Letters in a Second Language
A letter every Friday: one word, one small story and one sentence to try writing.
Writing on a night train
What I write in a notebook when the carriage is dark and I cannot look anything up.
The words I learned at the market
Names of jars, scales and greens that no textbook taught me, learned from a woman at a stall.
Three words I keep in my pocket
Three small words that I still get wrong, and the sentences I wrote to fix them.
Saying a sentence on every stair
How I practise a sentence aloud on each flight of stairs until it sounds like mine.
Reading both pages side by side
Why I read a text in two languages with a pencil, and what the arrows taught me.
What my first language cannot say
The meadow of my childhood has a word for hay drying in the sun, and I have not found its twin.
A story I wrote in the snow
The first story I wrote in my second language began on a winter evening and took a month.
Why I keep a paper dictionary
A battered book, a highlighter and the small pleasure of finding a word by hand.
Reading aloud to an empty room
What changes when you hear your own writing in a voice that is not quite yours yet.
Ten sentences a day for a month
A plain habit, a cheap notebook and what thirty days of ten sentences did for my writing.
Newsletter
Letters in a Second Language
A short letter every Friday: one word, one small story and one sentence to try writing in your own second language.
2026-11-05
2026-11-04
2026-11-03
2026-11-02