Language Resources
Do you want to learn Russian? Perhaps you find yourself struggling to find resources that help you start speaking. When I started out, I certainly did. Many of the tools that I found when I started learning Russian were grammar-heavy textbook style resources and they didn’t offer me a lot in terms of day-to-day conversation. Rather than learning how to say “what did you do...
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Culture & Cuisine / Travel
After navigating my way to Wangfujing in Beijing, China, I was greeted with the bustle of hungry bodies, navigating their way through the food stalls that made up this night market. As I made my way down the street, my senses were bombarded with smells, sights, and sounds that were all new. I was hooked. I enjoyed the evening sampling tasty foods and drinks, always curious about the...
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Language Resources
I recently announced that I am revising a language that I studied in the past – Korean. My first time around with Korean was a struggle. At the time, I was between Japanese and Korean as my next language project, but when my good friend Lindsay of Lindsay Does Language expressed interest in learning Korean alongside me, I chose Korean over Japanese. During those six...
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Travel
One of the best parts of touring is that you have the opportunity to visit a lot of different places. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that I have enough time to explore (we fly in right before the show and jet out the morning after). But sometimes, we have a few hours or even a day or two to explore the area. On my last...
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Language Resources
I often feel guilty for taking breaks. I feel as though I’m not doing the right thing if I’m not being productive. I also hate to give things up once I’ve already invested a lot of time into them. With Korean I did the first – I took a long break (read: more than a year) and I was afraid I was going to end...
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Travel
With even just five days in Singapore, you can accomplish a lot. The excellent and convenient transportation system connects you to several key locations and makes getting around the city a breeze. Recently, I spent five days in Singapore and here are just a few of the things that I enjoyed on the trip. 1. Visit the Marina Bay Sands. This iconic hotel always seems to...
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Language Resources
When we think of verb conjugation, we often think of it from a European language perspective. We run through the verb conjugation tables we learned in school – I run, you run, he runs, she runs, we run, they run… But Japanese doesn’t handle verbs in quite the same way. Rather than needing to figure out how to conjugate verbs based on who is doing...
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Language Resources
In April, I wrapped up my second Add1Challenge, this time for Japanese (the first was for Croatian). I also started my third. This time around I’m doing it for… *drumroll* Korean. And Russian. I couldn’t decide between the two. Russian is a language I’ve studied pretty lightly up until this point and I’ve never really gone deep with it. I recently had a lesson that made...
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Language Resources
Aesthetics typically refer to the nature and appreciation of beauty. When applied to the linguistic field, it refers to the appreciation of language’s beauty and nature. On a more informal level, aesthetics of language could be viewed as our individual perception of the sound and beauty of a language. This is form where the idea that “French is romantic” or that “German is harsh sounding”...
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Travel
In 2017, Raffles Hotel celebrated its 130th anniversary. Over the past century, it has housed guests such as Michael Jackson, Charlie Chaplan, Elizabeth Taylor, and several other figures of note. The hotel is steeped in history, and even has its own resident historian – Leslie Danker – who himself has more than 45 years of history with Raffles. Originally a beachfront property in the 1930s,...
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