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Viewing How Internet Images Can Help You to Learn a Foreign LanguageHow Internet Images Can Help You to Learn a Foreign Language
By Kathy Steinemann
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It may surprise you to learn that Internet images can help you to accelerate your learning of most foreign languages. Are you intrigued? It is true! Read this article for tips that will make you view Internet images in a completely new light. A picture is truly worth 1000 words - perhaps more. Google Images proves it. You can acquire languages much more quickly by exploiting Google's store of images as a learning tool. For the purposes of this article, I will be presenting examples based on German. However, you can apply the principles to other languages as well. The German term heißer Schlitten literally means hot sled. However, a TV episode I watched uses the phrase in context with mention of an old classic car. The literal translation is obviously incorrect. Entering heißer Schlitten as the search criteria in Google Images (http://images.google.com) produces thousands of results, displaying photos of sleds, toboggans - and hot cars. Subsequent searches for hot rod and hot ride bring up page after page of gleaming autos. After checking the German sites displaying photos of cars, it becomes obvious that German car enthusiasts use the term heißer Schlitten to refer to their vehicles. The following examples are from chapter 1 of Die geheimen Stunden der Nacht, a book by award-winning German author Hanns-Josef Ortheil. On page 9, Herr Ortheil uses the German word Fries. Dictionary lookups produce cornice, frieze, and molding. He describes a picture that seems to stand still for a moment in time - a panoramic representation composed of the river and the opposite shore. If you do not know exactly what the suggested English definitions mean, search for each of the words in Google Images. The only result that seems to fit the context of the book is the English word frieze. Page 14 contains the German word Kreuzblume, which in English means finial. Hm - do you know what a finial looks like? Many non-architects will not. Look for the images! When you see the multiple graphics of finials, many with little crosses and flowers, the combination of Kreuz - cross and Blume - flower makes perfect sense. The same page in the book also uses the word Parkstreifen, which means lay by in the dictionaries I consulted. However, where I come from, lay by is not a word that we use. In context, I believe it means something like traffic pullout, or parking lane. A search for lay by does not produce useful results, but layby does. Comparing the results with a search for Parkstreifen, traffic pullout, and parking lane confirms my hunch. Now when I see the word Parkstreifen I have a mental image and a word that I understand to go along with it. Page 17 talks about parking on the Domplatte. I know that a Dom is a cathedral, but Platte? Platte can mean flagstone or tile; however, in context, cathedral flagstone does not seem correct. The character in the novel parks directly in front of the entrance to a hotel - the Dom-Hotel. Searching through Google Images for Domplatte produces over 3000 results. The images originate from pages about Cologne, Germany (where the story is based), and further investigation reveals that the Domplatte is a popular Cologne destination where street musicians and pavement artists perform while skateboarders practice their skills. Thousands of people celebrate New Year's Eve on the Domplatte, with fireworks and sparkling wine. Dictionaries are wonderful tools, but they do not contain everything. In our rapidly evolving world, language is changing faster than dictionary publishers are. However, the Internet is a massive storehouse of information that evolves and expands with each millisecond. Use Internet images to reinforce your learning by imprinting word visualizations on your brain. (c) Copyright Kathy Steinemann: This article is free to publish only if this copyright notice, the byline, and the author's note below (with active links) are included. About the Author: Kathy is an author who creates German-English short stories and poetry for A-Language-Guide. She is also one of the authors who writes regularly for 1st Rate Articles. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com More free articles: 1st Rate Articles - 1stRateArticles.com |
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