little pine langblr @littlepinelangblr - Tumblr Blog

The best method of learning French, apparently, is a combination of:

Actual online classes for beginners, basic vocabulary and introduction

Highly advanced 700 long book about a grammar of a specific language that is not French, full of technical linguistic terminology

Where by 'best method' I do not mean anything about its effectiveness, for now I just think it's funny. But also, this is what I need to quickly learn French for – not talking to people, but reading these types of material so that maybe I can write my final paper for this course about a bunch of languages that are described only in French. So! It might actually work

#langblr #french

Wish me luck I have to obtain a sufficient reading level of French in 3 months

At least there is no such pressure on any skill besides reading because so far the fact that the pronunciation or une and un is like that is insane to me

#french #langblr #languages

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.

morallygay

Someone in the notes said that English has 30-something words for ‘rain’! That’s wild! A fascinating glimpse into their culture. It shows that rain is a part of their everyday life and important to them.

nakiju13

Did you know that the English language does not have words for 'przedwczoraj' i 'pojutrze', instead having to use cumbersome constructions like 'the day before yesterday' and 'the day after tomorrow' to express these simple temporal concepts? How bizarre!

mylittleredgirl

as a native english speaker reading the notes on this post i’m like oh good idea good idea oooh adding that one to the lexicon just

mapsontheweb

‘Kill two birds with one stone’ in European languages.

sighinastorm

Good job, Poland, for being civilized. Interesting hobby, Italy.

sighinastorm

Nice ambiguous, free-floating aggression, France.

gloriousruin-deactivated2018070

It’s how we roll, buddy. It’s how we roll.

elodieunderglass

I like the geographical separation of how people chose tools here. United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey, Russia, Estonia are using ranged weapons. France may indeed just be throwing rocks. Portugal has chosen to wield a stick, Germany has the correct tool for the specific job and Poland is indeed cooking. But Norway is slapping.

rotzaprachim

not only are there no bad languages there are also no bad or annoying dialects

rotzaprachim

Every dialect you don’t like is a friend you haven’t yet made

rotzaprachim

everyone who wants to suggest a language that’s actually a bad language. No ❤️

rotzaprachim

btw it does not escape my notice that when people want to make fun of English they make fun of us Black English or uk multicultural London English or accents inflected by patois and when they want to make fun of French they make fun of québécois. Even when they make fun of colonial languages they colonise. There’s no such thing as a bad accent

palant1r

I used to...not really get the big idea about dying languages, not really. Growing up where I did, with a lot of proximity to Indigenous communities but in an area 98% white, I was exposed to a lot of work done to revive dying languages through the grapevine, but I never really came across the impact. And as a high school liberal, it became one of those things that I filed away as "worth caring about because people care about it."

But I didn't feel the full impact of it. It wasn't something I felt passionate about. I knew you Weren't Supposed To dismiss the heartache of losing a cultural language or mock AAVE, but I didn't Get Exactly Why aside from It's Racist And We'll Leave It At That.

Around the same time, I also learned about the influence language has on cognition — about how grammar shapes the very way we perceive the world.

It wasn't until recently that I made the connection.

Language isn't just a set of rules for how to string sounds together. It's the very lens through which we interpret the world and convey interpretation. Every language represents, on the cognitive level, a different way of thinking. A different perception.

And once that clicked, the devastating injustice of linguistic death and dismissal hit me in the chest. When a language is lost, it's not just a set of words that's lost — it's a massive, irrevocable chunk of the context and paradigm of the culture it stems from.

Mocking a language/dialect isn't saying "the people who speak like this don't know the rules of language." It's saying "the people who speak like this see the world Wrong. They talk about the world Wrong. People who talk like this cannot convey information in a way that illuminates the world. There is something wrong with how they think."

So, yeah. It IS pretty fucked up how that line of mockery always falls along lines of class and race.

#languages #dialects

thearcaneuniversity

ok, this is amazing. I found a great site with short stories in 34 languages!

"WorldStories is a growing collection of stories from around the world. The collection includes retold traditional tales and new short stories in the languages most spoken by UK children.

We are adding new stories, translations, pictures and sound recordings every week. So keep coming back to enjoy new content!"

#language resources

polyglot-linguist

Unique and out of the box language learning resources you probably haven’t heard of!

• Lyrics Training - Lyric fill in game

• Radio Garden - Listen to the radio anywhere in the world

• Language Reactor - Browser extension to learn with Netflix, YouTube, etc

• BaBaDum - Fun vocab games

• Linguno - Listening, vocab, and conjugation exercises, plus 10 daily crosswords in each language

• Bilinguis - Read a small selection of classic, older books in a bilingual side-by-side style. Some have audio reading as well!

• Lyrik Line - Read and listen to poetry in your target language!! Huge selection

• Top 40 Charts - Top 40 music hits in countries around the world.

• Kiosko - Daily newspaper covers all over the world. Clicking on one takes you to the news website to read more

• Lexicity - For all of you ancient language obsessed people!! Amazing and thorough resource for many ancient languages

-> Click on the link below to get links to all those sites + more information about them!

These are 10 language learning resources that you have likely never heard of. Covering everything from audio to books to ancient languages.

#resources #language resources #langblr

lily-learns-finnish

Finnish resources I use

When I started learning Finnish I actually had a hard time finding the right resources for me, and it was a really slow start. However now I think the resources are out there if you know where to look and here are some that I personally like to use. (Sorry if these are just a repeat for people who actually know what they are doing…)

Youtube/Videos:

1) Finnished - interesting videos spoken by a native Finn

2) Luke Bland (in particular Suomi Torstai)

3) Elämä on mukava - this show is so lame and ridiculous, but at least they speak fairly slowly.

4) Tosi helppo - the news is presented in simple Finnish (video, radio and written down). It’s still very hard for someone of my level to understand, but worth trying.

Vocabulary/memorising:

1) Memrise

2) CLOZEMASTER - at first this was really hard, so perhaps not for a total beginner.

Textbooks:

1) Finnish for Foreigners by Maija-Hellikki Aaltio

2) Suomen Mestari 1 and 2

Grammar sources:

1) Random Finnish Lesson

2) The Finnish Teacher - I particular like some of the grammar explanations here (such as conjugating in present tense).

3) Finnish for busy people

Online dictionaries and similar:

1) Finnish verb conjugator - very helpful if you know the basic form of the verb, but can’t conjugate it yourself yet.

2) Wiktionary - great for typing in a word and finding out what form it is in (i.e. partitive/genitive/etc).

Other:

1) italki - you can buy relatively cheap 30 minute or 1 hour lessons with a native speaker or teacher, or alternatively try and do a language exchange for free.

2) Finding random Finnish people to talk to (sometimes harder than it sounds and I live with one and have multiple Finnish work colleagues…).

#finnish #resources

allinllachuteruteru

Duolingo is NOT what it used to be.

Emily Price Language learning app Duolingo will mothball its Welsh course at the end of this month meaning it will no longer be edited or up

“Duolingo is ‘sunsetting the development of the Welsh course’ (and many others)”.

I’ve used Duolingo since 2013. It used to be about genuinely learning languages and preserving endangered ones. It used to have a vibrant community and forum where users were listened to. It used to have volunteers that dedicated countless hours and even years to making the best courses they could while also trying to explain extremely nuanced and complex grammar in simple terms.

In the past two years it feels like Von Ahn let the money talk instead of focusing on the original goal.

No one truly had a humongous problem with the subscription tier for SuperDuolingo. We understood it: if you can afford to pay, help keep Duolingo free for those who couldn’t.

It started when the company went public. Volunteers were leaving courses they created because they warned of differing longterm goals compared to Duolingo’s as a company; not long after it was announced that the incubator (how volunteers were able to make courses in the first place) would be shut down. A year goes by and the forums—the voice of the users and the way people were able to share tips and explanations—is discontinued. A year or two later, Duolingo gets a completely new makeover—the Tree is gone and you don’t control what lesson you start with. With the disappearance of the Tree, all grammar notes and explanations for courses not in the Big 8 (consisting of the courses made before the incubator like Spanish/French/German/etc. and of the most popular courses like Japanese/Korean/Chinese/etc.) are removed with it. Were you learning Vietnamese and have no idea how honorifics work without the grammar notes? Shit outta luck bud. Were you learning Polish and have absolutely no clue how one of the declensions newly thrown at you functions? Suck it up. In a Reddit AMA, Von Ahn claims that the new design resulted in more users utilizing the app/site. How he claims that statistic? By counting how many people log into their Duolingo account, as if an entire app renovation wouldn’t cause an uptick in numbers to even see what the fuck just happened to the courses.

Von Ahn announces next in a Reddit AMA that no more language courses will be added from what there already is available. His reasoning? No one uses the unpopular language courses — along with how Duolingo will now be doing upkeep with the courses already in place. And here I am, currently looking on the Duolingo website how there are 1.8 million active learners for Irish, 284 thousand active learners for Navajo, and even 934 thousand active learners for fucking High Valyrian. But yea, no one uses them. Not like the entire Navajo Nation population is 399k members or anything, or like 1.8 million people isn’t 36% of the entire population of Ireland or anything.

And now this. What happened to the upkeep of current courses? Oh, Von Ahn only meant the popular ones that already have infinite resources. Got it. Duolingo used to be a serious foundational resource for languages with little resources while also adding the relief of gamification.

It pisses me off. It really does. This was not what Duolingo started out as. And yea, maybe I shouldn’t get invested in a dingy little app. But as someone who spent most of her adolescence immersed in language learning to the point where it was literally keeping me alive at one point, to the point where languages felt like my only friend as a tween, and to the point where friendships on the Duolingo forums with likeminded individuals my age and other enthusiasts who even sent me books in other languages for free because they wanted people to learn it, the evolution of Duolingo hits a bitter nerve within me.

~End rant.

#:/

selkies-world

Language resources

(Duolingo alternatives)

For those who no longer use or trust Duolingo, I've put together a list of resources - apps, learning methods, programmes, etc - with a list of whether or not they are free, and my personal experience with their success at teaching a language. I have also included new ones that I haven't tried yet but which I have researched; for these, I have included a rating of how much hope I have for them panning out in the future.

[I grew up bilingual & went to a multicultural school that had a student body consisting of children from refugee families who spoke little to no English. The school prioritised teaching the entire student body the minority languages, and finding a bridge language we could all learn together to fill in any gaps in communication. Due to this, I spent the last 4 years of primary school learning new languages with the rest of the student body.

We would have a school-wide lesson for 1 hour once a week - usually with a child or staff member fluent in that language leading the lesson at the front of the gym with a microphone so we could hear the correct pronunciation in time with reading the native spelling & English phonetics on the projector screen at the front of the hall. We were expected to use this language in the corridors when we spoke with teachers or staff members and when we passed by other students regardless of what their or our native languages were. As far as fluency went, we were expected to be able to recognise and say greetings and goodbyes, enquire to each others well-being, know how to ask for assistance, how to ask for medical help for various things, how to ask where the bathroom was, to give and receive directions around the entire school, as well as colours, names of things found around the school, make small talk about our activities of the day and our family, and why we were out of class - all with relative ease & mutual understanding.

We changed language after every break, so it was roughly 8 hours of lessons in each language, before we would start again with a new one.

Alongside this, the older students in the school (final 3 years, aged 9 - 11/12) would learn French 3+ hours a week for those 3 years so their writing, reading and speaking standards were acceptable for the beginning of high school. In 1 of these years, we also studied both of our native languages for the first time, for 6 weeks each.

I left traditional schooling at 11, and while I was home-schooled I taught myself Italian, Russian, and Latin from scratch, along with relearning my preferred native language, and 2 forms of sign - I used Makaton as a young child and in school as I have a form of mutism, but as a teen I realised I associated this language with the severe trauma I experienced at school, and so suffered from flashbacks and dissociative episodes when I used it. This, along with medical concerns, led to me learning BSL, and then SSE. Today, I use a combination of English, SSE and my native language in everyday settings. I have a mental block for learning French due to it being heavily associated with my trauma.

I am saying all this not for sympathy, but so that you can see firstly how much I enjoy and value learning languages, and in order to show my experience levels with learning languages. I've used, tried, and tested all of the learning methods I will be talking about in this post. I have either used or done a lot of research into the apps and programmes discussed in this post.

And yes, I have prioritised ones that teach endangered languages, indigenous languages and languages that aren't often included in language media such as Hebrew, various forms of Arabic, Navajo, Gaelic, and others. I have also included ones that teach and / or document sign languages and sign communication systems.]

#language apps #language resources #language learning

littlepinelangblr

Why be so mean about my Dutch to me :C

I said in Dutch that my Dutch js not very good but that this is a product they’re looking for and that no, we don’t have any older ones, this is the oldest one in our store.

I’m clearly trying and doing more effort than you’re doing in English, why the disappointed and judgemental face :C

(local linguist pissed off that some people expect perfection that they themselves can’t deliver and don’t see language as a tool for communication that it is)

littlepinelangblr

#ahw im so sorry op :((#dutch people are just really rude#when people say “no theyre just honest” it's a lie#a lot of dutch people are just v rude about things#esp this#i'm proud of you for trying anyway!!! don't be discouraged <333#as a local linguist & dutch native i know how hard it can be#so you're doing great <3

omg thank you <3 I don't think all dutch people are rude lmao but i think some do use 'we're just honest' as an excuse

and last saturday at my job there was an older dutch couple and they were much nicer about my dutch & english. i answered their questions in english but i did the formalities and i read the price to them in dutch and they were so nice about it :3

(just proves that it's not impossible to be nice you just have to try and some people are not willing to)

#also it's so satisfying to go do groceries #and be able to say all the little things in dutch #and just leave and not have this awkward moment of the person in front of you realising you don't speak dutch well #well it's not that awkward i'm just less anxious if the social interaction goes smoothly lmao

Why be so mean about my Dutch to me :C

I said in Dutch that my Dutch js not very good but that this is a product they’re looking for and that no, we don’t have any older ones, this is the oldest one in our store.

I’m clearly trying and doing more effort than you’re doing in English, why the disappointed and judgemental face :C

(local linguist pissed off that some people expect perfection that they themselves can’t deliver and don’t see language as a tool for communication that it is)

hotairballoon221

Dutch Human Anatomy Vocabulary

Know your body!

Other useful Dutch posts: The countries in Dutch! Dutch School Vocabulary Dutch City Vocabulary

Nouns

The human body - Het menselijk lichaam

The muscles - De spieren

The veins - De aders, aderen

The digestive system - Het spijsverteringsstelsel

The joints - De gewrichten

Body parts - Lichaamsdelen

The head - Het hoofd

The hair - Het haar

The face - Het gezicht

The forehead - Het voorhoofd

The eyebrows - De wenkbrauwen

The eyes - De ogen

The nose - De neus

The ears - De oren

The mouth - De mond

The lips - De lippen

The tongue - De tong

The neck - De nek

The chest - De borst

The breasts - De borsten

The arms - De armen

The upper arms - De bovenarmen

The lower arms - De onderarmen

The shoulders - De schouders

The elbows - De ellebogen

The wrists - De polsen

The hands - De handen

The palms - De palmen

The fingers - De vingers

The back - De rug

The stomach / tummy - De buik

The bellybutton / navel - De navel

The hips - De heupen

The genitals - De genitaliën

The penis - De penis

The vagina - De vagina

The bottom / butt - Het achterste, de bips, het zitvlak, de kont (very informal!)

The legs - De benen

The upper legs - De bovenbenen

The lower legs - De onderbenen

The knees - De knieën

The ancles - De enkels

The feet - De voeten

The heels - De hielen

The toes - De tenen

Organs - Organen

The skin - De huid

The brain - De hersenen, het brein

The heart - Het hart

The lungs - De longen

The liver - De lever

The stomach - De maag

The spleen - De milt

The pancreas - De pancreas

The intestines - De ingewanden, darmen

The large intestine - De dikke darm

The small intestine - De dunne darm

The kidneys - De nieren

The galbladder - De galblaas

The bladder - De blaas

Bones - Botten, beenderen

(I’m not going to name all of the bones in the arms, legs,… only the most basic ones.)

The skull - De scheden

The collar bones - De sleutelbeenderen, sleutelbenen

The spine - De wervelkolom

The ribs - De ribben

The pelvis - De bekken

Thanks for reading! x Tamara

#dutch #langblr #reblogging because i'm doing a dutch assignment right now #and somehow this langblr post is more useful than anything else i could quickly find

ayeforscotland

For people looking for leads on how to replace Duolingo, r/languagelearning is actually full of resources. I highly recommend taking a look through the links in the sidebar, such as Resources and the discord masterlist. They also link to a guide on how to learn a new language which has a section on how to find resources, which in turn lists a couple popular repositories.

My personal recommendation in general when looking for a language learning resource is to find something dedicated to just one specific language, as those will have much more in-depth courses.

All that said, Duolingo does have the advantage of being particularly easy to access, and having a pretty varied list of languages available, so yeah it's totally understandable if people want to stick with it.

Cheers Bluer, that's good info!

haru-dipthong

I just found out the japanese for "cookie cutter" is クッキー型（kukkī kata）. The kanji used here, 型 (kata) means "shape" or "form", and seems to come from an older word, 型抜き/抜き型 (shaped cutter/punch), which means that 型 is completely unrelated to "cutter" etymologically (a false cognate). It's just a coincidence that クッキー型 sounds almost identical to "cookie cutter"!

It's like that crazy case of the english word "dog" and the Mbabaram word "dog" having the exact same meaning and almost identical pronunciation by complete coincidence.

#japanese #langblr #false cognates #languages

best-non-english-word-torunament

Ok so! I'm the person who said much sadness for not being able to send you rare words from rare languages anymore.

And it's extra painful as a fellow linguistics student.

(part of me is thinking right now that a tournament of unknown words or words from small languages would be pretty neat, but anyway i don't have time for organising stuff unfortunately)

So the language I'm currently obsessed with due to it being my focus throughout a lot of structural courses (AKA it was assigned to me and I grew attached) is Vaeakau-Taumako, which is an Oceanic language spoken by ~1800 people in Solomon Islands (oh I have this intro memorised lmao) and while its phonology is quite simple (though it does have the biggest consonant inventory of that language family, and aspirated consonants!!), its syntax is... So fucked up. Pain and suffering. And yes obviously right now I chose to do a project on more syntax in it.

A very nice, if short word is kovaa (no energy to look for symbol for long vowel in IPA now) which means heron. I am very biased in favour on all bird-related words.

thanumia (where h is the aspiration) means 'to bury' and i just love how softly it rolls of your tongue especially when you combine it with the rather sad meaning

V-T is also one of those languages that have still only one word for blue and green, which is very neat and that word is ['wiwi]

A very specific phrase which I love due to the specificness is 'huatoo oho' (though it's often realised as one [huatoho]) which means 'paddle out to the sea' <3

And they also have reduplication! It can be partial or full, and well it's used for a lot of things but one of them is to express the plurality of the object in a transitive sentence (VT has both accusative and ergative traits isn't it great and cool and messed up <3), but it can also show that something takes place over a longer period of time!

So 'ahangia' (ng is a velar nasal) is 'to open' but 'ahahangia' is 'to open gradually' and it's cool and amazing. Same with 'apihia' and 'apipihia' for 'to close'

And some words (often animal names, but not always and not all of animal names) look like they're made by reduplication but there's no non-reduplicated form in VT so 'lingolingo' (again, ng - velar nasal) is a grasshopper or a similar insect. Maimai is dolphin, manumanu is bird or any animal in general and mongamonga (same, ng - velar) is a cockroach.

It's such a cool language spoken by so few people with only one proper grammar about it (which, granted, is more than most languages have, but still) and ye, just wanted to ramble a lil bit :>

Thank you for sharing, this makes me so happy to read! So many neat features! I really like reduplication and those are nice words! I don't really have much intelligent commentary, just a brain going 'cool language!!!'

#languages #vaeakau-taumako

toskarin

it's poor form to air your petty grievances with someone when it comes out they did something actually bad. save that for companies, like when you learn duolingo removed kanji from its beginner's japanese courses as part of their collab with crunchy roll

halfmoon-horse

duolingo is shit for japanese imo*, here are some apps i reccommend:

Hey Japan - comes with a cute shiba inu bc fuck that aggressive owl. its basically duolingo made specifically for japanese and much better at teaching you HOW the language works.

Kanji Study - its the grey one, made by one person. it covers the first 80 kanji plus the main radicals that make kanji up, PLUS hiragana and katakana FOR FREE. you can practice by drawing, flash cards, multiple choice, and you can decide whether you read or select the romanji/character/meaning. i learned hiragana in 5 days using this. the upgraded version (one time payment) with higher level kanji goes on sale a few times a year, consider supporting the app if you find it useful

Todai - more advanced but good for reading comprehension. japanese news in... japanese. highlights which JLPT level words are and gives percentages of each level for each article. has inbuilt dictionary to check words you dont know.

Takoboto - my preferred japanese dictionary but there are loads out there. i like it bc i can search in english, romanji, kana, or kanji and it breaks down kanji compounds into individual characters. it also shows different conjugations eg: to eat, eating, ate, to be able to eat, etc

those are just the phone apps i use, there are so many other resources out there that are free and not pulling bullshit like skipping one of the 3 'alphabets' of a language

*to be clear the reason i think duolingo is shit for japanese is that it doesnt follow the JLPT pathway. which... you dont NEED exactly, but i think the country that had to make a new, easier language profiency test bc not enough people were passing the existing one will know how to build courses that teach their language. plus duolingo is doing *gestures* whatever shit that is up top.

if you seriously want to learn japanese, memorise your kana (drop romanji asap or youll forever struggle and I'll come to kick your shins) and find the ebook of genki 1 that someone uploaded, or some other JLPT N5 course. but NOT duolingo.

Edit: just realised that duolingo may be your only real option if your first language isnt english (too easy for me to forget, sorry). in that case, make sure you supplement duolingo with your own kanji study!!!

gaysamurai

Link to all the Genki exercises that let’s you do them in different ways (writing, matchups, multiple choice etc)

#languages #japanese #language learning #langblr

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