Chris Warnasch

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Following: 71
Following Blogs: 24

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Crazy Long German Words

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Oct 28, 2010, 10:44 pm
[Photo Credit] I have a client who's learning German, and like many people I know who have learned German, he likes to complain about "crazy long German words." German is notorious for this, but, I'd venture, often misunderstood. English speakers learning it often see the long compound words as e...
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There's Something About Whorf

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Sep 5, 2010, 7:43 am
[Photo Credit] Very interesting article in the Times on the relationship between native language and perception, in other words, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (sort of) revisited. In a nutshell, the original formulation of this hypothesis had it that our native language constrains how we think and perc...
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What's the Hardest Language to Learn?

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Apr 20, 2010, 1:10 pm
[Photo credit] There are tallest mountains to climb, biggest cities to live in, and longest rivers to paddle down, but is there such a thing as a hardest language to learn? It's a concept that a lot of people seem to believe in, or at least ask about. Perhaps not so surprisingly, a lot of people se...
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Simple Past or Present Perfect? What's Your Aspect?

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Apr 18, 2010, 9:33 am
[photo credit] One question that comes up a lot for non-native speakers learning English (and not too few native speakers) is the difference between the simple past and the present perfect. ESL students learn rules, many of which are straightforward enough, but which have rough edges and lead to app...
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My Verbs Are Stronger Than Your Verbs

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Apr 13, 2010, 1:14 pm
[photo credit] I'm sometimes surprised by the search terms that lead people here. By far, the most popular one is sefer ha-marot; apparently a lot of people are looking up information on the Book of Mirrors, and I imagine they're disappointed to find my post about a bad movie. But a recent search ph...
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Small Clauses Are Not Just For Linguists

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Apr 9, 2010, 1:29 pm
[photo credit] If you're not a linguist, you've probably never heard of a "small clause" before. You've probably heard of clauses, and maybe even remember that there are independent clauses and dependent (or subordinate) clauses. Way back in elementary or high school, you learned that independent cl...
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Do Waveforms Help Your Pronunciation?

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Apr 8, 2010, 7:17 am
[photo credit] I've seen digital language courses that make a proposition along the lines of: Record your own voice, and see how your pronunciation compares to that of a native speaker. What that generally means is, the recording of your pronunciation, for example of Spanish ciudad (city), is conver...
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The Judy Perfect Tense

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Mar 17, 2010, 6:47 pm
[photo credit] I'm not terribly embarrassed to admit that I enjoy a good judge show or two. I have a full time job, and I'm (ostensibly) working on my dissertation, so I feel a bit entitled to some mindless, trashy television every now and then. Okay, every evening if you count DVR, but it all serve...
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The Trouble With the Middle

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Feb 26, 2010, 6:12 am
[photo credit] Not too long ago I was in the supermarket, waiting at check-out. There was a woman ahead of me who had just finished punching in her codes, had taken her receipt, and was gathering her bags off of the bagging area and getting ready to leave. The cashier began passing my items over the...
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Name That Japanese Cover Band

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Nov 24, 2009, 8:27 pm
[Photo credit] When one language borrows words from another, the borrowed item undergoes certain changes. For example, a word's semantic range may expand or contract. In English, cool can mean a whole range of positive things when describing a person, but in French (at least the French spoken in 199...
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Adults Do Not Learn Languages Just Like Babies

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Nov 13, 2009, 12:01 pm
[Photo credit] The affirmative variety of this statement is one of those things I either see suggested, or outright claimed, in various venues of language learning (ooh, double consonance), whether it's live instruction, software, or books and audio. And it makes me nutty. The claim or suggestion u...
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Comprehensive Spanish Grammar Summary

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Nov 11, 2009, 5:18 pm
[Photo credit] Click here for a very comprehensive Spanish grammar summary, provided by Living Language. It's got everything from pronunciation, spelling, and punctuation to gender, articles, adjective agreement, pronouns, and verb conjugation tables. There are also loads of examples, so it's a grea...
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Hindi Script Tutor

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Nov 10, 2009, 12:27 pm
[Photo credit] This Devanagari script tutor is a great online tool for students of Hindi (or other languages using the Devanagari script, of course.) It breaks down the consonants, vowels, and conjunct characters, not only showing animation of how to write them, but also providing audio of pronuncia...
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Cool Online Language Resource

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Nov 8, 2009, 3:37 pm
Check out the bab.la language portal for dictionaries, translation tools, games, quizzes, vocabulary lessons, and a bunch of other stuff I haven't gotten to yet. The lessons seem limited to vocabulary, which is fine, but you'd need something more structured to go along with your bab.la fiddling. But...
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Yankees Fans, Deixis, and The Canyon of Heroes

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Nov 6, 2009, 10:12 am
[Photo credit] This morning, on my way to work, I learned that you can clear out an entire train with a deictic expression. For non-linguists, deixis (dike-siss) refers to words, phrases, or even morphemes that do not have a fixed meaning, but rather a contextual one. A lot of utterances are fixed, ...
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In Defense of George H. W. Bush

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Oct 21, 2009, 1:40 pm
[Photo credit] I never thought I'd type such a thing, but a) I'm talking about Daddy, not Junior, and b) I'll restrict myself to language issues. As reported here, Bush the Elder is not pleased with the level of discourse in the nation. And who would be? We're basically in a Cold Civil War, with man...
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Learning to Love Grammar

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Oct 17, 2009, 3:35 pm
[Photo credit] Say the sentence in (1) to yourself a few times. It's in Tagalog, and its translation is given underneath. Don't get too hung up on pronunciation; the only thing that might trip you up is the difference between ang and ng. Ang has a vowel like o in on or a in pasta (at least if you're...
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Prince Edward Island French

Chris Warnasch posted an article on - Oct 13, 2009, 6:48 am
I must be on a Canada kick this morning, because I'm back in the Maritimes, not too too far from the Viking settlement at Vinland. This time it's Prince Edward Island, where a variety of French is spoken that does a pretty cool and decidedly un-French thing: it strands its prepositions. I've been re...
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Chris Warnasch is following the blog The Cunning Linguist
Chris Warnasch is following the blog Mr. Verb
Chris Warnasch is following the blog Chinese Help
Chris Warnasch is following the blog Babel Hut
Chris Warnasch is following the blog Omniglot
Chris Warnasch is following the blog Integrated Chinese Blog
Chris Warnasch is following the blog Language Obessed

About Me

I've spent my entire professional and academic life in language. I've taught English and French; I've lived abroad; and I've studied over a dozen languages in the classroom, with tutors, with self-study material, and online. I've worked as a teacher and trainer at a premier proprietary language school, and I currently edit and write language courses and related content for a major publisher. I studied French and German as an undergrad, and, after just a few years, I am currently working on my PhD in Linguistics (Syntax) at the City University of New York.

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