The Most Effective Way to Learn Hiragana
Posted on | September 28, 2010 | 6 Comments
Over the years, I had made a few attempts to learn Hiragana (平仮名), the fundamental character set of the Japanese language. Sadly, in every attempt I quited before completing the first row of あ, い, う, え, お (a, i, u, e, o). I never intended to learn Japanese seriously in the past, so I never tried to figure out the reason behind this failure.
About a year ago, I gave it another try, this time using the SRS approach. I found one nice Hiragana flashcard set available over at Smart.fm. I subscribed to it and after a few days of working diligently through the cards, I gave up.
Weird Tennis Course
Posted on | July 21, 2010 | 1 Comment
A few weeks ago, I went to play tennis with my friend. We found the two courts beside us booked for some kind of tennis course.
I saw about 10 students who looked like to be in their twenties, all sitting in their chairs. The coach was standing in front of them making some kind of speech, which reminded me of military briefings. This lasted for 5-10 minutes. Then the coach asked the students to watch 4 teaching assistants playing a few points, and they did not look professional at all. The coach then started his briefing again.
Languages and Business Opportunities
Posted on | May 31, 2010 | 3 Comments
This morning I and my wife went to a Chinese café for breakfast. Somehow they offered free Chinese newspaper. I looked for the headline expecting some specular world event to unfold. To my disappointment, the headline read “華裔移民第二代 喜中西合璧婚宴” (2nd-generation Chinese prefer Chinese-Western fusion wedding banquets). It also showed the photo of a businessman who caters this kind of banquets. I showed it to my wife, “What kind of headline is this?!”
My wife looked surprised, “Hey, you recognize this guy?” I looked closely. Yes, he was the one who organized our own wedding banquet some years ago. At that time, he was only a manager working for the restaurant.
Speak Only When Ready – But When Will You be Ready?
Posted on | March 21, 2010 | 12 Comments
There was an interesting exchange between Steve the Linguist and Benny the Irish Polyglot. I downloaded the podcast more than a week ago but only managed to get through it on a red-eye flight back from Seattle yesterday.
In brief, Steve thinks that we should first immerse ourselves into a lot of input activities and then try to speak with native speakers when we are ready. Benny argues that some people will never think that they are ‘ready’.
Google’s Babel Fish
Posted on | February 23, 2010 | 2 Comments
Here is my latest fish-joke. It was Chinese New Year last week. My colleague of Mexican origin instant-messaged me: ‘新年好’ (good New-Year). Obviously, he had been playing around with Google Translate. So I challenged him that, with the help of Google Translate, he should not have any more excuse not to chat with me in Chinese. Then I received a weird reply: ‘如果’ (if).
If what?
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