Confessions of a Word Addict

- take an ebook in your target language that you wanna read - convert epub to txt - copy txt into unique wordlist maker (http://caerphoto.com/uwc/) - remove words in the list you already know - maybe focus on keeping the high frequency new words - make this list into flashcard deck badda bing badda boom

“In 1404, King Taejong fell from his horse during a hunting expedition. Embarrassed, looking to his left and right, he commanded, “Do not let the historian find out about this.” To his disappointment, the historian accompanying the hunting party included these words in the annals, in addition to a description of the king’s fall.“

i thought maybe this was fake, but there’s even a citation!

Apparently the recorders were really intense about this. We have a record of King Taejong complaining about a recorder who followed him on a hunt in disguise and another who eavesdropped on him behind a screen. No one was allowed to see the records, even the king (one king did and killed five men based on what was written there, after which they took greater care to ensure it would never happen again), and changing the content or disclosing it was a capital punishment. Even when there were rival political factions trying to influence the writers, they wrote down what was a revision and what wasn’t and kept an original version with no revisions in it.

Chai tea bag + lil but of brown sugar + apple cider packet + 16 oz. mug of hot but not quite boiling water

tags by @eridan-ampora

The best thing about this is the words are all six letters long because they make up a game board. The board had three rows of twelve spaces, divided into two lots of six on each row. It's called Ludus duodecim scriptorum, a sort of Roman backgammon. So they used this little phrase not just as the base for their own life philosophy but as an actual base for the physical enactment of that enjoyment - a board game. I just love the simple poetry of that fact.

another fun fact about this game!! it was a gambling game often played by roman soldiers, and they used six-letter words instead of place markers because gambling was illegal, so if they were caught playing there would be no proof it was gambling!

when i started my last director job at a university, they told me one of my duties would be to write all the chancellor’s letters. me: “cool. but why though?” them: “English isn’t the chancellor’s first language.” me: “I’m aware of that.” them: “the chancellor likes the suggestions that autocorrect gives him if he misspells something.” me: “Ah.” them: hands me a copy of a letter the chancellor sent to a donor who had just given a million-dollar gift to the university, which includes the following: ‘The profundity of your gift fills us with the greatest horror. In recognition we have prepared a special plague to compromise you and your family’.