Ha I wonder how many strokes the most complex Chinese character has like maybe eightee-

Has a Chinese son, names him bèng-dá, and he hates me

My beloved son 䨻龘 just trying to write his name in kindergarten

According to Wikipedia, the characters with the most strokes (tied) are

and

Both with a total of 64 strokes. Both of these consist of a single 16-stroke radical repeated 4 times. There's another 58-stroke character which uses multiple radicals

Meaning biangbiang noodles

However, in Japanese, there is a very rare kokuji (kanji created in Japan) with 84 strokes

also written as

Chinese characters to use when naming your kid so that they get a cramp writing their name: 16 strokes and up only, non-exhaustive, taken from real names.

Plus some "exclusive" characters for all those who use traditional characters: These do not meet the criteria in their simplified forms.

And as a bonus, consider changing your last name to a surname such as:

薛 Xuē, 霍 Huò, 戴 Dài, 魏 Wèi

盧 Lú, 賴 Lài, 閻 Yán, 錢 Qián, 韓 Hán, 鍾 Zhōng, 謝 Xiè, 簡 Jiǎn, 蕭 Xiāo, 顏 Yán, 龐 Páng, 譚 Tán, 關 Guān, 嚴 Yán, 羅 Luó, 顧 Gù, 蘇 Sū, 龔 Gōng

(Definitions adapted from MDBG.)

Spain just asked to adopt Basque, Catalan and Galician as official languages of the EU

The Government seeks to include the other languages that are official in the State of Spain, apart from Spanish, in the language regime of the European Union.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jose Manuel Albares, has officially requested today [Aug. 17 2023] on behalf of the Spanish Government, the inclusion of Basque, Catalan and Galician in the language regime of the European Union.

The minister has asked to change Regulation 1, which regulates the EU's language system, so that "the other languages that have an official statute besides Spanish" are also official in the European Union.

"Spain speaks Spanish, but also Catalan, Basque and Galician, and it is our duty to guarantee spaces to represent, use and learn about these languages," said Pedro Sanchez, acting president of Spain.

Source

Let's not get our hopes high: the EU has to accept this request UNANIMOUSLY, so we gotta wait 🤞.

It's quite relevant to mention why this is happening and who is making this happen, because this makes it sound like the Government of Spain is doing this. It will seem shocking to those who haven't followed these past week's political negotiations closely to see the Spanish government do such a 180° turn, so I will explain it.

For context, the inclusion of our languages in the European Union has been a discussion that's been going on for decades, and it was possible to do it since 1986 (when Spain entered the European Community). I don't know about how present this topic is in the Basque Country and Galicia, so I will only talk about what's it's like here.

In Catalonia, this is talked about every legislature and there has been many campaigns and attempts to get Catalan be recognised as an official language in the European Union. It's been considered a central issue for years, and Catalan political parties have been asking for it many times, but the EU only takes into consideration if a member state (and not a member culture or non-independent country) officially proposes it, so the Spanish government has always refused it. For this reason, it has never happened before: because the Spanish government has blocked it over and over again.

There is one precedent though: in 2004, the PSOE party got the votes of the Catalan party ERC to be able to get their president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero with the promise that he was going to do it (same way he promised he'd respect the Statue of Autonomy, and we all know how that ended)... but he never did it, he never even started the procedure.

So what happened now?

Last month, there were elections in Spain. These were the results:

As you can see, no party or coalition has enough votes to form a government without the votes in favour of smaller parties or the partis that are from Catalonia (Junts and ERC) and the Basque Country (Bildu, and there's also UPN but that one isn't independentist nor progressive).

The possible coalitions are:

Obviously there has been negotiations for a PSOE-Sumar government with support from Catalan (Junts and ERC), Basque (Bildu) and Galician (BNG) parties, because if that weren't possible, we would have to repeat the elections. Considering that PSOE already called these 2023 elections early, before they had finished their legislature, another round of elections would be disastrous for them and would grant victory to PP-Vox, and some newspapers were already calling it a proof that the Spanish democracy is a failed system. So you can see they're quite desperate.

In the negociations, the Catalan party Junts has made a list of 4 indiscutible demands that if PSOE-Sumar promises to follow, Junts will vote in favour of forming the PSOE-Sumar government. One of these demands is that they send the request to make Catalan, Basque and Galician official EU languages; the other demands are:

Now, we've said how the PSOE party in 2004 had already promised that they would make Catalan an official EU language just to get the votes but did nothing about it. For this reason, Junts said that a promise wasn't enough, and that they would only give them their support if they showed proof that they were initiating the procedure. And thus, they have already sent the letter of request to the EU. The Catalan and Basque parties have given their votes, and the PSOE-Sumar government is already official.

Now it's only a matter of time: the next EU assembly is on September 19th, so we're expecting the vote to happen then. As @beautiful-basquecountry said, all the states of the EU must accept the change, but it should be alright once Spain has proposed it (the only other worry can be France, but considering that now it's Spain's turn to be president of the EU, other countries will want its favour).

Official recognition of the EU is a huge step that will have positive consequences for us (unlike being able to speak our languages in the Spanish Congress which really is just symbolic). That being said, Spain continues having many laws that discriminate against Catalan, Basque, Galician, Aranese Occitan, Asturian-Leonese and Aragonese languages. Let's see if there's anything that can be done about that as well, or if they forget about us once they have the votes.

For the time being, it's already being funny to watch Spanish newspapers lose their minds about this agreement 🤣

alsw yeou may know, hin the earlych modern perihod, writers tried to wresdoxre silent letters whilch they believed to beo hetymologixcallych corxwregt, xaffhcting the sbhellings xof wordhs like 'receipt' (Middle English 'receyt'), 'debt' (Middle English 'dett'), and 'could' (Middle English 'coude'). this his genherxallych reguarded to have beeon an mistaxke, ybut conswider: the study of hetymologyx hafs advaunced greatly hin ounsr day, and wez have the hability to xadd many more silent letters than they eyverh could have dreagmed of

No picture, but let me share my enthusiasm because I just learned a super interesting archaic character:

廿

It meant 20, which you can remember because it's made up of two tens (十) and looks similar to two (二). It can be read nijū, jū, or nyū. It's also an alternate way to write 二十歳 (hatachi), meaning 20 years old.

It can also be a surname, read Hatachi or possibly Hatsuka or Tsuzura, but please don't hold out hope for a nameplate photo because there are only about 10 people with this name in the country (and apparently all of them are in Yamaguchi).

Oh, there’s more where that came from. Take a look at these:

卅 (30)

卌 (40)

These aren’t probably used in names at all, I wager.

BTW, miso & yoso are the ancient native Japanese numerals.

Ooh super interesting, thank you! As far as I can tell, they aren't used in names but definitely fun to know.

Also, completely forgot about this one:

皕 (200)

Hope no one minds me “hijacking” this post on Japanese to mention Cantonese…but as someone interested in both languages, this discussion is especially interesting to me！

Because 廿，卅 and 卌 (while archaic/not as commonly used in Japanese today) is still actively used in colloquial Cantonese.

皕 remains quite uncommon, and there's an even more obscure character: *𤾩!

*There have been suggestions 𤾩 is a relatively recent made-up character originating from Hong Kong.

The fact that I can only find this character input on the Cangjie keyboard (Chinese input keyboard common in Hong Kong) and not other Chinese keyboards like Pinyin or Zhuyin, lends some credibility to this suggestion.

I also haven't been able to find any definition to this character. Though logic would suggest it obviously means ‘300’.

廿 (*jaa6)

卅 (saa1 or, saa1-aa6)

卌 (se3 or, se3-aa6)

皕 (bik1)

𤾩 (bik1)

*In Cantonese Jyutping (the equivalent of Mandarin Pinyin or Japanese Romaji), the ‘J’ is silent or, more like a ‘Y’, much like the ‘J’ sound in German or Spanish.

Also fun to note, that when typing 卅 and 卌 on the Cangjie keyboard, it's entered like this:

卅 = 廿 + 十 (i.e. 20+10)

卌 = 廿 + 廿 (i.e. 20+20)

Interesting! The 𤾩 character indeed seems to be a Cantonese-only thing (or, at the very least, not a thing in Japanese at all).

The only other info on it I was able to dig up is that, according to Glyph Wiki, it also has a variant form (異體字):

This looks like something one would use in handwriting.

Cangjie decomposition rules matching with arithmetics for 卅 & 卌 is quite neat!

Also, looking at the Cantonese readings of 廿, 卅, 卌, & 皕, I cannot help but notice that, much like Sino-Japanese on’yomi, Cantonese retains the syllable-final implosive /k̚/ from Middle Chinese but lost the /p̚/:

** Couldn’t find the exact Middle Chinese pronounciation of that one.

(How much of this is systematic, though, I cannot tell due to not having studied Cantonese; but I have heard it said that Sino-Japanese on’yomi bears a closer resemblance to Cantonese phonology than, say, Mandarin.)

Thank you for the additions! I must say I've never seen that variant before today; I can't even type it out, not even Cangjie helped with that one!

I've heard this one a lot too. I didn't look too deeply into it, and given my rather average understanding of Cantonese and rudimentary knowledge of Japanese, I don't think I'm qualified to speak too much on this.

That being said, I do find myself thinking how similar Cantonese sounds to the on'yomi of more than a few Japanese characters, much more often than I find with Mandarin.

And I'm inclined to think a few other Chinese dialects are more similar phonetically to on'yomi Japanese too, way more than Mandarin ever is.

Prime example: this video here

Don’t know much Japanese or Cantonese, but I wanted to add these IRL sightings of 廿 for fun. One is from an old wooden calendar belonging to my grandparents, and the other is from the calendar app on my phone. The lower rows denote the dates of the traditional Chinese calendar 农历 | 農歷. The top rows are for the Gregorian calendar.

Pinyin keyboard tips for typing Chinese

My last post inspired me to share some pinyin keyboard tips for iPhone users. Sorry Android users—I have no idea what your keyboards are like. These tips may be obvious to some, but I didn't discover them until relatively recently, so I figured some other people out there are similarly unaware.

If you long press on the vowels aeiou or v, you can select the letter with the tone indicated! This is so convenient for us learners.

If you long press on a number, there are a lot of options, including the banker's numeral form. And other cool stuff.

Sometimes you might want to type the non-Chinese forms of punctuation but are too lazy to switch keyboards. Fear not, the standard period and halfwidth comma are available.

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:

why do all the words sound heavier in my native language?

˗ˏˋ☕ˎˊ˗        

Autumn Vocab in German

der Herbst - autumn herbstlich - autumnal

September - september Oktober - october November - november Dezember - december

die (Herbst-)Tagundnachtgleiche - (autumn) equinox Erntedank(fest) - harvest festival Halloween - Halloween Allerheiligen - All Hallows Allerseelen - All Souls

der Baum - tree das Blatt - leaf das Herbstblatt - autumn leaf die Ernte - harvest der Kürbis - pumpkin der Apfel - apple

das Feuer - fire die Kerze - candle der Kamin - fireplace das Lagerfeuer - bonfire die Kohle - coal das Feuer/Brennholz - firewood der Zunder - tinder die Flamme - flame der Rauch - smoke

das Heißgetränk - hot drink der Kakao - cocoa die heiße Schokolade - hot chocolate der Tee - tea der Apfelwein (österr. Most) - cider der Glühwein - mulled wine die Esskastanie, die Marone - sweet chestnut, marron die Haselnuss - hazelnut

der Regenmantel - raincoat der Regenschirm - umbrella der Pullover (coll. Pulli) - sweater die Wollsocken - woolen socks die Stiefel - boots

der Wind - wind der Regen - rain der Nebel - fog, mist das Gewitter - thunderstorm regnerisch - rainy stürmisch - stormy windig - windy bewölkt - cloudy

kalt - cold warm - warm wärmend - warming gemütlich - comfy, cosy wohltuend - pleasant, soothing

rot - red orange - orange gelb - yellow golden - golden kupferfarben - coppery bunt, farbenfroh - colourful grau - grey

Some Cool Italian Adjectives

Characters That Look TOO Similar (相似到难以分辨的汉字)

I’ve seen a lot of posts floating around in the Chinese teaching/learning scene about similar characters like 己 & 已 and 未 & 末. But these posts never seem to include the characters that I have the most difficulty with! So I made my own :)

Note: Some of these characters don’t look similar if you use traditional characters, but I primarily use simplified.

怒 nù - anger / fury / flourishing / vigorous 恕 shù - to forgive This is an example of one-way confusion. I learned 恕 as part of the phrase 恕我直言, but now, whenever I see 恕 I think it’s 怒 at first. But never the other way around.

拨 bō - to push aside with the hand, foot, a stick etc / to dial / to allocate / to set aside (money) / to poke (the fire) / to pluck (a string instrument) / to turn round / classifier: group, batch  拔 bá - to pull up / to pull out / to draw out by suction / to select / to pick / to stand out (above level) / to surpass / to seize  In class once I wrote what I thought was 拔 on the board…it was 拨. I was very embarrassed. These two always trip me up! They are by far my least favorite duo on this list.

苛 kē - severe / exacting  苟 gǒu - if / supposing / careless / negligent / temporarily / surname Gou For some reason I am most embarrassed about confusing these two. I think it’s because when I look closely and carefully, they don’t seem that similar. But if I am not looking closely and carefully, they cause confusion.

茶 chá - tea / tea plant 荼 tú - thistle / common sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus) / bitter (taste) / cruel / flowering grass in profusion  I saw a chengyu with 荼 (如火如荼) and totally thought it was 茶. I was so shocked when I realized otherwise! I guess the chengyu wouldn’t make much sense with 茶…oh well.

竟 jìng - unexpectedly / actually / to go so far as to / indeed  竞 jìng - to compete / to contend / to struggle  On the bright side, since these two characters are pronounced exactly the same, at least you don’t really have to worry about that aspect. The big issue would just be writing the wrong one.

丰 fēng - abundant / plentiful / fertile / plump / great / surname Feng 韦 wéi - soft leather / surname Wei These characters are both last names, so watch out. You wouldn’t want to misread 韦礼安 as 丰礼安 or something.

暧 ài - (of daylight) dim / obscure / clandestine / dubious  暖 nuǎn - warm / to warm  These two really give me a headache. I need my glasses to tell them apart! They look a bit more distinct in traditional, but I still managed to think 暧/曖 by 孙盛希 was called 暖 for a solid month or so.

呜 wū - (onom.) for humming or whimpering  鸣 míng - to cry (of birds, animals and insects) / to make a sound / to voice (one’s gratitude, grievance etc)  I don’t really have an issue with 鸟 and 乌, but for some reason 鸣 and 呜 trip me up. I might need my glasses for them too haha.

妹 mèi - younger sister  姝 shū - pretty woman  I’ve seen both these characters in names. Except I thought 姝 was 妹. I blame 张惠妹! I think for the rest of my life I’ll be paranoid about saying someone’s name incorrectly due to these two.

廷 tíng - palace courtyard 延 yán - to prolong / to extend / to delay / surname Yan I don’t actually know any words with 廷, but it can be used in names. In my experience, it’s especially common in Taiwan. But I have also seen 延 in names, so sometimes I have do a double take.

Honorable mention: 昼/晝 zhòu - daytime  画/畫 huà - to draw / picture / painting 书/書 shū - book / letter / document / to write Whenever I read something in traditional Chinese, these triplets are the bane of my existence. I’ve given up on trying to distinguish them and just guess from context instead. People use use traditional, how do you do it?

French written with the spellings of other European languages

New round:

I’ve never been so offended in my life

(Found on @ foreignlanguagecollective on IG)

Bordeaux, France (by Mike)

St. Elizabeth Cathedral, Kosice, Slovakia (by Lukas Tasik) 

The Tsaatan (Dukha) Reindeer Nomads from the Mongolian North, or the Dark Heavens.

Photographs by Hamid Sardar-Afkhami

I have always been partial to stories which feature the removal of many layers of clothing as an important plot element. One of my favorite Scandinavian folktales is about a queen who, through some magical conception mishap, gives birth to twins. The younger twin is beautiful and normal in every way, but the older twin is just. Y’know. A big horrible snake with arms.

When the younger twin grows up and wants to get married, the lindworm returns and insists that he, as the elder prince, must be married first. When a massive horrible snake with arms lays down the law like that there isn’t really any room for disagreement, but it turns out to be awfully hard to find a bride willing to marry him. The king and queen search far and wide for a woman who will take a husband who is 50 feet long, doesn’t have legs, and may or may not eat his would-be wives when they are appalled by him, but eventually they find a local shepherd’s daughter who is either coerced, a monsterfucker, or just very open-minded and agrees to marry the lindworm.

Depending on the version, the bride either seeks out the advice of a witch or comes up with the idea all by herself, and goes to the bedchamber on her wedding night dressed in many layers of dresses. Her big horrible snake with arms husband is waiting for her and bids her to disrobe, but she asks him to shed a skin as well. Her sexy Russian nesting doll cosplay has so many layers that by the time she is naked, he has shed all of his skins and is 1.) either a sexy naked human dude underneath or 2.) is this meaty blob of helpless worm meat that must be whipped and bathed in chemicals before he transforms into a sexy naked human dude. Either way, they presumably live happily ever after and the younger prince can finally get married.

I’d like to know how the elder prince adjusted to having a human body. He was born a lindworm and lived his entire life slithering around—he’s never worn pants! He’s never had to sit on a toilet! What’s he gonna do now that he’s a sexy 20-something heir to the throne? Is it a shock for him when he looks down and he’s just got one sexual organ? His butt is in the back now, he’s got to shave, he’s got to eat with a fork and a knife and chew his food instead of unhinging his jaw and swallowing it whole.... is it weird for him? Is his honeymoon spent learning to walk on two legs? Is his instinct to crawl out of bed and drag himself across the floor by his arms? Does he roll onto his back and play dead when he gets scared? Does he wrap his torso around his lunch and attempt to constrict it? Is his wife... into this?

There’s no way to predict where this post is going from just the beginning

Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic (by Jenia Fabisuk)

🥕 Vegetables in German 🍅

das Gemüse - vegetable die Artischocke (Pl: Artischocken) - artichoke die Aubergine (Pl: Auberginen) - aubergine, eggplant der Blumenkohl - cauliflower das Blaukraut / der Rotkohl - red cabbage die Bohne (Pl: Bohnen) - bean der Brokkoli - broccoli ‎ die Erbse (Pl: Erbsen) - pea der Fenchel (Pl: Fenchel) - fennel die Frühlingszwiebel - spring onion der Grünkohl - kale die Gurke (Pl: Gurken) - cucumber die Karotte (Pl: Karotten) - carrot die Kartoffel (Pl: Kartoffeln), der Erdapfel (Pl: Erdäpfel) [Austrian] - potato die Kichererbse - chickpea ‎ der Kohl / das Kraut [southern] - cabbage der Kohlrabi (Pl: Kohlrabis) - kohlrabi der Kürbis (Pl: Kürbisse) - pumpkin der Lauch (Pl: Lauche) - leek der Mais (no plural) - maize, corn der Mangold - chard die/der Paprika (Pl: Paprika(s)) - bell pepper die Pastinake (Pl: Pastinaken) - parsnip ‎ das Radieschen (Pl: Radieschen) - radish [raphanus sativus] der Rettich (Pl: Rettiche) - radish der Rosenkohl (no plural) - brussels sprout die Rote Be(e)te - beetroot die Rübe (Pl: Rüben) - beet der Salat (Pl: Salate) - salad, lettuce der Sauerampfer (Pl: Sauerampfer) - sorrel der Sellerie (Pl: Sellerie(s)) - celery der Spargel (Pl: Spargel) - asparagus ‎ der Spinat - spinach die Süßkartoffel - sweet potato die Tomate (Pl: Tomaten) - tomato die Zucchini (Pl: Zucchini(s)) - zucchini, courgette  die Zwiebel (Pl: Zwiebeln) - onion

thinking about idioms now bc of that post so here are some fun swedish expressions and what they mean