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Languages and procrastination

@leo-does-languages

I'm Leo. I'm from Argentina. Languages, linguistics and some shitposting. Spanish (native), English, Portuguese, Italian, French, German. Interested in several others.

Hello everyone! My name is Leandro (or Leo, if you find my name hard to pronounce) and I’m a 23-year-old guy from Argentina. I’m currently studying to get a BA in English and Spanish Teaching as a Foreign Language.

Argentina is going through a terrible economic crisis, which got a lot worse with the pandemic, so I’ve decided to start teaching Spanish.

I’m very passionate about languages and I’m a language student myself, so I know how frustrating it can be sometimes. 

We can focus on grammar, conversation, writing or whatever you need! I can also suit the lessons to your interests!

If you are interested or have any doubts please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. I’d really appreciate it if you could reblog this  ❤

I love this generation. I hope we all die.

just here to add that tumblr user @earthnation started all this with this thrussy post in 2017 which influenced the one thicc bih meme cited in the paper in the second screenshot so say your thanks to an icon!

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Humour aside, this is genuinely super interesting linguistically! it's a whole new productive affix! What do we think the generalised meaning would be? (besides the, uh, obvioussy)

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Anonymous asked:

i live in a part of south africa where isiXhosa is the primary language spoken and its the worst because you cant whisper in class because the clicks are so loud the teacher WILL hear you

Oh shit I'd never thought about this. But yeah, it makes sense. Clicks are so sonorous.

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jabalinya-deactivated20230507

Gonna add this here because relevancy.

(Lowkey this is a working theory towards the origin of the phonemes)

jabalinya-deactivated20230507

Here’s the source: Güldemann (2007)

Word of caution this guy has weird big picture ideas of languages in Africa, so you know, read critically.

Most speakers of click languages in southern Africa do not talk during hunts. They have very specialized sign languages which they use for hunting communication. There is a paper comparing signs from the Ts’ixa, Khwe, ǁAni and Ju|’hoan communities (here), which makes me doubt that there is a special “click” language for hunts (there may be a confusion with specific praise names for animals which exist among the Ju|’hoan - this has nothing to do with hunting practices and does not signify a higher click load). In general, I doubt clicks arose in hunting contexts (which has been speculated about A LOT, also in the context of language origins).

Clicks in educational contexts are interesting. Besides not being able to whisper in class, many of my friends who went to school in Botswana during the 80s and 90s were punished for using their mother tongues on school grounds and in hostels - even during leisure time. They hence started to drop clicks and replace them by non-click consonants. This usually does not interfere much with intelligibility and may be at the heart of rapid click loss as found in some Khoe-Kwadi-speaking communities like the Ts’ixa.

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"Irish doesn't have a word for please, you have to say if it be your will" buddy do I have news for you about "please"

"Irish doesn't have a word for hello you have to use a shorthand religious blessing" buddy do I have news for you about "goodbye"!

"In Polish the word for car is that which walks by itself" BUDDY what do you think an AUTOMOBILE is?

you have got to understand that your mother tongue is not the model of language. all your words have secret histories and layers of meaning just the same as other people's words. the word you think of as just a word has etymology, it wasn't handed down from God as a finished word. English doesn't have a word for movie you have to either refer to the recording medium or use a short version of "moving picture", isn't that cute?

Some internet language things I really like:

  • Phrases like “that’s certainly a thing”, “it’s so shaped”, or “one of the most animals” (is there a name for this?)
  • when people write with little to no punctuation like they are just so done
  • More specifically, asking questions without punctuation i.e. ‘what’ or ‘why’. It’s like, you want to know but also you are resigned to the answer?
  • When people capitalise The Thing for emphasis - particularly if they add a trademark symbol to really drive The Point™ home
  • How we use both bold and italic text for emphasis, but they convey it in different ways and I can’t quite explain how
  • Responding to things exclusively with punctuation, because sometimes words fail you and all you can say is !!!
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My interpretation

machigaeru

I started Hebrew, which is why I’ve been dead on this blog, but I don’t think I can ever properly convey to you guys the sheer cultural whiplash of spending years learning Japanese from Japanese teachers and then trying to learn Hebrew from an Israeli

  • Japanese: you walk into class already apologizing for being alive Hebrew: you walk into class, the teacher insults you and you are expected to insult her back
  • Japanese: conjugates every single verb based on degree of intended politeness, nevermind keigo and honorifics Hebrew: Someone asked my teacher how to say “excuse me” and she laughed for several seconds before saying we shouldn’t worry about remembering that since we’ll never need to say it
  • Japanese: if you get one stroke wrong the entire kanji is incomprehensible Hebrew: cursive? script? fuck it do whatever you want, you don’t even have to write the vowels out unless you feel like it
  • Japanese: the closest thing there is to ‘bastard’ is an excessively direct ‘you’ pronoun Hebrew: ‘bitch’ translates directly

The span of human experience is so insane.

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loveyatothemoonandback
  1. why would you hide this in the tags
  2. i desperately want to learn hebrew right this very minute

Hello everyone! My name is Leandro (or Leo, if you find my name hard to pronounce) and I’m a 23-year-old guy from Argentina. I’m currently studying to get a BA in English and Spanish Teaching as a Foreign Language.

Argentina is going through a terrible economic crisis, which got a lot worse with the pandemic, so I’ve decided to start teaching Spanish.

I’m very passionate about languages and I’m a language student myself, so I know how frustrating it can be sometimes. 

We can focus on grammar, conversation, writing or whatever you need! I can also suit the lessons to your interests!

If you are interested or have any doubts please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. I’d really appreciate it if you could reblog this  ❤

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if you’re learning a language you’re either “I have the vocabulary of a pretentious old literature professor but grammar is a sinful mistress who shall never cross the threshold of my house” or you’re “I only know what ‘strawberry’ and ‘to go’ mean but by ye gods I can make them jump through conjugation hoops and declension parcours that would peel the socks off your feet”. no in between

Hello everyone! My name is Leandro (or Leo, if you find my name hard to pronounce) and I’m a 23-year-old guy from Argentina. I’m currently studying to get a BA in English and Spanish Teaching as a Foreign Language.

Argentina is going through a terrible economic crisis, which got a lot worse with the pandemic, so I’ve decided to start teaching Spanish.

I’m very passionate about languages and I’m a language student myself, so I know how frustrating it can be sometimes. 

We can focus on grammar, conversation, writing or whatever you need! I can also suit the lessons to your interests!

If you are interested or have any doubts please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. I’d really appreciate it if you could reblog this  ❤

Hello everyone! My name is Leandro (or Leo, if you find my name hard to pronounce) and I’m a 23-year-old guy from Argentina. I’m currently studying to get a BA in English and Spanish Teaching as a Foreign Language.

Argentina is going through a terrible economic crisis, which got a lot worse with the pandemic, so I’ve decided to start teaching Spanish.

I’m very passionate about languages and I’m a language student myself, so I know how frustrating it can be sometimes. 

We can focus on grammar, conversation, writing or whatever you need! I can also suit the lessons to your interests!

If you are interested or have any doubts please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. I’d really appreciate it if you could reblog this  ❤

Old English is a language option on ao3 now????

@professorsparklepants Oh my goodness! I checked the category, and it has 16 stories - 15 of which probably just assumed it was another spelling of 'english'. But one absolute MADMAN took it on and wrote possibly the only fanfic in Old English - because they could! And I for one, salute them <3

"AO3 has had an Old English language category for a minute, but none of the fic in it is in Old English, which I think is a crying shame. I'm not sure if anyone has posted fic in Old English before in, uh, all of human history, so I figured how better to inaugurate fic in the (arguable) origin of the English language than with the (arguable) origin of modern fanfiction?

This is the most unbelievably niche thing I have done in my entire life, and the category is competitive. Chapter 1 is the fic; Chapter 2 is a translation and translator's commentary, meant for an audience of non-Old English speakers. I love this language and its wildly homoerotic and emo poetry very deeply—if your primary reaction to a fanfiction in Old English is "why the sweet hell would you do this" a) you are right but b) I do want you to have a good time wondering with me how Captain Kirk would describe advanced computational technology in a language designed mainly for medieval men who are horse girls.

I'm hugely indebted to Bosworth-Toller's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online, and use their formatting for long vowels and palatalized C and G. The last time I was actively studying this language was 2017, and my grammar is certainly atrocious—corrections very welcome."

Spanish lessons for cheap!

Hello everyone! My name is Leandro (or Leo, if you find my name hard to pronounce) and I’m a 21 year old guy from Argentina. I’m currently studying to get a BA in English and Spanish Teaching as a Foreign Language.

Argentina is going through a terrible economic crisis, which got a lot worse with the pandemic, so I’ve decided to start teaching Spanish.

I’m very passionate about languages and I’m a language student myself, so I know how frustrating it can be sometimes. 

We can focus on grammar, conversation, writing or whatever you need! I can also suit the lessons to your interests!

If you are interested or have any doubts please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. I’d really appreciate it if you could reblog this  ❤

can i just rant for a quick moment about how much i hate the term “broken english”

i know this is probably Not That Deep but it’s just always been a pet peeve of mine

like no, your english isn’t broken. it might be a work in progress or maybe it’s just mixed here and there with another language that you know, but neither of those things make it broken. i’m an english tutor for newcomers, and so many people are already super insecure about their language skills and it impacts their willingness to speak, which can be so so so isolating and discouraging. surely there are less disparaging ways to describe the way someone speaks, idk

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I’ve always liked the term “learner English”

chthonic-isabelleadjani-deactiv

The idea of english as a mother tongue is so strange to me, in my head english is how ppl communicate when there's no way in common to communicate, so english as a mother tongue sounds a bit like idk email as a mother tongue ykwim? Like english to me feels like the stuff that's used to fill the empty spaces between languages

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Ok English is my native language and unfortunatly the only one I know yet, but this reminds me so much of that passage in Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

normal people in the shower: singing or whatever idk
me in the shower: [apapapapapa] [amamamama] [apʰapʰapʰapʰapʰa] [ʙʙʙʙʙʙʙʙʙʙ] [mmmmmmmm] [ββββββββ] [ɸɸɸɸɸɸɸɸ] [pppppppp] [aβaβaβaβaβaβa] [awawawawa]

Spanish lessons for cheap!

Hello everyone! My name is Leandro (or Leo, if you find my name hard to pronounce) and I’m a 21 year old guy from Argentina. I’m currently studying to get a BA in English and Spanish Teaching as a Foreign Language.

Argentina is going through a terrible economic crisis, which got a lot worse with the pandemic, so I’ve decided to start teaching Spanish.

I’m very passionate about languages and I’m a language student myself, so I know how frustrating it can be sometimes. 

We can focus on grammar, conversation, writing or whatever you need! I can also suit the lessons to your interests!

If you are interested or have any doubts please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. I’d really appreciate it if you could reblog this  ❤

What should you be reading to maximize your language learning?

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of literature we can learn from. Baby books bore you, but you’re not ready for any type of novel, so what’s left?

Here are some tips 

For beginner/A1/A2 learners

  • Watch a YouTube video in your target language, then read the comments
  • you’ll already have vocabulary from watching the video, most of the comments will probably use that vocab
  • it’s a short enough text that you won’t get fatigued
  • the only downside is that sometimes people utilize abbreviations and slang terms, but even these are good to know
  • Read news headlines and if you find one you understand almost fully, try to read the full article
  • sometimes the vocabulary used is not common in everyday usage, but it’s a total win for an A1 learner to fully read and mostly understand any text
  • while vocab is not used everyday, it will give you the ammunition to talk about that particular topic
  • Watch Netflix in target language with subtitles in the same language
  • believe it or not, you will learn to read better, especially because you don’t have to understand written description of visuals (usually uses very niche vocab) or emotion
  • and now you can slow down or speed up 
I watched DARK in German before I felt like I could read a book, and I understood 85% of it. This is because I looked up some vocabulary in the first episodes and they continued to use it throughout the show so it really cemented in my head to the point where I don’t even think about it. Now, I had to rewatch some conversations the characters had, but that’s much better for understanding than switching it to English or looking up full phrases and sentences. 

For intermediate/B1/B2 learners

  • read fanfiction
  • it’s ALWAYS good to read about something you’re interested in so if you like any major movies, books, television, this is the perfect option for you
  • most people use relatively basic language and you can choose the length 
  • find a comic book or graphic novel
  • like watching tv, that visual aid really helps with understanding of the plot without all those tricky descriptions
  • read a book in your target language that you’ve read and loved in your native language
  • this is by far my favorite way
  • you don’t have to worry about trying to understanding the bigger picture because you already know what’s happening/what will happen, you really have to discover the meaning of each sentence and then you begin to picture the scene using only your target language

Check out my other post for methods of how to get the most out of reading !