Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 2

• A note from Langston Hughes to my dad

  By ljd42 on January 10, 2026

  

  Seventy years ago the great Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes penned this inscription in the front of my dad’s copy of Hughes’s A Pictorial History of the Negro in America. (Note that Hughes’s co-author, Milton Meltzer, added his own autograph… Read More ›

• Enough is enuf.

  By ljd42 on January 8, 2026

  

  This book would have made an excellent New Yorker article. But a whole book? Not so much. All right, I suppose many a New Yorker article does feel like an entire book — but Enough is Enuf by Gabe Henry… Read More ›

• Is Modern Hebrew a conlang?

  By ljd42 on January 6, 2026

  

  So I keep seeing references to posts on Reddit…and I always ignore them. But then I said to myself, “Why not give Reddit a chance? What’s there to lose?” That led me to sign up for a few subreddits in… Read More ›

• Friends with words

  By ljd42 on January 4, 2026

  

  Yes, you read that correctly: the title really is Friends with Words, not the more familiar phrase Words with Friends. And even the correct phrase, Friends with Words, has at least two meanings (think about it). If you yourself are… Read More ›

• This year’s traditional Christmas dinner

  By ljd42 on December 26, 2025

  

  In accordance with long-established tradition, Barbara and I went to Chau Chow yesterday for a delicious Christmas feast: beef noodle, Chinese broccoli, har gao, shumai, xiao long bao, shrimp paste in tofu skin, stuffed taro, and pan-fried noodles with jumbo… Read More ›

• Where are you dining today?

  By ljd42 on December 25, 2025

  

• Claude predicts the future of English.

  By ljd42 on December 24, 2025

  

  Recently I’ve been playing with Claude AI, so I asked it (him? are we personifying AI’s these days?) to predict how English will change over the next 600 years. (Why 600? Because Middle English was spoken about 600 years ago,… Read More ›

• A Chanukah carol (in Yiddish)

  By ljd42 on December 21, 2025

• Two pop linguists who are worth listening to…

  By ljd42 on December 17, 2025

  

  and whose videos nevertheless share one particular flaw. I’m talking about Julie Maksimova, better known as Julingo, and Dr. Taylor Jones, better known as Language Jones. You can see what they’ve both done there with their noms, but that has… Read More ›

• The kittens say hello.

  By ljd42 on December 10, 2025

  

• “A language I love is…”

  By ljd42 on December 5, 2025

  

  What took me so long? Today I learned about a new-to-me linguistics blog and podcast called “A language I love is…” This blog has been around since June of 2020, and the podcast since 2023, so I certainly should have… Read More ›

• Thanksgiving

  By ljd42 on November 27, 2025

  

  Today I asked Barnaby and Cassandra what they are thankful for. “Each other!” they meowed. “And our forever home.”

• Language city: The fight to preserve endangered mother tongues in New York

  By ljd42 on November 26, 2025

  

  The title and subtitle may make this book sound rather esoteric. But in that case they are unintentionally misleading. You don’t have to be a linguist or a cultural anthropologist to enjoy reading Language City. If I still have your… Read More ›

• “So you want a model railroad” — a well-known… okay… not-so-well-known Warner Bros. film from 1955

  By ljd42 on November 22, 2025

  When you watch a movie made in 1955, you can’t judge it with 2025 glasses. A lot has happened in 70 years! With that caveat, enjoy this short Warner Bros. film. Also keep in mind, as the French say, plus… Read More ›

• A slowly dying cause

  By ljd42 on November 20, 2025

  

  What do you know about Cornwall? Cornish hens, I suppose. And Cornish pasties, but only if you’ve been to Britain. That’s probably it, unless you have an esoteric linguistic interest in the lesser-known Celtic languages, as I do for some… Read More ›

• Three cheers for Jason Jensen — not only a model railroader but also a true American artist!

  By ljd42 on November 17, 2025

  

  Model railroading is both a craft and an art. My favorite model railroader on YouTube is Jason Jensen, who is #1 as both a craftsman and an artist. Many of his videos are lengthy, but they’re worth it, as he… Read More ›

• Thai Oishii

  By ljd42 on November 16, 2025

  

  Looking at the name of this Dorchester restaurant, your first thought is that its cuisine must be Thai. It’s right in the name after all! But then you realize that the second word, oishii, is clearly Japanese, not Thai (we… Read More ›

• The new Springsteen bio-pic

  By ljd42 on November 11, 2025

  

  Your most urgent question (I’m sure) is why did I put a hyphen in biopic. The answer is that I learned recently that a majority of people pronounce biopic to rhyme with myopic! (In other words, they are parsing it… Read More ›

• Happy birthday, Cassandra. You are no longer a kitten.

  By ljd42 on November 8, 2025

  

  Happy first birthday, Cassie! You have left your kittenhood behind and are now officially a full-grown cat.

• Everything possible

  By ljd42 on November 5, 2025

  

  Back in 1983 I first heard this beautiful song, as a result of a recommendation by my sister Ellen. It was written and performed by Fred Small, who is least known as a lawyer, better known as a UU minister,… Read More ›

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