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Five to Halfway to Three Quarters After: Telling Time in German Posted by on Apr 6, 2016 in Archived Posts

Telling time in German can be a wee bit confusing. Yes, fünf nach halb sechs literally translates to “five past half six” (fünf = five, nach = after, halb = half, sechs = six) where in German “half six” means five-thirty, or “halfway to six” (Brits, however, use “half six” to mean “six thirty,” further confusing matters). “Half” in German…

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Top Language Learning Excuses and How to Beat Them Posted by on Mar 30, 2016 in Archived Posts

Itchy Feet: Acqua Alta con Mozarella

That’s right, my peanut-shaped drawing of an Italian waiter: in Italy, there’s never a good reason not to eat. The same is true for language learning! There are plenty of excuses we dream up for why we can’t or shouldn’t or won’t learn a foreign language. Believe me, I’ve heard them all before, mostly because I’ve said them…

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The Linguistic Origins of ಠ_ಠ and Other Unusual Internet Faces Posted by on Mar 21, 2016 in Archived Posts

Like me, you may have just recently starting bowing to internet pressure to put smileys in your e-correspondence – more and more, I get the feeling that without them, messages come off as overly serious. I hate myself for doing it 🙂 But in case you hadn’t noticed, the internet has long moved beyond colon-closedparenthesis to represent emotions in this…

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Language: As Convenient As German Recycling Posted by on Mar 14, 2016 in Archived Posts

Itchy Feet: Convenience

I wrote this comic when I first moved to Germany four years ago. As you can see, I was quite…taken by the German obsession with proper recycling (I’ve since found that Switzerland makes the Germans look like filthy litterbugs). These days, I rather appreciate their green attitudes, and I wish more countries took on recycling programs…

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Nose Papers, Christmas Blankets and Why Small Mistakes Make a Big Difference Posted by on Mar 7, 2016 in Archived Posts

My wife has started to say “tissues” now, and it breaks my heart. I always loved “nose papers,” even if she didn’t. From her perspective, I’m allowing her to speak the language incorrectly because it amuses me. I understand that. I get the same feeling when I say coperta instead of tovaglia in Italian, basically mixing up…

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How to “Change the Air” and Keep Things Fresh Posted by on Feb 29, 2016 in Archived Posts

Itchy Feet: Health Tip

The reason the comic above was written as taking place “in Switzerland” was that I had heard of this curious practice of opening all the windows of the house to “change the air” from a friend, who at the time was studying abroad in a small town near Zurich. Apparently the mother of his host family would…

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How Language Learning Makes You Want to Try New Things Posted by on Feb 24, 2016 in Archived Posts

Language and culture are hard to separate. You can’t really take one without the other – you can’t fully understand a language without understanding some of the culture in which it thrives, and you certainly can’t understand a culture without fully understanding its language. But to me, that relationship between language and culture actually has…

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