I Am Learning Japanese. Here Is the Map (Month 0)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0200

千里の道も一歩から Even a journey of a thousand ri begins with a single step.

Tomorrow, September 1st, I start studying Japanese. The deadline I gave myself is August 31st, 2029. Three years, thirty to sixty minutes a day, starting from absolute zero. And starting today I’m going to publish a monthly update here, every month, for thirty six months, so the whole thing is documented in public and I can’t pretend in month nineteen that I never said any of this.

My rant about the languages I speak (and why Spanish is my favorite)

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

With my recent move to the Italian peninsula I had a very interesting challenge alongside others: I had to learn Italian. I dove into grammar studies, consumed various audiovisual materials and today I find myself in Italy using this wonderful language.

With that, the following conversation came up:

“Which languages do you speak?”
“Speak fluently? Spanish, Portuguese, English and Italian. Catalan I can try a little bit, but I wouldn’t count it”
“Wow, so you fluently speak 4 languages, right?”
“Yes… four…”

And honestly I hadn’t stopped to think about it. Four languages. It is absolutely nothing out of this world, but I didn’t have this realization that it had been a while since I was just bilingual. Portuguese is the language of where I was born, Spanish of where I was raised, Italian of where I am right now and English… well, English was a necessary evil for someone who works in IT and likes to travel. But I want to share my perspective on some aspects of these four languages that don’t necessarily have any philological or scientific basis. These are my two cents on how I see each of these languages.

Grammar on doismiu - dispatches from the infernal archive

I Am Learning Japanese. Here Is the Map (Month 0)

My rant about the languages I speak (and why Spanish is my favorite)