Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 30

• Ayliean (who?)—and her Hitomezashi patterns (what?)

  By ljd42 on January 16, 2022

  No, I don’t know how to pronounce Ayliean. My Scots Gaelic isn’t what it used to be. (It never was.) And I’m not so sure about Hitomezashi either, as my Japanese isn’t what it used to be. (But I did… Read More ›

• Christine Lavin, Tina Ross, and Barbara Barrie

  By ljd42 on January 14, 2022

  Great short Zoom concert/interview last night by Christine Lavin, hosted by Tina Ross! Not sure whether it’s still available after the fact. In any case, you can check out her other concerts and recordings here. But I do need to… Read More ›

• If ontogeny really recapitulated phylogeny…

  By ljd42 on January 12, 2022

  If you need the full explanation, visit explainXKCD.

• Another treat from Richard Osman

  By ljd42 on January 10, 2022

  A couple of months ago I reviewed the first novel in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series. Now I turn to the second, which I have just finished reading. This mystery, The Man Who Died Twice, is at least as… Read More ›

• Stress is good. That’s why Shakespeare could never have been French. (Say what? Read on for an explanation.)

  By ljd42 on January 8, 2022

  No, not that kind of stress! We’re talking about stressing syllables, not your mind. English poetry and prose alike depend heavily on stress—especially poetry. In prose, if you get the stress wrong, your words may be incomprehensible. Or you may… Read More ›

• Tavolo Take-out Treat

  By ljd42 on January 7, 2022

  Anticipating today’s snowstorm, Barbara and I just had to treat ourselves to a take-out banquet from Tavolo last night. (We blame Tara for it, since she had posted a tempting menu excerpt on FB.) Here’s what we had (pix below):… Read More ›

• Yang’s Yummy Dumplings

  By ljd42 on January 5, 2022

  Finally, over a period of a month or two, Barbara and I have consumed nearly all of the fifty delicious dumplings that we bought from Yang’s in Dorchester. Don’t worry: they came frozen, and are still frozen. At least the… Read More ›

• Texas German vs. Pennsylvania Dutch

  By ljd42 on January 3, 2022

  Is there really such a language as Texas German? The answer is yes. So why is it—according to my informal (and totally unscientific) poll—that everyone has heard of Pennsylvania German (usually, however, called by the misnomer Pennsylvania Dutch, where “Dutch”… Read More ›

• NYE@AG

  By ljd42 on January 1, 2022

  Happy New Year! Barbara and I celebrated New Years Eve at the Ashmont Grill, as one does. We appreciated the fact that it was a quiet and understated affair, as you would expect under the current circumstances. Barbara started with… Read More ›

• Can German speakers understand Yiddish—and vice versa?

  By ljd42 on December 30, 2021

  Is Yiddish really a language? Or is it a dialect of German? And does anyone speak it anymore? The quick answers are yes, no, and yes, respectively. It used to be a dialect of German—12 centuries ago—but both languages have… Read More ›

• That long-awaited model railroad update: finally a progress report!

  By ljd42 on December 28, 2021

  As the estimable Barry Popik observes, “A model railroad [is] never finished. There is always something to add or to remove or to modify.” So I can’t simply postpone this report until my model railroad is finished! But “I’ve been… Read More ›

• A Jewish Christmas, in two parts (Part Two: Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas)

  By ljd42 on December 27, 2021

  After we got home from our requisite Chinese meal on Christmas Day, Barbara and I watched the requisite movie: in this case the Canadian documentary Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas. If you’ve never heard of it, go find it and… Read More ›

• A Jewish Christmas, in two parts (this is Part One: the requisite Chinese meal)

  By ljd42 on December 26, 2021

  Barbara and I chose to have our traditionally Jewish Chinese Christmas meal this year at Chau Chow, on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester. I am delighted to report that it was delicious. Of course there was too much food, so we… Read More ›

• Rudolph in Old English

  By ljd42 on December 25, 2021

  In recognition of Christmas 2021, here is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in the original Old English, a.k.a. Anglo Saxon, from exactly one thousand years ago, courtesy of All Things Linguistic: Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor – Næfde þæt nieten unsciende næsðyrlas! Glitenode and… Read More ›

• Netflix cares about the length of a sentence in a given language. You should too.

  By ljd42 on December 24, 2021

  Here’s the problem. Netflix shows shows in many different languages. Some languages, like English, allow compact phrases like that “shows shows” (which looks confusing); others use circumlocutions that take up more room on the screen. Why does matter? Because it… Read More ›

• All aboard! MRR at the MoS

  By ljd42 on December 21, 2021

  Go see the small but magnificent model railroad exhibit, All Aboard!, at the Museum of Science! I just got back from visiting it. This labor of love by the dedicated volunteers of the HUB Division of the National Model Railroad… Read More ›

• Trains, Rock Paper Scissors, & Hannah Fry: What do these three have in common?

  By ljd42 on December 20, 2021

  How can Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) have a winning strategy? It’s all just luck, isn’ it? Well, no, actually. It’s true that if your opponent plays strictly randomly, then you have no winning strategy. It’s really all just luck. But… Read More ›

• The Bicentennial Man

  By ljd42 on December 17, 2021

  “One has mixed feelings about the movie” would be my comment if I’m going to speak in Andrew’s style. As usual, I recommend seeing the movie before reading the book. In this case the first version was a long short… Read More ›

• A classic mystery—written in 2021!

  By ljd42 on December 15, 2021

  Agatha Christie was, I believe, the originator of the locked-room mystery. If not the originator, she was at least an early and very successful practitioner. But this post is not about Agatha Christie. It’s about Anthony Horowitz and his latest… Read More ›

• The Queen’s Gambit: what’s it all about?

  By ljd42 on December 13, 2021

  Is it about chess? You may be tempted to say yes. It seems to be about chess. In high school English—a hundred years ago or so—I learned to distinguish plot from theme. If we’re talking plot, then The Queen’s Gambit… Read More ›

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