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Learn like a linguist. Tips and inspiration for lovers of language.

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Mandarin Tones Are Not As Hard As You Think

Mandarin tones do take some getting used to, but they are not as complicated as you might think! I have noticed that language learners often decide not to try learning Mandarin because they are daunted by the …

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Shadowing: This Exercise Will Make You Sound Like a Native

Since I posted my blog post on the importance of prosody, many of you wrote to ask for more explanation of how my shadowing exercise works. It is a very powerful exercise and has helped me immeasurably. …

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Linguistics 101 Series: Why You Need to Master Prosody to Speak a Foreign Language

When you learn a foreign language, you usually study pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. Maybe even a new alphabet. But how many of your language teachers have ever mentioned prosody? Prosody is the “music” of language. In spoken …

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studying a minority language with a Swadesh List

Learn Like a Linguist: Using Swadesh Lists for Rare or Minority Languages

The United Nations has declared 2019 the Year of Indigenous Languages. I know a lot of you are taking that as your cue to try your hand at learning a minority language, from Occitan to Teochew …

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Sara Maria Hasbun 韩梅 사라 (misslinguistic)Follow

#linguist and #founder: Meridian Linguistics (Asian Language Data Services) and Misslinguistic (Blog). Obsessive language learner. Based in China, prev. Korea.

TIL that in Mongolian, "sara" means moon 🌑

Why You Should Learn Chinese

Someone on Quora Français recently asked me, “why should I learn Chinese?” (This post was originally written in French for Quora. Lisez son original en français) My opinion? There are several reasons why you’ll want to choose …

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Not A Moment Wasted: Hyper-Efficient Language Learning with the Monologue Method

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sara Maria's Language Diary (@misslingdiary) on Dec 2, 2018 at 3:31pm PST Above: an example of a monologue I memorized in order to improve my ASL. Recently, I …

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So You’re Not Fluent Yet: Should You Blame Duolingo?

When the recent article in The Cut came out proclaiming Duolingo useless, the glee was palpable. I get it. You’ve spent countless hours at the beck and call of that owl, and you still can’t speak Spanish, …

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misslinguistic

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

You can come for my skinny jeans and side part, be

You can come for my skinny jeans and side part, because everything comes back into fashion someday. Even if it takes a few dynasties.

Beijing is absolutely awash in influencers and cre

Beijing is absolutely awash in influencers and creators, from individual selfie-takers to 10-person camera crews. Some may bemoan the transactional nature of social media content, but there is a lot of real creativity out there. Especially given the fact that China has so many different platforms to stream/post/check in at, all with their unique styles and features.

Pokie isn’t very creative tho, she’s just here to serve lewks.

#swipeformore #ootd #autumnlewk #scottishvibes #casual #wanghong #kol #influencing #liketoknowit #notanad

Doing a hard thing? In Chinese they say “Add oil

Doing a hard thing? In Chinese they say “Add oil” (加油). In Korean they say “Fighting!” (Yes, from English, but with Korean pronunciation). In English we just say “Go [person or team that needs encouragement]😁

How do you give encouragement in the languages that you know?

Before I first moved to Asia, I gave most of my bo

Before I first moved to Asia, I gave most of my books to the Strand. I’m not too precious about needing to read real paper, Kindle is usually fine for me. And I wanted to go more minimalist with my possessions, especially before a big move.

But still, I remember feeling almost like I wanted to cry after they took away my much-loved books, so unceremoniously! I mean, give a girl a moment!

I have now lived in Asia for about 8 years, and somehow this self-professed Kindle lover has again built up a bit of a paperback and hardcover collection! Many are books that just don’t exist on Kindle (Mandarin-Uyghur phrase book, Mongolian children’s reader). Others are memories I just can’t bear to lose: like an incredible Indonesian grammar that I was gifted in Bali, and quickly became one of the most dog-eared and highlighted books I own.

Are you a collector of books 📚? Or are you light on your feet 👐

I started reading this book about a year ago (许三观卖血记) and I am committed to finishing it, but it is so existentially sad that I’m having trouble spending more than very short spurts on it. It just isn’t the kind of energy I want in my life right now.

I am doing the same with Squid Game 😂 I want to participate in the Squid Game conversation but I can’t spend more than 30 minutes with sadness or gore these days. Anyone else feeling that way?

As you can see, I want big pink fuzzy slipper energy. Mr. Rogers energy. Dancing Obama energy. In book form. But I’ve already read all of Obama’s books.

Anyone have any feel-good book recommendations? 📚📚📚📚

Beijing showed off her blue skies last week! And i

Beijing showed off her blue skies last week! And in the evenings, it was so fun to log on to the virtual #polyglotconference for a few conversations in Spanish, French, Malay, Mandarin, and Mongolian 🤪

In reactivating languages I don’t know very well (Mongolian) and haven’t spoken for a long time (Malay) it really drove home to me that my own feeling of fluency actually depends much more on the intuition of the person I am speaking to, rather than on my own ability. Some people are very good at conversing with non-natives/language learners, they know which structures to avoid and how to give you helpful context.

When I chat with them, they make me feel like such a badass! Look at me, answering questions with ease, reacting naturally, returning every ping pong serve, no balls dropped! It makes me feel so much more fluent than I actually am.

Thank you to everyone at the conference that helped me feel that way 🥰

Have you had that experience when speaking a language with different people…sometimes you feel so fluent, other times you can’t seem to catch a single word?

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?

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