'Machigai Podcast' Debuts!
Tokyo, Japan - Sep 18, 2006 (PRN):
Tim Young, author of two books and a newspaper column on common mistakes Japanese make in English, this week launched a weekly podcast on the same topic.
Machigai Podcast ( www.machigai.com ) features Young and co-host Kazumi Sashida in several short skits demonstrating common mistakes and how to correct them.
"Some of the mistakes have been covered in my column or my books," says Young, "but others haven't. Working in an audio medium means that while, for example, spelling mistakes become harder to explain than they are in print, pronunciation mistakes are now much easier to present. I'm even planning on covering a few intonation mistakes, which I wouldn't bother trying to do in print."
One pronunciation mistake in particular is a weekly focus of the podcast. "There's a feature called 'L or R' where every week I say a word that includes either an L or an R. The listener has to figure out whether I'm saying, for example, 'clue' or 'crew.' The answer is posted on the web site."
The machigai.com web site includes podcast scripts, photos of funny English found on signs in Tokyo, and a weekly quiz question for site visitors to find out whether they make certain mistakes. "The quiz is also for my own research," says Young. "The results will help me decide which mistakes to write about for my column in Mainichi Weekly."
Young's Mainichi Weekly column, "Machigai!", began in April 2003. His first book, "Nihonjin no Eigo Iimachigai" (ALC), was published in 2005. "Sono Eigo, Tsuujimasen!" (Daiwa Shobo), a collection of columns, was released in May 2006.
Young is a longtime resident of Tokyo and former Communications Manager at Tokyo American Club. He has also been an English teacher for his entire stay in Japan.
