Lingotopia

That was the beautiful view from our terrasse at Lake Garda. We stayed for two weeks in August at a holiday apartment in a small town up a mountain and all our neighbours were Italian. Prior to travelling there, I asked on italki, if it would be possible to communicate in French or Spanish in Italy. I have tried that already when I once went to Bologna many years ago and couldn't find help when asking for the way in English. So I asked in French and with my knowledge of Latin, I somehow deciphered the reply in Italian. But some (non-Italian) italki users told me that it would be extremely rude to ask the way in another language than the local one. A user asked me if I wouldn't find it rude if someone asked me the way in Dutch instead of German. No, I wouldn't feel offended at all. I don't expect tourists to learn German. But since I don't want to be rude, I started to familiarise myself with the Italian basics two weeks before the holiday and took two online clas...

One of my preferred methods of learning multiple languages at the same time, is reading something in one language and then writing about it in another language. So, this month, I take part in the Chinese reading challenge by Hacking Chinese and decided to read an anthology by Yu Qiuyu  ( 余秋雨读本 ), one of the most famous and influential contemporary writers in China. I want to use what I read as an inspiration for writing texts in other languages. So, yesterday I wrote a short text in Italian about a topic inspired by this book. Let me first explain the topic a bit. The first essay in the anthology is about paifang , traditional Chinese arches. When I stumbled upon the word zhenjie paifang (贞节牌坊), which means chastity arch , I remembered that I've been to a village called Tangyue (堂樾) in Anhui Province 14 years ago. The village is famous for their seven memorial archways built by the Bao family during the course of several centuries. The first archway can be traced back to...