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Hey whats up my name's Jarred, I'm 19, and I never learned how to speak Portuguese ~~ my family is from the Açores but all the good media is from Brazil so if you're expecting consistency you won't find it here

[programmerhumour]

Made that feature you requested boss

[n4r3n]

We have done dat in Hungary too

[lady-wildflower]

2008: The Welsh reads:  “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”

[karu-selli]

A road name and a sign that says “the same in swedish”.

(Many road names in coastal Finland have swedish names too as Finland is a bilingual country.)

[sameinenglish]

😍😍😍

[allinllachuteruteru]

Duolingo is NOT what it used to be.

Language learning app Duolingo to mothball Welsh course

Emily Price Language learning app Duolingo will mothball its Welsh course at the end of this month meaning it will no longer be edited or up

“Duolingo is ‘sunsetting the development of the Welsh course’ (and many others)”.

I’ve used Duolingo since 2013. It used to be about genuinely learning languages and preserving endangered ones. It used to have a vibrant community and forum where users were listened to. It used to have volunteers that dedicated countless hours and even years to making the best courses they could while also trying to explain extremely nuanced and complex grammar in simple terms.

In the past two years it feels like Von Ahn let the money talk instead of focusing on the original goal.

No one truly had a humongous problem with the subscription tier for SuperDuolingo. We understood it: if you can afford to pay, help keep Duolingo free for those who couldn’t.

It started when the company went public. Volunteers were leaving courses they created because they warned of differing longterm goals compared to Duolingo’s as a company; not long after it was announced that the incubator (how volunteers were able to make courses in the first place) would be shut down. A year goes by and the forums—the voice of the users and the way people were able to share tips and explanations—is discontinued. A year or two later, Duolingo gets a completely new makeover—the Tree is gone and you don’t control what lesson you start with. With the disappearance of the Tree, all grammar notes and explanations for courses not in the Big 8 (consisting of the courses made before the incubator like Spanish/French/German/etc. and of the most popular courses like Japanese/Korean/Chinese/etc.) are removed with it. Were you learning Vietnamese and have no idea how honorifics work without the grammar notes? Shit outta luck bud. Were you learning Polish and have absolutely no clue how one of the declensions newly thrown at you functions? Suck it up. In a Reddit AMA, Von Ahn claims that the new design resulted in more users utilizing the app/site. How he claims that statistic? By counting how many people log into their Duolingo account, as if an entire app renovation wouldn’t cause an uptick in numbers to even see what the fuck just happened to the courses.

Von Ahn announces next in a Reddit AMA that no more language courses will be added from what there already is available. His reasoning? No one uses the unpopular language courses — along with how Duolingo will now be doing upkeep with the courses already in place. And here I am, currently looking on the Duolingo website how there are 1.8 million active learners for Irish, 284 thousand active learners for Navajo, and even 934 thousand active learners for fucking High Valyrian. But yea, no one uses them. Not like the entire Navajo Nation population is 399k members or anything, or like 1.8 million people isn’t 36% of the entire population of Ireland or anything.

And now this. What happened to the upkeep of current courses? Oh, Von Ahn only meant the popular ones that already have infinite resources. Got it. Duolingo used to be a serious foundational resource for languages with little resources while also adding the relief of gamification.

It pisses me off. It really does. This was not what Duolingo started out as. And yea, maybe I shouldn’t get invested in a dingy little app. But as someone who spent most of her adolescence immersed in language learning to the point where it was literally keeping me alive at one point, to the point where languages felt like my only friend as a tween, and to the point where friendships on the Duolingo forums with likeminded individuals my age and other enthusiasts who even sent me books in other languages for free because they wanted people to learn it, the evolution of Duolingo hits a bitter nerve within me.

~End rant.

[noandpickles]

My bf studied japanese in high school and often says "gambate!" (not sure of spelling) to be like. encouraging. I think it means roughly "let's get this bread." However, as someone who took spanish in high school, it always sounds like a command to me. And as near as I can tell, in spanish it would mean "go shrimp yourself."

[noandpickles]

[noandpickles]

I'm definitely not a fluent speaker, so I could be wrong, but here's how I got there:

In Spanish, some (informal, I think?) commands are formed by dropping the "r" from the end of an infinitive verb. (Every infinitive verb in Spanish ends in r.) For example, "to run" is "correr." If you want to tell someone to run, it's "corre." If you want to tell someone to do something to something/someone, you append a little pronoun thing to the end. From "besar" (to kiss) we get "bésame" (kiss me). From "cocinar" (to cook) we get "cocínalo" (cook it). From "callar" (to silence) we get "cállate" (silence yourself/shut up).

So, "gambate" immediately reminds me of "cállate," which is a rude command. It would be formed from the verb "gambar" and the second person object "te" for "you/yourself." But "gambar" isn't a word in Spanish. However, "gamba" is a word. It means "shrimp." So while it isn't technically grammatically correct, in the same way we "verb" nouns in English, the noun "gamba" is being used in the place of a verb here. "Gambate" (or more properly "gámbate" to maintain the correct stress for both the Spanish and Japanese). "Go shrimp yourself."

[the-bakeneko]

Native spanish speaker. You're quite right about your linguistics here, and spanish speakers love to make up new words by conjugating existing words (at the very least, my parents do)

My confusion stemmed from never having heard the word gamba before. To my knowledge the word for shrimp is camarón

So i looked it up and apparently gamba actually means prawn. So it's actually go prawn yourself

[elbiotipo]

I thought this was less common that I believed, but it's apparently a thing so: If you have been raised or chosen to consume media only in English, and think your native language(s) aren't as good, it's never too late to change that attitude. Listen and sing to music in your language, do it proudly, from the heart. Read books from your country. Watch movies and series from where you are from. Write posts in your language, don't be afraid of showing off your dialect. And try to learn about media from other countries that aren't the US. You will find something enjoyable, promise.

English has many great things about it, and like it or not, it has taken the place of a global lingua franca -indeed I'm writing this post in English so I can reach a larger audience, in a way- but we should not let it replace global culture. So many languages are endangered, and so are their cultures. Don't lose a part of yourself just because English is "cooler". Don't subscribe to a monodiet of English-speaking media, don't let the world be a monoculture. Don't let artists from your place in life, who don't have the global reach of Hollywood or Silicon Valley, be unheard. Speak your language. Con orgullo, chamigo, con acento y todo.

[lily-learns-finnish]

So bachelor in Finnish is just “boyman” (poikamies)? That’s hilarious. So you can say “Sä oot niin poikamies”. (“You’re such a boyman.”)

[linesca]

The apartment in which a single man lives is a poikamiesboksi, a boy man box.

[anarkissa]

Ah, but let’s not forget bachelorette: rather than being the logical tyttönainen (girl woman), it is poikamiestyttö (boy man girl).

[useless-catalanfacts]

One thing that really shocked me when I visited Madrid is that some people seemed genuinely offended when I said I only spoke Catalan. I'm from Germany and my boyfriend is Catalan. As he has a very strong Catalan identity and is very much an activist for the language it made sense for me to learn Catalan instead of Spanish. I don't speak it very well yet, but enough to make casual conversation. Trying to have a conversation with an acquaintance when visiting Madrid, I threw in some of my basic Catalan when English didn't fully work (not to piss her off, because I had no idea it would, but simply to make myself understood as English was failing us and I figured the Catalan might be easier and closer and sometimes even the same words as Spanish). This led to a lot of questions from the friendgroup, but this one person seemed personally hurt that I had chosen to learn Catalan and NOT Spanish. She argued that all Catalans spoke Spanish anyway and that my mindset was childish and "excluding the rest of Spain just to make a point". I thought this was such a strange way to look at it. I know this person is not representative for all of Spain, but I thought it was really worrying that some people think like that. She seemed convinced that there was no purpose of learning Catalan beyond "making a silly, political point" as if there wasn't an entire culture and history that came with it. As if Catalans speaking Catalan were like... being difficult on purpose and not.. you know... practicing their f*cking culture and living their damn lives. Good thing I actually am childish, and spoke exclusively in Catalan to her for the rest of the evening.

That's exactly how many Spanish people see it, it's a shame but your story doesn't surprise me. When I was a teenager I went for a few days to do a thing with other teenagers in Madrid and they reacted in a mix of disgust and offence when they heard me speak to my parents in Catalan on the phone. And I've heard quite a lot of other people explain very similar situations. It also reminds me of a video I shared a while ago (post here) where Judit Mascó explains that when she's working in Madrid and she answers the phone to her mother or friends calling, her co-workers told her it bothers them that she speaks in Catalan to other people, when she's not even talking to them.

Many Spanish people just can't understand that Catalan people would like to continue speaking our language, period. They are so convinced that Spanish is superior, that they believe that for our own good we should want to abandon our language and assimilate to theirs, and if we don't, well, then the only possible reason is that we're doing it for the sole purpose of excluding them, as if they were the centre of our lives.

They can see how they use their own language (Spanish) for their family, friends and the rest of their lives, but they can't give us the same amount of humanity and respect to imagine that we can want to speak our own language for the same purposes as they want to speak theirs. No, according to them, we must do it for bad faith proposes.

And let me say: you are doing very well in learning Catalan for your boyfriend. If your boyfriend speaks Catalan, I assume it's most likely that his family and friends speak in Catalan too, it's normal that you'd want to learn the language they use. This will bring you closer to his heart, because you can understand the words with which he has grown up and that are around him, it strengthens your bond. And it gives you the opportunity to communicate with other people around him and participate in conversation. Why would you not want to learn the language? Why would you, instead, want to learn a different language, and does that Spanish person expect you police what your boyfriend and his family/friends speak so not to exclude you (when you would have been the one to decide not to integrate)? It's just such a self-centered way of thinking from them.

[gametriprant]

It has happened to me in Aragon several times. I was speaking privately with another friend in Catalan while being inside a bigger group of people or on the phone and they were like "eh, don't speak catalan".

As if we're using to fuck with them. When, if you listen properly, you can also understand most of it anyway....

[useless-catalanfacts]

(Even if they didn't understand it, it would be none of their business what we say to each other when we're not talking to them)

[ordinaryhorror]

I've lived similar stuff other times but the one I'll always remember first was when we were visiting family friends in Madrid and my brother and me got bored and went to wait on a bench. We were speaking Catalan and an old man walking by started yelling at us to just speak Spanish, and when my brother told him to please leave us alone he got even madder so we tried to leave. He pushed my brother and slapped me. Another man had to step in until our parents arrived and the thing I remember the most is the disbelief that he got so angry just because I was talking to my brother??? Our parents had warned us not to speak català outside Catalonia or Valencia (where we were living at the time) but I hadn't realized to which point it could be actually dangerous until then.

It was the only time someone's physically assaulted me over it as a kid, but it made it so we didn't speak Catalan the rest of the trip because we didn't know if someone else would react the same way. My brother lives in Madrid now but "luckily" whenever I visit and we happen to speak in Catalan (he says he's been using it less and less because "it's not worth the arguments") we only get a few insults directed our way.

[gowns]

I Can Eat Glass

I Can Eat Glass was a linguistic project documented on the early Web by then-Harvard student Ethan Mollick. The objective was to provide speakers with translations of the phrase "I can eat glass, it does not hurt me" from a wide variety of languages; the phrase was chosen because of its unorthodox nature. Mollick's original page disappeared in or about June 2004.

As Mollick explained, visitors to a foreign country have "an irresistible urge" to say something in that language, and whatever they say (a cited example being along the lines of "Where is the bathroom?") usually marks them as tourists immediately. Saying "I can eat glass, it does not hurt me", however, ensures that the speaker "will be viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect".

[queen-susans-revenge]

In traditional Irish folktales, the elves only understand/respect Gaelic: the English language revolts them, so don’t expect to be winning any of those famous riddle contests or song tournaments in English. I’ve idly considered making one of those memes where it’s like [THE IRISH] *brofist* [THE JEWS] and the point of agreement is “our language is magic,” but the joke would take too much explaining to be funny. A lot of Irish Gaelic is structured around speech and the power of language. There isn’t, for example, a word for “yes” or “no.” In order to answer a direct yes/no question, you have to use a form of the verb that was used to ask the question. So basically, if the question is–say–”did you murder your wife” then there is no way to simply say “Yes, Your Honor” or “No, Your Honor.” Your minimum required effort involves using the verb that was invoked in the question: “I murdered,” or “I didn’t murder.” Of course you can just as easily, in just as few syllables and maybe fewer, change the verb. “I was framed,” maybe. Which is to say that the most basic speech acts in Irish involve constructing a narrative, assenting to others’ narratives or challenging them, and most crucially elaborating on the narratives that have already been established. 

(I chose murder just to be a colorful example, but actually I need to go back to my language reference books and check because I bet this interacts interestingly with the tendency in Irish for the narrator never to be the subject of her own story. You’re always the object, in Irish: you can’t drop a plate, for instance, the plate drops itself at you. You’re not thirsty but a powerful thirst is on you. You didn’t murder that woman but she very well might have gotten murdered in your general vicinity.) You see this lots of other places in the language too. For instance there’s also no word for “hello” or “goodbye.” If you want to greet somebody your required minimum is to cough up a formulaic blessing: Dia duit, God be with you. Here’s the thing. The second person can’t just be like “yup, uh huh. dia duit.” No. The stakes have been raised. The second person’s required minimum answer is now Dia’s muire duit, God and Mary be with you. If a third person joins they have to invoke St. Patrick on top of the two already mentioned. I’m not kidding. At four people you do hit a limit where you’re allowed to just say “God be with all here,” but in the very traditional country pubs it’s an insult to cross the threshold without saying at least that to cover everyone inside. Actually worse than an insult; basically a curse. That’s the burden you bear when you start speaking a magic language.

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

That puts a lot of conversations I’ve had with rural Irish people into a far better context. Because even when speaking English they will speak in this structure, knowing that context makes so much more sense now.

[blackthorn-and-iron-deactivated]

The way Irish structures the speaker as *positional* is also deeply insightful. Not just because the speaker is the object of a narrative- though that is unique and fascinating too- but also because that narrative happens in a conceptual *space* around speaker and subjects. Tá brón orm, sorrow is on me. If I’m missing my coat it’s apart from me; my accomplishments are beneath me; my careers and skills are in me; if I’m to do something, it’s on me to do that. If I welcome you to my home, I’m putting the welcome in front of you.

We distinguish between temporary and permanent and habitual forms of being, even in English. The only other place I know that does this is AAVE. Marcus be playing the drums; aye lads, he surely does be playing them.

You can’t say please or thank you or I love you; those are powerful ideas, and you must put a little effort into articulating them. Le do thoil, with you will. Go raibh maith agat; very roughly “a good is at you.” (Good on you, mate; good going!) I love you, Christ if there’s not dozens of ways to say it, but none simple. The simplest I know translates most closely to “my heart is at you.”

[queen-susans-revenge]

Great addition!  A lot of people are also chiming in to say that the Irish language is called Gaeilge, not Gaelic. I am 43 and American, and when I studied Irish in school the class was literally called “Irish Gaelic” (though the teacher just called it Irish and that’s usually how I think of it too). So like, I hear you all that “Irish Gaelic” is wrong, but it is the way I was taught twenty-five years ago. Aithním go raibh dearmad orm, I find that a mistake was on me.

[cesario-r]

Please to me is “Má’s é do thoil é” it’s what I got taught as a kid and it’s the one I use more often than Le do thoill. It literally means “if it is your will” too.

[purronronner]

“Please” also comes from “if it pleases you”, and goodbye from “god be with ye”, and so on! But it’s definitely interesting which languages abbreviated and which didn’t

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Us, arriving to Austria to a tiny family hotel owned by an elderly lady

Us: speak only limited German

Lady: barely speaks English

Us:

Lady:

Lady: Czech? Slovak?

Us: Czech

Lady, to herself: Czech, that's a Slavic language right

Lady: understand Yugoslavian?

Us:

Us: yeah that works

[eastern-lights]

Shit like this can really only happen in Europe. Reminds me of the time I took my best shot at ordering at a restaurant in Spain in spanish. The closest language to spanish that I actually speak is latin.

Waiter: Germany?

Me: No, Czechia.

Waiter, in a heavily accented but intelligible Czech: Why didn’t you say so before! We get you guys here all the time!

[krcmelound]

Já v roce 2019 na Ukrajině: OK, takže když použiju tohle staročeský slovo, přidám polský sloveso, své chabé znalosti záhoráčtiny a řeknu to s ruskym přízvukem, tak to projde.

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

[Me in 2019 in Ukraine: ok so if i use this Old Czech word, add a Polish verb, my poor knowledge of the Záhorie dialect of Slovak and say it with a Russian accent, it might pass]

Reminds me of the time when we were in Poland and I tried to order a burger using a truly unholy mix of Slovak, Russian and Ostrava dialect (which in itself is like an unholy mix of Czech and Polish).

I did get the burger

[orion-the-onion]

[mmaurysiek]

[#my grandpa called this "Slavic Esperanto"]

I know Ukrainians who can do this on purpose and masterfully, and it was mind-blowing to hear a speech as immediately understandable to an audience of native speakers of three different native Slavic languages, not just two languages as is common

[alamuts-lair-of-madness]

During one student exchange I (a Pole) got acquainted with two students from Czechia and Russia. At first we talked in English or German, but after a while we’ve noticed, that we could understand each other’s native languages just fine. And if some word was unknown in one language, another one had the right synonym.

*Each of us talking in their mother tongue*

Me: Bla bla bla.

Russian: I don’t know this “bla”.

Czech: Oh, we have “bla”! We also call it “that”!

Russian: Oh I know “that”! It’s a very old version of “this”.

Me: Oh, we have “this” too, but it means something slightly different.

German acquaintance: Was für nen Scheiß zieht ihr da ab? o_O

[leseigneurdelorage]

the reason there aren't slavic people in the bible is that they wouldn't have been surprised or awed to hear the disciples speak in tongues and be understood by people of many nations at once

[alexfeelyx]

Slavs walked away from the Tower of Babel mildly inconvenienced.

[mapsontheweb]

“Me and the boys” meme in different countries of the Americas

[una-ragazza-con-un-flauto]

Only vaguely threatening!!!

[lesbianshepard]

fun fact about languages: a linguist who was studying aboriginal languages of Australia finally managed to track down a native speaker of the Mbabaram language in the 60s for his research. they talked a bit and he started by asking for the Mbabaram word for basic nouns. They went back and forth before he asked for the word for “dog” The man replied “dog” They had a bit of a “who’s on first” moment before realizing that, by complete coincidence,  Mbabaram and English both have the exact same word for dog.

[lesbianshepard]

on a similar note, a traditional Ojibwe greeting is “Nanaboozhoo” so when the French first landed in southern Canada they thought that they were saying “Bonjour!” Which is fucking wild to think about. Imagine crossing the ocean and the first people you meet in months somehow speak French. 

[yu-gi-oh-slavia]

[tuulikki]

Given that we famously don’t know the origin of the English word “dog”, I have decided to adopt an utterly batshit folk etymology conspiracy theory. As a treat.

[bonbonlanguage]

You know what I think is really cool about language (English in this case)? It’s the way you can express “I don’t know” without opening your mouth. All you have to do is hum a low note, a high note, then another lower note. The same goes for yes and no. Does anyone know what this is called?

[rk8con]

[suspendnodisbelief]

These are called vocables, a form of non-lexical utterance - that is, wordlike sounds that aren’t strictly words, have flexible meaning depending on context, and reflect the speakers emotional reaction to the context rather than stating something specific. They also include uh-oh! (that’s not good!), uh-huh and mm-hmm (yes), uhn-uhn (no), huh? (what?), huh… (oh, I see…), hmmn… (I wonder… / maybe…), awww! (that’s cute!), aww… (darn it…), um? (excuse me; that doesn’t seem right?), ugh and guh (expressions of alarm, disgust, or sympathy toward somebody else’s displeasure or distress), etc.

Every natural human language has at least a few vocables in it, and filler words like “um” and “erm” are also part of this overall class of utterances. Technically “vocable” itself refers to a wider category of utterances, but these types of sounds are the ones most frequently being referred to, when the word is used.

[classicfern]

Reblog if u just hummed all of these out loud as you read them

[momo-de-avis]

I need everyone to stop believing, please, that the green in the portuguese flag means HOPE and that the red means THE BLOOD OF THE BRAVE PORTUGUESE. It’s a lie. The flag was designed by three monarchists under a contest that they won against their will. It was supposed to be a mockery. Columbano drew the flag. He never, ever used green or red in his paintings. That’s why it’s red and green. Republicans were the ones to pull the brave and blood shit out of their ass. Everyone involved in the design of the flag didn’t even believe in a republic. Idk why we keep saying this hope and blood shit when this is infinitely funnier

[earhartsease]

[ID: youtube comment from Hal Sawyer:

My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word "the" used in phrases like: "the more I look at this, the stranger it seems, or "the bigger they come, the harder they fall". This "the" is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English "þā", pronounced "tha" which means either "when" or "then". Back in early Middle English the structure "if - then" had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if - then relationship you said "þā whatever, þā whatever", meaning "when such-and- such, then such-and-such". "þā" sounds almost the same as "the" and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. "the more, the merrier" literally means "when more, then merrier" or "if more, then merrier'; same as centuries ago.

end ID]

this is so cool

[awed-frog]

Here is the link! What an amazing idea ❤️

[onigiriforears]

crying bc i wish there was one for japanese

[seherstudies]

You are in luck, apparently there is one: https://sail.helte.jp/guide/en

Thanks to @presumenothing for sharing it in the comments of the original post!

[testosteronetwunk]

since regrettably most of my followers aren’t vietnamese, i’d like y’all to know that the vietnamese language is pretty moderately gendered, most of our honorifics are gendered, so nonbinary vietnamese people have been creating their own gender neutral pronouns like by combining “chị” (girl older than you) and “anh” (dude older than you) into chanh, but chanh is also the word for lemon lol. so for a short while lemons became a symbolic nonbinary thing, but some nonbinary viets were like hmm we don’t like how that pronoun is defined by a gender binary so they created a new pronoun, “cam” which means “orange” like the fruit lmaoo