Short forms (also known as contractions) are used frequently in informal and spoken English. The following are some very common examples: I’m (= I am) you’re (= you are) he’s (= he is / he has) she’s (= she is / she has) I’ll (= I will) I’ve (= I have) I’d (= I would / I had) don’t (= do not) doesn’t (= does not) didn’t (= did not) isn’t (= is not) hasn’t (= has not) can’t (=…
I have always felt like it’s harder to speak a foreign language on the phone than face to face. It’s especially difficult to understand native English speakers on the phone, because sometimes they speak very fast and with a heavy accent. On the phone, you can’t even use gestures and expressions to aid communication, but have to put every message into words as clearly and fluently and possible. For this post, I asked our English experts for English phone conversation…
To celebrate the new year, we decided to make a scheduled program for three months (13 weeks) to help you to learn a new language. The basis of the program is regular exercising with WordDive, but it also includes other tried and tested methods for supporting and accelerating your learning. Naturally, there are many ways to learn a new language, and some will work better than others depending on the learner’s starting point, studying skills and situation. In addition, most…
It’s nearly time to wrap up the year 2018, so now is a good time to stop and reflect on all the great things we have achieved together during the past year. That’s why we put together this blog post, compiling the most popular languages of 2018, the most read blog posts and all the other good stuff. Most popular languages to learn in 2018 English 47% Spanish 14% Finnish 12% Swedish 8% German 5% New in WordDive in 2018 WordDive 4.0 mobile app The…
Admit it: Most of us spend hours staring at a screen on a daily basis. Even if we’re just reading the news on our mobile phone, browsing Facebook for a few minutes or watching two or three episodes of our favourite series on Netflix, we are consuming multiple hours of screen time each week. Social media makes up most of this time, but luckily, it’s possible to take advantage of it. Many social media platforms are available globally, which means…
I bet you’ve encountered articles and funny pictures on social media concerning ‘difficult’ languages which appear impossible to learn. Languages with no prepositions (e.g. Finnish, Estonian) are often considered difficult. Tonal languages, languages in which stress and pitch change the meaning of a word (e.g. Chinese, Japanese), languages with many strict rules (e.g. German) or languages with a completely different alphabet (e.g. Russian) are also regarded as being difficult. But the truth is that no language is too difficult to…
