*leip-

Meanings

1.

stick, adhere, fat

(The original sense was for a sticky substance, but it ended up growing into the Germanic family of ... life. The connection there is likely "staying". The original sense is still alive in the Latin strand with words like "lipid".)

How useful:

Word Family

Root: *leip-

The original idea of this root was:

sticking, adhering, fatty substance

It’s still somewhat visible in the German word bleiben (to stay) but there’s another family member that isn’t very intuitive: life or leben in German.
The origin of this meaning is probably a notion of continuance, existence. We typically see life as something that ends. But at by the same token, it is then “life” as long as it has not ended, as long as it sticks around.
I think one could go down a philosophy rabbit hole about this :)

0 0 votes

Article Rating

Questions and Comments

🗨

Subscribe

0 Comments

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

Train Your Pronunciation

x

?

close info

What is this?

With the pronunciation tool, you can check how well you pronounce a word or sentence. It uses an AI system that is being developed by EF languages for that purpose. The AI takes your input, and compares it to how a native speaker would sound. Then, it gives you feedback for each word and the sentence as a whole.

How does it work?

You put in a word or sentence or load and example from the site. Then you hit record to start and again to stop. You'll then get feedback on how you did, for each individual word and in total. The AI grades sound, emphasis and rhythm. The recording is limited to 20 seconds and will stop automatically.

How do I know what to improve if I got a low score

That's beyond what an automatic system like this can do. It's not a tool to perfect your pronunciation. It's more about giving you a rough estimate and giving you the option to actually speak. But to really iron out mistakes, you need feedback from a native speaker.

My results vary a lot

Quite a bit depends on the quality of your microphone. If there's a lot of noise around you, the AI will struggle with that. Also, the AI does better with sentences. For short words, it's not as good. Lastly, the AI is still being developed and struggles with some important words.

The recording is not working

The recording button should change color and pulsate while recording. If nothing happens, the most likely problem is that your browser is blocking the microphone. You can allow mic access by clicking on the icon left of the address in the address bar (on most browsers).

What do the colors mean

red: not very good (<20% match) yellow: okay (<50% match)

light green: good (<80% match)

green: amazing (80-99% match)

green+outline: perfect (100%)

Difficulty (only for AI exercises):