Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

China Institute: Isn't This Pretty?

4 Mandarin, Museums/Cultural, Organizations, Classes/Conversation, Kids

China Institute was founded in 1926 by a group of American and Chinese educators, John Dewey among them. It resides in an Upper East Side brownstone from which it offers an array of lectures, symposia, films, exhibits, educational programs, corporate programs,…

Step by Step Korean Penmanship: Look at the Happy Student on the Cover!

4 Korean, Books, Multimedia

I bought Step by Step Korean Penmanship at Koryo Books in Koreatown, because I was experiencing a language emergency! Specifically, I had come to a dead end in both of the Korean textbooks I was using: I couldn’…

Visit Their Website for Information on the Next Feast

4 Italian, Fairs/Festivals/Parades

This annual 11-day event, held in September and centered on Mulberry Street, draws monster crowds to Little Italy.  According to the event website, it is “New York City’s biggest, most famous and longest running religious festival.” When…

Master the Basics of Japanese with These Useful, Clear Explanations

4 Japanese, Books

Master the Basics: Japanese by Nobuo Akiyama and Carol Akiyama begins with a multi-page diagnostic test to see how much you know. Since I personally knew nothing when I opened the book, I was a bit thrown…

For the AFFOI Website, You Will Need French!

French, Organizations

AFFOI, short for Assemblée des francophones fonctionnaires des organisations internationales, seeks to safeguard the linguistic diversity of international organizations. On its website, AFFOI asserts, “La diversité linguistique, culturelle et conceptuelle est une condition sine qua non…

Kana de Manga: I Think This Is A Kids' Book, But I Didn't Mind

3 Japanese, Books, Kids

Japanese has a complicated writing system combining two syllabaries (hiragana and katakana), as well as thousands of Chinese characters called kanji. A syllabary is different from an alphabet in the sense that each syllabary symbol represents a syllable (such as …

Dictionary.com Can Tell You the Origins of Words Like Schadenfreude and Aardvark

5 English, General, Dictionaries, Websites

I love this free resource. When I need absolute certainty about what I am looking up, I will go to my beautiful and totally current hardcover American Heritage dictionary, but for a quick check of a word’s…

Columbus Park, with Columbus Statue

3-5 Mandarin, Parks, Sports/Fitness, Kids

You might think Columbus Park is an odd name for a Chinatown park, but as one of New York’s oldest neighborhoods, this area has had many incarnations, and the park itself has had various names, among them Mulberry Bend…

W J Bookstore, Sunset Park

4 Mandarin, Bookstores/Libraries, Kids

There are three of these bookstores around New York City, one in each of the three major Chinatowns. Besides the one listed in this entry, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, there is one on 377 Broadway in Manhattan (212-226-5131) and one…

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