This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost. For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE: https://youtu.be/HgneyXvRI04
This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost. For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE: https://youtu.be/HgneyXvRI04
It originated in China and has been consumed in the country for over 2,000 years.[1][2] Tofu is a traditional component of many East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines;
...and although tofu is often used as a meat substitute in America, in Asia tofu is often used as a meat supplement--that is the tofu is often cooked alongside the meat, and takes on a bit of the flavor of the meat juices.
In other words, it's not considered a food only for vegetarians in Asia.
Tofu is originally from China, where it is called "dofu". It is called "tofu" in Japanese, however, and it is from Japanese that it came into English.
Years ago, I knew a guy in Japan who was dating a Chinese student. She was rather upset about the nomenclature. "It's originally from China," she said. "So you should use the Chinese name
dofu instead of the Japanese name tofu. Yet you say tofu in English. Why is that?"
The earliest documentation of the word in English is in the 1704 translation of Domingo Fernández Navarrete's A Collection of Voyages and Travels, that describes how tofu was made.[11] The word towfu also appears in a 1770 letter from the English merchant James Flint to Benjamin Franklin.[12]: 73 The term "bean curd(s)" for tofu has been used in the United States since at least 1840.[13][14]
Quick set-up (taken from here): He is in the middle of racism central/Mississippi and has luckily found haven with a friend for the weekend -- His friend has compiled news clippings and propoganda for him to rifle through (1950's internet - ha)...
I left them around eleven and meant to fall into bed. But the material P.D. had placed on the two bed tables fascinated me so that I studied it and made notes without sleeping until dawn. It is perhaps the most incredible collection of what East calls "assdom" in the South. It shows that the most obscene figures are not the ignorant ranting racists, but the legal minds who front for them, who "invent" for them the legislative proposals and the propaganda bulletins. They deliberately choose to foster distortions, always under the guise of patriotism, upon a people who have no means of checking the facts. Their appeals are to regional interest, showing complete contempt for privacy of conscience, and a willingness to destroy and subvert values that have traditionally been held supreme in this land.
This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost. For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE: https://youtu.be/HgneyXvRI04
This is multiple times now that I've gotten to a point where I felt that I couldn't remember all the vocabulary Duolingo was throwing at me, and felt that I had no choice but to start over and try to be more thorough about learning the vocabulary.
But no matter how thorough I try to be, no matter how much I try to be systematic about reviewing and consolidating old vocabulary, sooner or later I always seem to get to a point in the Duolingo course where my brain just can't remember it all.
At the same time, since we've returned to the United States, my daughter has started studying Spanish at school, and I've been helping her study by reviewing the numbers in Spanish and simple Spanish greetings.
Now, I never actually formally studied Spanish in school. I joined Spanish club in junior high school, but that was as far as I got. So I pretty much only know the numbers and the simple greetings. But what amazes me is that they've managed to stick in my head all these years, even though I haven't been using them during the past 20 plus years I've lived in Asia. (One seldom finds it necessary to use Spanish in Vietnam). And yet, I still remember them after all these years, but at the same time, I can't seem to remember the Vietnamese that I'm actually trying to study.
Why is that?
It occurs to me that the reason I remember my basic Spanish after all these years is for a couple reasons. First of all, we practiced it orally. (We began every session of Spanish club by reciting the greetings.) And secondly, I had a context in which I associated that language. I can still picture in my head the room where we had Spanish club, and where we recited those greetings.
By contrast, when I studied Vietnamese on Duolingo or quizlet, I was just typing words on a computer screen. No wonder very little of it was going into my long term memory.
The more I thought about it, the more this also seemed to be true of the other languages I have learned. I barely remember any of my high school Latin, but the bits that I do remember are mostly the Latin songs that we learned, and the Lord's Prayer in Latin, which we recited many times over in class. (I attended Christian schools.)
As for my Japanese, since leaving Japan 15 years ago, I've forgotten much of the Japanese that I once knew. But I still remember a lot of it. And in part, I remember a lot of it because I can still remember bits of conversations I had in Japanese. For example, I can remember a joke I made in Japanese that got a laugh at a party, or I can remember an important conversation I had with a Japanese friend that sticks in my mind, etc. And recalling those conversations helps me to remember Japanese vocabulary.
So, the lesson is obvious. Language in context is memorable. Practicing vocabulary on a computer screen is not memorable.
So, to that end, I've decided to supplement my language study on Duolingo by trying to memorize some clips of Vietnamese conversation that I can find on Youtube.
The idea is to listen to the videos every day (to get them really stuck into my head), while also using quizlet to practice both the individual vocabuarly from those videos, as well as the full sentences.
The first video I'm doing in this series--Basic Vietnamese Verbs--actually doesn't fit this criteria exactly, because it's not a conversation. However, I'm starting off with it for 3 reasons:
This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost. For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE: https://youtu.be/HgneyXvRI04
At the shoe stand, Sterling did not give his usual cordial greeting. His eyes looked yellower than usual.
“You heard?” he asked.
“No . . . I haven’t heard anything . . .”
He told me the Mississippi jury refused to indict in the Parker lynch case. The news had spread over the quarter like a wave of acid. Everyone talked of it. Not since I was in Europe, when the Russo-German Pact of 1939 was signed, had I seen news spread such bitterness and despair.
(This is from p.48-49, but the case also gets discussed a few more times later in the book.)
Sounds like this case was a really big deal back in its day, but I never even heard of it.
It's strange. You think that you learned all the major events in the Civil Rights Movement. After all, I learned about Emmet Till, The Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, The Scottsboro Boys, Medgar Evers, etc. And I thought I knew it all. But this is a reminder that there was a whole lot more stuff happening that never makes it into the history classroom--probably just because there's just way too much to talk about, so the teachers have to just choose a couple of cases to talk about, rather than try to include everything.
Anyway, if you (like me) had never heard of the Parker lynch case, you can read all about it on Wikipedia. It's not pleasant reading, but it is American history.
Mack Charles Parker (May 20, 1936 – April 24, 1959) was a Black American victim of lynching in the United States. He had been accused of raping a pregnant white woman in northern Pearl River County, Mississippi. Three days before he was to stand trial, Parker was kidnapped from his jail cell in the Pearl River County Courthouse by a mob, beaten and shot. His body was found in the Pearl River, 20 miles west of Poplarville, 10 days later. Following an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the men who killed him were released. Despite confessions, no one was ever indicted for the killing.[1][2][3][4] Historian Howard Smead called the killing the "last classic lynching in America."[5]
This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost. For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE: https://youtu.be/HgneyXvRI04
