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I tutor a French middle schooler, and he speaks almost perfect English. We’ll talk for 30 minutes and he’ll make one, two or sometimes zero mistakes. I also tutor a few French friends who are in their 20s. Some of…
As I write this I’m sitting on the couch looking out my window in Rouen, France, a mid-size town an hour and half north of Paris. I’ve been here for the last two years as a high school English teaching…
Even in times of self-imposed isolation, we can still become proficient in a language. I fooled myself into believing that my environment had a direct impact on whether or not I could speak a language. The key to learning a language is effort. Here are some ways to think outside the box when it comes to not just learning a language but learning a different culture as well.
Jeremy joined us on a French-immersion tour of Arnaudville, Louisiana and opened up a little about his family history, Cajun French culture, and his appreciation for French’s versatility worldwide.
Ryan’s two eldest children are Rosetta Stone’s most active French learners in Louisiana, so we jumped at the chance to have the whole family join us on our French-immersion tour of Arnaudville and for gumbo at Louis’s. We caught up with him afterwards to dig a little deeper into his Acadian heritage, Cajun music, and how speaking French has fueled their nonprofit’s mission.
I came across my nengajo (Japanese New Year’s postcards) that I had exchanged with the friends that I had made years ago through Rosetta Stone. I wanted to start the tradition of sending out postcards again, so I got out my calligraphy pen.
If you’re salivating thinking about spring break or summer vacation, you’re not alone. Millions will make travel plans this year to visit popular destinations that offer sand, surf, and sometimes, a bit of culture and cobblestone streets to go with…
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 12 weeks already and my tenure here as Rosetta Stone’s most compulsively foul-mouthed blogger is coming to an end. This has truly been one of the best experiences of my professional life (not counting the time when I got drunk with David Cross at South by Southwest, or the time we were on this huge traveling festival in Australia with Metallica and my tour manager and I tracked down Ghost without their disguises, or those three days where my band was stuck in Kitaning, PA because our van dropped its transmission and all we had was three beers, a loaf of Wonder Bread, and some sleeping bags to our names, and we had to sleep in a field that wild dogs liked to party in . . . ah . . . good times, indeed). But I’m getting off topic here already. Forgive me.
Here we are in week eleven of this journey and I’m supposed to be getting a tutor to help further my pursuit of learning Italian. As my wonderful tenure as one of the only bloggers here at Rosetta Stone to use phrases like “slapdick” and “asseyes” nears its end, I’m trying to crank it up a notch or two, and a tutor seems like a good way to crank said notch. But here’s the funny part: I harbor a little bit of fear when it comes to getting a tutor. It’s probably the same fear I harbor regarding going to the doctor, which is to say: totally irrational and actively self-sabotaging.
My wife is going to Saudi Arabia day after tomorrow, and it’s weird, the most terrifying thing to me is that I don’t know what’s up there at all. I’ve heard stories where if the powers that be feel like you’re out of line, you’re screwed, regardless of the rule of law? But honestly, I simply just don’t know much about what goes on over there at all, besides stories that are sensational enough to make the news. Beyond the fact that booze is illegal there and that things ended badly for at least one dissenting journalist, my guess is as good as your Fox-News-watching grandpa’s, if I’m really being honest.
“Ho la peste” means “I have the plague” in Italian. The plague, as we all know, refers to the bubonic plague, or Black Death, which struck Italy hardest between 1629 and 1631 and was probably pretty terrifying, since it ended up killing somewhere around a million people, according to most estimates.
When I was first approached about doing this here column for Rosetta Stone, the premise, if you can believe it, was pretty open ended and it was more or less this: “You learn a language using our software and then write about what it’s really like to do in the wake of navigating making time for it and retaining it with regards to your actual day-to-day existence.”
