英语博客-北美风情 191、Learning languages

  We’ve had two different listeners suggest that we do an episode about learning languages. Maura and Harp¹ could talk forever about this topic! So here’s the episode where we talk about learning French, and a little bit of Japanese and Korean too! Harp also tells us what she remembers about learning English. (Did you know that Harp learned English as a second language when she was a child?) We also give you a few of our best tips for learning English, besides listening to Culips!

　　Maura: Now, we’ve also had a little bit of experience with other languages, right? How much Korean did you learn when you lived there?

　　Harp: When I was there, I knew a lot. I could not have a basic conversation, but I was teaching English and I was working with kids so I was able to speak with them, give them commands and I was able to read Korean because Korean is a very easy language to pick up in terms of the written part of it, but it’s still a complicated language.

　　Maura: Oh yeah. Well, when I lived in Japan, I learned a little bit. I learned some expressions and some words that were important. But to be honest, I had just been trying to learn French for a year and then I realized how difficult it was to learn a language. And so when I was in Japan, I didn’t really immerse myself in Japanese. I just learned a little bit to get by.

　　Harp: Yeah. I learned enough to talk to taxi drivers, shopkeepers, and the kids in school.

　　Maura: But I do think that Japanese was much easier to understand orally than French, because the pronunciation was so much clearer, that in French I found it really difficult to understand at the beginning.

　　Harp: Oh, that’s very interesting.

1 harp   

n.竖琴；天琴座

参考例句：

• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。
• He played an Irish melody on the harp.他用竖琴演奏了一首爱尔兰曲调。