#language envy

[scarefox]

Perth Nakhun speaking english, thai and japanese at the same time in his youtube videos and streams for his different audiences makes me language-envy lol

[lily-learns-finnish]

The passive present tense

Forming the passive present tense in Finnish doesn’t seem to be too complicated!

For most verbs simply add -an/-än to the verb, such as:

viedä - viedään juoda - juodaan vastata - vastataan pestä - pestään

However for verbs ending in two towels (type 1 verbs), first find the “minä” form, then remove -n, and then add -taan/-tään. Note, if the last letter is a or ä, remove it and add e.

puhua - puhun - puhutaan lukea - luen - luetaan  nukkua - nukun - nukutaan  yrittää - yritän - yritetään 

The next issue is how to actually use the passive. This is mostly difficult for me because of English. Using passive in English is really messy. To use passive in English, we need phrases like  “we..” , “you..”, “generally people...”, “one...”  Luckily, it’s much nicer in Finnish, here are some examples:

Suomessa juodaan kahvia. In Finland, one drinks coffee.

Ranskassa puhutaan ranskaa. In France, one speaks French.

Kesällä mennään rannalle.  In summer, one goes to the beach. 

Wow, the hardest part of that was trying to come up with the English translations! My Finnish-speaking partner used to use “one” a lot when speaking in passive in English (which to me sounded like pseudo old English jibberish). Although now seeing how smooth the passive is in Finnish I am starting to experience some language envy.  

[crazykuroneko]

i just want to share this video of michelle flexing her Mandarin and Cantonese (which she needed to learn when she started her career). it's so cute 🤣

[hum-halleluyeahhhh]

So I'm watching old Eurovisions and gahhhhh I just wish I spoke every one of those languages, even just a little bit so I could pick up a phrase or so in each song

[andthestillhouriscome-blog]

... A historian by education, he had worked until two years ago at one of the Moscow museums, and, besides that, had also done translations.

‘From what languages?’ Ivan interrupted curiously.

‘I know five languages besides my own,’ replied the guest, ‘English, French, German, Latin and Greek. Well, I can also read Italian a little.’

‘Oh, my!’ Ivan whispered enviously.

[From Mikhail Bulgakov, Master and Margarita, trans. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky, New York: Penguin Books (1997), Book I, ch. 13 (in lieu of specific page references, because I have reason to suspect my ebook version has faulty page numbering).]

[raisingeda]

2 days + 3 words= 1 little chatterbox

The other day Eda spoke her first word. Although it might be considered a bit narcissistic, can you blame her? She probably hears the word (her name) about a million times a day!  Once that beautiful name rolled off her tongue, it appears that her tongue…

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[yuugi]

THEY'RE FLOWING BETWEEN SERBIAN AND ENGLISH LIKE IT'S NOTHING I'M SO JEALOUS OF PEOPLE WHO ARE COMFORTABLE ENOUGH IN TWO LANGUAGES TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT