The 1st Step for learning a New Language: Something YouTube Polyglots overlook.

When you want to learn a new language and you go to YouTube so you can find people who can teach you a language via vlogs or  via 10 minute lesson videos, you’ll actually find people who are also learning the language or they have learned the language and they’re actually giving you tips of how to learn that language,  and if you search a little bit more, you’ll find polyglots that can even teach you (in their own way) how to learn a language,  multiple languages or any language at all. If you have encounter one of them, he’s probably from the not so famous community of YouTube polyglots.

Now you can find a whole community of polyglots on YouTube, members that post really interesting and helpful videos about language learning, some of the most popular and influential polyglots on YouTube are: Moses McCormick (username: laoshu50500), Luca (poliglotta80), Richard Simcott (Torbyrne), Steve Kaufmann (lingosteve), Felix (loki2504) and the legendary Professor Alexander Arguelles (ProfASAr).

All of them are a true inspiration if you want to learn languages, they’re always giving you advices on the subject or sharing their experiences or showing you their method. Almost all of them, use (as far as I’m concern) the liberal method that I already explained on a previous post. They use a liberal listening-reading-speaking  method, without focusing on grammar.

However, despite all of the videos that they make and all of the good advices that they give, sometimes I think that they miss a really important factor about the people who are watching their videos. Sometimes, some of these polyglots like Kaufmann, try to impose you a predetermined way of how you should learn a language, and I don’t blame Kaufmann because his method is actually very good  but, I feel that they miss a really important question.

And this is that important question:

If you want to learn a new language, the first and the most important thing that you have to ask yourself is: “Why do I want to learn this language?” that’s the single most important thing that you have to know, why do you want to learn this language?.

You must completely define the reason why you want to learn that language, that’s the first and the most important step of all. Why is the most important step of all? Because is going to completely define the organization, style, material, time and methodology that you’re going to use for learning that language.

Define the reason.

Now, maybe you don’t really know why do you want to learn this language, well I will help you, and I will explain to you the most common reasons for why somebody would want to learn a language.

Why do you want to learn a language?

Well… maybe you like the language, maybe you like or you’re interested in the language, in the country, in the people, in the culture. Maybe you fell in love with the women of that country and what better way to hit on them that speaking their own language and being an exotic foreigner , or maybe you have friends or family who speak that language and you want to communicate with them in that way. Maybe you want to travel over there for a few weeks or for a few months and you want be able to communicate with the natives.

All of those reasons that I just mentioned, enter in the “SOCIAL REASONS” cabinet: You want to learn the language because you’re interested in the social aspect of the language. You’re interested in meeting people, maybe making friends. For this you don’t need to learn in an official way or anything, you don’t need to take exams or anything, you can learn just by using almost completely the Liberal Method. You just want to learn it so you can interact with people in a normal social way.  A lot of people have all of these reasons, however if you want to live in that country or if you want to work in that country or in a company of that country, I’m afraid that for these you’ll need official studies or you will need to take official tests regarding that language, what brings me to the second most important cabinet of reasons which is:

The “BUSINESS REASONS”cabinet:

Let’s say that you already have a profession, you’re already working in some place or looking for a job, and maybe you say, “Hey, I want to learn a new language so I can expand my curriculum”, “I want to learn that language because I want to work on that country”, nowadays is common fact that people who can speak another language or multiple languages don’t struggle to get a job as much as people who only speak one language, so maybe you can say: “I want to learn a new language because I want to get a job”. You wont believe how many windows of opportunities  begin to emerge when you learn a new language, is almost like a new work horizon and a new language is a definitive big plus on your Curriculum Vitae. The more languages you know, the less competition you’ll have during job interviews.

However, for this cabinet of reasons, you’ll mandatory need two things.

First, you’ll need official studies of this language or official recognition, now hang on a little bit!, official recognition is not as hard as you may think. First of all, you’re probably asking right now, why do I need official recognition in the first place?, Well, when you’re in a job interview, you can say: I know Chinese, I know Swedish, I know Russian, I know Spanish; and the interviewer is going to be like “Ok” but he will search on your Curriculum for documented evidence that proves that you can speak that language. He will search for a diploma, for a test, for a course, for any kind of official valid recognition that proves that you indeed speak that language in x level, and if he doesn’t find any, he will not take that aspect into consideration.  You need official studies or official recognition so you can prove to the company, institution or people who are going to hire you that you can speak the language.

But, how do you get that?

How do you get official studies or official recognition?, well there are basically three ways: you can study in a Language Institute, finish your studies and earn a diploma, certificate, a bachelor degree, whatever. Other way is to go study on that country, receiving at the end of your studies there; a certificate or a recognition of one of the country’s universities.

And the third, possibly the cheapest one but also possibly the hardest one is; to study for yourself and to take one of the official certification exams on that language and to approve it.

I’m going to make a little explanation here; almost every popular language out there has it’s own certification exam, English has the famous TOEFL (for US English) IELTS (for UK English) and a few others. French has the DELF and DALF, Spanish has the DELE, Portuguese has the CELPE-Bras, Chinese has the HNK, German has the TestDaf, well I think you get the idea now.

Almost all of these exams are divided into 6 levels: A1 (Beginner), A2 (Intermediate Beginner), B1 (Intermediate), B2 (Intermediate Advance), C1 (Really Advance), C2 (You can even correct a native).

If you study and if you’re really serious about this; you can get one of these

These are official exams and if you approve one of them you’ll get and official certification valid anywhere. Now these exams aren’t really cheap, and is really probable that  you will need to travel to a city where you can take this test. So I would recommend to find out where can you take the exam and how much does it cost, once that you know that, you can start saving some money.

You need to study a lot for these tests, you can find guides and other material like books that can help you for preparing yourself. Generally the B1 and B2 levels are the most demanded levels, I don’t know how it is in other countries but in France, you need the B2 level if you want to study  over there.

Second, you need to learn the vocabulary of your area of work. For example, maybe you’re an engineer, and you know German, you presented the TestDaf B1 and you passed it and now a German Industrial Company at Munich has hired you. Knowing the language is of course the most important thing but while you’re working, you also need to know the vocabulary or terminology that is use on your area of work. If you’re a doctor you should know medical vocabulary, if you are a lawyer you should learn law terminology, if you’re an engineer you should know engineering terminology, etc, etc. Learn the vocabulary, learn the terminology that is used on that area of work in that language.

Yep, you’ll have to study on of these, on your respective area of work of course

EDUCATIONAL REASONS

But a lot of people may be asking:

But what about if I want to become a teacher?

Well, when it comes to teachers it tends to vary a lot, first of all where did you want to teach? Here? in other country? in Kindergarten?  in Elementary School? in Junior High? High School? College? other kind of institution? everything seems to vary a lot. There are some places that will hire you as a teacher just by the simple fact that you kinda know the language. There are other way more respectable places that will ask you for official certifications (even if it’s your own native language). There are other places that will actually demand you a Bachelor on Languages to work there as a teacher, and there are other high ranking places that will demand you a Masters degree (that is actually what every institution should ask for). So yeah, when it comes to teachers it all depends in where do you want to work.

But if you want to become a teacher, working at a respectable place; you need official studies or official certifications, as simple as that.

And of course if you want to become a translator, an interpreter, a professional linguist, if you want to work on an embassy or something like that, you need official studies for that, you need a career.

You need studies, but it’s truly a beautiful job and they worth it.

And that’s everything that I have to say. Define why do you want to learn a language, it can be for the social reasons (meeting/speaking with natives on a normal social way, or just learning it because you want to learn it), for business reasons (applying a language on your work or career) , for educational reasons (becoming a teacher) or for working reasons (becoming a translator, interpreter, professional linguist, etc).

And now you know what do you really have to do in each one of them.

Thanks for reading

6 Questions That Any Christian Should Be Able To Answer

1.-Which parts of the Bible do you believe in, exactly?

2.- If we ignored Leviticus, why don’t we ignore all the books altogether?

3.- Did Jesus Christ cleaned up all of this other books?, if he did, tell me specifically which parts of the Bible are Ok.

4.- (Watch the video in the bottom) Do you realize that with that kind of conformist philosophy none of the independence movements that had happened trough out history would have happened?

5.- (Watch the video in the bottom)  Where exactly it is said that you should report them to the authorities?

6.- Haven’t you thought that maybe the entire Bible wasn’t meant for us but for the ancient people of Israel?

Today I want to talk about religion.

I’m not a religious person in any way , but religion has been something that I have been really interested, specially the tremendous psychological power that it has. I have been expose to some much atheistic media recently  but  despite of that I have never consider myself an atheist, there was a time that I considered myself an agnostic, but if you start to think about it, WE ALL ARE AGNOSTICS!!!

I don’t consider myself an atheist either, because: “An atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in a God or rejects the idea of a God or Gods”.

And my perennial question is: What the hell is a God?, I mean, God is one of the most relative, allegorical and formless terms that I have encounter. At the end of the day, God is just a flying term that can be use to describe a lot of things like: nature, peace, harmony, perfection, happiness, etc. For me God is just a vague, formless and relative concept that can acquire the meaning that anyone wants to give it.  So by that definition, I cannot say that I don’t believe in a concept that can acquire multiple meanings.

It’s a relative concept, it has a religious connotation of course, but it’s a relative concept.

But that’s just for the idea of a God, I not getting inside any religious stuff yet, I was just talking about my views on basic theology.

But if you ask me: Do you believe in Yahweh?

I’m going to say: Of course not! I reject that God and everything that he stands for!!!

I like atheist… to some degree. I sympathize with them, and there’s a statement that they always made that I find it extremely interesting: “Religion and religious people are dangerous” … and… as far as Catholics and Christians go, I think that’s a complete YES!!!

The religion, the philosophy and the values that those religions stands for are extremely regressive, oppressive and dangerous.

But chill out!, if you claim to be a religious person and if you’re about to close this blog,  HANG ON A LITTLE BIT!  and just read the next sentence: Most people who claim to be religious, are not religious at all!!!

What makes you a religious person?

… believing in God!

Not exactly, believing in a God makes you a Theist but it doesn’t precisely makes you a religious person.

To be a religious person you must accept a pre-formulated religion and follow it, that’s what makes you a religious person. What is a religious person? Someone who follows a religion, that’s the true answer.

And just be honest with yourself, do you really follow the religion that you  supposedly practice?, to be a religious person, you must accept everything that your religion says and follow it, do you do that? Do you even know what your religion says and which are the values that your religion stands for?

For the majority of suppose “religious people” who I know, that’s a complete NO!!!

I remember the other night I was about to get into a religious debate with my girlfriend’s mom(who is really really “religious”) about Catholicism, and she didn’t even knew that her God was name Yahweh!!! , when I realized that she didn’t even knew the basics about her own religion, I just changed the subject.

But yeah, that’s the case of a lot of people, that’s the case of the majority of supposedly religious people. They don’t know their own religion! They have never truly read the bible! They have never do research of what their religion is about!, and that just kills me!

Going to church all Sundays does not make you a religious person. Knowing your religion, accepting your religion and following your religion is what makes you a religious person. If you just go to Church all Sundays for trying to be religious, you’re not religious, you’re a tourist, you’re a wannabe.

So after all that I’ve just said: Do you still consider yourself a religious person?

If you answer is yes, if you claim to truly know your religion, accept your religion and follow your religion, then I’m in luck because I need your help:

This is a video that I made a few months ago, it was a video that I made for Mr.MinistryMan (if you don’t know him, he’s like a christian missionary YouTube personality), in this video I challenge his religion by just asking seven simple questions about Christianity and the Bible, this are questions that I’m really interested about and I guess they’re simple and basics questions that any Christian or Catholic should be able to answer, sadly Mr.MinistryMan never answered my questions, maybe you should be able to answer them, as matter fact you must be able to answer them since you’re a true Christian or a true Catholics, you should be able to answer these 7 ridiculous simple questions:

Now if you cannot answer these amazingly simple questions regarding your religion, I guess you are not truly a religious person.

But you know something, that’s completely fine because what most religious people don’t seem to realize is that: There’s 2 types of ways in believing in God.

The religious way and the philosophical way. And people don’t seem to know the difference and they end up mixing them all together.

I already explained what does it means to be religious and what does it means believing in God in a religious way.

But what does it means to believe in God in a philosophical way: It’s just believing in the concept of God, saying: yeah sure, there’s got to be a God out somewhere, I don’t know what my religious says or which are the values that it stands for, but yeah there’s got to be a God.

If you think that this second description suits you better, you’re not a religious person, you just believe in a concept of God that is truly independent of your religion, you are a Theist. You believe in a God but you really don’t follow your religion, that’s what it means to believe in God in a philosophical way.

You believe in the notion of a God, not in a religion.

Now, if you want to try to pull out the next card: “I’m religious, I don’t know much about my religion or the values that it preaches but I believe in that religious God and at the end of the day that’s all that matters”

Okay, you don’t really follow your religion, you don’t really follow their values, you don’t really know your religion, you just believe in the notion of a God… can you explain the difference between you and my concept of philosophical believe that I just explain?

You’re just believe in God the way you want, and my final point is: If you’re already believing in God the way you want, do society a favor and at least believe in a God that is not racist, anti-tolerant, oppressive, jealous, arrogant, superficial and homicidal.

And that’s it, if you think that you’re a true Christian or a true Catholic then answer me the questions that are presented in the video.

Anyway a really cool YouTube user name KurtzGMSD messaged me and he told about two particular books name

“Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament” By Peter Enns

and ”Slaves, Women, and Homosexuality: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis” By William Webb

He says that these books address some of my concerns without taking a fundamentalist approach, I will check them out and I’ll tell you all about it.

In the meantime, is there a Christian or Catholic that can answer the questions that I present in my video?

Eklegein Pt.2: The First Philosophy

In the beginning there was, there is and there has always been Chaos, the beginning, the past, present and future of everything, Chaos existed, chaos exists and it will always exist. We are the sons of Chaos and trough Chaos we discover our reason to be.  Chaos is our home and we should be thankful to it,  it created everything we see, everything we feel, we owed it our lives. All-thought to pay him back  is impossible, impossible might not be to reach the unreachable.

Chaos exists but it is not the only thing that exists, is not the only thing in our reality, something else was born from Chaos, a force that descended from it, it’s greatest offspring, the direct daughter and the direct mother of everything.

When this happened, patters start to emerge, patters coexisting in this chaotic world. The amalgamation between nature and chaos created this world, the reality in which we live.  The amalgamation between nature and chaos created life.  It was here, in this omnipotent and transcendental that a third and last force was born, the bastards of nature, we emerged, it was here where Luca was born.

The birth of life must had been an extremely funny and extremely anti-orthodox process for the things that happened in those times, the birth of organisms capable of recreating themselves, capable of living and capable of interacting with this created world. Capable of interacting with the nature that created them and with the chaos that they lived in.  The purpose of life is to live, that was something that the first keepers of life understood well, and for living they needed to survive, and the best way to do this, is using the simple and beautiful survival instinct. And that who could use it the best, it was going to live the best and the longer.  But they also knew that living wasn’t enough, they needed to transcend. The greatest enemy of every human being or better yet,  of every living being is time, time is death.

The first keepers knew this, they needed to defeat time in some way, they needed to leave their mark in this world before it was too late, they needed to deliver something  of themselves to the next generation. And then it was when they got the brilliant idea of reproduction, and with that, they guaranteed their immortality with the next generations to come, that’s how they defeated death. Then the structure of immortality emerge, a simple manual with just 4 steps: Born, Survive, Reproduce and Die. And that was and that is the structure of immortality. And with that, our microscopical ancestors created this wise philosophy, they developed all this knowledge by simply just using their survival instinct, and that was truly: The First Philosophy.

Parents vs Teenagers: The Battle of Generations

This is a little video I made for my English class discussing why teenagers just can’t get a long with their parents, focusing more on the eternal differences of generations and the constant frictions that are between them, I guess that you can call it a sequel or a prequel of my post “Generation Y: What’s the Deal With Us?”

Thanks for watching

Eklegein, Pt.1: The 2 Ways of Living Life

Transcendental Immanence 

The following is the process of the rain that I’ve created conscious and subconsciously, a manifest that will help me or that will make my life even more complicated, searching the constant that I’m holding on, it’s not the only way, there’s a thousand of ways, this will set me free or destroy me, if there’s even a difference. The meteors that will fall right here have been floating in this space for a long time and the time has come for them to impact in this Tabula Rasa, what I’m going to do is a little experiment of perspective, all will agree with me, nobody will agree with me, but it doesn’t matter, what I’ve assigned to myself goes beyond me and them, what I’ve assigned to myself goes to me and them, because there’s only two ways of living an existence: Living for Ourselves or Living for Life and all the Others. That’s the choice that we must make. That at the end of the day you will conclude that both of them are unified in the most fundamental and imaginable process. In any way that you choose to live, it must be done in its absolute form. Because if we don’t live in an absolute way here, it could be that we could never live in that way ever, or maybe we should just simply follow that totality without any clue if we could even reach it.

The eternal question with the infinite answer, the collision of that question with that answer is what I call Life.

Flying Colors (Album Review)

So, what do we have here, a project that just by the look of the cover seems interesting. Well let me tell you more about it, Flying Colors is a new superband created by Neal Morse and Mike Portnoy (geee these two working together?), the formation seems interesting and if you throw them together in a studio this is what you get.

I really loved the cover

The Band consist in Steve Morse (guitarist and founder of Dixie Dregs), Neal Morse (who needs no introduction), Mike Portnoy (who we all know and sometimes love), David LaRue (also from Dixie Dregs, Joe Satriani, John Petrucci and another shit load of projects) and the new comer Casey McPherson, (who I didn’t knew shit about).

Nice, nice

So yeah the cover is awesome, the line-up seems really interesting, but how is the actual album?

Well let’s get into the real stuff.

How can I say this?

For this I will give a little introduction about my experience listening to Neal Morse’s music, and that is that: I don’t like Neal Morse’s music, I only like Transatlantic, and that’s the only project of him that I really loved, Testimony, Testimony 2 and all of his other projects and solo albums I… just… don’t… like…them. I don’t know why, I don’t like them , I don’t hate his music but I just don’t like it, I just don’t think that his music is that good. And no, it’s not because he makes Christian music, I think it’s because his music is just too happy, cheerful ,mellow and one-dimensional for me, and I’m sorry but his lyrics are really REALLY cliché. His instrumental pieces are really good (for example in Sola Scriptura, if that album was only instrumental progressive music, it would be a masterpiece!) but I don’t know, when he starts to sing, everything falls apart for me. And on top off that, I really don’t like Neo-Progressive Rock, why? I honestly cannot answer you that, besides Marillion I don’t like any Neo-Prog bands.

So with that little confession I just made, you’re probably wondering that I completely hated this album and this project.

And the answer is: No

I got to say that I like the album, is really interesting. A lot of styles, a lot of genres and a lot of good songs in just one album.

Now that I’m going to actually start the review of the album, there’s another thing that I have to say: This is not a Progressive Rock album, if you’re expecting good old Progressive Rock you are not going to find it here, the first song and the last song are the only ones that you could call them Progressive Rock, the rest of them are… let’s call them Mixed Rock. It’s interesting because the premise of this band was: “Neal Morse and a bunch of Progressive Rock masterminds with a Pop singer”  and I thought that was really interesting because I always thought that Neal Morse’s music was kinda Pop-ish. So, in a way you can call this album Pop Rock, if you think that’s too offensive you can call it Mixed Rock. I call it a Mixed Rock album because every song almost belongs to a different genre and that was the thing that I really like about the album.

Now let’s get into the album.

1.- Blue Ocean: Classic Neal Morse prog song, happy, cheerful, mellow, with a high and catchy chorus and lyrics that are just Ok.

2.- Shoulda Coulda Woulda: Nice Hard Rock song, simple, with one strong solid riff and a good guitar  solo, and that’s pretty much it.

3.- Kayla: This one starts with a little folk passage and then it becomes a happy rock ballad, the song is meeeh, the chorus is just too simple it could have been a great chorus but something was missing there.

4.- The Storm: This one is a great song, really effectively emotional, the chorus is really powerful and the singing is amazing, it would make a really good radio hit.

5.- Forever In a Daze: This one is really cool, good old Funk Rock, not a masterpiece but really cool thought.

6.- Love Is What I’m Waiting For: The first time that I hear this one, I was like, what the hell?, is this a Beatles cover?,  yeah, the first half is really Beatles-inspire, the second half is more pop rock oriented, with a really good guitar solo.

7.- Everything Changes: What the hell? a Coldplay cover? jejeje, no, but you can definitively hear the resemblance, later, the song sounds like a Dream Theater ballad, and for a moment as a classic Neal Morse ballad. It’s a really good song.

8.- Better Than Walking Away: Again you can hear the heavy Coldplay resemblance here and the chorus is really Disney-Aladdin-Oriented.

9.- All Falls Down: We are getting into the Progressive Metal realm here, it sounds like mixture of Ayreon and Rhapsody of Fire.

10.- Fool In My Heart: Now we finally have it, Portnoy singing a song almost in it’s entirely, why this doesn’t surprise me at all. Overall it’s a good blues mellow karaoke song.

There, there Portnoy, let it all out

11.- Infinite Fire: And after all those genres, and after all those styles and mixtures  you have finally reached to: Progressive Rock. Amazing song. Powerful at the beginning, then it falls down a little bit for me in the chorus and in the first two verses but the bass is amazing here. And then in 4:40 we finally get into the real stuff, here you have Progressive Rock in flesh and blood, this passage is amazing, you can hear Genesis and can hear Yes all throw together, powerful, technical, emotional, perfect.  And finally a last ballad-Morse moment before the big eclectic finale.

And that’s the album.

Overall a nice, decent, fun, solid Rock album, it’s not a masterpiece and it’s not going to completely blow your mind. But you’re definitely going to enjoy it, it’s a good listen from time to time.

I remember that someone was asking which was the best album for getting into Progressive Rock, and I have to say that this one is a good option, because technically is not Progressive Rock but it gives you a nice introduction to the genre.

These are a couple of song from the album.

The Storm

Forever In A Daze

Thanks for reading.

Nice Self-Learning Tool for Languages: LingQ (Review)

So the other day I was just checking out videos about languages in YouTube, and I found this guy.

His name is Steve Kaufman, and he is the founder of a Self-Learning Language Online community called LingQ, he also makes nice videos talking about language learning, if you are interested in this you can check out his channel.

I became really interested about this LingQ community so I decided to join in, is free so you don’t have to worry about money, well if you want a premium account you have to pay, anyway, LingQ uses the Liberal Method that I already described in a previous post, so you know, it’s a nice community for you to start learning a new language. The languages that they have available for their community are English, Japanese, Dutch, French, Russian, German, Italian, Chinese and Spanish and a few more.

Now I’m not being payed for talking about LingQ or anything, no, I just  found this website, I thought it was really interesting and I decided to share it with you.

What I really like about LingQ is that they have a lot of audio media for you to listen in your target language, always remember: Listen, is the most important part of learning any language and sometimes is really hard to find audio media for you to listen, yeah, you found books, you found magazines, but always remember, listening is the MOST important part, and if you don’t have audible media, you’re missing the most important part. The audio files in LingQ are easy to download, they’re in mp3 format and you can be listening to them in your MP3P, LingQ actually encourages you to do this.

One thing that I didn’t like, is the actual LingQ process of learning new words, it’s a little tedious for me, to start selecting the words that I don’t know, I’m the supporter of the idea that it’s not really effective to learn new vocabulary without context that you can see right there. So I always prefer to read a lot, than memorize one for one the words that I don’t know. Other thing that I didn’t like is that there are just a few text translations of the text in the lesson, sometimes you have a sentence that you don’t understand, you can check out the meaning of each word but sometimes that doesn’t help because you still don’t understand what it actually means within the text, so you try to check it out on the text translation and oh surprise, there’s no text translation, and that’s a little bit bothering, I don’t know how it is in English but there are not too many translations in Spanish.

A useful tool is the Incomplete Text exercise or Cloze text exercise in the Vocabulary menu, that one is really helpful. A quick advice, if you have the free account, you can only choose 100 LingQ, that’s your limit, if you reach it, you have to erase some.

Another advice about listening jejejeje: When you enter the Library you will find numerous podcast of your target language, when you enter to them, you’ll find at the left the text of that podcast for you to read, and in the right you’ll find the actual audio podcast for you to listen. My advice is: listen, do not read. Ignore the text and just hit play and listen, listen and listen. Do this like four times and then you read, and then you highlight the words that you don’t know, LingQ will tell you the meaning and then you listen again a few more times.

There’s also an Skype-way of having conversations with tutors of the target language in the target language that you’re learning, I haven’t try it yet, but when I do, I’ll tell you about it. You can also send written works in the target language so people that know the language can check out your grammar and correct you if you made any mistakes.

So overall is a really nice Language community and you should definitively check it out.

http://www.lingq.com/

Arch/Matheos – Sympatethic Resonance Review

I must admit that I completely underestimated this album, and that is coming from a Fates Warning fan. I don’t know what was I thinking: I wanted it to be good, but something in my subconscious told me that it was going to be bad or not that good. Especially since Jim Matheos hasn’t been part of a big project for a long LONG time, except for OSI that I don’t like very much. The last album with Fates Warning was in 2004 and Twist of Fate with John Arch was in 2003. The same with John Arch, no, John Arch was in worse conditions, he hasn’t made an album since his Fates Warning years in 1986  and an EP in 2003.  I was exited by the idea of the album but skeptical at the same time.

Man that I was so SO wrong

Shelter me my asylum, SHELTEEEER MEE

Sympathetic Resonance is easily the most balanced Progressive Metal album that I’ve heard in years. This is Progressive Metal at it’s purest state. All the pieces fit together incredibly. The solos, the harmonies, the vocals, the lyrics, the drums, everything fits perfectly and it feels natural, they’re not trying to be pretentious, they’re not desperately trying to do new things. They just stick with their true genre and did what they do best. This album made me remember why I used to call Jim Matheos the Father of Progressive Metal.

That's right, The FATHER of Progressive Metal

He truly is, and now I can say it without any doubt. I said that this album is Progressive Metal at it’s purest state because if you listen to it, is Heavy Metal with Progressive arrangements and structures, that was what Progressive Metal was all about in the beginning. No synthesizer, No overlong keyboards solos, No woaaa woaaaa (cauf cauf Rudess cauf), No symphonic theatrical sounds. Just two amazing guitarist, one of the greatest bass players ever, a bad ass drummer,  and an incredible singer who’s voice  is still in perfect shape after all this years.

I was completely amazed of Arch voice, it has change, but now is way more unique , it still has that Bruce Dickinson feel but more high and operatic than ever.

This is the song that made me fall in love with Arch’s voice, amazing song

His style is still intact and his voice has change for the better

I said that this album is balanced because all the songs are perfect, there are no bad, slow or transitional songs, all of them are solid, bad ass, with unique and original riffs and solos, great lyrics and if you were a fan of Progressive Metal in the mid 80′s it’ll definitely throw you back.

I completely love this album, I think that possibly is going to become one of my favorite albums of all time. This project was amazing and I’m so exited of what they’re going to do next. I heard that a new Fates Warning album is going to be release this year and after this I just can’t wait.

7 years guys, 7 years

I don’t know of this is going to become a Black Sabbath / Heaven or Hell thing. When they are with Alder is going to be Fates Warning and when they are with Arch is going to be Arch/Matheos? Jejejeje I really don’t know.

Too bad that Mark Zonder is not in any of these projects

Where are you hiding Mark ?

Bottom line, the album is absolutely amazing and you must check it out, fresh Progressive Metal at it’s finest.

And another thing, if you absolutely hated this album, you just don't like Progressive Metal, I'm sorry but is as simple as that.

Here are two amazing songs of the album:

On The Fence

Any Given Day (Strangers Like Me)

Thanks for reading.

Language Learning

I will dedicate this category of the blog for language learning, I’m going to start a little experiment with a new language teaching method that I’m developing right now.

I make this method using the Assimil and Pimsleur philosophy and also combining the teaching philosophy of a few teachers that I had, my personal experiences  in learning languages and the philosophy of  a few polyglots that I know , loki2504 is one of them, you should definitely subscribe to him if you if you’re a language lover.

Another great youtuber in the area of languages is FluentCzech his videos are awesome  and incredibly useful

This is a webiste that I recommend alot for everyone trying to learn any language:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/index.html

Learning Languges: Do I need to learn grammar?

When you start investigating  methods of how to teach languages, you will soon find out that, there are this two opposite methods, this two opposite methods that are always in conflict with one an other, which are those methods?, well there’s the method that wants to teach almost the entire language as if it was a really theoretical science with a bunch of rules and with a bunch of grammatical equations like physics or like chemistry. We will call this the Conservative method, and there’s this other method way more liberal, that say’s the hell with rules, the hell with grammar,  just listen to the language, you will eventually know how to speak it, you will eventually know how to read it and all the grammar that it has, you’ll learn naturally because that’s  the way that you learned you mother language. Let’s call this the Liberal Method.

And, you know, these methods are right and wrong at the same time, what these two methods don’t realize is that they’re both complementary to each other. Learning the language just with a bunch of rules, with a lot of vocabulary without context, you know, learning it as a really strict science, is not effective, if you just learn the language theoretically you will fail at the moment that you start a conversation, because you don’t really know how people actually speak, you don’t know their common day expressions you don’t know the rhythm of a conversation , and besides of that, the Conservative Method is a truly boring method you will never learn to completely speak a language if you learn it as a science, you can apply this method in the really advance stages of your learning, but do not start with learning every single grammatical rule, there are important rules that you should know right from the beginning, but do not focus in the more advance rules at the beginning of your learning, focus on the simple ones.

And there’s this other method that says, screw grammar, you don’t need it, you don’t need it at the early stages just listen to the language, you will eventually know how to speak it, you will eventually know how to read it and all the grammar that it has, you’ll learn naturally because that’s  the way that you learned your mother language.

Yeah is not as simple as that, you need grammar, simple grammar, the simplest grammar ever, but you need grammar,  once that you’re familiar with the really really basic grammar you can procede to the 4 stages which are: Listen, Speak, Read, Write.

Now the great objection that this method has against grammar is the following: You don’t need grammar, because when you were a little baby you naturally learn how to speak your mother language without grammar or without rules, just listen and speak, and that’s how you will learn any other language.

You know that is actually true, except for the final part, “and that’s how you will learn any other language” mmm not exactly, you learned you mother language that way, because you were in the adequate environment to learn it. Every person that you were in contact with, spoke that language, you were listening to that language all the time, you we’re in contact with that language 24/7, and that language was the only way to truly communicate with other people.

Now that I’ve said that, the Liberal Method might actually work if you, for example I’m learning French right now, and the Liberal Method might work for me if I go to France or to Belgium and I stay there for maybe 6 months or a year. I’m sure that if I do that, the Liberal Method will work, I’m going to be in contact with French all the time, I’ll be listening to francophone people all the time and I’ll eventually know how to speak it fluently, I’ll eventually know how to read it, and how to write it. But my point is that you need to be in an environment where you will be in contact with that language all the time.  And if you don’t have this environment you will not learn a language by this method, or maybe you will but it’ll take you decades or even more.

But there is something that it’s absolutely correct about this method, this method strongly encourages you to listen to the language. And that’s the most important thing that you have to do when you’re learning a new language, listen to that language.  You need to listen to that language a lot. Because a the end of the day, a language is an spoken way of communication, you can also write it, of course, but  what is the most common way of communication that you use in your daily life, spoken communication,  you speak with people, that’s the most common way to communicate, and what do you need to speak with people? Know how to speak their language , and how will you learn how to speak, their language?, you listen to that language!

So with that little rant that I just made, you’re probably wandering: okay, but, what’s your point? , which one of these methods is the correct method?

I think that the correct method is the combination of these two methods, why do I think that? Because that was the way that I learned English, with these two methods combine.

You see I listen to a lot of English, because all of the English speaking media  that was around my country: all the video games, all the music, all the films, all the TV, and I learn English grammar in school and that’s it. The grammar that I learn in school was grammar that I could’ve easily learned in just one year. It was simple grammar, but that simple grammar made me understand a lot of English. So your question is why do I need grammar? Because if you study the common grammar of the language, you’ll learn that language so much faster, you will understand it so much faster, you will save years of learning with the Liberal Method if you just stop for a second, and you know, check out the common grammar of that language, and if you apply this two methods together you will learn a language in a fast and effective way.

And for that reason, I created a Language Learning page on this blog, where I’m going to put useful stuff for learning languages and also, try to develop my own teaching/learning method.

Thanks for reading