Adult Learners Handbook

My last post on this site about Japanese Language and Culture   grew organically out of me keeping this clip  about the proper way to wear a kimono. I kept it in part because I have a long-standing interest in clothes  but also because it explains that a Japanese idiom for I'm broke originated from how the kimono is worn and used and where people kept their wallets while wearing a kimono. Idioms are especially hard to learn and translate. They typically grow out of cultural context and even the people using them routinely because it's their native language frequently don't know the history and context of common phrases. Growing up in the Deep South, I often heard people say I could care less when they really meant I couldn't care less . And that's not even an idiom. So he says one way to say "I'm broke" in Japanese is a Japanese phrase that he translates as "My bosom is cold." That's probably not exactly what that means in Ja...

This is a YouTube channel @ kyotako1372 titled Kyota Ko, which may be his name. I tripped across a video about the proper way to wear a kimono and made note of it because I have an interest in clothes and language and culture. If you watch ONE, then YouTube stalks you. So today I got notification about this clip by him with a story about a Japanese office romance. This is humor and exaggerated for effect, which is common in fiction generally and perhaps especially so in Japanese media: Fiction frequently exaggerates but is often based on something real. In Japanese Anime, it's common for someone excited to get a gushing nosebleed.  Japan is mountainous. Getting a nosebleed more easily at altitude is something real. It's probably a known phenomenon in Japan that strong emotions can trigger that but it's probably depicted as a gushing nosebleed to make it visible to the audience. That's probably an exaggeration.  His intended audience is people who are not Japanese, so ...

My mother was German and she didn't really want to teach me to speak her language. I was too young to understand that "her people" were "the bad guys" in a global conflict a couple of decades before I was born and she was probably just trying to protect me from potentially life-ruining prejudice. So I persisted in asking questions about her mother tongue. How do you say this in German? What does that mean in English? And one day we talked about German having a personal or informal form of you and a separate impersonal or formal you.  I was a fairly young kid, maybe something like eight years old, trying to understand this alien concept my language and culture lacked and I said something like "So if I wanted to insult someone, I would use impersonal you ."  Because I'm a child and my limited life experience was mostly with family and friends and I'm thinking something like it's rejecting and othering and will distance people from me and sig...

You live you learn My favorite professors typically worked full-time in the field and taught part-time. Several of my GIS School professors fit that profile and it's part of why the UC-Riverside program is the best in the world.  One professor was a professional surveyor. You could see in his body language how he related to geometry as his body being a physical point in a giant triangle while recording satellite readings to establish the data sufficient to accurately mark a point in space to within a few feet. When I had a corporate job I frequently fantasized about working half time at my claims processing job and half time as some kind of educator or problem solver, trying to improve the job experience and work efficiency of the department. I never could figure out how that would work. Usually what happens is someone who used to do X retires and moves on to teaching. Sometimes because they can no longer do X. Those who can, do.  Those who can't, teach. In some cases, that wo...

The Romans, whose civilization is a great grandfather of most Western cultures, didn't have a concept for zero. Their numerical system looks to me like it probably arose from making tick marks for counting. For tick marks, you make a straight line to record "1." For every instance counted, you make another straight line up to four. For the fifth instance, you make a diagonal line through the first four to group them together and for 6, you start a new group of straight lines.  The Wikipedia article for tally marks has an illustration of what "5" looks like in tally marks. And here are what Roman numerals look like: Roman Numerals  1 = I 2 = II 3 = III 4 = IV 5 = V 6 = VI 7 = VII 8 = VIII 9 = IX 10 = X 11 = XI 20 = XX 50 = L 100 = C 500 = D 1000 = M It was primarily a system for COUNTING and writing DATES (and their calendar had issues: October, our 10th month, translates as "month 8" and November, our 11th month, translates as "month 9"). T...

As a teen, I wanted to be a simultaneous translator and had aspirations of becoming fluent in seven languages (counting English). That never happened but I know a smattering of multiple languages  and I know a bit about learning another language. I never learned Farsi AKA the Persian language, though I wanted to and went through a chapter or two of EasyPersian.com and still have the link years later. In my teens, I wanted to become fluent in multiple languages and had a list: German, French, Spanish, Russian, Greek "and one more, probably something Asian or Middle Eastern." I've actually studied every single one of those languages though I've never achieved fluency.  When I lived in southern California, I sometimes watched the Spanish language channel with the English subtitles on because my German immigrant mother told me watching TV is how she learned English.  Link rot happens and I no longer have the list of German and Spanish resources I used to help fulfill the...

On at least a couple of occasions, I've taught myself a new subject.  At age fourteen, I bought a three-book set called "The Only Way to Learn Astrology" and most nights I studied them for thirty minutes to an hour before going to sleep. It was a persistent interest for years and I acquired probably a few dozen books over time, including an ephemerides and learned to hand cast charts at age seventeen.  At about age forty, a friend who already knew how to code sent me a book with a computer CD for learning HTML and CSS together. I was already a blogger and I went through the book and practice exercises on the CD. 1. Find good materials to learn from. My friend who already knew how to code vetted my self study course for me and it was a good program. I did choose my own astrology books but I was a strong student generally and already somewhat familiar with astrology. If you have no idea what constitutes a good course of study for the subject, try to ask around if possible a...