#language geek

[russenoire2]

ways to say ‘seems like’ or ‘-ish’ in japanese.

in the order in which i learned them. these are highly productive suffixes, in that they can be attached to many, many nouns/adjectives/adverbs to make new adjectives.

NOTE: i use apostrophes to compensate for some of the limitations of rōmaji, as it doesn’t reliably indicate which vowels are devoiced. if you see an ‘ in any of my transliterations, it stands in for an i or u sound that gets flattened (but still pronounced!) in speech.

~臭い（くさい, k’sai）

literally ‘smells like’. this particular kanji (臭, nioi) refers to unpleasant smells. i’m not sure if the pleasantly-scented analogue kanji 匂 (also read nioi) can be used in the same way.

なんかさっきから聞いてると胡散臭いな… nanka sakk' kara kiiteru to usank’sai na... i have been listening to the crap coming out of [your] mouth for a while [and] it smells fishy...

~的（てき, teki）

霊って言うのは二酸化炭素的なアレですから… rei tte iu no ha ni-sankatanso-teki are des’kara... one could say that spirits are like carbon dioxide...(the kara here refers to the previous reason the speaker gave for this description: the presence of spirits can only be reduced, not removed. this is bullshit, but his client is ignorant of this.)

小母さんも暴力的なの？ obasan mo bouryok’teki na no? are you violent too, old lady?

~っぽい（ppoi）

でも、あまりに人間っぽいので… demo, amari ni ningen-ppoi no de... but...you seem very human...

(this one is my absolute favorite. i just love how it tastes on the tongue.)

~らしい（rashii）

男らしいと言えば、やっぱり褌でしょう！ otoko-rashii to ieba yappari fundosh’ deshou! when one uses the word ‘manly’, the sumo loincloth (fundoshi) springs to mind!

[crazycatsiren]

I want to learn all the dead languages.

The language of my ancestors, especially.

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Klimkin saw in the idea of Ukraine’s withdrawal from the Cyrillic alphabet “a game on Putin’s logic” – The European Times News

The transition from Cyrillic to Latin in the Ukrainian language will only “play on the logic” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin. He expressed this point of view on his Facebook page, stressing that the Cyrillic alphabet is a part of Ukrainian history, which does not in any way depend on the Russian language and Russian culture.

Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, has suggested that Ukraine get rid of the Cyrillic alphabet and use Latin instead, in a supposed bid to separate Ukraine from Russia. 

I am not Ukrainian, but I think this is a mistake. Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin is correct. Just because Putin issues a rambling, fraudulent statement denying Ukrainian history does not mean that the solution for Ukraine lies in denying anything that links the country to Russia. 

Of course, Ukraine is not Russia. But both countries do have close historical, cultural, religious, ethnic, and linguistic ties. Many important writings on Slavic history and culture found in Ukraine were written in Cyrillic, as Pavel Klimkin argues. 

If the majority of Ukrainians do agree on getting rid of Cyrillic, it should be for another reason, not to prove a political point. For example, the Belarusian language uses both the Cyrillic and Latin script. 

By the way, I thought that the alphabet which would later be known as Cyrillic did not come from Russia, but originated in or around Bulgaria (after Cyril and Methodi had left Greece). If I am correct, then that is another reason not to abandon Cyrillic.  

Also, isn’t the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet slightly different to the Russian, anyway?

[nomilkinmyteaplease]

I remember watching an interview with  Lee Byung-hun, where speaking in fluent English he stopped, apologised and said something along the lines of “Sorry, I have only been learning English for two years”. Hehehe. Lots of people learn language for years and years and get nowhere to his level of fluence. And according to google the specialist, he also speaks some French (which he studiet at university) and Mandarin Chinese. And of course his native Korean. I LOVE actors who go out of their way to learn another language and make an effort to speak it, even if it’s just a few sentences. Plus, he is an incredible actor, so double thumbs up. and OMG those abs. 

[studyvari]

28. 8. 17 | 19:53pm | Second picture today just because i can! Today was very successfull. My wallet is empty, my brain is full. Been at the Dussmann Kulturkaufhaus in Berlin, got chinese workbooks and a college block to practice these hanzi. Also, found out that it’s chinese valentine’s day and i had lunch at a chinese restaurant. Then i went to the Humboldt-University because i couldn’t find a good cafe to work in (thanks at slow internet at the end of the month!!!) and yeah that was it pretty much. I’m so happy that eduroam exists and that as a student, you have access to wifi at every uni! It makes everything so much easier!!

[thedurvin]

“English As She Is Spoke” was the world’s first ironic best-seller, an 1883 Portuguese-to-English phrasebook written by a Portuguese guy that didn’t speak English...but he did speak some French and owned a French-to-English phrasebook, so how hard could it be? The “My Immortal” of language books and the 19th Century’s equivalent of “All Your Base". Anyway, in the “Familiar Phrases” section he translates “esperar horas y horas” (”wait hours and hours”) as “to craunch the marmoset”, which was pretty bizarre even for Carolino. I finally found out what it meant:

1a. Craunch is an unusual spelling (even by 1883 standards) for “crunch”.

1b. He didn’t know the difference between a marmoset (a monkey)

and a marmot (a fat squirrel)

2. His literal Portuguese phrase was translated into French as the idiomatic “croquer le marmot”. Why would “to crush the marmot” mean “wait a while”? Pull that jank up in French Wiktionary and:

I haven’t been able to find a doorknocker that actually looks like a marmot--maybe just making fun of how these don’t look much like lions?

Ah, but:

So yeah, that was a really long post to explain something few have seen in the first place even before wondering what was up with it, but i’m a librarian, dammit

[miisticats]

"it's not you it's me" more like i'd date you but your native lang is same as mine sorry

[studyvari]

Masterpost how to start learning Chinese

Hi!

Since i'm just starting to learn Chinese, and I'm looking for ways of how to actually start and generate some material, like vocab lists, grammar rules and stuff hat's gonna be useful for progress, I just thought that I'd share whatever i'll find. So here's my TOP 10 sites, apps and ways of learning Mandarin by yourself. Mostly, this is just to motivate myself, but i hope, some of you guys can add their own things to this list and also find interesting stuff on the sites mentioned! 

As for the system on how to actually start learning the language, I decided to go with the very basics first. So, for the vocabulary part, I decided that i'd learn the first 200 so called 'radicals', which actually are essential to find any Chinese word in the dictionary. Also, I am going to learn the basic conversations, meaning how to say your name, how are you and to say good bye and stuff like that. With GrammarWiki, I'll be catching up on grammar rules that convent with the A1 level. Since I'm only just starting, this is the one that i'm going for first. I'm going to get you an update about my improvements quite regularly, hopefully.

Chinese Social Web

WeChat (basically like chinese facebook, also used to talk to strangers, update your bank account, order food, taxis, or literally anything)

Weibo

Youku (chinese youtube)

QQ (Chinese instant messaging program)

Taobao (chinese ebay/site for online shopping)

Sina (Chinese yahoo)

chinese culture

I decided to watch docus and read websites about chinese culture in order to understand Chinese people, their way of thinking and the culture in general. Since I found myself to be pretty interested in this kind of stuff (which is weird, because i've never really been interested in China before I got to know some Chinese people), I think it's going to help me stay motivated to keep learning the language.

apps to learn the basics of mandarin

I'm pretty sure there's a lot more, and if you have any recommendation, please feel free to add it to the list – these are just a few that I found whilst scrolling through the app store when I first decided to learn Chinese!

memrise

sadly, it is only a very few words available on the free version, however I guess that the method they use is pretty good to memorise the words and characters

pleco (dictionnaire mandarin – english)

yi er san

Essentials

I really like this one because it has flashcards and learning sets, such as the weather, numbers, months and weekdays, colours, food, …

nemo

this app also only has the very basics to start a conversation in Chinese, but also contains listening and recording options, which is, as already mentioned, really important to get into chinese.

songs/playlists on Spotify

I absolutely love the fact that you can actually learn Chinese on Spotify thanks to some awesome playlists with basic grammar and vocabulary lessons. Maybe it's not the best way for the writing system, but it sure makes you talk and listen to the language, which is an important part of being able to understand and read Mandarin. I'm finding it easier to learn languages when listenening a lot to it, that's why I also want to learn Chinese by listening to songs and these themed spotify playlists mentioned above. Also, it's great when being on the bus, this way I can use the time and listen to some Chinese. Also, listening the words first makes it easier for me to remember the specific character later because I have an idea of what the character sounds like and what it means. So yep, guess you could say I was pretty excited when I found the free spotify playlists.

BBC Languages – mandarin mini guide

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/real_chinese/mini_guides/characters/characters_meaning.shtml

FluentU:

http://www.fluentu.com/blog/chinese/2014/12/22/how-to-study-mandarin-chinese/

the site is just linking you towards different systems on how to study chinese, specific vocabulary sets and basically tells you systems on how to get fluent in Mandarin, which can be pretty helpful. I hope it will be useless for my journey!

ArchChinese

This site has pretty much everything that you need to practice Chinese. It includes a list containing all of the 214 Chinese radicals – both in pinyin and English, which is pretty much perfect. Also, it has worksheets, vocabulary lists, a tool to create your own flashcards, tools to practice your handwriting, and contains listening examples. All for free! Yey!

http://www.archchinese.com/arch_chinese_radicals.html

ChineseGrammarWiki

This one is probably going to save my life. It literally has everything in it, basically, you could just learn from the Wikipedia site and you're all good. It has grammar rules for the different levels, links you to forums, has vocabulary lists, keywords, printables, etc. etc. etc. It's basically just heaven for generating your study material!

Use quizlet!

Honestly, just do it! It is just so easy to either way create your own set of flashcards or just look for one that suits your needs, then start learning! This way, I realise that i'm having the most fun whilst actually learning something because of endless repetition. It doesn't even feel like learning when i'm on quizlet. Also, flashcards are in general a very good method to memorise the characters and the pinyin. A friend of mine who lived in Peking for 4 years and learned Chinese during that time told me that you basically have to memorise the characters with flashcards to pinyin and then to your mother tongue. Which would be german for me, but I guess it also works with English since Chinese is closer and i'm fluent in both languages.

General tips:

learn vocabulary. Honestly Vocabulary is pretty much the most important thing if you wanna be fluent in a language, especially when this language is Chinese. I always loved languages but I am so bad at remembering vocabulary, that's why I almost forgot everything I learn in school for French (and I'd say in Luxembourg, we learn lots of French because you need it everyday.), I only just remember the basic conversations, which is quite sad. I don't want to make that mistake again whilst learning Chinese. So one of my main goals is to just remember loads and loads of characters and words, so that I'll be good in speaking Chinese with my friends one day.

Have a reason to start learning the language. For me, that was meeting people who are Chinese and spending a lot of time with these guys (Since I helped at a festival, where Chinese school orchestras and choirs came to Vienna, most of the organisation team was Chinese, I was surrounded by the language every day, and it confused me a lot at the beginning, but it made me understand that actually, Chinese is a pretty important language, because basically there are so many Chinese people who can't speak English – and if you can speak Chinese and English, you can literally speak to most people on this planet. Isn't that fascinating? Also, I kind of want to meet the people I've worked with in Vienna again, maybe even work there later on, which is why I decided to learn Chinese. Plus, it's just additional soft skills for my VC – languages are never a bad thing to know.

Watch youtube videos, listen to Chinese music and Podcasts, get into the Culture. This is probably the most important thing to fully understand the language and the people – and also to just have fun studying the language. Whilst listening to songs and translating the lyrics, you're learning new vocabulary, new sentences, ways of how Chinese think, etc.

buy textbooks. I haven't bought a proper textbook yet because i'm in Berlin right now which means I don't wanna take it home with me, when I can also just start with material that I find online, however I'm pretty much either way gonna buy Chinese books in the library or at first just rent it from the University library.

Look up for courses/tandem partners. If you're a student, check your university's courses. Most of the time, they do offer additional lessons where you can just learn something, without paying as much as people from the outside, sometimes even for free. If you wanna learn the language, just try to get in touch with it as much as you can. Courses with actual teacher can help you improve your pronunciation which I guess is pretty hard in Chinese. I will be struggling with that a lot, but I can always send text messages to my friends on WeChat and ask them if it's correct. However, courses are also good to get more material, maybe get a system into your whole learning thing.

Organise yourself. I find it pretty much overwhelming right now to get thrown into this new language. I'm looking for material all over the internet and I'm finding so many different sites. Find one that suits you, then just stick to the system. As I said before, I'm going to start with learning the radicals, basic A1 vocabulary and Grammar by themed learning sets. It's the easiest way to learn I guess.

Also, it is important to accept that learning Chinese is a very hard process and is probably gonna take a lot of nerves. I'm actually kind of debating with myself wether i'm gonna stick to learning Chinese or not, whether it's gonna be useful or not – but right now, I'm still content in what I'm doing, because I have this goal. I know that Chinese is hard and that I'll forget words a lot of times before I actually am gonna be able to chat with someone in Chinese, but I wanna impress some people – and this keeps me going.

Last but not least: Have fun! Learning a new language is an amazing process, it changes your ways of thinking, it changes your perception on human nature, on culture, you get to have other insides on people's history, which is all just really interesting. Learning is a fun process, learning makes you happy, makes you great, learning makes you you! So please, just enjoy yourself with the language – it really is a game, you know! Failure is human, failure is part of it, but if you still have fun learning new things, then you're good! Keep it up!