studying

this is where i collect things about language learning and book reading and post about my experiences. native english speaker. target languages: french (a2/b1?); spanish (a1); japanese (jlpt 5); hebrew (baby); and perpetually dabbling in everything else.

[japanese-lol]

Today's phrase is "薬より養生（kusuri yori yojo）".

【Vocabulary & Grammar】

1．薬（くすり, kusuri） A noun meaning “medicine.”

2．より（yori） A particle meaning “than.” Used for comparisons, indicating that what follows is more important.

3．養生（ようじょう, yōjō） A noun meaning “health maintenance,” “care of the body,” “living in a way that preserves health.”

「薬より養生」 means that maintaining your health through daily habits is more important than relying on medicine after getting sick. It teaches the value of prevention, self‑care, and living in a way that protects your well‑being every day. Is there anything you make a point of doing in your daily life to stay healthy? From drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning to doing radio exercises, there are many different ways to care for your health. Starting something may be easy, but continuing it is not something everyone can do. If there is something you do to maintain your health, I hope you keep it up. It might be the real secret to feeling energetic every single day.

-----

本日の一言は、「薬より養生」です。 健康を保つために、日々の生活で心がけていることはありますか。 寝起き一杯の水から、ラジオ体操まで、様々な健康法がありますね。 始めることは簡単かもしれませんが、続けることは全員ができることではありません。 もし、あなたが健康維持に対して心がけていることがあるなら、ぜひ続けてみてください。 もしかしたら、それが毎日を元気に過ごせる本当のコツなのかもしれません。

[kitapkokansevgili]

Comfort era

[deegausserr]

Wow, what a beautiful image.

[hiiighpriestess913]

Y’all I’m being so serious when I say this: go to the library for witchcraft reasons.

You can usually find books on witchcraft, yes, but there’s also field guides on local foraging and wildlife, cookbooks, books that teach you how to craft and DIY, books about environmental protection and stewardship, books on how to use herbs medicinally, books about other religions, cultures, and spiritual practices. My favorite local library even has a seed swapping program and fantastic resources to research your own family history!

Go to the library for witchcraft. Please. :) <3

[atusion]

spanish vocab today!

inversión - investment

salvo - safe

esperar - to expect

can also mean "to wait"

grammar / phrases

estar a salvo de ___ - to be safe from ___

note: needs a, not just "estar salvo" in this case

(i usually mix up "salvo" with "seguro" because of "seguridad" lol)

me hace falta ___ - I'm in need of (object)

lit.: "it does me lack ___"

deja que ___ (verb) - let me ___ (verb)

note: needs que and triggers the subjunctive!

ex: deja que baile - let me dance

whereas "dejar de ___" means "stop doing ___"

lo que se te pasa por la cabeza - what's on your mind

lit.: "what passes you through the head"

quererlo de vuelta, querer ___ de vuelta - to want it back, to want ___ (object) back

note: "back" as in "again", "returned"

NOT "atrás" which is physically "back", "behind"

no queda otra (opción) - there is no other (choice, option etc)

structure: "no queda ___"

lit.: "no ___ is left", "no ___ remains"

estoy tan feliz de que estés aqui - I'm happy that you're here

note: needs "de que", not just "que"

[renshuusuru]

Trans Jews, I love you

Cis Jews, I love you

Gender non-conforming Jews, I love you

White-passing Jews, I love you

Jews of color, I love you

BIPOC Jews, I love you

Orthodox Jews, I love you

Reform Jews, I love you

Reconstructionist Jews, I love you

Conservative Jews, I love you

Chasidic Jews, I love you

Jewish men and boys, I love you

Jewish women and girls, I love you

Jewish non-binary people, I love you

Jewish non-humans and alterhumans, I love you

Israeli Jews, I love you

Diaspora Jews, I love you

Proud Jews, I love you

Jews who hide for safety, I love you

Jews from birth, I love you

Converts and prospective converts to Judaism, I love you

If I forgot something important, feel free to add on

[shofarsogood]

Disabled Jews, I love you

Mentally ill Jews, I love you

Chronically ill Jews, I love you

Jews with invisible disabilities, I love you

Jews with developmental disabilities, I love you

[vampiricbloodyraven]

Autistic Jews, I love you.

Plural Jews, I love you.

d/Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and mute Jews, I love you.

Neurodivergent Jews, I love you.

Jews dealing with and managing OCD, I love you.

Jews with BPD, ASPD, and NPD, I love you.

Jews with Cluster B Personality Disorders/Conditions, I love you.

Jews with Cerebral Palsy, I love you.

Jews who are systems, I love you.

Non-verbal and semi-verbal Jews, I love you.

Romani Jews, I love you.

Asian Jews, I love you.

Humanistic and secular Jews, I love you.

[renshuusuru]

Aplatonic Jews, I love you

Asexual Jews, I love you

Aromantic Jews, I love you

Jews with memory disorders, I love you

Jewish children, I love you

Jewish elders, I love you

[jewishblog]

Patrilineal Jews, I love you.

Renewal Jews, I love you.

Sephardi Jews, I love you.

Mizrahi Jews, I love you.

Ashkenazi Jews, I love you.

Bukharan Jews, I love you.

Mountain Jews, I love you.

Beta Israel and Ethiopian Jews, I love you.

Abayudaya and Ugdanan Jews, I love you.

Italki Jews and Italian Jews, I love you.

Yemenite Jews, I love you.

Karaite Jews, I love you.

Krymchaks and Crimean Jews, I love you.

Georgian Jews, I love you.

Kaifeng Jews and Chinese Jews, I love you.

Tzarfati, Shuaditi, and French Jews, I love you.

Moroccan Jews, I love you.

Romaniote Jews and Greek Jews, I love you.

Syrian Jews, I love you.

Persian Jews, I love you.

Iraqi Jews, I love you.

Anatolian Jews and Turkish Jews, I love you.

Cochin Jews, Bene Israel, and Indian Jews, I love you.

Latin American Jews, I love you.

Indigenous Jews, I love you.

Black Jews, I love you.

Mixed-race Jews, I love you.

Those who identify as half-Jewish, I love you.

Jewish refugees and immigrants, I love you.

Jews from interfaith families, I love you.

Jews who are deeply observant, I love you.

Jews who are culturally Jewish but not religious, I love you.

Jews learning Hebrew, I love you.

Jews who don't know any Hebrew, I love you.

Jews who feel connected to Jewish community, I love you.

Jews who feel isolated from Jewish community, I love you.

Jewish survivors of antisemitism, I love you.

Holocaust survivors and their descendants, I love you.

Jews who are the only Jew in their town, I love you.

Jewish adoptees, I love you.

Jews who don't fit neatly in, I love you.

Jews reconnecting with Judaism, I love you.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

[tokidokitokyo]

校庭

こうてい

schoolyard; school playground; school grounds; campus

校庭に何人かの生徒がいます。 こうてい に なんにん か の せいと が います。 There are some students in the schoolyard.

[makingqueerhistory]

How to Defend Books and Why

Danny Caine

Listen on Audiobook

You're invited to the book revolution!

Fight back against censorship and empower your community with this close look at the book banning movement.

In a moving, compulsively readable call to arms for readers everywhere, Danny Caine, bestselling author of How to Resist Amazon and Why and How to Protect Bookstores and Why, offers an expertly-crafted confrontation of far-right, Christian nationalist attempts to reshape American culture through ban campaigns targeting schools, libraries, bookstores, and prisons, with the aim to silence marginalized identities in life and in literature.

From the first-ever banned books display at San Francisco's City Lights in the 1950s to the rapid rise of so-called Moms For Liberty during the COVID-19 pandemic to attempts to silence Palestinian authors, Caine charts the course of repressive censorship campaigns, along with the creative and sometimes unlikely activists who've stood up against them.

Each chapter is based on a particular book banning episode, bolstered by research and legal precedent, and concludes with helpful takeaways for further reading or resistance.

Throughout, Caine approaches these heated issues with gentle openness harkening back to his work as a public school teacher and a bookseller.

He emphasizes our collective responsibility towards art, free speech, and each other.

*Affiliate link above, this book was originally read as an ALC on Libro.fm*

[65wordsblog]

Me studying:

- I'll never forget this 🤗

Me tomorrow:

- What was that word again? 🤔

[afurioushawk]

Hey look, the obvious happened.

You know who did stand up in court against Trump for trans kids tho? Who had her state's federal funds frozen in retaliation for it? And who still beat Trump in court and got them unfrozen? And who trans leftists didn't have her back afterward for her troubles?

Also, this is a taste of what M4A would look like when leftists hand it over to federal Republicans every four years and why nobody will ever trust them with their healthcare.

[nyahongo]

Using は to create space for contrast

The topic particle は can either replace or combine with other particles in order to mark the topic of a sentence. For example, は replaces を to mark the direct object as the topic of a sentence.

私も弁当を食べる。

→ I will eat a bento, too.

Has no topic (nothing is marked by は)

Direct object = 弁当 (marked by を)

弁当は、私も食べる。

→ As for a bento, I will also eat it.

Topic = 弁当 (marked by は)

Direct object = still 弁当

What is は doing in the second sentence?

Interpretation #1: A neutral statement. 弁当 is the topic of the conversation, and the speaker is mentioning that they also eat 弁当.

Interpretation #2: Introducing a contrastive topic. 弁当 is the topic of the conversation, but the speaker is being specific about eating 弁当 versus something else.

Contrastive は

Think of は as putting a spotlight on a topic and quietly implying:

"As for X… (here’s what I want to say about it — and it might differ from other things)."

That "might differ from other things" is where the contrast sneaks in. It’s not always strong contrast — sometimes it’s just a gentle nudge.

私も弁当を食べる。

→ I will eat a bento, too.

Focus = 私

You're adding yourself to the group.

No contrast implied.

弁当は、私も食べる。

→ As for a bento, I will also eat it.

Focus = 弁当

You're adding your action to the topic of 弁当.

Contrast = between 弁当 and other possible foods/topics/other people's actions

A trick to feel the contrast

If you can naturally add "but…" after the は phrase, the contrast is there.

弁当は、私も食べる。

→ As for the bento… (but the curry? maybe not).

You don’t have to say the second half — Japanese often leaves it unsaid.

Additional Examples

① りんごは食べるけど、バナナは食べない。

As for apples, I eat them, but bananas I don’t.

Contrast = explicit (けど)

Topics = りんご and バナナ (は marks the things being contrasted)

② 今日は行くけど、明日は行かない。

→ As for today, I’ll go, but tomorrow I won’t.

Contrast = explicit (けど)

Topics = 今日 and 明日 (は marks the things being contrasted)

③ コーヒーは飲む。

→ I drink coffee (but maybe not other things).

Contrast = implicit

Topic = コーヒー (marked by は)

Compare to:

コーヒーを飲む。

→ I drink coffee.

Direct object = コーヒー (marked by を)

Neutral and factual.

No contrast implied.

[makingqueerhistory]

Y'all loved this last year, so I had to do it again for 2026! This time I added an additional sheet for the queer writers along with the queer readers!

For "what counts" under individual prompts, err on the side of personal interpretation. I made some of these vague so people with varying levels of ability and access can do them!

To support us making more queer history related printables, check out our Patreon!

[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

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

Reblogging for myself: the first link is broken but the site still exists at djtguide.github.io

[renshuusuru]

i highly recommend the app/site renshuu for grammar and vocabulary and kanji and the kanas so basically everything

[thespanishgarden]

Spanish Phrase Guide - Ir De La Mano

Ir De La Mano - To Go Hand in Hand [Figurative]

• Hardwork and success go hand in hand.

• El trabajo duro y el éxito van de la mano.

• Crime and proverty go hand in hand.

• El crimen y la probeza van de la mano.

Explanation: To “go hand in hand” means that two things are closely connected, happen together, or complement one another.

[Gif not mine]

[mawofthemagnetar]

Cold take but all languages are beautiful actually. Every single one. Every single human language on earth is a collection of stories interwoven into the very fabric of the words that are spoken.

“Oh but this language sounds scary-“ have you heard a child speak it while pointing at a butterfly?

“Oh but this language sounds silly-“ have you heard someone’s grandma recite a recipe with such practiced ease it comes off as poetry?

“Oh but this language is really weird-“ and yours isn’t? Everyone’s language is weird, dumbass, it came free with your fucking humanity.

Every tongue that is spoken is a work of art. Every language a unique window into the world.

Isn’t it wonderful?

[pompadourpink]

Hi mom! I know language acquisition is important but I’ve been having a hard time with finding YouTubers or French tv I’d like. French culture is very different, to put it mildly, and it seems like with movies it’s either rated R or for children. Do you have any “happy medium” recommendations? And tips on finding French YouTubers that don’t just speak English?

Hi dear,

When it comes to movies, I would recommend romance or comedies as well as older content in particular:

Amelie, La délicatesse (most Tautou stuff)

Les petits mouchoirs

Les romantiques anonymes

Le grand blond avec une chaussure noire

Anything Jacques Tati

Anything Jean Cocteau (bit more dramatic)

Anything Jacques Demy

Anything Eric Rohmer (except Perceval)

Anything French wave (Godard, Varda, Truffaut), very slow

Anything Lisa Azuelos (my fav is Une rencontre), more modern

Anything Cédric Klapisch

La grande vadrouille or other De Funès/Oury movies if you are a bit more advanced

And of course dubbed beloved animated movies

When it comes to shows:

Dix pour cent

Bref 1 & 2

Lupin

Code Lyoko (animated)

Plus belle la vie (cheesy soap opera)

Les aventures de Tintin (animated)

Demain nous appartient (dramatic soap opera)

Le bureau des légendes

Les malheurs de Sophie (animated)

Clem

Joséphine l'ange gardien (cliché, been on forever)

Pamela Rose (parody)

Maison close

Le flambeau if you're really advanced

And of course dubbed shows (search "épisode 1 français" on Youtube)

When it comes to Youtubers (obviously a difficult shopping list when I don't know your level nor your preferences):

Et pourquoi pas Coline and Natoo for the girlies

Amixem and Inoxtag for big US-type concepts

Squeezie, Cyprien, and McFly et Carlito for mainstream content

Jigmé for food/nature, borderline off-grid living

Dr Nozman for science, Charlie Danger for history

Karambolage via Arte for general trivia

Cyrus North for philosophy

Nico Mathieux, Ulysse Lubin, Léa Camillieri for adventure

(Gurky if you want a taste of Québecois accent)

Hope this helps and thank you for your patience! x

[languagelvlup]

Even if no one is watching, the toilet god might be watching!

Please only flush poop and toilet paper.

If you dirty (the bathroom), the cleaning grannies will cry!!

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

Batty.About.Books' Queer Book Recs for UnCover's Pride Month Challenge 🌈

Good afternoon, book lovers and bookish bats! I'm so incredibly excited to share this with you today, the first day of Pride Month! As someone who constantly creates book lists (and loves a visual), Uncover is my go-to bookish app. This year, they're hosting their first Pride Month reading challenge! The categories include (drum roll please!): 🌈

Queer Non-Fiction Books ❤️ Bisexual or Pansexual MCs 🧡 Queer Coming of Age Books 💛 Gay / Achillian Books 💚 Queer Horror 💙 Trans or Nonbinary MCs 💜 Lesbian / Sapphic Books 💛 Queer Awakening Books 🧡 Asexual or Aromantic MCs ❤️

Want to challenge yourself to read more queer books this Pride Month? Download Uncover from your app store (it's available on Android and Apple devices), create your account, and start reading! Any queer books you read that fit the above categories will automatically appear on Pride Month board. Challenge yourself to read a book within every category! 🌈

While you're at it, make sure to find me @battyaboutbooks. You can find all my book guides on Uncover (where they're updated every month!). 🦇

I've also included two bonus categories for my book lovers and bookish bats who strive to read queer all year! These include: Queer Graphic Novels 🌈 Coming Out Stories 🌈

What are you planning to read for Pride Month this year? ❓ Are you joining any reading challenges (and will you join me in completing the Uncover app Pride Month Challenge)? ❓

PS: I need your help! More queer content creators are getting suppressed (many of my monthly queer guides don't appear in the tags). PLEASE help by sharing this post! I would really appreciate it! Happy Pride Month, my loves. 💜