Category Archives: Uncategorized

According to Scientific American, Evidence Rebuts Chomsky’s Theory of Language Learning. Chomsky had theorized that there was all languages had beneath them an underlying structure whose rules for use were embedded in the human brain and that when we encountered … Continue reading →

I’ve been reading Learning Russian Marathon: How to Speak Russian in 10 Years and the author has an excellent suggestion (among many): When speaking, we use language chunks. We don’t speak in separate words, sounds, syllables, or sentences, and especially … Continue reading →

Read all the sagas and eddas? Looking for something else to read in Old Norse? Here’s a curiosity: A grimoire from the 1600s called Galdrabok. You can find a (less than perfect) scan of a 1921 reprint with Swedish translation … Continue reading →

I’ve written in the past about the problem with New Year’s Resolutions and won’t do so again. What I will suggest, though, is that this is the year to learn Old Norse, the Viking Language. Two years ago, Jesse Byock … Continue reading →

In the run-up to the holiday season, I’ve managed to get a week off. I’ve been devoting my time to two languages: Old English and Elixir. For Old English, I’ve been working through Learn Old English with Leofwin, which includes … Continue reading →

For the last year or so, I’ve spent a lot more time on one computer language – R – than I’ve spent on human languages. It’s not a question of foregoing human languages. It’s just that I’ve been able to … Continue reading →

I see at the end of December, I wrote about this being the year I’d hit French. We all know how that goes… I have now finished 39 lessons of Pimsleur Dari – the whole first phase and the first … Continue reading →

After years and years of knowing French, this year I’m relearning it to get my speaking back up to a halfway decent level again. I’ll be working with the beginning Assimil book, just for content to read, and Using French. … Continue reading →

Recently, my language learning efforts have been divided between Python and Elixir on the computer side, and the Indo-Iranian languages on the human language side. The Indo-Iranians provide the basis for getting pretty close to the Indo-Europeans – the Rg … Continue reading →

I recently ran across The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast! . In the last few years, with books like Outliers: The Story of Success , we’ve gotten fixated on things like 10,000 hours to … Continue reading →