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Leggo my eigo

Many years ago, when I was a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s, the cult that I was raised in had a propaganda magazine called “Youth <insert year here>” where leaders of the cult would attempt to be relevant to the youth of the day, and most of the time, they just came off as condescending. I remember very little about that magazine, to be honest.  I remember the very first magazine that came out had a large photo of the cult leader’s face adorning the front, inside… Read More »Leggo my eigo

Monday English Colloquialism Corner #1: Goldilocks

Goldilocks and the Three Bears Sometimes you will hear an English speaker say something like “We’re looking for that Goldilocks sweet spot”.  What does that mean? As you can see from the story, Goldilocks is a fairy tale, which is a story told to children at a very young age.  It usually has a “moral” to it, but it also sometimes is just a short story meant to entertain children.  It’s usually read at bedtime, so this means that most people know the stories, and the stories have entered our… Read More »Monday English Colloquialism Corner #1: Goldilocks

The Limits of Language

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” – Wittgenstein This is a topic that I have been thinking a lot about for the past couple of weeks – in fact, I’ve even wrote a couple of posts touching on this idea.  In general, language shapes our thinking and our perception of the world – if there is something that is unexpressible in language, we then try our hardest to find a way to express it in language, and more often than not, we will usually take… Read More »The Limits of Language

Parallels Between Language and Computer Science

Ogawa Makoto is a former Morning Musume idol, who took a couple of years off of performing to go to New Zealand to learn English.  She recounted her experience in words similar to this (and I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember them entirely): I went to New Zealand to learn English, but in doing so, I found that I didn’t understand Japanese.  So I had to learn Japanese first. As I’ve been thinking about how best for me to learn Japanese, I’ve been thinking deeply about the underpinnings of language,… Read More »Parallels Between Language and Computer Science