I used to try hard to remember the pronunciations of English words by looking up the phonetic symbols over and over again in a dictionary, which was indeed quite inefficient. This evening I read a post about learning English, and one of the viewpoints of the author was that one should remember the pronunciations via listening instead of phonetic symbols. I believed he was right after I corrected one of the confusing pronunciations of one word “specify” ([e] or for the “e”) from the VOA radio programs.
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As a freelancer (currently working as a contractor) and a dad of three kids, I truly appreciate your donation to support my writing and open-source software development! Your contribution helps me cope with financial uncertainty better, so I can spend more time on producing high-quality content and software. You can make a donation through methods below.
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I’ll give back a significant portion of the donations to the open-source community and charities. For the record, I received about $30,000 in total (before tax) in 2024-25, and gave back about $15,000 (after tax).