ev-n-learning

[ev-n-learning]

Ghost Jam 2025 will be happening soon! It's an event we host annually where participants build a brand new ghost in just a week!

You can find the rules and information for the event here.

There is a Japanese translation of the rules provided, thanks to Nikolat. If you are interested in our event, we would be happy to have you join us!

The jam will be starting on June 19th. That gives you about two weeks to make plans and find collaborators if you want to work on a team.

Please note, unlike previous years this event will be starting at noon EDT and NOT at midnight. This is a 12 hour time shift from previous events, due to constraints on moderator schedules at this time.

[ev-n-learning]

I've been meaning to learn Marathi for work; do you have any recommendations for where to go?

Unfortunately, there aren’t many Duolingo-style Marathi resources out there, but here are some websites that will help you:

You can learn to read and write Marathi on Omniglot, which also has basic guides to phrases, numbers, colours, family words, and a Marathi translation of the Tower of Babel.

Wikibooks has a free online book for Marathi.

Marathi is available on 50LANGUAGES (free) and Ling (paid).

YouTube must have many videos to learn Marathi, but many of them teach it through Hindi (like this channel). Here’s an hour-long video I found that teaches basic Marathi through English:

By the way, it’s surprising to me you need to learn Marathi for work!

[ev-n-learning]

Retroflexification of place names in Marathi

I find it interesting how certain place names are pronounced with retroflex consonants in Marathi, even if they aren’t in the languages Marathi borrowed them from, or the languages spoken in those regions:

Hindi भोपाल (Bhōpāl) → Marathi भोपाळ (Bhōpāḷ)

Hindi लद्दाख़ (Laddāx) → Marathi लडाख (Laḍākh)*

Nepali नेपाल (Nēpāl) → Marathi नेपाळ (Nēpāḷ)

Nepali तिब्बत (Tibbat) → Marathi तिबेट (Tibēṭ)*

Persian اتران (Irân) → Marathi इराण (Irāṇ)

Persian افغانستان (Afǧânestân) → Marathi अफगाणिस्तान (Afgāṇistān)

Contrastingly, Bhutan is called भुटान Bhuṭān in Nepali (and འབྲུག་རྒྱལ་ཁབ ('Druk Gyal Khab) in Dzongkha), but भूतान (Bhūtān) in Marathi.

*Ladākh and Tibēṭ more likely come from their English names, Ladakh and Tibet (whose Indian English pronunciation does have the retroflex /ʈ/). Tibet is called Tibbat in Hindi-Urdu and Persian too, and the Tibetan name བོད (Böd) is quite different, but is probably still the ultimate origin of Tibbat.

[ev-n-learning]

Marathi words for “hospital”

Marathi has many words from languages like Sanskrit, Kannada, Persian, Portuguese, English, etc. So, it has four words for “hospital” from three different languages:

दवाखाना (davākhānā) from Classical Persian دواخانه (dawāxāna) “pharmacy.”

रुग्णालय (rugṇālay) from Sanskrit रुग्ण (rugṇá) “patient” plus आलय (ālaya) “house.”

इस्पितळ (ispitaḷ) from English ⟨hospital⟩,

… which also has a doublet, हॉस्पिटल (hŏspiṭal).

(Note that दवाखाना‌ is a clinic or a small hospital, while the others are big hospitals.)

[ev-n-learning]

It's ready! My Anki deck for Devanagari Alphabet for Marathi! You can use this to learn the Devanagari alphabet as it is used in Marathi.

It has a whopping 500 cards, which include all the vowels including अ‍ॅ and ऑ, and goes through all the consonant combinations for the vowels, except ञ and ङ (which are included without their consonant combinations).

I trawled through dictionaries to find example words for as many letters as possible. I found decent ones for most of them, I think, and I omitted any that I thought were too rare to bother learning.

Additionally, the deck is fully voiced for both letters and words. Some of these pronunciations were really tricky but I think I nailed 'em. My recording equipment isn't the greatest, but hopefully it should be fine for this.

You can download the deck from AnkiWeb here:

If you like it, be sure to add a nice comment or two!

My next project is to voice the vocabulary deck for मध्यरात्रीचे पडघम [madhyarātrīče paḍgham]. Then, I'm considering creating a deck for Marathi numbers from 1-100. Look forward to them!

[ev-n-learning]

I recently added audio to my Marathi Anki deck for the vocabulary I picked up from Ranjit Desai's short story collection मेघ [megh].

I've added the updated deck to the Google Drive folder, but I'd really appreciate it if you instead downloaded it from AnkiWeb. You can comment there with a thumbs up, and the downloads will help prevent the deck from being delisted, which helps everyone.

I'll soon be adding audio to my other vocabulary deck as well, which was for Ratnakar Matkari's मध्यरात्रीचे पडघम [madhyarātrīce paḍgham]. I've re-uploaded it to AnkiWeb for now, so again, if you download it, that would be great!

Finally, I'm working on a big beginner deck for Marathi learners that goes through all the bārākhaḍī letters for Marathi (i.e. क का कि की etc. and all variants). I'm only excluding the conjuncts (zoḍākṣare)... for now.

It'll be complete with example words wherever possible, and yes, I searched for potential example words for every single bārākhaḍī letter. It was surprising how many of them are not used in Marathi at all.

I'll be voicing both the letters and the example words. Exciting stuff!

Look forward to it!

[ev-n-learning]

I try to keep my list of eventual "forever" languages* down to a reasonable number but lately i've been thinking about learning toki pona for fun again, maybe as a forever language itself ......... too many languages out there. Also i'm busy with italian??

*as opposed to dabble languages. So like, asl, belarusian, icelandic, marathi...... etc. But based on how many languages it's reasonable to have a good knowledge of at once, that etc probably shouldn't even exist!! So you see the problem...

[ev-n-learning]

Oh! I forgot to make a post about it sooner, but there's a Marathi film having its global premiere at the ongoing Sundance Film Festival.

It's called साबर बोंड [sābar boṅḍa] ("Cactus Pears"), and it's a very gay love story about a Mumbai resident re-encountering his childhood friend in an Ahmednagar village.

The director, Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, grew up in a Mumbai slum and trained himself as a filmmaker despite having a background in interior design. The film is described as a very personal piece stemming from the director being gay himself.

Nandini Ramnath interviewed him for Scroll.in here, so have a read!

I look forward to catching it when it (hopefully) makes its way to the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival late in the year.

[ev-n-learning]

Duolingo will be like "complete the next 3 lessons" and i will complete one and its like "not that one"

[ev-n-learning]

Resident duolingo user in 2024 here. They are now not letting you practice if you still have hearts left which imo is VERY BAD like do you want people to stay and watch more ads? Let them practice more.

Also it means they cant stay on your app longer and watch Even More ads because of doing actual lessons

I do not know how to get them to change it back but it is Bad 👎👎👎

[ev-n-learning]

SO CLOSE

[ev-n-learning]

:O

[ev-n-learning]

Library find 😎

[ev-n-learning]

Me (typing russian): ok, teenagers, i know this word

Me (typing): *подростки*

Me:

Me: *looking up teenager in the dictionary*

[ev-n-learning]

I suspect my time with czech is coming to an end soon...

I have six and a half units to go, and with the dramatic decrease in unit content, it will probably only take me a few months to finish them! By the end of the year at most, but more than likely before then.

...sooo I need to pick a new dabble language from the list. And maybe resolve to finish it a bit faster than 1&¾ of a year, LOL. I have other things i wanna learn...!!

Anyways, there's 11 languages on the list and i don't think a single one of them is slavic, so it's gonna be a bit of a struggle no matter what i do, haha. Add in at least 4 new writing systems*...

*one of these is japanese and i still don't really want to learn it. Hmmmm.

[ev-n-learning]

life is awful i must *remembers suicide jokes only do harm* study a new language!

[ev-n-learning]

Nobody wanted that.

(I still *have* mine, for the record, it just won't display anymore. Rude.)