Here are some miscellaneous things I learned during the past month. Enjoy.
- At the beginning of the year I followed a two-week meal plan from this book… One thing I learned was that I should stop pretending to like kale.
2. Another thing is that bulgur is an easy and delicious alternative to brown rice (I made it with herbs and lemon zest).
3. Good news! I learned from this podcast that old, blemished mushrooms that have been left in the fridge for a week actually have more flavour than fresh ones.
4. You can ripen avocados by leaving them in a paper bag with flour for a day or two.
5. Lima, Peru is the second largest desert city in the world. (Can you guess which is the first?)
6. Because tigers only attack from behind, people have avoided attacks by wearing masks on the backs of their heads. (Unfortunately the tigers eventually caught on to the trick.)
7. It is not until babies are nine months old that the sounds they make begin to mimic the rhythms of the language people around them are speaking (e.g. English, French, Chinese).
I learned this from this fascinating book, which I had to return to the library before finishing it. (I plan to borrow it again as soon as possible!)
Fun trivia. Thanks!
That book sounds great; will see if I can find it in our library system. I did know (from linguistics courses years ago) that we are all born able to produce all the sounds in all human languages; then we learn which ones are useful in our own environment, and discard/forget those that we aren’t hearing. Language acquisition (first, second or more) is fascinating!
Yes, I’d love to learn more about linguistics someday.