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From the category archives:

linguistics

Learn a Language – Change the World Part 2 – No Money No Funny

January 14, 2012

Who Wants to Be A Refugee? In Part One ‘Unchartered Waters’, I gave an overview of how language had taken me to many weird and wonderful places.  There are many programmes and groups out there fighting to help and defend the rights of refugees. My views have changed a lot since working on these people [...]

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Learn a Language – Change the World. Part 1 – Unchartered Waters

January 7, 2012

What Would YOU Do? What would you do if you landed in a foreign country and realized that you had left your ATM / Credit card back home and only had a few dollars cash on you? What would you do if your only choice was to stay in the jungle overnight without any food, [...]

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The Language of People Smuggling II

November 21, 2011

My apologies to those who had gone to the previous link sent out for ‘The Language of People Smuggling‘ and weren’t able to read the article. Due to legal reasons, I was required to pull the story until the case was over. An historical decision was made in Queensland today in regard to one of [...]

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Getting Past the Squiggles – Hanacaraka

September 20, 2010
Thumbnail image for Getting Past the Squiggles – Hanacaraka

Click to View “Stuart Jay Raj – Help Preserve Javanese, Balinese and other Bahasa Daerah Indonesia – Hanacaraka It’s Faster for Some to Learn to Read than Others Over the years living in Thailand, I had many people coming from Non-English speaking backgrounds approach me about how they might best approach learning Thai. Many of [...]

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Producing the Initial ‘Ng’ /ŋ/ in Asian Languages

September 13, 2010

Next to getting the tones right, the initial ‘Ng’ sound that is found in so many Asian languages proves to be one of the major pronunciation issues for non-Asian learners of ‘initial ng’ languages.The languages that have an initial NG sound include: Thai Lao Cantonese and other Chinese Languages / Dialects (especially southern dialects) Bahasa [...]

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Mistakes People Make When Learning A Language

September 8, 2010

Have you ever spent weeks, months … even years learning a language only to have people still scratch their heads trying to figure out what you’re saying? .. Or even worse? How do you know that people are really getting the message you intend them to get? Have you ever had terrible experiences with language [...]

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Preparing to Master a Language

September 7, 2010

Pick a Language Any Language Over the past 2 weeks, I have received over 50 messages, comments and emails from people all over the world asking about how they should embark on learning a language.  I normally keep the following for people who enroll in my Cracking Thai Fundamentals programme, but after reading through it, [...]

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Language – Weapon of Choice for Propaganda and Disinformation

August 18, 2010

Has language ever revealed things to you that you wish everyone else knew? The first casualty in any war is the truth. From a glimpse of the headlines in my news-feeds today, it looks like the veritas body-count is sky high. Sifting through the propaganda in the aftermath of 9/11 Just after 9/11, I can [...]

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A Polyglot’s Secret for squeazing More Out of Los Libros

August 16, 2010

I’m sitting here looking across to at a pile of around 3,000 books that just arrived from my home in Bangkok. About 85% of these books are ‘language’ books. That is, they’re books whose purpose is to teach you a language, or books on linguistics … in many languages, or dictionaries. How Many of Your [...]

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¿Cuál idioma? – How Important is being able to Speak English in Becoming Miss Universe?

August 13, 2010

Lights … Camera … That crazy time of year has arrived again. White sashes are being pinned, flubby bits are being retracted and false eye-lashes are going into overdrive as some of the hottest women from around the planet spend almost a month together in Mr. Trump’s Panopticon under the hawkish gaze of the Mid-West [...]

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