Words & Things

24 | learning 🇩🇪 German (B1/C2), 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Welsh (A1), 🇵🇱 Polish (A1), 🇫🇷 French (A1) | native English speaker | icon by @petitster on twitter

[another-heckin-langblr]

About Me

Hi, I'm Ray!

I'm 24 years old and a native English speaker currently living in the United States.

I've been taking German classes in both high school and college for the past ~6 years, and recently took an interest in Welsh, Polish and French.

I will tag different languages separately for those interested, and am always looking for new resources and tips!

❗DNI: TERFs, racists/white supremacists, exclusionists, or other bigoted folk❗

[pompadourpink]

This or that?

Day: Jour, m if it's a specific 24h time unit (calendar, events); Journée, f if blurrier (summary of daily activities, weather: C'est une belle journée)

Evening: Soir, m if specific (habits, calendar) as opposed to other moments of the day; Soirée, f if not (duration, party, evening in/out: On fait une soirée chez Sophie demain)

Morning: Matin, m if it's specific (habits, calendar); Matinée, f if not (duration: J'ai passé la matinée à m'occuper du jardin)

Number: Chiffre, m if it's from 0 to 9; Nombre, m if they represent a quantity/value (maths); Numéro, m if it's a code (phone, house)

Owl: Hibou, m if it has ear-looking fluffies; Chouette, f if not

Seagull: Goéland, m, if it has a bright yellow beak with a red spot; Mouette, f if it's all dark red

Penguin: Manchot, m if the beak is orange and the collar yellow; Penguin, m if it's just black and white

Second: Deuxième if there's a third, Second-e if not (ex: Un sac de seconde main)

Year: An, m if it's specific (calendar, history); Année, if it not (summary, wishes, duration: Bonne année!)

Also: a crow is une corneille and a raven is un corbeau.

[kutyozh]

not only langblr music resources

people irl often ask me where the heck i find the music i listen to, so i figured i might as well make a handy resource masterpost!

Radio Garden: Listen to radio stations all over the world. You can save your favourite stations, explore radio playlists, and search for stations in specific countries or cities. Love this one. You can download the app (android and apple) or listen via your preferred browser.

Radiooooo: Lets you choose a country, a decade, and a 'genre' (slow, fast, or weird) to listen to. You can download the app (android and apple) or listen via your preferred browser.

Every Noise At Once: Sounds overwhelming - and tbh it can be. For this reason I personally prefer to look at 'Genres by Country', although there are many other interesting playlists to look at, such as 'We Built This City On' or 'The Sounds of Places'. You can find more if you scroll all the way to the bottom. Unfortunately, due to the layoff of the creator of this site, some features are not available anymore. This website is entirely based on Spotify.

Charts: Charts can be tricky if you're looking for music in a specific language due to the insufferable dominance of music in english in uh a lot of countries. It is nevertheless worth checking them out. Spotify charts or Top 40 Charts are your places to go.

Tunefind: Heard a song in a film or tv show that you enjoy but can't find it in the credits? This is the website for you! I use it when shazam fails me or when I'm at the cinema and can't use it or w/e. The songs sometimes come with a description of the corresponding scene for easy checking. Just very handy to have on hand.

Local events: Check for concerts etc. in your area. I know this is not an option for everyone for a bunch of reasons, but if it is for you, visiting local concerts can be a gold mine. I got like ten whole new songs in spanish and one in rapanui from one event I went to (it was like a culture fest with singing, dancing, and poetry). Also listening to live music just connects you differently to the art imo.

Friends & Acquaintances: Last but not least; sometimes my nosiness beats my social anxiety and I simply ask people what they like to listen to. If I'm being extra confident, I ask if they listen to music in languages other than english. Go forth and ask people about their music, go go go!!

[nowtoboldlygo]

wait did y'all know there's a ton of free language course resources for u.s. peace corps training??

[loveletter2you]

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!

[i-read-in-five-languages-deacti]

french language resources masterlist

Last updated: 02/11/2023

Websites

RFI Savoirs has lots of listening and reading activities (from A1 to B2)

Apprendre le français TV 5 Monde has listening activities from A1 to B2

Tester son niveau - this is a free placement test (just listening)

CNTRL Dictionnaire is a dictionary

France Université Numérique - free MOOCS (massive open online course) with different levels: Level A1 - Level A2 - Level B1

Kwiziq (a website that you can test your level and study grammar)

Music

French songs you should listen to

french aesthetic songs (youtube)

Crème French playlist (youtube)

Books/Reading

GEO Magazine is a online magazine with articles about nature and history

Library Genesis has many books in french and other languages too

TV/Movie

TV 5 Monde has series and movies from France and other countries (for free), available for desktop and mobile (ios and android)

TV 5 UNIS has series and movies in French (mostly from Quebec). Some of the shows are not available outside Canada (but you can use it with a vpn)

Podcasts

Artips podcast (art, music, science)

France culture podcasts (various subjects)

Apps

WLINGUA app (both IOS and Android) teaches grammar

Other

French grammar pdf exercises - if you search the topic you're learning (example: le passé composé) + pdf, you're going to find many pdf activities from University of Quebec. Like this one: Passé Composé UQuebec

Artips is a newsletter about art, music, science and ecology that you receive in your email. You can chose the topics you wanna subscribe (example: I subscribed for art and music newsletters).

Bon courage !

[thearcaneuniversity]

ok, this is amazing. I found a great site with short stories in 34 languages!

"WorldStories is a growing collection of stories from around the world. The collection includes retold traditional tales and new short stories in the languages most spoken by UK children.

We are adding new stories, translations, pictures and sound recordings every week. So keep coming back to enjoy new content!"

[ich-bin-der-baer]

Random German Vocabulary (96)

der Halunke -- scoundrel der Inbegriff -- epitome; embodiment die Nächstenliebe -- charity die Suchaktion -- search

brutzeln -- to sizzle predigen -- to preach (jemanden) umhauen -- to wow (someone) schwelgen -- to indulge

abgestumpft -- blunt; numbed gültig -- valid kess -- cheeky; saucy zerstreut -- absent-minded; scattered

zur Neige gehen -- to run short (etwas) im Keim ersticken -- to nip (something) in the bud eine Niete ziehen -- to draw a blank (jemand) ist am Zug -- it's (someone's) turn

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

The "Americanization of the global internet" post and slow deterioration of local native culture gave me an idea: many users don't even know there is native language communities on this website, so if you know of a regional group/"subculture" on Tumblr, reblog/comment with the tags they use so people can find them and connect with other folks from their countries or speakers of a language they'd like to learn

I will try to update this post with every new addition to hopefully make a comprehensive list of Tumblr regional communities

The list so far:

Europe

• Czech

#česky, #hezky česky - general Czech language posts, frequently featuring user-written poetry, art, sometimes politics and current events, warning: often contains vent posts

#čumblr - Czech but frequently used by Slovaks as well, primarily memes and fandom things, shipping, art, cultural things, frequently overlaps with #česky

#obrození, #obrozujeme - memes and fandoms as well but with more emphasis of maintaining and developing Czech culture, is a mostly humorous parody/self-proclaimed continuation of the Czech National Revival of the 1800s, overlaps with #čumblr and #česky

• Slovak

#slovensky - general Slovak language posts

#slumblr, #sumblr, NEW - #ťumbľr - Slovak, general posts, memes, fandom and culture things, sometimes overlaps with #čumblr

• Polish

#polska, #polish - Polish, general posts, art, politics and current events

#polblr, #polishposting, #polskie rzeczy - Polish, more humorous general posts and memes, often overlap with the above

• Ukrainian

#ukraine - general Ukrainian posts, often in English

#укртумбочка - mostly used by artists

• General Slavic

#slav, #slavic, #slavposting, #slavic stuff - mixed Slavic, usually cultural things, memes, art and photography, sometimes politics, sometimes visited by other East Europeans

• Irish

#gaeilge - Irish, general posting but especially cultural things and memes, often features posts for language learning

• Welsh

#cymraeg - general Welsh posting, memes

• Romanian

#romanian - general Romanian tag

#romanisme, #vlandom - Romanian, mostly memes and humor

• Hungarian

#magyar, #hungarian, #tumbli - Hungarian language, mostly quotes

• Finnish

#suomitumblr, #suomitumppu, #suomipaskaa, #suomeksi, other variations beginning with suomi - general (shit)posting

any and all swear words such as #perkele, #vittu, #saatana, #helvetti and #paska - shitposts, overlap with above

• Dutch

#dutch, #the netherlands, #netherlands, #holland, #nederland, #nederlands - general Dutch posts

#nedermemes, #dutchcore - memes, shitposting

• German

#deutsch, #german stuff - general German posting

#BundesTag - memes and humor

blogs like @official-deutschebahn, @official-german-medienlandschaft and other official-deutsche- blogs, "because THE joke of German tumblr is to act like an overly bureucratic public institution"

• Swedish

#sweblr, #swedenposting, #svea rike - memes, shitposts, fandom stuff, sometimes political

#svenskt, #sverige - general Swedish stuff

#all makt åt tengil vår befriare, #sa du sten - used mostly by @svenskjavel

#borås - posts and memes about the city, "kinda like Swedish Ohio"

#lesbisk, #bög, #bisexuell, #pansexuell, #hbtq+, #hbtq, #homosexuell, #asexuell - Swedish queer tags

• French

#upthebaguette, #french side of tumblr, #whatthefrance - general French posting but especially memes, comics, art

#bagaitte - French queer posting

• Greek

#greek tumblr, #ελληνικα, #ελλαδα, #γρεεκ, #ελληνικο ταμπλρ - general stuff

#greek memes - memes

Catalan

#coses de la terra - general stuff

Belarusian

#беларускі тамблер - general stuff, fandoms

#артшляхта - art

Italian

#itablr - general stuff, not very populated yet

Estonian

#eestiblr, #eesti - general stuff

@unofficial-estonia - blog

Danish

@useless-denmarkfacts - blog

Asia

• South Asian

#desiblr, #desi, #desi tag - general South Asia posting, memes, humor, sometimes also used by Arab people

• Indian

#dabara tumblr, #தம்பிளர் - suggested tags for South India

Russian

#русский тамблер, #русский tumblr - general stuff, memes

Sri Lankan

#අරගලයට ජය, suggested tags LKA or #Lankablr if anyone's interested

Indonesian

@useless-indonesiafacts - blog

Israeli

#ישראבלר

Oceania

Australian

#auscore - general stuff, culture, memes and shitposts

#auspol - politics

Not location-specific

Jewish

#jumblr, #frumblr - general stuff, history, discussions, posts mostly in English

Romani

#romani, #rroma, #rrumblr - romani sides of tumblr, general stuff, history, discussions, mostly in English

Please share around wherever you're from, US American local cultures are welcome as well, especially indigenous (though that should go without saying)

Reminder that this is a post made to allow people to find others of the same culture/language, be respectful and do not use these tags to target groups and spread hate

[gayforlangs]

someone: so what’s your biggest fear??

what I think: the potential for english and other major languages to wipe out thousands of existing languages as they have been for decades and never having the potential to learn or use specific languages as populations shift from using their native language to more mainstream means of communication and neglect to teach their children their native language rendering them monolingual likely english speakers and further pushing other languages to the sidelines.

what I say: oh haha! um spiders are pretty scary!

[ihatecispeople]

i love it actually when nonnative speakers make mistakes that reveal how their native languages work.

lots of koreans online say they "eat" drinks which would assume they only have one word which covers the concept of consumption.

arabic immigrants in sweden (my mother included) have a hard time differentiating between "i think/i believe/my opinion is" which suggests that in arabic these different modalities of speaker agency is treated as one or at least interchangeable.

swedish speakers in english will use should/shall/have to/must with much higher nuance precision than native english speakers, to the point where they sound well awkward, because the distinction between these commands in swedish is much clearer than in english. i make mistakes between is/am/are and has/have constantly because swedish only has one pronoun covering all grammatical persons.

i've heard speakers of languages without gendered pronouns (finnish, the chinese dialects, and a tonne more) make he/she mistakes because it's hard(!!) to learn two or more gendered pronouns and when to use them correctly.

how neat is that?! it add a charm to international english usage in particular and make our appreciation of both our native languages and our learnt ones stronger...!!

[aandriskobold]

i love this! one thing i notice with a lot of people (native speakers of polish, romanian, french and others) is no differentiation between present simple (i go) and present continuous (I am going), because those languages only have one present tense to cover both. it's so lovely every time i hear it

i always think one of the most fun things about learning languages is that it teaches you how weird your own is! especially english phrasal verbs (the very different meanings of stand up, stand down, stand off, stand up to), or trying to explain the difference between being up to something and being up for something to my french friend. I love it!

[ihatecispeople]

another tag reminded me of how spanish speakers often mix up /v/ and /b/ because in panish they pronounced identically!

I wish more people had the ability to become bilingual because you're right, it makes you understand your own language at a more intimate and analytical level!!

[ace-and-ranty]

Story time: one time I drove my best friend to tears of horrified laughter, by virtue of being bilingual.

See, Portuguese only has one word for "meat" and "flesh". If you're talking about meat off an animal that you buy at the butcher, or your own flesh, it's the same word, which is "carne".

So one time I'm visiting her, and I'm speaking in English cause she is American, and we are in the bathroom. I am trying to open the little valve that opens the water for the bathtub. The stupid thing will not bulge, I am trying to open it with my fingernails, and my grip is shit, and it will not work.

Bestie helpfully reaches over me with a wet towel, uses it to get a good grip, and wrenches it open.

I go, "Shit, thank you. I could feel my fingernails coming off my meats."

She had to sit down to cry-laugh at her bed, and still curses my whole bloodline every time I remind her.

[ireadbooksandeatchocolate]

RANDOM GERMAN IDIOMS bc i'm bored

jmd. die Daumen drücken - to keep one's fingers crossed (lit. to press the thumbs)

um den heißen Brei herumreden - beating around the bush (lit. to talk around the hot mash)

fix und fertig - exhausted (lit. quick and ready)

ich verstehe nur Bahnhof - it is all Greek to me/I don't understand anything (lit. I only understand train station)

einen Kater haben - to be hungover (lit. to have a cat)

sich zum Affen machen - to make a fool out of oneself (lit. to make oneself into a ape)

Bohnen in den Ohren zu haben - to be deaf {like if they repeat sth multiple times and you still don't understand, they may ask "Hast du Bohnen in den Ohren?"} (lit. to have beans in the ears)

die beileidigte Leberwurst spielen - playing the prima donna (lit. to play the offended liver sausage)

einen Korb geben - to reject someone {if they have a crush on you..} (lit. to give someone a basket)

[berlinlogs]

singend

GERMAN WORD OF THE DAY

singend : vocal, singing

Er spricht mit singendem Tonfall.

He speaks in a sing-song tone.

[nordic-language-love]

beginner grammar: the grammar is used in this specific way. here are some simple examples to demonstrate the point.

intermediate grammar: ehh actually the grammar’s kinda complicated and it has a lot of different uses and exceptions. but there are still general rules you can follow.

advanced grammar: this language is a lawless wasteland where rules are simultaneously both arbitrary and incredibly specific and only strictly adhered to by 32% of the population anyway. but if you use them incorrectly you’ll sound awkward and unnatural. good luck!

[meinfernvveh]

hallo und herzlich willkommen! today i will be going over some transitional words and phrases you might find in conversations! all information gathered and examples used are from fluentu; please let me know if anything's incorrect or outdated! <3

weil - because when using "weil" in anyway, you'll have two clauses; your regular and subordinate clause. in subordinate clauses, in this case the sentence using "weil", your conjugated verb should go at the end! ich bin müde, weil ich nicht gut geschlafen habe ( i am tired because i didn't sleep well )

(immer) noch - still "immer noch" stresses time or continuity and has a stronger attitude than "noch", although both still translate as "still". ich habe gewartet und gewartet und der Zug war immer noch nicht da. (I waited and waited, and the train was still not there.)

deshalb - therefore a clause that begins with "deshalb" requires a different construction. in these clauses, the conjugated verbs always appear in the second position, like in the main clause. ich bin müde, deshalb möchte ich schlafen. (I am tired, therefore I would like to sleep.)

vorher - before "vorher" and "vor" both mean “before,” but they are used differently in german. "vorher" is used as an adverb to indicate that something happened before a specific point in time. "vor" is a preposition that triggers dative case. ich habe ein Buch gelesen und vorher habe ich eine Serie geschaut. (I read a book, and before that I watched a TV series.) vor dem Treffen, habe ich Kaffee getrunken. (Before the meeting, I drank coffee.)

danach - after "nachher" and "nach" are similar to "vorher" and "vor". "nach" is used as a presposition that triggers dative, and "danach" is an adverb. ich habe meine Hausaufgaben gemacht und danach habe ich geschlafen. (I did my homework, and after that I slept.) nach dem Unfall ist er nicht mit dem Auto gekommen. (After the accident he didn’t come by car.)

trotzdem - nevertheless this works the same as "deshalb" es ist kalt, trotzdem gehe ich spazieren. (It’s cold, nevertheless I’m going for a walk.)

schließlich - finally schließlich habe ich mich entschlossen, ein Taxi zu finden. (Finally I decided to find a cab.)

bald - soon entschuldigung, ich bin zu spät dran, aber ich komme bald! (Sorry, I’m late, but I’m coming soon!)

Ganz im Gegenteil - on the contrary Ganz im Gegenteil, mein Fahrrad hat meine Reise verlängert. (On the contrary, my bike made my journey longer.)

that's all for today!! thank you for reading and coming with me on my language learning journey, bye!!

[thatswhywelovegermany]

Es gibt Menschen, die unglücklich sind, bloß weil sie sind.

There are people who are unhappy just because they exist.

Georg Büchner (1813 – 1837), German writer, physician, scientist, and revolutionary

[official-german-puns]

Unisex? Wo genau findet der statt und wer kommt alles?

[softservewidow]

Wieviel ECTs gibt's dafür? Kann ich mir das anrechnen lassen?

[official-german-puns]

69 ECTS natürlich. Und ja, wenn du befriedigende Leistungen erbracht hast.

[official-german-schulsystem]

CT (cuck time) oder ST (sexy time)?

[official-german-puns]

Egal, Hauptsache du kommst.

[gabriellethebookworm]

I have to take third language at university and that happens to be German. Every week we have to show the rest of the class what we did for learning more German - like watching videos or reading news in German. I think y'all know what I'm gonna show the class next week.

[official-german-puns]

Dann nimm nächste Woche besser auch ein paar Kondome mit. Nur für den Fall...