Job Discussion Forums

[jud]

I've seen weather used for whether more than once here.

I used to be a great speller. Living abroad for almost ten years has ruined me for spelling, don't know why. Sometimes a correctly-spelled word looks somehow wrong to me on the board. My students actually seem to enjoy when this happens. They get to look the word up for homework.

[dduck]

When I was learning Dutch I had problems remembering what was Dutch and what was English. For example, I thought 'beter', after a while, looked more sensible than 'better'!

I think when you're in a foreign country you have to keep practising your English, otherwise it starts to slip - even for native speakers.

Iain

[yaramaz]

Last year totally messed with my linguistic abilities because I shared a flat with an Afrikaans speaking S. African, and she and the other S. African teacher often conversed in Afrikaans at home. I speak some of the language thanks to 6 months in Cape Town and 3 years with a SA boyfriend. As well as having the surreality of Afrikaans spoken whilst in Turkey, I also had, of course, the prevalence of Turkish. We often incorporated Turkish and Afrikaans words into our every day English--- ie Nerede is my bloody glas of rooi wine? Compounding my confusion was the fact that several of my Turk friends spoke no English but did speak French, so I conversed with them regularly in a melange of French-Turkish. I found that I often couldn't complete a sentence in one language- it would start out in one and finish in another-- and the crazy thing is, people around me knew what I was talking about.

When I came back to Canada for the summer in July, I couldn't remember which words belonged to which language and which words and terms could be used in my present location. My friends and family were often left scratching their heads.

[lagger]

People think it has an 'a' in it because it sounds a bit like that. A good way to learn the correct spelling is to remember that de"finite"ly has the word 'finite' in the middle.