tonguesties

[tonguesties]

Spotted on twitter

Do you know how we call a very bald british gentleman? (archi : slang for very)

The weather is lovely

Oh you know the weather will also be lovely on the day of the end of the world

My family : so how’s adult life?

In Kyoto, the snow’s weight broke a statue’s nose so they put a plaster on it

[tonguesties]

Everybody in the language learning space that tries to tell you that you can learn a language in a certain amount of weeks or months is probably trying to sell you something

[tonguesties]

this is so cool and also rosencrantz and guildenstern's sign names are killing me lol

[tonguesties]

Spotted on Twitter

I'm talking to an 85-year-old neighbour, I'm telling me "What's your longevity secret?" "I like no one, keeps you fresh" I had a ten-minute-long fit

I love it when you're on a walk and men on bikes come next to you to do figures omg so royalcore I have my own jester to entertain me

When they replace fries with broccolis at the cafeteria

My dad bikes with friends on Sundays and call themselves "the bakers' club" because they all have a brioche (: a belly)

Joyeux samedi Je ne suis pas comme les autres filles, je suis pire

Fanmail - masterlist (2016-) - archives - hire me - reviews (2020-) - Drive

[tonguesties]

Something fascinating is happening to me rn where I'm dreaming in my target languages.

A few weeks ago I had a dream in French... which made some sense because I had just met a French family even though I haven't done any active French acquisition in aggeeessss.

But last night, completely unprompted, I dreamt I met a really cute HOH guy and I waited around to ask him his name.

And while I waited, I started talking to one of his friends and asked if he signed. But he started signing so fast I had to get him to slow down and I tried to tell him that I was still a student. But I think I ended up using the word for "teacher" actually now that I think about it.

And then I chatted with the cute guy and he taught me a new sign which I honestly think was just an opportunity to hold my hand T.T. It was adorable!

But anyway, I woke up soooo impressed with myself.

[tonguesties]

Korean Provinces and Cities

Hello! This is Admin Sun here. Today I’m going to talk about the main administrative divisions in our country! Today we’re going to just cover the basics of Korean geography.

Korea is a peninsula, with the west meeting the Yellow Sea (황해), the south the Pacific Ocean (태평양) and the east meeting the East sea (동해). We share a land border with North Korea, but since the relationship between North and South Korea is unstable at best we cannot travel to another country via land. 

We have a lot of mountains on the Eastern part of our country. There are two main mountain ranges, Taebaek Mountains (태백 산맥), and the Sobaek Mountains (소백 산맥). The lowlands are located in the Southwest of our country. Overall we have a lot of mountains in our country, so while you travel around you will be able to see a lot of beautiful mountains. The highest mountain is 한라산, located in Jeju.

Since we covered the basics of Korean Geography, let’s move on to our administrative divisions!

First let’s talk about provinces. “Provinces (��, 道)” are the highest-ranked administrative divisions in our country. As you can see in the map above, there are 8 main provinces. North Chungcheong (충청북도), South Chungcheong (충청남도), Gangwon (강원도), Gyeonggi (경기도), North Gyeongsang (경상북도), South Gyeongsang (경상남도, North Jeolla (전라북도), South Jeolla (전라남도).

There’s also other provinces, like the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province (제주특별자치도), which means a total of 9 provinces with one special self-governing one. 

There are also 8 cities (시). There are 6 metropolitan cities (광역시) Busan (부산), Daegu (대구), Incheon (인천), Gwangju (광주), Daejeon (대전), and Ulsan (울산), and also one special city (특별시) Seoul (서울) and one special self-governing city (특별자치시) Sejong (세종). Though the name ‘city’ can fool you, these are not part of the provinces mentioned above and both are the first-level divisions (Upper level local autonomies, 광역지방자치단체) of our country.

So to recap all the information above, the first-level divisions of South Korea consists of…

1 special city (서울특별시)

6 metropolitan cities (부산광역시, 대구광역시, 인천광역시, 광주광역시, 대전광역시, 울산광역시)

8 provinces (충청북도, 충청남도, 강원도, 경기도, 경상북도, 경상남도, 전라북도, 전라남도)

1 special self-governing province (제주특별자치도)

1 special self-governing city (세종특별자치시)

Which makes a total of 17 Upper level local autonomies (광역지방자치단체) of our country!

We elect governors (도지사) for our provinces and mayors (시장) for our cities every 4 years.

-Written by Admin Sun

-Edited by Admin Yu

[tonguesties]

Some helpful resources for learning Irish

Pronunciation and Spelling

abair.ie - is a website as Gaeilge. Just type in the word you want to hear in the textbox and press “Déan sintéis” to hear it

“Sounds and Spelling of Irish / Fuaimniú & Litriú na Gaeilge” by Karen Reshkin - is a youtube video that explains the phonetic spelling and pronunciation of Irish words 

“Sounds & Spelling of Irish/Fuaimeanna agus Litriú na Gaeilge” - a PDF with more information on spelling and pronunciation as Gaeilge, with IPA for those of you who understand it 

Grammar

“Graiméar Gaeilge na mBráithre Críostaí” - is an Irish grammar book that’s written entirely as Gaeilge 

Irish Grammar: Wikipedia - the Wikipedia article on Irish grammar. It’s surprisingly thorough 

Vocabulary

“Useful Irish Phrases and Words” by Bernd Biege - a short introduction to Irish. Includes basic helpful phrases and grammar 

Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla - The official Irish-English Dictionary

Media 

Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Ireland’s National Public Service Broadcaster - Link to the online broadcast of RTÉ. A lot of the broadcast is in English, but some is as Gaeilge 

Litríocht - online Irish bookstore, read books as Gaeilge! 

[tonguesties]

My Favourite Youtube Channels for Studying Languages 🌷

 - innerFrench -

innerFrench is a channel ran by Hugo Cotton, a French teacher situated in Poland. Hugo is a native French speaker and speaks only in this language on his channel - you will never hear a word of English! Even when he explains the meanings of more obscure French words, he still uses French to both convey the word’s meaning, and enable his viewers to continue practicing their comprehension skills. The French Hugo uses is slow, clear and easy to understand for intermediate speakers. Begginners will also find this channel useful as a way to immerse themselves in the language. Hugo focuses on explaining different aspects of French culture in his videos, with a foreign target audience in mind. Since he is both a French teacher, and has had to learn Polish, it’s fair to say that Hugo understands the struggles of learning a foreign language and so is able to help his viewers improve their French skills in a suitable way. This is by far my favourite channel for learning French and I truly believe it has helped me a lot over the years!

- The Purple Palace -

The Purple Palace is a channel ran by Shayna Klee, an artist from the US who moved to Paris for art school. She makes videos in both English and French, often combining the two. When she speaks in French, she always includes English subtitles so that beginners don’t feel lost. Most of Shayna’s videos are vlogs in which she talks about art (which is incredible btw), fashion, French lifestyle / culture and her own personal life. She is quite open about her personal life which definitely makes her viewers feel more close to her as a person. What makes Shayna’s channel so unique is her artwork. I have never seen anything like it before! Seeing her creations makes learning French so much more enjoyable. If you love art or French culture you must explore this channel!

- Easy German -

This is my favourite channel to use for learning German. The hosts of Easy German just seem so sweet and every video puts me in such a positive mood. The Easy Languages network make videos on a range of languages (German, Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan, Polish, Greek, English, Russian, Turkish and many more) and the main premise of their videos is to “learn from the streets”. Most of their videos consist of street interviews with native speakers on various topics. This, of course, is a great way of learning because you get to hear conversational phrases, different accents and see different parts of the world. What makes Easy German so special is definetely the hosts. The channel has several hosts but the two main ones seem to be Cari and Janusz who just seem so lovely. Idk why but it seems like everyone they interview is always so friendly and sweet. It definetly breaks the stereotype that Germans are cold and distant. Easy German also make videos about grammar, vocab and any other things about German which they feel are important to point out. Another thing about this channel is that they don’t just focus on Germany - they also have videos situated in Austria and videos that talk about Swiss German and Austrian German.

- Spanish After Hours -

This channel reminds me of innerFrench as the host (Laura) speaks only in Spanish. Like Hugo from innerFrench, Laura uses a clear, slow register that makes it very easy for intermediate speakers to comprehend. Laura is a native Spanish speaker from Spain and so, if you are looking to speak Castilian Spanish, her accent is perfect to take inspiration from. Her videos are usually shorter than those at innerFrench which might help viewers who find it hard to concentrate for long periods of time. Laura’s videos are very diverse. In some she reads Spanish children’s stories, in others she does ASMR and sometimes she focuses on vocabulary. Nevertheless, her videos are always enjoyable and have definetly helped me with my Spanish listening skills recently.

- Parpalhon Blau -

This channel focuses on the Occitan language which is definetly a language which has very few learning resources. Occitan is a minority language, referring to several dialects spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Northern Spain and Western Italy. It is a romance language which has very close ties to Catalan. On Parpalhon Blau (which means blue butterfly), Gabrièu teaches his viewers how to pronounce Occitan words and helps them to improve their listening skills, catering for both beginners and intermediate learners. Before finding this channel, I had never even heard of Occitan but after hearing how beautiful it sounds, I just had to subscribe. Often with smaller languages like Occitan, the learning resources are very limited and the ones that do exist aren’t really the best quality. Parpalhon Blau however, is a great channel and the perfect introduction to the language.

- Langfocus -

On Langfocus, Paul makes videos surrounding an incredible range of languages. He has videos on almost every language I can think of! the chances are, if you are studying a language, Paul will have made a video about it. I genuinely cannot understand how one person can know so much about so many languages. Most of his videos focus on individual languages or dialects, however, he also has some very interesting ones in where he compares two languages together, highlighting the differences and similarities between them, whilst also explaining the reasons behind this. In each video, Paul aims to give a good overview of the language, discussing it’s origins, pronounciation, alphabet and grammar. Sometimes these videos can be a bit overwhelming if you don’t know anything at all about the language so I mostly use his videos to learn more about languages I am already studying or as an introduction to a language I want to study in the future. 

- JuLingo -

This channel is quite similar to Langfocus in the way that Julie mostly focuses on a different language per video, offering a general overview of it. Julie tends to focus on smaller languages, like Ainu and Basque that people may not know a lot about rather than more popular languages like Spanish and French. Julie’s channel is a great way of exploring new languages that you may have never thought to learn before. Like Paul from Langfocus, she doesn’t just talk about grammar and sentence structure, she also includes information on the language’s origins, which I personally find fascinating. 

- Ecolinguist -

On Ecolinguist, Norbert challenges native speakers of different languages to try and understand a language foreign to them. Through these experiments, he reveals how similar and how different languages are to one another. Usually, he chooses speakers of the same language family as the language which they are listening to and, being a viewer, you are invited to test yourself too. As a native English speaker, I particularly enjoyed discovering how much Old English I could decipher but also since I speak intermediate French and Spanish, I was able to test myself against Latin, Italian, Romanian and Lombard too. Since Norbert is Polish, he also makes videos focused on learning Polish, mostly regarding speaking and listening. Another series Norbet has is his guess the language challenge, in which a guest is presented with audios of language from anywhere in the world and has to guess it. Although I am very bad at these theyre always fun to watch. Its incredible how skilled his guests are!

[tonguesties]

Many of you may know that I keep youtube playlists of language samples, and I thought it was about time to compile them all into one post. They contain pretty much anything where you can hear the language clearly – music, dialogues, tutorials, movie trailers, readings, etc. I’ll probably add more in the future. Hope someone finds them useful!

afrikaans

ainu

akkadian

albanian

american sign language (ASL)

amharic

angolan portuguese

arabic

aramaic

aranese

armenian

aromanian

assamese

asturian

aymara

azerbaijani

bashkir

basque

bavarian

belarusian

belizean creole

bengali

berbice creole dutch

biblical (classical) hebrew

bosnian

brazilian portuguese

breton

british sign language

bulgarian

canadian french

cantonese

cape verdean creole

catalan

chechen

cherokee

chickasaw

coptic

cornish

corsican

cree

crimean tatar

croatian

crow

czech

danish

dogri

dutch

early modern english

egyptian

emilian-romagnol

esperanto

estonian

etruscan

faroese

fijian

finnish

flemish

french

french sign language (LSF)

frisian

fula (fulani, fulah, peul)

galician

gallo

garifuna

georgian

gottscheerish

greek

greenlandic

griko

gujarati

gullah

guyanese creole

haitian creole

hawaiian

hawaiian pidgin

hebrew

hiberno-english (irish english)

hindi

hindko

hittite

hungarian

icelandic

indonesian

irish

italian

jamaican patois

japanese

javanese

kannada

karelian

kashmiri

kazakh

khmer

kinyarwanda

konkani

korean

kristang

kurdish

kyrgyz

ladino

lakota

latin

latin american spanish

lebanese arabic

lemko

lithuanian

livonian

lombard

louisiana french

luganda

luo

luxembourgish

macedonian

malagasy

malay

malayalam

maltese

mandarin

maori

mariupol greek

martinique creole

mayan (general)

meitei (manipuri)

mirandese

mongolian

mossi

nahuatl

neapolitan

nheengatu (língua geral amazônica)

norwegian

nuosu (yi)

odia

ojibwe

okinawan

old english

old french

old norse

old welsh

pashto

pennsylvania german

persian

piedmontese

polari

polish

punjabi

rajasthani

rioplatense spanish

romani (general)

romanian

romansh

russian

ryukyuan

saint lucian creole

salish

sami (general)

samoan

santali

saraiki

scots

scottish gaelic

serbian

shanghainese (hu dialect, wu chinese)

shona

sicilian

silesian

sindhi

slovak

slovene

soga

somali

sumerian

swabian

swahili

swedish

swiss german

tagalog

tahitian

taíno

tajik

tamazight (general)

tamil

tatar

telugu

texas german

thai

tibetan

tlingit

tocharian

tokelauan

tongan

totonac

trinidadian french creole

tuareg

turkish

turkmen

ukrainian

urdu

uzbek

venetian

vietnamese

vurës

welsh

wolof

yiddish

zaza (zazaki)

zulu

[tonguesties]

So here’s a folder containing grammar from eVERY LANGUAGE I CAN THINK OF holy shit

Seriously, there’s like even 10 Aboriginal languages

Enjoy it lol

[tonguesties]

me listening to foreign music and not understanding a single word of it

[tonguesties]

Bonjour maman! I hope you are doing well. I am an avid reader and lover of poetry and I have wanted to read French poetry for a long, long time. Could you please suggest some poems/collections (B1 - B2) for me?

Hello dear,

It would be hard to make a universal list for this because B1/B2 can look many different ways, the best advice I have is to check out famous authors and see at first glance if their stuff looks too hard for you or not. Here are the basics and an example:

B1/B2 with a good dictionary:

Correspondance by Charles Baudelaire

Dans les bois by Paul Verlaine

La demoiselle by Théophile Gautier

Les malheureux by Louise Ackermann ♀

Crépuscule by Guillaume Apollinaire

Les yeux d'Elsa by Louis Aragon (which I would claim to be the most beautiful love poem in the world)

L'hirondelle by Sophie d'Arbouville ♀

Chanson à boire by Nicolas Boileau

La nuit de printemps by Théodore de Banville

L'ennui de Léonore by Victoire Babois ♀

Les feuilles mortes by Jacques Prévert

Regrets d'amour by Pierre Corneille

Des vivants et des morts - Andrée Chedid ♀

Le désir by Anatole France

À Aurore by George Sand ♀

Par un mauvais temps by Alfred de Musset

Melancholia by Victor Hugo

Le bonheur est mélancolique by Cécile Sauvage ♀

C1/C2 but give it a try anyway:

Première soirée by Arthur Rimbaud

Luth compagnon de ma calamité by Louise Labé ♀

La sagesse by Alphonse de Lamartine

Prière de Socrate by Gérard de Nerval

Le temps de vivre by Anna de Noailles ♀

Le songe by Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Ce que dit l'homme de peine by Paul Éluard

Élégie du printemps by Pierre de Ronsard

La grande douleur que je porte by Christine de Pisan ♀

Poème à Uranie - Voltaire

La prison by Alfred de Vigny

L'amour et la folie by Jean de la Fontaine

Ô qu'une sagesse profonde by François de Malherbe

L'âme errante by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore ♀

Les fleurs by Stéphane Mallarmé

Le lundi à Vêpres by Jean Racine

C'était novembre by Vénus Khoury-Ghata (1937-) ♀

Holy shit:

Escargots by Francis Ponge (XX, surrealism)

Nous ne sommes fâchés by Joachim Du Bellay (XVI)

Ballade des dames du temps jadis by François Villon (XV)

Lai du Frêne by Marie de France ♀ (XII)

Je brûle avec mon coeur by Théodore Aggripa d'Aubigné (XVI)

Plus:

Entire anthology about female poetry

Hope this helps! x

[tonguesties]

I hate when people say "why are you learning foreign languages everyone speaks English" because, first of all, no. And second of all, even if they speak English as a second language it's formal and distant, but when you speak their native language it just... hits different? Goes to their heart? When I write in Spanish I feel detached from it, but when I write in my native English the words carry more weight and speaking feels heavier. It carries more emotion.

Language learning for me isn't just "I want to get the bare minimum of information across in words we both understand". If it was, I could just use Google translate and call it a day.

But when you learn a new language you get access into a new world, with music, ancient literature, films, cultural meanings and traditions, perspectives on how the world is, strange idioms and jokes, history, new sounds, new beautiful writing scripts.

Did you know that Mandarin speakers see time as vertical (vs just linear horizontal)? Or that when babies babble, they use every phonetic sound until they narrow down on specific notes? And when you're an adult you no longer hear the other sounds? Or that different languages speak from different positions in the mouth/throat? Or that Greek has eight different words for love?

Each country's language soaks up the culture, philosophy, mindset, history, jokes, artistry and so even if "everyone speaks English" I'm still going to learn it, thanks.

[tonguesties]

The Least Intimidating bakery in the village has closed for good so now I’ve got to go to the Intimidating Bakery, it’s awful. If you don’t have a PhD in being French I don’t recommend going to that bakery, here’s the humiliating account of the 3 times I’ve visited it so far:

the first time I went in there I pointed at one of those extra-skinny baguettes and said “a flute, please” feeling pretty sure of myself, and the baker said “… that’s a ficelle” (you idiot) (was implied) “a flute is twice as large as a baguette.”

That’s insane, first of all, a flute is a skinny instrument. Call your fat baguette a bassoon, lady—I made some timid remark about how it would make more sense for a flute to be a skinny bread and the baker said, “In Paris it is. I thought you were from the South?”

oh, that hurt

I guess I’m from the part of the South that’s so close to Italy the bread’s waist size matters less than whether it’s got olives in it, but I left the bakery having an existential crisis over whether living in Paris had made me forget my roots

the Least Intimidating Bakery just had normal baguettes vs. seedy baguettes vs. horny baguettes (easy mode, some have seeds, some have horns), while the new bakery has breads that are only different on a molecular level—there’s a good old loaf and then another, identical loaf called a bastard? google told me a bastard is “halfway between a baguette and a bread” but denouncing them like “those are not regulation-sized bastards” would get me banned from the bakery for life

on my 2nd visit (while I stood in line discreetly googling baguette terminology) there was an English tourist who asked for a baguette while pointing at what was either a rustique or a sesame and I felt a bit worried for them, but the baker just clarified “this one?” to waive any responsibility if they found out later it wasn’t a classic baguette, then handed them the bread without educating them in a judgmental tone and I felt envious

I know it’s because she thinks the English are beyond saving but still it made me want to come back with a fake moustache and an English accent so I wouldn’t be expected to play bakery on expert mode just because I’m French. I asked for a pastry this time and the baker asked “no bread with that?” which felt cruel, like she wanted me to sprinkle myself with ashes and admit out loud that my level of bread proficiency isn’t as advanced as I once believed it was

The third time I went, I had lost all self-confidence and I hesitantly pointed at a bread and said “I’d like this, uh—what is it called?” and the baker looked at me in disbelief and said “That’s a baguette.”

God.

for the record, if that stupid bread had been flanked by a skinny bread (ficelle) and a fat one (flute) then yeah of course I would have known to call it a baguette, but in the absence of reference points I now felt lost and scared of being called a Parisian again

it’s hard to express the depth of my suffering so I’ll just let the facts speak for themselves: this morning a French person (me) stood in a French bakery in France surrounded by French people and pointed at a baguette and said “what is this called”

[tonguesties]

Watching my toddler figure out how to language is fascinating. Yesterday we were stumped when he kept insisting there was a “Lego winner” behind his bookshelf - it turned out to be a little Lego trophy cup. Not knowing the word for “trophy”, he’d extrapolated a word for “thing you can win”. And then, just now, he held up his empty milk container and said, “Mummy? It’s not rubbish. It’s allowed to be a bottle.” - meaning, effectively, “I want this. Don’t throw it away.” But to an adult ear, there’s something quite lovely about “it’s allowed to be a bottle,” as if we’re acknowledging that the object is entitled to keep its title even in the absence of the original function.

[tonguesties]

[tonguesties]