While my Internet connection Chez Lo is faster now than it was two years ago (when it was basically non-existent), it is still not great. And that is why it has taken me two days and counting to upload my Vodoun Festival videos to YouTube so that I can share my next installment in the Benin-Togo-Ghana chronicles.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post them early next week, but in the meantime, here are some links I stockpiled so that I could one day share them here for your reading pleasure:

An amusing essay: Does Duolingo even work?

I’ve posted here before about untranslatable words in other languages. It’s interesting to see what the French consider to be untranslatable words in English.

Here’s an article from a few months ago – about why the French don’t show excitement – that is actually quite apropos for me to share now, the same week as my post about funny faux amis.

Even passive exposure can help you discriminate speech in another language, so put on that background radio/TV/computer/iPad!

That reminds me of the Paul Noth cartoon in the New Yorker that made me seriously LOL a couple of weeks ago:

And with that, I’m walking away from my screen and going to bed.

Oh, wait, before I do.. one more insightful and ever so slightly relevant thing I read ages ago but never shared (and which reminds me, perversely, to encourage you to check out my Instagram profile if you want to see some of my vacation pix ahead of me posting them here):

Good night and good weekend, all!

[Saturday addendum via Irene Pedruelo‘s listserve: this essay on “privilege-centered design” is relevant well beyond design. Amazing quote: “If we only observe and imagine those who resemble ourselves, then what we call empathy is merely introspection.”]