I encountered a delicious etymological treat this week. Emojis! 😋I did not know that “emoji” is a Japanese word. I thought it was the internet’s way of taking the word “emotion” and shortening it or combining it with something, as the internet loves to do. It was a light bulb moment. 💡 Ah, ha! This is why there are so many Japanese kanji and Japanese cultural items in the emoji library!
Let’s break down the word in Japanese.
Continue reading “Emoji Etymology”
Have you ever learned a word incorrectly because you misheard it? You won’t know at the time, of course. Such a realization comes afterward when you bump up against others using the word, and your lexical paradigm doesn’t match your interlocutor’s.
You see, our brains are meaning-making machines and will try to make meaning make sense even when it does not, and will fill in words it thinks it hears. The school game telephone (also known as Chinese whispers) exploits this property linguistically known as a mondegreen, which got its name through Sylvia Wright’s famous mishearing of the poetic line “layd him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen.”
Continue reading “Misheard Words”
After my firstborn, a combination of stress and genetics triggered Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in me. (The fact that this disease was discovered by a Japanese person does not lose its irony on me.) I was exhausted. There is no tired like autoimmune tired. If you have an autoimmune disease, you understand and probably, like me, are willing to try any diet to regain scraps of energy to simply function.
Continue reading “Almond Bread”
“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
This quote describes me and blogging perfectly. I hope my readers will enjoy my growth process as much as my content.
What are you currently doing in order to do?
Parents are stressed. Teachers are stressed. I know because I am a parent and a teacher. I have also learned that if I find a tool that helps me, it may also be a benefit to others.
Therefore, I’m providing a free resource to help those thrust into telework due to COVID-19.
Continue reading “How Can I Help? Freebies!”
I wrote this poem during my high school days when I was in my third depression, and when I found what an incredible healing tool writing could be. The 14th stanza (I’ve put it in bold.) has become a mantra for me when life splits at the seams.
(Woab! I just had a metacognition flash typing that paragraph: The act of finding something beautiful in a terrible time reflects the poem’s message itself. I found writing in my depression. [Oh, the isometric beauty!])
Continue reading “Tea Party”
Being able to speak a language is subjective. I have many Japanese friends who speak beautiful English, but do not consider themselves to be English speakers. (This could just be Japanese humility though and not their true opinion： 本音 vs. 建前.
Continue reading “How many languages do you speak?”