Here I am, at the starting stages of speaking a language once again, and I’m reminded of how it felt taking a similar first step into playing the piano and other instruments I’ve learned. Since my feelings would likely be shared by others, I asked my friends on twitter how learning a language is like learning a musical instrument and I got the following interesting replies: Both are about listening carefully and learning how to reproduce the sounds you hear. Then you add your own style (@pocketcultures) You need persistence at first, and the rewards increase the.. || Continue Reading →

This is what I get for buying an "M" t-shirt in Asia My first month in Thailand has come to an end; the purpose of this month for me was to discover a little of the south, be a tourist and be able to grasp the rules on reading Thai. It was way easier than people warned me it would be, and I’ve only put a total of about 2-5 hours a week into it. Really. (The real work starts from this weekend; see below) I’d like to think I had learned a lot about languages before starting this blog, but I’ve been exposed to something that will be essential in helping.. || Continue Reading →

This post includes an embedded video. If you are reading it through RSS or email and don’t see it, click through to watch it on my site! Note: Rather than this video being a how-to about Thai tones, it’s simply giving an idea of the way that I’m looking at and approaching them to help to make them easier. Since I had only been in Thailand for just over 2 weeks at the time of filming there are a few mistakes, but it should hopefully help others starting off! Blogger cameo roles in the video I was going to wait to record this video for another week or so when.. || Continue Reading →

The pessimist says the glass is half empty. The optimist says it’s half full. The pragmatist says its liquid contents are at 50% capacity. The ironist says it’s half full of air. The practicalist says the glass is twice as big as it should be. The psychoanalyst says the glass is your mother. The punk sitting next to you on the bus also says the glass is your mother. The zen master says, “There is no glass.” And me…, I say, “Waitress! Refill!” Each one of these is a different perspective on exactly the same thing. A negative one is by.. || Continue Reading →

Travel update: no language tips in this (long) post! After travelling for about 7 years already, I thought I was immune to surprises, shocks and general wide-eyed awe. And then I came to Thailand! There’s nothing I can say about Thailand that hasn’t already been blogged, Lonely Planeted, Documentary Channelled, photographed or twittered a million times already. This country is on pretty much every RTW ticket and gap-year itinerary and is usually among the first countries that travellers end up in. However, what is slightly different for me compared to other Siam.. || Continue Reading →

Preface Na’vi is the language spoken by the fictional aliens in the currently very popular movie Avatar. Even though it’s “just a movie”, Na’vi is an “actual” (constructed) language. It has vocabulary and grammar and was developed by linguist Paul Frommer. He’s hoping it will become the new “Klingon” of movie languages. Since the whole point of this blog is to show you that any language can be learned very quickly, I am taking it a step further today and claiming that even an alien language can be learned in no time.. || Continue Reading →

Wow!! Over 40,000 stumbles in the last week! If you like these tips, please leave a comment, stumble the post and subscribe to the blog since I have more tips on Asian and other languages coming soon! For those curious, this post discusses Thai, but the ideas can equally be applied to other phonetic scripts such as Japanese (but not as well for Chinese). Just one week into the challenge of reading/speaking Thai in 8 weeks (actually only about 5 hours total, since I’ve been quite busy since I arrived, but I’ve made time to learn on the skytrain/in restaurants/taxis.. || Continue Reading →

In my travels I always try my best to speak a language fluently (or better), but sometimes this is not possible, since I may be only spending a few days in a country. As well as this, you need to start somewhere if you want to eventually speak fluently, and “enough to get by” is how I like to start! For example, I’ve just spent the week around New Year’s in Poland. This was actually for an Esperanto event (JES), but to get from the airport at Krakow to Zakopane and to talk to everyone outside of the event, I needed to be able to get by in Polish, which.. || Continue Reading →