Tag: language
How To Successfully Conquer A New Language On A Budget

How To Successfully Conquer A New Language On A Budget

As telecommunications and travel methods get better, our world continues to get smaller. Whether you’re engaging in international business or just looking to relate to the broader planet around you, the benefits of being a citizen of the world — with the multilingual talents, to boot — will only help differentiate you from the crowd. Not to mention that multilingualism has been said to have a range of benefits including better brain functionality.

Luckily, learning a new language is easier than ever thanks to technology. Right now, Rocket Languages is offering up introductory language training combo packs that’ll get you speaking the most popular languages around for just $49, over 80 percent off the regular price.

Just pick a language, even if you have no experience at all, and Rocket will get you started. Each package in this award-winning system includes dozens of lessons and hundreds of hours of training content, helping you grow from rudimentary beginner to fluent speaker at your own pace.

With on-the-go audio lessons for any iOS or Android powered device, all you need to do is spend a few minutes a day training to start building useable language skills quickly. You’ll go from knowing a handful of words to assembling simple sentences to understanding and answering more complex exchanges.

Choose from lesson 1 & 2 bundles covering Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese and Chinese, each for just $49 (a $299 value) while this offer lasts.

This sponsored post is brought to you by StackCommerce.

Learn A New Language On Your Own Time With This Creative App

Learn A New Language On Your Own Time With This Creative App

Languages are one of the last great barriers to international communication. While technology and improved transportation have made the means of talking with and traveling to far-off lands so much easier, there’s still a giant hurdle when two people literally speak different languages.

Become a true citizen of the world and help make for a smaller planet with a lifetime of access to uTalk Language Education courses, which you can get right now for as low as $29.99 (a 90 percent savings) in The National Memo Store.

uTalk’s innovative techniques help you learn real world vocabulary and syntax in the world’s most widely-spoken languages from your smartphone, tablet or other favorite device. The courses, led by native speakers and highlighted by insightful learning games, help you internalize fundamental words and phrases you can use in everyday situations. As your command of the language grows, uTalk even monitors your achievements to let you know how you’re doing.

With the $29.99 package, you’ll get tutorials for six different languages, including American English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Latin American Spanish.

If that’s not enough, you can even expand your learning to include even more languages with $49 European and Asian language bundles or a colossal 22-language mega-package for $99.

This sponsored post is brought to you by StackCommerce.

What’s In A Name? Plenty, To Those Who Want ‘Alien’ Out Of Federal Law

What’s In A Name? Plenty, To Those Who Want ‘Alien’ Out Of Federal Law

By Charles McConnell, Cronkite News (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Gilbert, Ariz., resident Belen Sisa, who arrived in the United States from Argentina 15 years ago, says it’s time to stop using “inhumane” language to describe large swaths of people — people who call America home.

Sisa may eventually get her wish — at least within the law — under a congressional bill that would strike the terms “alien” and “illegal alien” from federal law and from government signage and literature. The phrases would be replaced with “foreign national” and “undocumented foreign national.”

Sisa, 21, said removing what she sees as offensive language would be a “step forward.”

The word “makes me feel that I’m not a human in the eyes of other people and the eyes of the federal government,” Sisa said after citing the definition of alien — “not from this planet.”

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, introduced the Correcting Hurtful and Alienating Names in Government Expression (CHANGE) Act on Oct. 21, and it has already attracted 87 Democratic co-sponsors and the support of numerous advocacy groups.

“Terms like ‘illegal alien’ are used by those who would rather marginalize and dehumanize undocumented people than find an answer to our broken immigration system,” said Roger Rocha Jr., president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, in an emailed statement.

His statement said the bill represents progress toward comprehensive immigration reform, which he noted 70 percent of Americans support.

This is not the first time lawmakers have tried to strike offensive language from the law. Castro’s office pointed to Rosa’s Law, a 2010 measure that replaced all references to “mental retardation” in federal law with “intellectual disability.”

Two years later, his office said, Congress passed the 21st Century Language Act, mandating the removal of references to the word “lunatic” from certain areas within the U.S. Code.

Those two bills passed with almost unanimous consent. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., a co-sponsor of the CHANGE Act, said he hopes to see the same support for this bill, since it does not call for any changes to immigration law.

For Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., another co-sponsor, the issues of immigration and civil rights are married, something he said “people don’t seem to understand.”

“You could be a fifth-generation Latino and the rhetoric and the racism and the stuff that you hear from political leaders … demeans you,” Grijalva said at an October meeting of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “It makes you less than a full American.”

Gallego said the word “alien” is “specific to all immigrants” and changing it is an effort to improve the system of due process for immigrants.

“The term has become pejorative,” Gallego said. “It unduly harms the person who is trying to go through due process.”

The bill, he said, is an effort to “use a more modern word.”

Sisa said the word has impacted her beyond just federal law. When applying for a job, she said an interviewer told her she is “technically … an alien” and asked if she was even allowed to apply for the job.

She said she understands why undocumented people must be characterized differently from citizens, but her hope is that lawmakers can pass the bill so the government, at least, uses something more “compassionate” and “sympathetic.”

“Symbolically, it would mean that we’re taking a step forward and we’re accepting immigrants,” Sisa said of the proposed change.

And that is the message Castro promotes with the act.

“Words matter, particularly in the context of an issue as contentious as immigration,” he said in a statement announcing the bill.

Photo: Critics say the government’s use of the word ‘alien’ in reference to foreign nationals, as on this Citizenship and Immigration Services form, is demeaning and they want the word removed from federal law. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration)

Woman Named Isis Wants Public To Change How It Refers To Terrorist Group

Woman Named Isis Wants Public To Change How It Refers To Terrorist Group

By Kathryn Varn, The Miami Herald

MIAMI — Let’s play a game of word association.

The word?

Isis.

The association?

Terror or violence or maybe fear instilled by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a terrorist group commonly referred to as ISIS.

But one Miami-area woman is trying to remind people that it’s a woman’s name.

Isis Martinez, 38, started a petition on thepetitionsite.com urging the media to refer to the group as ISIL, or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, to purge her and other women with her first name of the negative connotation.

“Whenever I was at a public place or a restaurant, there would be TV monitors with tickers at the bottom: ‘ISIS warns,’ ‘ISIS kills,’ ‘ISIS threat,'” she said. “Every word after my name is incredibly negative.”

Until the terror group surfaced, Isis was best known as an ancient Egyptian goddess in mythology.

The petition has gained about 1,800 signatures since Martinez started it in late August, many of them in the last week since it sparked attention from local and national media outlets. On Saturday, in the latest horror, the group beheaded a British aid worker, following the murders of two American journalists.

Martinez and other supporters say ISIS is an inaccurate name and that the media should follow President Barack Obama’s lead in calling the group ISIL.

But the question isn’t one of accuracy as much as transliteration from Arabic to English, said South Miami-based foreign policy analyst Marsha Cohen.

“Everything about the title is somewhat negotiable,” said Cohen, who also taught as an adjunct lecturer at Florida International University for a decade. “It’s dependent upon who is doing the speaking and who is doing the listening.”

It’s tough to translate the group’s Arabic name — al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham. Dawla is state, Islamiya is Islamic and Iraq is Iraq. Sham refers to Syria and its bordering countries (other than Iraq). In that case, ISIL would be the more accurate translation.

But, in calling it that, “you’re legitimizing this organization’s claim not only to Iraq and Syria, but to the whole Middle East,” Cohen said.

Her suggestion? Call it DIIS, an acronym formed from the Arabic name. However, she admitted that most media outlets wouldn’t make the switch from English.

Cohen also pointed out that many organizations share in Martinez’s struggle.

The Daily Telegraph wrote about the struggle of a nonprofit organization called the Institute for Science and International Security that refers to itself as ISIS. And the Palm Beach Post reported that developers changed the name of a new condominium going up in West Palm Beach from ISIS Downtown to 3 Thirty Three Downtown.

Many have suggested that Martinez go by her middle name, Teresa. But to her, changing her name would mean letting the terrorists win.

“I can’t rebrand myself,” she said. “This is my heritage.”

AFP Photo

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