Greg.Jones's recent topics

Not really a bug, more cosmetic, but at the end of the box in a post it should close the quotation marks

Not sure what is affecting it as it's only showing on some posts, but attached is an example.

Some details given under the usernames are up to date, but not always

Hi, thought I should put a little something on here as I haven't done so yet.

Hi, I'm Greg, native English but I have a smattering of French and German. I'm currently trying to learn Spanish.

I learn mainly by repetition and lots of corrections, practicing the words that I know by trying to put them together in sentences and working on the actual grammar separately. 

I have an interest in words themselves as we adopt them from other languages and adapt them for our own purpose, but even words that change over time e.g. terrifiterrific has the same root as terrifying, but mean the opposite in modern usage.

Trying out the site on the phone and I posted up the wrong file, went in to edit the post and it wouldn't allow me to remove the picture, only add another.

Could we get somesome way to remove postsposts? Not sure if I could edit it properly on a computer

Learning other languages has to start somewhere, so in following a few of the other posts here's how we say please thank you in 10 foreign languages;

1. Spanish

Please: Por favor

Thank you: Gracias

2. French

Please: S’il vous/te plaît (formal/informal)

Thank you: Merci

3. German

Please: Bitte

Thank you: Danke

4. Italian

Please: Per favore

Thank you: Grazie

5. Portuguese

Please: Por favor

Thank you: Obrigado/a

6. Chinese

Please: Qǐng

Thank you: Xièxie nǐ

7. Arabic

Please: Min fádlak (to a man), Min fádlik (to a woman)

Thank you: Shukran

8. Russian

Please: Pazhalsta

Thank you: Spaseeba

9. Japanese

Please: Onegaishimasu

Thank you: Arigatou

10. Swedish

Please: Tack

Thank you: Tack (yes, really)

 Many English words have their roots from other tongues, or are even directly taken and used, below are a few examples sorted by language of origin, there are thousands of words taken, but i will give you a handful to start;

The most common language for English to be adapted from is french, this is partially due to french being the language of the nobles in England around the 11th century and continued for around 400 years. Most are very similar in spelling if not pronunciation. 

A few examples;

Etiquette (from the french for "little cards") was taken from Versailles where 'little cards' were used by courtiers to keep record of the rules they needed to follow while in court.

Coupons (literally "piece cut off") 

Faux-Pas (false step)

To queue (from the french for "tail") is a very common English past-time

Parachute (almost exactly "protection against a fall")

Sabotage (comes from the french "sabot" which was a french shoe)

Maneuver (literally "to operate with the hand")

Another main language that helped form English as a whole was Proto-Germanic, the precursor to more modern German as olden English comes from a Germanic root;

Delikatessen (proper name for a deli)

Fest (feast, celebration, party)

Hinterland (backwoods)

Kaput (not working, broken)

Poltergeist (ghost)

Wanderlust (pleasure, desire, wanting)

Rucksack (knapsack)

Nosh (small amount of food, or to eat a small amount of food)

As i said, these are just a few words from 2 of the closest languages to English, but on the whole we take words from dozens of other languages including, but not limited to, Latin, French, German, Greek, Dutch, Norse, and Arabic

A little bonus- "Dog"

We aren't certain where this form comes from originally as we have the Latin derivative in our language (canine) and the German (hound) too, as far as people can tell it appeared in middle English as "Docga"

Just thought i would recommend a basic language tool available as a learn through play style:

I use Influent which is a decent source of everyday home related vocabulary, it won't help you much with conversational language, but it has a multitude of language packs which you can get usually starting on sale at £4.99 through steam or as a multipack of all languages currently

https://store.steampowered.com/app/274980/Influent/

Cheap and immersive if you can't visit the country, it will give you written and spoken pronunciation and there are a variety of mini games you can use to test yourself of words already learned

Sometimes when a new user enters a chat their messages appear without a username, after refreshing the page it will show all previous messages with the right names

No room created after chat request accepted, an alert popped up but when i clicked accept it didn't create a chat page