babelhut.com

Warning: This post may not be suitable for adults.
Today’s Word Of The Day is うんち (unchi). That’s Japanese for poop.
Last weekend, my wife and I went to the Confectionary Exposition in Himeji, and on the way back to the car we saw this sign:

Here is what the sign says:
Everybody come and play! Come [...]

Today (May 5th) is Children’s Day in Japan, and that means today’s Word of the Day is 鯉幟 (koinobori). 鯉 (koi) means “carp” and 幟 (nobori) means something like “flag”, so 鯉幟 (koinobori) translates into English as “carp streamer“.

Japanese families (who have boys) put these carp streamers up to celebrate boys. 　My wife and [...]

In the summer of last year, my wife told me (in Japanese) “We need to buy a magic bottle.”
“A what?”
“A magic bottle.”
“What on earth is a magic bottle? and why do we need to buy one?”
Magic Bottle
The word in question here is 魔法瓶 (mahou-bin). The first part 魔法 (mahou) means “magic”, as in [...]

My wife and I went to see cherry blossoms at Himeji castle today. On the way back we ran across this awesome sign:

What a welcoming sign! The Japanese reads お急ぎの方ご利用下さい (o-isogi no kata go-riyou kudasai), which is hilarious in Japanese but translates a little awkwardly to something like “People in a hurry, please [...]

I took a two week vacation to the States and I’m back now.   My infant son got to meet his paternal grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins for the first time.   Good times had by all.
I didn’t do any language study during my vacation, so I came home to a lot of due cards on Anki.  [...]

One of my Swedish textbooks has a section at the beginning with useful websites for Swedish learners. A couple of these are Swedish newspapers and radio online. If you are studying Swedish, or know someone who is, you might want to check these out:

8sidor – http://8sidor.lattlast.se/ – 8sidor has daily news in Swedish. [...]

Rmss over at Spanish Only has made a great post about how to roll your R. He gives you step-by-step instructions on how to go from zero to perfectly rolled Rs.
I tried it out yesterday during an hour-long jog and I was able to get up to step 2! It was quite exciting [...]

In the past 8 months or so I have made big changes to the way I study Japanese and it has paid off big-time. I’m still evolving how I study to maximize my learning while staying interested and I thought I’d post a little update on my current study habits.
The biggest change is that [...]

So I was at the bookstore the other day and I just couldn’t keep myself away from the foreign language section.  In a weakened state of mind I nabbed these:

For those of you who don’t read Japanese, those are beginning Swedish textbooks.
It looks like I’ve made the commitment to start studying Swedish.  Yens have been [...]

My grandparents on my father’s side immigrated to America from Sweden in the 1920s. Many Americans are obsessed about their “roots”, being proud of having Irish or Italian or whatever heritage, even if they have no contact or relationship with the land of their ancestors. I don’t know why exactly, but it may [...]