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Q: “Is McGill or UofT better for undergrad as an international?”… undergrad to study what subject, in what program? From what country (this might be not so important)?If you have admission to both of these good universities, I suggest you to go Montreal and study at McGill. Both McGill and UofT are English-language schools.But, if there is a specific factor about Toronto giving a strong advantage (like, having a family/relative here in Toronto/Mississauga, etc.) then the scenario would be different. You will get a par or better education at McGill at less cost in a better city than Toronto in many aspects. Plus, you find a great chance to learn French and become fluent at almost no cost, as Montreal is located in French-language province of Quebec.My suggestion is for any subjects of: Arts&science, engineering, and medical school.Thank you for request to answer.~ SD

I love all of the iconic Federation adversaries, from the Klingons to the Romulans to the Tholians and later Cardassians, Borg, and Dominion.Picking a favorite tends to be more era-based for me.My favorite TOS enemies were undoubtedly the Romulans. They were sneaky and secretive and we knew about as much as Starfleet did about them. At first. The reveal that they were related to the honorable Vulcans was a shock (to a young me, anyway) on par with the Luke-Vader parentage stunner. Plus, the Romulans had no qualms with putting a woman in command of a vessel, unlike NBC.Khan was IT for the OG movie era, with the Klingons in a close second.The Romulans were a pleasure during the TNG era, especially when Sela or Tomalak was pitted against Picard. However, my favorite adversary from that era (since the Klingons were technically buddy-buddy then) was the Borg.One-note as they were, they still remain one of the most terrifying and seemingly indomitable foes off the Federation. They also gave Picard a truly horrific ordeal to grow and change through, as well as a blemish on his nearly spotless record.During DS9, the best villain was undoubtedly the Dominion. The Cardassians were sneaky and dubious, but the relentless and xenophobic Dominion truly represented a threat to the Alpha Quadrant only the Borg could rival. Their war against the whole damn place also allowed the series to dive into grayer and juicier storylines than any prior series.For Voyager, the Borg were back. I found some one-off threats like the Krenim Imperium and recurrents like the Vidians and Species 8472 compelling. But the Borg had the greatest impact on the crew and its story arc. Plus, they even adopted ex-Borgs as a crew members, including, of course, Seven of Nine.I didn't watch much of Enterprise, but I did enjoy their interaction with the Tholians.As for Discovery, the jury is still out on that. I'm waiting to see what happens in the third season before I call a favorite. Still, I did enjoy the revisited Terran Empire and Section 31.Super-honorable mention and my near-answer for favorite overall baddie: Q. Watching John de Lancie spar with Patrick Stewart was endless fun. But I also considered him more of a frenemy than enemy.

I speak German, Russian, Spanish and odds and ends of others, including some Turkish. And I’ve been trying to learn Arabic.First of all, Arabic is not Indo-European, meaning there are very few cognates to aid in memorization. In Spanish, there’s “agua” for “water,” which is similar to words like “aquatic.” German “Wasser,” piece of cake. Even Russian “voda” is enough like “water” to be helpful, plus “vodka” is a memory aid (until you imbibe it!) But Arabic “maa” just has to be memorized. A few words like “seven” and “saba” are similar, but those are just accidental.It helps to know Latin. People ask, why not just learn Spanish, or whatever? Fine, if all you want to know is one language. But if you hope to learn a bunch of languages, a detour through Latin is very useful. You learn how languages work and what all those grammatical terms mean. I went from third year high school Latin to third year German without a hiccup because I already knew what cases and tenses were. Only four cases in German? A vacation!I get the impression a little grammar goes a lot farther in Arabic than in German or Russian because Arabic has lost most of its inflections. I’ve seen it said that Arabic lacks a verb “to be” but that’s wrong. It does have one, “kaan,” but it barely gets any mention in books, because unlike any other language I’ve encountered, it’s completely regular (Yay for Arabic!). Also, like Russian, it’s generally omitted in the present tense. “I am an American” is “ana amriiki,” “I (am an) American.” The more languages you know, the more memory hooks you have available.The hardest thing about reading is training your eyeballs to scan in the opposite direction. Also, in too many books the type face is crammed into the same sizes as English fonts, making them far too small to read easily. Most of the intimidation of the four forms for the letters goes away when you realize Arabic is basically a cursive writing system, and the variations are no different than the different ways you’d write “r” in “ore,” “red,” “roof” and “are.” Concentrate on the “connected” forms and learn that “b” is basically a dot under the line, “t” is two dots above, “th” is three dots, etc.Also, there are several forms of what, to English ears, sound like the same letter. Two kinds of T, D, S, etc. They differ in where you put your tongue and are considered distinct sounds by Arabs. The word “tungsten” is transliterated in Arabic using the two different varieties of T.But the vocabulary, for me, is the hardest part. First of all, Arabic has a logical three-letter root system, but unlike European languages and even Turkish, it relies a lot on prefixes to modify words. You can look up variations on, say, “carry” alphabetically, but looking up “kataba” (write) won’t help you find “maktaba,” (office). A purely alphabetical Arabic dictionary would be dominated by the letter “m,” the most common prefix. What this means is you have to identify the root of the word, look that up, then look for the variation you want. So you see a building labeled “mustashfa.” You take off the m- and get “stashfa,” but you can’t find it. Then you realize “ista” is a common verb prefix in Arabic, so you take that off, leaving “shafa,” That you can find. It means “cure,” and a “mustashfa” is a hospital. Are we having fun yet? I can pretty much always look up words in an Arabic dictionary now, but I may need several guesses, and it’s taken a long time to get there.The dominance of the prefix “m-” makes words all look alike. Add to that the large numbers of roots with “h” (two forms), “kh” “q,” a guttural “a,” and other things we don’t use much in English. And the absence of “p,” “ch” and “v,” (Pepsi-Cola” is “Bebsi-Kola’) and the vocabulary sounds, to my ears, monotonous. (note, Arabic speakers, I’m not criticizing, just identifying things I find difficult, tayyib?)But my huge gripe is that it’s hard to find books that lay things out systematically. Latin was my first acquired language. (Latin is extremely hazardous - everyone who grew up speaking it as a first language is dead!) And I’m one of those people who likes seeing organized tables in language books. Yes, even Latin books present concepts piecemeal, but they always have tables at the end. Arabic books will tell you about the rudimentary case endings, the verb forms, and so on, but they don’t lay them out in an organized form in the appendix.And I have yet to find a book that presents vocabulary in terms of roots, rather than haphazardly. I easily remember “thalaaja” (refrigerator) and “muthlaj” (icy) because, first, the consonants (th-l-j) are distinctive but even more so, because I learned them together. “th-l-j” (there are no caps in Arabic) means “ice.” “k-t-b” means “write” (that’s the example used in just about every introduction to Arabic). The Defense Language Institute actually tried this approach and found it didn’t significantly improve student vocabulary retention, but I think it would certainly help me.As the language of the Quran and much poetry, Arabic is a classical language on a par with Latin and Greek. And lots of books were written by people who are very impressed with themselves for having learned Arabic, and want you to be impressed as well. Books with Arab authors tend to be the ones that say “it’s really not as hard as you think, and we’re delighted to have you try.”Edit: I keep getting suggestions from earnest helpers changing verbs to past tense. Yes, the dictionary form of Arabic verbs is third person past tense, but that just adds a layer of confusion for non-linguists. Please stop. Besides. you wouldn't look up “wrote" in the English-Arabic section.