I always find language learner’s materials artificial and boring. I always want to access real-life contents in the languages I am learning.
There are of course a lot of real-life contents I can find today, especially on the Internet. However, most of them are either in written forms, or only available in audio or video format. [...]

Naturegirl left a comment on my previous post, mentioning a common scenario, where you want to practice your target language, only to find out that the other person always responses back to you in English (or your native language).
This is indeed an extremely frustrating experience. This could be by far the number one enemy for [...]

The other day I and my wife walked pass a mobile phone sales booth. My wife was considering upgrading her phone.
A young salesman approached us and started to introduce to us all kinds of phones available. He was a CBC (Canadian-born Chinese) speaking English with a perfect Canadian teen’s accent. Then he got stuck in [...]

This morning, I needed to call the doctor’s office to reschedule my daughter’s appointment for next week. From the other side of the line came a female voice:
“The doctor’s office…”
Both receptionists speak Cantonese. I usually speak to them in English when booking appointments. But today for some reason, I felt like speaking Cantonese.
“唔該…” (May I…)
“Excuse [...]

Imagine someone threatens to sue you for pronouncing some words differently.
This actually happened last month in Toronto. A group of Cantonese language enthusiasts held a press conference, complaining the news anchors of some Cantonese channels for adopting a pronunciation standard known as the ‘Correct Pronunciation’ (正音). They also started a petition letter:
“As native speakers of [...]