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שלום-עליכם!

I’m a relatively new Yiddish learner and I was wondering what you think the best online Yiddish-English dictionary is. Thanks in advance!

Aleichem sholem!

I actually have no opinion on this currently because I made the mistake of buying an absolutely horrible paperback Yiddish-German dictionary I'm now stuck with.

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This is a friendly heads up that the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages has opened applications for their language classes beginning in Michaelmas term (October) 2023. They offer classes in 18 Jewish languages, including Old Yiddish. Classes are on Zoom, so applicants can live anywhere in the world. The deadline to apply is September 5, 2023.

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I will fistfight anyone who doesn't believe in learning rare languages.

Does everything really have to be optimized? Why should I learn a top-5-most-spoken language? Isn't language learning about love? About expanding your mind? Why should it be only fast and practical and make you money?

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what do you mean i have to actually study languages to learn them???

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Language Playlists

Disclaimer: These playlists predominantly reflect my taste in and knowledge of music. I apologise in advance. Some playlists include songs in other languages including English if deemed appropriate for the playlist. All playlists are works in progress. Playlists in bold are really long.

Multilingual and Continental Playlists

African Music (this used to be a South African playlist and then just mutated)

Foreign Covers

Germanic Music (excluding German and Low German)

Middle Eastern and North African Music

Multilingual Mixtape (contains most of the playlists in this post and a lot more)

North American Music (classic and contemporary indigenous artists)

South Asian Music (mostly but not exclusively Hindi film soundtracks ngl)

Single Language Playlists

Cambodian

Catalan

Chinese

Czech

Finnish

French

Galician

German

Greek

Hawaiian

Hebrew

Hungarian

Irish (Gaeilge)

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Low German and Northern German

te reo Māori

Portuguese

Scottish (Gaelic)

Spanish

Thai

Turkish

Vietnamese

Welsh

Yiddish

Hidden Agenda: Please recommend me music in Romanian and Croatian 🥺 (I also accept other recommendations)

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source

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Round two: Craic vs שלימזל, shlimazl

(poll at the end)

Craic (Irish Gaelic)

[kɾˠac]

Translation: Fun, good time, chat, but can also be used in ways like "what's the craic?" to say "what's up?"

Irish Gaelic is an Indo-European language belonging to the Celtic branch. It has 141 000 native speakers in Ireland and 1 030 000 people speak it as a second language. It is taught in schools as a second language, but the population actually speaking Irish Gaelic on a daily basis either live in small areas where English never took over (around 2% of Ireland’s population) or are groups in urban areas mostly speaking it as a second language. Many only speak Irish Gaelic within the education system.

Motivation: The spelling is pretty cool, it’s a culturally specific word, and I love how confused people get when I use it, it’s funny to see people thinking I am talking about drugs when I am not.

שלימזל, shlimazl (Yiddish)

[ʃləˈmɑːzəl]

Translation: A person with perpetually bad luck

Yiddish is an Indo-European language belonging to the Germanic branch, today spoken by 409 000 people. It originated among Jews in Germany who mixed German with Hebrew from the Tanakh, with records going back to the 8th century. After 1250 the Yiddish-speaking Jews got contact with Slavic Jews and spread the language there. The dialect that evolved in contact with the Slavic languages later on became the prominent one. Yiddish was spread beyond Europe due to persecution of Jews in eastern Europe that led to emigration. Around half of the Yiddish-speaking community was murdered in the Holocaust, and due to that as well as further prosecution in Soviet and voluntary switching to Hebrew, there are far less speakers now than before WWII, when Yiddish had 11 million speakers.

Motivation: It’s a fun word

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yes, I purposely left out scripts that are more commonly recognized in the west like cyrillic and hangul :)

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- Welcome to Norway!

velkommen til Norge!

- Thank you

takk, tusen takk, mange takk, hjertelig takk, takk skal du ha

takk for hjelpen, takk for maten

takk for sist, takk for i går, takk for i dag, takk for meg, takk for nå

-You’re welcome

bare hyggelig, vær så god, ingen årsak, velbekomme, det var da så lite

- Here you go, go ahead

vær så god

- Please

vær så snill, er du snill, plis, vennligst

- Excuse me

unnskyld meg

- Sorry

unnnskyld, beklager, jeg er lei for det

- Come on!

kom igjen!

- Oh my god!

åh herregud!

- Thank god!

gudskjelov!

- Awesome! Unbelievable!

-fett! utrolig!

- Damn! Alas!

-farsken! akk!

- Look out!

se deg for!

- Oops! Oh no! Oh dear!

ups! åh nei! huff da!

-What’s the matter?

-hva er galt?

- No problem

ikke noe problem

- I don’t mind

jeg bryr meg ikke

- Okay! Cool! Fine!

greit!

- Indeed!

akkurat!

- Enjoy your meal!

god appetitt!

- Cheers!

skål!

- Don’t worry!

ikke bekymre deg!

- Take care of yourself

pass på deg selv

- Poor you!

stakkars!

- Bless you!

prosit!

- Get well soon!

god bedring!

- Congratulations! Congrats!

gratulerer! grattis!

- Yay!

hurra!

- Good luck!

lykke til!

- Happy birthday!

gratulerer med dagen!

- Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

god jul og godt nyttår

- Happy Easter

god påske

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Resources For Learning Norwegian

A1/A2

Books

The Mystery of Nils -  “ We all hate text books that begin with “Hello, what’s your name?”, don’t we? “The Mystery of Nils” is a coherent story, which starts very simply, but develops into a fascinating novel.”

Norsk på 123 - has online exercises as well, don’t need a book to complete the exercises

Colloquial Norwegian - “provides a step-by-step course in Norwegian as it is written and spoken today. Combining a user-friendly approach with a thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Norwegian in a broad range of situations.”

På Vei - A1-A2, workbook and textbook, these are used by most courses in Norway to teach Norwegian as a foreign language to adults; online exercises 

Ordbøkene - dictionary, nynorsk og bokmål

Apps

Duolingo - usually a good place to start, great for a free resource

Babbel - subscription service, teaches grammar and vocab, has a speaking component

Drops - has a free version, only 5 minutes every 10 hours, vocab only, variety of topics, gameifies language learning

Memrise - I haven’t really used this, seems like you can choose different courses but I’m not sure about the quality of the courses, has a free version

Ordbøkene - app version of this dictionary

Sites

Klar Tale - meant for people with dyslexia or those learning Norwegian

Ordbøkene - dictionary, nynorsk og bokmål

Grammatikk.com - has PDFs with grammar explanations and some grammar drills (they need to be printed though)

Courses

Introduction to Norwegian (UiO) -  Learn to speak, write and understand basic Norwegian with this free four-week course. Can be followed with the Introduction to Norwegian 2

Norwegian for Beginners (NTNU) -  Master the basics of the Norwegian language. Gain confidence in speaking and understanding common phrases. Can be followed with Part 2 and Part 3

Podcasts

Norsklærer Karense - from a Norwegian teacher aimed at those who are learning

Klar Tale

Youtube

Norwegian Teacher Karin -  “This is absolutely free online Norwegian lessons. The language I’m teaching is not exactly Bokmål nor Nynorsk. It’s an east dialect and I don’t think you will have much problem with bokmål after this. :) And everyone will understand this“

Norsklærer Karense -  “Denne YouTube-kanalen har jeg laget for å hjelpe alle som lærer norsk til å bli flinkere i norsk. Ettersom jeg har jobbet lenge som norsklærer og undervist mange tusen elever, vet jeg hva som kan være vanskelig når man  lærer norsk.“

B1/B2

Books

Stein på Stein - B1, textbook and workbook, continuation of På Vei, online exercises here

Her på Berget - B2/C1, textbook and workbook, continuation of Stein på Stein;  online exercises

Sites

NRK- news site

Klart det! - B2, online exercises

Podcasts

Språkteigen - Her kan du høre om nye ord og gamle ord, ny forskning og rare språkfenomener.

Ekko - culture podcast on a wide range of topics; lots of interviews so dialects can be difficult; episodes are fairly short

Oppdatert - det lille du trenger for å henge med på sakene alle snakker om; fairly short episodes 

Gamle Greier - stories about historical artifacts found in the National Library; episodes are about 30 minutes

Nyhetsmorgen - a daily morning news podcast from NRK, great way to hear a variety of dialects; episodes are 90 minutes

Forklart -  De største nyhetssakene forklart på 15 minutter

*These are just a few - NRK has a ton of great podcasts on a variety of topics available here or on the NRK Radio app. Chances are they have something you are interested in!

C1

Books

I Samme Båt - workbook and textbook, this is the only C1 book I’ve found but I’m not sure it’s worth the money. It’s mostly vocab/phrases, but does have exercises too

at this level, you can pretty much read any book you want in Norwegian

Sites

Kompetanse Norge - practice for C1 test

Bergenstest.com - to prepare for the Bergenstest (B2-C1), paid

Sites to Test Yourself

Kompetanse Norge - site with information on the Norskprøve, has practice tests and exercises for A1-B2

Bergens Test examples - B2/C1

UiO 

ARealMe.com - test your vocab, compares the size of your estimated vocab to the general population

Language Trainers listening and language level

*updated March 28th, 2022

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🧑‍🔬🧑‍🔬🧪🧪 Chemical elements (化学元素) 🥼🥼⚗️⚗️

I have learned something amazing which is that the Chinese word for sodium (Na) is … 钠 (nà)! If only they all matched like that!!

Ex: 低钠酱油 (dī nà jiàng yóu) - low sodium soy sauce

Sometimes you may see the word 卤 (鹵/滷，lǔ, halogen or salt) used to describe dishes or sauces, such as 卤肉饭 (lǔ ròu fàn, braised pork rice), 打卤面 (dǎ lǔ miàn, noodles with thick gravy), 卤虾油 (lǔ xiā yóu, shrimp sauce).

Here is the first three rows of the periodic table!

Hydrogen (H) - 氢 (qīng)

Helium (He) - 氦 (hài)

Lithium (Li) - 锂 (lǐ)

Beryllium (Be) - 铍 (pí)

Boron (B) - 硼 (péng)

Carbon (C) - 碳 (tàn)

Nitrogen (N) - 氮 (dàn)

Oxygen (O) - 氧 (yǎng)

Fluorine (F) - 氟 (fú)

Neon (Ne) - 氖 (nǎi)

Sodium (Na) - 钠 (nà)

Magnesium (Mg) - 镁 (měi)

Aluminum (Al) - 铝 (lǚ)

Silicon (Si) - 硅 (guī)

Phosphorus (P) - 磷 (lín)

Sulfur (S) - 硫 (líu)

Chlorine (Cl) - 氯 (lǜ)

Argon (Ar) - 氩 (yà)

And a few more useful ones:

Iron (Fe) - 铁 (tiě)

Gold (Au) - 金 (jīn)

Silver (Ag) - 银 (yín)

Examples:

地铁 (dì tiě) - subway; short for (地下铁道, “underground iron path”)

金银 (jīn yín) - gold and silver, can be used to refer to ancient currency

穿金戴银 (chuān jīn dài yín) - to be dressed in gold (clothes) and silver (ornamentation) (idiom)

Radical practice

Notice how all of the above (except gold) have a radical based on 金 (钅, metal, gold), 气 (air, gas), or 石 (stone). Makes sense based on each element right? ;)

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Esperanto learning ressources and content:

The American Esperantist, short video lessons (no more than 10 minutes) that will tell you 90% of Duolingo grammar.

Mazi en Gondolando, a movie that teach you esperanto, now with subtiles as well. If the link doesn't work you can find the movie on the American Esperantist channel as well.

Exploring Esperanto, a youtube channel with 50 lessons both grammar and vocab.

Lernu.net, THE website to learn esperanto.

Readlang, website where you can read in another language and have the translation of words you don't know by clicking on them. Has a beta in esperanto.

Glosle eo-en, one of the best dictionnary out there, as far as I know.

There is always duolingo, but eo grammar is really easy so I would recommend investing the one hour you need to learn it before going into duolingo blind.

Content:

Chelsea Rae Moses channel, learning language videos, interviews, travel vlogs most of them in esperanto.

Kolekto de Hersko, jutubo kanalo making videos about horror stories, in esperanto, subtitled in esperanto.

Exploring Esperanto, the channel has a bunch of media in Esperanto as well, movies, short stories with vocab indicated.

Keep it Simple, channel with explicative videos about esperanto, vlogs, language learning videos of other language.

Easy Esperanto 1, if you want to listen to people from a bunch of countries speaking esperanto this is the video.

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Multilingual Lists

Days of the week in Spanish, Italian, & Portuguese

Lunes, lunedì, segunda-feira

Martes, martedì, terça-feira

Miércoles, mercoledì, quarta-feira

Jueves, giovedì, quinta-feira

Viernes, venerdì, sexta-feira

Sábado, sabato, sábado

Domingo, domenica, domingo

Months of the year in Spanish, Italian, & Portuguese

Enero, gennaio, janeiro

Febrero, febbraio, fevereiro

Marzo, marzo, março

Abril, abrile, abril

Mayo, maggio, maio

Junio, giungio, junho

Julio, luglio, julho

Agosto, agosto, agosto

Septiembre, settembre, setembro

Octubre, ottobre, outubro

Noviembre, novembre, novembro

Diciembre, dicembre, dezembro

Seasons in Spanish, Italian, & Portuguese

El invierno, l’inverno, o inverno

La primavera, la primavera, a primavera

El verano, l’estate, o verão

El otoño, l’autunno, o outono

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noticing as I learn different languages I tend to think using the shortest word from any of those languages, so for example instead of "this is" or "dette er", I'll just automatically think "c'est"

So my proposal is a creole of every language in which we find the shortest syllabic way to say every single word and speak at maximum efficiency

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accessible classic lit in spanish

tale as old as time: a learner asks for a classic reading rec and people suggest masterful works like don quijote and cien años de soledad. these are WONDERFUL works of fiction but they're not really level appropriate for someone who is trying to start reading classic lit. so here are some recommendations for someone who wants to start reading but is a bit intimidated by these works. they are by no means an absolute cakewalk to read, but a lot less demanding than the novels mentioned above. here are the criteria i used to select books:

(relatively) canonical: i tried to stick to things i read in college and names that are relatively recognizable. it's easier to start conversations with others about these authors because they're widely read.

on the shorter side: to make it easier to get through the book and to help build stamina. it's like training for a marathon, you don't go out and run 26 miles on your first day

simpler language & graspable plot: it takes some getting used to to be able to read different styles, so i picked things that are a bit simpler and not filled with time skips and narrator changes every step of the way

20th and 21st century: just to keep things a bit more relevant. there are some great works pre-20th century but again, the style takes some getting used to

some of the recommendations might not fit all four criteria, and i'll specify when. that said, i think these are all good options for starting out:

aura, carlos fuentes (mexico, 1962): probably the shortest on the list, gothic, written in second person, really just an enjoyable read. i feel like this should be every learner's first novel in spanish just because of how accessible it feels.

la última niebla, maría luisa bombal (chile, 1934): also quite short, and usually paired with la amortajada, so if you like it, check that novel out as well! bombal's work is very concerned with the position of women in society and uses the gothic to get that across.

el coronel no tiene quien le escriba, gabriel garcía márquez (colombia, 1961): if your heart is SET on cien años de soledad, this is a great alternative by the same author. much shorter but still has the signature garcía márquez feel.

la casa de los espíritus, isabel allende (chile, 1982): this one is on the longer side, but i found it to be like. cien años de soledad written for eighth graders. it's got the same dynamics (magical realism, history of a country, intergenerational story, etc). but just simpler. it's not a bad story by any means.

abel sánchez, miguel de unamuno (spain, 1917). this is the bibical story of cain and abel but told in modern times and in spain. probably my favorite of unamuno's novels (if not niebla). his style is relatively straightfoward in the sense that he isn't constantly looking for the most flowerly language. since it is older than the other novels, you'll have to look out there, but it's still an entertaining option

ficciones, jorge luis borges (argentina, 1944): ok this is cheating. it's not a novel but rather a collection of short stories, AND borges' style can get quite convoluted. i'm putting it here because during my undergrad we read a ton of borges' short stories and they are always very thought provoking and linguistically helped push my limits. since they are stories, you can stop after one if it was too much, later revisit it, let yourself be challenged. my most fondly remembered stories from this collection are la muerte y la brújula, funes el memorioso, and las ruinas circulares

and that’s it for the list! if you’ve read one of these or decide to read one because of this post, let me know what you think! i’m working on making a list of more accessible materials for my students :)