#how to learn a foreign language

[mesmemos]

How to Learn Any Foreign Language 7x Faster by Yourself

[polyglot-sock]

it's ironic that, for someone who is able to speak several languages, my ability to verbally communicate disappears really often

[stormsthatrage]

Important PSA: Do not ask linguists how many languages they speak. Linguistics is the scientific study of language, investigating things such as (but not limited to): how language can be modeled as a complex logic system; the cognitive processes and neurological structures that support the acquisition, storage, and usage of language; the biological and acoustic mechanisms involved in the production/perception of language; how language influences society and how society influences language.

Other things linguists do: work with communities to document or revitalize dying languages; develop dictionaries; work on language modeling software; consult for copyright litigation; reconstruct dead languages.

Really lucky linguists get hired by Hollywood to create fictional languages for sci-fi and fantasy blockbusters.

What linguists do not do: spend all day learning foreign languages. (Alas, if you are a linguist who enjoys learning foreign languages, you must do it in your free time, not during work hours.)

Also! Another important PSA: Any linguist who has learned, like, anything about language, WILL NOT JUDGE YOUR GRAMMAR! Do NOT apologize to a linguist for how you speak. Remember: no dialect is "more correct" than another. There is literally no objective criteria with which you can compare two languages or dialects and decide one is "better" than the other. If you are communicating successfully, you're doing language right!

[gaydivorcetual]

funny enough im onky familiar with chinese romanization systems despite not speaking it. Ive got no idea how aby other languages work

[wukongfeetpics]

guys i may have pieced together a sentence in russian without putting it in a translator. thank you loanwords

[clonerightsagenda]

For some reason whenever I try to use a foreign language in a dream (which happens on an oddly regular basis), I'm entirely lucid, no matter what the rest of the dream is like. Last night I was trying to translate part of a Shakespeare play into French (why? who knows!) and grumpily trying to remember if I was doing past tense right because I kept mixing it up with Spanish rules.

[crowscadence]

My friend just completed an 800 day duolingo French streak I only wish to have her sense of commitment

[pearl-kite]

Did decide to do an update on Facebook since it's been 3 years and most of my overseas friends are there instead of other socmed, and one of my former students gave me an update in return and 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Guys I'm legitimately going to cry okay it started while I was typing tags I'm crying

[vibrantstarfire]

god i hate this course. but it's good for me to do something i hate if it gets me back in the groove of forcing myself to do academics.

[rapha-reads]

My dinosaur of a laptop is so old that not only can't it support anything past Windows 10 (and it struggled like hell to update to it), but it also apparently can't support Ubuntu and I'm having trouble trying to install Linux. I think but I really have no idea what I'm doing that I can get Linux to work but it's going to require some tinkering and yeah I'm not an IT. Welp. Backing up all my files on my external drive first and then we'll try and see.

[githjanken]

i started watching onmyoji because we’re going to japan again in march, and i want to be able to get around more easily wrt japanese

and uh oh i have gotten attached to these guys

[tardis--dreams]

buying hozier tickets for brussels was a reasonable decision and necessary for my mental wellbeing

[swordmaid]

is there any handbooks or whatnot on what the half illithid state would give or is that just a bg3 thing but anyway in my interpretation I imagine it literally opens up shri’iia’s mind and now her senses are heightened, she’s so hyper aware of everything and she probably can see shrimp colours. i also think the language barrier falls apart too, and she’s able to speak freely in common or whatever language like it’s her own and I think it’s def easier for her to infiltrate anyone’s mind and communicate telepathically like a mindflayer does. the illithid powers comes easier too, and she performs it as if she has already done it a thousand times since there’s no need for practice ; it feels as if it’s innate and the temptation to unlock more of this power and develop herself further is so very present since she’s aware she’s barely scratching the surface of what this newfound form offers. what more could she do if she embraced this form? how great could she be? but then her more human side would come back and she’d find herself more disturbing. the insecurity over this new form would return as well as the regret since she was barely finding her own self before, now she’s lost it again.

[dappersappho]

Shoutout to folks who ask you to translate a popular foreign language song after just one lesson.

[mathmusicreading]

@yummysuika @ospreywhite I really appreciate your translation work; can you explain more about shichen timekeeping to me? Because I know a tiny bit of modern Mandarin Chinese, but I can't recognize the shichens as the zodiac animals:

Zi (I don't know "rat", so I actually can't make any argument here.)

Chou (I don't know "ox", but I reasonably could have expected "niu" for "cow".)

Yin (I know "tiger" as "hu".)

Mao (I don't know "rabbit", but to me "mao" is "cat".)

Chen (I know "dragon" as "long".)

Si (I don't know "snake", but now I find it interesting that it sounds like death, like snakes could be seen as evil in Chinese culture similar to how they are seen in the Christian world.)

Wu (I know "horse" as "ma".)

Wei (I know "sheep/goat" as "yang".)

Shen (I don't know "monkey", but I would have expected "Sun" or "Wu" or "Kong" because of "Monkey King".)

You (I know "rooster/chicken" as " ji".)

Xu (I know "dog" as "gou".)

Hai (I don't know "pig/boar" unless "pork" and "pig" are the same "siu".)

I tried asking my parents, but they just starting talking about how the Chinese zodiac is actually a 60-year cycle with the 12 animals and the 5 elements. So are these shichen names the "Pre-Han dynasty semi-descriptive terms"? Is it kind of like the difference between "midday" and "noon" in English? The former is a "descriptor", the latter is a "name", but they "mean" the same thing?

(I tried checking the etymology for "noon" on dictionary.com, so to be fair "ninth hour" is a descriptor, but in Modern English it's not really recognizable as such and so for the sake of my shichen question, I'm calling "noon" a "name".)

Or is this another language/dialect or due to the evolution of language (changing words and pronunciations)?

I was also looking up the Dragon Boat Festival being on the unluckiest day of the year, and it says, "The Chinese name of the festival is pronounced differently in different Chinese languages. Duanwu (端午) literally means 'starting horse'—i.e., the first "horse day" of the month according to the Chinese zodiac." so I was able to get the exact character for "wu". I think it's interesting that Wikipedia says "literally ... horse" but putting 午 into Google Translate yields "midday, noonday, seventh earthly branch, 11 a.m.-1 p.m." It's unfortunate that Wikipedia only says "different Chinese languages" for "Duanwu" instead of specifying them or time periods, but I appreciate it listing different romanizations by country for Cantonese.

Would you say there's any pattern to Chinese writers or English translators using the above terms vs. using "hour/time/head/body/tail of the (insert zodiac animal here)"? Like if one sounds better for a historical fantasy setting, or choosing to use the pinyin in English instead of translating to not be translating literally? ETA: I should have gotten onto a computer sooner. I asked my parents and then you guys because searching "shichen" in Wikipedia just resulted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement. But further digging took me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeeping. I'll probably get answers there (Maybe I'll even be able to explain to my dad why he was thinking of ten stems and not matching mathematically with "60 is from 12 times 5, not 10 times 6" when he was trying to lecture on the 60-year cycle for the Chinese zodiac, lol.), so my apologies for bothering you. I'd still appreciate your thoughts on what was formerly the last paragraph about writing and translation choices!

[deklo]

rewatching young royals and now i wanna learn swedish :/