Month: November 2019

Although English isn’t exactly the same as every other language, an elementary grasp of English grammar can make it less difficult to learn a distant language. Like any new study, there is a lot to know when you start a different language, in case you already have some experience to which you’ll be able to connect new material you own an advantage. This is one reasons why people who are competent by 50 percent languages often combine and more when they go through life, to your amazement of those that have never really mastered any language apart from English. Language learning truly does get easier because you tackle much more of them!

What is Grammar?

Grammar is essentially the skeleton of any language. In essence it describes how words are formed, used, and linked together in order to be used for communication. Every language features its own grammatical peculiarities and languages like English, that is descended from the 3 major different linguistic families, have quite a lot of them, but while doing so they can be explained a common vocabulary, and share many concepts.

When you learned English since a child, this didn’t matter much that you simply did not understand its grammar since you consistently heard accurate patterns repeated time and time again until these people were ingrained in your head. Now you hear mistakes of subject-verb agreement and it is possible to correct them even when you cannot explain the situation in technical terms, that is the fruit of a lot of listening so you probably shouldn’t take that long to dicuss your language correctly. This is where studying some English grammar will pay amazing dividends because doing so enables you to perform some basic analysis and correct a complete class of difficulties within a fell swoop.

If you gaze on Amazon, or search the text section of most bookstores you will discover titles like “English Grammar for Students of German” (or French, Swahili, Spanish…), or “German Grammar for Anglophones” which might be aimed at solving this precise problem, and they are generally very useful tools. They get the similarities and differences between English and also your target language and gives specific instances of usage. In fact, should your knowledge of English grammar is below stellar I would suggest these particular are one of the very useful investments you may make – discover the one that matches your target language and make reference to it often when you will be enhancing your understanding of English while making progress with your chosen language you are studying. Even if the language program includes grammatical instruction (and several short-sightedly will not bother for this), this will likely give you an outstanding overview which enable it to increase your rate of progress greatly.

Grammar gives you a framework into which you are able to fit the intricacies of one’s target language rather like pieces of the puzzle, which enable it to classify areas of speech, tenses, moods and scenarios. Without such knowledge you may be stymied by simple grammar in other languages while they have exact English equivalents that you simply use each day, with it you are able to make the comparison while focusing on learning the specific forms.

In the first stages of foreign languages study your skill to compare concepts and grammatical terms between English and also your target language is especially helpful as it is rather like messing around with lego blocks – once you’ll be able to see the function of any class of word in the sentence that you are free to substitute plain english of the same class and suddenly you are able to make many correct sentences, as opposed to just the one you’re memorizing. Even if you currently have studied English grammar you will probably find which you gain new insights engrossed while learning an overseas language since you are motivated to know the mechanics behind all of the concepts which come naturally within your native language.

Day One:

Driving as much as the Port of Southampton’s Mayflower Terminal and catching first glimpse on the white-and-black hulled Queen Mary 2, the most significant, longest, tallest, heaviest, and many expensive ship ever built, evoked considerable excitement and awe. Docked to port with a 50-degree, 54.25′ north latitude and 001-degree, 25.70′ west longitude and facing a 116.4-degree compass heading, the 17-decked leviathan, which has a 1,132-foot length and 148-foot width, featured a gross weight of 151,400 tons and towered higher than the buildings having its balcony-lined façade, eclipsing it which consists of 236.2-foot height. Its draft extended 33.10 feet under the water line. The floating metropolis, complete using its staterooms, restaurants, shopping arcades, libraries, theaters, and planetariums, would bridge, in six days, the European and North American continents, the same in hours for the duration with the aerial crossing by 747-400, itself then your world’s largest commercial airliner. But the oceanic crossing would yield civility, refinement, rejuvenation, emotional repair, and return towards the slower, but more elegant era of steam ship travel-a trip, I would soon discover, would create a search to the maritime good reputation for the past that had created the technology in the present.

Unlike the proliferation of contemporary cruise ships making use of their comparatively lower speeds and greater-volume, square-geometry hulls, the Queen Mary 2 was designed being a next-generation successor on the 35-year-old Queen Elizabeth 2 and, therefore, must offer a similar year-round, passenger-carrying capabilities, predominately within the rough North Atlantic, having a design which sacrificed revenue-producing volume and minimize construction costs with the traditional luxury cruise ship for the required safety, speed, and stability on the ocean liner. Resultantly, it featured a similar v-shaped hull configuration characteristic with the long distinct its Cunard predecessors, made of thicker steel which carried a 40-percent greater cost than others of conventional cruise lines. Designed by Stephen Payne, whose inspirations with the bow had come on the Queen Elizabeth 2 along with the brake wall through the Normandie, it turned out the first quadruple-screw North Atlantic ocean liner considering that the France of 1962. Payne himself, a naval architect born and raised in London, was involved with the Carnival Holiday, Carnival Fantasy, and Rotterdam VI projects. The latter, incorporating an altered Statendam hull, had featured a less “boxy” hull shape as opposed to traditional cruiseship, but had still been considerably removed the full liner design.

Intended for your primary Southampton-New York route, it incorporated dimensional restrictions dictated through the United States port, including a funnel height which cleared the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge by only ten feet as well as an overall length which exceeded the 1,100-foot pier with the Port of New York by 34 feet.

Constructed by Alstom Chantiers de l’Atlantique in St. Nazaire, France, which have also built the Normandie, and designated hull G32 with the shipyard, it ended up the first Cunard liner ever constructed outside on the United Kingdom and, like Concorde, the earth’s fastest and hitherto only supersonic airliner, had become the second British-French collaborative transportation project created for trans-Atlantic service, although via vastly different, otherwise opposite, modes.

Its interior offered unparalleled space and comfort. Of the 17 decks, the very first four were for machinery, storage, plus the 1,254-strong crew; 13 were for that 2,620 passengers; and eight contained balcony staterooms. Notable features included a Grand Lobby, the Royal Court Theatre, the Illuminations Theatre and Planetarium, the ConneXions Internet Center, the Queen’s Ballroom, a Winter Garden, nine major restaurants, 11 bars and lounges, an 8,000-volume library and bookstore, an Oxford University lecture program, performances from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, five pools, sports venues, a Canyon Ranch Spa, a pavilion of shops, along with a discotheque. These appointments would constitute my “home” to the next six days.

Symbolically reflected by its smaller QE2 predecessor berthed a significant distance looking at the bow with the Queen Elizabeth 2 Terminal, the Queen Mary 2 represented a two-fold gross weight increase over its earlier-generation counterpart and, indeed, traced its lineage returning to a long path of Cunard vessels that had spanned a 165-year period. I somehow sensed that this imminent crossing won’t only be a trip of distance, but money in time.

Gently vibrating at its spine, the behemoth laterally separated itself beneath from the berth below the metallic overcast at 1810, local time.

Unlike the common engine-propeller shaft technology of older-generation ships, the Queen Mary 2 was powered instead by four aft, hull underside-mounted Rolls Royce Mermaid electric-motor pods, each weighing 260 tons and containing four fixed-pitch, 9,900-pound, metal blades, and collectively producing 115,328 horsepower. The forward, outboard pair was fixed and provided forward and astern propulsion, as the aft, inboard pair featured 360-degree azimuth capability and provided both propulsion and steering, obviating the need with the rudder. The advanced-technology system reduced both complexity and weight and increased internal hull volume by reducing the traditional engine configuration’s associated equipment.