Memory Palaces & Foreign Vocab Pt. 2

November 29, 2016

You could say a part time hobby of mine is being a janitor. A janitor in my head… Well in my memory palace to be more specific. I’m no mental athlete thus I don’t study over an hour a day to compete in any of the memory competitions thought that doesn’t mean I’m not fascinated by it. Seeing as the only community that I know of with tips for this stuff is this eerily quiet Reddit thread, I’m forced to learn my own way. If you’re tuning in and clueless as to what a memory palace is and how people use them to remember more effectively…

Language

Recall Better Using Porn Stars and Dictators

May 11, 2016 2 Comments

A giant explosion goes off outside and Joseph Stalin runs into the living room and sees Elvis petting a Llama that lives there and shouts “You two! What jus’ happened?” Sound ridiculous? How does this help me recall better? That’s the point. In that one sentence, that’s part of a much bigger story that takes place in my Soviet style apartment block, I managed to tie in the Estonian words elama (to live) and juhtus (happened) into a memorable visual that I can use to learn words. I’ve only started this method a week ago and right from the get-go I was surprised to…

Language

Unique Sounds in Languages – Try Pronouncing

May 8, 2016

In my drunk stupor last night I wound up in a conversation with a person from the Czech Republic talking about unique sounds in languages which lead me to trill my R’s while making the sound like a rapid river pumping water. It got me thinking, as an American we have a very limited vocal palate. Need an example? Without further ado, here’s some unique sounds in languages other than yours and mine that I either spent a while sounding like a moron attempting, or I gave up on… Ř ř (Czech) This is a letter that’s unique to…

Culture & Immersion, Language, Travel

The Gua’s of Colombia

April 18, 2016 1 Comment

Guayabo, guayaba, guanabana-bana-bana… If you’re learning Spanish in Colombia, chances are you’re going to get into the rabbit hole of words that are about as similar to one another as a peach is to a nectarine. That’s what the gua’s of Colombian Spanish are to me. I’m partially writing this to help wrap my own head around this. With that being said, here are the gua’s.

Language

Learning Estonian over Mandarin

March 22, 2016

How could a language spoken by a mere 1.1 million be useful compared to one spoken by ~1 billion? How does the internet define what is a useful language in the first place? Sites like Quartz and Mosalingua use criteria like the number of speakers throughout the world and relevance in economic and political contexts. I call bullshit. These sites leave out the human aspect. I argue that it doesn’t matter what language you learn, you will find a way to make it useful as long as you have a desire to learn it and I’m proof along with many others.

Language

4 Ways to NOT Learn Spanish

February 1, 2016 1 Comment

Seven months –how long I spent living in Berlin and not improve my Germain one bit. Yet why does everyone say that immersing yourself in a country is the best way to learn the language? They all say the same thing, “Just move to there and you’ll be fluent in no time”, but they’ve never done it successfully themselves. To add to that here are 4 ways to not learn Spanish! Also, frankly speaking, there’s a little something I miss out on when I can’t speak to the old gramps’ in a country, and they don’t teach that in the textbooks neither. Well, just dandy, but…