The end of 2010 and beginning of 2011 has been a busy time of family visits and parties, dotted with Pimsleur lessons, Rosetta Stone sessions, and Japanese writing drills. Rosetta Stone Pronunciation Lesson I am enjoying Japanese more now that…
I continue to be impervious to instruction that involves linguistics terminology. I love grammar terminology, but funny things happen in my brain when I read things like “voiced and voiceless bilabials.” Linguistics experts out there: that is linguistics…
Today was a blizzard. Blizzards are good for studying. While practicing the Japanese syllabaries at Café Margot, I met a Japanese man who is here on a short-term rotation with his employer, a large financial firm. I am finding that…
I have been consuming a balanced diet of Pimsleur lessons, Rosetta Stone, and my various Japanese books. Japanese Books Work Better With Coffee Today in my Kana de Manga book by Glenn Kardy, I read, “Children in Japan learn to…
Today I came to a conclusion: the Japanese writing system is the hardest one I have encountered so far in this project. Not Korean, not Arabic, but Japanese. I had no idea. This Workbook… …Reminds Me of First Grade…
All this week I worked on a large proposal relating to Syntaxis, my business with Brandt. Proposal writing and language learning, I have decided, are not compatible activities. At least not for me. Every minute I was not working on…
Pimsleur is coming in handy, at least in my sleep. Last night, for example, I dreamed that I was with a pretty big group of people, I don’t really know who, around a big square hotel bar on some…
Today as I was reading through the vocabulary list in the back of the grammar book I am using, Master the Basics: Japanese, I noticed that certain nouns in English were listed with two different Japanese equivalents, one…
My German test results are in! The highest score you can get is 12. I got an 11 on the oral exam (“nearly fluent”) and a 10 on the writing exam (“advanced plus”). That may sound pretty good, but I was hoping for…
I have just learned that itsu is “when” in Japanese. One of the things I love about this project is how different these simple little concepts look and sound in different languages. I mean, itsu and “when” are…
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