I finally watched the animated film, “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” by Hayao Miyazaki. I have very high expectation, but I still enjoyed it a lot. Hayao Miyazaki is a highly regarded Japanese film director and his works include, “Spirited Away“, “Princess Mononoke”, “My Neighbor Totoro” and so on. “Ponyo” was released last year in Japan, and I was waiting to see it for a long time. Its English dub version came to the US and Canada last month. I was fortunate to get the Japanese copy from a friend. It is a simple story that young children can enjoy. I was surprised how much I was moved by it. I love the closing song, too. If you are learning Japanese you will probably be able to understand a lot of it as much of the dialogue is spoken by a five-year-old boy. I think you will feel good about your studies if you can catch some of the dialogue. I hope you can see it with Japanese with sub-titles, if possible.
Japanese translation

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Since the Japanese school year starts in April, September in Japan has a bit of a different feeling than in North America, as it is the beginning of the second term. I wonder if there are other countries that have a school year that starts in April? I always enjoyed the second term. The weather is fairly nice in September and October. The second term is usually very busy with various actives such as sports day, field trips, and music recitals. Unfortunately this year, some Japanese schools were forced to close classrooms due to swine flue just after students came back to school from summer vacation.
Japanese translation

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When I was in Japan, I enjoyed riding a bike. My bike was a typical Japanese bike, which has a low seat, upright seating, and a front basket (of course). There is a slang expression for this type of bike. It is called a, “mama-chari”. “Mama” means, “mom”. “Chari” is the short form of “charinko”, which is slang for “bike”. I haven’t owned a bike for a long time. Since I was so used to riding a “mama-chari”, I feel a little uncomfortable about trying a mountain bike. However, I see more cruiser bikes lately in North America and would like to try one of them. A recent survey says that there is a one bike for every 1.5 people in Japan. Japan placed sixth in the world in the survey following Holland, Denmark, Germany, Norway and Sweden. I was a little surprised that bike ownership per person in Japan is higher than that of China or France.
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I love animals. One of my dreams when I was young was to live at and work for the Mutsugoro Animal Kingdom in Hokkaido (the northern island of Japan). Although my dream never came true, and I am not surrounded by as many animals as I had wished, I do have two spoiled cats. I am writing this while one of my cats is sitting on my lap. Unfortunately there are many stray cats in Japan. It is estimated that between 70 and 90 percent of Americans have their pets spayed or neutered. However, it is only about 30 percent in Japan. “Wagahai wa neko de aru (I am A Cat)” by Soseki Natsume is one of the most famous novels in Japan. The opening dialogue, which is “Wagahai wa neko de aru. Namae wa mada nai (I am a cat. As yet, I have no name.),” is very familiar to many Japanese.
Japanese translation

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The following post will be a bit different from what we usually write about. Today is the International Literacy Day and we decided to join this cause as many others have in order to create awareness of this issue that still exists in this modern world. The objective of this day is to highlight the importance of literacy to individuals, communities and societies.

Despite the efforts and varied efforts of different organizations, literacy still exists up to this day. One of the organizations that has been working on this issue, and trying to make a difference in the illiterate world is UNESCO. Here are some facts about this problem that we found on the UNESCO website.

- 776 million adults lack minimum literacy skills
- 1 out of 5 adults is still not literate and 2/3 are women.
- 75 million children are out of school and many more attend irregularly or drop out.

Literacy is considered to be a human right, vital to everyone because it allows social and human development, it is essential in fighting poverty, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality, peace, among other things.

Even though it seems that this article is not directly about learning languages, it is related with our sites purpose. For a person to fully learn his or her language, it is important that they know how to read and write. Communication is not only verbal, also there is non-verbal communication and written communication. People that are illiterate are at a disadvantage because they don’t have all of the information available that you and I have, just by knowing how to read, they can’t fully communicate. Literacy is part of life, and everyone deserves to have the opportunity to enjoy this human right.

The current challenges of the problem as described by UNESCO are the following:

- Too many literacy programmes have taught literacy for its own sake – learners become discourages and wonder why they should go on. It is important to link literacy with other development action, such as health, education running businesses, cultural development. The purpose of learning literacy should be clear.
- Programs should be flexible and designed with lots of local inputs. Standardized programmes will not do the job.
- People learn to read and write best in their own language, before learning to do so in other languages. For many minority languages, the challenge is to produce a usable alphabet and interesting literature, but there are ways to do this that are affordable.
- There is a need for research to find innovative and appropriate literacy methods. We also need to investigate what works and find out where these lessons can be applied.
- The figures on adult literacy are unreliable and often represent estimates and guesses. We need better ways of measuring progress in literacy.

If you want to know more about this problem, and want to help in some way you can visit the webpage or contact UNESCO, which has been working on this issue for several decades.

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Las Telenovelas

Telenovelas are a big hit in Latin America and Brazil. Hundreds of them are produced every year, and stars go from telenovelas to Hollywood, like Mexican Salma Hayek and Brazilian heartthrob Rodrigo Santoro, who’s starred in Lost and some mainstream movies.

Watching soap operas in Spanish is a very good way to improve your Spanish and even keep updated with slang and expressions.

Carrusel was a very successful soap in the early 90s. It told the story of Maestra Jimena (Gabriela Rivero) and her students in a typical Mexican elementary school.

You can see the kids 15 years later on this video:

Verónica Castro is one of the most respected Mexican actresses and has participated in more than 15 soap operas and more than 20 movies, besides being a recording artist in Mexico. Her role in Los Ricos También Lloran was highly acclaimed in every country where the soap opera was broadcast. Here’s a video of her role in Rosa Salvaje, where she plays a tomboy who falls in love with the wrong man but, as it turns out, everything ends well.

Now, a teen soap that has been a huge success, even after it’s finished, is Rebelde. The main characters have a band off-screen and it’s a hit all over Latin America and the United States. The following video is very easy to understand and it is the first episode of this soap.

Let’s finish by showing the first telenovela trilogy: Maria Mercedes, MariMar and María la del Barrio, which tell basically the same story: a poor girl falls in love with a rich guy and after lots of distress, backstabbing, crying and shouting, the main characters (Mexican actress/singer Thalía and some leading man) live happily ever after.

Nos vemos prontito.

Post from: Spanish Blog

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As I mentioned in previously, Japanese summer is very hot and humid. The humidity reaches up to 70~80 %. It is obviously not a comfortable time, but there are many things that I miss about the Japanese summer. When I was little, I used to go to the shrine grounds to do “radio exercises” every early morning (It started 6:30 a.m.). Radio exercises (rajio-taisou), is a form of exercise most Japanese are familiar with. The instructions are synchronized to light piano music. There is an attendance card for rajio-taisou and you get a stamp on it when you come. I didn’t want to miss rajio-taisou because I liked seeing my card filling up with stamps. The music of rajio-taisou makes me nostalgic. It is funny; after all these years my body still remembers the exercises whenever I hear the music.

Japanese translation

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Traveling is one exciting activity and learning a language while traveling may be more exciting than ever! Learning languages abroad has its many perks – it allows faster assimilation of the language in a language learner’s system since he or she will be immersed in the language and it gives a lot of opportunities for learning more about the place like its history, culture, and people!

There are many things to consider when traveling to another place yet one of the most important concerns would have to be accommodation. Knowing where to stay when traveling in another place assures the traveler that he or she will have a secure and clean place to stay while enjoying his or her vacation or language abroad program.

One of the most convenient forms of accommodation for travel is a hostel. Hostels are a type of accommodation that provides budget oriented and sociable lodging where guests can rent a bed, and share a lounge, bathroom, and sometimes a kitchen with other occupants. Rooms in hostels can be shared among occupants though there are some private rooms available. Hostels are normally cheaper for both operators and occupants and they only assure that the best services are available at affordable prices.

If you are planning to learn a language abroad and would want to spend time with fellows who love traveling and learning languages too, you can opt to stay with any of our partner’s hostels. Hostelworld.com provides on-line confirmed booking for hostels, budget accommodation centers and package tours, as well as comprehensive content such as city and country guides. The staff of Hostelworld is composed of people from different parts of the world and has many years of experience in the budget travel industry. All of the bookings made with Hostelworld are made securely and in real-time, guaranteed for travelers like you.

Hostelworld has hostels on different parts of the planet including the more popular locations such as London, Amsterdam, Paris, Prague, Dublin, Berlin, New York, Vienna, Edinburgh, Sydney, Munich, San Francisco, Glasgow, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Rome, Venice, Florence, Budapest, Lisbon, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Aside from providing quality services to their customers, Hostelworld.com also donates a portion of their service charge from every booking to UNICEF. UNICEF provides assistance to and works for long term improvement in the lives of children from the poorest countries in the world by supporting programs aimed primarily at protecting children through immunization, education, health, and the long term eradication of poverty as well as emergency relief. Booking your hostels with Hostelworld.com assures you great accommodations, as well as helps you help underprivileged children from different parts of the world.

Booking for Hostelworld hostels is easy; all you have to do is enter your destination city and country, date of arrival, and the duration of your stay. You can book for hostels from the Abroad Languages main page and look for the Hostelworld widget at the left sidebar. You can also connect to Hostelworld’s website and search for more than twenty thousand hostels in over one hundred seventy countries.

Are you set to explore the world? Equip yourself with foreign languages and book in superior hostels right now!

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Here are some currencies in Spanish-speaking countries. Check them out!

Balboa – Panamá
Bolívar – Venezuela
Colón costarricense – Costa Rica
Colón salvadoreño – El Salvador
Guaraní – Uruguay
Lempira – Honduras
Oro Córdoba – Nicaragua
Euro – España
Peso argentino – Argentina
Peso boliviano – Bolivia
Peso chileno – Chile
Peso colombiano – Colombia
Peso cubano – Cuba
Peso mexicano – México
Peso uruguayo – Uruguay
Quetzal – Guatemala
Sol nuevo – Perú
Dólar estadounidense – Ecuador

Nos vemos prontito!

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More than 50 million people speak a language other than English in the home. At the present time, some linguists estimate that about 6,000 or more languages are spoken in the world, not including local dialects.
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