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Hello, My name is Jeff, I am married, have a daughter, and I am a software engineer working at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, USA. I am passionate about culture, I have been since I was quite young, and it is one of the things I love about my job. Almost every person on my team and that I work with is fluent in multiple languages... and I hope to join them by working towards fluency in Spanish. It would also put a smile on my grandfather's face if he knew I was working to learn his native language. He was born in Cuba though his parents were from Spain.
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Icelandic
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  • Commented
    "por y para ti" is an intresting phrase I hear once in a while, and I think it helps an English speaker like myself understand the difference after breaking it down into the meaning. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe in English we would translate "por y para ti" to "because of and for you". Meaning, the reason I am doing it, my motivation (in exchange for), is because of you (some action you did), but also, I'm doing it for you, you are the recipient.
    March 11, 2022
    1
  • Answered
    You can also use the word "via". "... and send them to the group via telegram..." Via means "by way of" and you could also substitute those words for via.
    0 voted
    April 19, 2020
    0
  • Answered
    I agree with Mena. I'm trying to think how I can help explain why #1 is incorrect. I'm a native speaker but not an English teacher. The part of the sentence that sounds incorrect is "is to you". "Is for you" can be used. Examples: The best option is FOR you to either do A or B. The best option is FOR you to do either A or B. Those don't sound incorrect, they sound OK but it feels more natural to put "is" after "you".
    0 voted
    April 19, 2020
    0
  • Answered
    Here are a couple examples of using these words in different ways: "That was a knee slapper" is a phrase which refers to the reaction a person has to a joke, they slap their knee with their hand. "She smacked her lips" is a phrase meaning a noisy way to close and open your lips. Slapping is typically an action performed with the hand or something that reminds you of that action. I could use both in a sentence like "the board slapped to the ground with the sound of a smack". Suppose my face was red in color and I was asked "What happened". If I respond with "I was slapped in the face" versus "I was smacked in the face" the difference is, in the case of "slapped" I would assume by someone's hand, but with "smacked" it could have been by hand but also a tree branch or something else that hit me in the face. In the first case I might ask "Who hit you" where in the second case I might ask "What hit you". In the case of hitting a person, as you said, slap is specifically an open hand. My mother-in-law has a funny phrase which sounds like it was used over 50 years ago (not something you'd hear today), it goes "I'll smack you so hard it'll jar your kinfolk". Which means the hit will be so hard that your relatives will feel it. "Wallop" is another fun one that means a hard hit though this is also an older word and I can't recall the last time I heard someone say it.
    0 voted
    April 19, 2020
    0
  • Answered
    @Stu, I'm going to guess for #3 that "The tie against one of the leaders" could possibly mean "the connection with one of the leaders" and "came to handy to us" would likely be "came in handy for us" Best guess at the meaning: 3) "Our ties with one of the leaders came in handy because we were struggling in the regulation zone" What is particularly difficult between English and Russian is English uses "the" and "a" (definite and indefinite articles). The two languages have different ways to specify what the topic is in a sentence. In English this sentence might use "A tie with one of the leaders" or "The tie with one of the leaders" and end with "in the regulation zone" or "in a regulation zone". If previous to this sentence the reader knows which regulation zone in particular, then "the regulation zone" can be used. So to properly translate this sentence in English we need to know more about what the reader knows about "tie" and "regulation zone" to know if we should use (a/the).
    0 voted
    April 5, 2020
    0
  • Commented
    Patience and persistence will work. It doesn't feel like it at the very beginning. I think of the process like how a snowball or a ball of yarn turns into something bigger. You have this tiny thing when you start but the bigger it gets the faster you can add on to what you have. Just don't worry about what you add and if you can remember, just try to get anything to stick and trust the snowball theory! :-)

    I started learning Spanish at the end of January and I know how you feel. I've been obsessive trying to learn it, spending a couple hours every day. Just over two months of study I'm able to speak a little, albeit slowly, and I understand basic concepts when someone speaks slowly. Reading is much easier because you have the time to guess and re-review what you're seeing, unlike listening. So I see my snowball growing much more quickly now than I did at the beginning. My goal right now is to be able to get to a point where I can easily listen and understand media (radio, youtube, songs, etc.) so that the words I don't know will come to me in the same way an English word that I don't know does - I can guess what it means by the context.

    0 voted
    April 5, 2020
    0
  • Commented
    My wife and I spent a year and a half learning Icelandic. Iceland has only 350,000 people (statistically they don't exist in a world of 7.5 billion people). The reason Icelandic is so interesting is Iceland is an island that no other country overtook and introduced their language to, so the language has remained unchanged for nearly 1,000 years. Modern Icelanders can understand the texts which were written in runic symbols. When I recently visited Denmark, Norway, and Sweden I was able to understand all three languages pretty well because I understood the roots of their languages from knowing Icelandic. The reverse is not as true, it is more difficult for those countries to understand Icelandic. So while it is not a common or popular language, it is still very useful.
    0 voted
    April 4, 2020
    0
  • Answered
    This sounds like a matching exercise. Are there pictures for you to match the numbers to?
    0 voted
    April 4, 2020
    0
  • Answered
    As a native English speaker I find this text VERY difficult to read without analyzing it very carefully. I would say you are correct in all 3. When you mine something you retrieve something of value. I don't know what "the death drive" is or "unpleasurable pleasure" is. "unpleasurable pleasure" is an oxymoron. Oxymorons are purposely confusing. It makes me think the author of this text wants the reader to know that the author is a profound person.
    0 voted
    April 4, 2020
    0
  • Answered
    It means someone is good at avoiding death.
    0 voted
    April 4, 2020
    0