Easy Beginning Sentences

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holbuzvala
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Easy Beginning Sentences

Post by holbuzvala »

Hi All,

So I was wondering where I might find some good beginning sentences for my language. There might not be a corpus anywhere (thought if there is that'd be awesome), so I thought I'd open the floor to the extensive minds here. I'd like sentences preferably without animals, so that I can work on deriving words from word-roots. I'd prefer stuff with 'plain' and 'everyday' vocabulary.

Some examples might be:

The man went to the shop.
The boy saw the woman.

Or if y'all have any textbooks of foreign languages handy, could you lift out some 'introductory' phrases?
masako
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Re: Easy Beginning Sentences

Post by masako »

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holbuzvala
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Re: Easy Beginning Sentences

Post by holbuzvala »

Masako,

Thanks for that list. I'd seen it elsewhere before, but glad to have it refreshed. It's super helpful for pinpointing the finery of grammar, but I was more so looking for simple sentences in order to expand my vocabulary (instead of just thinking up words willy-nilly). The 650 word-game might be a good place to start though (albeit, again these are isolated words and not sentences)
masako
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Re: Easy Beginning Sentences

Post by masako »

If building vocabulary is your goal, I would recommend that you subscribe to a news outlet twitter feed or RSS, and each day pick one or two stories to translate. I guarantee you'll have new vocabulary and new grammatical structures to deal with on an almost daily basis.
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Lao Kou
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Re: Easy Beginning Sentences

Post by Lao Kou »

holbuzvala wrote:Or if y'all have any textbooks of foreign languages handy, could you lift out some 'introductory' phrases?
I date myself, but when I was in high school and resources were limited, the Berlitz "teach yourself" series was a nice springboard (I got my mitts on the German and Italian editions). Foreign language pedagogical methods have certainly changed since then, but I think there's an abundance of the simple sentences you may be seeking.

In the 90s, I latched on to the Lonely Planet language series. Obviously aimed at tourists and not meant to systematically get you to basic conversational proficiency, it nonetheless had simple sentences and touristy-concern sentences, but also stuff you might strike up an actual conversation about with someone on a train. I had the Western Europe, Mediterranean, North Europe, and Central Europe editions, all formatted almost exactly the same (sentence-per-sentence) way (so you could see how different languages handled it), so I just translated the greater "it" edition, and it filled in lots of vocabulary and grammar holes.
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