The Foreign Fool

Danny \\ Canadian trying to learn languages when they're not studying physics\\ English (native) | 日本語 (N4/3)| Deutsch (B1) | italiano (A1) \\Following from @zony66

[macgyvermedical]

Took me until about halfway through college before I realized “study” means “play with the material in a variety of ways until you understand it” and not just “read the assigned chapters and do the homework” and I think that probably should have been discussed at some point prior to that.

[anexperimentallife]

Or as Strunk and White said in Elements of Style (to the best of my memory), "Feel free to ignore everything in this book rather than write something inelegant."

[theanythingmachine]

my first favorite hobby is yapping. second is being extremely quiet and not talking ever at all ever.

[latinare]

prima mea delicia est blaterare. secunda est valde silere nec umquam loqui in perpetuum.

[lila-walker]

There's a LATIN guy now??????

[latinare]

Num est iam LATINUS??????

[kalimaxxing]

the idealized version of my tomorrow self will fix this

[kalimaxxing]

not again

[moami]

if you’re learning a language you’re either “I have the vocabulary of a pretentious old literature professor but grammar is a sinful mistress who shall never cross the threshold of my house” or you’re “I only know what ‘strawberry’ and ‘to go’ mean but by ye gods I can make them jump through conjugation hoops and declension parcours that would peel the socks off your feet”. no in between

[nordic-language-love]

forgot the japanese word for "together" today and tried writing つざめん. "zusammen". the german word. a language i have not studied for about 15 years and only ever spoke at A2 level at best.

[empresslaurosaurus]

Happens to me all the time with French. I'll never be free. Occasionally it happens with Spanish as well...

[onigiriforears]

凸凹

i hate this kanji

[japanwords]

I ❤️ this kanji!

The first one means “convex” and the second means (obviously!) “concave”.

Put together they are pronounced “deko-boko”, which means “bumpy”.

[hungwy]

Proto Germanic *gumô and *weraz, both words meaning "man" and separate from PG *mann- "human, person, man", survive in modern English in the compounds brideGROOM and WEREwolf (and weregild). *gumô as a lone word survives in Scottish and Northern English oral traditions as "gome", but it seems like "wer(e)" has not survived outside of compounds, and apparently "has been replaced by *mann- and it's descendants in all surviving Germanic languages."

[hungwy]

Also, to my great surprise, English "world" used to be a Proto-Germanic compound *weraldiz, *wer- "man" + *aldiz "age, generation"... Or "the age of man". I bet Tolkienheads knew this all along

[conjugation-persuasion]

Cryillic is just italic Greek

[clonepa]

THANKS

[deutsche-bahn]

Reddit germans refusing to use any anglicized words to the point of absurdity VS tumblr germans using the most abhorrent denglish you've ever seen

[deutsche-bahn]

Here’s possibly the weirdest way to translate shitpost:

“in a nutshell” is at least a bit more obvious

Honorable mentions to that guy who translated “pov” into a row of words that couldn’t possibly sound any more unnatural:

[thefencebeetle]

That’s child’s play.

Take a look at the French reddit guidelines to avoid English words to the point of complete absurdity :

[kineticpenguin]

I can't decide what's funnier: insisting on making French versions of brand names like Youtube and Reddit, or for some reason, doing it to "Merica Fuck Yeah"

[headspace-hotel]

Masturbenrond...

[what-even-is-thiss]

BRB just stealing the word réfrigéré for my own nefarious anglophone purposes.

[what-even-is-thiss]

He’s got that certain réfrigéré

[hotvampireadjacent]

How often are the French talking about chemtrails they need their own word???

[conjugation-persuasion]

L'Académie Française is just that powerful 

[hopepunk-humanity]

Language-learning can be a hobby. If striving for perfect fluency is sucking the fun out of it, then fluency doesn’t need to be the goal

[hungwy]

idiomatic translation of japanese is definitely valuable but i also feel like its a great experience to get semi-literal translations if only to understand more granularly the different ways the world can be communicated

[prokopetz]

Fact: The phrase “you will suffer me”, occasionally encountered in older literature, is using the word “suffer” in the same sense as the root of the word “insufferable” – i.e., an archaic usage meaning “to permit or allow”.

Additional fact: The modern sense of the word creates an additional layer of meaning that is both unintended and completely appropriate.

[ichigo-kuriimu]

the japanese “-ne?” particle and the british slang term “innit” serve the same function

[ichigo-kuriimu]

Standard English: It’s cold, isn’t it?

Japanese: Samui desu ne?

British: It’s fuckin’ freezin’, innit?

[ichigo-kuriimu]

i have to do everything around here

[notahorseindisguise]

i hate this cause i did japanese for like a year and this explains the use of the -ne particle WAYYYY better than my teachers ever did. it took me ages to comprehend what this post makes abundantly clear.

my teachers: its like a, a little rise at the end of a sentence, to show that you are seeking a response, while not warranting the -ka particle which would make it a proper question.

me: ok. i guess i get that??

this post: its like saying “innit?” 

me: oh. oh no.

[wind-on-the-panes-deactivated20]

fun fact: afaik, "-ne" was inherited from the Portuguese settlers/priests that stayed in Japan in the 16th century. It comes from "né?", which the contraction of "não é?", "isn't it?".

It's LITERALLY "innit".

[twofingerswhiskey]

oh so like "eh" in canadian

[the-last-teabender]

*un-Babels your Tower*

[iain-pm]

My Argentinean housemate just got a book on proper American accents and I’ve never felt more attacked

like why’s it gotta be so accurate

[jaspertheshark]

What’s fascinating to me is realizing that we simply ignore the glottal stop in every word that begins with a vowel when we speak quickly. Like unless you’re enunciating or speaking slowly you simply tell that glottal stop “fuck you” and hook the vowel to the previous consonant sound. Amazing. Glottal stops more like waste of time amirite

[glowingghosty]

SUPER SALAD

[headspace-hotel]

Wtf we actually talk like this don’t we

[assassinregrets]

[wormdad]

people will see a meme in spanish where the latin roots all align with the english words and be like “this transcends language” no it doesn’t you just know how to read

[yurimom]

skcnoencjs fucking. meme says “yo” and “mi mamá” and suddenly these bitches finished the tower of babel

[none-beef]

@lucio-o-o call out post