PiE Blog

¡Cuánto tiempo!

It's so long since we've posted anything on the PiE blog! Sorry! Things have been exceptionally busy over the past few months and we've been working hard to get everything ready for the new term and a new year of PiE activities. Hopefully now we'll be back on track with more posts and information from the PiE project.

Eurovision Phrasebook

The cheesefest that is the Eurovision Song Contest is on tonight and I thought I'd provide our traditional Eurovision Phrasebook for the occasion.

These phrases may come in useful at a multilingual Eurovision party near you...

Bonsoir et amusez-vous bien ce soir!
Good evening and enjoy yourself this evening!

J'espère que notre cher M. Wogan est en forme ce soir!
I hope that dear Mr Wogan is on form this evening!

You may decide to discuss the eventual winner...

Qui va gagner, à votre avis?
Who do you think will win?

If the conversation dries up, you could always talk about your passion...

J'ai une collection de drapeaux nationaux à la maison
I have a collection of national flags at home!

...or discuss last year's contest...

Vous avez aimé la chanson slovénienne l'année dernière?
Did you like the Slovenian song last year?

Les animateurs sont très professionels, n'est-ce pas?
The presenters are very professional, aren't they? [no doub a bit tongue in cheek this one...]

As the evening draws on and you become more ... expressive ... your Spanish skills allow you to discuss the evening's events with other party-goers...

¿Qué opinas de esta canción?
What do you think of this song?

Esta canción parece mucho a...
This song sounds very like...

Or indeed you may despair about the whole contest...

Cada año es lo mismo
It's the same every year!

The performers themselves may well cause you some confusion...

¿Es un hombre o una mujer?
Is that a man or a woman...?

Siempre hay un país que quiere mostrar sus tendencias políticas con su canción...
There's always one country who wants to show its political tendencies with its song

As the song performances come to a close, it's time to consider the interval act...

No habrá nada que sea mejor que Riverdance, en mi opinión!
There won't ever be anything better than Riverdance in my opinion!

It's now time to move onto voting. And for this you'll probably move towards the Germans in the room.

Was für eine Überraschung! Griechenland hat dem Zypern zwölf Punkte gegeben!
What a surprise! Greece has given Cyprus 12 points*

Mit Bestürzung höre ich dass Frankreich dem Vereinigten Königreich keine Punkte gegeben hat!
I'm astounded to hear that France hasn't given the UK any points!

And you finally begin talking about which song will actually win.

Ihrer Meinung nach, welches Lied soll gewinnen?
Which song do you think will win?

Meiner Meinung nach wird Spanien gewinnen.
I believe that Spain will win.

And as you realise that Daz has no chance of bringing the contest to the UK next year...

Ich bin sehr enttäuscht! Wir haben nicht gewonnen!
I'm disappointed - we didn't win!

You can even download the audio for these phrases.

Virtual Mandarin

Not quite sure where this fits, but I thought it's worth a mention. I've been thinking about doing something like this for a while now and I've finally done something about it today. I've set myself a challenge of learning a language using online resources only. I'm going to have a go at learning Mandarin Chinese by using materials, podcasts, pdfs, and anything else I can lay my hands on (virtually!) from the web. I'll be keeping a blog about my progress, but readers can also link to the resources I find from the blog and learn along with me. Why Mandarin? Why online resources? Why now? Well, I've tried to explain things over on the Virtual Mandarin blog. Subscribe, leave a comment and join with me in learning Mandarin!

Hap-PiE New Year!

On behalf of everyone at PiE we'd like to wish all readers of the PiE blog and everyone involved in the project a very happy and prosperous 2006. We look forward to working with you and continuing to provide a service to the language-learning community across the world!

Géographie de France: selon la CNN...

Slightly worrying how CNN rearranged France recently when reporting on the rioting... not only did they move a few cities, but they seemed to have extended the country to take in most of Switzerland, half of Austria and a fair chunk of Germany. Lille is now a lovely seaside town, Cannes and Lyons have moved about 200km west, Toulouse is now a beautiful Alpine town in the north of Italy, and best of all, Strasbourg is that little known Austrian town where apparently half of the Sound of Music was filmed.

To view the map, click on the image!

Using Japanese on a PC

I've copied this from the LanguageZone website  because I thought it may be useful to other people.  どうも　ありがとう to Lesley and Brian who helped out as we tried to sort this out!

You first of all need to go the XP Japanese download site  where you can find the Office XP Japanese language pack. By installing this, then restarting your computer, you should find that you can now read the Japanese on these pages. You should also be able to read Japanese on MSN convos etc.

However, in order to *write* in Japanese on here, I think you need to install something else: the Global IME for Japanese can be found here  and if you follow all the instructions on that page you should be able to write in Japanese.

It's soooo cool using it on your computer - next week at class I'll show you how it works. You basically switch on Japanese input and as you type, eg "watashi", each syllable (mora) comes up. So I'd type w-a and I'd be given わ immediately. As I continue to type t-a I get た and as I type s-h-i I get し. Now comes the really cool bit. Having typed "watashi", I have three moras of hiragana: わたし. But if I press the space bar, it presents me with the possible kanji writings of that combination of sounds. These include 私、渡し, among others. If I know my kanji (it always helps...) then I know that the first one it showed me is the correct kanji for "watashi" meaning "I", so I accept it by pressing the return key. That, at least is how it works on a Mac. I assume it's something similar on a PC. I have a meeting later today during which I should be able to find out a bit more, or at least try the PC version.

がんばって！

A new PiE classic?

I was asked recently what the difference between the main PiE site and the blog is. Maybe this is the perfect example - I'd never have posted this on the main PiE site!!! I've just bought Madonna's latest single Hung up from the iTMS. Classic pop song, but couldn't believe it when I heard the samples of Gimme Gimme Gimme in there! Abba are known for never letting their music be sampled. Here are some comments from Benny Andersson:

Andersson said recently: "We get so many requests from people wanting to use our tracks but we normally say no. This is only the second time we have given permission. We said yes this time because we admire Madonna so much and always have done. She has got guts and has been around for 21 years. That is not bad going. If it wasn`t any good we wouldn`t have said yes. It is a wonderful track, 100% solid pop music." [Link to original]

Hung up will be featured at a PiE party near you...