Author: Richard Raycraft

Journalist and audio nerd. Thrill seeker.

Why I’m learning Esperanto, a constructed a language

July 5, 2018

Languages have never been my strong suit.

An assumption many Canadians have run into abroad, myself included, is that most people in our country are bilingual. I’ve found that many non-Canadians believe this in spite of knowing that exactly one province in our federation is majority francophone.

“But isn’t it taught in all the schools?” they ask.

It is — poorly. At least, I felt it was taught poorly to me. I can’t pin all of the blame for my monolingualism on Ontario’s public school system: my dad actively discouraged my French language education. But I feel as though a pretty important element that nine year-olds should know before they’re taught a second language was conspicuously absent from my first French class in fourth grade.
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Muay Thai adventure final post: I’m back

June 2, 2018

I’ve been back from Southeast Asia for about three weeks now. Many of you have wondered what’s happened to my serialized memoir on this blog. You’ve probably seen a lot of my posts on social media, so you might have a sense of my experiences over the past month or so, but little reflection on them. I’ve missed about 20-30 posts. I hope this one will make up for that. It’s just a more concise version of what I would have written anyway, and brevity is always a good thing.
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Muay Thai adventure days 5-8: Slacking through an ice storm

April 16, 2018

So yeah, Southern Ontario got hit with an ice storm Saturday. I went to class Friday, couldn’t make class Saturday and the gym was closed because of the weather Sunday. It’s Monday afternoon as of writing. I’m not sure if I can even safely get to class today, given that a lot of government services are telling people to stay off the roads if possible. As much as I love going, it’s not worth risking a car accident. We’ll see in a few hours.
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