War, disasters and accidents

I was deeply moved by the plane accident of the Brazilian football team. Disasters and accidents happen all the time. But so many young people with a bright future suddenly lost their lives just in seconds. They were on the way to fulfill their dream. How sad ...

Yesterday I watched a documentary about ISIS. The situations in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan are really bad. It affects our lives here too. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are coming to Europe every day. Specially the countries like Italy, Greece, Spain, France, Turkey ... do not know how to deal with the illegal immigrants. The situation is worsening day by day.

The terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice ...  The terrorist attack in Nice happened on 14th July in French National Day. The day of their big celebration, of their national pride ... 

I was with my family in Paris on Bastille Day in 2013. We saw the spectacular celebration of Bastille Day with our own eyes. But now the beautiful celebration of the Bastille day will be never like before. Every year in that day people will remember the innocent victims of the terrorist attack. 

I personally a bit blame George Bush, his administration and USA government who went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq for the today's situation in the Middle East.

We are living in very complicated time. I just hope the situation would not worsen. 

I am back; English teachers.

Probably you noticed that I had been away for some time. Yeah, I abandoned my blog! How it is possible? Where have I been?! I have been busy. The important thing is now I am back. Hehehe, that is enough, now seriously...

It is already November, my favorite month. The further the darker it is outside.

Well, this blog is about English then let's talk about English. This week I joined 5 days free English course. I came across it on Facebook. This is the second time which I joined online English course. The first time it was online course of British Council and I didn't finish it. The course I joined now is email course about how to study English effectively. The teacher is sending me some materials and I am sending my stories to him. I don't know if it would be something useful but I believe every contact with English is good for English learners. Also I really appreciate the teacher's effort to help English learners. Besides, I don't have much opportunities to correspond with native English teacher.

I have been watching English lessons for beginners from one English school in Mongolia. They broadcast the lessons live on Facebook. I was just curious because I am learning English in Slovak-English. I mean I use English-Slovak dictionary. I translate words in my head from English to Slovak or from Slovak to English.

I have watched some Mongolian-English materials on Facebook. It seems to be hard to translate English phrases to Mongolian. Because these two languages are very different in all aspects. Also Mongolian language isn't rich in polite and formal phrases. Although spoken Mongolian language is old enough, the written modern formal form is very young. We can say Mongolians started using polite and formal phrases recently.

Generally European languages are close. Although Slovak and English are in different groups, we can see the similarity of meanings of phrases and idioms.

I think learning English is harder for Mongolians than for Europeans.

So I was just curious and watched the videos. This Mongolian school is called Sondorkhilen English Centre. According these articles on Facebook the teacher is supposed to be excellent teacher. But he makes beginners' mistakes. I couldn't believe my eyes and ears. Just today when he wanted to make past tense of his own example:

"Today is Chimeg's birthday." He was going to make a past tense of this sentence. He changed it:
"Today is Chimeg's birthday yesterday."
Maybe the teacher was just confused. But another serious mistakes were: Possessive adjective ITS according him: It's with a apostrophe. When he was explaining about Indefinite Pronouns instead Somewhere and Anywhere he used Some place and Any place.

I don't know what qualifications are required for Mongols to become English teacher in Mongolia but it looks like my knowledge of English grammars is much better than knowledge of this English teacher. Maybe he is really good at speaking, I guess.


Well, enough criticism. It was just interesting to compare my knowledge with someone else's.

It is already late here. Have a nice weekend, everyone.

Good luck with your study!

Rio Olympics

My Brazilian friends have just sent me greetings from Rio de Janeiro where they just arrived to attend the Paralympic Games! Thank you guys and enjoy the games!!

I watched the Opening Ceremony of both of the Olympic Games in Rio. Both of them were amazing. The first big Olympics Opening Ceremony was fantastic and very original. I specially liked the part about Brazilian history.

The TV host explained that Brazil is the only country where we can not find ghettos. (You know ghettos like Chinese town, Korean town or districts where live many people from certain ethnic groups) The immigrants who arrived to Brazil, they assimilated into the community during first or second generations. It is their tradition. I liked it very much. It might explain the mix of nations, the mixed culture, music, Samba, their joy of life, friendliness and tolerance.

The large and powerful country with a beautiful nature, Amazon rainforest where live more than 200 tribes of indigenous people who speak in 188 different indigenous languages, where there still live many uncontacted tribes, the beautiful seas, ocean, beaches...The nice, happy, friendly people, their diversity and unity... Beautiful Copacabana beach, I fell in love with Brazil, who didn't?!

Amazing, my friends just texted me from Rio that they are going to watch Goalball competition. They said that Goalball is a sport which was created for blind people. It sounds interesting, I did not know about that. So I hope to watch some competitions on TV. Usually TV stations do not pay much attention to the Paralympic Games.

As my friend said Paralympic Games need as much attention as other Olympic Games. We all should support these people who had gone through difficult situations in their lives but did not give up and moved on even became Olympic athletes.

About phrasal verbs

I have noticed that I used only two phrasal verbs in my previous posts. The most difficult thing in English is pronunciation for me. The second difficult thing to learn in English are phrasal verbs. They are so many. And they have too many similar and different meanings. It confuses me. Lol!

I am used to download movies in English with subtitles. I am always writing down the words that I don't know their meanings. And I had learned a lot of new words in this way. 

But I always left out phrasal verbs. But recently I started learning phrasal verbs. When I was watching "The Americans" I wrote down some phrasal verbs. And I tried to learn meaning of the verbs. Sometimes I try to practice these new words with my son who is fluent in English. 

Two days ago I learned phrasal verb "Hook up with somebody." The meaning was: "To meet somebody and spend time with them." (Oxford dictionary older edition) 

Coincidentally, my son wanted to go out with his friends that evening. So I wanted to practice this verb with him and I asked him "Do you want to hook up with your friends tonight?" He looked at me surprisingly and asked me "What?" I repeated my question and started explaining what the meaning of this phrasal verb is. He had laughed a lot and explained me that the slang meaning of the phrasal verb is: "To have sex with someone." 😊 

Hahahaha, and he told me that I had better not use this word. Hehehe! 

So, let's s hook up with somebody!! It means: to meet somebody and spend time with them or start working with somebody or have a sex with somebody. All of them sound good!

My Russian is a bit rusty

I was taught  Russian for 7 years in the middle and high school in Mongolia. Mongolians used to be very close to Russian culture: Russian TV channels, literature, goods, Russian schools and teachers. And they still are... Almost everyone spoke Russian. 

The important thing is they helped to build Mongolian economy, infrastructure, education and health sector from nothing. After Mongolian People's Revolution of 1921 Soviet Union built the first school and hospital in Mongolia. 

Before the revolution in Mongolian land there were a few Buddhist temples and practically nothing else. The country we have now, was started being built after the revolution of 1921.

But now some Mongolian people, politicians even historians and linguists became very nationalistic. Some people are trying discredit the leader of the revolution and great importance of the revolution. For example, Mongolian new language law from last year it was a step back. More about this law in future posts... 

It seems some people become obsessed by Genghis Khan. OK, Genghis Khan was a big part of our history but not our future. We should raise kind, tolerant and globally thinking new generation. 

So get back to my Russian. Russian language me made it a bit easier to learn Slovak. Because both of them are Slavic languages. They have in common gendered nouns. But they are in most aspects completely different languages. 

I haven't spoken Russian for a long time. Sporadically I used it in Moscow when I travel to Mongolia. 

Recently I watched American TV series called " The Americans." There are lots of conversation in Russian. I enjoyed the Russian conversations very much. I still understand it. So it is a good thing, isn't it?

A little about me

Hello,

I didn't introduce myself in my previous post. I don't anticipate that people would read my blog. Maybe when I publish more posts I will invite some friends to read my posts. Otherwise for people who don't know me, my blog would seem so primitive and maybe childish because of my limited English. 

But what would you expect from a person who is studying English for just 2 years! When I got the idea to create a blog in English I wrote my first post at night in a bed in 15 minutes on my iPad and I posted it the following evening. 

So my name is Bayarmaa. I am from Mongolia but I have been living my whole adult life in Slovakia and the Czech Republic because I came to Slovakia to study at a university and I stayed here after graduating .

If anyone who is studying English or who wants to practise their English or maybe a native speaker who just wants to chat please leave me a comment, I would be pleased! 

So today is 1st September, hooray to school!

My way of English

Living in a multilingual environment sometimes might be confusing. Yeah, naturally I am Mongolian but I got used to think in Slovak because of many practical reasons. And for the last two years I have been living in Prague, of course Czech language became part of my everyday life. At the end, English is my passion, my baby, hahahaha! 

Probably you would think why there is an exclamation mark after "Hahahaha". Yep, it shouldn't be there according to the rules but it is in my way of English! I will explain you about that in my next posts. 

Why I am trying to write a blog in English with my very limited vocabulary? Because I am learning English at the moment, because I am trying to find some motivation for my progress of learning. I know I am too old to learn a foreign language, especially English. Why did not I learn English earlier? As an excuse I had lived in bilingual environment and it was hard itself to learn an another foreign language. Or most likely I was too lazy to learn English. I have to admit that there were several attempts to learn English before. I even attended a few English courses, but I didn't have the courage to keep on studying. 

Now I am older and I have more time and I am determined to succeed in my goal. The great thing is I have a son who is the biggest supporter and help with my English. And the most important thing is, that fell in love with English!