Harry M

I'm fairly experienced travelling around Europe and I've spent this year travelling to various places in China (I speak Chinese, so it's not all too hard), but this summer I have plans to travel in central Asia (including Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan (potentially Osh) and Kazakhstan). I'll be travelling definitely with one female, but also maybe another male. I'm going to be 20 (and look very Western!), and wanted to know what kind of safety/security issues there are in these countries which I should be aware of. I've checked the FCO etc. about specific questions in a few of these places, but as I haven't had a great deal of experience travelling in slightly more risky places in the world, it would be good to have a few pointers about what to look out for, what the safest/best combinations of travel companions would be, especially me being in my situation (fairly young Westerner etc.)

Thanks in advance :D

I've been learning French, Spanish and Chinese for a good while now and I'm looking for a new language challenge. What do you guys think about how useful, intuitive etc Russian is compared to Arabic? Please give reasons in your answer!

Thanks in advance.

大家好，

我是中文大学生，我刚刚学完 "比" construction，但差一个问题。用英文，我们说：I cycle MORE OFTEN than I swim， 用中文怎么说？怎么用“比”和副词？我已经试过 “我骑自行车比游泳常常骑” 可是我知道这不对。请你们帮助我！

谢谢 :)

For my Chinese practise, I've been trying to type out a short piece of Chinese text, however there are two characters that I simply cannoy find. In the text below there are four blanks - the first blank has the same character as the third, and the second blank has the same as the fourth. If anyone could tell me what the missing characters are, it'd be much appreciated!! (The text is taken from the iPod On-The-Go screen, by the way!)

选中歌曲后, 请按住中央按钮，__(1) 歌曲 __(2) 加到 On-The-Go 播放列表。 选中播放列表，表演者咸专辑井按住该按钮，可以 __(1) 其中的所有歌曲 __(2) 加到 On-The-Go 播放列表。

Many thanks in advance!

I've been studying Chinese history recently, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, with the five "dynasties" in the north and the ten (or twelve) "kingdoms" in the south. Why were the northern states known as dynasties rather than kingdoms as in the south? Does this imply a difference between a dynasty and a kingdom, or am I just being stupid?? :P

Thanks in advance

A friend and I (who will be 18 at the time of travelling) are planning on a 20-day trip across Europe this August (through Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Czech Republic and Slovenia). We've booked the flights, reserved hostels online, and started to see when transportation can be booked, but the one issue is how to take sufficient money for 20 day's travel with us. Of course, it would be simplest to take our Visa debit cards, but then we'd be facing a charge every time we take out money. Also, it seems to us a bit risky to take all of our sustenance money with us all the time, just in case it got stolen. What could anyone recommend to us?

Also, one more question, we've booked hostels in our destinations through HostelBookers.com, we've paid a 10% deposit already, but is it expected that we pay in cash or by debit card when we get to the hostel? (I've looked on the HostelBookers.com website, but it doesn't say anything :S)

Thanks in advance :)

I'm currently a sixth form student in Year 13, and I'm trying to make plans of what to do this summer - I'd like to know if there are any summer jobs abroad. I've heard a lot about teaching English abroad, but the schemes I have read about seem to last longer than just a few weeks during July/August and you generally need to be taking a gap year. I'm hoping to just find something for a fortnight before going off to university in September or October. I have fulfilled a French A-level, so teaching English at a school in a French-speaking country would appeal to me.

If anyone has any suggestions of schemes to investigate, please tell me :)

Thanks in advance :)

There is a lyric from a Shakira song called "No creo":

"Solo tu doblas mi razon

Y por eso a donde tu quieras voy"

Would I be right to translate that to the following in English?

"Only you bend my reason (as in change my mind :S)

And that is why I go where you want me to."

It is mainly the first line which confuses me most : doblar razon :s

Gracias por anticipado :)

Muchos

I need to say "I am stronger than you" in Chinese, but I am having trouble finding the right use of the comparative. I have come up with the following two possibilities, can a fluent Chinese speaker please tell me if I'm right on one of them, or completely wrong??

1) 我很强壮的比你多

2) 我比你更强壮

谢谢 ：）

I'm getting really confused about when to use each kind of preposition. I understand that certain prepositions go with certain verbs, but I've seen two sentences which seem really contradictory:

1) Ich spiele in der Schule

2) Ich arbeite an der Schule (when I've also seen "Ich arbeite im Krankenhaus"

I assume these are all correct, so can someone explain please :|

Thanks :)

http://russellbrand.shhhmedia.com/podcasts/ - I want to know if there is a program which can rip individual tracks from a player like on that website. Can anyone help?

Thanks, in advance :)

I'm following the Rosetta Stone course for German, and I'm looking around on some websites to get down the grammar rules alongside the course. I've got to the bit where it's teaching how to say "I am warm, I am cold" etc. and I'm getting really confused.

In one place it says "Ist Ihnen kalt", and from Wikipedia I've found that "Ihnen" is the dative case of "Sie". They reply with saying "Uns ist nicht kalt".

First of all, why is "ist" used for the conjugation of "sein" when I thought it would have been "sind"?

Also, why is it the dative case?

Thanks in advance :)

What will happen if I try to install the Sims 3 - the website says it requires "2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent" - on a laptop (which I only bought last week) which has an "Intel(R) Core 2 Duo CPU T6400 @ 2.00 GHz" processor?

Will it work or will it just slow it down loads, or will there be no noticeable difference?

Thanks, and sorry if this is a really stupid question...

I'm 16 and throughout secondary I've consistently had one group of close friends. We occasionally do things outside of school, but it's not like we're going out every night like a lot of other people I know. I myself, I feel like if I want to be more outgoing in my free time. Recently I've got to know a whole load of new people in a kind of social group together, but they do a lot of things outside of school all together, and I want to get involved to get to know them more. Can anyone give me any advice about how to get to know them on a more personal level short of having to like ask to come to their parties? And also not making it look like I've ditched my old group of friends? Thankies :)

I'm trying to say "summer". I've heard that there are two ways to say it,

1) 夏季 (xiàjì)

2) 夏天 (xiàtiān)

I know that 天 means 'heaven/sky', but can someone explain to me when you'd use each variant of "summer"?

Thanks :D

A few friends and I are planning on going to Denmark for a 10-day trip during the summer holidays. We're all 17, and we'd like to stay somewhere in Copenhagen for a few days, and then go off somewhere with a beach or something. Anyone have any suggestions or recommendations where?

Thanks in advance :)

When I try to open a video that needs subtitles with VLC Media Player, I open up VLC, File > Open File, select the video and the .sub or .srt file that goes with it. For some videos this works, but for others it just returns a message saying "Unable to open [then the file name]". However I CAN open the video on its own without the subtitles. Is there any way to fix this or get round this problem, or any more reliable player that can embed subs? Thanks :)

I have to write a essay in French about the success of Indochina, and to analyse it all fully, I'm looking to discover the French motives for being there in the first place. Apart from the attempt to create a plantation economy and trading routes, can anybody come up with any interesting reasons for France's involvement in East-Asia?

It is isn't essential, but it would help if any sources/links are in French :D

Thanks everyone :)