New country, new language I crossed in the border into the Autonomous Province of Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan with curiosity. How much would my intermediate level of Turkish help me to read, understand, and communicate? Azerbaijani, also known as Azeri, and Turkish are from the same family
What it means to dream in other languages People sometimes talk about dreaming in a new language as a marker. It marks that the language is somehow now in you, lodged in your brain or your way of being. If your unconscious can access it, well, that’s something. Arabic…nightmares? When
December Traditions from Around the World This year I started working at an international school in Vancouver. In September the Mexican students celebrated Mexican Independence day. At around the same time, students from China celebrated the Harvest Festival. The holiday celebrations
The language of Genghis Khan I have been reading and loving a biography of Genghis Khan that came out in 2015 by Frank McLynn. Did you know that Mongols tamed snow leopards and used them for hunting? And that they fetishized small noses? And that Genghis Khan, when he was about thirte
Is a seahorse a ‘sea’ ‘horse’ in any language? In English, we know that the marine fish with the long snout and the curled tail is called a ‘seahorse’. It makes sense; the shape of the head resembles the those of our familiar land horses. Evidently
Why I don’t worry about “losing” additional languages A high school teacher once told me to stop studying (I had come to him terribly stressed about not fully understanding some calculus principles before a test) and instead to let the knowledge settle. The concept h
The 2015 Vancouver Turkish Film Festival The Vancouver Turkish Film Festival is now 5 years old, and has grown from its modest start in the classrooms of Langara College to its new venue of Vancity Theatre. I remember the inaugural year in 2011, when I caught the great doc, On the Way
A Backgrounder on My Next Language Challenge: Punjabi Punjabi (also spelled Panjabi), is spoken by 130 million people and is the 10th most widely spoken language in the world. The majority of its speakers live in Pakistan and in the Punjab state of northern India, as well as large dia
Friday and Saturday mornings in Xochimilco Following up on my last post about the market and tianguis in Tlacolula on Sundays, this one is about El Pochote market in Xochimilco, one of Oaxaca City’s historic barrios. My favourite things at Tianguis Alternativo El Pochote Jewelry
The unique nature of international friendships I have super friends. All my closest friends in Vancouver I made in grad school, which means that we bonded over language. We’ve all lived abroad, learned other languages, and continue to travel. The friends I made in Chinese class in my
