Since regaining my motivation to learn languages a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been trying out some of the methods from Barry Farber’s text, How to Learn any Language.
study stuff Hosted on Zooomr
There are several components in Farber’s system, but the one that has helped me the most is the use of what he calls [...]

The Romajinator is a simple tool that converts Japanese Katakana into romaji, i.e., roman characters. Most western students of Japanese will have little use for this tool, since katakana words are about the easiest Japanese there is to read for native English speakers. However, for students of Chinese, it’s the opposite. Kanji [...]

Last night, Rika threw a dinner party over at my place. Since she and Martin already sold most of their things, including their refrigerator, to the Tealit vultures, she had to make the food over at my place. I’ve been really busy with work recently… but hey, they’re leaving and the party needed [...]

Who could come up with something as whack as red bean flavored Kit Kats? Apparently, not the Taiwanese. No, no… the convenience stores have to import this stuff for us. Thank goodness for Japan.
Red Bean Kit Kat Hosted on Zooomr
I bought them out of morbid curiosity, but get this- they were good!

紅豆餠 Hosted on Zooomr

To Chinese people, maybe this sign looks normal. But, as a former Japanese student, I found this sign very amusing.

手紙- a false cognateHosted on Zooomr

In every language I know of that has borrowed from the Chinese writing system, 手 means hand and 紙 means paper. Many many words made out of multiple characters [...]

Foreign loan words have always been one of the hardest parts of Chinese for me. Despite hearing it millions of times, I still don’t say 拜拜 instead of 再見, or other alternatives. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I just don’t like saying 叩 instead of 打電話, either. Above all, [...]

My own experience with language learning has been a long and painful journey. Some people have told me they thought I had a “natural aptitude” for learning foreign languages. If only they knew. All of my more recent success is a direct result of spending 10 years failing… miserably.
Latin
Excluding the small amounts of Spanish introduced [...]