Toki-Pona is a minimalistic artificial language that contains about hundred words. The language was created by Sonia Lang in 2001. 

I would like to learn this language because this can be used as a basement for all other languages - all most importnat words are here.

See Toki-Pona dictionary.

I am spending most of the life coding in IntelliJ IDEA but still not familiar with all it's shortcuts. I made so far several attempts to master shortcuts of this IDE. Each time by some reason the knowledge evaporated from my memory.

The space repetition approach solves this problem very effectively. I have created an IntelliJ IDEA Shortcuts Dictionary for Mac to learn it's shortcuts. Strange that I did non do it earlier.

Having shortcuts remembered helps to decrease cognitive load. I noticed that now I can work longer and can better focus on things that have to be done instead of fighting the editor using mouse.

The idea has long been ripening to start writing about how you can significantly improve the quality of language learning. It has long been clear that there is no one universal way to learn a foreign language, but there are many ways to make this process more interesting and easier. Moreover, there are many ways of these, and since all people are different, then these methods are completely different - one is suitable for someone, for someone else. This is what I want to start writing about. Whether this will work out or not, time will tell.

And the first way to learn a language, with the help of which I learned English quite well, was reading books in the original language. At the same time, the method is rather controversial and is not suitable for everyone.

When I was visiting London I visited a bookstore and bought the first book I liked - it was "Journey to Ixtlan" by Carlos Castaneda. I already read fragments of this work in translation when it was published in old russian magazines - now I had the opportunity to read this thing in the original. Since my English was very weak at that time, I started a notebook and wrote down all the unfamiliar words that came across in the text. That being said, I was wondering how many new words I would add as I read as I moved through the text as I read it. This technique for me personally turned out to be extremely effective in terms of pumping vocabulary.

Recently, work on improving the service has been resumed again. Partially, this is due to the fact that now the creator of the project moved to Germany and resumed learning the language - this time German.

The mobile application has returned to Google Play again and acquired new cool features.

Life goes on!

Now it’s time to explain the differences between essere and stare. Essere means “to be” or “to exist”, while stare usually means “to stay” but can be used where English idiomatics use “to be”. The rules are summarized here:

Essere is used to indicate more permanent aspects of people or things, such as -

1. Identity – Io sono Carla. (“I am Carla”)
2. Profession – Egli è un professore. (“He is a professor.”)
3. Origin – Noi siamo di Milano. (“We are from Milan.”)
4. Religious or political affiliation – Tu sei cattolico? (“You are Catholic?”)
5. Time of day or date – Sono le otto. (“It is 8 o’clock.”)
6. Possession – La casa è di Giovanna. (“It is Giovanna’s house.”)
7. Nationality – Sono Italiano. (“I am from Italy.”)
8. Physical aspects or characteristics of something – Le sedie sono verdi. (“The chairs are green.”)
9. Essential qualities of something or someone – Sono vecchio. Sei antipatico. (“I am old. You are unpleasant.”)
10. Location – La sedia è in cucina. (“The chair is in the kitchen.”), but also, more rarely – La sedia sta in cucina. (“The chair is in the kitchen.”)
11. Condition or emotion that is subject to change – Sono malato. (“I am sick.”)
12. Personal observations or reactions, how something “seems” or “feels” – La cucina è pulita. (“The kitchen is/ seems clean.”).

Stare is used to indicate precise locations, in idioms and as auxiliary, such as -

1. Idiomatic sentences – Sto bene. (“I am well.”)
2. Idiomatic sentences – Sto male. (“I feel bad.”)
3. Location – La sedia sta in cucina. (“The chair is in the kitchen.”)
4. Continuous tense – Sto correndo. (“I am running.”).

The above lists of when to use essere and stare have to be memorized – using them incorrectly means you will be less likely to be understood, and people will definitely know you are not a native speaker. The same goes for the conjugations of essere and stare. Every Italian verb has a conjugation, and memorizing them just goes along with learning the language.

Pasted from here

Fixed small, but annoying bug that was breaking up the ability to edit dicionaries online. Now this function is working well. Thanks for using my site.

Everyone knows how important to be fluent with Katakana and Hiragana when first touching Japanese language, but how to learn all these symbols? There are about 40 characters for each alphabet and about 30 combinations that should be memorized.

I tried several different approaches, I was making paper cards, I was forcing myself to write these characters on paper, but most efficient way for me appeared learning kana using mobile phone software. Learning kana symbols by small peaces every day helped me to learn all these characters in several weeks.

Now you can learn katakana and hiragana using superwords - the katakana and hiragana dictionaries was added here.

Happy learning!