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Language - Blog Posts
the man hadn't met the russian i think🧍🏼♀️
i am fighting tears this language is a punishment even my ginger tea isn't helping
I took a walk while listening to this podcast and it made me realise that i am fucked up but heyy i made a new friend on my way home 🤸🏼♀️
Finished the book i've decided to read on a whim it was pretty good read ngl.Electricity is shit here,our lights went off again so i had to light a candle while studying russian.The old books were my great grandmother's they are older than my entire family i think.And yes i still have old cassettes of mortal combat lol.Me and my lil brother were addicted to this video game.
all days seem like the others since i don't quite leave the house much often these days just some housework,some reading and language learning and and and most importantly praying
today was a grammar day so i died a little (at least verb conjugations are little bit easier than cases of nouns :') )
trying to read Harry Potter in russian because i like to torture myself 💁🏼♀️
Best language learning tips & masterlists from other bloggers I’ve come across
(these posts are not my own!)
THE HOLY GRAIL of language learning (-> seriously tho, this is the BEST thing I’ve ever come across)
Tips:
Some language learning exercises and tips
20 Favorite Language Learning Tips
what should you be reading to maximize your language learning?
tips for learning a language (things i wish i knew before i started)
language learning and langblr tips
Tips on how to read in your target language for longer periods of time
Tips and inspiration from Fluent in 3 months by Benny Lewis
Tips for learning a sign language
Tips for relearning your second first language
How to:
how to self teach a new language
learning a language: how to
learning languages and how to make it fun
how to study languages
how to practice speaking in a foreign language
how to learn a language when you don’t know where to start
how to make a schedule for language learning
How to keep track of learning more than one language at the same time
Masterposts:
Language Study Master Post
Swedish Resources Masterpost
French Resouces Masterpost
Italian Resources Masterpost
Resource List for Learning German
Challenges:
Language-Sanctuary Langblr Challenge
language learning checkerboard challenge
Word lists:
2+ months of language learning prompts
list of words you need to know in your target language, in 3 levels
Other stuff:
bullet journal dedicated to language learning
over 400 language related youtube channels in 50+ languages
TED talks about language (learning)
Learning the Alien Languages of Star Trek
.
Feel free to reblog and add your own lists / masterlists!
Masterlist for learning languages
Brick-by-brick language learning challenge
Best language learning tips & masterlists from other bloggers I’ve come across
my tips for a language study plan
topics for new vocabulary
how to find a language partner
my tips for how to practice writing in your target language
Recommendations for Learning Languages & Other Stuff
Learning a language = learning a culture
Vocab list templates: #1, #2, #3
Some easy Fantasy books to read in your target language
Language Learning Tips: #1, #2
6 tips for learning languages
App for organizing your language-learning (and anything else): Trello
Apps i use to learn languages
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Requests / Asks:
-> you can find all my answered asks by searching for #ask, #ask response or #request
Indo-European Language Families
Improving your vocab
German infinitive & when to use it
English word order
How to find a language learning partner
Changing a game to your target language & "harmful" learning strategies
Can you get away with just using "das" the majority of the time in Germany?
Do you have any tips on how to improve your writing in your target language?
Do you have any resources/methods about how to reach an academic level in the language you’re learning (& how to improve your writing)?
Do you have any linguistic recourses on Ruhrpott-Deutsch?
do u have any advice for ppl who want to study linguistics and languages but couldnt afford to study it at school?? thanks if you answer this, have a great day
yeah! you can easily download textbooks online and study from them AND I do have a dropbox full of linguistics textbooks!
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qm7x5dz8fu4bdlp/AADshTfRGZG5JZALkDV6wFlwa?dl=0
it includes phonetics/phonology, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, morphology, and etymology.
I also have another dropbox folder full of language textbooks:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tdm26h60ccl9pe1/AABg0B3mOGaWLG9Kfyuvut6wa?dl=0
As of Sep 20: Includes 76 textbooks including Arabic, ASL, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Welsh :)
general language learning resources
dictionaries:
wordreference - has spanish, french, italian, portuguese, catalan, german, swedish, dutch, russian, polish, romanian, czech, greek, turkish, chinese, japanese, korean, & arabic
reverso translation - has arabic, chinese, dutch, french, german, hebrew, italian, japanese, polish, portuguese, romanian, russian, spanish & turkish
bab.la - has spanish, arabic, chinese, czech, danish, dutch, finnish, french, german, greek, hindi, hungarian, indonesian, italian, japanese, korean, norwegian, polish, portuguese, romanian, russian, swedish, swahili, thai, turkish, vietnamese, & esperanto
digital dictionaries of south asia - has dictionaries for assamese, baluchi, bengali, divehi, hindi, kashmiri, khowar, lushai, malayalam, marathi, nepali, oriya, pali, panjabi, pashto, persian, prakrit, rajasthani, sanskrit, sindhi, sinhala, tamil, telugu & urdu
resources for learning words in context:
reverso context - has arabic, chinese (in beta), dutch, french, german, hebrew, italian, japanese, polish, portuguese, romanian, russian, spanish & turkish (in beta)
linguee - has german, spanish, portuguese, french, italian, russian, japanese, chinese, polish, dutch, swedish, danish, finnish, greek, czech, romanian, hungarian, slovak, bulgarian, slovene, lithuanian, latvian, maltese, & estonian
for learning different writing systems
omniglot - an encyclopedia with literally any language you could think of including ancient languages
scripts - an app for learning other writing systems with a limited amount for free (you can do 5 minutes a day for free) - has the ASL alphabet, Russian cyrillic, devanagari, Japanese kana, Chinese hanzi, & Korean hangul
Wikipedia is also helpful for learning different writing systems honestly!
pronunciation
forvo - a pronunciation dictionary with MANY languages (literally an underrated resource i use it all the time)
a really helpful video by luca lampariello with tips on how to get better pronunciation in any language
ipachart.com - an interactive chart with almost every sound!! literally such an amazing resource for learning the IPA (however does not include tones)
another interactive IPA chart (this one does have tones)
language tutoring
italki - there’s many websites for language tutoring but i think italki has the most languages (i have a referral link & if you use it we can both get $10 toward tutoring lol) - they say they support 130 languages!
there’s also preply and verbling which are also good but there aren’t as many options for languages - preply has 27 and verbling has 43
(obviously these are not free but if you have the money i think tutoring is a great way to learn a language!)
getting corrections/input from native speakers
hellotalk - an app for language exchanges with native speakers & they also have functions where you can put up a piece of writing and ask for corrections - honestly this app is great
tandem - language exchange app but unlike hellotalk you can choose multiple languages (although i think hellotalk is a little bit better)
LangCorrect - supports 170 languages!
HiNative - supports 113 languages!
Lang-8 - supports 90 languages!
verb conjugation
verbix - supports a ton of languages
Reverso conjugation - only has english, french, spanish, german, italian, portuguese, hebrew russian, arabic, & japanese
apps
duolingo - obviously everybody knows about duolingo but i’m still going to put it here - i will say i think duolingo is a lot more useful for languages that use the latin alphabet than languages with another writing system however they do have a lot of languages and add more all the time - currently they have 19 languages but you can see what languages they’re going to add on the incubator
memrise - great for vocab! personally i prefer the app to the desktop website
drops - you can only do 5 minutes a day for free but i still recommend it because it’s fun and has 42 languages!
LingoDeer - specifically geared towards asian languages - includes korean, japanese, chinese & vietnamese (as well as spanish, french, german, portuguese and russian), however only a limited amount is available for free
busuu - has arabic, chinese, french, german, italian, japanese, polish, portuguese, spanish, russian, spanish, & turkish,
Mondly - has 33 languages including spanish, french, german, italian, russian, japanese, korean, chinese, turkish, arabic, persian, hebrew, portuguese (both brazilian & european), catalan, latin, dutch, swedish, norwegian, danish, finnish, latvian, lithuanian, greek, romanian, afrikaans, croatian, polish, bulgarian, czech, slovak, hungarian, ukrainian, vietnamese, hindi, bengali, urdu, indonesian, tagalog & thai
misc
a video by the polyglot Lýdia Machová about how different polyglots learn languages - this video is great especially if you don’t know where to start in terms of self study
LangFocus - a youtube channel of this guy who talks about different languages which is always a good place to start to understand how a specific language works also his videos are fun
Polyglot: How I Learn Languages by Kató Lomb - this book is great and available online completely for free!
Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner (on pdfdrive) - another great book about language learning
Anki - a flashcard app (free on desktop for any system & free on android mobile - not free on ios mobile) that specifically uses spaced repetition to help you learn vocabulary, it’s got a slightly ugly design but it’s beloved by many language learners & is honestly so helpful
YouTube - literally utilize youtube it is so good.
Easy Languages - a youtube channel with several languages (basically they go around asking people on the street stuff so the language in the videos is really natural) & they also have breakaway channels for german, french, spanish, polish, italian, greek, turkish, russian, catalan & english
there’s also the LanguagePod101 youtube channels (e.g. FrenchPod101, JapanesePod101, HebrewPod101) which are super great for listening practice & language lessons as well as learning writing systems!
dropbox containing linguistics textbooks
contains 34 textbooks including etymology, language acquisition, morphology, phonetics/phonology, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, & translation studies
dropbox containing language textbooks
contains 86 language textbooks including ASL, Arabic, (Mandarin) Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hebrew (Modern & Ancient), Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh
dropbox containing books about language learning
includes fluent forever by gabriel wyner, how to learn any language by barry farber, polyglot by kató lomb
if there’s a problem with any of the textbooks or if you want to request materials for a specific language feel free to message me!
Lingo by Gaston Dorren
so true and no less valid the other way around. most likely, it was noam chomsky who introduced me, a social scientist, to linguistics.
Mimicry of Marginality in Soft Authoritarian Identity Politics
In the past few decades, far-right parties have successfully implemented their authoritarian and nativist ideologies in the center of public discourse (...) In this process of normalization, the lines between far-right and mainstream discourse have been blurred (...) to the point that »ideas and viewpoints once considered deviant and morally repugnant« are »confidently asserted as the new common sense« (...).
Everything has shifted. With every word, with every tweet, with every provocation, the things that can be said and considered moderate shift further to the far-right.
Steinhauer, H. (2023). Mimicry of Marginality in Soft Authoritarian Identity Politics. Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung, 2. https://doi.org/10.3262/ZFD2302143
I'd never think that having language kink could be a struggle... And here I am now. English is my second language and I love the way dirty talk and praises sound in English. But in my mother tongue phrases such as "good girl", "such a cockslut for me", "such a sweet cunt" and etc. either do not sound pretty or simply do not affect me as strongly as they do in English. It wouldn't be a problem if my partner spoke English... and was comfortable with dirty talk but this is a story for another time 😒
Path of the Black Alchemist was accompanied by lots of bonus materials in the Appendices. Rest assured, there's more on the way when the third and final, as-yet-untitled book in my AoD sequel trilogy is released!
What bonus goodies are YOU looking forward to seeing?
Check out the Appendices, and download my books for free, from my website: jrmilward.com
Shout out to @dean_kopri for the INCREDIBLE music! 🎶❤️🎶❤️🎶❤️🎶
📚❤️📚❤️📚❤️📚
language learning tips
-listen to disney songs in your target language.
-watch tv shows with subs, dubs or both in your target language.
-find some pop songs in your target language and listen to them while you work on something else.
-when memorizing vocab, try writing the vocab in sentences, rather than just learning the vocab itself. try to make the example sentence as funny/ridiculous as possible, so you remember it later.
-try texting a friend who speaks/is learning your target language. you might surprise each other with new words, and you’re more likely to remember them if they have context, eg. talking with a friend.
If you get this, answer w/ three random facts about yourself and send it to the last seven blogs in your notifs. anon or not, doesn’t matter, let’s get to know the person behind the blog!
Hi! Thanks for the ask!
1- I'm currently studying to become a primary school teacher. This is why I've been tasked by my family to help my little cousins with their homeworks for half of the summer, however they have never listened to me and never will. Since they don't want to do them, they're currently running and screaming around the house, while I decided to hide in the bathroom. Normally I would do better, but it's just not my day 😅
2- I love musicals and have participated as a dancer in one. Unfortunately the group disbanded after that because half of the members moved away from town, but if I could I would repeat the experience.
3- I love learning new languages and I'm thinking about learning sign language as well since it could be useful in my career. I'm also learning French and Spanish, and I already know English. My mother tongue is Italian.
So… I may or may not have written an entire Conlang based on a single joke in Minecraft Parkour Civilization 2. That would be ridiculous. Aha. Hahahaha. Ha.
*cough*
A Quick Guide to Writing in Parkour
Flourish List.
You add these in front of blocks to change their meaning. There’s a key at the bottom containing the Parkour alphabet which demonstrates how the space, 180°, 360°, and 720° Flourishes are used to refer to specific English-Letter analogs.
_ = Space
C = 180° Flourish = 5 spaces
O = 360° Flourish = 10 spaces
8 = 720° Flourish = 20 spaces
? = Reverse = Reverses input
^ = Vertical Jump = Raises Intensity
v = Drop = Lowers Intensity
Block List.
These are the building blocks (lmfao) of the language and are what would be counted as an “input” or “letter”. Also included are short legends under each block describing what each flourish does to each block!
(Note! _,C,O, and 8 cannot be applied to any block other than [ ] and H)
[ ] = Block = Grammatical Value
(?[ ] = Capitalized)
(^[ ] = Impassioned)
(v[ ] = Depressed)
H = Fence = Numerical Value
(?H = Negative)
(^H = Exponential)
(vH = Square Root)
u = Pot = Period
(?u = Comma)
(^u = Hyphen/Equality)
(vu = Parentheses)
I = Pane = Question
(?I = Exclamation)
(^I = Command)
(vI = Sarcasm)
% = Brewing Stand = Addition
(?% = Subtraction)
(^% = Multiplication)
(v% = Division)
Alphabet
a = [ ]
b = _[ ]
c = __[ ]
ch = ___[ ]
d = ____[ ]
e = C[ ]
f = _C[ ]
g = __C[ ]
h = ___C[ ]
i = ____C[ ]
j = O[ ]
l = _O[ ]
m = __O[ ]
n = ___O[ ]
o = ____O[ ]
p = OC[ ]
r = _OC[ ]
s = __OC[ ]
sh = ___OC[ ]
t = ____OC[ ]
th = 8[ ]
u = _8[ ]
v = __8[ ]
w = ___8[ ]
y = ____8[ ]
Numbers
0 = H
1 = _H
2 = __H
3 = ___H
4 = ____H
5 = CH
6 = _CH
7 = __CH
8 = ___CH
9 = ____CH
Now that you have all the tools, let’s put it all together~!
————————————
?8[ ]____C[ ]__OC[ ] ____C[ ]__OC[ ] OC[ ][ ]_OC[ ]__[ ]____O[ ]_8[ ]_OC[ ]?I
____CHH% _HH ^u _HHH
?C[ ][ ]____OC[ ] 8[ ]C[ ] _OC[ ]____C[ ]___[ ]^I
————————————
Big thanks to my friend PrismaticKoi for giving me the idea and helping me figure this all out! Working with her made this process super fun!!!
Enjoy Parkour-!!! I’ll be coding an English<—>Parkour translator at some point, so stick around to find that!!
All of you need to go watch Minecraft Parkour Civilization though. It’s seriously fantastic.
i keep trying to phrase a post as like a helpful tip for people who like worldbuilding but. i have to be honest with myself. it is not a helpful tip because no one asked for it. i just want to rant about kinship terminologies.
The problem here isn’t that large language models hallucinate, lie, or misrepresent the world in some way. It’s that they are not designed to represent the world at all; instead, they are designed to convey convincing lines of text. So when they are provided with a database of some sort, they use this, in one way or another, to make their responses more convincing. But they are not in any real way attempting to convey or transmit the information in the database. As Chirag Shah and Emily Bender put it: “Nothing in the design of language models (whose training task is to predict words given context) is actually designed to handle arithmetic, temporal reasoning, etc. To the extent that they sometimes get the right answer to such questions is only because they happened to synthesize relevant strings out of what was in their training data. No reasoning is involved […] Similarly, language models are prone to making stuff up […] because they are not designed to express some underlying set of information in natural language; they are only manipulating the form of language” (Shah & Bender, 2022). These models aren’t designed to transmit information, so we shouldn’t be too surprised when their assertions turn out to be false.
ChatGPT is bullshit
shorthands for dumbassery that i have grown to love deeply
"how dare you say we piss on the poor" in response to someone misinterpreting your post
"_ isnt gonna fuck you" for suck up behavior
"woah. should we tell everyone? should we throw a party?" for who the fuck cares
"and what if the world was made of pudding" for when would this ever matter.
"and sharks are smooth both ways" for a group of people heatedly arguing with 1 guy who is fucking with them all
".. but its about a witch in the alps finding her lost cat" for someone trying to sanitize something to the point of absurdity
"I love languages and learning languages and learning about other cultures through languages I love learning langugaes..." - me, trying to motivate myself to study while struggling with a language I'm willingly learning
Dude we should just change the words for gender to be more Greek because andros and gyne sound so much cooler than male and female, just saying HUGE missed opportunity from the creators behind English
Smiles and Nods
It’s twelve fifteen and a woman is waiting in a busy coffee shop for a man she doesn’t know named Scot. He was supposed to meet her at the door but when she arrived she found no one, understandable considering the rain. She looked for Scot inside, but since she didn’t know him she was only looking for a man that seemed to be looking for a woman— that is to say a man who has an appointment to meet a woman for a job interview. This will be her third in-person interview for this position, a receptionist at a small software firm, and she was hoping it would be her last.
She’d never met Scot before but she did have his phone number. She tried it but it went straight to voicemail. She tried the woman in human resources also, since she was her contact at the company and since it was her that had arranged the hiring process up till this point, but that also went straight to voicemail. This wasn’t surprising. It’d been this way with everything, not just the interviews. Her applications had disappeared twice and following up on them had shown her right from the start that the people at this company were allergic to phones. She had to take her resume in and physically hand it over to the woman in HR to get anywhere, and then it was a phone interview that she was told was on Tuesday but which was supposed to be on Thursday, and another phone interview that just straight slipped the interviewer’s mind, an on-site interview with a man who had a thousand more important things on his mind, and another at eight o’clock in the evening. That last one took place in the parking lot— the man she was interviewing with only remembered the interview when he saw her in the parking lot as he was leaving for home. They chatted at length about many things beside his car, interminable small talk having nothing to do with her ability to be a receptionist at their company, and if he noticed her teeth chattering from the cold he didn’t mind. Some people wouldn’t have put up with it. People who don’t need a job, for instance.
After fifteen minutes of waiting, her phone rings, a text from Scot asking where she is. There’s a man standing outside, holding an umbrella and looking at his phone. She crosses the coffee shop to let him in.
“You must be Scot”, she says from inside the door she’s holding open for him.
“--— —.—--—— —--— —”, he replies, as if speaking, but instead of words, hissing and buzzing and popping like an arc of electricity rippling through the air. She looks at him uncomprehending.
“…What?”
“--—------, —?”
She smiles and nods like the hard of hearing do and tells the man she’s gotten them a table. The man smiles and follows. “Do you want to order anything before we get started?”, she asks as they pass the line for the register.
“— —”, the man replies, breaking off from her. “--—— —--—— —?—--—----— —.”
“…I’ll be over at that table, over there”, she tells him, pointing to the spot where she’d been waiting. She looks around the room, watches people in conversation, and she listens. There’s a lot of noise in the coffee shop, but she can pick out their words. Then it isn’t her hearing. But she looks at the man in line, watches him order his coffee. From across the room she can hear the buzzing and crackling coming from him, but the cashier rings him up without trouble. Then it isn’t his speach….
After ordering, he waits by the counter, and his order must’ve been simple as it’s handed to him quickly. He joins her at the table, setting down the coffee cup and his phone, which is running an audio recorder.
“--—------—--------——--—--,—----—--— —.”
Again she smiles and nods. She figures he must’ve said something about the recorder. Glancing at his coffee, she sees the lid has “Scott” written on it— two t’s, but close enough. At least she knows she’s talking to the right person. Or, something like talking.
“--—----—--—----—----— —,—------,—--—--— —--—--—--—--—--—----. —--,—--—--——--—------, (— —--—--),—--—------.—--— —--—— —…—--—--— —--—--?”
She smiles and nods once more, hoping that what he’d just said wasn’t a question she was expected to answer, but he keeps looking to her like he expects more of a response than a smile and a nod.
“I’m just looking for a fast-paced team that I can grow with”, she tosses out limply, figuring that whatever he may have asked, that’s a pretty all-right interviewey thing to say, but as the words topple out of her their stupidity rings in her ears and the sad humor of the situation—that here she is, a miracle of life, and this is how she spends her time, and these are the things she uses what may be the rarest phenomenon in the universe, language, to say—makes her chortle, but she catches herself and fakes a little cough to cover it.
He smiles at her pleasantly and says, “--.—— —. —----—----—— —— —--—------—--—--—--—--—--”, and extends his hand to her. She shakes it and smiles. “--—--—— —--—----.—--—--—------?—--….”
He had shaken her hand and stood up, so the interview must be done. Short, but that could be good or bad. Probably bad, she thinks. Either way she’s glad to be done with it.
“Thank you”, she says, but the cafe is crowded and noisy and he mishears her and thinks she said “No thank you.” It doesn’t make much difference. He smiles again, she smiles back. On the way out he gives her a little departing wave. She eyes a chocolate croissants in the pastry case but decides not to waste the money on it, what with her unemployment almost gone, (not that two dollars seventy-five cents is going to save her anyway). Later on that afternoon she’ll get an email from the woman in HR, and to her surprise, it’ll be a job offer. She’ll then return to the coffee shop and buy one of those chocolate croissants, to celebrate. At last! she got a job.
Language may be the rarest phenomenon in the universe, but the job market wants smiles and nods.
