Archived

[languagenerds]

It’s not too early to get organized for the GLOBAL CLIMATE STRIKE on Friday, September 20th.

- Scroll to the bottom of this page and check on Facebook to see if a strike has already been planned near you.  - If not, you can create your own event. Check here for tips and advice on how to organize in your community, school and workplace. You can also download the FREE CLIMATE RESISTANCE EBOOK with an introduction written by Greta Thunberg.  - You can also use free graphics, banners, and posters to spread the word online (instagram, twitter, facebook, snapchat I guess?, whatever you use). Or make your own graphics and memes using their fonts and templates IN 6 LANGUAGES here. - Lastly, spread the word to your family and friends! Let’s make something happen.

[languagenerds]

It’s not too early to get organized for the GLOBAL CLIMATE STRIKE on Friday, September 20th.

- Scroll to the bottom of this page and check on Facebook to see if a strike has already been planned near you.  - If not, you can create your own event. Check here for tips and advice on how to organize in your community, school and workplace. You can also download the FREE CLIMATE RESISTANCE EBOOK with an introduction written by Greta Thunberg.  - You can also use free graphics, banners, and posters to spread the word online (instagram, twitter, facebook, snapchat I guess?, whatever you use). Or make your own graphics and memes using their fonts and templates IN 6 LANGUAGES here. - Lastly, spread the word to your family and friends! Let’s make something happen.

[languagenerds-archive]

Two weeks from today folks!!

[languagenerds]

It’s not too early to get organized for the GLOBAL CLIMATE STRIKE on Friday, September 20th.

- Scroll to the bottom of this page and check on Facebook to see if a strike has already been planned near you.  - If not, you can create your own event. Check here for tips and advice on how to organize in your community, school and workplace. You can also download the FREE CLIMATE RESISTANCE EBOOK with an introduction written by Greta Thunberg.  - You can also use free graphics, banners, and posters to spread the word online (instagram, twitter, facebook, snapchat I guess?, whatever you use). Or make your own graphics and memes using their fonts and templates IN 6 LANGUAGES here. - Lastly, spread the word to your family and friends! Let’s make something happen.

[languagenerds-archive]

Hi all!

I’ve decided to come back to tumblr, but I’ve remade on my main blog @languagenerds so you can follow me there~

[languagenerds-archive]

Hi all!

I’ve decided to come back to tumblr, but I’ve remade on my main blog @languagenerds so you can follow me there~

[languagenerds-archive]

After four years of langblr, I think it’s time for me to go. I am leaving my blog up as an archive but I will no longer be updating or responding to messages. Thank you to everyone who made my time on tumblr positive. 

Best of luck to everyone on their language journeys!

[language-obsession]

Tibetan Resources [ཐབས་ལམ་]

I CANT STOP POSTING THESE OMG. NO ONE IS EVEN STUDYING TIBETAN

I’ve uploaded a bunch of pdfs to a Dropbox folder which you can access here. What’s inside: 

1) Manual of Standard Tibetan 

I’ve heard a lot of good things about this one. It goes very in-depth with the grammar and has tons of exercises. Unfortunately, I didn’t get my hands on the .mp3 files that come with the textbook.

2) Colloquial Tibetan

AMAZING. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS ONE. It explains things very clearly and guides you through the terrifying mystery of Tibetan spelling and pronunciation ;-; It also explains the confusing verbs of existence in Tibetan, which a lot of textbooks failed to do well. 

3) English-Tibetan + English-Tibetan-Simplified Chinese Dictionary

These are the two finds that I’m really proud of *_* Very thorough, but unfortunately they’re both only one-way dictionaries (Eng -> Tib)

4) Essentials of Modern Literary Tibetan 

Another very thorough grammar book, with tons of examples. I’d mostly use it as reference material.

5) Tibetan Proverbs

This is the proverb book I’ve been taking proverbs from! Good for reading and translation practice. 

6) Tibetan-English Folk Tales

A great reading resource, complete with vocabulary lists, English and Tibetan versions of folk tales and reading comprehension exercises at the end of each story. 

[languagenerds-archive]

In my four or so years on tumblr, I’ve seen a remarkable amount of unproductive argument and countless of examples of immature responses to perceived disagreement. I genuinely do not think this is a problem of individual people, but rather stems from a culture on tumblr of seeing argument and disagreement as negative. I think our community would be much more pleasant and productive if we could learn how to discuss things openly and respectfully, so I’m going to share some of my ideas about how to do so, although I certainly still have a lot to learn myself.

Be very clear about what your stance is. By using generalizations, you are leaving room for other people to misunderstand what you are saying. Be as specific as possible in your argument/point of view.

Be open to changing your mind. An argument that is resistant to facts is usually not a good argument, because it is based on non-factual opinions and prejudices. There is a Chinese proverb that says “only the very wise and the very stupid never change their minds”. 

Don’t take disagreement or criticism as an attack. This is a hard one to do, but nothing derails a discussion like being overly defensive. This being said, don’t attack others either. It will only make them less likely to listen to anything you have to say. So steer clear of ‘you’ statements, as cheesy as it sounds. 

No name-calling. It’s easy to want to hurt someone back when they criticize you, but name-calling is incredibly immature and precludes any productive discussion from happening. 

It’s ok to ask questions to clarify what the other person is saying. 

If someone else is having an argument/discussion and you have nothing to add to it, just stay out of it. Commenting on it from the sidelines is unhelpful and honestly the type of thing that should have been left behind in middle school.

An ideal conversation does not necessarily end in all the parties agreeing, but in all the participants gaining new ideas and perspective and maybe refining their argument or gaining a more nuanced opinion. 

Discussion, argument, and ‘discourse’ does not have to be a bad thing! 

[languageoclock]

strangers you follow on social media aren’t obliged to do anything for you, no matter how politely you think you may be asking. if the raw human experience delivered to you via social media for the bargain price of absolutely nothing isn’t to your liking, i can highly recommend investing in a good textbook and dictionary.

[languagenerds-archive]

In the same vein, strangers who follow you are also not obliged to do anything for you, including giving likes, reblogs, asks, attention, or financial compensation. We all signed up knowing this is a community where people are not required so give anything they don’t want to. If you want more information than what people offer freely on tumblr you are welcome to seek that elsewhere. If you want to be compensated for the time and effort you put into your posts, you are also welcome to seek that elsewhere. 

It comes down to whether we want tumblr to be a place outside the capitalist system of knowledge sharing, or whether we want to monetize everything we put into tumblr and everything we get out of it. 

[languagenerds-archive]

Hello!! I wanted to say that I love your tumblr, it gives me so much inspiration to learn new things!! Also I wanted to ask... I really want to learn new languages but I don’t know where to start (should I start with the alphabet, with vowels..) can you help me?

Thank you so much! I think it’s a good idea to start with the sound system and the alphabet first. Then I’d read the wikipedia on the language or something just to get a feel for the structure of the language and what you’ll be learning, and then just start with basic vocab and simple sentences. Let me know if I can help with anything, like resources or tumblrs learning your target language etc!

[languagenerds-archive]

In my four or so years on tumblr, I’ve seen a remarkable amount of unproductive argument and countless of examples of immature responses to perceived disagreement. I genuinely do not think this is a problem of individual people, but rather stems from a culture on tumblr of seeing argument and disagreement as negative. I think our community would be much more pleasant and productive if we could learn how to discuss things openly and respectfully, so I’m going to share some of my ideas about how to do so, although I certainly still have a lot to learn myself.

Be very clear about what your stance is. By using generalizations, you are leaving room for other people to misunderstand what you are saying. Be as specific as possible in your argument/point of view.

Be open to changing your mind. An argument that is resistant to facts is usually not a good argument, because it is based on non-factual opinions and prejudices. There is a Chinese proverb that says “only the very wise and the very stupid never change their minds”. 

Don’t take disagreement or criticism as an attack. This is a hard one to do, but nothing derails a discussion like being overly defensive. This being said, don’t attack others either. It will only make them less likely to listen to anything you have to say. So steer clear of ‘you’ statements, as cheesy as it sounds. 

No name-calling. It’s easy to want to hurt someone back when they criticize you, but name-calling is incredibly immature and precludes any productive discussion from happening. 

It’s ok to ask questions to clarify what the other person is saying. 

If someone else is having an argument/discussion and you have nothing to add to it, just stay out of it. Commenting on it from the sidelines is unhelpful and honestly the type of thing that should have been left behind in middle school.

An ideal conversation does not necessarily end in all the parties agreeing, but in all the participants gaining new ideas and perspective and maybe refining their argument or gaining a more nuanced opinion. 

Discussion, argument, and ‘discourse’ does not have to be a bad thing! 

[languagenerds-archive]

Hey!:) Idk if you're a native English speaker but I just hope you know that much about English grammar asking you this: my teacher said there are (basically) never "would"'s in if-sentences. So what do I say in this case: "If I were you, I..." "... told him about it"?? "would tell him" (is the one I'd have said before)??? I'm really unsure:/ Thanks in advance!

I think your teacher is wrong. It’s perfectly natural to follow an if clause with a conditional verb. As long as your if clause refers to the past, the conditional ‘would’ is perfect. 

This explains it pretty well, if I didn’t make sense or if you want to show your teacher. 

[languagenerds-archive]

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but what do you want to do with your linguistics degree? I'm asking because I've been thinking about studying linguistics, but I don't really know what I'm doing *flails arms around rapidly*

I don’t think anyone’s actually asked me before, so I’m happy to answer! I’ve found that what I really like is sociolinguistics and I’ve decided I don’t really want to pursue linguistics into grad school because I’m not interested enough in phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax, to get a Ph.D or anything. So I’m not sure if what I end up doing will be related to my linguistics degree, but at any rate it will continue to help me as I learn languages. 

TL;DR - I’m probably not going into a linguistics related field, unless it has to do with endangered languages or ESL. 

Also, I’m pretty sure @linguisticsundergrads and @allthingslinguistic have some resources on what you can do with a linguistics degree.

[languagenerds-archive]

hello! i'm hoping to learn Portuguese and i wanted to know if you had any beginner tips? i'm only just starting to learn, and i only really know sim, bom, nao, and desculpe

That’s great that you’re learning portuguese! For starters, you might want to choose which variety of portuguese you want to learn. This might depend on what resources you have available to you or what native speakers you might have helping you. Once you decide, then you can work on developing a consistent accent (because there’s a lot of variation) and grammar (for example, whether or not you learn the informal second person conjugations). Then, if you don’t have a teacher or a textbook, I would start with Duolingo and try to get the basics down, and try to listen to as much music in portuguese as you can, to get it into your head. 

Best of luck!

[farhaha]

Literally Everything You'll Ever Need To Know About Semantic Bleaching

A very special article about 'very' (& 'actually', 'really', 'ultimately'...)

Sometimes it seems as though literally is held to an adverbial double standard that makes many people question the validity of its use as an intensifier, whereas other words with similar patterns of usage seem to pass without criticism.

[languagenerds-archive]

when you first start learning a new script, a new grammar concept, new sounds, it may seem impossibly difficult

but don’t be too discouraged because i promise someday it will feel second nature

[languagenerds-archive]

How to Study Advanced French

This guide is aimed at non-native French-speakers who have a solid grasp on grammar and can read and understand spoken French with ease. Often, when you get to this point, it’s difficult to know how to keep improving, so I’ve made this guide based on my experience. 

Disclaimer: This guide is based on “Standard” Parisian French. This is the dialect most people learn in school and most resources are based off of. I recognize that all other dialects of French are just as important and will post more on them in the future. 

PRONUNCIATION

1. Once you reach proficiency in French, it’s a good time to practice your accent. You probably already have a decent accent, but wouldn’t it be sweet to sound like a native? To practice I usually watch French youtubers and pause and repeat after them. You can also use Forvo to isolate specific words you want to practice. Also, here’s a good guide on how to pronounce the French r which is difficult for many native speakers of English. 

VOCABULARY

You probably have a pretty good vocabulary. You know the words for most things you come across in everyday life. But what if you are in a situation where you need to know how to say mushy? These kind of words are good to know to increase your fluency.

1. Reading is a good way to find words you don’t know. I usually underline words I don’t know while I read, and look them up later. That way I don’t interrupt my reading. 

2. Think to yourself in French. Make a note when you can’t find a word for something you’re thinking about and look it up later. 

CULTURAL FLUENCY

1. Usage - The rules we learn from textbooks are based on “correct” grammatical French. In reality, the native usage of words differs from what we are taught. For example, the French shorten many words just like we often call a picture a pic in English, or a telephone a phone. Contractions, filler words can also help make you sound more natural. 

2. Proverbs/Sayings - These are also important to know and will help you sound like a native: proverbs, colloquial expressions, quotations from movies, euphemisms, and more colloquial expressions. 

3. Slang - While you may not use all the slang you learn (I’m not sure what might be considered appropriative), it will greatly enhance your comprehension of spoken French: phrases, words derived from Arabic, words for money, verlan, swears, and expressions with foutre. 

Bonus: ways to avoid gendered or binary language.