illiaburakov

[illiaburakov]

Free PDF Workbooks for Japanese, Spanish, Korean, etc. (30+ languages)

If you’re looking to practice a bit and remember your target language better… here are tons of free worksheets/workbooks for 34 languages (Japanese, Spanish, Korean, French, German, Italian, etc, etc.)

It’s the same type of “fill in the blank” workbook across all of their languages but the magic in actually rewriting things over and over is that the words end up sticking. Plus, there are English sections where you’ll have to force yourself to remember and write the word/phrase in the target language - which is even better for your memory (called active recall - forcing yourself to remember).  I’m personally a big fan of this approach and I’d do similar to pass vocab quizzes in my HS & uni language classes.

If you’re interested, give these a go.

Afrikaans— https://www.afrikaanspod101.com/Afrikaans-workbooks

Arabic— https://www.arabicpod101.com/Arabic-workbooks

Bulgarian— https://www.bulgarianpod101.com/Bulgarian-workbooks

Cantonese— https://www.cantoneseclass101.com/Cantonese-workbooks

Chinese— https://www.chineseclass101.com/Chinese-workbooks

Czech— https://www.czechclass101.com/Czech-workbooks

Danish— https://www.danishclass101.com/Danish-workbooks

Dutch— https://www.dutchpod101.com/Dutch-workbooks

English— https://www.englishclass101.com/English-workbooks

Filipino— https://www.filipinopod101.com/Filipino-workbooks

Finnish— https://www.finnishpod101.com/Finnish-workbooks

French— https://www.frenchpod101.com/French-workbooks

German—https://www.germanpod101.com/German-workbooks

Greek— https://www.greekpod101.com/Greek-workbooks

Hebrew— https://www.hebrewpod101.com/Hebrew-workbooks

Hindi— https://www.hindipod101.com/Hindi-workbooks

Hungarian— https://www.hungarianpod101.com/Hungarian-workbooks

Indonesian— https://www.indonesianpod101.com/Indonesian-workbooks

Italian— https://www.italianpod101.com/Italian-workbooks

Japanese— https://www.japanesepod101.com/Japanese-workbooks

Korean— https://www.koreanclass101.com/Korean-workbooks

Norwegian— https://www.norwegianclass101.com/Norwegian-workbooks

Persian— https://www.persianpod101.com/Persian-workbooks

Polish— https://www.polishpod101.com/Polish-workbooks

Portuguese— https://www.portuguesepod101.com/Portuguese-workbooks

Romanian— https://www.romanianpod101.com/Romanian-workbooks

Russian— https://www.russianpod101.com/Russian-workbooks

Spanish— https://www.spanishpod101.com/Spanish-workbooks

Swahili— https://www.swahilipod101.com/Swahili-workbooks

Swedish— https://www.swedishpod101.com/Swedish-workbooks

Thai— https://www.thaipod101.com/Thai-workbooks

Turkish— https://www.turkishclass101.com/Turkish-workbooks

Urdu— https://www.urdupod101.com/Urdu-workbooks

Vietnamese— https://www.vietnamesepod101.com/Vietnamese-workbooks

[illiaburakov]

To get & to forget

The distant ancestor of to forget meant 'to lose hold of'. It was the opposite of to get. Speaking of to get, this verb is special: it only has cognates in the Nordic languages, such as Norwegian å gjeta. It was even borrowed from their Old Norse ancestor geta. The infographic will tell you more.

[illiaburakov]

Orrmulum Wending

Orrmulum Prolegomenon, p1-12:

Nu broþerr wallterr. broþerr min. Affterr þe flæshess kinde. ⁊ broþerr min i crisstenndom. Þurrh fulluht (1). ⁊ þurrh trowwþe. ⁊ broþerr min i godess hus.   yȅt (2) o þe þride wise.  Þurrh þatt witt (3) hafenn tăkenn ba. An reɣell boc to follɣenn. Unnderr kanunnkess had (4). ⁊ lif. Swa summ sannt awwstin sette.  Icc hafe don swa summ þu badd; ⁊ forþedd (5) te þin wille.

-Johannesson-Cooper transcription

My Translation:

Now brother Walter, my brother After the flesh’s kind  & my brother in Christendom, Through baptism and through faith, & my brother in God’s house, yet on the third degree,  in that we (dual) have taken both A rule-book to follow, Under the canonical office & life Just as Saint Augustine set [down]. I have done as thou baddest [me],  & accomplished thy will.

Unfamiliar Elements:

Þ - letter thorn, pronounced as /th/. ⁊ - Tironian nota for "et", here used as "and". ɣ - A voiced /g/, not present in Modern English.

fulluht - n. Baptism. 2. yȅt - adv. Yet, still. 3. witt - prnn. We, dual (you and I). 4. had - n. Rank, office. 5. forþedd - v.pst. Accomplished, carried out. From forþenn.

[illiaburakov]

Chester (placename element)

The English place-name Chester, and the suffixes -chester, -caster and -cester (old -ceaster), are commonly indications that the place is the site of a Roman castrum, meaning a military camp or fort (cf. Welsh caer), but it can also apply to the site of a pre-historic fort.

source: WIkipedia.

I found the book on the English place-names by Charles Whynne-Hammond. Direct quote about fortified places which ended up as the name of cities/towns with suffix (somewhere altered) -cester.

"The most common elements which refer to defensive sites are those meaning army camp, fort or fortified place. The Romans built many a defensive or military base, most of which were taken over by later peoples. The ‘colonia’ was an army establishment, usually a colony for retired soldiers (hence the present name of Lincoln) and a ‘castra’ was a fortified camp or walled town. The latter was very common indeed and most were re-established under the later Saxons, who called them ‘ceasters’ or ‘caesters’. Their walls were rebuilt, their gates and towers restrengthened, their streets resurfaced. The settlements today which began as Roman ‘castras’ are legion. Normally they can be recognised by their suffixes, which derive from the Saxon version of that word. Thus, we have all those places ending in ‘-chester’, ‘-cester’ ‘-caster’ and ‘-xeter’: Winchester, Worcester, Manchester, Doncaster, Exeter and so on. Some of these have prefixes from older Celtic words (sometimes tribal names or physical features), others have prefixes purely Saxon. Rarely, if ever, are the prefixes from a Roman or Latin root."

More examples: Acaster Malbis, Acaster Selby, Alcester, Alchester, Ancaster, Bicester, Binchester, Brancaster, Caister-on-Sea, Caistor, Caistor St Edmund, Casterton (Cumbria), Casterton (Great, Rutland), Casterton (Little, Rutland), Castor (Cambridgeshire), Chester, Cheshire (Chester-shire), Chester (Little, Derby), Chesterfield, Chesterford (Great), Chesterford (Little), Chester-Ie-Street, Chesterton, Chesterwood, Chichester, Cirencester, Colchester, Dorchester, Dorchester-on-Thames (Oxfordshire), Ebchester, Frocester, Gloucester, Godmanchester, Grantchester, Hincaster, Ilchester, Irchester, Kenchester, Lancaster, Lancashire (Lune-caster-shire), Lanchester, Leicester, Mancetter, Muncaster, Portchester, Ribchester, Rocester, Rochester (Kent), Rochester (Northumberland), Silchester, Tadcaster, Towcester, Uttoxeter, Woodchester, Worcester, Wroxeter.

Since there are a lot of "-shire", and it's popular place name all over GB, I'll make next etymology-of-places post about this suffix.

[illiaburakov]

Leigh, lee, lees, lease, ly or lay?

Scrolling Tumblr I ran into a book "The Story of English in 100 Words" by David Crystal, and it's absolutely fabulous. In a nutshell, the author decided to stroll down the history of English by digging deep into 100 separate words. Lemme retell one word story and a little bit elaborate it with more examples:

"Lea" is not an everyday English word, well, since hardly anybody (among non-native speakers) will understand it without clicking a link to OxfordDictionary. However, inhabitants of the British Isles will probably recognize next proper names (mostly places): Lea, Leigh, Bletchley, Dudley, Wembley, Audley, Madingley, Morley, Dingley, Evenley, Rowley, Stanley, Langley, Ashley, Oakleigh, Thornley, Uley, Bronley, Cloverley, Farleigh, Wheatley, Flaxley, Durley, Gateley, Horsley, Shipley, Finchley, Crawley (supernatural xd), Beeleigh, etc.

England was heavily forested in Anglo-Saxon times, and it was common practice to make a new settlement by chopping the trees down and starting a farm. If Beorn made a space in this way, it would be called ‘Beorn’s clearing’ – ‘Beorn’s leah’ – modern Barnsley.

All of them have their own meanings, you can check them all in Wikipedia or on Scribd.

These are 20-25% of what I've found, there are definitely even more and not only in the UK, but the USA and Australia, too. If you'd like to see more etymologies of toponyms - let me know.

G'd luck :))

PS: just found out that links to specific paragraphs on Wiki doesn't work as I thought it had to ;( Anyways check chapter "History" or just look for paragraphs with etymology on the pages I added links to.

[illiaburakov]

A map of dialects and language variety differences of North America.

Key point: everyone has an accent. And that’s okay.

[illiaburakov]

Lord: 'bread guardian'

Lord stems from Proto-Germanic *hlaibawardaz: 'bread guardian'. This compound consists of two words: *hlaibaz, the ancestor of loaf, and *wardaz, which meant 'guardian' and became English ward. Click the video to hear how over the course of 2500 years, its four syllables turned into one.

[illiaburakov]

Map of British English dialects

by Ryan Starkey (Starkey Comics)

Author Ryan Starkey accompanies the map with a great article:

I’ve spent the last few years pooling together every study, survey, map, and database I can find, and then subjecting my image to several rounds of peer feedback. […] The end result is an image which is, to my knowledge, the most detailed map of British dialects ever made.

He also discusses “Why this map is wrong, and always will be”, and just how difficult it is to create a precise map of dialect regions.

Why is there so much dialect diversity in the U.K.? Because the longer a language is in a region, the more it tends to diversify. This is partly why, for example, there is a much larger variety of dialects spoken in the Eastern U.S. than the Western U.S.

Further Reading

The stories of English (David Crystal)

This is the perfect book to read if you want to know more about the history of dialect diversity in English, because the entire focus of the book is to show that English is not just one unified language (hence the plural “stories” in the title). It’s one of my favorite popular language books.

[illiaburakov]

I've started noticing that English as a worldwide spoken language has so many peculiarities as literally every individual on this planet. Ofc nothing surprising here, since it's spread throughout Europe, both Americas, Australia and Oceania, occasionally in Asia and Africa. But I'd like to start my blog with the phonetic "deviation" in England. It's not a secret that most of dialects of the British Isles are non-rhotic (so such words as mother are pronounced /maθə/), so sometimes linking-r is needed for an easier pronunciation (e.g. mother-in-law). Still it's not something that I've never known before, because it's the simplest rule learnt in school to tell whether someone speaks British or American English.

Well, there's also an intrusive-r, which is more weird in non-rhotic dialects (kinda cool) than a linking one. For example, you have "the idea of it", ea+o = too hard to say quickly, so the matter of logic 🎁 us /ʀ/ and we've got "the idea-r-of it". More examples:

the Shah of Iran = the Shah-r-of Iran

Majorca in the spring = Majorka-r-in the spring

law and order = law-r-an orde (it's basically the nickname - Laura Norder - for Margaret Tetcher)

You can also listen out this intrusive-r in Beatles' song attached to this post in the line "I saw a film today". Also I attach scientific info from the phonetics textbook which I've found on Scribd.