Lingo Allu

Language learning blog. here to keep track of my language learning journey. French/English

[lingoallu]

Bonjour à tous !

I'm Flo and I'm French, in my 20s. This is my study/langblr. My goal is to post what I study and reblog anything related to languages and cultures.

The languages I speak: I'm a passive bilingual

- French (Native speaker)

- Creole (Native speaker)

- English (C1)

I'm learning:

- Spanish (not really sure but it's probably B2)

- Hindi (beginner's level)

- Tamil (beginner's level)

I have interest in:

- Korean (i have dabbled in it a bit over the years)

- Celtic languages (mainly Breton since it's spoken in France too)

If anyone needs help with their French, I can help to the best of my abilities. And I hope I can chat with anyone who speaks the languages I'm learning. I'm especially looking for resources to learn Tamil since it's the one I'm lacking in the most ☺️

Also I'm really into sociolinguistics but don't really know where to start so if that's your thing please manifest yourself and shoot me a DM 🙏

[ohmybollywood]

Aditi Rao Hydari in "Saasu Maa" Music Video

[celticstudies]

View this post on Instagram

Tá an mhalairt fíor liom - is mac léinn as an mBreatain Bheag mé a dhein seimeastar in Éirinn, agus ní raibh cead agam déanamh na ranganna as Gaelainn. Mar mic léinn idirnáisiúnta, ní rabhamar ach ábalta déanamh Gaelainne do thosaitheoirí. Ach dheineas Gaelainn i m'ollscoil sa Bhreatain Bheag mar sin bhíos a d'iarraidh meánranga ach ní raibh meánrang ann. Mar sin, bhí orm déanamh ranga oíche TEG B1, agus bhí orm íoc. Ach sa Bhreatain Bheag is féidir le mic léinn ollscoile agus daoine fé 25 bliain d'aois déanamh ranganna Breatnaise saor in aisce le Dysgu Cymraeg.

[hindipod101]

Here are 5 ways to express your gratitude like a real Hindi speaker! 🙏 P.S. Learn Hindi with the best FREE online resources, only here: https://www.hindipod101.com/?src=tumblr_infographic_thank-you_050726

[an-spideog]

hi! would you know any ressources for learning Ulster Irish from a very low level? (when I say very low I mean I don’t even live in Ireland so not even cúpla focal lol)

Now You're Talking is a great option for beginners wanting to do ulster Irish! It's a video/audio course available completely free online with worksheets on the website too.

Buntús na Gaeilge is also an option, an online textbook for beginners, as far as I know it's not completely dialectal but it leans towards Ulster over the other dialects in terms of vocab and grammar. (Note: NOT buntús cainte, that is a worse different textbook that doesn't use Ulster Irish)

[an-spideog]

Dia dhuit!

I've been trying to write myself a summary of grammatical concepts in Irish as I learn them (school failed me ages ago but I'm an adult on a mission now to relearn the language properly and use it!) anyway I realised I'd have to write a section on lenition and I have a few interdepenant questions on how verbs lenit (is that the verb of "lenition?")

So the verb bris would go

bhris mé for break[past] I so I broke.

bhrisfinn break[conditional + 1st person singular] so I would break.

And I think I have seen bhrisinn but teanglann just says it's a form of bris not what it means.

My questions are is "bhrisinn" a word, and what does it mean? And have I understood why verbs get lenition added to them correctly? you see my text book is clear as a glass of mud when it comes to lenition and I've found it hard finding other good sources.

GRMA, oíche mhaith agat (tá sé san oíche anois as an áit a bhfuil mé.) [I hope that's grammatically correct, but alas níl aon féinmhuinín agam.]

Hey! I'm glad you're learning Irish as an adult I hope it goes well and I can help with it.

You're correct that bhris mé is I broke and bhrisfinn is I would break. Bhrisinn is the past habitual so it's "I broke (habitually)"

e.g. Bhrisinn an fhuinneog sin go minic nuair a bhí mé óg - I often broke that window when I was young.

I'm not super sure about 'have I understood why verbs get lenition added to them, what is your understanding of why verbs get lenition? (you can RB with clarification and I'll respond further).

Verb is lenite, and your sentence was grammatically correct :) though the most common way of saying it's nighttime would be 'tá an oíche ann' or 'tá sé ina oíche'.

[celticstudies]

i often see people online saying that irish has 1.2 million or more speakers and like where are you getting these numbers from. because irish has less speakers than welsh and welsh doesn't even have a million yet. is it just people on the census with cúpla focal ticking boxes because that doesn't count.

[an-spideog]

have you any books/resources/literally anything for learning connacht irish specifically conamara (anything works really) grma

Yeah for learning Conamara Irish I'd use

the textbook Learning Irish by Mícheál Ó Siadhail

If you already know some Irish and want to know more about the dialect specifically you can use An Teanga Bheo - Conamara by Séamas Ó Murchú, or the translation online here

A lot of the media produced in Irish has strong conamara speakers, especially Ros na Rún on TG4, and some of the dubs of kids shows like Miraculous

Iris Aniar and Adhmhaidin are both Raidió na Gaeltachta shows hosted by strong Conamara speakers

In terms of more linguistics heavy books there's stuff like Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge and The Irish of Iorras Aithneach which talk about all the sounds in the dialect and can be found online

For books written in the dialect, the biggest name is Máirtín Ó Cadhain who was a really influential writer, wrote Cré na Cille which is one of the most well known novels in Irish. There's also people like Pádraic Ó Conaire who wrote many short stories in the dialect.

There's a good few strong speakers on Tiktok who have Conamara Irish or a nearby dialect (Inis Oírr, Inis Meáin, etc. they're all fairly similar) and important to note that Ráth Chairn uses Conamara Irish, so the strong speakers from there are also speaking the same dialect!

[thespanishgarden]

Spanish Word Wheel - Los Idus de Marzo

Los Idus de Marzo - Ides of March [History]

• Beware the ides of March

• Cuídado con los Idus de marzo

Today is March 15th! The day that Julius Caesar was assassinated in Rome in 44 BC. It is a day that symbolizes betrayal, bad luck, and danger.

Fun Fact: The word “ides” refers to “the middle date of certain Months” in Latin.

[Gif not mine]

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

Gradient ink Chinese calligraphy by 爱写字的豆豆

[vetchtibbles]

a moment of silence for my roommate who has to endure me doing linguistics homework. out loud. making sounds with parts of my mouth and throat I didn’t even realise I could use to make sounds. repeatedly and with passion

[teacupsandcyanide]

i think the moment of silence needs to come directly from you on this one

[superlinguo]

Linguistics books for kids: What Makes Us Human, Victor D. O. Santos and Anna Forlati

"When you were a baby you hardly knew me."

"I'm sure you saw me today. Or Heard me. Or felt me."

Victor D. O. Santos has written an utterly charming first person riddle of a picture book. The text balances the rich, multimodal, diverse reality of what language is with accessible vocabulary that is approachable with younger readers.

Re-reading is rewarded by Anna Forlati's expressive illustrations, which provide some visual red herrings alongside clues to pick over when you come back around.

A fun one for introducing early and mid-primary school children to the diversity of ways language works beyond whatever their own experience of language is.

Get the book: Bookshop, Amazon [buying through these links provides financial support to Superlinguo]

See also: Linguistics Books for Kids - the Superlinguo list

[aokozaki]

So much translation discourse just boils down to monolinguals not understanding that "coolness" doesn't translate across languages, and you need to re-add it manually on the other end.

[beforeliteracytherewasdeez]

Spanish and French understand the anglicism so just say "eso es muy cool" or "c'est très cool" if the context is not particularly formal

[aokozaki]

No no, not literally the word "cool" I mean the [concept of coolness]. Things that sound cool, poetic, funny, dramatic, etc in one language will completely fail to land if you simply go 1-to-1 word equivalents.

In the Japanese version of Fullmetal Alchemist, the antagonists are named after the seven deadly sins, in English. As in, rather than the Japanese word, "Greed" is still Greed in the original.

Because loan words from English are often pretty "cool", as with your Spanish and French example.

But this presents a problem, because, to give them a bit of flair, the antagonists are sometimes given a proper Japanese adjective along with their name, to make a sort of title of sorts.

"Greedy Greed"

The italicized part would be a Japanese adjective, and the bolded part is an English loanword. This is fine in Japanese, but would be totally nonsense in an English translation.

After all, it's common sense to keep the names the same, duh, and obviously the whole point of what you're doing is to translate the Japanese.

Greedy Greed. You cannot call him that.

You can't go 1-to-1. To keep the [concept of coolness], you have to identify what made the original cool, and then recreate it in the new language.

And here, we have a foreign word, and a native word, both meaning the same thing, paired together to give an antagonist a cool sounding title. So how do we do that in English.

Well, the seven deadly sins, being Christian and Catholic and all, have fancy names in Latin. Or well, they just sound fancy in English, because Latin was the language of intellectuals for a long long time.

And in fact, while we also have the word "greed", English has a fancier sounding word that means the same thing, but whose etymology comes from the fancy Latin. That might give a similar cool-loanword feeling, right?

Let's try it.

"Greed the Avaricious"

Oh yeah. That's definitely, undeniably, "cool".

[thespanishgarden]

Spanish Word Wheel - Toque De Queda

Toque de Queda - Curfew

• The government has imposed a curfew after the attack.

• El gobierno ha impuesto un toque de queda tras el ataque.

[Gif not mine]

[an-spideog]

best academic dictionaries of irish? i mean both bilingual and monolingual

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'academic dictionary', but there's not that many dictionaries so I can basically list them all here.

Monolingual

Foclóir.ie - The monolingual dictionary here is still new and in development, it contains a lot of more modern words and phrases, along with dialectal variants sometimes, but it's incomplete and often lacks important words. Design in an encyclopedic style to explain words rather than just doing things like "anthroponymist - one who studies anthroponomy"

An Foclóir Beag (Teanglann) - Doesn't have more niche words, nor does it give full definitions but it's useful if you come across a word you don't know and want a quick explanation

Croí Cainte Chiarraí - One of the most comprehensive dictionaries of Irish, definitely the most comprehensive monolingual one, Kerry biased because it was recorded by one dude in Kerry, but a really good resource, unfortunately it's not super accessible you just have to search the PDF

Irish-English

Ó Dónaill's Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla (Teanglann) - Quite good, very comprehensive (for the year 1977, it will not include more recent terms). It is a huge pain to read without this browser extension I made (Chrome) (Firefox)

O'Dinneen's - Uses pre-reform spelling, but has some words or phrases not found in later dictionaries, it's available as a PDF online but the web UI is more convenient to search, though you have to be aware of the occasional typo in the web version.

eDIL - This is a historical dictionary, so it's quite useful if you want to look up words / spellings from c.700-c.1700 (Old, Middle Irish). Won't really be necessary if you're only looking at modern Irish.

English-Irish

De Bhaldraithe's English Irish Dictionary (Teanglann) - Useful for finding natural turns of phrase, again the browser extension above is useful. It was published in the 50s so it lacks many modern phrases and will sometimes be overly censorious.

Foclóir.ie - A lot easier to use than De Bhaldraithe's, with clear indications of what sense of the word is being translated. Occasionally translations will lean a bit too heavily on English structures or seem unnatural in Irish. Covers modern phrases.

Téarma.ie - Terminology database, used for recording translations to niche governmental or academic terms. I would not recommend using this in general, some of the translations can be a little wonky, but if you can't find a word anywhere else it can be useful.

Hope this helps

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 113: Why "it's a diglossia!" explains so many social dynamics

In some communities, everyone regularly uses two languages or varieties according to the social situation, with one of them being more prestigious (and more likely to be written down) than the other. This particular kind of multilingualism is known as a diglossia.

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about diglossia! We talk about why diglossia is the answer to so many questions Gretchen gets asked at parties, what "high" and "low" versions of a language have to do with mountains, where the four "classic" cases of diglossia come from (Arabic, Greek, Haitian, and Swiss), and how at least some of them might not be diglossias anymore. We also talk about whether there are new diglossias emerging (French? English???) and how to tell if you might be in a diglossia.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

The LingComm grants are running in 2026! If you're working on sharing linguistics concepts with broader audiences or know someone who is, whether in person, online, with kids, through art, video, audio, writing, in person events (or some other idea we haven't thought of!), we have $300USD grants to support your cool project. The grants also include a mentoring meeting with Gretchen, Lauren, and/or an experienced lingcommer who we have personally selected to be relevant to your project.

Applications close on 30th of April 2026, that's the end of April anywhere on earth. Thanks to the generosity of several people we have more grants to give out than we expected, so please apply! Application form and further details can be found here.

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about what we've been up to in 2025 and what's coming up in 2026! Plus, we go behind the scenes on the Lingthusiasm Supporter Wall of Fame: we finally take our Which IPA character are you? personality quiz ourselves and use the results to give you a look into our artisanal process of assigning phonetic symbols to patrons at the Ling-phabet tier.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes (and get a symbol for yourself). You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

'Diglossia' by Charles A. Ferguson

Wikipedia entry for 'Mozambican Portuguese'

Wikipedia entry for 'Brazlian Portugese'

Wikipedia entry for 'European Portugese'

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

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Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @gretchenmcculloch.com, on instagram @gretchen.mcculloch and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

[irisharchaeology]

Early medieval round tower at Glendalough, Co Wicklow, Ireland