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Hi, I'm Jay. I'm from America but I live in Japan. I am a native American English speaker, but I can also speak Japanese at a near native level. I used to be able to speak Spanish pretty well, but 10 years without using it has hurt my vocabulary and fluency quite a bit! I recently began a journey to learn 3 new languages: Arabic (Egyptian Spoken first), Russian, and Persian (Farsi). I am here to work on those, but also to provide help or teaching to anyone who is trying to learn English or Japanese. I taught English 1 on 1 in a language school here in Tokyo for a year or so, as well as privately in person and over skype with a few people. Feel free to contact me if you need some help!
Learning
Arabic (Egyptian)
German
Language Skills
EnglishNative
Japanese
Spanish
Indonesian
Persian (Farsi)
Russian
Dutch
Lesson Feedback
Lesson history
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Completed lessons009
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Teacher reviews
Amera Eid
Arabic
Jan 12, 2015
It was nice to meet you Jay! I am really surprised with your Egyptian Arabic, the sentence structure is great. I agree with you that you need to do some effort in vocabulary but I believe that you can do that easily. Good luck ya Jay :)
Khloud Al-Alfy
Arabic
Jan 3, 2015
it was a great start with you, your pronunciation is good, you are a person who full of enthusiasm .and i expect from you alot in next sessions!
Activities
  • Commented

    i've also heard that spoken egyptian and levantine arabic sound closer to each other than either one does to MSA. add that to the fact that the entertainment industry has spread the language beyond the borders of egypt, it didn't seem like a bad way to go. i plan to work on fus7a and the levantine dialect after i get to a functionally conversational level of egyptian.

    0 voted
    January 19, 2015
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  • Commented

    good discussion. i've heard a lot of people bring this kind of thing up who have studied arabic. i personally agree that one should study based on how/when/where they plan on using the language.

     

    i personally chose to go with the egyptian dialect first because egypt is the first place i will travel where i will have a chance to speak arabic and my main priority is being able to communicate with the people i meet there as smoothly and covering as many topics as possible.

    0 voted
    January 19, 2015
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  • Commented

    i agree with what someone else said about listening to a dialogue with the transcript in russian in front of you. there's a youtube channel with short dialogues in russian with the text on screen: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcnakakIRt7Yp5Dsu1YGO7A

     

    and also with reading lists of load words because as you start to sound it out you can make the connections with the letters and the coming sounds.

     

    i've still only managed to spend between 10-15 hours on russian so far. i have put in about 30 minutes of active study into the letters and their sounds on a memrise cyrillic alphabet course. other than that i've done about 10 hours of the michel thomas course and the first 5 lessons of assimil russian. at this point with loan words and pretty much any words that i can say and understand when heard, i have no trouble with reading although wouldn't call myself "fast". words that aren't in my vocabulary take me a lot more time but i'm not really worried about that because i know the more vocab i learn the more the words will jump off the page at me.

     

    keep it up!

    0 voted
    January 14, 2015
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  • Answered
    i didn't study japanese grammar at all. but i know how to use it naturally just like i know how to use english. likewise like you can learn new vocabulary without sitting down and studying vocabulary. though focused vocab learning/study/practice is probably more efficient. personally, i think focusing on vocab over grammar early on will help you understand more of what you hear and read while also expanding what you can talk about yourself,which in turn will help you understand the grammar as you experience the language first hand. i learn more from trying to say something and having it confirmed right or corrected when wrong than from reading rules on how to say it. but everyone is different.
    0 voted
    December 31, 2014
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  • Answered
    thanks for all of the comments guys!
    0 voted
    December 30, 2014
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  • Corrected
    0 voted
    December 30, 2014
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  • Posted
    Egyptian Arabic: how do I say "I didn't have time" makansh 3andy wa2t? makoontish 3andy wa2t? or would you say "there wasn't time".... which I also don't know how to say but would guess something like: makansh fy wa2t?after thinking for a second, makoontish 3andy wa2t wouldn't be correct because the "3and" goes with "wa2t"....literally saying "time wasn't with me"....correct? so it would seem "makansh 3andy wa2t" would make sense...to me anyway. haha.
    December 30, 2014
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  • Corrected
    0 voted
    December 27, 2014
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  • Commented

    it depends on what your goals are and how much motivation you have. your training program should reflect your training goals. a professional or aspiring athlete should train differently than a bodybuilder. someone interested in doing ironman/triathalon/decathalon type of events should train differently from someone interested in running marathons. etc. etc.

    0 voted
    December 25, 2014
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  • Answered
    I agree with Ruthi... having something stretched to the limit is usually the phrase. stretch the limit could mean something similar to "push the boundary" or "push the boundaries" or "push the envelope". these refer to the idea of bending rules or trying to get as close to breaking them as possible. testing the limitations of a situation to see if you can actually go beyond or not. often used in sports as well when talking about always trying to push as hard as you can and basically break down the current limits and create new ones.
    0 voted
    December 25, 2014
    0