Japanese Days of the Week Notes Personal notes on Japanese day names — Nichiyōbi (Sunday, 日曜日, sun-day), Getsuyōbi (Monday, 月曜日, moon-day), Kayōbi (Tuesday, 火曜日, fire-day), etc. — and how they encode the classical East Asian five-element system (fire, water, wood, metal, earth) alongside sun and moon.
Japanese Family Vocabulary: 子供, 父, 母, お母さん Personal notes on Japanese family vocabulary — the formal/humble vs. honorific distinction (chichi vs. otōsan for father; haha vs. okāsan for mother) — a grammatically obligatory respect system that requires knowing whether you’re speaking about your own family (humble forms) or someone else’s (honorific forms).
Chikatetsu (地下鉄) = Subway, Jitensha (自転車) = Bicycle — Etymology Notes Personal etymology notes on Japanese transportation vocabulary: chikatetsu literally means “underground iron” (地下 = underground + 鉄 = iron/metal); jitensha literally means “self-turning vehicle” (自 = self + 転 = turn + 車 = vehicle). The transparent compound structure of Japanese vocabulary is a learner resource — knowing the morphemes unlocks understanding of new compounds.
John Garrison Quora: Japanese vs Chinese vs Korean Difficulty A Quora answer by John Garrison comparing the difficulty of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean for English-speaking learners — covering the different writing system burdens (Japanese: three scripts; Chinese: characters only; Korean: Hangul phonetic alphabet), grammatical distance from English, and the amount of Sino-Xenic vocabulary shared between the languages.
Japanese Learning Progress Notes Personal learning progress log: 239 new kanji and 149 different meanings; 241 new kanji and 144 new at end of section 2; 30 and 14 at section 3.1; 365-day Duolingo streak still at ~1,500 words. The progress record illustrates the front-loaded difficulty curve of Japanese: vocabulary accumulation is initially slow due to the kanji learning requirement.
Japanese Name Meaning: 宝物家 信念 = “Takaramonouchi Shinnen” / “Srinivasan Vishwas” A personal exploration of how the name “Srinivasan Vishwas” might be rendered in Japanese kanji with meaningful equivalents: 宝物家 (Takaramonouchi = “treasure-house family,” a rendering of Srinivasan/Sri = prosperity + nivāsa = dwelling) and 信念 (Shinnen = “faith/conviction,” matching Vishwas = trust/faith).
ヴィシュヴァス (Vishwas in Katakana) The personal name “Vishwas” rendered in Japanese katakana — the syllabic script used for foreign names and loanwords — as a phonetic approximation. The katakana rendering demonstrates how foreign phoneme clusters (like the /vʃ/ in Vishwas) must be restructured to fit Japanese CV syllable phonotactics.
誕生日おめでとうございます！知恵雷神さん (Birthday Greeting in Japanese) A birthday greeting in Japanese — tanjōbi omedetō gozaimasu = “Happy Birthday, honorable” + a Japanese rendering of a Sanskrit name. A personal note demonstrating how formal Japanese politeness markers (gozaimasu) attach to celebratory formulas.
Maki Asakawa — Japanese Blues Singer A note on Maki Asakawa — the iconic Japanese blues and cabaret singer of the 1960s–80s who interpreted Western blues and jazz through a distinctly Japanese aesthetic sensibility, and who inspired musicians across multiple generations. An example of Japan’s creative absorption and transformation of imported musical genres.
Ichi-go Ichi-e — Wikipedia (Japanese Concept) The Japanese concept ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会, “one time, one meeting”) — the idea that each encounter is unique and will never recur exactly, and should therefore be treasured fully in the moment. The concept originates in tea ceremony philosophy and has broad cultural resonance as a Japanese approach to presence and impermanence.
Dear Duolingo: Do Other Languages Have Diminutives? A Duolingo blog post exploring diminutive formation across languages — Spanish (-ito/-ita), Russian (-k-), Italian (-ino), Kannada (-appa/-amma for familial endearment), and Japanese (-chan). The cross-linguistic survey reveals how universal the need for affectionate/small-size marking is, expressed through typologically varied morphological strategies. https://blog.duolingo.com/diminutives-in-spanish-and-other-languages/
Dear Duolingo: Can You Learn a Language in 6 Months? A Duolingo blog post addressing the popular claim that any language can be learned in 6 months — examining what “learning” means (survival vs. professional proficiency), how language difficulty interacts with target level and learner background, and realistic timelines for achieving different proficiency benchmarks.
Dear Duolingo: Can You Forget Your First Language? A Duolingo blog post on first-language attrition — the documented phenomenon of heritage speakers gradually losing fluency in their first language when immersed in a dominant second language environment. Relevant for Kannada heritage speakers in diaspora communities.
How to Pull Yourself out of a Learning Slump (Duolingo Blog) Motivational and practical advice from Duolingo on maintaining language learning consistency through plateaus, motivation dips, and periods of slow visible progress — covering habit design, accountability structures, and reframing progress metrics.
Why Do Mexican Students Learn Hieroglyphics in Math Class? (Duolingo Blog) A Duolingo piece on the Aztec vigesimal (base-20) numerical system and its symbols, which are incorporated into some Mexican mathematics curricula as a cultural heritage component. Interesting parallel to the proto-Dravidian numeral reconstruction above — both represent base-10 systems with distinct verbal and symbolic encoding.