vitor034 - Tumblr blog

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That thing when US people get asked where they're from and they say their state, while basically everyone else says their country. Foreign people have a better knowledge of your states than you have of our countries.

Also, the US government is the only one to use only .gov, everywhere else needs to use .gov + another domain (like Brazil is .gov.br).

users from outside usa, do you find online spaces too americanised? (please add "see results" option OP <3)

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I need a name for a grammatical case meaning "about" like in "they were talking about the dog". I'm going with "topic case" but I don't really like this name.

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jesus fucking christ

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Friendship is the root of freedom

These are not just words; they are clues and prods to earthquakes in kin making that are not limited to Western family apparatuses, heteronormative or not.

—Donna Haraway[44]

Freedom and friendship used to mean the same thing: intimate, interdependent relationships and the commitment to face the world together. At its root, relational freedom isn’t about being unrestricted: it might mean the capacity for interconnectedness and attachment. Or mutual support and care. Or shared gratitude and openness to an uncertain world. Or a new capacity to fight alongside others. But this is not what freedom has come to mean under Empire.

Look for the dictionary definition of “freedom” today and you’ll find rights, absences and lack of restrictions at the core, applied to an isolated individual. Here are some of its definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary:

The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants: “we do have some freedom of choice” The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved: “the shark thrashed its way to freedom” The state of not being subject to or affected by (something undesirable): “government policies to achieve freedom from want”[45]

At bottom, all of these definitions are about getting away from external restriction or influence: being unhindered, unaffected, independent. Under capitalism, freedom is especially associated with free markets and the free agent who chooses based on individual preferences. In spite of colonization and capitalism, this vapid form of freedom still can’t get a foothold in many parts of the world. Even in Europe, where so many tools of colonization were refined, the roots of freedom were different. Centuries ago, some Europeans had a more relational conception of freedom, which wasn’t just about the absence of external constraints, but also about our immersion in the relationships that sustain us and make us thrive.

“Freedom” and “friend” share the same early Indo-European root: fri-, or pri-, meaning “love.”[46] This root made its way into Gothic, Norse, Celtic, Hindi, Russian, and German.[47] A thousand years ago, the Germanic word for “friend” was the present participle of the verb freon, “to love.” This language also had an adjective, *frija-. It meant “free” as in “not in slavery,” where the reason to avoid slavery was to be among loved ones. Frija meant “beloved, belonging to the circle of one’s beloved friends and family.”[48] As the Invisible Committee writes in To Our Friends,

“Friend” and “free” in English … come from the same Indo-European root, which conveys the idea of a shared power that grows. Being free and having ties was one and the same thing. I am free because I have ties, because I am linked to a reality greater than me.”[49]

A few centuries later, freedom became untied from connectedness. The seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes imagined freedom as nothing more than an “absence of opposition” possessed by isolated, selfish individuals. For Hobbes, the free man is constantly armed and on guard: “When going to sleep, he locks his doors; when even in his house he locks his chests.”[50] The free individual lives in fear, and can only feel secure when he knows there are laws and police to protect him and his possessions. He is definitely he, because this individual is also founded on patriarchal male supremacy and its associated divisions of mind/body, aggression/submission, rationality/emotion, and so on. His so-called autonomy is inseparable from his exploitation of others.

When peasants were “freed,” during this period, it often meant that they had been forced from their lands and their means of subsistence, leaving them “free” to sell their labor for a wage in the factories, or starve. It is no coincidence that these lonely conceptions of freedom arose at the same time as the European witch trials, the enclosure of common lands, the rise of the transatlantic slave trade, and the colonization and genocide of the Americas. At the same time as the meaning of freedom was divorced from friendship and connection, the lived connections between people and places were being dismembered.

As Empire was enclosing lands and bodies, it was overseeing the enclosure of thought as well. The Age of Reason was marked by a new kind of knowledge that could subdue and control nature and the human body, enabling capitalist rationalization and work discipline.[51] Time and space would become measurable, stable, and fixed. Bodies were no longer conduits for magical forces, but machines to be harnessed for production. Plants, animals, and other non-human creatures were no longer kin, but objects to be dissected and consumed.

Even among intellectuals in Europe, not everyone agreed with Hobbes’s fearful vision of freedom and the divisions imposed by Cartesian thought. Descartes’s contemporary, Baruch Spinoza, articulated a philosophy in which people were inherently intertwined with their world. Spinoza left instructions for his most important work, the Ethics, to be published after his death, because he knew he would likely face torture and execution for the ways his relational worldview undermined both monotheistic religion and the dualistic philosophy that was emerging during his own time. Instead of a passive Nature on one hand and an active, supernatural God on the other, Spinoza envisioned a holistic reality in which God is present in all things, and in which all things are active and dynamic processes. Everything is alive and connected. Mind and body, human and non-human, joy and sadness, are intertwined with one another.

We do not mean to present Spinoza’s philosophy as a handbook for living in today’s world. In many ways, Spinoza remained a product of his time and place: he used the geometric method to create proofs for his philosophical claims, he couldn’t overcome patriarchal divisions, and he remained wedded to the state as a vehicle for security. Our interest is not in Spinoza himself, or even his philosophy as a whole, but in the way that his ideas are part of a minor current in Western thought that is more relational, holistic, and dynamic. Spinoza’s work remains marginal compared to that of Descartes and Hobbes, but his relational worldview has nevertheless been taken up by radicals at the margins of philosophy, ecology, feminism, marxism and anarchism.[52]

Most importantly, for us, Spinoza’s philosophy is grounded in affect.[53] Things are not defined by what they are, but by what they do: how they affect and are affected by the forces of the world. In this way, capabilities are not fixed for all time, but are constantly shifting. This is a fundamental departure from the inherently ableist and ageist perspective that measures all bodies in relation to the norm of a “healthy,” “mature,” or “able” body. When starting right from a body’s material specificity, without any intervening “should,” learning becomes fundamentally different: rather than detached categorization or observation of stable properties, it happens through active experimentation in shared, ever-changing situations.

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learned toki pona in preparation for my trip to ma pona.. where- where is it again?

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some loser: humans are innately selfish creatures

my psych book:

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Sobre mim:

Oi! Meu nome é Vítor. Eu nasci no Brasil. Eu gosto de linguística, história e geografia. Eu sou poliglota, eu falo: português (nativo), inglês (C1), toki pona (C1), espanhol (B1) e italiano (A1-A2). Eu já fiz algumas conlangs, mas nenhuma está completamente disponível online.

About me:

Hi! My name’s Vítor. I was born in Brazil. I like linguistics, history, and geography. I'm a polyglot, I speak: Portuguese (native), English (C1), Toki Pona (C1), Spanish (B1), and Italian (A1-A2). I've made some conlangs, but none are fully available online.

mi:

toki! nimi mi li jan Wito. ma Pasila la mi kama lon. sona toki en sona pi tenpo pini en sona ma li pona tawa mi. mi toki e toki mute, mi toki: e toki Potuke (mama), e toki Inli (C1), e toki pona (C1), e toki Epanja (B1), e toki Italija (A1). tenpo pini la mi pali e toki, taso toki mi ala li ale lon linluwi.

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Some are funny, but most make me very angry and it's very hard for me as a professional amateur linguistics fan ✨

Language is literally everywhere so it's so easy for people to have bad takes at it

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Language is literally everywhere so it's so easy for people to have bad takes at it

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"Hello! My first language is English, but I'm learning Esperanto. I'm a starter, but it's a very interesting language and I want to learn more. I can't speak it very well, because my friends don't speak it, but I met a local group during the summer, so I could speak with them."

Esperanto translation from a former esperantisto (Esperanto suporter). I've actually come to dislike Esperanto from an international language perspective, but it's still a cool conlang outside that (and misogyny).

Saluton! Mia lingvo unua estas Angla, sed mi lernas Esperanton. Mi estas komencanto, sed ĝi estas tre interesa lingvo, kaj mi volas lerni pli. Mi ne povas parolas ĝin multe, ĉar mia geamikoj ne parolas ĝin, sed mi renkontiĝes kun grupo loka dum la somero, do mi poves paroli kun ilin.

If I'm understanding correctly, you'll meet up with a group of esperanto speaking people this summer? Sounds great!

(sorry 'translate' doesn't recognize esperanto so I just gotta .. figure it out xD)

Anyway, good luck!

[vitor034]

Free Online Language Courses

Here is a masterpost of MOOCs (massive open online courses) that are available, archived, or starting soon. I think they will help those that like to learn with a teacher or with videos.  You can always check the audit course or no certificate option so that you can learn for free.

American Sign Language

ASL University

Sign Language Structure, Learning, and Change

Arabic

Arabic Without Walls

Madinah Arabic

Moroccan Arabic

Armenian

Depi Hayk

Bengali

Learn Bangla (Register to see course)

Catalan

Parla.Cat

Speak Cat

Chinese (Mandarin)

Beginner

Chinese for Beginners

Chinese Characters for Beginners

Chinese for HSK 1

Chinese for HSK 2

Chinese for HSK 3 I & II

Chinese for HSK 4

Chinese for HSK 5

Mandarin Chinese Level I

Mandarin Chinese Essentials

Mandarin Chinese for Business

More Chinese for Beginners

Start Talking Mandarin Chinese

UT Gateway to Chinese

Intermediate

Intermediate Business Chinese

Intermediate Chinese Grammar

Mandarin for Intermediate Learners I

Dutch

Introduction to Dutch

English

Online Courses here

Resources Here

Faroese

Faroese Course

Finnish

A Taste of Finnish

French

Beginner

AP French Language and Culture

Elementary French I & II

Français Interactif

Vivre en France - A1

Vivre en France- A2

Intermediate & Advanced

French Intermediate course B1-B2

Passe-Partout

Travailler en France A2-B1                    

Vivre en France - B1  

German

Beginner

Deutsch im Blick

German Project

German at Work

Goethe Institute

Gwich’in

Introduction to Gwich’in Language

Hebrew

Biblical Hebrew

UT Austin

Hindi

A Door into Hindi

Virtual Hindi

Icelandic

Icelandic 1-5

Indonesian

Learn Indonesian

Irish

Irish 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107

Italian

Beginner

Beginner’s Italian I

Introduction to Italian

Intermediate & Advanced

AP Italian Language and Culture

Intermediate Italian I

Advanced Italian I

Japanese

Genki

Japanese JOSHU

Japanese Pronunciation

Marugoto Courses

Tufs JpLang

Korean

Beginner

First Step Korean

How to Study Korean

Introduction to Korean

Learn to Speak Korean

Pathway to Spoken Korean

Intermediate

Intermediate Korean

Norwegian

Introduction to Norwegian I, Norwegian II

Norwegian on the Web

Persian

Easy Persian

PersianDee

Polish

Online Course

Portuguese

Pluralidades em Português Brasileiro

Russian

Beginner

A1 Course

I speak Russian

Intermediate

B1 Course

B1+ Course

B2.1 Course

B2.2 Course

Spanish

Beginner

AP Spanish Language & Culture

Basic Spanish I, Spanish II

Spanish for beginners  

Spanish for Beginners 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Spanish Vocabulary

Advanced

Corrección, Estilo y Variaciones 

Leer a Macondo

Swahili

Online Course

Turkish

Online Course

Ukrainian

Read Ukrainian

Speak Ukrainian

Welsh

Beginner’s Welsh

Discovering Wales

Yoruba

Yorùbá Yé Mi

Multiple Languages

Ancient Languages

More Language Learning Resources & Websites!

Last updated: May 2019

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if english was consistently written, i would not have the lot-cloth-thought-palm merger

i have since learned how to pronounce and [kinda] differentiate /ɑ/, /ɒ/, and /ɔ/; i just don't know where to put each one so i only use /ɔ/

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Happy International Mother Language Day!

Feliz Dia Internacional da Língua Materna!

woohoo.

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The names of 11, 500 children killed by Israeli forces as of February 2024!

jewishvoiceforpeace

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it should not be "unrealistic" to dream about a world of progress and solidarity.