lingua-calamitas

[lingua-calamitas]

Once the friend of a friend of my mom's was visiting Rio and she saw Sugarloaf Mountain and she wanted to impress her taxi driver with her knowledge of Portuguese, so she said in Portuguese "Look, Sugarloaf [Mountain]! It's very big!".

Unfortunately, English native speakers have a hard time making the "ão" sound correctly since the sound doesn't exist in English, so instead of saying "pão de açúcar" (literally, bread of sugar), she said "pau de açúcar." Now, "pau" technically just means "wood," but it's also, unfortunately for her, slang for "penis."

So to the driver what he heard was "Look at the sugar dick! it's so big!" and he almost crashed the car from laughing so hard.

[lingua-calamitas]

Types of linguistics posts you see online:

Linguistics content

Blatantly false etymologies

"What's the reason for German being the ugliest language alive?"

College freshman who just reinvented the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis from scratch

"I just learned my sixth language. What language should I learn next?"

[lingua-calamitas]

In Spanish there are actually 3 different words for "pig" and they're all valid, and largely interchangeable

The standard one is cerdo/a for "pig" and "sow", and is used everywhere - also cerdo can mean "pork" as in meat

The other one you'll see is el puerco which is both "pig" and "pork", and can sometimes be used almost like a species name? As in, there's "cat" and then there's "feline"; in English for pigs it "pig" and "porcine", so puerco means that; it's also how you get words later like "porcupine" where it's literally "thorn/spike-pig"

Anyway, point is for anything vaguely related to pigs, puerco can be used

The third option is cochino/a which you will frequently see as its more popular meaning "filthy" or "gross"; as in el cochinero can be "a pigsty", and calling a person cochino/a can be calling someone "gross", "vulgar", or "a slob"

[side note: you may occasionally see the word chino/a used to mean "curly"; the standard word is rizado/a, but this word chino/a is related to cochino in the sense of a pig's tail being curly or springy... so if you ever see chino/a used in a context where it does not mean "Chinese", that's usually what it means]

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A secret fourth option is more Latin America than anything but you sometimes see chancho/a for "pig" or "pork"; I tend to think of it as more South American

And occasionally you'll see marrano/a used for "pig" - be careful with this word; the term used to refer to people who were forcibly converted to Christianity in Spain during the Reconquista and Inqusition periods - specifically it tended to mean Jewish people or children of converts. It wasn't that they were being called pigs, it's that the original etymology meant something like "bitter-forced" in Hebrew, and it came to refer to converts who would still avoid pork... in modern Spanish, it just means "pig" or "messy person", but historically you'll see marrano/a used for Jewish people who were converts, or the term morisco/a which was often more applied to Muslims who were forced converts, and these historical terms would show up during the next centuries when talking about people's bloodlines and whether they were Catholic or if there were converts in the family line

[lingua-calamitas]

The Turkish language is so pretty and I wanna learn it but wahhhhhhh first gotta learn Spanish then probably ASL… or skip Spanish… hm…

[lingua-calamitas]

The Turkish language is so pretty and I wanna learn it but wahhhhhhh first gotta learn Spanish then probably ASL… or skip Spanish… hm…

[lingua-calamitas]

yeee!! :D

The Turkish language is so pretty and I wanna learn it but wahhhhhhh first gotta learn Spanish then probably ASL… or skip Spanish… hm…

[lingua-calamitas]

perhaps you could learn it for little bit on the side or during? Then again that might not be how your brain works..either way I need to listen and see this language to see what u mean properly…

The Turkish language is so pretty and I wanna learn it but wahhhhhhh first gotta learn Spanish then probably ASL… or skip Spanish… hm…

[lingua-calamitas]

finished my first movie today: Conclave

(Possible spoilers below)

Admittedly I am a bit confused on it, but I do understand it as a criticism of organized religion and the Catholic Church. Definitely fully of catty and petty clergy, found it to brilliantly done. One I’d have to rewatch with more context but I still think I understand it after it’s end… also strangely relevant to American politics.

I love the characters and costuming and the cinematography of it… I feel like I can definitely learn from that lol. Fuelling my Latin learning, honestly. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a film entirely in Latin….

thinking it might be fun to participate in @salvadorbonaparte’s summer language film challenge!!

my chosen number is minimum 5 prompts, and one movie per prompt. I’m allowed to watch more than that but I figure that might be a good starting number, or well, at least hopefully attainable lol

chosen prompts & movie ideas to go with them (I picked more than five but just for options):

Spanish — tambíen la lluvia

Vietnamese — the little girl of hanoi

Arabic — you will die at twenty

Korean — the call

Indonesian — the devil’s bride

A Language from Asia — Leonor will never die, Tagalog

A Multilingual Film — conclave, has Italian, Spanish, Latin, and English

An Animated Film & Japanese — perfect blue

movie ideas sources: #1, #2, and rotten tomato & imdb searches for language specific horror movies, and tumblr for conclave

[lingua-calamitas]

thinking it might be fun to participate in @salvadorbonaparte’s summer language film challenge!!

my chosen number is minimum 5 prompts, and one movie per prompt. I’m allowed to watch more than that but I figure that might be a good starting number, or well, at least hopefully attainable lol

chosen prompts & movie ideas to go with them (I picked more than five but just for options):

Spanish — tambíen la lluvia

Vietnamese — the little girl of hanoi

Arabic — you will die at twenty

Korean — the call

Indonesian — the devil’s bride

A Language from Asia — Leonor will never die, Tagalog

A Multilingual Film — conclave, has Italian, Spanish, Latin, and English

An Animated Film & Japanese — perfect blue

movie ideas sources: #1, #2, and rotten tomato & imdb searches for language specific horror movies, and tumblr for conclave

[lingua-calamitas]

resources for learning Japanese

I'm just making this post because someone asked me! This is stuff I've used and liked; it's not comprehensive by any means. For every resource I enjoy, I know a bunch of Japanese learners who managed to reach a high level of proficiency without using it.

First:

The person who messaged me mentioned motivation. I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a quick sec, so bear with me. Japanese, for native speakers of English who do not know any languages similar to Japanese, is really time-consuming to learn. I am teaching Japanese to a student rn, and I just had a conference with her parents in which I straightforwardly said: In the time it takes your child to learn Japanese, they could probably have learned Spanish, French, how to sail, and a bit of carpentry instead. I'm personally learning Japanese for a lot of different reasons: I want to live in a country where I can afford health care and rent; I love Japanese literature and feel intellectually stilted without access to it; lots of my homies speak Japanese; etc. But there are real trade-offs, and I have sometimes wondered what my life would be if I'd gotten super into Dutch or computer programming instead. It's worth thinking about whether the investment is worth it for you, and taking the time to write out why you're doing this.

The Resources

Grammar

A very nice guy named Tae Kim wrote a perfectly good textbook on basic Japanese grammar that he shares with folks for free (https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar).

Bunpro.jp: Bunpro is THE BEST!!!!! Really thorough, logical grammar explanations; they routinely clarify stuff for me that I've never fully understood before. In addition to explaining the grammar, they have tones of example sentences, most of which have audio tracks with recordings made by professional Japanese voice actors. AND you can add the grammar points you're learning to a flashcard desk and practice that way. Bunpro doesn't just improve grammar, but it really improves your speaking and writing skills as well imo; something about the way the flashcards force me to think really works on my active language skills.

GameGengo is a super cool YouTube channel where one guy explains grammar points while showing you tons of examples from real video games. https://www.youtube.com/@GameGengo

JapaneseAmmoWithMisa is another great YouTube channel where a native speaker explains a lot of stuff that I otherwise don't encounter in textbooks.

Kanji

I like WaniKani and think it's been the best thing for me in terms of knowing how to read kanji combinations that are kind of "weird," unusual, rare, etc. However, it took me a long time to realize that WaniKani really focuses on passive reading skills and not writing at all, so I do recommend practicing writing on your own.

I didn't own a kanji dictionary for years, but I've found them pretty necessary since I started focusing on my writing. Both of the above are equally good imo (the left is probably more readily available in Japan; the right is cheaper in the US). They both put the kanji in a logical sequence, from common to uncommon, and then have useful lists of frequent kanji combinations, tell you the stroke order, etc.

Listening

I really like FluentU, which shows you clips from native materials like movies, shows, commercials, interviews, etc., and then teaches you the vocab you heard, quizzes you on it, and shows you the video again so that you can see how much more you can understand. It's a little expensive to use, though (DO wait for their sales, which happen frequently), and you can definitely find a lot of free stuff to listen to online.

I love JFF Theatre, which has recently released movies from Japan, completely free to watch:

They used to only be allowed to stream movies for one month every year, and now they stream different stuff year-round, which is really cool. They usually have about 6 different movies at a time.

Textbooks

The Shin Kanzen Master textbook series, which is based on JLPT levels, is known for being pretty hard but is also v useful, especially if you're trying to pass the JLPT. The vocab textbooks are cool when you're N2 and above because they teach you tons of nuance between synonyms of words.

Misc

You can follow cool Japanese learners on Tumblr like @tokidokitokyo, @corvid-language-library, and @epivanosilon (and tons of other cool folks!!)

There's a fun monthly book club on Discord that's probably good for N2+ folks: https://www.tumblr.com/tokidokitokyo/785027373105020929/seitokais-june-english-book-club

Ruby Gagotoku on Instagram and Substack makes amazing posts on learning Japanese (she is N1+ in terms of reading), and she's really inspiring to me because she taught herself to read Japanese books while never having actually been to Japan. If you follow her, you can definitely find a lot of resources, communities online, and homies to learn with: https://www.instagram.com/rubygagotoku, https://rubygagotoku.substack.com/

Literally yesterday I found the KuLa app (くずし字学習支援アプリKuLA), which teaches you the basics of how to read kuzushiji (pre-modern Japanese script) in a cute way. I love how the little sensei-bug starts off so optimistic but then freaks out when explaining how hard it is to read pre-modern texts lol:

And remember: There's no shame in learning French, Spanish, sailing, and carpentry instead of this beast of a language that has uprooted my life multiple times and has made me go through probably 20,000 flashcards in the last decade lollllll ganbatte

[lingua-calamitas]

Summer Movie Challenge

I'm participating in @salvadorbonaparte's summer challenge to watch movies in different languages!

The prompts (I can't find the original tumblr post anymore; sorry!): 1. Chinese 2. Spanish 3. English (native speakers can ignore this or pick a film in a dialect or variety of English) 4. Bengali 5. Hindi 6. Portuguese 7. Russian 8. Japanese 9. Punjabi 10. Vietnamese 11. Turkish 12. Arabic 13. Marathi 14. Telugu 15. Korean 16. Tamil 17. Urdu 18. German 19. Indonesian 20. French 21. A Language from the Americas 22. A Language from Europe 23. A Language from Africa 24. A Language from Asia 25. A Language from Oceania 26. A Sign Language 27. An Indigenous Language 28. A Multilingual Film 29. A Documentary 30. An Animated Film

Movie 1

Black Panther (2018) Languages: English, Xhosa, Swahili

Sort of cheating because it's mostly in English, but my eyes were too tired to read subtitles. It does have Xhosa and Swahili! And I completely forgot that Kilmonger and the Black Panther watch the sunset as Kilmonger bleeds out at the end. Had me bawling. 10/10, only superhero movie that matters.

Movie 2

La Cage aux Folles (1978) Language: French

Ahh!!! I loved this movie!!! It makes me sad because I actually feel like this film that came out in 70s France is more progressive than what my country would make today. It completely holds up imo; there were a lot of ways to tell this story wrong, but it dodges queerphobia at every turn and insistently centers the gay couple, portraying them as loving parents and partners. The inability to hide your sexuality/gender expression also felt v relatable tbh, rather than something that was there for straight people to laugh at.

(btw I made a huge list with movie suggestions for the different language prompts:)

[lingua-calamitas]

stumbled across this collection of free resources to learn vietnamese by reddit user SusieFougerousse! it's absolutely massive—it's broken into ten separate sections, including ones on free apps, free lessons, and media! the reddit thread i found it on also lists a couple other resources :)

[lingua-calamitas]

For anyone looking to learn Vietnamese, here is what I personally use:

🇻🇳

Apps

* Duolingo (yes, I said it. It's a good foundation.) Free -includes premium

* Drops (use topics that correlate with what you are already learning, good for retaining memory. Like flashcards but fun.) Free -includes premium

* Learn Vietnamese Speak, Listen (yes, that is the name of the app ��. Really good for speaking/listening especially if you don't have anyone to practice with. Learn content that correlates with your Duo/Drops lessons.) Free -includes premium

Books

* Lonely Planet Vietnamese Dictionary (self explanatory, good for reference. Any dictionary works.) $$$ pricey / may be found in public library ✅

* Reading and Writing Vietnamese: A Workbook for Self-Study (found on Amazon here, covers basically everything needed for beginners) $$$ pricey

YouTube

* Tieng Viet Oi- Vietnamese Lessons (here)

* What the Pho (here)

* Vietglish Fun (here)

* Learn Vietnamese with Annie (here)

* Learn Vietnamese With SVFF (Southern Vietnamese. here)

Individual Video Recs:

*The Vietnamese Alphabet

*Vowel Pronunciation

* Vietnamese Tones

* Counting 1-10

* Travel Basics

* Accent Discrimination

Hope this helps. Vietnamese is hard, but I believe in you!!! 🇻🇳💖

Q: What helps you learn? Let me know!!

[lingua-calamitas]

I saw someone recently say that they use chatGPT to get information about language rules (grammar, sentence structure, translations, etc) for languages that are very rare and have pretty much no information available online.

And that really stuck out to me because generative AI like chatGPT does not think. It doesn't magically have information about every single language in the world in its database. Generative AI works by deciding what words are most likely to be next to each other in a sentence, based on information it pulls from either its internal database or from whatever online resources it is given access to.

So if you're looking for information about, for example, Ojibwemowin grammar and you can't find ANY information about it online no matter how long you search, but chatGPT somehow has the exact information you're looking for? Then whatever chatGPT is telling you was made up. It took a bunch of different resources about a bunch of different languages, probably using pages that mentioned Ojibwe once or twice, and smashed it all together into something that looked somewhat coherent to someone who doesn't actually know the facts. Whether it's accurate or not doesn't matter because that isn't actually the purpose of generative AI.

[lingua-calamitas]

ive seen lots of folks reccomending mango languages (and i just started using it myself), if you have a library card and your library has a program with it, you can get it for completely free

i think someone already said this in replies but youtube, textbooks, and other things i cant remember at the moment can be good as well

What language(s) do you want to learn?

how to learn language EFFECTIVELY with no money 😥 (broke as hell) (likes to learn)

[lingua-calamitas]

I actually really like the thing when you're starting to get the hang of a new language, enough to understand and say simple sentences but you gotta get creative to get more complex thoughts across, like a puzzle. I remember a time in the restortation school when a classmate who wasn't natively finnish and did her best anyway dropped something and sighed, telling me "every day is monday this week. I have had four mondays this week." And I understood.

I don't think I speak much of spanish anymore, but in the nursing school training period I did there, I did manage to get by with making weird Tarzan sentences. I got a nosebleed at some point and startled another nurse. Not knowing the words "humidity" or "stress", I managed to string together: "This is ok. It is hot, it is cold, I have a bad day, I am sad, I have blood. This is normal for me." And she understood.

And sometimes you just say things weird, but it's better than not saying it. One time, I was stuck in a narrow hallway behind someone walking really slowly with a walker, and he apologised for being in the way. I was not in any hurry, but didn't know the spanish word for "hurry", but I did know enough words to try to circumvent it by borrowing the english "I have all the time in the world."

The man burst into one of those cackling old man laughters that they do when something in this world still manages to surprise them. He had to be somewhere between 70 and a 100 years old, and I guess if there was one thing he wasn't expecting to hear today, it would be a random blond vaguely baltic-looking fuck casually announce that he is the sole owner and keeper of the very concept of time.

[lingua-calamitas]

Common Verbs (Spanish)

Abrir = to open

Asister a = to attend

Aprender = to learn

Ayudar = to help

Bailar = to dance

Buscar = to look for

Caminar = to walk

Comer = to eat

Comprar = to buy

Comprender = to understand

Creer = to believe

Deber = to owe

Decidir = to decide

Descansar = to rest

Desear = to wish

Enseñar = to teach

Escribir = to write

Escuchar = to listen

Estudiar = to study

Hablar = to speak

Leer = to read

Llegar = to arrive

Mandar = to send

Mirar = to look at, to watch

Practicar = to practice, to play

Preparar = to prepare

Recibir = to receive

Regresar = to return

Tomar = to drink, to take

Trabajar = to work

Vender = to sell

Ver = to see

Viajar = to travel

Visitar = to visit

Vivir = to live

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