons that I check out Duolingo forums after the lessons. The discussion about what people tend to say vs. what the app is set to mark as correct is usually very helpful.
A couple funny/embarrassing anecdotes, when I first moved to Germany at the age of 18, this was 1994, I bought a cassette and book to try to learn the language ahead of the trip. So I listened and learned some of the very basics.
One night at the club I decided to try one of my phrases out on a new friend. The cassette had taught me that, “möchtest Du dein Tanzbein schwingen?” was how you asked someone if they wanted to dance.
Jens almost peed himself.
Also, all summer I learned mainly from hanging out with my same-aged friends, so when I went to school in the fall and the teacher asked me what I thought of the reading I said it was “geil.” I thought that meant “cool,” based on how I’d heard it used all summer, but the whole class started laughing. Turns out it’s not really appropriate for school.
I was taught in Belgium to read children’s books as a way to get the basics down. And that way, you might sound simple or old-fashioned, but you’ll never accidentally say something risque!
Totally, that was what finally tipped me over into true fluency. I was staying someplace and they had a bunch of Astrid Lingren books laying around, not Pippi, but about a group of kids growing up in a remote nordic village. Such a great way to learn a language.
But I had fun hanging out with my punk friends and learning inappropriate German that summer
Yup. Excellent advice. (Why did none of my teachers at school ever told me that?) Worked quite well1) for me with English.
Currently giving it a try it with Italian. That and the SatNav. Alla rotonda, prendi la seconda uscita.
1) Starting with books meant for kids/young adults, gradually moving to popular light entertainment.
Tweak #1: reading books I had previously read a translated version of. Already knowing the plot and the characters made it much easier for me to focus on the language.
Tweak #2: reading the book while listening to the audio book. See how the word is spelled, hear how it is pronounced…
As long as they are modern.
Ooh, yeah, that’s a good point!
He is speaking like a Rio de Janeiro native.
Has it already been discussed here about how people learn to speak with a native accent in a foreign language?
Remembering how I learned, it’s funny to think back on fellow USian students whose syntax/grammar was more proper than mine (as in they never messed up the cases) but they sounded like an American reading the words, you know? Kind of clunky.
I never thought before about where some of us pick up the skill to somewhat match the local accent, and others just don’t. Even after months or years.
When I learned German at school I had instruction in proper pronunciation. I distinctly remember reciting “am abend esse ich immer Eis” to learn the use of the glottal stop, the forced “uh” sound used with words that start with a vowel. If you didn’t learn it you would run words together, like "a maben desseich immerEis:
We also watched German TV and listened to radio so we got exposed to a few different accents too. There were some longwave stations that could be picked up in the evenings. I also did a few student exchanges in Germany. I can still do a decent Swabian accent.
I remember when I was told I had a cute accent by someone I worked with in Belgium. Took me a moment to grok that, as of course I thought he was the one with the accent!
Königin-Katharina-Stift Gymnasium, by any chance?