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So I haven’t written on language learning in a while. That doesn’t mean I’ve been doing nothing. In fact, I’ve been extremely focused. I put a halt on my SRS sentences. I put down the novel I was reading. I took a break from transcribing Fight Club. I stopped studying for the JLPT. I finally [...]

Can’t figure out how to type “¿Dónde está el baño?” on your keyboard? If you use Windows Vista, this article will tell you how to setup a Spanish keyboard so that you can type all those characters that aren’t standard on your keyboard. Users of older versions of Windows (XP, 2000, etc) won’t be able [...]

I was on the phone with my friend Patrick, who has been my friend for about 12 years, and one of the things we discussed was our study of Spanish. Patrick has gone a little further than I have and I found his description of his study habits interesting. He doesn’t use an SRS program [...]

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 [...]

I recently purchased a book called Spanish Verbs And Essentials of Grammar to strengthen my understanding of Spanish grammar and conjugation. I didn’t feel I was getting enough of this from my existing study materials. It’s funny how some themes seem to occur at the same time. On Friday, Ramses at Spanish Only posted Studying [...]

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 [...]

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 use”. [...]

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 [...]

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. But [...]