The best part is that it doesn’t have to be difficult or take years to master. Thirty minutes a day is all it takes, and we get you speaking right from the first day. Pimsleur courses use a scientifically-proven method that puts you in control of your learning. If you’ve tried other language learning methods but found they simply didn’t stick, then you owe it to yourself to give Pimsleur a try.Why Pimsleur? - Quick + Easy – Only 30 minutes a day. - Portable + Flexible – Core lessons can be done anytime, anywhere, and easily fit into your busy life. - Proven Method – Works when other methods fail. - Self-Paced – Go fast or go slow – it’s up to you. - Based in Science – Developed using proven research on memory and learning. - Cost-effective – Less expensive than classes or immersion, and features all native speakers. - Genius – Triggers your brain’s natural aptitude to learn. - Works for everyone – Recommended for ages 13 and above. What’s Included? - 30, 30-minute audio lessons - 60 minutes of reading instruction to provide you with an introduction to reading French designed to teach you to sound out words with correct pronunciation and accent - in total, 16 hours of audio, all featuring native speakers - a Reading Booklet and a User’s GuideWhat You’ll Learn In the first 10 lessons, you’ll cover the basics: saying hello, asking for or giving information, scheduling a meal or a meeting, asking for or giving basic directions, and much more. You’ll be able to handle minimum courtesy requirements, understand much of what you hear, and be understood at a beginning level, but with near-native pronunciation skills. In the next 10 lessons, you’ll build on what you’ve learned. Expand your menu, increase your scheduling abilities from general to specific, start to deal with currency and exchanging money, refine your conversations and add over a hundred new vocabulary items. You’ll understand more of what you hear, and be able to participate with speech that is smoother and more confident. In the final 10 lessons, you’ll be speaking and understanding at an intermediate level. In this phase, more directions are given in the target language, which moves your learning to a whole new plane. Lessons include shopping, visiting friends, going to a restaurant, plans for the evening, car trips, and talking about family. You’ll be able to speak comfortably about things that happened in the past and make plans for the future. Reading Lessons begin in Lesson 9 to provide you with an introduction to reading French. In addition, the combined Reading Lessons are included after Lesson 30. These Reading Lessons, which total about one hour, are designed to teach you to sound out words with correct pronunciation and accent. The Pimsleur Method We make no secret of what makes this powerful method work so well. Paul Pimsleur spent his career researching and perfecting the precise elements anyone can use to learn a language quickly and easily. Here are a few of his “secrets”:The Principle of Anticipation In the nanosecond between a cue and your response, your brain has to work to come up with the right word. Having to do this boosts retention, and cements the word in your mind.Core Vocabulary Words, phrases, and sentences are selected for their usefulness in everyday conversation. We don’t overwhelm you with too much, but steadily increase your ability with every lesson.Graduated Interval Recall Reminders of new words and structures come up at the exact interval for maximum retention and storage into your long-term memory.Organic Learning You work on multiple aspects of the language simultaneously. We integrate grammar, vocabulary, rhythm, melody, and intonation into every lesson, which allows you to experience the language as a living, expressive form of human culture.Learning in Context Research has shown that learning new words in context dramatically accelerates your ability to remember. Every scene in every Pimsleur lesson is set inside a conversation between two people. There are no drills, and no memorization necessary for success.Active Participation The Pimsleur Method + active learner participation = success. This method works with every language and every learner who follows it. You gain the power to recall and use what you know, and to add new words easily, exactly as you do in English.The French Language French is spoken by 55 million speakers in France, 3 million in Belgium, 1.5 million in Switzerland, 6.5 million in Canada, and 5 million in former French and Belgian colonies. It is an official language in 44 countries and an official language of the United Nations. An estimated 50 million people around the world speak French as a second language.Tech Talk - CDs are formatted for playing in all CD players, including car players, and users can copy files for use in iTunes or Windows Media Player.

    You need to speak the language from day one.No years of studying grammar, no expensive and complicated software, no “magic pill” to master a language while you sleep, you just need to speak it. Speak it regularly, speak it confidently, and speak it immediately. The more you speak, the quicker you will improve.Even though this may be obvious, how you actually speak a language that you have just started to learn seems almost impossible to many people. So they’ll wait until they are “ready”. That wait may be years, or they may simply never even try.But it’s not actually that hard! That’s what the Language Hacking Guide is about.

    People are interacting more frequently and more fervently than ever before, turning the English language into an indecipherable mess. Now, this unique and concise compendium presents the most confused and misused words in the language today -- words misused by careless speakers and writers everywhere. It defines, discerns and distinguishes the finer points of sense and meaning. Was it fortuitous or only fortunate? Are you trying to remember, or more fully recollect? Is he uninterested or disinterested? Is it healthful or healthy, regretful or regrettable, notorious or infamous? The answers to these and many more fascinating etymological questions can be found within the pages of this invaluable (or is it valuable?) reference.

    In what will likely become the introduction to the history of the Spanish language, David Pharies clearly and concisely charts the evolution of Spanish from its Indo-European roots to its present form. An internationally recognized expert on the history and development of this language, Pharies brings to his subject a precise sense of what students of Spanish linguistics need to know.After introductory chapters on what it means to study the history of a language, the concept of linguistic change, and the nature of language families, Pharies traces the development of Spanish from its Latin roots, all with the minimum amount of technical language possible.  In the core sections of the book, readers are treated to an engaging and remarkably succinct presentation of the genealogy and development of the language, including accounts of the structures and peculiarities of Latin, the historical and cultural events that deeply influenced the shaping of the language, the nature of Medieval Spanish, the language myths that have become attached to Spanish, and the development of the language beyond the Iberian Peninsula, especially in the Americas. Focusing on the most important facets of the language’s evolution, this compact work makes the history of Spanish accessible to anyone with a knowledge of Spanish and a readiness to grasp basic linguistic concepts.Available in both English and Spanish editions, A Brief History of the Spanish Language provides a truly outstanding introduction to the exciting story of one of the world’s great languages.

    The result is a veritable panoply of words -- drawn from the real-life context of written and spoken language.

    If you'd love to learn Greek so you can study your Bible better, but you can't spare two years for college or seminary courses, then Greek for the Rest of Us is for you. Developed by renowned Greek teacher William Mounce, this revolutionary crash-course on 'baby Greek' will acquaint you with the essentials of the language and deepen your understanding of God's Word. You'll gain a sound knowledge of basic Greek, and you'll learn how to use tools that will add muscle to your Bible studies. In six sections, Greek for the Rest of Us will help you: - Recite the Greek alphabet - Read and pronounce Greek words - Learn the Greek noun and verbal system - Conduct Greek word studies - Decipher why translations are different - Read better commentaries Greek for the Rest of Us broadens your knowledge still further with an appendix on biblical Hebrew. It also includes a CD-ROM for your computer featuring the author's class lectures in audio, combined with text and overheads.

    By a hierarchy of classes and sections containing individual "meaning clusters" or semantically linked words.2. By alphabetized A-Z index.Most Thesaurus Kindle Edition ebooks DO NOT have this active table of contents built in. Roget's Thesaurus is perfect for anyone. Whether you use it for school, work, or home, you will find this handy Thesaurus a treasure to have.Get your Roget's Thesaurus Today!

    Twelve days later, she was stabbed in a Shanghai stairwell. The actions of both police investigators and O'Brien's Chinese modeling agent soon aroused suspicion as her family sought answers from China's opaque legal system. Ultimately, their quest would put them face to face with her accused killer.At once a page-turning murder mystery and a work of deep investigation, And The City Swallowed Them is a true crime nonfiction story based on dozens of interviews with investigators, models, and both the victim's and the convicted murderer's families. The short book moves from Shanghai's back alleys to the seedy underbelly of high fashion, where young models travel alone to strange cities, often with falsified work papers, and sleep ten to an apartment between cover shoots. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai's explosive urbanization, the work also explores the world of China's liudong renkou, or floating population, where the hopes of newcomers from poor villages often turn to dust—leading some to horribly desperate acts.The debut digital title from the writers cooperative Deca, And The City Swallowed Them overturns assumptions about both China’s feared justice system, where the conviction rate for criminals is 99.9 percent, and the glamorous world of international modeling. More than a murder tale, And The City Swallowed Them lays bare the powerful forces that send two families on a collision course from distant sides of the Pacific.

    Previously known as Gone Fishin', this book has brought Jay Rubin more feedback than any of his literary translations or scholarly tomes, "even if," he says, "you discount the hate mail from spin-casters and the stray gill-netter."To convey his conviction that "the Japanese language is not vague," Rubin has dared to explain how some of the most challenging Japanese grammatical forms work in terms of everyday English. Reached recently at a recuperative center in the hills north of Kyoto, Rubin declared, "I'm still pretty sure that Japanese is not vague. Or at least, it's not as vague as it used to be. Probably."The notorious "subjectless sentence" of Japanese comes under close scrutiny in Part One. A sentence can't be a sentence without a subject, so even in cases where the subject seems to be lost or hiding, the author provides the tools to help you find it. Some attention is paid as well to the rest of the sentence, known technically to grammarians as "the rest of the sentence."Part Two tackles a number of expressions that have baffled students of Japanese over the decades, and concludes with Rubin's patented technique of analyzing upside-down Japanese sentences right-side up, which, he claims, is "far more restful" than the traditional way, inside-out."The scholar," according to the great Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume, is "one who specializes in making the comprehensible incomprehensible." Despite his best scholarly efforts, Rubin seems to have done just the opposite.Previously published in the Power Japanese series under the same title and originally as Gone Fishin' in the same series.

    This book makes grammar practice interesting by presenting rules that are easy to understand and remember, with exercises that entertain as they teach.

    If you are looking for a basic Japanese for beginners textbook that teaches Japanese kanji, vocabulary, and grammar, you will not find it here. But if you are struggling with the question of how to learn Japanese more effectively or if you have trouble speaking Japanese, why not try something new and different? Half of the people who see the title to this book might be thinking, "Learn Japanese by watching anime? What a load of crap!" Such a thing certainly sounds like a crazy pipe dream that a great number of anime fans share. And if you watch anime with English subtitles like most people, Japanese fluency will remain merely a dream. You will not learn Japanese outside a small handful of basic words. If you turned off the English subtitles, however, you would be taking your first steps towards a successful Japanese language learning program. Of course, this is not the only step either. The following steps contained within this book describe a fascinating process of how anyone can learn to speak Japanese fluently through mostly reading and listening to native Japanese language materials. Inside of this book is a system that allows you to learn and never forget thousands of new Japanese kanji, vocabulary words, phrases, and grammar structures that you encounter from any Japanese language source of your choice. This includes anime, manga, dramas, movies, videos, music, video games, visual novels, and anything else that uses the Japanese language. Whether you are at the basic Japanese for beginners level or intermediate levels, use this book to help you learn Japanese to fluency faster and easier starting today!

    In Righting the Mother Tongue, the author of A Left-Hand Turn Around the World brings us the tangled story of English Spelling, from Olde English to email. Utterly captivating, deliciously edifying, and extremely witty, Righting the Mother Tongue is a treat for the language lover—a book that belongs in every personal library, right next to Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, and the works of Bill Bryson and Simon Winchester.

    All necessary corrections have been made, and the book retains the form which has long made it the most complete and valuable work of its kind. In this descriptive grammar the author offers a treatment of Greek syntax which is exceptionally rich as well subtle and varied.

    The spellbinding world of Hiromi Kawakami; the hair-raising horror of Otsuichi; the haunting, poignant prose of Banana Yoshimoto; even the poetic word-play of Yoko Tawada whatever a readers taste, he or she is sure to find something of interest and value in this book, suitable for students at the intermediate level and above. As in real Japanese novels, the text on each page runs from top to bottom and from right to left. Each double-page spread features translations of all the difficult passages. In the back of the book, moreover, is a built-in Japanese-English learners dictionary and a notes section covering issues of nuance, usage, grammar and culture that come up in each story. Best of all, the books comes with a free audio CD containing narrations of the stories, performed by a professional voice actress.

    I was born into Russian; transposed into Czech, then German; introduced to Hebrew; and finally adopted by English.' Elena Lappin was born in Russia. Her parents speak Russian to one another, and to their children. Elena speaks Czech to her brother, but he writes in German and she writes in English. What does it mean to be brought up in family that speaks several different languages, and where all members are writers? Elena Lappin explores what it is to be a writer, what language is, and it's also a wonderful look at the life of a woman who has moved from country to country looking for a language to think in.