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Pronunciation is King Posted by on Jul 21, 2014 in Archived Posts

The above comic is one of the very few I’ve done (along with the one from my previous entry) which is taken verbatim from personal experience. In 2008, I was on the island of Muuido, off the coast of South Korea, in a little restaurant on the beach. It was apparently off-season, as there was…

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Fighting Expat’s Unease: Don’t Sweat the Vocab Posted by on Jul 7, 2014 in Archived Posts

I have a certain psychological condition I like to call Expat’s Unease: I wish I could pass as a local, and it bothers me when I don’t. I wish I could just blend in with the crowd and speak like the locals speak. I wish I could enter into conversation with random people on the…

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English: That Irritating, Ubiquitous Language Posted by on Jun 23, 2014 in Archived Posts

These days, if you’re a native English speaker, or even halfway competent in English, you can travel just about anywhere in the world and get by. This is admittedly a broad generalization, but when’s the last time you returned from a trip without having once met someone who spoke even a single word of English?…

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The Benefits (and Drawbacks) of Looking Foreign Posted by on May 26, 2014 in Archived Posts

As you can see from my profile picture at the bottom of this post, I’m relatively Germanic-looking: blonde hair, blue eyes, pasty white skin. This means I often get confused for an actual German person, usually by Germans. They’ll approach me on the street selling this or that or asking directions, beginning with a veritable…

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The Thrill is Gone: Arabic, Italian, and Blissful Ignorance Posted by on May 12, 2014 in Archived Posts

Itchy Feet: A Travel and Language Comic by Malachi Rempen

Certain languages have a charm or magic about them which only exists so long as you have no idea what they’re talking about. I personally find Arabic to be the most aesthetically pleasing written script. There are a number of beautiful Asian alphabets, including ornate Hindi, swirling Burmese, and precise Chinese. But to me, written Arabic exudes an…

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Ground-Apples, Glow-Pears, and Go-Wheels: Enjoying Etymology in Your New Language Posted by on Apr 30, 2014 in Archived Posts

I find words fascinating. That might be part of why I enjoy learning new languages so much: so many new words! And so many new ways of looking at the same words; that is to say, different words with the same meaning. As I detailed in another one of my comics, I felt like some sort…

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Let’s All Gang Up on the Multilinguals: Three Ways to Combat Language Learner’s Envy Posted by on Apr 21, 2014 in Archived Posts

When I lived in Morocco in 2012, it was in Al Hoceima, a seaside town on the Mediterranean coast. Built by the Spanish in the mid-1920s, Al Hoceima became Moroccan in the 1950s after independence, but as such a young city, it retained a lot of its international influence. The majority of locals in Al…

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