Topics include word order, time, nouns, verbs, adjectives, word choices with verbs and adverbs, and letter writing. The simple format has one goal: quick mastery and growing confidence.Qin Xue Herzberg, a graduate of Beijing Normal University, has taught Chinese for decades and has been an upper-level Chinese professor at Calvin College for ten years.Larry Herzberg did his PhD work in Chinese and founded the Chinese language programs at Albion College and Calvin College.Qin and Larry live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and are co-authors of the popular China Survival Guide as well as the recently released Chinese Proverbs and Popular Sayings.

    We think nothing of jumping on a plane to travel to another country or continent. The most exotic locations are now destinations for mass tourism. Small business people are dealing across frontiers and language barriers like never before. The Internet brings different languages and cultures to our finger-tips. English, the hybrid language of an island at the western extremity of Europe seems to have an unrivalled position as an international medium of communication. But historically periods of cultural and economic domination have never lasted forever. Do we not lose something by relying on the wide spread use of English rather than discovering other languages and cultures? As citizens of this shrunken world, would we not be better off if we were able to speak a few languages other than our own? The answer is obviously yes. Certainly Steve Kaufmann thinks so, and in his busy life as a diplomat and businessman he managed to learn to speak nine languages fluently and observe first hand some of the dominant cultures of Europe and Asia. Why do not more people do the same? In his book The Way of The Linguist, A language learning odyssey, Steve offers some answers. Steve feels anyone can learn a language if they want to. He points out some of the obstacles that hold people back. Drawing on his adventures in Europe and Asia, as a student and businessman, he describes the rewards that come from knowing languages. He relates his evolution as a language learner, abroad and back in his native Canada and explains the kind of attitude that will enable others to achieve second language fluency. Many people have taken on the challenge of language learning but have been frustrated by their lack of success. This book offers detailed advice on the kind of study practices that will achieve language breakthroughs. Steve has developed a language learning system available online at: www.thelinguist.com.

    Kilpatrick, "good, better, and best." With the experience of a lifetime of writing, he tells us, he wants to make a few judgment calls. And Jack Kilpatrick, master of the art, is as good as his word. In the tradition of Theodore Bernstein, Edwin Newman, and William Safire, James J. Kilpatrick gives us a finely crafted, witty guide to writing well. Written for laymen and professionals alike, The Writer's Art highlights techniques and examples of good writing. A section of the book called "My Crotchets and Your Crotchets" comprises more than 200 personal judgment calls, often controversial, often funny, on word usage.

    Damn, you fine!blin, nu ti i shi-KAR-nii! Let's have an orgy.da-VAI u-STRO-im OR-gi-yu. This is crappy vodka.d-ta VOD-ka khre-NO-va-ya. Let's go get hammered.poi-DYOM bukh-NYOM. I'm gonna own you, bitch!ya te-BYA VI-ye-blyu!

    Covering all areas of language which students at this level find difficult, this substantially revised and updated book retains the clarity, simplicity and accessibility of the first edition, adding to it new and redesigned units and appendices, modified right-hand page exercises and additional exercises. - Easy to use: 136 two-page units combine clear, accurate language presentation on left-hand pages with thorough, varied practice on facing pages. - New additional exercises offer further practice of grammar points from different groups of units. - Designed for self-study: learners choose and study problematic areas with the help of a new study guide. - Key section contains answers to all exercises and the study guide. - Appendices deal with irregular verbs, tense formation, modals, spelling, short forms and American English.

    Detailed suggestions for strategy use in each of the four language skills are included as well as case studies and models for setting up similar programs.

    Assuming no knowledge of the field of morphology on the part of the reader, the book presents a broad range of morphological phenomena from a wide variety of languages. Starting with the core areas of inflection and derivation, the book presents the interfaces between morphology and syntax and between morphology and syntax and morphology and phonology. The synchronic study of word structure is covered as are the phenomena of diachronic change such as analogy and grammaticalization. Theories presented clearly in accessible language with the main purpose of shedding light on the data, rather than as a goal in themselves. The author consistently draws on the best research available, thus utilizing and discussing both functionalist and generative theoretical approaches. Each chapter includes a summary, suggestions for further reading, and exercises. As such this is the ideal book for both beginning students of linguistics, or anyone in a related discipline looking for a first introduction to morphology.

    Topics are structured in three parts in the book. Part I, Reference and Referring Expressions, includes topics such as Russell's Theory of Desciptions, Donnellan's distinction, problems of anaphora, the description theory of proper names, Searle's cluster theory, and the causal-historical theory. Part II, Theories of Meaning, surveys the competing theories of linguistic meaning and compares their various advantages and liabilities. Part III, Pragmatics and Speech Acts, introduces the basic concepts of linguistic pragmatics, includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force and surveys approaches to metaphor.Unique features of the text: * chapter overviews and summaries* clear supportive examples* study questions* annotated further reading* glossary.

    GET D!RTYNext time you’re traveling or just chattin’ in Spanish with your friends, drop the textbook formality and bust out with expressions they never teach you in school, including:•Cool slang•Funny insults•Explicit sex terms•Raw swear wordsDirty Spanish teaches the casual expressions heard every day on the streets of Spain and Latin America:•What's up?¿Qué tal?•I'm wastedEstoy fumigado.•Your mom's a ten.Tu vieja es un cuero.•I gotta take a piss.Necesito mear.•I wanna nail that ass.Quiero clavar ese culo.•What a sunnuvabitch!¡Qué 'jueputa!•Goooooaaalll!¡Gooooooolllll!

    Written with the non-specialist in mind, its user-friendly style and layout, delightful original passages, and exotic scripts, will continue to fascinate the reader. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to include more languages, more countries, and up-to-date data on populations.Features include: *information on nearly 600 languages*individual descriptions of 200 languages, with sample passages and English translations*concise notes on where each language is spoken, its history, alphabet and pronunciation*coverage of every country in the world, its main language and speaker numbers*an introduction to language families

    It discusses the structure and content of the human word-store or mental lexicon with particular reference to the spoken language of native English speakers.

    A. Hudson's Sociolinguistics will be welcomed by students and teachers alike. To reflect changes in the field since publication of the first edition in 1980, the author has added new sections on politeness, accommodation, and prototypes; and he has expanded discussion of sex differences in language use, and the relationship between language and thought. Ample coverage of classic topics such as varieties of language, speech as social interaction, the quantitative study of speech, and linguistic and social inequality, remains.

    Additionally, 100 Words Every Word Lover Should Know features scores of quotations from classical and contemporary authors, from Henry James and Jane Austen to Sylvia Plath and William Golding, Douglas Coupland and Donna Tartt. A great gift for anyone who appreciates the beauty, history, and depth of the English language, 100 Words Every Word Lover Should Know will appeal to all who are avid readers and take pride in a vibrant, active vocabulary.

    Egyptomania spread throughout Europe with their return, and the quest to decipher the hieroglyphs began in earnest, for it was understood that fame and fortune awaited the scholar who succeeded. In rural France, Jean-Francois Champollion, the brilliant son of an impoverished bookseller, became obsessed with breaking the code of the ancient Egyptians. At sixteen years of age he decided that he would dedicate his life to the decipherment of hieroglyphs. Amid political turmoil in France caused by Napoleon's meteoric rise and catastrophic fall, Champollion was hounded, exiled, and even charged with treason, yet he continued to strive for the key to the ancient texts. In 1812, Champollion made the decisive breakthrough, beating his closest rival, English physician Thomas Young, to the prize and becoming the first person to be able to read the ancient Egyptian language in well over a thousand years. The Keys of Egypt is a true story of adventure, obsession, and triumph over extreme adversity.

    Nonsense poems in French, when pronounced, sound like English nursery rhymes, such as Humpty Dumpty and Jack Sprat.