#dutch-polyglot

[la-galaxie-langblr]

Explaining Conlang Critic Terms, Episode One: Lojban

Disclaimer: I am explaining this from my own (admittedly basic) research, I'm not an expert or even a linguistics student, I'm simply interested in linguistics and I want to be able to appreciate Jan Misali's videos more fully. If I've said anything blatantly incorrect then please let me know.

Intro

Conlang - short for Constructed Language, a language that was created by someone for various purposes, including but not limited to fiction (eg Sindarin from Lord Of The Rings) or trying to create a language that everyone could hypothetically speak (eg Esperanto)

Logical language - a type of conlang designed to get rid of as much ambiguity as possible in sentences. Lojban is one of the two most well-known logical languages as well as its predecessor, Loglan

Orthography and Phonology

[ie writing system and how the sounds of the language are organised]

Miniscule letters - lowercase letters

Phoneme - a single unit of sound eg /p/, shown in slashes as that's how linguists show pronunciation

Glottal sounds - sounds produced from your glottis (between your vocal flaps), often breathy in sound

Glottal fricative - the /h/ sound in the word hat, fricative refers to forcing air through a narrow channel

Glottal stop - what happens between saying 'uh' and 'oh' in 'uh-oh'

Inventory - what phonemes are in a language

Schwa (ə) - a vowel produced when the lips, tongue and jaw are completely relaxed, such as /a/ in ' about'

Phonemic - given a symbol to represent its phoneme/part of the phoneme inventory, the schwa can have a few different pronunciations and as it's unstressed it usually disappears from the middle of words such as choc-/o/-late -> chocklat, sep-/a/-rate -> seprat, so Lojban having a space and symbol in the inventory is a little strange, especially as it's quite difficult to say intentionally

Voiced alveolar fricative - the 'z' shown on screen, voiced refers to the vocal chords vibrating when making the sound and alveolar means it's made with your tongue on your alveolar ridge (just behind your top teeth), trying saying 'zzzzzzz' and notice how your vocal chords are vibrating, your tongue is on your alveolar ridge and the sound is creating by obstructing air flow, hence a voiced alveolar fricative!

Postalveolar fricative - the 'j' or 'ʒ' shown on screen, postalveolar means that the tongue is near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge

Vocabulary

Natural language - opposite of a conlang, a language that has developed over time and has native speakers eg Spanish or Arabic or Russian or sign languages or literally every non-conlang language on Earth

Endonym - the name for a place/language in their own language, eg Français is what the French language is called in French

CVCCV/CCVCV - C stands for consonant, V stands for vowel; this describes the structure of consonants and vowels in Lojban words

Grammar

Predicate logic - OK awful and probably wrong explanation because it took so many braincells to try understand this: yknow the way in maths you have variables such as x and y? Predicate logic basically allows sentences with variables in them as well as quantifiers (those expressions in maths questions such as "there exists x") and creating sentences in this way allows it to be easily understood by computers as it's mathematical in nature, therefore removing ambiguity since computers can't function with ambiguity. Lojban was created with computers in mind and it's been suggested that it could be used in machine translation

Parts of speech - category of words such as nouns, adjectives, verbs etc

Particles - 'function words' that must be with another word or part of a phrase to have any meaning and doesn't fit exactly into the other parts of speech categories, some examples in English include the 'negative particle' not and the 'infinitive particle' to (as in 'to be or not to be')

Interjections - a word or expression said on its own as part of a spontaneous feeling/reaction, eg 'ouch' or 'huh?'

Markup system - a method of formatting text for web pages, HTML is a famous markup language to create web pages and uses tags such as <text> these </text> to make the text visible

Will I do more of these? If I feel like it, I'm going to take a lie down after trying to understand predicate logic enough to explain it simply and somewhat correctly

[randomstudyblr]

02/11/2020 - Happy November!

I have a desk, y'all. I'm so excited. It's week 2 of classes with soft lockdown in Germany, but for some reason we're still allowed to go to class in person. Don't @ me, I don't make the rules. My first exam is this Friday, wish me luck!!

[ravenlesslangblr]

9 points about language learning and how I’m learning 20+ of them

I’ve had a few requests to write about how I learn my languages. To different degrees, there’s currently 20+ of them and I don’t see myself stopping yet. The thing is, learning languages comes really easily to me and I want to share, maybe it will be helpful to somebody else.

First, I’d like to have a look at first versus second language acquisition. I’m a linguist and I’m super interested in Child Language Acquisition. That however, has a critical age of 14 (or so I was always told) and is then no longer possible and any language learned after that age will never progress as quickly or can’t be learned perfectly. Well. I disagree. The simple difference is - first language acquisition is how you acquired your first language(s) as a child. By imitating, finding patterns, etc. Second language acquisition is what you know from language courses. Vocabulary, irregular verb tables, endless exercises. Now that we got some of the terminology off the table, let me see how I actually learn languages: 1) I utilise elements of the first language acquisition rather than second language I’ve only studied vocab a couple times at school, when I put them into Quizlet or when someone forced me to. I’ll get back to it in another point. I don’t learn patterns. I know there is one and I let the input do its magic of slithering into my head. Again, more on that in point 2. You always get told you’ll learn a language better when you’re thrown into the country where they speak it.  And it’s so true because of the processes behind it. Because input and immersion are the keys and that’s how children learn, too.

2) I don’t cram languages. I process them.

Around langblrs, I keep seeing all the ‘crying over verb tables’, ‘trying to learn a 1000 words this week’ and the like. That may work for you, sure. But I’ve never done that. I did learn a few irregular verb patterns for German in class, but while I could recite them, it wasn’t helpful. In Irish, I sometimes still wonder which verb ‘An ndeachaigh tú?’ comes from. The thing is, you’re able to process language. You know this word is probably irregular. If you come across it and don’t know what the irregular form is, look it up. After you’ve looked it up for the tenth time, you’ll probably remember by then. Same with anything else. Don’t try to learn things by heart when it comes to languages. 3) Vocab?? Same rule applies here. I’ve only learned vocab at school and then a handful of times when I wasn’t too lazy to put it into Quizlet (which is fun and I learn something, but it’s more of a useful pastime than anything). When you read, just skip the words you don’t know and only really look them up if you can’t tell by context. NEVER translate vocabulary. I mean, sure, look up what it means, but don’t connect it to the word itself. Connect it to the meaning. Pictures work better. As for abstract words, imagine the concept. Just try not to bridge the meaning of the word with your native language. Languages in your brain are meant to be two separate units. Unless you’re working on a translation piece, they shouldn’t be ‘touching’. 4) I use example sentences for everything.

Grammar guides are useful but rather than learning all the rules at once, take it one step at a time and remember some example sentences and let them guide you through the grammar rule you need.

5) Input is everything. Output is hard, but you’re basically imitating input and utilizing patterns you know (or think you know). Let me give you an example. Let’s say I’m writing a piece on my daily routine, for example. I make use of the example sentences and try to tailor them to my own needs. Trial and error, if I make a mistake, it’s okay, if somebody points it out, I probably won’t make it next time. As I progress, I will gradually remove the mistake. Same goes to new words and new verbs. Use the input you’ve got. Does this verb sound like some other verb you’ve heard before? It’s might have a similar conjugation pattern. You can check it, you don’t have to.

6) Learning languages should NOT be stressful! I never stressed over learning a language. Sure, I’m frustrated that after a year and a half of learning Irish, I’m not 100% fluent, but I’ve never stressed over it. I’ve never cried over it. I’ve never cried over a language (I only cried after a French oral exam which I thought I failed). Don’t be hard on yourself and try learning through a method that’s not stressful. Watch videos for children. Read books for children. Write down cool things in your target language(s). 7) You’ve learned a language before. Why wouldn’t you be able to learn it now in a very similar way? This is basically me saying that I have little belief in the efficiency of pure second language acquisition. Maybe a few individuals can reach fluency by cramming a language, the thing is, I think that if we concentrate on processing instead of remembering, just like we did when we were children, we can reach better results in a shorter amount of time. Also, if this is your third or fourth language, compare to languages you already know. 8) I don’t start with basics. I start ‘somewhere’.

Delve into the language the second you’ve started. Are you overwhelmed? That’s fine! You’ll find your way around it. Start with word meanings, finding out what kind of sentences those are and then build your way around it. Don’t start saying ‘hello’ and ‘I’m from’. Those are cool, but usually, they are used in a different way when you actually go out and speak. You’ll get them along the way.

9) Don’t rely on instructions (only). Rely on yourself.

This is just my two cents. I’ve pieced this together trying to remember how I’ve learned what I’ve learned and comparing it to how others around me learned. Please, let me know if it makes any sense. I may edit this and post this again later if I have any more ideas. Feel free to contribute or to bombard me with questions. I’m happy to answer.

[rivkahstudies]

Hallo! Een fijne moedertaaldag en ik hoop dat je deze vraag vertaalt krijgt hahaha, heb je eigenlijk ooit Nederlands gehoord? En hoe veel woorden lijken er op het Engels? De talen zijn best verwant aan elkaar dus ik ben nieuwsgierig of je er een paar uit kan halen! Veel liefs, dutch-polyglot💕

ik hoop dat je deze vraag vertaalt krijgt hahaha

I literally had to get back on desktop to do so yes HAHAHAH 

I’ve had a wonderful day and I hope you have too! I’ve only heard Dutch in music and my brain always goes “English dialect? Nooo. Wait. What? What is this?” until I realize it’s Dutch and I feel like a fool. Y’all have really good fucking rappers. 

I actually had to look your second question up! There’s more than 170k that are actually alive/used in speech or writing, but we natives typically have 20k-30k a piece in our repetoire. Isn’t that crazy? I wonder how many of the words are loans from different languages though ;3c

[heyrosiebee]

04 SEP 2020 🌕 days 6-10 of the quarantine fall study challenge by @spell-studies

favorite thing about school ✨

passionate professors who still have souls, being challenged to leave your comfort zone, living away from my family, & getting to meet friends who become absolute keepers.

favorite school memory ✨

producing a documentary with my friends about something i’m really passionate about that turned out really well. taught me how to lead a team instead of doing all the work.

how do you take your coffee? ✨

i’m caffeine-intolerant, so sparsely. (who are we kidding i brew coffee grounds in a french press i put in a crapton of milk and a billion sprinkles of sugar and dump it all in a mason jar of iceee)

how do you take your tea? ✨

i take mine with honey, always. sometimes, a bit of milk and cinnamon. whether it’s warm or iced depends on the weather or how bloated i feel, really.

favorite study snack ✨

chocolate wafers like Dekka & Loacker Quadratinis, mildly spicy ramen, or cheese-flavored pastry (pizza included)

instagram 💫 more original content 💫

P.S. i hope it’s okay to do the challenge like this. i’m trying to manage a heavy workload, so i can’t do this everyday, but i still wanted to participate.

[basilesroom]

2019년 02월 28일

My March title spread in my new tiny journal and I’m really happy with it!

My March goals are to start flying again and study Korean more and write consistently!

How about you?

[amandaswork]

November 4, 2018

Last weekly spread of October. I really like how this one turned out! 

Studygram: boldlystudy

[actuarystudies]

30.08.2018 // I really wanted to post a photo today, and I totally forgot I took this earlier.