I find that I’ve written quite a few jocular posts about language learning—here are some faves.
Most remarkably, how not to learn Japanese:
On Chinese:
- two classic stories from Paul Kratochvil (here and here), as well as
- struggling with some arcane pinyin, and
- Changing language

Intriguing shopfront https://stephenjones.blog/2017/09/10/shabi/
On French:
- for swearing and Verlan, French slang
- gendered nouns
- A French letter, on the limited French vocabulary of the English
- Comment te dire adieu (with a side-dish of German and Italian).
See also
- Some Portuguese epigrams
- Ogonek and Til
- Some Venetian greetings
- Some unlikely Turkish vocabulary
- Tickety-boo.
On the importance of placeholders in achieving fluency:
When watching a film in English, the strange compulsion to follow the subtitles in a foreign language that you barely know:
- Monty Python on Creative tribulations
- Shoeshine Johnny.
And here David Sedaris covers various languages, including Japanese and German:
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