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October 6, 2013 | Review Period

Routledge Has Oodles Upon Oodles of Language Books

Their website literally makes me drool. This is a correct use of "literally."

The books shown in the picture below arrived three days ago from Routledge, launching me into a state of linguistic euphoria. A Magnificent Pile of Routledge Language Books I’ve used Routledge books for a number of languages, but mostly…

October 10, 2013 | Review Period

Portuguese-Flashcards.com!

And French-Flashcards.com, and German-Flashcards.com, and Spanish-Flashcards.com, and much more!

I am a little sleep-deprived today, for which I blame Oliver Antosch and Wei Hsiang Lin, a husband-and-wife team whose UK-based company, Antosch & Lin, has a dozen different flashcard websites that kept me up way into the wee hours. …

October 11, 2013 | Review Period

Event Alert: Calling All New York City Language Lovers!

If you are curious about Igbo and Bambara, come to Brooklyn on October 20th.

To my New York City metropolitan area readers, this is a language-news bulletin for you. Brooklyn Bridge: Head on Over! On October 20th, you are invited to attend Foreign Language Hopscotch, a cool event in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and…

October 13, 2013 | Review Period

A Question About Beer

It is a lazy Sunday afternoon with my books, and a theoretical question about alcohol containers has arisen.

Sundays are bewildering, as are Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, because so many choices are involved. I Struggled Between These This Morning Like: Italian or Portuguese or French? Then: book or audio lesson or flashcards? Then: which book,…

October 17, 2013 | Review Period

Murky Beauty

Other languages seem less fussy than English about degrees of aesthetic appeal.

As I continue to review Portuguese, Spanish, German, French, and Italian for my New York City Marathon volunteering duties next month, I keep thinking that some languages seem oddly undiscriminating about how aesthetically pleasing things really are. The Marathon Signs…

October 24, 2013 | Review Period

Foreign-Language Extravaganza in Brooklyn

In which a bunch of New Yorkers (including me) take mini-courses in languages from around the world!

Last Sunday I went to the Brooklyn language event I mentioned previously in this blog, Foreign Language Hopscotch. It was a three-hour language-learning extravaganza, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., covering more than 20 different languages through a series of half-hour…

October 26, 2013 | Review Period

Linguistic Acoustics

How you listen to your language matters.

I am far from expert on sound systems and headphones and all that, but I wanted to weigh in with the observation that sound quality really matters when you are trying to learn a language. Fuzziness obscures vowels and consonants…

October 29, 2013 | Review Period

A New Play, with Rapping in Chichewa

From a theater company named for the number of languages (167!) spoken in the Queens neighborhood of its founding.

Are you looking for something new in the world of theater? Philosophically opposed to shelling out a hundred bucks to see a mentally unstimulating Broadway show? The Theater of Language Well, a few years ago I mentioned in this blog…

November 7, 2013 | Review Period

Paul Noble vs. Michel Thomas

Competing audio products from a pair of polyglots.

In recent weeks I have had my first exposure to products from two different linguists with large reputations. Now posted on this site are reviews for both Learn Italian with Paul Noble and Start Portuguese with the Michel Thomas…

November 9, 2013 | Review Period

This Year’s Marathon: For Me, a Bit of a Bust

Sort of fun, but also a little demoralizing.

I volunteered for two different events as part of this year’s New York City Marathon, held last weekend. I have done this kind of thing a few times now, largely because I enjoy the language practice that this annual…