Category Archives: Uncategorized

If you speak French, but want something more exciting than that dreary Parisian accent and all that goes with it, why not give Québecois a look? Actually, there’s long been a good reason not to… decent materials are virtually non-existent. … Continue reading →

A little while back, I wrote about the question, Do you really want to be fluent? Here’s a chance to see where your language skills now stand. Just remember, C2 isn’t your automatic goal. If you only need to be … Continue reading →

I’ve previously written about the University of Texas’ Early Indo-European OnLine site as the place par excellence to get started with ancient Indo-European languages, especially languages like Avestan, Old Persian and Tocharian where resources are otherwise scarce. If you want … Continue reading →

The other day, I got The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Aksum, which collects a handful of articles from the larger Cambridge Encyclopedia of Ancient Languages. I got it, in particular, for the article on Sumerian, which gives an … Continue reading →

It’s a serious question. Few of us take a painting class with the expectation that we’ll be able to do our own take on the Sistine Chapel when we’re done. Few of us take a yoga class with the expectation … Continue reading →

The other day, I took the opportunity to read Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners. It was an interesting read, not least because one of the featured “characters” is Alexander Argulles, a one-time regular … Continue reading →

My usual timetable of looking at multiple languages has been almost completely given over to Sumerian lately. Part of the allure of language learning, I think, is making the exotic familiar. And the more you explore languages, the harder it … Continue reading →

You often hear about the idea of learning language like a child with reference to speaking it in, say, a direct method. I haven’t seen much about reading in this vein, however. And yet, the reader, which has been with … Continue reading →

It has long been a tradition to start Greek with Xenophon’s Anabasis. And it’s even been a tradition for close to a century to assert that there ought to be a better way. That goes back to Pharr’s Homeric Greek: … Continue reading →

A little bit ago, I was looking for information on Greek when I came across a title, Teach Yourself Doric. Much to my surprise, however, it referred not to the Greek, but to a dialect of Scots. In the last … Continue reading →