Silvia's langblr

16, Spanish (native), english (C1), french (A2/B1), latin (beginner) italian (beginner)

[lovinmybaguettes]

"I've had enough"

Two main "structures", with variations going from most polite to familiar or vulgar.

- Most literal structure: J'en ai assez [lit. I have enough] -> J'en ai marre

- Idiom: J'en ai ras le bol* -> J'en ai ras la casquette -> J'en ai ras le cul [lit. I've had it up to the head/hat/ass]

*additionally, un ras-le-bol means an exasperation, a discontent, when people are fed up with something.

Lastly, to say "that's enough", you can say "ça suffit" or "y en a marre" (this one only when you're pissed off, not when telling your child "that's enough playing for today", for instance).

Sample sentences:

J'en ai assez de ce cours, je n'y arrive pas.

I've had enough of this class, I can't get it right.

J'en ai marre de cette meuf, elle me soûle avec ses histoires !

I've had enough of this gal, she's annoying me with all her drama!

Bon, écoute, j'en ai ras le bol de ça, reparlons-en plus tard.

Okay, listen, I've had enough of this, let's talk about it again later.

Je crois qu'il en a ras la casquette de son boulot.

I think he's fed up with/he's had enough of his job.

Laisse-moi te dire qu'on en a bien ras le cul de ses crises de jalousie.

Let me tell you, we're really fed up with his fits of jealousy.

Ça suffit pour aujourd'hui, on va rentrer maintenant.

That's enough for today, we're going home now.

Bon, ça suffit maintenant ! Il va falloir te calmer !

Okay, that's enough now! You're going to have to calm down!

Y en a marre de cette fac de merde, vivement que je me casse d'ici !

I've had enough of this shitty university, can't wait until I'm out of here!

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This year's eurovision

Watch it, enjoy it, but please keep in mind that this is not okay

[ghostlywriterr]

Bussaco Palace Hotel, Portugal.

[bluereevesphotography]

Misty Edinburgh - 6/4/19

[zoryalikestolaugh]

4 exercises to improve speaking skills in your target language:

Tell a story. It’s a great exercise to improve not only your speaking, but also your grammar and vocabulary. Think about what happened to you or anyone else, that you would talk about to your friends or family. Then tell a story out loud using only your target language. Telling stories is a huge part of our everyday talks, so it’s really important to practice that.

Talk about a book, a movie or whatever you want. Imagine you’re convincing someone to check out (or not to check out) a book you have already read. Review every movie or TV series you want, and don’t worry about spoiling anything or offending someone. If it’s a piece of shit, learn how to say that when talking to Queen Elizabeth II, and how to say that when chatting with someone you’d meet at the bar.

Discuss an important topic that is interesting to you. You can choose from anything: society issues, politics, economics, science, environment, culture… First try to explain it and then tell your own opinion on the subject. It’s different than the second exercise since it develops the specific vocabulary.

Read an article and summarise it. Find an article in your target language that interests you and talk about it. You can do it like you would when asked about it in school, or you can do it in more of a “sharing knowledge with my friends” manner.

Et c’est tout! You can call it “act like a youtuber” exercises. If you want, record yourself while speaking. Remember that work is the key to success.

[foreignerongermansoil]

Excerpt from Kató Lomb’s “Polyglot: How I Learn Languages”

[polyglotten]

✧ RANDOM SPANISH PHRASES YOU MAY FIND USEFUL  ✧

PREVIOUS PARTS: one, two, three, four, five

No es para tanto it’s not a big deal

Sin novedad  without incident, safely, much the same, no change

¡Qué chistoso!  how funny!

Te toca a ti  it’s your turn

Dedicarse a   to do for a living 

Menor de edad  minor

Mayor de edad  of legal age

Por consiguiente  therefore

Sin remedio  hopeless, hopelessly

Por lo visto  apparently, it would appear

Aun así  even so

Cuanto antes  as soon as possible

Por si acaso  just in case 

Todo por culpa de...  all because of

No merece la pena  it’s not worth it

Me molesta  it annoys me 

¿Es gratis?  is it free (of cost)?

¿Hay algún descuento?   is there any discount?

Prepararse para lo peor   to prepare for the worse

En tus sueños   in your dreams

Pasar por alto  to overlook

Te deseo lo mejor   I wish you all the best

Espero que te sirva  I hope it helps you

Tener celos  to be jealous

Estar en contra  to be against

Tener prisa, estar de prisa  to be in a hurry

Un amigo mio (m), una amiga mia (f)  a friend of mine

Tocar la puerta  to knock on the door

Quejarse de algo/alguien  to complain about something/someone

Te presento a [insert name]  I present you (when introducing someone)

[polyglottraveler]

Untranslatable French words

(Be careful, these are casual expressions you can use with your friends but do NOT write them in essays!)

Putain 

We use this word for literally anything: when we’re happy, amazed, annoyed, disgusted…  Examples: “C’est génial putain!”, “Putain, ça me fait chier!”, “Mais bouge-là ta caisse putain!”. We also use it in front of nouns: “Cette putain de machine”

Ouf 

When something is great, amazing. It’s the “verlan” (reverse) of the word “fou”, which means crazy.  Examples: “Ce match est ouf!”, “C’est un ouf lui!”, “C’est un truc de ouf!” We also use it when something bad or scary happened but we finally made it, it’s a word of relief.  Examples: “Ouf, on s’en est sorti!”, “Ouf, on a eu chaud”

De ouf 

This expression uses the same words as before but means something different. We use “de ouf” to mean that something is extra, too much. It’s usually a reply to agree with someone.  Examples: “- Il était tellement bourré hier soir! - De ouf!”

La flemme 

The closer translation to “avoir la flemme” would be “to be lazy”. But I don’t think that there is any word in English that comes close to the concept of “flemme”. You can have “la flemme” to do basically anything.  Examples: “ -Tu viens à la soirée ce soir? -Non, j’ai trop la flemme” , “J’ai la flemme de la faire la vaisselle”

Ras-le-bol 

It literally means “at the edge of the bowl”, we use this expression when we’re over something, when we can’t stand it anymore, when it’s annoying us. It can be used for a thing or for a person.  Examples: “J’en ai ras-le-bol de mes voisins”, “J’en ai ras-le-bol de répéter tout le temps la même chose”

Flâner 

Probably the only word of this list which is not a slang but actually a word that you would find in books and that you can use in essays etc. “Flâner” means to walk slowly, to enjoy your time, to wander aimlessly just for the pleasure to walk and to enjoy your environment.  Example: “Elle a flâné dans les rues de Lille tout l’après-midi”, “Ils aiment flâner dans les allées du magasin”

Ringard 

When something is out, when it’s not trending anymore and it’s a bit shameful to like it or wear it.  Example: “Cette chanson est trop ringarde”, “Porter des pantalons pattes d’eph c’est ringard”

Relou 

This is the “verlan” (reverse) of the word “lourd”, which means heavy. “Relou” means that something or someone is annoying you or that it’s boring or annoying.  Example: “Le bus a 15 minutes de retard, c’est relou”, “Ce mec est tellement relou” 

Pêter un cable 

To go crazy, to burn out Example: “Si ça continue comme ça je vais péter un cable”, “Il a pété un cable au bar hier soir”

Un beauf 

Someone who wears old or ridiculous clothes such as socks with flip-flops. The stereotype is that these persons are white, not very educated, live in the countryside, are quite poor, like drinking alcohol, listen to bad music, have bad hair etc… I’ll join a picture so that you can portray better what is means

The man from the picture is actually “Jeff Tuche”, a character from a popular movie in France called “Les Tuche” which is the story of a beauf family who wins the lottery.  Examples: “C’est un camping de beauf”, “Patrick Sébastien ne fait que des chansons de beauf”

Avoir le seum 

To be mad, to be petty about something. We mainly use it when we’re annoyed because we lost or when we wanted something to happen but it’s not happening.  Examples: “Ma mère veut pas que je sorte ce soir, j’ai le seum”, “Les belges ont le seum d’avoir perdu contre les français” 

Bric à brac

A mix of random objects Examples: “C’est un vrai bric à brac ta voiture”, “Je n’arrive plus à retrouver mon briquet dans ce bric à brac”

And the last one: Pouloulou, it’s not a word, it’s a feeling 

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Google Word Coach

If you want to improve your english vocabulary try the new Google game "Word Coach" its perfect.

It starts off with easy words and the more you get right the more difficult they become, even if you have an advanced level some of them are quite a challenge, in my opinion even native speakers can benefict from it.

Also if you get some of them wrong the game gives you the option to look at explanations

Just type in Google "word coach" to get to the game.

[lalinguistique-blog-deactivated]

french adverbs

actuellement- currently déja- already d’habitude- usually encore- again ici- here immédiatement- immediately là-bas- over there longtemps- (for a) long time malheureusement- unfortunately peut-être- maybe plutôt- rather pourtant- however presque- almost rarement- rarely récemment- recently souvent- often surtout- above all, especially toujours- always, still tout de suite- right away trop- too, too much vite- quickly vraiment- really, truly

[nnapulitanerd]

What I Did After Duolingo

I think this is one of the biggest struggles of the langblr community because once you’re done with duolingo it’s kind of like you’ve just been thrown out on your own with no direction. In all honesty it took me a LOOONG time to figure out what to do with myself and how to keep progressing once I finished the tree, but now I’m at a point in my language journey where I speak my L2 every single day with my native friends. I wouldn’t consider myself fluent, but I’m definitely conversational.

Do the reverse tree I seriously cannot stress this enough. Go through and do the reverse tree of your language (if it’s available, of course). What I mean by this is when I finished the Italian tree for English speakers, I went through and did the English tree for Italian speakers. It may seem redundent, but at least for those two trees, the vocabulary the two trees offered was actually quite different and I ended up learning loads of new vocabulary. Not just new vocabulary, but you’ll have access to the duolingo forums in your target language. You can ask questions to an unrestricted amount of natives, and you could possibly offer help to a bunch of natives who have questions. Also for all of the brave ones out there learning more than 1 language at a time, try to see if there’s a duolingo tree for your L2 to your L3 (for a while I was learning French for Italian speakers)

Flashcards & Vocab Remember to be SMART about the vocab you learn. Learn words that you’ll actually use in day-today conversation. IF you never speak in your native language about a topic, don’t waste your time learning the words in your target language. Vocab isn’t just about acquisition of words, it’s about acquisition of words you will actually need and use. Memrise is my go-to for new and GOOD vocabulary. All of the vocab lists are user-submitted, so you’re guaranteed to get good, commonly used, and NATURAL vocab words that have been put into lists created by native speakers! There are so many thousands of lists for hundreds of languages and it’s honestly a gold mine. They have a mobile app for which you can download lessons so that you have access to them when you’re offline (aka perfect when you don’t want to use cell data or you have crappy service) AND THE BEST PART IS THAT WHATEVER YOU DO OFFLINE GETS SAVED AND YOU CAN JUST PICK BACK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF. Not only that, but they have an “ignore” option so that you don’t have to repeat any words that you already know. I love memrise. I’ve even made a few of my own lists just because I’m a hoe for a good deck of flashcards and I love the repetition method of memrise. Also, Memrise is a lot like duo in the aspect that you can add a bunch of friends and it keeps track of your experience points so that you can compete with people if that’s something that helps keep you motivated. They even have different rankings once you accumulate a certain amount of experience (personally, this is a HUGE motivator for me). All in all I love memrise. ALSO it has lots of other things completely unrelated to languages, so even if you dont study languages I would still check it out! ALTERNATIVELY: Anki! Just find somewhere to MAKE FLASHCARDS AND STUDY THE DAMN THINGS. I’ve never used Anki before so I can’t really give a good review on it (however if someone who has used anki wants to shoot me a message, I can add their review to the post or smth). I, personally, used an app called StudyBlue (there’s a desktop version as well) when I was making flashcards because it would let me make decks of like 1,000 words and then I could take quizes (you have the option of doing multiple choice, true/false, and fill in the blanks) and it’ll keep track of your progress and stuff. Also, you have access to other user-submitted flashcard decks so it’s pretty cool in that sense!

LEARN THE DANG GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURES (Honestly you’d think this one would go without saying) I think people get too caught up in the accumulation of new words to stop and realize that knowing 8,000 fancy words is completely pointless if you don’t know how to put them in a sentence. To me, this is 900000000% more important than vocabulary, because if you don’t know a word you can quick do a simple search for a single word and slap it into a sentence, but if you don’t know an entire sentence structure you’re dead meat, kid. Please make notes and try to form simple sentences for all of the grammatical conventions, different verb tenses, etc. Also, don’t just learn HOW to use them, but WHEN to use them. — A really good website for explaining grammatical conventions in super simple terms is about.com. They have AMAZING resources! Lots of vocab lists, information on grammatical structures, verb conjugations, verb charts, etc. Plus, you can even sign up for newsletters, “word of the day” emails, and things of that nature. Here are the language subsections of the website that I’m aware of: Italian About, Spanish About, French About, German About. There might be more, but I’ve never checked. It should be easy to find out if they have a subsection for the website that you’re looking for, just type in “LANGUAGEHERE.about.com” into the browser and try your luck! — If there isn’t an about page for your language, google is your BEST FRIEND I PROMISE.

Switch to your target language This one is pretty simple: change your phone and all of your social media over to your target language. If you’re feeling really brave; change your entire computer over to your target language. This one didn’t particularly do a whole lot for me as far as learning new vocabulary and sentence structure, but I’ve always been really bad at trying to remember days of the week, names of the month, telling time, etc. and changing my phone over to my target language helped solidify that information in my brain and now I can throw out dates and times like I was born to do it. – ALSO: Since I know you’re on tumblr if you’re reading this post, FOLLOW BLOGS THAT POST CRAP IN YOUR TARGET LANGUAGE. I follow so many Italian blogs, and honestly it’s just super great exposure for my dash to be half Italian, half English.

YOUTUBE God I frickin love youtube. There are LOTS of super great language-learning youtubes out there, and lots of channels that have subtitles. BASICALLY YOUTUBE IS AN UNLIMITED BOX OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE LISTENING SKILLS. You like watching monthly favorites videos? Plug the line “my monthly favorites” (in your target language ofc) into the search bar and BOOM. You like watching pokemon letsplays? FIND U A DAMN POKEMON LETSPLAY SERIES IN YOUR TARGET LANGUAGE. You wont understand everything at first, but trust me just hearing the language makes life easier. One thing I like to do is listen to asmr videos in my target language because people tend to speak more slowly in ASMR vidoes and it’s far easier for me to understand them.

NETFLIX On the note of listening skills, WATCH NETFLIX IN YOUR TARGET LANGUAGE. There’s this really great google chrome extension called “Hola!” (the picture is a little flame with a face on it) that is basically a proxy extension so you can change what country you’re browsing the internet from, and–in turn–access netflix in different countries. This lets you have access to web-series’ and movies that might not be on the netflix in your country (fun fact, the first two Kung Fu Panda movies aren’t on America’s netflix list, but they’re on Italy’s netflix list in case you want to watch), and also access to films and series that were CREATED IN YOUR TARGET LANGUAGE!!! Not to mention access to subtitles, which is always a wonderful thing. (p.s. you can use Hola! for any website you want to, and it doesn’t slow your internet down ;) ) 

EDIT: Hola is actually really harmful for a number of reasons, and it’s sine been blocked on netflix, so just try your luck in the foreign language category, or check out the subtitles and stuff (they have a list somewhere of different language subs available)

MUSIC PLEASE LISTEN TO MUSIC IN YOUR TARGET LANGUAGE. Not only will you feel super cool and empowered once you can start singing along to songs in a foreign language, but you’ll feel even MORE super cool and empowered when you start understanding the lyrics of the songs you’ve learned. Also: please, please, please look up the lyrics to the songs you’re listening to. It’ll prevent you from singing along and mis-singing (is that a word lmao) lyrics and making silly errors, you feel me. A big bonus of listening to music is that you inadvertently pick up pronunciation skills! It’s great fun, I love music. – One way you can find foreign music is through spotify. You can go to the top 50 charts of different countries, and that’s a great way to get exposure to boppin’ tunes in your target language. Just go to the main menu then to charts, and then click “top 50 by country” and find the country you’re looking for and TADA. // CONVERSELY: If you don’t like spotify, use pandora, or find some songs you like in your target language and plug them into the youtube search bar and then weed through the recommended videos on the sidebar and find new music that way!

Children’s books This might not be for everyone, but sincerely googling and reading children’s books in your target language is a great way to get used to sentence structure. You might not know all the words, but sometimes it’s just such a wonderful thing to read such simple sentences and to just practice that sort of stuff. – If reading children’s books isn’t your style, then read books that you ARE interested in. Read translations of your favorite books, read books that were written originally in your target language, just read books man.

ASK QUESTIONS PLS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD This one can get to be a little tricky because it might be hard to find someone to ask questions to, but please keep in mind that there are lots of different native languages in the langblr community and we’re all here for the sole purpose of helping each other out so please don’t be afraid of asking a native (or even someone who’s fluent) to explain something or to correct your sentences, etc.

Find speaking partners Personally, I think this should be the LAST thing on your list of priorities. I KNOW LOTS OF PEOPLE WILL DISAGREE WITH ME BUT HEAR ME OUT: I think it’s rather discouraging to try and pressure yourself to speak your target language and realize “wow I’m not as good as I thought I was”, or to feel like you’re bad because you know so many words and you study your verb tenses but you still can’t make good conversation, etc. I THINK YOU SHOULD WAIT A WHILE BEFORE FINDING A SPEAKING PARTNER, but you definitely need to do it. I would wait until you’re comfortable reading and understanding your target language as well as forming basic sentences and stuff like that. JUST A WARNING, FINDING A LANGUAGE PARTNER IS HARD AS HELL. IT’S LITERALLY A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK ORDEAL. I used Hellotalk to find all of my language partners, however you could probably just as easily find language partners on other social media outlets like tumblr, facebook, twitter, etc. (Actually, using those types of social medias might be more comfortable for most people). A good way to find people on facebook is to join a bunch of language groups on facebook, and even if you don’t find language partners you can still see posts in your target language. REMEMBER IT’S ALL ABOUT EXPOSURE FOLKS. The more exposure the better. Like I mentioned: I do think you need to hold off a bit on finding a speaking partner, but I will say that for absolute certain speaking partners are astronomically more helpful than anything I’ve mentioned on this list. You can listen and read and make flashcards and write sentences to yourself, but at the end of the day is netflix REALLY going to fix that grammatical error you made?

Last but not least: please don’t be so hard on yourself. Making mistakes is ONLY NATURAL. Just think of learning a language like any other kind of skill; you make lots of mistakes when learning how to do anything but you learn from your mistakes and soon enough you stop making those mistakes and keep refining your skills. a quick vote of confidence for you all before you leave: I once confused the italian word for panties(mutande) with the word for snacks(merende) and basically told my friend “I BOUGHT SO MANY PANTIES IM GOING TO EAT THEM UNTIL I DIE”. And like two days ago I mixed up the word for the color lavender(lavanda) and the word for laundry(lavanderia) and told my friend she should wear a laundry-colored dress to her sister’s wedding. OKAY– in all seriousness, it’s really important to remember that mistakes are natural and they’re nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, once you learn that making mistakes is totally normal to do, you’ll enjoy yourself much more and learn way better. HAVE FUN AND STUDY HARD I BELIEVE IN YOU ALL.

[silviaslangblr]

6/100 days of productivity

My notes from yesterday’s history class

[thelanguagecommunity]

Native & Fluent Speakers Directory

This post will act as a directory for native/fluent speakers, it will be updated frequently. I’ll be putting the list under a read more for easier editing. Fluent, but not necessarily native, speakers will be marked with little stars [ ** ]

If you would like to be added to this post, send me a message (please include your language and any specific dialects you speak)! You just have to be willing to talk about your language. I made a little faq if there are any other questions.

Seguir leyendo

[foxlanguages]

Nature in Spanish & Italian

Spanish - Italian - English

la naturaleza - la natura - nature

el árbol - l´albero - tree

el bosque - la foresta - forest

el tronco - il tronco - trunk

la piedra - la pietra - stone

la roca - la roccia - rock

la planta - la pianta - plant

la flor - il fiore - flower

la grama/el césped - l´erba  - grass

el río - il fiume - river

el riachuelo - il torrente - creek

el moho - la muffa - mildew

el hongo - il fungo - mushroom

la pradera - il prato - meadow

el lago - il lago - lake

la laguna - la laguna - lagoon

el acantilado - la scogliera - cliff

el océano - l'oceano - ocean

el mar - il mare - sea

la playa - la spiaggia - beach

la arena - la sabbia - sand

la costa - la costa - shore

el desierto - il deserto - desert

el pantano - la palude - swamp

[words-in-starless-skies-studies]

Italian Grammar: Definite Articles

In English we have only one definite article: the In Italian every noun is either masculine or feminine. So the definite article is either feminine singular, feminine plural, masculine singular or masculine plural:

1. The feminine forms

la is used before words beginning with a consonant.

l’ is used before words beginning with a vocal or a h.

le is used as plural form for both la and l’. 

Examples: la casa - le case (the house - the houses) la ragazza - le ragazze (the girl - the girls) l’entrata - le entrate (the entry - the entries) l’uscita - le uscite (the exit - the exits)

2. The masculine forms

l’ is used before words beginning with a vocal or h.

lo is used before words beginning with z, gn, ps and s+consonant.

il is used for all other words.

i is the plural form for il. 

gli is the plural form for l’ and lo.

Examples: l’uomo - gli uomini (the man - the men) l’hotel - gli hotel (the hotel - the hotels) lo zio - gli zii (the uncle - the uncles) lo specchio - gli specchi (the mirror - the mirrors) il ristorante - i ristoranti (the restaurant - the restaurants) il cielo - i cieli (the sky - the skies)

lo is also used for masculine words starting with i+vowel, x or y:

lo ione - gli ioni (the ion - the ions) lo xenofobo - gli xenofobi (the xenophobe - the xenophobes) lo yogurt - gli yogurt (the yogurt - the yogurts)

[silviaslangblr]

1/ 100 days of productivity Studying latin. Except my crappy handwritting i'm pretty proud of how it turned out

[silviaslangblr]

Lenguage learning tip

Study your target language translating it to other language you learnt in wich you are fluent instead of your native language so you are less likely to forget it.