Thanksgiving '08

Images of Thanksgiving 2008. That's what Thanksgiving is to me: family, raspberry pie and playing cards.




Before & after.

practicingasianlanguages

Since being back in the States I've tried to keep practicing Laos and Japanese language.

One of the reason Asian languages are difficult to learn is that they do not use spaces between words.

haveyouevertriedtoreadasentencewithoutspaces?

Not so easy is it? It makes looking up words in the dictionary a little bit challenging.

Laos language has the additional complication that sometimes vowels are written before the consonant even though the vowel is pronounced after the consonant. It takes a little getting used to looking for vowels before, above and below the consonant. If you have Laos fonts installed on your computer (probably not) you can see a sentence written in Laos:

ເຈົ້າມັກກີນເບຍລາວບໍ່?

Written Japanese is complicated by the fact that there are three "alphabets". Two are phonetic; hiragana is used for native Japanese words and katakana is used for foreign words. These are relatively easy to learn. Kanji, the pictograms related to Chinese characters, are the real challenge to all foreigners attempting to learn to read Japanese. The sheer number presents a major task - several thousand need to be learned to read the daily newspaper. But a single kanji character may have several pronunciations and meanings depending on the context. oiyoiyoi. If you have Japanese fonts installed on your computer (probably not) you can see a sentence written in Japanese:

あなたは、日本に行きたいですか?

One of the things I learned in Asia about myself was that I actually enjoy learning foreign languages. After spending four years in high school attempting to learn Spanish and a couple years in France attempting to speak French both with limited success, I thought I just wasn't good at learning languages. I realized I'm not an auditory learner, I'm a visual learner. By learning the foreign characters I was able to learn the basic language much quicker than in the past.

Prize for the first person that can answer my questions.

mallory cave

Jason and I took a quick hike up to Mallory Cave today in the beautiful weather. Photo of Jason doing his curious squirrel impersonation:

lest we forget

Today is the 90th anniversary of the end of WWI. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 the Armistice Treaty came into effect to end the first world war. Take a moment to remember.