Well, today’s little post is just about to make me feel old and aged. But yes, The Language Closet has officially turned 10 years old today! I had taken the time to reflect on the changes, growth, amongst other aspects which have happened on this very website, as with other milestones achieved during my decade writing on The Language Closet.

The Language Closet was always meant as a place on the Internet for me to write and share experiences in language learning, but it has also spread out to introduce the online audiences to writing systems, linguistics concepts, and other languages and language varieties that many would not be very familiar with. From the introductions to the writing systems of Africa way back in 2017, to various indigenous languages all over the world in more recent years, I hope that through these introductions, I have shed light on some aspects of human cultures and languages that may be obscure to many people. Over time, I have also ramped up the focus on some journal papers in linguistics, and breaking down some linguistics concepts that I have raised every now and then in my introductions. Language learning applications have also received their own fair share of reviews, and I look forward to do more of them in future when the commitment allows.

There were also several things that I have promised in previous anniversary posts that I did not end up accomplishing. Things like aesthetic updates and progressing with some post series are some aspects that I have intended to do, but long put off over an uncertainty on how to progress. I have wanted to do a redesign of The Language Closet to give the blog a nice refreshing look, but choosing a style has definitely proven difficult for me. I think the first thing I might consider working on is the colour palette, to improve colour contrasts between text and background, before working on what WordPress has to offer when setting the layout of posts and things like that. However, the logo and the main header of The Language Closet will not change for the foreseeable future, as I am pretty satisfied with these designs and the branding attached to the website.

Sticking on the aesthetic theme, I have been thinking of improving the organisation of posts on this website. Posts are currently sorted into several categories and sub-categories, and come with their own tags. Additionally, some posts reference previously published posts, with many of these referrals never actually getting their own links back. With more than 350 published posts already, I think an organisational rework is long needed, and I would be working on some sort of proper organisational system for these posts over time. Things will move around during this period of organisation, but I aim to complete this rework in the coming weeks.

For this year’s handwriting update, I have decided to do something a little different. Instead of listing out the letters or characters in an alphabet, abjad, or syllabary, I have put together some pangrams. These are basically sentences that contain all the letters of a certain alphabet at least once. Sometimes, you would also encounter perfect pangrams, which use every letter of the alphabet only once. And so, I have here some pangrams, in Greek, Japanese, and Arabic!

To conclude, I have really enjoyed writing on The Language Closet for the past 10 years, and I do look forward to continue writing for years more. Thank you so so much for chancing upon The Language Closet and taking a read, and I will continue to do my best researching, writing, and maintaining this very site.

-Zui