Author archives: languageimmersions

Why are chickpeas called that way? They don’t come out of a chicken, do they? And when you’d hear ‘chickpeas’ without a context maybe some would hear a ‘chick pee’. In Dutch, ‘chickpea(s)’ have a similar weird animal connotation: ‘kikkererwt(en)’, literally frog peas. Why are they called that way? They don’t pop up when heated […]

This post is written in both French and English. It’s a format I’m trying out to get to practice the language(s) of the area while interesting potential readers as well. Today I’m going to Geneva, the famous Swiss city by the lake. On Google Maps I saw that the runway runs just next to the […]

As I started a new job as a flight attendant recently, I just compiled a list of destinations I visited and other cities that I’m planning to request flights to and learn the local languages of: city Country (focus) language Johannesburg South Africa First: Afrikaans. Later: Zulu Accra Ghana Akan / Ga Helsinki Finland Finnish […]

Motivation: connection with people Learning from years of experience what got me going, I should continue to use low-entry apps such as Duolingo. It’s low effort to open the app or a browser tab, press D, hit enter and start a lesson in one of my target languages. That way I improve a bit, but […]

I’m learning languages in multiple ways, but doing so while watching my favourite series and video’s makes it a lot of fun. I love the options to optionally auto-pause after each spoken sentence, show two (target) language subtitle lines at the same time. I’m currently usinh it for Russian, Swedish, Italian, Spanish and French and […]

Monday Today I’ve been very busy with work, but I decided to do two a couple of exercises to practice my Arabic, Russian, Chinese and Arabic learning on Duolingo. I didn’t feel much energy after a long day, but it made me keep my 19 day streak. Tuesday Again a very busy day, so it […]

Reaching my daily goal is not enough Even though I promised myself to keep up the daily exercises in Chinese, Turkish, Arabic and Russian, I realize my progress is minimal. It’s good that I followed up on my daily goal, but while maintaining my daily learning, I way to rethink the most efficient way to […]

Not having much time, I just felt compelled to stick to my daily goal on Duolingo to do Chinese, Russian, Arabic and Turkish exercises. Other than that, I’ll follow the news (listening and reading skills) and do some actual speaking practice during the rest of the day.

Hello, Duo! To get me started today, I’ll let the green owl help me. Diving into Arabic lessons He is generous and he is your husband, Judy. هُوَّ كَريم وَهُوَّ زَوْجِك يا جودي. Also, it’s interesting to realize that before ever learning some Arabic, I wouldn’t even have known where these Arabic words ended, only knowing spaces between words in […]