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misslinguistic

Founder: Meridian Linguistics (Asian Language Data Services).
Spare time: Learning languages, 📸 my drink
Current📍: China
Links and bio ⬇️

I’ll give up my sunset office kicking and scream

I’ll give up my sunset office kicking and screaming, as Beijing moves definitively into fall. For this pleasure I wore two 暖宝宝 (stick-on oxygen-activated heating pads that adhere to the inside of your clothing) and sipped a lot of tea!

Does your country have any special tricks or habits for staying warm?

When your coffee sprouts legs and tries to run awa

When your coffee sprouts legs and tries to run away…

Just as coffee gets more and more of a foothold in East Asia (bean snobs proliferate, coffee menus get longer and longer, hardly a block goes by in Busan or Beijing where you can’t get a pour-over or a oat milk flat white…I am hearing about more and more American buddies giving it up!

What is inspiring this sad story? Health? Proliferation of other caffeinated options?

Where are you based, and are you a coffee drinker? ☕️

“Sugar and spice the only thing you made of? 🎶”

Nope, I’m also at least 30% matcha

(🎶Ms. Fat Booty - Mos Def)

I've had so much fun dabbling in the languages of

I've had so much fun dabbling in the languages of China this year!

From their grammatical structures, I've learned that there are many ways you can categorize and describe the world. Some languages find plurals optional (old Mongolian), but "how true the sentence is" better get conjugated correctly! (Uyghur).

From these languages, I've learned a lot about history and migration and the flow of culture, and even better: I've eaten the results! Tibetan tsampa (basically an organic Clif bar) and a sweet Salar tea were probably among my favorites. Shaanxi’s paomo soup also cannot be missed.

I was recently interviewed by @irishpolyglot and @eurolinguiste on the @languagehacking podcast, where I talked a bit about language dabbling (among other subjects). I used to feel guilty about dabbling, like it was a waste of time unless my goal was to become fluent. I definitely don’t feel that way anymore!

Are you a language dabbler? Have you ever learned just a little bit of a language for a fun trip, or just out of interest?

The irony is that I got a new yoga mat so that she

The irony is that I got a new yoga mat so that she could have my old one, but she only ever wants mine #workhardtogivemydogabetterlife

My exploration of Chinese languages has finally br

My exploration of Chinese languages has finally brought me to Chinese Sign Language! Yes, it is different from American Sign Language (although both are related to French Sign Language, and I have already spotted some fun etymological evidence of that!)

Even sign languages have “accents” and I can already see how different this one is…hand shapes and movements are just very different from the ones used in ASL.

It is so exciting how many resources there are now to learn sign languages, now that video is such an accessible medium. I can’t wait to mine Bilibili and Youku for vlogs and signed literature…

Have you ever learned a sign language?

#todaysoffice, can’t complain! Today I tuned int

#todaysoffice, can’t complain! Today I tuned into a conference on the future of work in China.

No big shockers here…the Chinese panelists (from a good range of industries) talked about hybrid/remote work, digital nomadism, AI, automation, and climate change.

How about your country? What does the future of work look like where you are? Has the pandemic changed or updated that vision?

I am wrapping up a few months of joyful dabbling -

I am wrapping up a few months of joyful dabbling - after 16 months focused only on Chinese, I had so much fun learning more of the languages out here in China. Just look at Mongolian! What a gorgeous script.

I’ve also really enjoyed learning a bit of Turkish, which was mostly to help bootstrap me towards the languages of China’s West.

The next language I’d like to learn is used right here in Beijing, as well as throughout China. It isn’t part of the Sino-Tibetan, Turkic, Manchu, Mongolian, or Austronesian language families.

In fact, it shares a lot of features with languages spoken in the US, France, and Malaysia.

Any guesses? If you follow the rest of my socials you might have already figured it out…

The Gulou hutongs of Beijing are our “hood away

The Gulou hutongs of Beijing are our “hood away from hood” as my husband of exactly five years likes to say ❤️

(swipe)

We don’t deserve dogs. Truly. I love that in Ind

We don’t deserve dogs. Truly. I love that in Indonesian, the word for dog is “anjing”. In Mandarin, “anjing” means “peaceful”.

How do you say “dog” in your language(s)?

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