spyld

[spyld]

Found a new language practice app!

Polygloss has you describe an image in your target language so another player can guess it. It encourages creative answers. The game works for people of all levels — you can describe simple pictures or try your hand at wordplay.

It has plenty of options and will let you add any language you’d like — tho it’ll probably be more difficult to find people to play with.

[spyld]

Did you know that Marathi (one of India’s many languages) is actually less than 100 years old. It’s just a baby compared to Tamil and Kannada. 

[spyld]

hello!! just here to tell you that this post isn't very correct (of course, if i'm wrong, please do correct me)

I don't go and check every submission, so I'm sorry if this one slipped through. If you have more info, I'd love to know!

(got more info in your reblog, thank you)

[spyld]

the english language has the major disadvantage of not having a direct translation to "Es kriselt."

(pointless attempt of a translation: "A crisis is brewing." but thats lame bc turning Krise into a verb is half of the fun. "Its crisising" no.. also "Es kriselt" sounds a lot like "Es neiselt" which means theres a dirzzling rain. )

[spyld]

Free or Cheap General Language Resources Because idk I Just Wanna Help

All resources either have a free tier or have a low ($10 USD/month or less) subscription fee or a one time purchase option below $100 USD. All prices I give are in USD because I live in the US and this list was already hard to put together okay I'm not also doing conversions

I have given the links in text format because tumblr has a link limit. Copy and paste into your browser to look at them.

These are generalized. Not for your specific language.

LinQ, a website for reading: https://www.lingq.com/en/

You can click on words you don't know and get a definition and save a flashcard. They provide readings for all levels from beginner to advanced and you can upload your own texts and podcast or video transcripts and there's stuff uploaded by other users to browse through. The website also has some texts with audio included. You can also purchase books through the website. This is all included in the free tier. The paid tier allows you to save an unlimited number of flashcards and includes some forum and tutoring options. It's either $15 a month or $120 for a full year.

Languages available in full: Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian

Languages partially supported or with incomplete beginner courses: Afrikaans, Armenian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Catalan, Traditional Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Georgian, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Khmer, Macedonian, Malay, Persian, Punjabi, Serbian, Slovenian, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish, Vietnamese

Migaku, a web extension and app: https://migaku.com/

Paid service at $10 a month. It has beginner courses and allows for dual language subtitles on things like netflix or youtube. It also allows users to save flashcards from subtitles or articles and sync flashcards between devices

Supported languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese

Storylearning Books: https://storylearning.com/books

These are short story, dialogue, or history books by Olly Richards written for beginner to intermediate learners that in my experience at least are written to not be boring for adults. Each chapter of a book includes a key vocabulary list and comprehension questions. Storylearning also has online courses available but they're too expensive for what you get in my opinion. The books are way cheaper, though depending on the language you may have more or less books to buy. The books are usually in the $15-$20 range new but they're often available at used bookstores both online and irl for much cheaper.

Books available in: Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Arabic (MSA), Brazillian Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, Irish

Mango Languages, a pretty standard language app: https://mangolanguages.com/

This is actually a pretty pricey one at like $20 a month but the reason I bring it up is that a lot of people can get it free through their local library and it has a large selection of languages.

Languages supported: Armenian, Azerbaijani, Egyptian Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Levantine Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), Bengali, Cantonese, chaldean Aramaic. Cherokee, Mandarin, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, Dzongkha, English, Tagalog, Finnish, French (European and Canadian), German, Greek (modern, ancient, and kione), Hatian Creole, Hawaiian, Hebrew (modern and biblical), Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kazakh, Korean, Latin, Malay, Malayalam, Norwegian, Farsi, Polish, Potawatomi, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Shanghainese, Slovak, Spanish (castillian and latin american), Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Tuvan, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Yiddish

Comprehensible Input Wiki, a website for finding language specific comprehensible input resources: https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

Comprehensible input is input in a language you understand the message of, not necessarily input you understand every word of. It's good for you to get a lot of it from day one. This website gathers resources like podcasts, kid's shows, youtube channels, books, etc. that are perfect for this sort of thing.

Languages currently on the website as I am writing this: American Sign Language, Arabic (MSA), Armenian, Basque, Biblical Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Haitian creole, Hakka, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Occitan, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian, Sanskrit, Sardinian, Serbo-Croatian, Sicilian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Toki Pona, Tunisian Arabic, Turkish, Ukranian, Vietnamese, Welsh, Yoruba, Zulu

Drops, a vocab app: https://languagedrops.com/

Drops teaches vocab through pictures and matching and spelling games, though you can also customize your settings to show translations and different alphabets or not. The free tier has ads and a daily time limit. The lifetime subscription is technically against my personal rule for this post because it's $160 but it often goes on sale for half off or $80. There's also a monthly or yearly payment option. At the paid tier you can practice for an unlimited time without ads and choose which types of vocabulary words you want to learn.

Supported Languages: Ainu, English (American and British), Arabic (MSA), Bosnian, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Cantonese, Spanish, (Castilian and Mexican), Catalan, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galacian, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Maori, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Sanskrit for yoga, Serbian, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Yoruba

Anki, a general flashcard app: https://apps.ankiweb.net/

You can make your own flashcards on Anki or download flashcard packs that other users have made. It also allows for importing of audio and visual aids. It has a spaced repetition system that a lot of people swear by. Some companies like Refold also sell premade flashcard packs specifically for Anki. Free on desktop, I believe about a $20 one time purchase on iOS.

Muzzy In GondoLand (1986): https://archive.org/details/muzzy-in-gondoland-level-i-1986

No, really! The old Muzzy movies from the 80s made to teach kids foreign languages are fairly easy to find for free on archive.org or on youtube. The new Muzzy with workbooks and an app and whatnot requires a paid subscription to the BBC but the older ones are much easier to find. They're available in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Chinese, Korean, Esperanto, and Welsh.

Easy Languages, a connected group of Youtube channels: https://www.easy-languages.org/

Easy Language channels are channels where people interview speakers of the language on the street about everyday topics like dating, tourism, and shopping for example. They have dual language subtitles in their videos in the target language and English. Many of them also have series about useful phrases for beginners and intermediate podcasts. Most also have bonus worksheets and other learning materials on their patreons but the free content available is already a lot.

Current active channels: Arabic, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish

wordreference.com

A website that lets you look up words in another language. It's better than google translate. It has pronunciation in multiple dialects and in depth explanations that some other websites don't have.

Supported Languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Swedish, Icelandic, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Czech, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic

edX, a website for taking college courses, often for free: https://www.edx.org/learn/language

I can't tell you precisely what's available because it changes year to year but they usually offer a wide variety of courses. You can also often get real college credit through these if that's something you're interested in. Programming languages are often mixed in with spoken or signed languages though so you may have to do some digging through the lists to fins what you want.

[spyld]

To translate into your native language: Cozy

G E Z E L L I G for the win!!

[spyld]

borders between countries aren't real btw we just made them up. there's no such thing as an "immigrant" we're all just people moving around on the same planet that we've always moved around on

[spyld]

Tildes, rings and umlauts

Several accents on letters originate from a stacked letter. The ñ of Spanish señor ('gentleman') arose from a stacked n. It used to be sennor. The letter å, as in Swedish stå ('to stand'), is an a with an o on top. The German umlaut on ä, ö and ü comes from a stacked e. It changed a lot:

[spyld]

Ma traagiliselt unustasin ära, et täna (minu jaoks eile) meie suur päev on:( Lohutuseks ma siis blogin keset ööd, kuskil ju ikka seitsmes veel kestab. Head keeltepäeva minust läänepoolne rahvas!

Hehe, unfortunately this came too late for my sleeping needs. But, yay, thank you for having joined in!!

[spyld]

កូនហង្សចង់បានចិត្តក្រហម

translation notes : -"fly happily above the sky" can also be "fly above the happy sky" -សាច់ means meat , but also skin , flesh , innards -ឆ្កែព្រែ (literally "wild dog") actually refers to any wild canine and not specific , wolves , painted dogs , and foxes being part of it -ចាប specifically means sparrow-like song birds like this robin . when casually referring to song birds youd never use សត្វស្លាប which is general word for bird (literally means "feathered / winged animal") and use ចាប instead -the "swan" drawn is actually a goose (story reasons wawa) ហង្ស more so refers to swans and ក្ងាន more so refers to geese

[spyld]

Uhh ciao volevo mandare un ask prima che finisca il 7 da me

Grazie per aver organizzato questo evento è stato bellissimo vedere tutta gente parlare varie lingue sulla mia Dash!! Ho iniziato a tenere conto di quante volte vedevo una lingua ma ho perso il conto lol

Someone in the spyld tag summoned up the languages used in there I think it was very nice! Thank you for participating!!

[spyld]

speak your language day asks!

☾ : favourite word from your language ♧ : favourite word from the english language translated in your language ✌ : favourite proverb/saying from your language ☮ : translate the first lines of your favourite song in your language ☆ : give the first lines of a song which is originally in your language ☯ : what do you love about your language? ☪ : what do you hate about your language? ❀ : which language(s) would you like to speak fluently? ♡ : which languages do you speak/have you learned in school? ❁ : which language(s) do you think of as the most beautiful? ✓ : funniest word in your language ϟ : translate a sentence

[spyld]

✌️for the ask game?

A rather timely one that always amused me: "był w Rzymie i nie widział papieża" ("he went to Rome but didn't see the pope") -> when you overlook something obvious and important, or miss your chance at something.

[spyld]

Send me an English word and I'll translate it to my native language

[spyld]

každý rok přijde spyld a já naprosto ztratím jakoukoliv vůli komunikovat >.<

mno. co se dá dělat. příště si zapíšu všechny jazykově zaměřené nápady během roku a jenom je nastavím aby se automaticky zveřejnily další spyld XD (a teď budu mít rok kdy naprosto zapomenu že jazyky existují jenom aby mi tohle nevyšlo, já se znám...)

hezký zbytek dne!

Oh I definitely understand this feeling!

Thanks, you have a good evening!!

[spyld]

quemman eltoc spyld huan axticmati tlen tlailliah nochin motequixpoyohuan

[spyld]

Je suis francophone mais ça me manque d'apprendre le néerlandais, j'en ai fait pendant des années à l'école. J'essaie de m'y remettre et je me souviens encore de beaucoup de choses ! C'est vraiment une langue amusante à parler, j'aime la façon dont les phrases sont construites.

Oh that's fun to hear!

Ik wens je nog veel genot van dit taaltje ;)