A few weeks ago we put out a question to the Facebook page asking if users would be interested in a monthly column that responded to reader questions about Chinese and Japanese. Many replied with an enthusiastic YES, so today we’ll be outlining exactly what our “Dear Skritter” column will include, and how you can participate.
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| Dear Skritter… why are you such an awesome program?! |
The Goal:
We are aiming to create a monthly column that explores specific questions that you, the readers, would like answered. In the beginning, the posts will target both Chinese and Japanese, at least until we have enough participation to justify writing separate posts for each. The Japanese questions will be answered by, Jeremy, our resident Japanese expert, while I will be handling the Chinese side of things.
This new segment is very much in the beta phase, so things are subject to change as we work out the kinks and details, but we’re very excited to be able to use this medium as a way to discuss language (and Skritter) related questions for all to see.
How to submit questions:
Jeremy and I will check the forum posts, the Facebook page, and the Twitter feed for any questions you might have, but the easiest way to submit questions is still to send an email to: skritter@skritter.com with the subject line “Dear Skritter.”
Types of Questions:
While we not experts on everything Japanese and Chinese related, or native speakers of either language, we’ll try our best to answer anything you can think of. We’ve been studying these languages for a very long time, and are certainly up to the challenges your questions are likely to provide.
Confused about the usage of a word; unclear about a particular grammar pattern; don’t know why a particular character is written the way it is, ask away! We’ll do our best to answer any and all questions you might have. And in the rare event that we don’t know the answer, we’ll try our best to at least point you in the right direction, or ask someone (native speakers) what they think.
When will my question be answered:
In the beginning we hope to at least answer five or six questions a month (from each language) in the order they arrive in the inbox. The ones that don’t make the cut for that particular month will be responded to the following month. All of the post will be archived on the blog, with a few of the more recent posts linked to in the most current post. We hope that after a few months this will turn into an excellent resource for all of our readers, regardless of language level.
We hope that you’re all as excited about this new column as we are. If you have any thoughts or comments about “Dear Skritter,” please be sure to share them in the comments below, or send us an email with some of those questions you’ve been dying to know the answer to.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the first episode of “Dear Skritter” sometime in August!