September 2014 - Language Bug

The Past Perfect Progressive Tense in English

Following on from yesterday’s Past Perfect Simple Tense in English article, we’re going to cover the Past Perfect Progressive Tense. As always, you can view all our tense articles by moving down to the bottom of this page and using the links to the tense you want to learn about. Past Perfect Progressive Tense: What […]

Simplified or Traditional Mandarin

Should you learn Simplified or Traditional Mandarin? Ricky at the fluentin3months forum asked the following: “Simplified Mandarin as they say is used and spoken in mainland China. But traditional Mandarin is used on signs, history books, restaurants, newspapers, and possibly used more locally around US. Which has me in the middle. I was thinking of […]

learn english grammar - past perfect simple tense

Past Perfect Simple Tense in English

In the last couple of articles in this series, we talked about the present perfect simple and present perfect continuous tenses. Now, we’re going to talk about the past perfect tenses. This article is about the Past Perfect Simple tense. This article and the next use tenses which can be swapped for one another. It’s […]

learning mandarin chinese with the language bug method

Chinese Conversation: Words You Need To Know

There will come a time when you need to have your first Chinese conversation. During the course of my Mandarin learning project, I put it off repeatedly. The truth is, Chinese conversation, or any language, is a trial by fire. You have to practice with native speakers for the first time. Once you do, it […]

Present Perfect Progressive Tense

We’re on a roll here with our English Grammar series. In this article, we will learn about the Present Perfect Progressive Tense. It is like the Present Perfect Simple tense, but there are differences. What is the Present Perfect Progressive Tense? The Present Perfect Progressive Tense is used when we need to describe a situation […]

Present Perfect Simple Tense

This post is the latest in our English Grammar Series. We have looked at four different tenses before. Now we will look at the Present Perfect Simple Tense. To see our other articles on English Grammar, please read this article and then follow the links at the end. What is the Present Perfect Simple Tense? […]

Language Learning is an Economic Investment

I try and stay mostly on the topic of the mechanics of language learning. However, there’s nothing that quite whets the appetite more than a little motivation. Add in a bit of fear-mongering, and you’ve got the basis for a great post on why language learning is an economic investment. That’s my aim of the […]

Chinese Alphabet: Pinyin Explained

If not the hardest aspect of learning Mandarin, the single most time-consuming aspect of the language is the character system. The fact that there is no common sense (I’m sorry Mandarin speakers, but it’s true) alphabet or script makes me wonder how Chinese children do it. Luckily, some fellows a long time recognised this, and […]

Online Resources for Learning Mandarin

It’s been a while since I updated the project section of the site. Suffice to say, the language project is still ongoing. I am getting better at Mandarin. Daily updates are probably not the way to go though after the initial stages. Nobody wants to read, “learned ten characters today. Wrote ten sentences. Listened to […]

What is the Easiest Language to Learn

“The easiest language to learn” isn’t a straight-cut answer. It’s one of the questions that brings people to this site though, so it’s something that I’ll address in this article. The easiest language to learn is determined by three simple metrics. Having learned a romance language (close to my native language) and a Sino-Tibetan language […]

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