Aina's lenguages

🇦🇩🇪🇦🇬🇧🇫🇷🇳🇱 Hola! This is my lenguage learning blog, where I'll yeet all my tips, progress, victories and frustration on my jouney to become a polyglot

[lenguagesforaina]

Fall/winter lenguage goals

So I'm starting school again in less than a month, and with my re introduction to a rutine and the academic world, i want to set myself a more consistent scheduale for my lenguage learning, since i dont feel like im improving that much right now. I'm starting by setting a list in each one of my tl that i will try to achive in the upcoming 4 months before christmas.

DUTCH:

(I'm lower intermidate, been studiying it for a yean now)

Take 6 italki lessons

Keep a consistent daily diary

This I've already been doing and its working wanders, so I'm keeping it up and trying to writte at least a page a day every single day.

Find a lenguage exchange partner

(If you speak dutch and want to learn some spanish or catalan hit me up!)

Read 2 books

I have 2 books in dutch witch are for children but quite above my level rn, one about orangutans and one about witchcraft.

Go trough 4 magazines

I use magazines (children's ones, about animals and with lots of comics and games) to practice intensive reading, so i go trough them very slowly and paying attention to every single word.

Watch 25 hours of movies/tv in dutch (minimum)

Right now i'm watching My little pony , Tangled the series, and i want to start Wie is de mol

Watch dutch youtube in class

I study art and most of my classes will be studio time, so i'll try to chose youtube videos to have as background noise instead of music whenever i can use my headphones.

Master the 10.000 most common words

I'm planning on using Clozemaster for that, but i still need to get the premium version. Also my flashcard app of choice: Duocards. And compleating a vocabulary list notebook i bought recentley.

Learn to conjugate like a pro

I'll probablly be investing on buying a grammar book, but even if i can't get to that, i want to focus on learning conjugation well with videos or websites, more than eny other grammar point at this moment.

FRENCH:

(Used to be advanced but lost a lot of it, so im revivifying it step by step)

Master the 5.000 most common words

Sadly i've forgotten a lot of vocab so i want to start from the bottom again to solidify the basics in my brain

Get a grammar book and start it

If i can find it i want to dig up my old high school grammar book or find a simalar one secind hand.

Watch 6 movies in french

They'll probablly be Gibli films, since i find french really armonizes with the Gibli aesthetic.

Start reading a bit every day with apps

There are apps that show you a bit of art history, fun facts, or a history event that happened on that day every morning. You can set those in your tl and then you have a bit of reading every day provided to you in a subject you like!

Writte 1 or 2 short stories/texts every month

I dont want to writte as much as in dutch but i still want to practice my spelling, so ill be filling in 1 or 2 pages every other week with watever i feel like writting about.

Listen to more music in french and start analyzing song lyrics at least 1nce a week

Music is my main motivation to learn french so i'm gonna dive into it as much as possible

INDONESIAN:

(-0 beginner, haven't started yet)

Learn the 150 most common words

The basics: greetings,colors, animals, 10 common verbs, etc...

Get to the 1st checkpoint on Duolingo

Learn to introduce myself

Learn the basics of the grammar and save up for a grammar book

I'll probablly gift myself an indonesian textbook by christmas. Until then ill watch a lot of videos to famirialize myself with the grammar points.

Start a childrens tv show in indonesian

Also music! Instead of doing a lot hardcore studying i'll be just doing a lot of pasive learning and listening a lot

[useless-catalanfacts]

Now for a real challenge, what are some swear words in Catalan? >:)

The most important one: fotre (or cardar, in the Girona area), which means "to fuck". But it's used differently than in English. In English you add "fucking" between words (for example: "the fucking best"), but in Catalan it substitutes the word. For example:

Fot-li més sal: literally "fuck more salt", meaning "pour more salt"

Quin fred que fot: literally "it fucks so cold", meaning "it is so cold"

It can also be used as the adjective "fotut" (m) / "fotuda" (f) meaning bad. For example, if you just found out you have an exam tomorrow and you haven't studied, you might say "estic fotut" or "ho tinc fotut" ("I'm fucked"). But "estar fotut" is also often used to mean that you're ill.

"Fotut" or "refotut" ("re-fucked", for emphasis) can also sometimes be used like the English "fucking": "no em parlis d'aquell fotut examen!" ("don't even mention that fucking exam!"). Nowadays, many people use the word "puto"/"puta" ("whore") in this way, as the result of influence from Spanish.

But the most common in this situation is "cony" ("cunt"): "què cony fas?" ("what the fuck are you doing?"), "he deixat aquell cony de feina!" ("I've quit that fucking job!").

A lighter version of this is "dimonis" ("devils"), though this is so light it's not really considered a swear word and it's quite outdated: "què dimonis fas?" ("what the hell are you doing?")

Another one we say all the time is "collons!". It's a vulgar word for testicles, but it's used as an interjection that can have all sorts of meanings depending on your intonation: suprise, admiration, anger, exasperation, incredulity...

Besides that, adding this word to other sentences is also very common to express a full range of meanings and emotions. I've done my best to add subtitles to a video that talks about it, but it was difícil de collons (difficult as fuck). I've translated it as "balls", thought it's a stronger word in Catalan, more of a curse word.

(As you can see, some of those have a sexist implication)

Though probably what we say the most is "me cago en..." ("I shit on...") as the equivalent of the English "fuck!" as a quick reaction when you drop something or get hurt, something bad happens, or you want to complain or insult. Some common ones are:

Me cago'n Déu: I shit on God

Cago'n dena or cago'n deuna: I shit on G... (euphemism to not say "god", like when English speakers say "heck" to avoid saying "hell")

Me cago'n tot: I shit on everything

Me cago'n tu: I shit on you

Me cago'n la mare que et va parir: I shit on the mother that gave birth to you

Me cago'n la mare que et va matricular: I shit on the mother that registered you (to avoid the word "give birth", which can be a swear word by itself)

Me cago'n la mar salada: I shit on the salty sea

Me cago'n Judas: I shit on Judas

Me cago'n Satanàs (quan era jove): I shit on Satan (when he was young)

Me cago'n l'hòstia: I shit on the communion bread

Me cago'n l'hòstia consagrada: I shit on the blessed communion bread

Me cago'n la puta or me cago'n la grandíssima puta: I shit on the whore or I shit on the greatest whore

Cago'n cony: I shit on the cunt

These are only a few examples of the most common ones. There are many more, and these ones can get longer. For example, "me cague en un barril d'hòsties amb el cap de Déu per tapadora" ("I shit on a barrel of communion bread with God's head as the lid") or "me cago'n els claus-ganxo que aguanten les postetes del cagadero de Cristo" ("I shit on the nail-hooks that hold up Christ's shitting hole"), among many others. There are many fixed expressions like those, but people are also welcome to let their imagination come up with new ones related to the context and the people it's directed at.

And the soft, family friendly equivalent of those is "caso'm l'olla" or "caso'm l'os pedrer".

We also very often say "merda!" ("shit!") and "hòstia!" (this word is both a vulgar way of saying getting slapped or crashing into something and the communion waffle, it's used like English's "damn it!", "shit!" or "fuck!").

And to say something is great, we say "de puta mare!" ("of a whore mother!").

Of course, besides those ones there's the insults and ways to tell people to go to hell. But we'll leave those for another day (believe me, that will be a long post).

It's also worth saying that we use swear words less carefully than English speakers generally do. Many parents will say "fotre" in front of their kids or on TV and it's not that much of a big deal.

[elbiotipo]

There's better books explaining this and I'll give the quick explanation because I need to study, but ONE of the reasons why there's so many Italo-descendants in Argentina (up to 60% of the population, that's a lot and I really think it's a low estimate) and so few people who actually speak Italian or identify themselves as Italians (though there's also a lot and more than any other country) it's because there was kind of a mini-Risorgimento (the Italian process of unification) here:

People came from all over Italy to Argentina, and they spoke "Italian" but it wasn't the same Italian, it wasn't even the "standard" Italian taught internationally today, it was a lot of dialects some who could be considered entirely different lenguages. So it wasn't just "Italians", it was Neapolitans (the Porteño accent is actually closer to Neapolitan dialect than other Spanish accents), Lombardians, Tuscans, Fruilans, Trentines (represent!) and so many others.

Thing is, all those dialects are more or less similar to Spanish. Italian dialects? languages? are all very intellegible with Spanish. So when a Friulan needed to speak with a Neapolitan, they preferred to talk by Spanish. There was also the determining fact that public education often forced Spanish-speaking, but the fact remains that between Italian inmigrants, it was much easier to use and adopt Spanish among each other, even between widly disparate identities (many of them which even persist today in unified Italy). Of course, as more Italian families came and had success in Argentina (can you believe?) and found the country welcoming they brought more and more of them. To the point that they in many ways created a big part of modern Argentine culture and identity.

Even Cocoliche which is considered the Spanish-Italian hybrid has been almost wholly integrated to the Rioplatense Dialect. Argentine Spanish has basically integrated Italian into it and become a new dialect.

So, while Garibaldi unified the kingdoms of Italy with his Thousand and all that, here in Argentina we also unified the Italians, but we just made them drink mate and say che and turned them into Argentines.

And the best example? Milanesa Napolitana, the perfect fusion between North and South Italy, chupála Gary:

[s-enseless]

Least spoken languages

At present, three languages ​​are registered that have a single speaker: Taushiro (spoken by the Pinchi ethnic group of Peru), Kaixana (from the tribe of the same name in Brazil) and Tanema (a language native to Vanikoro Island, in the Solomon Islands). With two speakers we have the Lemerig of the Republic of Vanuatu, which comes from Lava Island, more than 1000 miles east of Australia. And finally there is the chemehuevi, of Aztec origin. Although the tribe still exists and is quite prosperous, only 3 people are able to speak the language fluently.

Source/Fuente: What's Up!

En la actualidad se registran tres idiomas que tienen un solo hablante: Taushiro (hablado por la etnia Pinchi del Perú), Kaixana (de la tribu del mismo nombre en Brasil) y Tanema (lengua originaria de la isla Vanikoro, en las Islas Salomón). Con dos hablantes tenemos el Lemerig de la República de Vanuatu, que proviene de Lava Island, a más de 1000 millas al este de Australia. Y por último está el chemehuevi, de origen azteca. Aunque la tribu todavía existe y es bastante próspera, solo 3 personas pueden hablar el idioma con fluidez.

[ratty9boy]

I'm so fucking dumb that i Just replied in german and czech at my sis question. My brain is melting an I have no idea how other bilingual people can talk in just one lenguage at once jsnsksnsis

[annadiplosis]

I made a radio piece about Catalan nonbinary people and the role our language plays in our identity! This subject means a lot to me so I drew a graphic to go with it even though no one asked me to 🙃

I know most of my followers here speak English but just in case anyone wants to listen to it here’s a link 💛🤍💜🖤

[gwendolynlerman]

How lovers call each other around the world

What makes lovers bloom in the most beautiful colors of their deepest inner feelings is a grave insult for 99% of all people around them.

Disclaimer: This is not a comprehensive list. I chose the weirdest/funniest terms.

Afrikaans: klein bokkie (little buck)

Arabic: بصري [basari] (my eyesight)

Catalan: colomí/colometa (pidgeon)

Dutch: dropje (little licorice), mopje (little joke)

English: “pumpkin”, “sweet pea”

Finnish: kulta (gold), muru (breadcrumb)

French: ma puce (my flea), mon chou (my cabbage)

German: Hase (bunny), Maus (mouse)

Indonesian: jantung hatiku (my heart and liver)

Irish: a leanbh (my child), mo chuisle (my pulse)

Italian: biscottino (little biscuit), microbino mio (my little microbe)

Japanese: 卵方の顔 [tamago hō no kao] (egg with eyes)

Korean: 우리강아지 [u-ri gang-a-ji] (my puppy)

Mandarin: 沉鱼落雁 (chényú luòyàn) ([beautiful enough to] make fish sink and birds alight), 心肝 [xīngān] (heart-liver)

Persian: باشد که یک موش شما را بخورد [bashed keh ak mewsh shema ra bekhewred] (May a mouse eat you)

Polish: misiu (little bear), okruszku (breadcrumb), rybko (little fish)

(Brazilian) Portuguese: chuchuzinho (little pumpkin)

Russian: лапочка [lapochka] (paw), рыбка [rybka] (little fish), голубчик/голубушка [golubchik/golubushka] (little pidgeon)

Spanish: cielo (sky), gordo/a (fat boy/girl)

Swedish: söt kanin (cute bunny)

Thai: ช้างน้อย [cĥāngn̂x/chang noi] (elephant)

Tibetan: སྙིང་སྡུག་ལགས། [nyingdu-la] (most honored poison of my heart)

Turkish: patlıcanım (my eggplant)

[liefdesverdriiet]

gezellig (🇳🇱)

abstract feeling of individual well-being that you share with others; cozy environment, something pleasant, familiar, friendly

[allesgeklaut]

Amsterdam, you own my heart

[waddei]

the fact that a shit ton of cultures share little Detail Things (like the slight change in pitch we do at the end of sentences to indicate that it's a question ) that are not at all dependent on lenguage is so fucking interesting dude

call me fucking nerd but this kinda shit is the real deal