[kingpin-of-steel-act3]

[ihatenearlyeverything]

its ok theyre Gods lil helpers

[oatmealbrain]

And boy are they clumsy

[hydrangeafae]

Hi, these bees are babies! They’re not clumsy at all, this is what is called orientation flights. After birth and before beginning their careers as foragers (as all Honey bees cycle through all the jobs in the Hive throughout their lifespan), Honey bees take short flights back and forth, to and from the Hive, to orient themselves with their wings and their home so they can learn its location and how to get back home after foraging! Everyone has to learn, these are just smol little baby turkeys. Bees use the angle of the sun for location so adults have a better and more direct sense of location than any human

[polar-solstice]

IM SO PLEASED TO LEARN THIS!!!

They are just!!! Student drivers!!! 😭

[sindri42]

BONK!

[burntcopper]

things english speakers know, but don’t know we know.

[windycityteacher-deactivated202]

WOAH WHAT?

[ice-light-red-deactivated201611]

That is profound. I noticed this by accident when asked about adjectives by a Japanese student. She translated something from Japanese like “Brown big cat” and I corrected her. When she asked me why, I bluescreened.

[moved--306389]

What the fuck, English isn’t even my first language and yet I picked up on that. How the fuck. What the fuck.

[exomoon]

Reasoning: It Just Sounds Right

[arkthepieking]

Oooh, don’t like that. Nope, I do not even like that a little bit.  That’s parting the veil and looking at some forbidden fucking knowledge there.

[canthinkofaurl-deactivated20221]

How did I even learn this language wtf

[titaniumelemental]

I had to read “brown big cat” like three times before my brain stopped interpreting it as “big brown cat”

[arjan-de-lumens]

I’m kinda reading “brown big cat” as “brown (big cat)”, that is, a “big cat” - like a tiger or lion or other felid of similar size - that happens to be brown. “Big brown cat”, on the other hand, sounds more like a brown cat that’s just a bit bigger than a regular housecat - like a bobcat or a maine coon cat or something like that.

[the-real-seebs]

yeah, a brown big cat is almost certainly a puma. a big brown cat is probably a maine coon.

[whetstonefires]

yeah, if you put the adjectives out of order you wind up implying a compound noun, which is presumably why we have this rule; we stripped out so much inflection over the centuries word order now dictates a huge amount of our grammar

[delphinidin4]

Just looked up why we do this and one of the first lines in this article is, “Adjectives are where the elves of language both cheat and illumine reality.” so I know it’s a good article.

Things this article has taught me:

This same order of adjectives more or less applies to languages around the world.  “It’s possible that these elements of universal grammar clarify our thought in some way,” says Barbara Partee, a professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Yet when the human race tacitly decided that shape words go before color words go before origin words, it left no record of its rationale.

One theory is that the more specific term always falls closer to the noun. But that doesn’t explain everything in adjective order.

Another theory is that as you get closer to the noun, you encounter adjectives that denote more innate properties. In general, nouns pick out the type of thing we’re talking about, and adjectives describe it,” Partee told me. She observes that the modifiers most likely to sit right next to nouns are the ones most inclined to serve as nouns in different contexts: Rubber duck. Stone wall.

Rules are made to be broken. Switching up the order of adjectives allows you to redistribute emphasis. (If you wish to buy the black small purse, not the gray one, for instance, you can communicate your priorities by placing color before size).  Scrambling the order of adjectives also helps authors achieve a sense of spontaneity, of improvising as they go. Wolfe discovers such a rhythm, a feeling-his-way quality, when he discusses his childhood recollection of “brown tired autumn earth” and a “flat moist plug of apple tobacco.”

Brain scans have discovered that your brain has to work harder to read adjectives in the “wrong” order.

TL;DR: No one knows why we do this adjective thing but it’s pretty hardwired in.

[cuzosu-blog]

@deadcatwithaflamethrower Linguistics tidbit.

[thecsjones]

Since it’s never credited, this is from Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence, and just one reason why I think it’s required reading for anyone interested in prosecraft. Every page is this useful.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP: I finally get why ancient chinese people loved strolling on the streets during lantern festival

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)

Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.

Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.

This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.

The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).

Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.

Split-joint seals (骑缝章qifengzhang)are still widely used on important paper documents in modern China, an anti-tampering technique passed down from ancient times. They are applied across the edge of multi-page contracts, bidding documents and official archives. If any page is removed or replaced, the broken seal pattern can prove the file has been altered.

[h0n3ym00n333]

coffee + ancient greek ˖˚⊹ ꣑ৎ‎ (or pics from study sessions that i never posted)

[theinternetarchive]

I just want to let you guys know Cornell's entire library is open access (no permissions required) and there are (shocker) many books...

[crane12jp]

@official-library-posts

[official-library-posts]

official library post

[toskarin]

I'll always talk up internet radio stations because I don't think the average person is aware that they're free, can run in your browser (or in any program that can connect to them), work on your phone, run better than a youtube tab, and give you a much better selection of music than you could get from a general algorithmic playlist

(also lots of them have live shows which you can tune into for free)

[toskarin]

"oughh I follow this blog for weeb stuff not internet radio promo" here. gensokyo radio.

[toskarin]

oh and also I have to plug yggdrasil. it's cute.

[windcalling]

if u like folk and/or roots music: wumb.org !!! it is AD-FREE it has ZERO MORNING TALK SHOWS it is on air at 91.9 FM in the BOSTON AREA but streams WORLDWIDE on the WEB it is perfect.

[andmaybegayer]

big fan of soma.fm's selection, dozens of themed stations covering ambient, jazz, soul, punk, and a lot of electronica

[emmavoid]

Also if you search for student radio stations at almost any university you can listen to all sorts of crazy stuff for free!

[uisce-portaigh]

Maybe niche but for any Irish speakers or learners out there, Radio na Gaeltachta streams online and is a great way to listen to some Gaeilge without YouTube.

[kevin-ar-tuathal]

All of these resources are fantastic, but I wanna give a specific shoutout to Raidió na Gaeltachta streaming online - and I say this as a person who works in Irish-language visual media - if you wanna gainna better grasp of spoken Irish and how the language is used in casual settings, Raidió na Gaeltachta is the way to go, not visual media 😬📻😁

[uncuteartist]

I recommend Radio Garden! It has an interactive map of internet radio stations. It's a lot of fun to explore radio stations from all over.

Radio Garden

Explore live radio by rotating the globe.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP: Me coming back to work after the holiday (cr 两眼一睁就是活)

[marilearnsmandarin]

辞职 (cí zhí): to resign

[eightyonekilograms]

How far back in time can you understand English?

An experiment in language change

Nifty little language game here.

I can read back to 1500 with basically no difficulty

at 1400 I have to read slowly and carefully, but I can understand all of it save a couple words

at 1300 I can still comprehend most of it if I read slowly, but a much larger percentage of the words are unfamiliar to me, even with context

1200 and earlier are almost totally unintelligible

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

@eastern-lights

[eastern-lights]

It was so fucking weird to feel my comprehension go worse and worse until I hit 1400 and then it started gradually improving again the closer I got to 10th century OE.

[tiktoks-i-enjoyed]

[locallysourcedheroics]

Wish the subtitiles´d kept the Denglish XD

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[marilearnsmandarin]

[marilearnsmandarin]

烦恼 (fánnǎo): worries

[marilearnsmandarin]

I've just finished Filter 《滤镜》 (unhinged, very funny, recommend if you're looking for something light and casual, but the last 3 episodes were a total waste of my time and I think you should skip them) and have this song from the ost stuck in my head. You're welcome.

[marilearnsmandarin]

减压 (jiǎn//yā): reduce stress; relax

[max1461]

I'm gonna reblog with some videos of people speaking various American Indian/indigenous American languages, because I think most people don't even know what they sound like. Not to be judgement of that—just, you know, I think people who want to be informed should know what they sound like!

[max1461]

Former president of the Navajo Nation, Joe Shirley, giving an address in Navajo.

[max1461]

Nora Marks Dauenhauer telling a story, "Raven and Deer", in Tlingit.

[max1461]

Albert White Hat, a well known Lakota teacher, translator, and activist, speaking Lakota.

[max1461]

This YouTube user, Grahm Wiley-Camacho, has uploaded a bunch of videos in Colville Okanagan Salish, but I'm not sure who all the speakers are.

[max1461]

Multiple people speaking Cherokee and talking about revitalization of the language.

[max1461]

This guy speaking Yucatec Maya (guest starring: adorable small child).

[max1461]

There's a ton of material in Greenlandic on YouTube, but it's hard for me to find, because the titles and other metadata are also in Greenlandic! Of course, this represents a huge win for the language, since this is a biproduct of being in vibrant use by a community of speakers. Greenlandic has been an official language of the territory of Greenland since 1979, and the sole official language since 2009.

Here are some proceedings of the Greenlandic parliament, the Inatsisartut, which are conducted in Greenlandic.

Here is a radio show in Greenlandic, from Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa.

And here is a video of Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, Greenlandic MP in the Danish parliament (Folketing), causing some upset by speaking in Greenlandic instead of Danish.

[max1461]

Conversation between Loran Thompson and Francis Boots in Mohawk.

[max1461]

Interview with Yup'ik elder Raphael Jimmy about qaneryaraq "words of wisdom/right living".

[official-linguistics-post]

official linguistics post

[beforeiread-studies2]

Colour me surprised but I didn't expect to open today's issue of 20 Minuten (to practice Lesen) and see that the first and second page entirely dedicated to Taylor Swift's engagement (and a bit of the third too!). The articles weren't half bad anyway. The main one is about how now that Taylor is getting married Swifties want their own boyfriends to propose already haha.

link. I wonder if they had to pay to print those giant photographs?

If you are a German learner (esp if you are interested in Switzerland) I recommend this newspaper, btw. It's completely free, online and the articles are short and sweet, interesting but quite easy at the same time. It's the newspaper that gets distributed for free on Swiss trains. Go on the website and look for the E-paper version for a new issue every working day. And on the last page they always have Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes in German!!!

Another good alternative is Deutsch Perfekt, which is a newspaper specifically designed for German learners, but that one is like 10€ per issue... They put some free articles on the website but I like 20 Minuten better :P