Languages: O-bomma likes that you voted for Obama!

Congratulations to Obama and all Americans that voted for him! My grandmother and I wish you another good four years! ;)

Languages: One of the best ways to memorize vocabulary

Because of my recent new interest in dialects and languages I looked for the most efficient ways to learn a new language. Another passion of mine is knowing how the mind works, including the art of memorization. I've read several books about memorization and the systems used for this purpose. It comes very handy to have that knowledge, certainly when applied to the learning of a language, vocabulary to be more precise. When doing my research on how the memory works I came across the website of Memrise. It's a website that uses memorization techniques so you can learn a language more efficiently. I'm a real fan of Memrise, so I occasionally help them by making drawings for them. Why drawings? 

Well, the basic principle used in almost all memorization systems is based on this: We, humans, are incredibly good in memorizing images. Sadly enough we are bad at memorizing words and numbers. The systems convert words and numbers into vivid images, so they become very memorable. It is as simple as that, but extremely powerful. There is more to it, certainly when looking at more complex systems, but this will do for learning languages. I'll write more about all these systems in the future.    

Here is an example of how it works. These are some drawings I made for the Polish course on the website. The website is English, so it's an English-Polish conversion used here.

Languages: What is my grandmother saying?

Haha, here's a little quiz! What is my grandmother saying in these 2 videos? My hat off if you can understand it all! :)

Translation: "Past dat paar u? Ja, ma, dat paar past mij."

Translation: "Mie had koud. Mie had heel koud. 

Waar had Mie heel koud? Op de markt had Mie heel koud."