As you read this, you may be wondering if I’m serious, and if I’m really about to suggest you read the news in your target language.
I am, and with good reason. Reading the news has several benefits:
“That’s great,” you may say, ” Read More
Ever since the move to www.blangblog.com (and maybe before?) our RSS feeds haven’t been working properly.
This has now been fixed. Feed a hungry RSS reader near you and syndicate Blang so you can see new posts without having to check the site.
Hey all – just to let you know there won’t be a haiku this week. I’ll instead be continuing to work on Talk to the Fjords, the Norwegian course being developed by myself and a couple friends.
There will still be a Fun Language Learning Tip on Sunday.
Talk to you then,
Kevin
Hi there, and welcome to the first installment of Fun Language Learning Tips! This weekly feature is aimed at sharing some of the methods I’ve found most effective for language learning. I find that “fun” and “effective” tend to go hand-in-hand, and I’m pretty sure there are studies that corroborate this. More importantly than studies, though, I’m interested in what works, and that’s what I’ll be trying to share.
I figured I’d kick this off with a classic and useful tip – listen to e-books in your target language! Read More
Special feature this week…a haiku in English! Oh, wait…that’s not that special, I guess. I was thinking of doing it in Greek, but I don’t know if you guys would tolerate it.
But! I’m going to write the haiku twice, using different words, while maintaining the same essential meaning and hopefully creating something funny in the process. Since Blang has just changed homes, I’ll haiku about home. And yes, I just verbified haiku. And I also wordified “verbified.” So you just better just accept it before I “-ify”-ify anything else. Ahem:
Home. Where, while taking
out the trash, you must rake the
first leaves of autumn.
Home. Stuff gets dirty.
You must rake up the autumn
imagery too.
OK…maybe they weren’t entirely the same, but what fun would that have been? I hope you enjoyed this week’s Haiku Tuesday in English!
ALSO! Blang’s LNC (level of new content, and yeah, I made that up on the spot) is going to be increasing. Look out for new posts on Tuesdays and Sundays. On Sundays, there will be a new feature called Fun Language Learning Tips. Because, after all, Blang ain’t just haikus…even if it mostly has been the past…umm…well, there’s hardly anything but haikus on the front page, I know, but…
But! That’ll change. And what’s better is that you too can send me your fun language learning tips using the contact form. If I feature it (I get to pick what I write about it), I’ll include your name and a link to your whatever (if you want, of course). And, like, it won’t even be “nofollow!” It’ll totally be “follow.”
Motivating? 
Looking forward to hear from you. See you Sunday for the new feature.
Hello!
Blang is now free from the shackles of subdirectorial servitude. That’s right…you’re reading it on www.blangblog.com, in case you didn’t notice.
It was about time to give Blang some domain name bling, and now it’s been done.
Nothing else has changed, yet…but it will.
I also finished lesson 1 of Talk to the Fjords (that’s the Norwegian course I’m working on with some Norwegians), and hopefully within the next month it’ll be going into a public beta (alpha?) so people can start giving me feedback early. Can language courses even have a beta? Well, I’m doing it, so they can.
Haiku time now.
Kevin
Me gustó escribir un haiku en otra idioma hace un mes que ¡lo voy a hacer otra vez! (La rima -pronunciación sudoamericana- no fue intencional.) La tema de hoy es la economía, aunque no sé mucho de ella. Leí algo ayer en mobile.lemonde.fr de mi móvil. De todos modos…
No tengo mucho
dinero. Culpa a la
economía!
—-
In English:
I liked writing a haiku in another language a month ago, so I’m going to do it again! (The rhyme [in Spanish only] was unintentional. [I'd be really good if I could translate THAT without sounding silly. You can try in the comments if you want.]) The topic is the economy, even though I don’t know much about it. I read something yesterday on mobile.lemonde.fr on my phone. Anyway…
A lot of money
is something I don’t have. Let’s
blame the economy!
—
Yay, it worked again! Bit wordy on the English, though. I never realized how many syllables Spanish words have until now.
Hope you enjoyed the haikus.
Hi all,
After the underwhelming response to the last post (it’s my fault, I know), I’ve just up and changed the theme to one I like. It kinda matches WizOne Solutions at the moment, though that will change (for both sites).
I’m still taking suggestions for any colors or arrangement of things that you’d like to see, so don’t be shy.
By the way, did I say the contact form works again? I need testers, hint hint! You can test with real messages, of course
Enjoy the rest of summer…
Hello readers!
I want to give Blang a new look. I’ve checked out a few of the existing WordPress themes, but nothing really strikes me so far – at least nothing out-of-the-box.
I might wind up tweaking this one myself or using Atahualpa (great theme), but if by a stroke of luck, you know of another (free) option, let me know…
I’m aiming for either a nice brown (like my Twitter page) or a bluish-purple color (but I’d settle for a colour as well, if that’s your preferred orthography).
Compulsory language jests aside, let me know if you have anything worthy of Blang’s consideration.
Haiku Tuesday – Learn with Haikus
Hi – today marks the start of a new experiment here at Blang. I’m calling it an experiment, at least; what I’ll be doing is writing haikus in foreign languages and having you try to translate it into English (well, if it’s particularly good, you can get away with Spanish, Norwegian, or French, too).
The goal is that you learn a little more of your target language through this exercise and get a nice bite-sized practice session.
I’ll be doing this every other week, starting this week. In between, the usual haikus you know and love will continue.
Let’s start! I’ll start with a language lots of people want to learn: Spanish. It’s also my best. ¡Vámonos!
Si me levanto
más temprano, ¿habrá que
comer gusanos?
(No estoy seguro si me gusta ese haiku, así que intento otra vez con un tema semejante.)
¿Temprano o no?
¿No son los gusanos que
son devorados?
(¡Es verdaderamente un desafío escribir un haiku en español! Me hacen falta más sílabas. Pero allí los tienen. Buena suerte.)
For extra credit, translate the parenthetical text as well
I might start picking my favorite translation and giving some kind of prize in the future, but for now it’s for fun. So let’s see some responses!