[malaidarling]

we're running it back (langblr re-intro bc my old one is two years out of date)

i am:

a burnt out language nerd

graduating college in two months and terrified to do so

studying various things but mostly literature, creative writing, linguistics, and psychology

languages i know

english (in a pretentious lit major way)

hindi (brokenly)

punjabi (i cant actually speak any but oh how i yearn to)

spanish (i skipped ahead to spanish 5 within two years back in high school and have since forgotten everything)

mandarin (the loml since i was 16 and the bane of my existence)

etc etc etc idk look through my archives i have posts in thai and russian and korean and italian and irish and probably a few more. why would i pick one language when i can dabble in them all

currently i am hyperfixating on punjabi because learning to speak it is healing me in ways i never expected.

[melongifts]

Hey anyone notice how google translate is being pretty liberal with their translations as of late? Takin some real liberties to infer tone.

[melongifts]

ask and ye shall receive: When I write in Japanese I usually also throw it in google translate to double check that I'm not using the wrong kanji by mistake, and two years ago it gave me very dry and literal translations.

I was doing it today and noticed it had a pretty strong voice added to the output

For reference, to give a dry translation I would put: Lately I'm into in Hanafuda. Nobody seems to know anything about it here, so they probably wouldn't understand my brilliant jokes. I guess you guys will never be able to understand "Mister November and the Scary Cave".

I have a fluent friend who is able to check my work for me and give me tips on hitting the correct tone (I was going for a comically casual feeling), so I'm confident that I'm expressing the feeling I'm intending. While Google is also hitting the same emotion, I really don't like knowing that it's assigning tone in the first place.

To check if it was editorializing based on informal grammatical choices, I formal'd up the writing to be more polite and remove any non-standard vocabulary.

I'm just like... what is anyone who is translating what I'm thinking into their own language going to think when a translation app decides that it knows my intended tone? When online communication is already so complicated and nuanced? I'm a non-native so I'm spending ages agonizing over 117 characters, but when I'm chatting in English I'm not being so deliberate. How likely is it that tools that 'naturalize' are going to make choices that don't reflect reality and lead to insulting misunderstandings? I spoke with an English learner just yesterday who thought they were being bullied (they were not, the commenter in question was just excitedly infodumping about sociology) because something was lost in translation, and I wonder if it's because of tools making choices like this. I'm just a luddite I don't trust stuff like this. stinks of ai asking me if it can rerwrite my email in a more quirky style.

[melongifts]

What do you mean I'm just using the browser versi-

I AM SO SICK OF DEFAULT AI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[spanishskulduggery]

This reminds me of the recent twitter meme where someone was speaking Turkish and what they meant in Turkish was: "I'm going to make you lose your mind, old-school Turkish style" which is an idiom

And what it translated it as was: "I'm going to pop your pussy old school Turkish style"

Which is a WILD thing to say to someone by accident

[malaidarling]

my laptop has been broken for a week which is awful because i've had midterms and my writing workshop and just a lot of things to write in general. got a cheap replacement but i miss my old one so bad :(

[raylangivins]

[trainthief]

honestly the only reason im not an old man is that i happen to have been born somewhat recently. other than that 

[gadoctopus]

linguists are crazy bro. found a 768 page PhD dissertation on an endangered sino-tibetan language. look into the writer and they are THE source about that literature. pages upon pages upon pages...all by one woman...terrifying...and inspirational....

[the-greatest-taste-around]

nice outfit LOSER. 1443 called but in a dialect of Early Modern English that hadn't experienced the Great Vowel Shift yet so i don't know what it said

[chulip-blossoms]

a really really really underrated feeling in learning a different language is when you start to hear words. as in it's no longer a string of sounds, you can parse through where words start and stop as you're hearing them. even words that you don't know what they mean yet but you can distinctly hear it as a whole word

[malaidarling]

some more punjabi notes :3 we're speedrunning sentence structure. it's easy to intuit but hard to execute 😭

[malaidarling]

So great to see you getting back into Punjabi! Really inspiring since I'm trying to get up on my Urdu+Punjabi this summer 🫶 keep it up !

omg so nice to see you, thank you!! good luck in your studies as well <3 i definitely want to start posting more about punjabi since blogging about it helps me revise

[sexy-people-contests-2026]

My friend just sent this in the group chat, we got the new gay or European 2026 update

A rigorous diagnostic. 15 questions. One uncomfortable truth.

[german-enthusiast]

checks out i guess?

[linguistness]

Well well well...

[malaidarling]

...idk why i took this quiz as someone who is neither

[malaidarling]

april 12

restarting punjabi. relearning how to learn a language. i got way in over my head last time trying to memorize all the cases at once, but i found a tutor and am taking it easy. i hate using roman letters and feeling like a total beginner in a language i already know, but it's good to build a strong foundation, especially since i'm focusing on generating output. there's something very healing about the way she corrects me so gently. maybe it's okay to make mistakes??????

[malaidarling]

maybe i go back to language nerd blogging (after being dead for a year and a half)

[i-read-in-five-languages-deacti]

Courses for learning Thai language

Thailand Foundation and Chulalongkorn university have many self paced courses (mooc) for learning Thai language. It’s translated into many languages (as you can see). You can check them out here

Just found out this and wanted to share :)

[a-study-log]

Resources for learning Sanskrit

open pathshala - https://openpathshala.com/

e book and lessons - http://learnsanskritonline.com/lessons/introduction

interactive lessons - http://www.acharya.gen.in:8080/sanskrit/lessons.php

Sanskrit documents - https://sanskritdocuments.org/learning_tools/

Grammar lessons - http://learnsanskrit.org/grammar

Detailed grammar with video lessons and exercise pdf - https://sanskritstudio.wordpress.com/

Fresh approach to learning Sanskrit - https://slabhyankar.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/learning-sanskrit-by-a-fresh-approach-lesson-1/

Simple Sanskrit lessons- https://simplesanskrit.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/simple-sanskrit-lesson-1/

Spoken Sanskrit dictionary - https://spokensanskrit.org/

Sanskrit dictionary - https://sanskritdictionary.com/

6th to 12th grade NCERT textbooks - https://www.learncbse.in/ncert-sanskrit-books/

Will add more once I find them :)

I know that learning Sanskrit is not a huge thing. The last time I learnt Sanskrit was in school and titbits from a great grandfather who tried his best to teach my rebellious teen brain. I regret not making the best use - Don’t mistake me, I did learn things but not whole heartedly. Now that I’m trying to self-learn Sanskrit or Saṃskṛta as it is really called, above are resources that I’m using and hoping that can help out others.

[mooniluvyou]

[malaidarling]

end of the term thoughts!

i'm failing one of my classes and it's okay. if i don't graduate a year early it's okay.

i'm looking into applying for a creative writing mfa program in the future because of my wonderful ta who is encouraging me to continue writing. is this considered a mentorship. can i bug him about everything now that he likes me

my therapist thinks i need to be present but imagining myself in other countries is my main coping mechanism so idk what she expects

i'm finally going to live in an apartment. it doesn't matter that my history with one of my roommates is incredibly awkward. this is a good thing for me. i will have a kitchen and gym access and will adopt a cat

i read like 19 million words on ao3 this year and that could easily be transferred into picking up more physical books and decreasing my screentime. plus my tbr is long because i keep buying books that just absolutely take over my shelf space — i should read them all

i need to stop pretending the new year is going to change me. i can make goals at any point of the year and change myself