So, remember the Twyla Tharp “Dancing to Japanese Fluency” thing from before? Good times, huh? And remember how, in the course of all the dancing talk, we made mention of a little Japanese book with a powerful idea? And remember how we promised to get into a lot of detail about it someday? No? Yes?…
Mental Tools
Progress Over Perfection
by khatzumoto
“Give yourself permission to focus on progress, not perfection.” Robyn O’Brien, author of The Unhealthy Truth: One Mother’s Shocking Investigation into the Dangers of America’s Food Supply — and What Every Family Can Do to Protect Itself Progress over perfection. It’s true for eating, true for writing, true for getting used to a language. You…
What Can A Dancer Teach You About Learning Japanese?
by khatzumoto
What can a dancer teach you about learning languages? As it turns out, just about everything. Twyla Tharp. It’s not a household name. In fact, whenever I hear it, I picture Tilda Swinton — another woman lots of T’s in her name and very little fat on her body. …Just sayin’. Anyway, it turns out…
Why Are You Acting Like A Deadbeat Dad Language Learner?
by khatzumoto
The day you stop sucking at the language isn’t the end of the journey, it’s the beginning. Universities pay full, luscious lip service to this. Graduation is called “commencement”, at least in North America. But lip service it is. Full lusciousness notwithstanding. It’s said that most peoples learning — in fact, all nonfunctional reading —…
Why Everything You Do Wrong Is Right
by khatzumoto
You are not a screw-up. You are not lazy. You work hard. Too hard. At things that don’t matter. You work hard at struggling and self-blame and self-hate. You work hard at worrying. You work hard at pacing the floor. You work hard at imagining terrifying, low-probability contingencies. You work hard on trying to force…
You’re not learning the language…
by khatzumoto
…You already know the language. It already belongs to you. You’re just maintaining your knowledge. You’re not struggling and there is no “there” to get to. You’re not a foreigner; you’re just a remedial native speaker who was functionally deaf (not enough hearing hours) and is now getting speech therapy.