#learning resource

[burgeoning-ambition]

Making Sentences With the Copula

Hello everyone! Welcome back. Today, we’re going to learn how to make basic sentences using the copula, です/だ. In our last lesson, we did a super deep dive into the copula– its origins, its functions, and what exactly a “copular construction” is. Now, it’s time to learn about how to actually use those constructions to build basic sentences! If you’re not a linguist (or interested in linguistics),…

[a-shade-of-blue]

Learning Resources on Palestine

I've compiled a list of learning resources on Palestine. These are either resources I have used and found useful, or have been recommended to me by other people. Please check them out and share if it is something you find useful.

The Palestine Academy: https://www.thepalestineacademy.com/ (information and resources for learning what is happening in Palestine and how to support the cause)

The Palestine Directory: https://thepalestinedirectory.carrd.co/ (A directory of links and free-to-access resources from and about Palestine)

Palestine Literature Reading List: Click here. 

My personal book recommendations

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

Towers of Ivory and Steel by Maya Wind

Verso free ebooks on Palestine, mass protests, and student rebellions: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/in-solidarity-with-the-students#:~:text=In%20solidarity%20with%20these%20students,also%20still%20available%20for%20free.

More free ebooks on Palestine/Israel: https://x.com/scottlong1980/status/1717757783141949864?s=46&t=0jrq_Y4gCfqf2OSCJc2Czw

Laughing at power: Humor, transgression, and the politics of refusal in Palestine: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2399654419874368

This is a free access academic paper by Lisa Bhungalia

I read this for a political violence class, in which my professor showed us a photo of a Palestinian student smiling at the camera as he was being arrested. I just think about that photo from time to time. I think that image and this paper have helped lead me to where I am today, writing this

This is the first thing I read about Palestine, and I think it has shaped me that the first thing I read about Palestine focuses not on the oppression of Palestinians, but Palestinian resistance, how they use laughter as a resistance

Resources on Palestine for Anthropologists: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vZm0KXAD8eWHzxZlxcOrqtzEIWH0mRrnXeoJgpE3Ylo/edit?usp=sharing

This is a list of resources compiled by my anthropology professors

The Great Book Robbery Documentary: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdtCrCsKlw0&t=1s

(Documentary on the stealing, destruction, and appropriation of Palestinian books by the Israeli State, and how they twist it to serve the Israeli’s State’s narrative, e.g. how they are ‘saving’ the books by stealing them.)

Librarians and Archivists with Palestine: https://librarianswithpalestine.org/gaza-report-2024/ (on the destruction or libraries and archives in Palestine)

[ruhua-langblr]

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

[orion-my-rion]

i cannot keep quiet about this anymore.

if you're seeing this, check the reblogs or my "languages" tag for an addition!!

if you're in the US or Canada and interested in learning a language using a free app please get a library card and download MANGO. it's very good and extremely free with a library card (there are many public libraries and universities using the service, so make an account and use the search feature here to find out if there's one near you).

mango currently has 72 available languages and dialects (that's right! different courses for french or canadian french! spanish or latam spanish!). it's set up basically like an audiobook with text. the idea is that the narrator explains the words while you read, and you repeat after them or say the translation out loud when prompted. there's a daily review where you go through flashcards. you can also use the flashcards at your leisure and create your own. at the end of each chapter there's a listening comprehension quiz and a reading comprehension quiz. i cannot emphasize how effective this all is. and it's free with a card.

if you're not in the US or Canada and/or looking for something more like duolingo (don't use duolingo btw tldr they fired translators and replaced them with "ai"), then try BUSUU! it only has 14 languages atm but the lessons are really descriptive and effective. it also has a feature where you can correct other people's open-ended speaking/typing exercises. you set your fluent languages, and exercises by people learning those languages will appear in your feed for you to correct. you can even add others as friends! and, much like duolingo, it has a streak and leaderboard system for you to strive for, minus the guilt-tripping owl.

busuu is free (you watch ads to unlock lessons and they're all skippable after like five seconds), although it also has paid premium/plus versions (i don't use the paid version—the language courses are available for free, and the ad system is Really unobtrusive).

so that's my wisdom for the day. mango and busuu. please check them out :)

[demigods-posts]

percy doing better than annabeth in college is one my favorite developments in the rrverse. if we reflect on percy and annabeth's academic upbringing. annabeth living at camp allowed her to receive accommodations for her adhd and dyslexia and surround herself with like-minded campers who had the same limitations. whereas percy was ridiculed, belittled, and routinely humiliated because of his adhd and dyslexia. even more so, percy's friends and family leave him out of the loop on so many important issue (no chb orientation film, no information about the great prophecy) which perpetuates his subpar confidence and self-esteem in his skills as a student and a demigod. but going to college at NRU changes his mindset because he receives the accommodations he should have gotten years ago and fucking thrives to the point of getting higher grades than annabeth — a person he deems way smarter and more prepared than him in every way. the most important thing percy is learning now is that a supportive environment makes all the difference, and he is more capable than he initially thought.

[ayin-me-yesh]

In light of Duolingo laying off its translators, here are my favourite language apps (primarily for Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and te reo Māori).

Multiple Languages

Anki is a flashcard programme and app that's not exclusively for languages. While making your own decks is ideal, you can also download shared decks for most languages.

If you're learning Japanese, specifically, Seth Clydesdale has websites for practicing alongside Genki's 2nd or 3rd editions, and he also provides his own shared Anki decks for Genki.

And if you're learning te reo Māori, specifically, here's a guide on how to make your own deck.

TOFU Learn is an app for learning vocabulary that's very similar to Anki. However, it has particularly excellent shared decks for East Asian languages. I've used it extensively for practicing 汉字. Additionally, if you're learning te reo Māori, there's a shared deck of vocabulary from Māori Made Easy!

Mandarin Chinese

Hello Chinese is a fantastic app for people at the HSK 1-4 levels. While there's a paid version, the only thing paying unlocks is access to podcast lessons, which imo are not really necessary. Without paying you still have access to all the gamified lessons which are laid out much like Duolingo's lessons. However, unlike Duolingo, Hello Chinese actually teaches grammar directly, properly teaches 汉字, and includes native audio practice.

Japanese

Renshuu is a website and app for learning and practicing Japanese. The vast majority of its content is available for free. There's also a Discord community where you can practice alongside others.

Kanji Dojo is a free and open source app for learning and practicing the stroke order of kanji. You can learn progressively by JLPT level or by Japanese grades. There's also the option to learn and practice kana stroke order as well.

[indigostudies]

my friend and i were going to study a language together and wound up having to cancel our plans due to scheduling pressures, but! through research we came across a really cool resource for reading in a TON of languages: bloom library!

as you can see, it has a lot of books for languages that are usually a bit harder to find materials for—we were going to use it for kyrgyz, for example, which has over 1000 books, which was really hard to find textbook materials for otherwise. as you can see it also has books with audio options, which would be really useful for pronunciation checking. as far as i can tell, everything on the site is free as well.

[mokeonn]

"But if college was free, then people would abuse that and get useless degrees" hell yeah I would! If I could go to college without debt I would make it my job to get a degree in every little thing that interested me. I'd get a doctorate in film studies. I'd have a bachelor's degree for every science I like. I'd try to learn at least 5 languages with varying results. I would learn something "useful" like coding and then follow it up with a ""useless"" degree like art history. I'd be the world record speed run holder for getting every degree possible.

But I can't afford college without going into massive debt, so instead I spent the last 5 years trying to figure out what I am passionate enough about to consider going into debt over, because unfortunately being passionate about everything is extremely expensive to pursue.

[hellyeahscarleteen]

We could use your help!

If you support the groundbreaking, inclusive, affirming, feminist, comprehensive, young-people-centered, queer sex ed for all we've provided for 25+ years to over 90 million people, please help us raise the $15K we need to pay our bills in 2024, or become one of 250 new donors we need for 2025! You can do that at Scarleteen.com/contribute or by heading to our site and clicking ‘Pitch-In ’. 🎉 If you’re already donating (thank you!) please consider increasing your monthly amount, if you can, even a little bit. We’ll count any increases we get towards our two goals! You can do that by clicking 'Manage Your Donation' in your latest donation receipt. If you can’t donate yourself, can you tell your friends, family and followers who we are, why you value our work and ask them if they’d be willing to donate? You can share this post and the link above, but using your own words is the most effective! Despite leading the way in SRE online from the 1990s on, and always making sure young people have access to good information even when it is suppressed elsewhere in their lives, we remain underfunded, including funding to pay our staff a fair, living wage. We need to meet this $15K goal to fund our most basic needs and our tightest budget. If you can help us do that, we can focus on providing awesome SRE, growing, improving and kicking-ass, and finding more funding for 2025. Thank you! ❤️

- The Scarleteam

[burgeoning-ambition]

Words of the Week (6/9)

Hello everyone! Today’s words of the week is all about alternative fashion. I’ve been scrolling through lots of fashion and style inspo blogs lately, mostly in English and Japanese, so I wanted to collect a few of the words I kept seeing over and over again. I’m into a lot of different styles, but pretty much all of them fall somewhere on the alternative spectrum, so words related to those types…

[crabsnpersimmons]

inspired by my friends and their gacha adventures

bonus end, because the road of gacha gaming is riddled with the salt:

some process sketches and lines under the cut if anyone's interested

the first little doodle that started everything:

i was originally just going to make this one drawing, with a short little dialogue thing, but i decided to draw it all out into a little comic:

fun fact: you can tell how anxious i am about drawing something traditionally by how many process photos i take. cuz if the worse comes to worst, i can always finish or fix it digitally IF my motivation battery hasn't completely drained, which... it usually is 😅

but i'm very happy with how this turned out! need to draw more silly ideas

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Honestly I think modern syllabics for indigenous oral languages are genuinely incredible. There's a lot of issues with them, namely how often they're created by people who aren't part of those cultures or communities (like white missionaries. . .), but it's amazing how many indigenous communities saw the current need for writing systems and, instead of just accepting that they would have to use their colonizers' writing systems for transliteration, gave the world a big ol' fuck you and came up with entirely new ones for themselves instead.

[questwithambition]

Something incredibly satisfying about knowing your craft and the confidence that goes with it. Just the casual “yeah I could make that”. Want a band tee? Yeah I can embroider my own with the lyrics I want. Bridesmaid dress too long? Yeah I can hem it. Need new slippers? Yeah I can crochet a pair (and give them bunny ears). And of course it’s not perfect but nothing beats that feeling of being able to craft your own solution with your own two hands

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

thinking about the effects of Kira being raised in a refugee camp and never (as far as we know) having a formal education never being addressed on the show properly. she's obviously not a scientist or an engineer but her position as first officer still means that she has to supervise all of the engineers and scientists on ds9 to some degree. and as much as the Starfleet characters are uncomfortable with roughing it and the terrorist tactics Kira still needs to use every once in awhile, i think it's a really underrated idea for Kira to be just as uncomfortable with a lot of the high-concept science thrown around between the Starfleet people. she knows all of the practical stuff she needs to – how to repair essential technology, how to fly ships, how to use weaponry – but i could imagine her being really insecure about not fully understanding the underlying concepts the way everyone in Starfleet does.

anyways, i think Jadzia would pick up on Kira's insecurity eventually and would start giving her secret math lessons to get her up to speed so she can join in on all the Science Talk.

[andsewingishalfthebattle]

Novice sewing pattern: Cut out shapes. Line up the little triangles on the edges. Stitch edges together. We've also included step-by-step assembly instructions with illustrations.

Novice knitting pattern: yOU MUSt uNDerstANd thE SECret cOdE CO67 (73, 87, 93) BO44 (63, 76, 90) 28 (32, 34) slip first pw repeat 7x K to end *kl (pl) 42 * until 13" (13, 13, 15) join new at 30 pl for 17 rows ssk 27 k2tog mattress lengthwise BO and sacrifice a goat to the knitting gods. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT "INSTRUCTIONS," I JUST GAVE THEM TO YOU