Showing posts with label speaking to more people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speaking to more people. Show all posts

23 Jun 2013

10 reasons to learn Auslan (BANZSL)


Auslan or BANZSL (British, Australian, New Zealand Sign Language) is a sign language which originates from a deaf sign language used in Britain during the 19th Century. Contrary to a common belief, not all sign languages are the same. For example, ASL (American Sign Language) is very different to BSL (British Sign Language). Also, signed languages are not just word for word spoken language signed but they have their own syntax, grammar and word origins. Also, some countries actually have sign language as one of their official languages, for example: New Zealand. 
I'm going to give you ten reasons to learn Auslan (the sign language in Australia).

Creative Common by Deaf Action 
Creative Common by Wycliffe South Africa

20 Jul 2012

What languages are harder to learn - Photo Blog

Source: http://zidbits.com/2011/04/what-is-the-hardest-language-to-learn/

I believe the table is missing German and Indonesian / Malay. If I was going to add them, I would have German in the bottom of the easy list or at the top of the medium list. I would have also put Indonesian in Medium only because of the diverse vocabulary (Indonesian has a lot of loanwords from Malay, English, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese languages, Portuguese, Sanskrit and Arabic). Indonesian grammar is simpler than Spanish and other Romance languages, the sentence structure is logical and there is no tense. Also questions can be made out of sentences very easily. E.g. Saya tinggal di... (I live in...), Anda tinggal di mana? / Di mana anda tinggal? (Where do you live?).

I agree with 80% of the table but the only fact I disagree with is that it takes 88 weeks to learn Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Arabic because Benny Lewis learnt to speak relatively fluent Mandarin in 3 months.  
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