Adventures in Being Wrong

A blog about language. Learning, speaking, writing, moments of success, moments of "I screwed up", and all the other rewarding challenges (and I mean CHALLENGES) of broadening your linguistic horizons.

[nemo-xlii]

Some may think that the existence of pronouns implies the existence of amateurnouns. This is false. The pro part of the termin derived from latin. In that context it means instead of. Therefore, the existence of pronouns also implies the existence of qumnnouns (from latin for along with.)

[linguisticadventures]

cummnouns 😔

[groovysarity]

[linguisticadventures]

hey how Dare you. your accusations that "nobody uses these words" are malarkey. I am flabbergasted and bamboozled by this tomfoolery. why don't you skedaddle elsewhere with those shenanigans, nincompoop, before I start a Kerfuffle of serious proportions

[linguisticadventures]

Mi puto cerebro keeps buscando Spanish words en lugar de English ones 😭

[unusual]

Japanese is an incredibly fun and rewarding language (if you’ve ever wanted to learn it for ANY reason, most importantly including the “silly” reasons) but the fearmongering and capitalist intervention involved in the language learning process have given it a reputation as an “impossible task” for English speakers, leading to confusion and dkn learners and weird pessimist attitudes about the whole thing. In this thread I will explain how to effectively learn and retain Japanese. This is a tried, tested and true method; probably 99% of all people who try to learn Japanese give up, but everyone I’ve met who has tried and stuck with this has been at or above N3-N4 after 6 months or less including me

[unusual]

You can teach yourself Japanese for free if you have a little free time every day and a computer

1. Drill yourself on hiragana and katakana. These are the phonetic building blocks of Japanese, think of them as equivalent to english letters. This site is a good resource in general. Once you have a solid grasp on this, DO NOT LINGER HERE; move to step 2. You will master kana later.

2. Download Anki. This is a flashcard service. They have a paid app if you’re willing to invest for it, but if not, they have a mobile website (create an account and sync it with your computer).

This is the deck you’re going to download. Import it to Anki and do this every day. I have learned the hard way (twice) that skipping this is bad. If you become overwhelmed, you can change the number of new cards and reviews by clicking the cog next to the name of the deck!

3. Cure Dolly (Youtube, grammar) + transcript. She has kind of a posh accent, you might want to turn subtitles on. Watch a few videos when you feel like it but most importantly set up 4 and 5 as soon as possible

4. Yomitan (must have) is a browser extension that functions as a pop-up dictionary. you need to install dictionaries for it to work. here are some dictionaries you can use with yomitan and explanations of what they do

5. READ. DO NOT LET YOURSELF GET STUCK BEFORE THIS STEP. JUST READ!!!! Most people who fail to learn Japanese do so because they are afraid of not being ready to move on, which is counterproductive. Just read. When you were a child did you spend years on vocab and grammar before reading? No I bet you did not. Pick something to read and learn what you don’t already know by reading in Japanese.

Jiten.moe has a list of novels and visual novels that you can read on your computer sorted by difficulty. So does jpdb. There’s also this document. There’s also this document. Hey look this website is cool too

For visual novels: download LunaHook. It “hooks” to your VN and allows you to use Yomitan on words you don’t know. Turn off the translation feature, it does nothing to help you learn

For literary texts: ttsu e-reader supports epub and htmlz files.

You can also learn Japanese by watching anime, but it’s a little more convoluted and requires a lot more patience.

For manga, utilize Mangatan, but I don’t recommend this right out the gate because when you’re first learning sentence structure you’ll want something with complete sentences.

Set your computer up for mining vocab before you start reading. Once you finish your kaishi deck, you can drill your mining cards (I didn’t do mine until after finishing kaishi because it was too much).

Most importantly: reading is going to be hard at first. It is going to piss you off. You need to muscle through with this because this is where the bulk of your learning will happen. After a while you will just feel like reading because you love reading! Try not to pick something too hard for your first read, but if you’re interested in the story you might be able to muscle through something a little tougher.

Remember to consult yomitan and cure dolly where needed, that’s what it’s there for. As you can see I am quite normal about the Japanese language, so if you have any other questions or need help with anything else feel free to shoot me an ask and I will get back to you promptly. Japanese is not your enemy and it is not impossible. It is your friend

[linguisticadventures]

Saving this for later,

[writingonthewalls1832]

the international phonetic alphabet is really revolutionary for people who like things to be Described. Yeah you know that funky Sound you just made? You can write it down exactly and if someone else who knows IPA reads it then they, too, can make that weird Sound. Even if it means nothing. And sometimes you get to use Funky Symbols! Incredible

[official-german-puns]

Sepp: “Du, wos hoast’n Frosch auf Englisch?

Hans: “Frog.”

Sepp: ”I hob ja grod g’frogt.

[saltdust-crusader]

whoever decided the word lisp should have an s in it is the most cruel person to have ever lived

[onion-souls]

All speech difficulties were named like this

[muse-meter]

This is both reasonable and unreasonable at the same time and i hate it

[linguisticadventures]

tetacism sounds REALLY funny in Spanish

[nibmoss]

did you hear there’s a new short film that is GAY?? LESBIAN, even???

AND it’s filmed in a minority language?? a CELTIC language, one might say??

AND that it’s available for FREE, with SUBTITLES in both irish AND english??

“FAN” (2024) dir. cúnla ní bhraonáin morris

watch here 🫶

[linguisticadventures]

I havent been interested in learning Irish in particular, but seeing such support for minority languages always warms my heart!!! REBLOG FOR GAY IRISH LADIES

[adhd-languages]

Found a new language practice app!

Polygloss has you describe an image in your target language so another player can guess it. It encourages creative answers. The game works for people of all levels — you can describe simple pictures or try your hand at wordplay.

It has plenty of options and will let you add any language you’d like — tho it’ll probably be more difficult to find people to play with.

[linguisticadventures]

Saving for later :3

[morsobaby]

Speak English poorly. Speak with an exaggerated accent or with the pronunciations easier for your native language. Add your language to it. Speak with direct or poor translations of your words into English. Don't conform. Sound obnoxious, sound stereotypical. Be free. Fuck the americanization of the world. Prioritize your native language. Prioritize languages other than English. Listen to them. Listen to your own language.

[linguisticadventures]

Well... I am a native English speaker from the USA... but I do love this post. I've met too many people who seem ashamed of their accents, their cultures, who they are. They tell themselves their English isn't good, even though they speak completely fluent English with just a little bit of an accent. It can be hard to truly be yourself in a world where people will mock and other you for it, but I love linguistic diversity and hope it will be here for a long long time.

[ly0nstea]

Gotta start treating english like monolinguistic english speakers treat other languages

Did you know English doesn't have a word for the Irish word 'mar'? Instead they have to say 'is the cause' of or 'because' for short

[ly0nstea]

On this, i think its HILARIOUS that English lost the singular/plural you distinction and like, unanimously, almost every dialect re-evolved a plural you pronoun, be it ye, yall, yis, yous

[defectivegembrain]

[ID: tags reading #sure I'll hop on this #english doesn't even have 'tu' AND 'jūs' #imagine having only one 'you' which has to be used for one person and for multiple people]

[official-linguistics-post]

official linguistics post

[lwyzlwyz]

english doesn't make a distinction between ser and estar and have to make do with to be

eu sou feliz(i am happy) and eu estou feliz(i am happy) are so, so different

[sprachgefuehle]

This proves that the native english speaker can't distinguish between permanent and transient states, forever stuck in a flow of existence where all states of being carry the same weight. This cognitive dysfunction explains not only the political but also socioeconomic turmoils in the lands where english speakers are native.

[betweencrossedblades]

in western eurasia, where english originated, they do not write in characters. they have a fascinating writing system instead called the 'alphabet'. this approximately translates to 'strings of letters that represent sound'.

it is unique among the civilised world's writing systems for many reasons. most notably, it is based entirely on the sound of the language and doesn't reference in any way the meaning! this reflects the european state of mind, where the 'sound' is considered the primary unit of language, rather than the written word. this philosophy is reflected in the continent's long and storied history of small feudal kingdoms, oral transmission, isolated communities, and widespread illiteracy.

the alphabetic system of the european region is fascinating, and deserves our respect: it exemplifies the diversity and flexibility of the human mind, and has numerous implications for its impact on european thought. it is, however, undeniably impractical.

if a person speaks the english dialect and want to know what is written in the closely related german dialect, there is simply no way to communicate. whilst it is common to fail to understand a people's spoken dialect - consider mandarin and cantonese - this system is unique in the following disadvantage: the english speaker cannot understand the written german dialect at all, unless they have expressly learnt the letter strings of the german pronunciation.

this would seem to defeat the entire point of a writing system. its continued (and enthusiastic) usage in the distant european region is, therefore, a matter of much theorising and debate. most scholars of europe agree, however, on the alphabet's ritual, religious and traditional importance to the european mind.

[linguisticadventures]

idk what even to add. this post is so interesting

[linguisticadventures]

the Swedish accent is the best. It sounds like...... a refreshingly chill river flowing over sexy pebbles. Idk how to describe it. It’s more clear-cut than American pronunciation. If Swedish English is neat print handwriting, American English is like a 7-year-old child’s cursive. It’s also infectious! After watching one video by TheClick I am overwhelmed with the urge to buy IKEA and conquer Sweden with an army of blåhaj.

[linguisticadventures]

i hate you mla formatting I hate you double spacing I hate you 12-point times new roman I hate you alphabetized works cited page

[twinicegiantorbiters]

i don’t know why but i’m really amused by the winner of some ‘new kanji’ contest:

compare with the real kanji

座 (seat/gathering), but the two 人 (person) radicals have been moved from next to each other within the 土 (earth) radical to diagonally from each other, making this “social distance(d seating/gathering)”

[jadethest0ne]

This is hilarious, but to further the hilarity, I’d like to point to the fact that half of the “A rank” (runners up) for this contest also are related to 2020 epidemic jokes

First up we have:

Compare with 太

The original kanji means “to gain weight”. But it adds the コ “ko” and ロ  “ro” katakana symbols at the top to represent the weight you gain while staying home due to the corona virus.

Then we have:

Compare with 会 

The original kanjij means “meeting”, but the lower radical is changed to look more like a “Z” to represent Zoom meetings. Thus, the new kanji means “web meetings” or “zoom calls”

And of course another social distancing one:

Compare with 話 

This means “to talk” or “chat”, but it’s changed simply to show the two radicals social distancing from one another as we should also while holding conversations nowadays.

At least we can have some fun language humor despite all of this!

[niuniente]

@goromonkjima

[kirbyfanneox]

That’s really neat! 

Anyway, here’s Loss kanji again.

[linguisticadventures]

hey, whoever’s reading this: your accent is cool. No matter where you’re from. It’s still cool.

[linguisticadventures]

American TV intros: Whoa! Yeah! We’re doing a thing! Yay! Hooray! Together we’ll do the thing!

Japanese TV intros: The birds call. The crimson-red flowers, once sacred in their beauty, now wither as if in fear. The world is about to get fucked over in 100 different unimaginable ways, but I’ll run by your side as the sky comes crashing down. There will be many tears, so you must take solace in that they may fall upon my shoulder. Yeehaw!

[linguisticadventures]

me, who does not understand german beyond a few simple nouns, reading a tumblr post in german: ah, yes, that