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Photo by [nati] One of the great challenges of learning a new language is immersing yourself in the new language enough so that you can almost absorb it through osmosis. In addition to putting index cards up around your house, setting up your mobile phone and your computer in your target language, watching movies in [...]

When I got my Blackberry Pearl earlier this year, one of the first applications I installed on it was Google Maps Mobile. This application is very handy for checking traffic on the go, and that is my primary use for it. Imagine my disappointment when I switched my phone’s display language to Spanish, and suddenly [...]

It is said that the best way to learn a foreign language is through total immersion. So why should your shower be any different? Someone who was Christmas shopping for me found this wonderful shower curtain, which contains 250 Spanish words and their English definitions. It’s also available in French. Honestly, I’m awestruck. Have you [...]

Do you know the difference between Japanese snowmen and the snowmen we are used to?  Check out this picture of Japanese snowmen: The main difference is that Japanese snowmen are made from only two snowballs instead of three. They also tend to be much smaller than our snowmen, although that’s not always the case. The [...]

I came across an interesting word in the Japanese novel I’m reading.  The word is おてんばさん (otenbasan).  It means tomboy.  It has kanji too: お転婆さん.  This makes it look like the actually word is 転婆 (tenba) with an honorific o- prefix and honorific -san suffix. But this is not the case.  This word is actually [...]

While celebrating my youngest son’s birthday earlier this week, I was enjoying a can of my favorite drink from México: Del Valle Néctar de Guayaba de concentrado (guava juice nectar from concentrate) when I realized I had just found the source for my next Frases en Español post! Conveniently the text on the can is [...]

I recently discovered that I could switch my phone’s display language from English to Spanish, and in doing so I was blown away by the new vocabulary that I hadn’t seen elsewhere. This, along with an excellent series of posts from Ramses, has inspired me to help others by sharing what I have learned. This [...]

As I mentioned at the end of my article, Setting up a Spanish keyboard in Windows Vista, I am primarily a user of Linux and the KDE desktop environment. In an small effort to immerse myself in a little more Spanish, I changed my desktop from English to Spanish. To do this, I opened the [...]

I came across an interesting word in one of my JLPT prep books today.  It’s 蛇口 (じゃぐち　jaguchi).  The first character 「蛇」 can be read ja or hebi and means snake.  The second character 「口」 is read kuchi or kou and means mouth.   So 蛇口 is snake mouth, right?  Not quite.   What does this word [...]

I took my first practice test for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) level 2 the other day.  I scored a 70%.  To pass, you need 60% or above, so I passed!  My goal is to pass the real test with 90% or above.  The test is in December so I only have a couple [...]