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bcitisthelight · 3 years ago

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So.Where to begin.

What you should know is, this isn’t my fault. It’s @misskirby who is to blame for this. She has this AMAZING fic, it’s called Benediction. I like to read it weekly, for sustenance. Go read that first if you want...literally any of this to make sense. So there’s this passage which stole every marble I had, wherein Anakin is explaining the etymology of the Huttese he uses to refer to his children (with a really thorough explanation on Luke’s name.

Anakin scrubbed the back of his neck. “Huttese doesn’t have—words of love. It doesn’t have… benedictions. It’s kind of a cruel language. There’s a whole case for groveling and then—there’s really only the word for love.”

“And that’s abiya?” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin’s grin was crooked. “No. That’s luke. In the Tatooine dialect, at least, it’s luke. We used—things, mostly, to—you know.”

“Luke,” Obi-Wan said, tasting the word, looking down at the sleeping child he’d just been holding, one who carried his parents’ love for him in his name. For the first time in all his life, he wondered what his own name meant, and who it was who had given it to him.

“Abiya is the milk from a flowering cactus,” Anakin said. “It’s very sweet. And rare. I only ever had it once, with my—my mother.”

Obi-Wan turned to look at Anakin again. The expression on Anakin’s face was raw, intense, but Obi-Wan forced himself to look at it, out of respect for the memories of a woman he owed all of Anakin to; the one who had protected him, loved him, when Obi-Wan hadn’t known he had existed at all.

“It also means the morning rain,” Anakin said, waving a hand. “A lot of words in Huttese have many definitions. Abiya, though—it’s a relief. A respite. Pure joy.”

Obi-Wan swallowed around the burning in his throat. “I see,” he said, strangled.

Anakin looked away, his throat bobbing. “Luke only has the one definition, though. There’s only one word derived from it, too, lukkali. Noun and a verb. A krayt dragon whelp, or—krayt dragons, the mothers, their carry their whelps in their mouths, because there’s no place on Tatooine that’s safer, so it’s also the act of doing that.”

I LOVE this passage. I love all of the work it does emotionally, narratively, etc. It’s the best. And yesterday morning, I zeroed in on a specific line. “In the Tatooine dialect” Except hold on, I thought to myself. Anakin was born a slave. What if, when he says the Tatooine dialect, what he means is...the dialect of the slave class?

So here’s the thing. The Hutt society is based on the idea that the Hutts are the prime race, there was the whole Hutt empire thing, I mean the holiday the Boonta Eve Classic is supposed to commemorate is literal holiday that commemorates a Hutt ascending to godhood, during the process of which all of his slaves renew their vows of fealty. It’s not just a class system, where you can you know, in theory move between classes. This is a strict caste system, which you are born into or are captured into. Which got me thinking - what if the language of Huttese has a dialect system...based on caste? We see examples of this sort of socio-linguistic pattern in actual real life!! Tamil and Arabic are some pretty famous examples where certain historical societies who use that language break down that language based on caste, with their different varieties having all sorts of different meanings and cultural connotations, but there’s a ton of them. And in fact, there’s tons of societies which base their dialects on social or other cultural factors.

There’s even a name for it: diglossia, where a society as a whole uses one language but different parts use radically different dialects and forms of that language in different circumstances. Now, strictly historically, how diglossia typically works is that one dialect is seen as a low (L) dialect and one is seen as a high (H) dialect. And get this - in diglossic societies which also contain really severe social inequality - in some cases the dialects can seem almost unintelligible to those who speak the opposite dialect And then based on that passage I posted above, I thought...what if the unintelligibility in this certain case, specifically the unintelligibility between “high” huttese and the dialect spoken by slaves wasn’t surrounding the actual words or structure...what if it was /context/.

So basically in the last thirty six hours I’ve....I’ve made an entire headcanon on Huttese as a trifold diglossic dialect system. I’m putting it under the cut because God its, its a lot guys. Its a lot. Also? It’s written as though its an entry in sociolinguistic glossary of sort, because of course it is. Who wrote that glossary? Space nerds. Nerds in space. Nerds in space from Coruscant University who need research credits for their space masters degrees.

For the purposes of this glossary, the modern caste system of the Hutt Clan has been recorded below. 1. Masters 2. Servants* 3. Slaves The reader should be aware that there is technically a high caste called “Grand Masters”, which historically was comprised of members of the Grand Hutt Council and their families. This caste used a dialect usually referred to as “Archaic Huttese”, and is the source dialect of Huttese, originally developed on the Hutt home planet of Nal Hutta. However, this language has long fallen out of common use. The reader should also note that belonging to the Servant caste does not imply any quality of servitude per se. Rather, this is the caste of all ordinary free people who live under Hutt Rule. This designation is believed to have originated in the understanding within the ancient Hutt empire that any being who lived under Hutt dominion was by rights a servant to any Hutt who should need them. The dialects of the castes are as follows. 1. The dialect of the master class is also known as “High Huttese”. The common dialect of all high-born Hutts, and widely adopted by non-Hutts who own slaves or hold positions of authority within Hutt society. This dialect is used in all interactions involving a master, whether between a group of masters or a master and a lower-caste member. With Hutt families whose bloodlines have been regarded as a part of the master class for several centuries, there is a curious strain of monolinguism in an otherwise highly polylinguistic society, with many high born Hutt families refusing to learn even the fundamentals of standard Basic. The reasoning for this seems to be a cultural belief held by the masters that any person of a lower caste bends to the needs of the masters, rather than the other way around. The historical risk of a master’s displeasure upon improper address has led to this dialect becoming the default in conversation unless you are absolutely sure of another person’s caste, since historically the risk of offense should you choose wrong was often very high. There are at least three different cases of blood feuds between members of Hutt Master families which involved the use of a lower caste dialect as a cause of offense.

This default status of this dialect means that when a person in the Republic references “Huttese”, they are almost always referencing the master dialect. The master dialect is what is taught in the schools of the Republic. This has led to a sort of self-perpetuating cycle. As interactions with the rest of the galaxy have shifted to singular dialect, the use of the master dialect has become more solidified within common Hutt Society, even when the speaker is aware that Low Huttese would be acceptable.

It should be noted that this exception applies only to free people. Slaves are required by Hutt law to use this dialect when speaking Huttese to any non-slave they interact with, even if that person does not belong to the Hutt caste system. The Hutt law imposing this requirement famously reads, “Because all beings are above a slave, a slave should speak to every being in the tongue of their masters.” The penalty for a slave addressing a master in anything but the high dialect is often some sort of physical punishment. A rather gruesome tradition which is kept in force to this day. 2. The servant dialect is also called “Low Huttese”. While originally it was relatively distinct from both the dialect spoken by the masters and the dialect spoken by the slaves of Hutt Society, it has since suffered a bit of stagnation. There are many factors which could cause this to occur. As the Republic opened up more and more channels of commerce to Hutt Space, and the Master dialect has become the norm outside of Hutt Society, true enforcement of the linguistic standard for non-enslaved beings has fallen much to the wayside in the last two standard centuries or so. Modern Low Huttese dialect is thus mostly similar to the Master dialect in grammar and generally accepted vocabulary. However, a remaining diversion exists which is based on pronunciation, and a significant reliance on rather course slang on the part of those who speak Low Huttese. It has been said by Huttese linguistic scholars that while High Huttese is a an excellent dialect for threats, Low Huttese is an excellent dialect for swearing. 3. The slave dialect has no name in any official Hutt or Republic record. It is not recognized by any authority in either written or spoken form. In fact, generally the only beings who know or speak the slave dialect are those who are or who once were enslaved, and their loved ones. The dialect differs rather severely from high huttese - though primarily through meaning and cultural context, rather than actual structure.

It seems that this “hidden” diversion was born of necessity, rather than choice. The masters didn’t like the idea of their slaves having a way of communication the masters were not privy to, and so would punish any slave caught speaking a dialect which was immediately recognizable as being outside of the master dialect. The slave class in the ancient Hutt empire adapted to this by taking the dialect forced upon them, and manipulating a large portion of it for their use. Rather ingeniously, they seem to have developed an entire dialect specifically ordered so that they could express themselves freely without being automatically targeted by a passing master or authority figure. This is the vital distinction: words in the master dialect often have vastly different or even opposite meanings when used in the slave dialect. Added to this complexity are the wide range of connotations and contexts for each word. An interesting note to the slave dialect is that generally, the more abstract a word is, the fewer meanings or connotations it has, whereas often the most culturally impactful words and concepts are taken from simple or every day words. There is only one word for love in the slave dialect - “Luke” - because it is seen as pure, and when given, unconditional. When this word is used, there is no linguistic distinction between platonic or romantic love - the slave class instead relies on idioms or proverbs to express the difference in feeling. In direct contrast, there are nine different ways a person can use the verb which means “to attach”, ranging from the mundane (“Attach these two machine parts together”) to the taboo (“to cause another person to be enslaved”) There are some words which are unique to this dialect, however. One example is the word for “freedom”, which in the slave dialect is “telena”.

The master dialect’s word for freedom is the same as their word for authoritarian power. Freedom within the master caste, then, was specifically associated with the ability to exercise dominion over the world around them. Members of the slave class, as individuals who constantly suffered under that same authoritarian power, showed a collective repugnance for the association between freedom and the very dehumanization they themselves suffered. Drawing from the use of the anakin plant as one of the most culturally and spiritually significant symbols in the caste (See entry on Anakin, a flowering plant which originated in the deserts of Tatooine but which has since been domesticated throughout the Outer Rim) they instead chose to develop a word based off the Hutt verb “to bloom” One common expression amongst the slave class is “Telena telen ali anakin” - “Freedom blooms with the anakin” Those interested in the study of this dialect, then, are well warned that they should take great care in attempting to communicate in this dialect (if they can find a teacher, that is - many slaves or even those who were formally enslaved are understandably reluctant to give up what is likely one of the only means of expression of not only agency, but of caste solidarity. I have seen two former slaves go from total strangers to kindred spirits in the space of five minutes, upon discovering by means of dialect each others mutual experience.)

#I made an entire headcanon on Huttese as a trifold diglossic dialect system #she said #like a LOSER #do you ever write a sentence so insane it immediately deals you psychic damage #and what makes it worse is that #this is something i did in my free time today #this is what i do for FUN #anyways #I will be writing more to come lmao #Huttese #star wars #conlang #sociolinguistics #but you know #in space #please don't take the actual structure too seriously i am strictly here for the social connotations #i dont know linguistics #and frankly #i dont care

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spanishskulduggery · 3 years ago

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Hi, I'm the anon who wanted to learn some basic Spanish and I'm looking for grammars

♡♡♡

So my first recommendation is for www.studyspanish.com/grammar because they have a really good intro to the basics of pretty much all of the grammar (minus some more advanced things)

Also I would recommend: https://tildesites.bowdoin.edu/~eyepes/newgr/ats/

And I can't go over every single piece of grammar in Spanish but I will do a very bare bones overview of the major tenses/moods that you'll find in Spanish and a basic explanation of them

If you're a beginner a lot of this may go over your head until you're there but I'm not totally sure of anyone's level so!

Strap in everyone, it's a long post again and I'm going to explain like a solid 65% of the most important Spanish grammar concepts including tenses and moods, and even I think I need a read more for this one.

I didn't include things like concordancia "agreement (between nouns/adjectives)" and other fundamentals because I assume you probably are aware of those and so I'm focusing more on verbs and tenses/moods, but if you are a total beginner I'm more than happy to discuss the fundamentals in more depth

As always if anyone has any questions on anything I've mentioned here specifically, please let me know. I have no problem delving deeper into specific concepts but this is just a general overview of most of the big grammar concepts you're going to come across as you learn Spanish.

First things first, they don't totally teach you this in Spanish, you kind of just have to figure it out yourself or delve into it later on by yourself but there are tenses and moods. I mean they teach you that there are tenses, but they don't totally explain the idea behind tenses and moods and I think it helps to know them to keep them straight.

It's not required learning but it is helpful for overall concepts. It is required learning if you're going more into the linguistics side of things though, but practically speaking you don't really need to know what a mood is to use subjunctive, but I find it helps.

What is a linguistic mood?

In Spanish a mood [modo or "mode"] refers to the ways in which grammar should be used. The moods encompass the tenses themselves.

There are three moods, and really you only need to worry about two.

There's the indicative, subjunctive, and the imperative.

Getting imperative out of the way real quick, it's commands. Commands are very easy to spot because they boil down to affirmative commands ["do it"] vs. negative commands ["don't do it"]. There are some things to mention with imperative but I'll do that towards the very end for miscellaneous grammar concepts

Indicative mood is hard to explain linguistically. It's honestly mostly defined as "not subjunctive or imperative". This is default explanation of things. Most of the tenses are indicative - present, preterite, imperfect, future, conditional.

Subjunctive mood is harder to explain but really important. It doesn't totally exist in English, at least not in a noticeable way so it's something that people really struggle with. Subjunctive mood is usually described as the mood you use for desires, wishes, polite requests, imposition of will, hypotheticals etc

You usually find that subjunctive is 1 of 2 things. It's usually either a kind of imposition of will, where it's one subject making a wish/request or imposition on another subject like quiero que hables "I want you to speak"....... or it's subjunctive clauses. Subjunctive clauses tend to be kinds of conditions, that something will happen once a condition is met; "until", "unless", "so that", "as long as", "provided that", "even if", "as if it were"... Those are kinds of subjunctive clauses.

Some subjunctive clauses make more sense than others for English speakers. It can be its own sort of topic.

...

A Tense on the other hand [tiempo or "time"] in Spanish refers to the time in which grammar is used.

A mood is used to explain the way in which Spanish gets used, but a tense determines if you're talking about it being past, present, or future... or something in between.

You can usually divide the tenses between past, present, or future. There are some "in-betweeners" which I'll mention in miscellaneous but in general it's like this:

Present [things happening now at this very moment] = Present Tense, Present Subjunctive

Past [things that happened or things started in the past (either completed actions or ones that may still be going on)] = Preterite, Imperfect, Imperfect Subjunctive

Future [things that will happen or have the ability to happen] = Future, Conditional, Future Subjunctive [*obsolete now mostly], Imperfect Subjunctive [sometimes] .......also ir + a + infinitivo expressions are somewhere between present tense and future, it's a thing, we'll get there

Again, tenses don't have much to do with the imperative mood because a true command is always "do it" or "don't do it" at that moment. If you're saying "I want them to do it" or "I wanted them to do it" that becomes subjunctive.

Present

The present tense is probably the most important tense because it encompasses a lot of things and it isn't always talked about fully. Plus it's the tense you use the most.

The present tense as the name implies talks about things happening now. Most of your declarative statements are things happening in the present. "I am", "you have", "we are here", "it is blue", etc tend to be present tense

The other facets of present tense are what make it more important than most tenses. In present tense there are two other important functions: "continuous present" and "short-term future"

Continuous present is synonymous with the gerund/progressive forms which I'll talk about more below in miscellaneous. What continuous present means is that you may be translating it as the -ing forms in your head. For example: leo may be "I read" as a present tense declarative statement like leo mucho "I read a lot"... or it could be leo "I am reading" depending on context. It's very subtle but something like leo el libro could be "I read the book" OR "I am reading the book". If you knocked on someone's door you would hear ya voy "I'm coming (right away)"

With the gerund forms, you are specifically talking about something happening right at that moment. But it is a function of present tense as well. Both are correct, mostly synonymous, and useful in their own ways but I mention it because it isn't often mentioned

There also exists a facet of present tense that is understood as "short-term future". There exists the possibility to use present tense to talk about things you plan on doing shortly or things that will happen in the very near future. This is somewhat different than ir + a + infinitive forms since those can be in any tense. It's just something to be aware of.

Preterite

Preterite tense (also called simple past) is nice and easy. It exists only in the past tense and it's for completed actions.

The hallmark of preterite is that they're actions rather than descriptions, and often involve set time phrases like ayer "yesterday", antiayer/antier "the day before yesterday", anoche "last night" or they include things like times, dates, days, or implied time frames

Think of preterite as "I did it", no muss no fuss

Imperfect

Imperfect tense is all muss and fuss

In linguistic senses, "imperfect" means "not yet completed", or "not yet past". You see it used for description rather than concrete actions and so it is very commonly used for narration and description; telling time in the past, talking about something's appearance or moods, and uninterrupted actions

In the context of preterite vs imperfect the very basic (possibly too reductionist, even) is that the imperfect tense is often used to set up a situation while preterite marks the action that interrupts the setting

In other words; dormía y sonaba el teléfono "I was sleeping and the phone was ringing" is all imperfect and it seems to imply the sleep was not interrupted. Saying dormía y sonó el teléfono is a mix of preterite and imperfect "I was sleeping and the phone rang". It stops being description and marks an "interruption" and if I read that, I would assume either "I" woke up, or we're paying special attention to the fact that the phone rang, and that it's not just casual description

Just like present tense, imperfect tense can be used as "continuous past"... saying leía could be "I read" [past] or "I was reading" [past continuous]. You could also say leí "I read" for preterite, though that's a completed action. Saying leía "I read" sounds more like description to me

You will also find that imperfect tense is used for "used to" to describe habitual things. This can be done with the verb soler [which only really exists in present tense as "to be in the habit of" or in imperfect "used to"]. Imperfect is a simpler way but it is important to note.

So for example: iba a la playa could be "I went to the beach" [description], "I was going to the beach" [continuous", OR it could be "I used to go to the beach" [habit that may or may not continue]

You often see this "used to" with certain time phrases or something qualifying it like cuando era niño/a "when I was a kid" or something like that. It's just important to note because saying something like vivía en Londres could be "I lived in London" or "I used to live in London"... If you saw it as vivía en Londres cuando era joven "I lived in London when I was young(er)" is more specifically a "used to" sort of phrase.

Future

Future tense is exactly what it sounds like

Actions that will happen in a long-term setting. Things that WILL happen, that imply more certainty.

You'll also want to note that it means "shall" as well. It's less common in English to say that, but in older texts and especially the Bible you're going to see future tense like that... no matarás is "thou shalt not kill", literally "you will not kill"... same with no robarás "thou shalt not steal"

Depending on tone, you might see no volveré translated as "I will not return / I won't return" or "I shall not return / I shan't return". Future tense has a sense of finality to it, very much like preterite does in past.

In general I would say that the future tense is unremarkable and kinder to non-native speakers, but do note that there are Spanish speakers who sometimes use future tense the way English might use present tense; serás idiota for example is a way to say "you're an idiot" rather than eres idiota (present tense)

I would say think of that particular expression as "stating the obvious" or "it's a foregone conclusion"... I only mention it because in some countries, especially Spain, you will see future tense used like that sometimes

Present Subjunctive

Present subjunctive is subjunctive mood that takes place either in the present, or the short-term future. It carries that same continuous and short-term future vibe

Again, subjunctive typically works with a set of 2 clauses [that is, two different subjects and verbs] with an imposition of will in some way... or subjunctive clauses. These just happen to be in present

So for example; quieren que (yo) hable con ella "they want me to talk to her"... has two clauses [ellos/ellas quieren and then yo hable] with a kind of imposition of will

This is common for polite requests or someone giving orders; exige que hagamos la tarea "he/she demands we do the homework"

Subjunctive clauses in present are more straightforward once you know the clauses: sea lo que sea "whatever it is / whatever it may be", or para que sepas "so that you know", or antes (de) que te vayas "before you leave"

Conditional + Imperfect Subjunctive

These two are often taught together and for good reason

The conditional tense is indicative, but it talks about something that will happen... as long as a condition has been met. It can be a little harder to nail down, but in "if/then" statements, conditional is the "then"

Conditional talks about things in the future and that can make it difficult for English speakers because we use the same conjugations for multiple things.... podía hacerlo "I could do it" is imperfect so it's past, it means I had the ability to do it... and podría hacerlo "I could do it" is future, so it talks about something you do have the ability to do, but you haven't done it yet

Though I do need to say that "should" is usually either in present tense or conditional: debo decir "I should say" or "I must say"....

But then no debería haberlo dicho "I shouldn't have said that". That kind of should is very often conditional and that can be weird for people

The main thing to know is that conditional isn't unlikely or doubtful, it just hasn't happened yet... but it COULD.

Imperfect subjunctive on the other hand is a very wide topic. What you need to know for this to make sense is that once upon a time in Spanish imperfect subjunctive was used for the past tense subjunctive [imperfect being "not yet complete", again]... and then you had a separate branch of subjunctive that was more future and that would have been your hypothetical situations and contrary to fact statements

Today the same tense pulls double duty so that's why it's a big topic

You'll see it for past tense subjunctive: querían que hablara con ella "they wanted me to speak with her"

But you'll also see it for more nebulous or doubtful futures. This is the kind of imperfect subjunctive that gets used with conditional tense.

In "if/then" statements, imperfect subjunctive is the "if". And that's what we mean by hypotheticals and "contrary to fact statements"

si fuera jefe/jefa "if I were the boss" is your if statement. I would call this contrary to fact. It implies "I" am not the boss

The "then" would be in conditional because you're talking about some condition being met... si fuere jefe/jefa, no lo haría "if I were the boss, I wouldn't do it"

Or, si tuviera dinero, viajaría en el extranjero "if I had the money, I would travel abroad". You can translate it as "if I were to have".

But don't hate on Spanish for doing this. English does it too. We say "if I was president" and "if I were president" and they both mean a contrary to fact future.

...Oh also I should mention that if you look up imperfect subjunctive conjugation you'll find two forms. So like you'll see hablara, hablaras, hablara, hablaran, habláramos... and you will see hablase, hablases, hablase, hablasen, hablásemos

Both conjugations are correct, but there's a lot of history involved in this that I can't totally get into without it being a big discussion.

Suffice it to say, it's historical, and Latin America tends to use the -ara and -iera forms for both. Spain makes more of a distinction, where they'll use -ara/-iera for past subjunctive, but use -ase/-iese more for the hypothetical subjunctive

So just as an example: both Spain and Latin America would say querían que lo hiciera "they wanted me to do it" because that's past subjunctive

But Latin America would say si tuviera dinero, compraría una casa "if I had money I would buy a house"...

And Spain would more often say si tuviese dinero, compraría una casa "if I had money I would buy a house"

Again, both are totally fine, but I personally don't use the -ase/-iese forms very much in my own life. I see and read them more than I use them myself, but I'm also in the United States and not Spain.

And that's your bare bones overview of the tenses and moods

I'll also just include some other key miscellaneous grammatical concepts real quick:

Silent Subject (sujeto tácito)

This is very basic and not talked about often, but in English we're taught that we always need to put the pronouns in our sentences. It's always "I do this" and "you do that"

And that makes sense for us because our conjugations have less variation; "do" could be anyone

But in Spanish, it's not as common to include the subject because the subject is often implies by the verb. If hablo only exists for yo, and hablamos is always nosotros/nosotras... then mentioning the pronoun seems irrelevant because it was implied

However, habla and hablan are different; habla could be "him" or "her" or "it" or even usted. And hablan could be multiple people but is it ellos or ellas or ustedes?

It becomes more common to mention the subject if there's a chance you'll be misunderstood

The general rule is you mention your subject and the verb... and you continue on until your subject changes and then you mention a new subject so no one's confused

As an example; ella habla con Marco y siempre menciona sus amigos y familia, pero Marco no habla mucho sobre su vida personal "she talks to Marco and always mentions her friends and family, but Marco doesn't talk much about his personal life"

When it's obvious like yo [except in certain tenses], you rarely mention the subject. Saying something like yo hago la tarea, yo limpio la sala, yo leo el libro doesn't come across as "I do the homework, I clean the room, I read the book"...... it comes across as "I am the one who does the homework, I am the one who cleans the room, I am the one who reads the book"

When you mention the subject over and over when it's obvious it sounds either like bragging like "look at all the things I do aren't I great!", or it sounds like complaining "I'm the one who did this, I'm the one who did that, not you, it was me"

When it's obvious you tend to keep the subject out. But you can put it in when you want some emphasis! Such as yo mando aquí "I'm the one in charge here / I give the orders around here"... which is kind of like if you'd italicized or bolded the "I/I'm" there

Infinitives

Infinitives are the dictionary form of verbs, you probably know that already even if you didn't know what they were called

They're unconjugated so the show up ending in their -ar, -ir, or -er forms... hablar, vivir, comer for example

By themselves you read them like... hablar "to speak/talk"; that's what I mean by dictionary forms

When you come across multiple verbs together, one is conjugated and the other tends to be in either infinitive (or gerund but that's next)

So, quiero aprender "I want to learn", quiero nadar "I want to swim", or quiero aprender a nadar "I want to learn to swim" for example

Also be aware that infinitives can be used as the noun forms of verbs. That is, they are "the action or result of a verb". In English we tend to translate them as the progressive forms, but in Spanish the gerund is a verb conjugation implying motion or continuation

For example: errar es humano, perdonar es divino "to err is human, to forgive divine".

Or hablar es fácil pero escuchar me cuesta "speaking is easy but listening is difficult for me"

Gerund/Progressive

The gerund form (also called progressive) is the equivalent of the -ing forms in English

In Spanish they usually end in -ando, -iendo, sometimes -yendo, and there are a few weird ones here and there because of irregular verbs

They're different somewhat in that in Spanish, gerund is a form of motion or movement in some way, so we don't use them quite the same way that Spanish does - see above with infinitive

You're using this when you're specifically talking about something in the moment.

Very often you're going to see gerund forms either by themselves, or you'll see them with the verbs estar, ir, andar, seguir, continuar or some kind of verb of motion or continuation

As an example teniendo esto en cuenta "keeping that in mind"

Or... estoy aprendiendo "I am learning", voy aprendiendo "I'm learning" [as in "it's a process and I'm in the middle of it" or "I keep on learning and I am making progress"], or sigo aprendiendo "I'm still learning".

Additionally you can see infinitive and gerund used together in some cases: quiero seguir aprendiendo a nadar "I want to keep learning to swim"

Past Participles

The past participles are other conjugations of verbs

While the infinitive is the noun form of a verb, a participle is the adjectival form of a verb

These mostly end in either -ado or -ido... although there's a whole host of irregular ones that you need to memorize

By themselves they can be just straight up adjectives and can lead into the passive voice... or just used by themselves

dicho eso "that said / that being said" where dicho is the past participle of decir

Or something like limpiado "cleaned" is the past participle form of limpiar "to clean"; and you could say el suelo limpiado "the cleaned floor" or la ventana limpiada "the cleaned window"

Past participles lead straight into passive voice, or the perfect tenses

Perfect Tenses

Speaking of the perfect tenses, these are "tenses" that are sort of their own thing but they use forms of the verb haber + past participles

The perfect tense is like a time traveler. It can exist in any tense and any mood (minus imperative). It's function is to make everything just a little more past tense

Again, if "imperfect" means "not yet completed"... then "perfect" means "already completed", since it literally means "done thoroughly"

The perfect tenses make use of haber and you most frequently are going to see present perfect and the pluperfect [sometimes called pluscuamperfecto which is "more than perfect"... aka "past-er than past"]

These follow very closely with English.

he hablado is "I have spoken/talked" (present perfect), and había hablado is "I had spoken/talked" (pluperfect)

The goal of perfect tenses is to make everything a little bit past tense while still keeping the impact of it in the present which is why I say it's a time traveler.

Instead of hablé "I spoke" you're saying he hablado "I have spoken", which means that you're now reporting on what happened once you did it. Maybe you're saying "I've talked with them and this is how it happened" or "I've already talked to them and it made no difference". Either way you're reporting on a past event but it still has bearing on the present.

Pluperfect is the same just more past. You're using the imperfect form of haber + past participle and it's very common in 3rd person narration. This is something that someone "had done". It's still got some bearing on the present but the action took place further in the past

había hablado con él antes "I had spoken with him before" makes it sound like you're reaching further into the past, but you're still going to report on how it went

But like I said, they could be used in any tense or mood except imperative; si lo hubiera/hubiese sabido, no lo habría hecho "if I had known, I wouldn't have done it"

Indirect Commands

Indirect commands are the murky space between the subjunctive and imperative moods

It's very simple though. It's basically you're telling someone else to have something be done. Kind of like delegating a command.

que canten for example is "let them sing", but it could be translated as "sing" as a plural command... it's sort of like pointing to someone and being like "I want them to sing" or "go tell them to sing"

Indirect commands are more polite than regular commands. A command can be rather brusque and impolite, depending on how it's said or phrased. Indirect commands are just nicer.

Instead of hazlo "do it" you might soften it with que lo hagas "go ahead and do it"

Indirect commands can be more impersonal and distant however. They can be used as a more... patronizing tone almost? For example: que así sea is "so be it". Literally that's "let it be so"

"We" Commands

The "we" commands are technically imperative mood but I mention them separately because they show up a lot as "let's"

For example hablemos con ella "let's talk to her"

Or something like seamos amables "let's be nice"; no seamos crueles "let's not be cruel"

It's a less common type of command, where you're part of the nosotros group, but also issuing a command to everyone else in the nosotros group

Sometimes the "we" commands are done just with present tense, but there's always the option: nos vamos could be "we're going" but may be "let's go"... while vámonos is "let's go" specifically

Oh did I mention you can stick object pronouns and reflexives onto these? Because you definitely can; hagámoslo "let's do it" or hagámonoslo "let's do it (for ourselves)"

The next ones are bigger and more confusing so I'm just going to attach my tags and other things that might help if that's okay because they are important but they're big and confusing:

Active Voice vs. Passive Voice

Indirect Objects

Direct Objects

Reflexives / Pronomials Additional reflexive stuff Dativo ético which is very advanced and confusing but involves reflexives so I will include it but just be aware it's like advanced advanced stuff

This is also not including spelling changes for stem-changing verbs and verbs with certain endings like -car, -gar, -zar.

And I also didn't mention irregular verbs just in general so they're really that's more of a linguistic thing. I can just tell you some verbs are irregular and require memorization so you get the spelling right and so you sound smart

I also didn't include por and para because good lord that is a huge topic and very confusing for people so really just better for me to link to more info on it rather than try to explain it because it's hard to do briefly in a way that feels complete and makes sense

Also I didn't include different verbal expressions like tener expressions. Those are important but sort of separate grammar concepts in my mind. If you've studied other Romance Languages you probably have seen them and are familiar, but it's more of a translation thing because English speakers are more likely to say "I am hungry" rather than "I have hunger" for example.

#Spanish #learning Spanish #reference #langblr #language #languages #la gramatica

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hoardingthoughts · 4 years ago

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My messy way of learning Spanish

It took me roughly 3/4 of a year to finish learning about the basics of Spanish grammar. I have already gone through the rules of basic sentence construction, imperatives, verb conjugations, etc. That doesn't stop there, though. I tend to occasionally forget what I've learned so I need to keep refreshing and practicing everyday. I do it alongside augmenting my vocabulary.

My methods of practicing Spanish are very simple and self-explanatory. You've probably heard them a hundred times from other language learners/teachers; I won't reiterate them all. The general idea here is to integrate yourself in environments or communities in which everything is in Spanish. What do I mean? Join or follow channels intended for Spanish viewers. In that way, you'll encounter more content that is in Spanish. You'll be able to communicate with native speakers too. Besides actively practicing by reading Spanish literature/listening to podcasts/watching Spanish videos, I believe the best way to learn a foreign language is by immersing yourself in its culture.

I do have one unusual practicing habit/technique that I really like. I get a piece of paper, then try to describe how my day went, or narrate current events, or, basically, just transribe my thoughts or feelings (sort of like writing on your diary) in Spanish. If there's something that I want to express or say, but I just can't find the right Spanish word for it, I think of the equivalent English word then look it up in SpanishDict. (Note: I don't translate. I don't construct my sentences in English first then translate them to Spanish.) After finding the right word for it, I use it in my sentences. I highlight them too and indicate their definition/part of speech classification. Once I feel that I've written all I want to say, I gather all the new words I've discovered and use them in another set of sentences.

Do I have notes? Nope. Actually, I do have “notes”, but not the kind that you organize, compile, and store for later use. When I'm practicing or fulfilling the lesson assigned for the day, I write my “notes” on any piece of paper I can find, review and reread it over and over again until I'm certain it's been etched into my temporal lobe, then trash that paper immediately. I don't like keeping notes (don't know why lol.) So, they're not really notes per se. I just like writing down information I've just registered. Helps me remember them.

Do I have a module? I did, yes. I was using a module when I was still learning about the grammar, but now that I've finished the grammar fundamentals and vocabulary expansion is now my focus, I don't use a specific module anymore.

What reference materials do I use? I only use online materials. YouTube, Podcast, SpanishDict. Honestly, that's all. And no Duolingo. I find that I progress slowly in Duolingo. Not that I didn't learn anything through that app, but I believe that Duolingo lessons are best only as additional practice exercises. Don't use it as your principal learning medium. Expect that if you use Duolingo as your main learning avenue, your progress will be glacial.

How often do I do practice exercises? Every day. I dedicate at least 30 minutes of my life everyday to doing practice exercises. Sometimes I cheat and skip a day. I don't want to take the risk of skipping two days as I know it'll affect my progress.

Anyway. Here's an example of my “notes”. If you read what's written, you'll probably think it's weird, or I write really unusual stuff. The topics of my sentences are almost unrelated to one another. Like I said, I transcribe whatever comes up in my mind. Besides, I'm not trying to write an eloquent essay. The point here is to train myself in expressing my pensamientos and sentimientos in Spanish.

#spanish #language #bilingual #education #habit #study tips #learners #learning #learn spanish #español #linguistics

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bonaintan · 4 years ago

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A Journey to KGSP/GKS: Study Plan

After a very long while, I finally managed to post this! This, I guess is my final post on A Journey to KGSP/GKS Series. I’m still considering whether or not to make a post about the interview. I’m not sure I can cover this topic well since my experience is limited to the interview session in the Korean Embassy. Even I heard that each Embassy has its own way of conducting the interview, including the questions given. Anyways, on this post, I’ll be sharing on my experience in writing a study plan (or statement of purpose for the Graduate degrees) for the GKS Application. If you just started preparing the GKS Application, you may want to check my previous posts on the guideline to the application forms and personal statement essay or read my experience in applying for the 2016 KGSP/GKS-G.

So, as we’ve known, a study plan is another important stage to showcase the applicant’s ability in planning his study in Korea. One needs to explain his/her plans before coming to Korea when doing the study in Korea, and after graduating from the Korean university.

Study Plan template (2021 GKS-Undergraduate Application)

Statement of Purpose template (2021 GKS-Graduate Application)

When preparing for the application back in 2016, I tried to find as many resources as possible. I joined the KGSP Global Applicant Facebook group, searched awardees from Indonesia and other countries online through Facebook and Instagram, and contacted them to discuss their experience and ask for some advice. I then found Mas Nasikun’s blog, a KGSP awardee from Indonesia who did his Master’s degree program at Seoul National University. I was especially very grateful for his posts on how to write a study plan. His posts on KGSP Application are still there and anyone interested in applying for this scholarship will surely find it very useful.

Here I’m making a kind of brief guideline in writing a study plan. I divide them into plans before, during, and after studying in Korea.

Plans before going to Korea. Here, you need to write down things you have been doing and will be doing before going to Korea. This mostly covers Korean language preparation. I believe that ‘taking Korean language courses’ shouldn’t be necessarily on the list. There’s a bunch of fun ways to learn a language, especially the Korean language. What is better than watching Korean TV shows and being whipped by the actors and actresses? (Not watching one?) Okay, if you still doubt whether you should start learning the language by now, I urge you to do so unless you just apply for fun and ‘luckily’ see yourself get a seat at the end. Especially for those who never got anything related to Korea, get yourself used to how Korean language sounds is an important first step that will take you further lightheartedly. I met people who hardly heard the Korean language until they reach the country, and they struggled within one-year language training which I believe could have been less tormenting and fun instead. One year is short if not to say insufficient, trust me.

I was far from fluent when applying for this scholarship program (well, I still am), but I wasn’t unfamiliar with the language either. If there was only one effort in learning the language that I invested the most, it was listening to Korean songs. I wasn’t into K-dramas before coming to Korea, and I could barely make any time to go to a language center. I started learning Hangeul (Korean alphabet) while preparing for the application but just started self-teaching on basic grammars around 2 months before my departure in August. I wasn’t confident in mastering the language in one year, plus my over-anxiety told me to do something to lessen my stress in the future. Still, I knew I should’ve started earlier.

So, you need to explain that any plans during this time are to prepare you for life in Korea and of course the degree program. Here, you also need to mention your goals during the language training program. You may divide it into two semesters; what things you will do and the level of Korean proficiency you aim in the first and second half. There are many programs you can participate in during language training, such as the Buddy program, voluntary work at Korean schools, cultural festivals, etc. You may do your research and mention what you’re mostly expecting to do to improve your Korean skills.

Plans during your study in Korea. This section is a little bit different for GKS-U and GKS-G applicants AND applicants via Embassy and University Track. GKS-U applicants are provided a separate section for this part whereas, for GKS-G applicants, this part is combined with the plan before coming to Korea. Regardless, the best way to deliver this part is by setting a timeline for your plan, either per semester or per academic year.

For GKS-U applicants, I personally think that you can simply mention the number of credits in total to graduate and the average number of credits every semester. As for the course, you can mention some courses you’re particularly interested in and the reason (for example, those courses are in line with the topic interest of your final project/thesis, or they will be beneficial for your future career). These are basic information, so make sure you check the curriculum and graduation requirements! Other things to include are plans on taking short-term courses during summer/winter break and organizations/clubs/other student activities you will want to join (check on the university/department website for reference). Don’t forget to elaborate on why you need these activities (project it to your future goal).

For GKS-G applicants, I recommend writing down your study plan per semester since dividing into two academic years may limit the details. Depending on the major, you may set different goals each semester. Generally, I believe, the first semester would be the time to strengthen your fundamental knowledge regarding your field of study while adapting to the Korean education system. Some may have chances to start consulting with their academic advisor/professor even working in a lab. In the second semester, you may need to start working on your research plans. Here, you may briefly explain the thesis research you want to do. Most Master’s degree programs in Korea require a thesis for graduation so make sure you prepare one. Unless you’re applying for the Research Program, no need to go very detail on this. Three important points to include when explaining your research plan: what the research topic is, why you want to work on it, and why Korea and/or your university choice is the best place to carry out this research. In the third semester, you will probably need to sit for a comprehensive exam and start conducting your research. For social science and humanity students, you should prepare the ethical clearance application by the end of this semester or during the semester break so that you can start conducting your research, especially, collecting the research data, as the new semester begins. Finally, you may wrap up your final semester by completing the thesis and publishing or submitting a research article to a journal (some departments have it as part of graduation requirements).

For Embassy track applicants, I don’t think you need to elaborate on your 3 university and major choices and the reasons behind every choice. You likely apply for similar if not the same major. Despite different names, the focus study should be the same and that’s what you need to elaborate on. What I did back then is briefing the reason I applied for that major (I already mention it in the Personal Statement so I just briefly explain it here) and what topic of study I will focus on my thesis research. For university track applicants, you may explain the reasons for applying to the major and the university of your choice and your study plan followed by the plan each semester.

Plans after graduating from a Korean university. The keyword for this part, I believe, is future career. And the best way to show the reviewer your enthusiasm and your visionary side (regardless of how vague the future life is yet), is to name your future goal. I think telling what kind of job you aspire and some motivations behind it would work. Another important point to include is whether you will return to your home country or stay in Korea after graduation, accompanied by things you will do afterward. Again, this part may seem vague for some, especially for GKS-U applicants. Still, you need to make it as detail as possible, regardless of whether you’ll change it someday in the future or whether it seems unattainable for now. Dream big! If you plan on going directly to a graduate school, briefly explain what motivates you to continue your study and what field of study you’re going for. For GKS-G applicants, I guess their work for this part shouldn’t be too difficult as some are likely to already have a job and/or know where they’ll go after receiving the degree.

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I hope you find this post helpful and may as well be a reference for writing your study plan. Best of luck with your GKS application and your study in Korea.

#korean government scholarship program #KGSP #global korea scholarship #GKS #studyinkorea #Korean Scholarship #scholarship for graduate programs #scholarship for undergraduate programs #student life #university life in korea #SouthKorea #studyplan

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rsadelle · 4 years ago

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Your writing is really good, do you have any tips? I started something but after reading yours and some by others I feel rubbish about it 😂x

Awww, thanks anon! I appreciate the compliment. ♥

I'm not sure I'm the best person to give tips to new writers; I've been writing for a long time and it's hard to look back and see what was helpful earlier. There are some ideas below, and maybe other people will chime in with additional tips or resources.

Write a lot. Writing is a skill, and like any skill, part of how you learn to do it is just by doing it again and again. I will also encourage you here to learn to write for yourself. This means write what you want to write without thinking too much about your potential audience. I know that this is much easier said than done. I have an advantage in that I've been posting fic for over 20 years, which means I come from a time before centralized fan fiction archives, before kudos and likes, and even before websites with comments. Look at the general comments to hits ratio on fic on AO3, and then imagine what it was like when people had to first find your story and then actually send you an email if they wanted to tell you they liked your fic. I learned to post fic knowing that maybe no one would ever tell me that they liked it, and that's a big part of why it doesn't bother me if other people don't like my fic the way I do. The thing I'm probably happiest about having written last year only has six kudos, and that doesn't make me any less happy about having written it. I've also written things that I never even posted, and yet that doesn't make having written them a waste. I don't know how to learn this in a world so focused on kudos and likes, but I do know it's possible to look at your writing that way.

The lesser talked about part of writing for yourself is to figure out a writing process that works for you. There are so many suggestions out there about what a writing process can or should look like, but it only works if it works for you. Try out a bunch of those ideas, certainly, but don't think that any one of them is the one and only way. Writing is also about the experience of writing. There are a lot of writing advice books out there, and I tried reading several of them before I realized that the reason they didn't work for me was that most of them started with the premise that writing is some difficult, torturous thing you have to force yourself to sit down and do, and that isn't how I feel about writing at all. There's effort in writing, certainly, but it isn't a horrible experience. If the way you're going about it is making you miserable, then it's not the right way for you. I don't want to discourage you from writing; I do want to discourage you from doing things that make you unhappy. This is especially true when it's a hobby, because hobbies are activities that we get to choose to do and enjoy.

Remember that you're a beginner. There's a great post I couldn't find with a quick google about thinking about how someone who's been writing for three years could be called a level 3 writer, and one way to combat the idea that you're not good enough is to think about a three-year-old as a level 3 human and remember that just as a level 3 human has a lot of learning and growing to go, so does a level 3 writer. You're not bad at it; you're just new. Again, writing is a skill, and that means you can learn and develop it. I also want to share with you the most important secret about life I've learned as an adult, which I wouldn't have believed as a teenager: it's okay to fail. It's okay if your writing doesn't go the way you want it to or if it's not loved the way you wish it were. That doesn't make you less valuable as a person, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.

Read a lot. Reading is an important part of writing. You can absorb things about writing, or get inspired, or just remind yourself that you love written stories. It can also be helpful to consciously notice how authors do things you do and don't like so you can better understand how writing works. If you read a story or a book and you think, "I really liked that," can you see what the author did that you liked? If you read something you didn't like, can you see what made it not work for you? It can also be helpful to read outside your usual genres. I read a romance novel trilogy of a sort I don't usually read recently, and I found that the part of my brain that analyzes writing snapped itself on and I noticed all kinds of things about the style and structure that I don't necessarily think about in more familiar genres. If this sounds like the kind of thing you learn about in English classes in school, that's because it is. I obviously don't know anything about your age or life situation, anon, but if you're in school, pay attention in your English classes or sign up for one and get some guided practice in this. In my earlier fic writing days, I remember thinking that having done poetry analysis in high school was especially helpful for writing because poetry, more than longer prose works, really forces you to pay attention to word choices. I have also long thought that fan fiction is essentially literary analysis in a fictional form. Understanding the basics of how to pull apart and interpret a text can help you do the same thing when you go to write fic about it.

Learn the rules of grammar and punctuation. This is not an exciting piece of advice. However, I do think it's an important one. These are fundamentals when it comes to the written language. I think a lot about a scene in a book I read years ago where the character is very resistant to learning deportment until someone tells her something like, "You can flout the rules of society, but you have to understand them first." Writing is the same way. Once you understand rules of grammar and punctuation, you can decide how you're going to use, or play around with them, in a purposeful way to get across what you want to get across.

Ask for help. Anon, you already know how to do this because you asked me for tips! This is a hard thing, so kudos to you for starting in on it. There are a lot of ways to go about this: ask other writers you like for their writing tips, ask people for their favorite writing resources, ask people what they like about their favorite books, make friends with other writers you can talk to about writing. A note about asking people to help you in a beta reading way: be clear about your limits and the kind of feedback you want to get. For example, I don't worry much about how people will react to fic after I post it, but I am a delicate flower when it comes to feedback on things I'm still working on. I am a person who has wip amnestied fic because I got discouraged by how hard it would be to fix the things early readers pointed out needed fixing, and who once didn't deal with beta comments for a full two years because I didn't know how to make the story work. Now when I ask friends to read through my fic, I generally have specific questions I ask them, either in the initial email or in notes in the doc itself, which helps me get only the kind of feedback I can really deal with for that story.

Anon, I hope one or more of these things is helpful to you. You're very brave to start writing and to ask for help with it. Good luck in finding a way to an enjoyable and fulfilling writing experience. ♥

#Anonymous #writing #advice #inspiration

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okinawanonline · 4 years ago

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Okinawan Verbs II — Negative, Fundamental

We’ve covered the basics of the role of verbs and the Continuative Stem in the last grammar post. Today, let’s get into the fundamental stem and the negative form of verbs.

Fundamental Stem

Since we’ve looked at the Continuative Stem, it’s time to look at another major stem: The Fundamental Stem. Unfortunately, the Fundamental Stem is more difficult compared to the Continuative Stem as finding a verb’s Fundamental Stem depends on what type of verb it is.

You see, there are 9 types of verbs in Okinawan based on the final consonant sound in their Fundamental Stem state. They are the ka-column verbs (based on the fact that their final consonant sound in the Fundamental Stem state is k, aligning it with the か column of kana if you were to look at a kana chart), sa-column verbs, ta-column verbs, na-column verbs (of which there is only one, 死ぬん・しぬん・shinun・to die), ma-column verbs, na-column verbs, ma-column verbs, ra-column verbs (which we called -in verbs in the previous post, regardless of whether or not they’re in their -in or -yun ending state), ga-column verbs, da-column verbs, and ba-column verbs.

So how can you tell which column a verb falls into by looking at the dictionary form? Well, there’s only one na-column verb, so we have that down. We just said that verbs that end in -in/-yun are ra-column verbs. Ma-column verbs end in -mun. Sa-column verbs end in -sun. Ba-column verbs end in -bun.

Things get trickier outside of those columns. You see, both ka-column verbs and ta-column verbs end in -chun in the dictionary form and both da-column verbs and ga-column verbs end in -jun in the dictionary form. So how do you know which is which?

Uh, near as I can tell, you have to learn each verb by heart. Open up the Okinawan Language Dictionary (see the resources list), open up the spreadsheets, and in the 品詞 column, see what type of verb it says it is (for example, if it has a capital ‘K’ in that column, it’s probably a ka-column verb). For now, I don’t think it’s possible to tell the difference between ka- and ta-column verbs and the difference between ga- and da-column verbs on sight in the dictionary form.

So, that confusing mess out of the way, what are the fundamental stems? Our first step is to take away the -un/-in like in the Continuative Stem (exactly like the Continuative Stem, actually). And then, we do the following:

For Ka-column verbs — The ch- ending becomes k- Example: Kachun -> Kak-

For Sa-column verbs — Don’t do anything more. The sa-column Fundamental Stem is identical to the Continuative Stem.

For Ta-column verbs - The ch- ending becomes t- Example: Machun -> Mat-

For Na-column verbs - Don’t do anything more. The na-column Fundamental Stem is identical to the Continuative Stem. (Shin-)

For Ma-column verbs - Don’t do anything more. The ma-column Fundamental Stem is identical to the Continuative Stem.

For Ra-column verbs - This is going to be a bit different. For ra-column verbs, don’t even turn it into the Continuative Stem but simply remove -in or -yun and replace it with -r-. Example: Kooin -> Koor-

For Ga-column verbs - The j- ending becomes g- Example: Wiijun -> Wiig-

For Da-column verbs - The j- ending becomes d- Example: Yanjun -> Yand-

For Ba-column verbs - Don’t do anything more. The ba-column Fundamental Stem is identical to the Continuative Stem.

Plain Negative Terminal

Moving on, our first conjugation with the Fundamental Stem is the plain negative terminal form of the verb. To make the verb negative, simply put the dictionary form of the word into the fundamental stem and add -an.

書かん・かかん・Kakan - Not write

買ーらん・こーらん・Kooran - Not buy

Simple!

Plain Negative Attributive

Now, to make that attributive, we need to take the fundamental stem and add -aru.

書かる人・かかるっちゅ・Kakaru cchu - not-writing person

買ーらる人・こーらるっちゅ・Kooraru cchu - not-buying person

Polite Negative

Now, let’s make the negative terminal polite. In this case, we’re taking the polite form of the verb (that will either end in abiin or ibiin). As these are ra-column verb endings, their fundamental stem is abir- and ibir-. Add -an, and there you have it.

書ちゃびらん・かちゃびらん・Kachabiran - Not write

買ーいびらん・こーいびらん・Kooibiran - Not buy

買ーやびらん・こーやびらん・Kooyabiran - Not buy

Polite Negative Attributive

And finally, to make that attributive, add -aru to abir- or ibir-.

書ちゃびらる人・かちゃびらるっちゅ・Kachabiraru cchu - not-writing person

買ーいびらる人・こーいびらるっちゅ・Kooibiraru cchu - not-buying person

買ーやびらる人・こーやびらるっちゅ・Kooyabiraru cchu - not-buying person

In review:

There are 9 types of verbs in Okinawan (ka, sa, ta, na, ma, ra, ga, da, ba)

A dictionary is required to learn if a verb ending in -chun is a ka or a ta verb and if a verb ending in -jun is a ga or a da verb.

The Fundamental Stem makes various phonetic changes from the Continuative Stem.

The Plain Negative Terminal: Fundamental Stem + an

The Plain Negative Attributive: Fundamental Stem + aru

The Polite Negative Terminal: Continuative Stem + abiran (or ibiran for -in ra column verbs)

The Polite Negative Attributive: Continuative Stem + abiraru (or ibiraru for -in ra column verbs)

#Okinawan Online #Okinawa #Okinawan #Uchinaaguchi #grammar #verbs #fundameental #stem #negative #form #polite #attributive #terminal #plain

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liamoftheirish · 4 years ago

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Task 24 - OOC About Your Character

1. What do you want to get out of playing this character(s)?

To see him and his story develop, especially with relationships.

2. Describe your character(s) with three words.

Strong, fierce, caring.

3. What made you decide to write this muse?

Liam was my first muse in this game, and I always wanted to play someone that went against typical fantasies of wealth and power, instead someone simple-life oriented, quiet, reserved, cold who could develop into something more if unlocked.

4. If you could change one event in your muse’s life (in their main or canon verse), what would you change?

Nothing really, everything is carefully crafted to put Liam in the mindset he needs to be in; I already re-wrote his history when I left the game and came back, to flesh him out better.

5. If you could tell your muse one thing, what would you tell them?

Don’t be afraid to open up and love again.

6. If you could give your muse one gift, what would you give them?

He’s not very sentimental or materialistic, but if possible, maybe one more day with his wife that would let him get closure.

7. If you had to take one positive thing away from your muse, what would you take away?

His unwavering conviction: He has his beliefs, he has his loyalties, and those don’t stray, and it’s an admirable trait to have a strong conviction that you don’t let falter.

8. If you could “borrow” one aspect of your muse and apply it to yourself or your own life, what would you borrow?

His confidence in himself and his beliefs, to not care so much what others think.

9. Do you genuinely want your muse to be happy? What do you think would make them most happy in life?

I would love Liam to be happy, I thought there was a chance at first, but that fell off; since then, it seems the options are there, but it’s on him to be more open to allow for it. Clearly the man has lived a violent, angry, and lonely life, one that he created himself because of his nature. He hasn’t allowed himself to love since his wife passed (by his hands in a blood rage), and he hasn’t allowed himself to love again. There’s been a few that have nearly unlocked that, but it’s not until he allows himself to admit it and forgive himself, that he’ll ever be truly happy.

10. Do you enjoy putting your muse through angst? What do you think would break their heart the most?

I do, even if he doesn’t seem ‘angsty’, fact is stuff bothers him inwardly and he worries. He just doesn’t like to show weakness or too many sides to himself. He has been more open, and recently been questioning some of his actions. Hurting him the most would be him harming someone he cares deeply about.

11. What do you love about your muse?

His confidence, and again, his unwavering conviction. His simple-life mindset is also something I greatly appreciate.

12. What do you hate about your muse?

His coldness and closed off mindset.

13. What about your muse amuses you?

The fact that pop-culture references just go flying over his head, because he just does not care a thing about film or TV.

14. What about your muse makes you sad?

The fact that he feels so lonely despite his friends.

15. How would you describe your muse to someone about to meet them, in person, for the first time?

He’ll be cold, distant, a bit stand offish. May be a bit intimidating, and maybe a bit too matter-of-fact in speaking, seems to lack any real filter. If you can accept that and work past it, he’s a good friend to have though.

16. Would you like your muse as a person if you met them in real life?

Probably, but it’d be hard for me to feel comfortable to call him a friend; I’d be pretty intimidated around him until I got to know him.

17. In what ways are you better than your muse? In what ways are they better than you?

I’m more open, empathetic, able to befriend people easier, but Liam has a confidence and conviction that I lack and wish I had. I wish I could care less about what people think of me, and be more confident in who and what I am.

18. Why do you think you connect to your muse?

We both care deeply about people we love, we’re both a bit quieter, and both of us aren’t the most social of butterflies; while Liam would prefer to sit at home wood working and working on cars, I’d more than happily sit at home and write or watch movies.

19. What aspect of your muse’s personality is most important to you? What aspect of your muse’s personality do you think is most important to them? Is it the same? Why or why not?

Again, it’s his pure and unwavering confidence and conviction. I think that probably is the same with Liam as well, holding onto his identity is so invaluable to him, because if he loses that he’ll lose control and that’s when he’ll slip back into what he used to be. He struggles with the fact that he’s a violent, insatiable killer, but at the same time has compassion for life and doesn’t WANT to just attack and kill. And he has to make sure he accepts that aspect of him, of what he WANTS to be, so he can balance that against what he can be. His confidence and conviction helps maintain that balance.

20. Has your character(s) changed over the time that you have been playing them? How have they changed?

While Liam’s fundamentals, his rules to live by and moral convictions have mostly stayed the same. He has slowly opened up more, been more open to listen and talk with people; though, he doesn’t often talk about himself, he can let a bit of his past slip in here or there. He’s learned to not look at others as potential enemies or victims, but instead daring to call some of them friends. He’s able to laugh more, joke more, hopefully someone’s willing to push that to the next level someday.

About You!

1. What is your name?

Matt

2. What is your profession?

Beer and Wine Steward

3. What do you do to relax?

Listen to music, write, watch films, play video games.

4. What is your favorite treat (desert)?

Ice Cream on fresh-baked brownie/cookie with fudge dripped over it all.

5. Favorite movie -

I’m a massive film buff, so almost every movie is a favorite to me in some fashion. I adore Star Wars for several reasons, not all of them good. Maybe my favorite movie is probably a toss up between The Big Lebowski or No Country for Old Men, any film with incredible dialogue really. But then I also absolutely love beautiful BS like the MCU films and got shivers during the Portals scene in Endgame, so yea... no idea really.

6. Favorite book -

Currently: The Immortal Irishman - Timothy Egan (This needs to be made into a movie)

7. Favorite vacation spot -

My favorite vacation I ever went on is a toss up between trip with friends to Portland for a wedding, and Chicago for Star Wars Celebration, but I’ve always wanted to visit Ireland. I intend to try next year.

8. Favorite Disney movie -

The Lion King (I’m basic bitch like that, don’t at me.)

9. How did you first get into role playing?

I started playing back when I was around 13 or 14, back on AOL, playing a Jedi in a D&D like setting... because that’s what I knew. People were accepting of it, and it was some of the greatest experience. I love story telling.

10. What was your first platform? If it was something other than Tumblr, what made you get into Tumblr?

AOL. And why Tumblr? AOL moved to Greatest Journal, which died, and moved to Insane Journal, and I met a girl there who told me about Tumblr RP, which I said ‘that sounds stupid’... and now I’m here. So there’s that. I still really don’t know what I’m doing half the time on Tumblr, no idea how to discover games on this platform, lol.

11. What’s a grammar rule you find yourself breaking or ignoring a lot?

100% it’s tenses. Past/present, I just write how I talk and it’s bad writing, I know. I will also simultaneously explain way too much in depth, and other times get ridiculously lazy writing in-depth.

12. Are there any languages besides English in which you think you could comfortably roleplay?

Just English. I’ve tried to learn other languages, but for whatever reason it’s very hard for me to wrap my mind around sentence structure and grammar rules in other languages.

13. Do you listen to music while your write?

Depends. If it’s just basic writing, an easy-going scene, probably not? I can get distracted from time to time; however, if I’m trying to get into a specific mood most definitely. Or if I feel a scene is heading somewhere that needs a good soundtrack? I’m a sucker for soundtracks in film, and music can really drive my mood (which is why it can be a distraction). And sometimes I write a scene specifically because I was hearing music that put me in that mood.

14. Are you a morning, day, evening, or night writer?

Evening. Which is why changing positions at work will help me, when I start working more during the day. When I work at night it’s hard for me to get up and get going enough in the morning to write.

15. How does tiredness affect your writing?

Do you know how many times I write something exhausted, and when I come back to read it I absolutely hate it? It affecs me greatly...

16. What is your biggest obstacle to writing every day, if time doesn’t count?

Motivation, mood. I’m up and down in my moods, and sometimes I’m feeling down, exhausted, both, or sometimes I just feel inadequate in my writing and hate writing because I judge my abilities and suddenly don’t want to write.

17. How many drafts is a paralyzing amount?

None? It’s more my mood and how far I get behind that’s paralyzing, but when I’m not feeling down or depressed, I’m in a normal mood or a great mood, I can write 30 threads in a single sitting and not miss a beat. I’m sure others can attest to how far I can turn around a reply when I’m on my game. (probably annoyingly).

18. Is there anything character-wise or writing style-wise that you can’t stand?

It’s probably Godmodding, it takes away from the fun of writing WITH people if you’re trying to control their actions.

19. What kind of anonymous questions are your favorite?

Things that make me think about my character, or have my character think. Things that make me really develop my character’s mind.

20. What is your weakest point in writing? Angst, fluff, dialogue, etc.?

I love dialogue in film, so maybe it’s a bit ironic that writing dialogue can easily be an achilles heel for me. It’s hard for me to write fluff or small talk, because I’ve personally never been very good at small talk, and focusing that in my writing is difficult. Fluff is kind of the same way, because it’s all romantic and cheesy and really? I feel a bit embarrassed when writing it. Though that’s more or less for some characters more than others. Murad I can get a bit more fluffy and small talky because I can be outwardly weird with him, where as Liam... his quiet reserve and demeanor make those difficult.

#theinstitutetask #task 24

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nursing-school-struggle-bus · 4 years ago

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Tip #2

Alright, I still have another week of rest and relaxation before the start of fundamentals. My books should be shipping soon so I will update you on that when they are all here. In the mean time, we will continue this trend of advice that literally no one asked for

The topic of today's advice is the HESI A2!!!!! for those of you that are little babies or that are interested in nursing but still researching you're probably like what the hell is the HESI A2.

In simple words the HESI A2 is an entrance exam. In order to attend nursing school you must present this exam and score the required amount. However there is more to it than that, nursing schools often times use the HESI A2 as an aptitude test of sort. some of them say that if you struggle on the HESI then you will struggle with nursing classes and you have a low probability for an NCLEX pass on the first try.

No fear, the HESI is not that hard. Depending on where you are applying the sections of the exam will vary but there are 8 possible sections to the exam

math

reading comp

anatomy and physiology

vocab

grammar

chemistry

biology

physics.

for my school I only had to present A&P, math, grammar, vocab, and reading comp.

Now this exam is not hard. It is actually pretty basic and easy IF you prepare for it appropriately.

The textbook that I used to prepare was the Elseveir HESI Admission Assessment Exam Review. However, in my experience it was only very helpful in the math department because it very neatly broke down exactly what kind of math problems you would be facing and it also had a very nice chart with all the unit conversions that you would need for the exam.

The book is very limited in the practice questions that I can provide you with, and in my opinion they are not very reflective of what the test is actually like. my SAVING GRACE was Pocket prep.

Pocket prep a program that generates practice questions and tests that simulate the HESI A2. I abide by this program. I think that the unlimited version has a guarantee that is you do all the practice question and you sill don’t get the scores you need they will refund your money.

Now on to the actual study plan.

Get pocket prep or some other similar software

I recommend for the two to three months leading up to the exam spend about 1 hour studying for the exam by doing practice questions.(make sure to take notes about things that you didn’t know)

Take care to pay special attention to the anatomy and physiology, biology, physics, and chemistry, because those sections have less questions than the other sections. Meaning that there is less room for error.

For the vocabulary make flashcard or find a good quizlet.

make sure that you learn ALL the conversions. No exceptions.

In the last two weeks leading up to the exam do practice runs of the section of the exam with the actual number of question in the section (yes, even the reading comp).

It’s the day of your exam!!!

Here is my advice to you the day that you take this test:

Get a good nights sleep

Eat brain food for breakfast like oatmeal or eggs

Bring a bottle of water and a granola bar or some fruit

When you’re actually taking your exam take a break every 15 questions and take deep breaths and close your eyes for 30 seconds

finally, if you do not pass one of the sections do not let that get to you, because one bad score will not be the death of you. If you do bad on all of them that will be your downfall

#hesi #nursing #nursing school #studyblr #study #advice #blog #student nurse #student

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pamphletstoinspire · 5 years ago

Photo

Learning To Pray Takes Time And Practice Although we do not like to admit it, even to ourselves, we still believe that prayer happens suddenly, or never happens at all. We kid ourselves that saints are born or created by an arbitrary decision of God who every now and then suddenly decides to top up humanity’s quota. This is a comforting idea that we harbor at the back of our minds because it absolves us from any serious effort to live in union with God.

An Alcoholic: A Picture of Us All

The predicament of the alcoholic is but a dramatic ‘blown-up’ picture of us all. The fact that our perilous plight is not so obviously dramatic is a mixed blessing. If it were, it would at least force us without undue delay to see ourselves stripped naked of all falsity and pretension to face stark reality. Then we would come to a moment of decision that we might otherwise cowardly evade, drifting into a life of superficiality, merely existing on the surface of human experience. Often when an alcoholic hits ‘rock bottom’, they become serious about changing their lives by surrendering and dedicating their lives to God through hard work, by practicing new habits.

A friend of mine made no secret of the fact that he was an alcoholic, although he had been ‘dry’ for five months. He was only twenty-six when I met him, but he had concertinaed the sufferings of a lifetime into a period of about five years. He had been through two marriages and was mixed up with a seedy set of degenerates who led him astray. In the end, he broke down under the strain of his lifestyle and took to the bottle. He used to drink between two and three bottles of whiskey a day. In desperation, he went to a local parish priest, who took him to Alcoholics Anonymous which he also attended. The leader of the centre told him there was nothing they could do for him until he reached ‘rock bottom’ and admitted to himself that he was an alcoholic, and absolutely helpless. Then they could step in and begin to help him to help himself. But, until he faced reality and made this admission, they could do nothing. The hardest part was waiting helplessly looking on until he reached the depths. He was given a pamphlet containing the twelve steps of recovering alcoholics. The first was to admit they were powerless to help themselves and their lives had become unmanageable. The second was to come to believe in a power greater than their own which could restore them to sanity. The third was to turn their lives over to God as they understood him. The other steps amplified these and emphasized the need to face up honestly to past faults and try make amends to those they had caused so much suffering.

Space and Time For Prayer

There can be no fresh start, no renewal in the life of any individual, group or community unless we are able to see and admit our own inadequacy and past failures. Once we begin to see, to experience and to admit our weakness, then we can begin to appreciate the fundamental principle of the spiritual life, namely that we cannot go a single step forward without God. The Gospel does not say, ‘Without me, you will not be able to get very far.’ It says, ‘Without me, you can do nothing.�� Without me – nothing!

Which of us would belittle ourselves by going down on our knees to pray unless we are in need of help? Without the basic humility of the little child, we cannot even begin. This is why Jesus said it is as difficult for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Jesus is not just referring to the person with a fat wallet or a big bank balance; he means people who are rich in natural gifts and abilities too, the person with brains or flair, with administrative skills or business insight, with charm or artistic brilliance. None of these riches are evil in themselves – far from it – but they all have the same danger. They can so easily give us a false impression of our own strength, our own importance and personal competence. Who needs God when money will give me all I want? Who needs God’s help when I can do it myself? Riches of any sort obscure the fundamental vision that we are basically weak and incapable of achieving anything lasting or worthwhile without God. We are totally dependent on him for everything. If we do not see this, we are blind, and we will stumble around for a lifetime and never find the right road, never mind enter the Kingdom.

Recognizing our Own Weakness

The recognition of our own weakness is the only way we will come to feel our utter need of God’s help. Building a life of prayer means turning our lifestyle upside down if need be to find the necessary daily time for prayer. Prayer is not just a luxury for priests or religious, or people who happen to have spare time on their hands. It is an absolute necessity for everyone who wants to plunge themselves effectively into the mystery of Christ’s life, to be drawn into the endless ecstasy of life and love that unceasingly surges out of the Son towards the Father. We are filled to the measure of our weakness by the Father’s richness. The more we are filled with his fullness, the more we are lifted up out of ourselves in a self-forgetfulness that enables us to pray properly for the first time. The more we are tangibly immersed in the mystery of God’s love, the more we begin to see that all prayer leads to praise, to give glory to him and to lose ourselves in his inexhaustible goodness.

The trouble is we do not believe this, except as a purely academic principle of theology that we scandalously disregard in our lives. We beat our breasts with a sponge, reach for a drink and nibbles, and slump down in front of the television. If we did believe it, then we would scream out for God’s help; we would go to him, find time to open ourselves to his healing power and urgently create space in our lives for prayer. The space and the time we find in our daily life is the practical sign of our sincere acceptance of our own weakness, and of our total belief in God’s power, which can alone help us. You might say you would like to be a concert pianist or speak fluent French or become a scratch golfer, but I will only believe you mean it when I see you practise for several hours a day. I will take you seriously when I see you hard at it, day after day on the piano, or studying French grammar, or tramping around the golf course. You would hardly meet a Christian, let alone a religious who would not say he or she desired to come closer to God, to become possessed by him and to build up a deeper prayer life. But how can this be believed until a person relentlessly practises prayer, day after day The desire is not enough, any more than are good intentions.

Learning to Pray needs Practice

Learning to pray, learning to open ourselves to God, is like anything else: it needs practice and it takes time. There is no accomplishment of any worth that I know of that you can attain merely by desiring to have it. We think nothing of spending hours a day and working for years to get a degree, pass an examination, or attain certain qualifications, and we quite rightly accept as a matter of course that the time we give and the energy we expend is necessary. Somehow we seem to think that prayer is an exception, but believe me, it is not. Those who wish to succeed in a particular accomplishment have to give hours of time, even if they have flair or genius. Arthur Rubinstein, the concert pianist was arguably the greatest pianist of the last century and yet at the age of eighty-four he admitted that he needed to practise for six hours a day. In his prime, he practised for nine! Although he was a musical genius at the age of three, it took a lifetime to master the techniques necessary to facilitate and maintain the growth of that genius and to enable him to share it with others on the concert platform. The same could be said of hundreds of great artists, performers, athletes and people from all walks of life who reach the top of their particular branch of human achievement. What right have we to imagine that prayer is an exception to the rule. We are supposed to be dedicated to the mastery of the art of arts and at best we drift aimlessly along like half-baked amateurs dabbling in something that demands the full potential of the professional.

The Oasis will become a Fountain

If we are only prepared to give the same daily time to prayer that would be required to reach a fairly reputable standard on the piano, then, in time, our lives will be dramatically and irrevocably changed. We may start with ten minutes a day and gradually extend that period as we master the preliminaries. But as the months go by, the period will gradually extend so that in the end the problem will be to restrain rather than prescribe a minimum time. If all goes well, the prayer that starts and develops at set times ought to gradually filter through into the rest of the day. In the end, it will become co-extensive with all and everything we do. To begin with, the prayer period will be like a desert, dry, arid and barren. But it will eventually become an oasis in our lives that we cannot do without. However, that is not the end. It is only the beginning. In the end, the oasis will become a fountain that will well up and brim over to irrigate the whole of our lives, as ‘the prayer without ceasing’ transforms our daily spiritual lives enabling us to say with him, ‘It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’.

DAVID TORKINGTON

#learning to pray

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lesbeet · 5 years ago

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this might be a strange question but what goes into becoming a teacher? i've been thinking about becoming a teacher and i'm nervous even though it's something i really think i want to do and i'm curious as to how you go about becoming one like what courses/requirements do you need to take and how do you come up with a lesson plan and everything? and how did you know teaching was something you wanted to do or realize it was something you would be good at?

hm well i can only tell you about my own experience, which i would say is probably pretty unorthodox, but it’s been working really well for me!

so i’ve been working on a masters in teaching for english/language arts grades 5-12 from western governors university, which is an (accredited) online program for aspiring teachers who need to be licensed as teachers in general as well as certified/endorsed in their particular subject areas. depending on what you want to teach, there are a couple of undergrad teaching degrees they offer (i believe it’s elementary ed, special ed, and a couple of different math and science programs), but to do like language arts or social studies etc, you’d need to have a bachelors degree to qualify -- though i also did my bachelors at wgu (in business management sdklfdjskdflsjd i hated it) so it doesnt need to be education-related or anything

if you wanna know more about my particular program let me know, bc it works fairly unusually but is a legitimate post-secondary educational institution and is also incredibly affordable, and idk what i’d be doing if i hadnt found out that it existed lmao

but so yeah idk what an education undergrad would consist of, but for my program in particular there were a lot of english content classes, obviously, like secondary disciplinary literacy, english pedagogy, secondary reading instruction and interventions, stuff like that

and then there were a lot of more generalized pedagogical courses, like educational assessment, foundational perspectives of education, classroom management, fundamentals of diversity and inclusion, principles of psychology: child and adolescent development, and stuff like that

again, this is just based on my own experience, but re: lesson plans, i actually just had some assignments for my courses where i had to write them and justify the thought process behind the decisions i made! like in my english pedagogy course, i had to write 3 essays (one for a literature-based lesson, one for a grammar-based lesson, and one for a writing-based lesson), and in each essay there was a section where i had to plan an entire lesson using their lesson plan format, and then explain and justify why i made each choice that i made.

i’m starting student-teaching next semester, as soon as we get back from winter break, and i assume i’ll get more practice with lesson-planning through that, but basically it kind of comes down to like...figuring out the standards your students are supposed to reach, then figuring out how you’re going to break them down into a curriculum, and then for each lesson you figure out what objectives/goals you want your students to reach by the end, and you figure out how to present the material and then assess in some way whether or not the students understand it. once you know what the purpose of a lesson plan is (whether re: the idea of lesson plans in general, or a specific lesson plan you’re working on), the rest is just figuring out how to achieve that purpose. and it comes with practice! and trial and error, and figuring out what works and doesnt work with your own teaching style and in your classroom, etc. ik that’s super vague but so much of it depends of the parameters you’re given—like while i’m student-teaching i won’t be picking the books we read, so i’ll already have that requirement figured out for me, yknow?

as for your last question, my mom has been teaching my whole life, and my dad started teaching when i was about 10. my aunt is also a teacher, and my other aunt is a speech-language pathologist, so. i grew up around teachers kfjsldkfjs

i’ve just always liked explaining things to people and helping them understand them! i think really what it comes down to is that i just have a lot of passion and a lot of things to say sldfksjdkflj like i really do believe that english/language arts in particular is applicable in all parts of life, because all people communicate. i can’t speak for like. calculus or biology or whatever, but 99.9999% of people will need to do some sort of reading, and some sort of writing and/or speaking and/or communication of some type or another, and for all of the “the curtains are just blue!!!” whiners out there, it’s crucial to know how to communicate with others, and to understand what others are attempting to communicate to you, and i can’t think of a single scenario in which that isn’t the case.

plus like, idk a single person who doesn’t like some form of story, whether through tv shows or movies or books or plays or podcasts or video games etc etc etc, and imo those can all be enhanced and made even better by having some sort of background knowledge of storytelling as an art, or as a process, or as an established medium with its own structures and intertextual lexicon etc! like the more i read about the art and history of storytelling, the more i enjoy movies and tv shows (which i already love and watch frequently), bc storytelling isn’t just a textual medium!

tbh part of the reason i think i’m good at explaining things is because i grew up in an emotionally abusive household, and i learned very early on how to anticipate the way another person (usually my dad lol) would interpret something i said to him, regardless of what i actually meant by it. so i subconsciously learned to apply that skill to other people, and now i’ve got sort of a knack for being able to cater my explanations to different people based on how i think they’ll best understand the information, and not just in a classroom setting—like i sometimes serve as a mediator/”interpreter” when my sister and my dad are having difficult conversations, because i know them both well enough, and the way they think well enough, that when one of them says something, i can usually understand both their intention AND how the other person is going to interpret it, and i can rephrase or explain things so miscommunication doesn’t end up making the problem worse

so in a classroom, i can explain things in several different ways, and if i’m working one-on-one with different kids i can usually figure out what isn’t clicking and can try another way to explain it. also bc my adhd brain processes information by making connections to other things i already know, i’m particularly good at coming up with (often unusual) metaphors or analogies for things, and people are like “oh wow ok that’s a weird way to explain it but i definitely get it now” and stuff

so basically i’ve learned bc of necessity how to communicate more effectively with others, and because i want everyone else to get the enjoyment out of language arts that i do, i’m drawn to teaching because i hope to help the students find at least some area of it that they’re interested in, and to show them that literature/storytelling/communication aren’t just about reading old boring books written by racist white dudes who hated women, but about learning to represent and interpret and take part in the human experience, because the foundation of any sort of society is communication, and that very basic desire to be understood by others

so even when i didnt actively Want To Be A Teacher it was always kinda in the back of my mind like “well if i dont find anything else i wanna do, i can always be an english teacher” bc most of my favorite teachers growing up were english teachers, and even at my absolute worst i did just fine in those classes, even when i hadnt read the books we were discussing (which was most of the time jsdklfsjd which is now kind of a problem for me as a teacher so i do think i shot myself in the foot there but oh well, i was 14)

anyway, as usual that got super long, but i hope it was helpful! lemme know if you have any other questions :)

#anonymous #answered

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sleepy-and-anxious · 5 years ago

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Uh, sorry to bother you but your writing seems super cool and like, I'm getting into writing about demons and like, do you have any tips for new writers?

Hi nonnie!!! uwu I’m glad to hear that you like my stuff - thats very lovely of you!

I’m probably not the best to give this kind of advice because, for all intents and purposes, i’d still class myself as a new writer. But I’ll try uwu

Bel’s Tips for new writers:

- Know your characters!

Personally, I think this is the important first step before you write anything. If you know your characters, how they react and their motivations, they become so much easier to write.

- Start small.

Do as I say and not as I do lmfao Before you start a new project i’d recommend writing a monologue or a small scene (maybe a section from the bigger wip?) as a character experiment or interview between two characters. I like doing this because it allows me to experiment with tense and POV and character dynamics. I think its a useful tool for someone who is new to writing. Don’t force yourself to make it perfect. Its for fun or for play. Think of it as brainstorming!

When I started writing my main wip this time last year, I started with one of the beginning scenes between the main character and her older brother. It’s a scene i’ve decided not to include anymore but writing it was something that really helped me get a feel for my story and how my main character reacts around those she loves.

- Practice

As much as I hate the mentality of “real writers write everyday” - it comes from a place of truth. Writing and building habits of writing everyday can really help when it comes to improving your craft! I have improved so so so much over a year (sure, I don’t write every day. I’m in the final year of my degree and im clinically depressed so life gets in the way). But, ohmygod just sitting down every few days or maybe once a week to practice dialogue or to describe a setting really helps you improve.

- Read! Lots!

Okay, this is a really stupidly obvious one, but I really think that my ability to write to the sub-par kinda okay standard that I do now is because of the mass amounts of books that i’ve read over the years. When you read, often without realising it, you take in how to write dialogue and the fundamentals of storytelling. When I started out I knew nothing about story beats or act structure, yet somehow, the bare bones story idea I had for GFS seemed to follow them easily. Because I knew what stories needed for reading.

I also think its important to read diversely and across genres. It is all helpful. Each genre has its own conventions and structures, but they also have different tropes that you can choose to use in your own writing or you can choose to try and subvert them!!! Read!!!

- Believe in yourself and shamelessly love your own craft

You’ve got to be your own biggest fan. It’s the only way you’ll get through it. You’ve got to have stubborn hope that you’ll improve and that you stories will be amazing and loved. It’s going to be hard. It really will. There will be times when you just want to trash your entire project, but it will pass. You’ve just got to keep going and keep moving forward with an open mind. If you feel like you’re not in a place right now to champion your own writing and craft - fake it till you make it. Look for the aspects that you do like.

What do I do? Sometimes I hate my work. I hate my grammar and my structure and how basic and non-flowery my work is. I wish my writing was poetic. I wish it was beautiful and impactful. But, it isn’t. But, what I do love about my work is my characters. I love my ocs and their growth and their character arcs with a fiery passion. Sure, my writing might not be the best but I know how to create a damn complex and interesting human. Find something about yourself and your craft that you adore and never let it go. If you do that, you’ll always have something to look forward to do when you sit down to write.

- Enjoy it!!!

This one is kinda self explanatory. Take your time. Have fun. Enjoy the journey of drafting. Then enjoy improving. You’ve got this!!!!

I hope this is okay for you nonnie!!! uwu

#asks

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bc-mtchll · 6 years ago

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I have a prompt. What about a Bechloe fic based on Ed Sheeran's song Friends?

So I’ve been really slow with writing, but I finally got this done. I hope it was what you were looking for love, I had to listen to the song on repeat for like an hour to get a feel for it. Also please excuse any typos and grammar issues, I did re-read this like 5 times.

You can also read on ao3 here

We’re not, no we’re not friends, nor have we ever been.

It never failed to surprise Beca when she woke up in the morning, her body tucked into Chloe’s side; her short legs tangled up in long ones; her arm lazily hanging over the exposed skin of the other’s stomach. It was almost every morning she would wake up like this, cuddled up with her friend. The word ‘friend’ didn’t seem right anymore. This didn’t seem to be how friends acted. Sure Beca hadn’t really been friends with a lot of girls before she got to Barden but she definitely didn’t act the same with Stacie or Aubrey or any of the other girls like she did with Chloe. But it was starting to feel as if they had blurred the lines between friends and something more recently. If they weren’t friends then what were they?

The brunette shifted, trying her best not to disturb her best friend as she did so. She loved to just lie in bed, it was her favourite thing to do besides make music, it’s why she now kept earphones under her pillow. For times like these when she was awake before the red head but didn’t want to disturb her. It was one of the things she told Chloe right at the start of their friendship that she didn’t do. Cuddle. That she shouldn’t expect all the touchy feely cutesy friendship stuff. Looks like Chloe had worn her down because she was giving it to her constantly.

The small brunette became so lost in her music that she hadn’t even noticed Chloe waking up no later than half an hour after her. The redhead faking sleep as to not bother Beca. She loved watching her best friend getting lost in her own little world, mouthing along to the lyrics of whatever song she was listening to. The small smile that graced her lips every time she came to a lyric that meant something to her, that made her happy to sing. Chloe didn’t even try to speak, knowing the other wouldn’t hear her anyway; instead she turned herself and pressed soft lips to just above Beca’s ear, causing the younger girl to yank her earphones out in surprise. “Shit, Chlo. I thoug— how long have you been lying there just staring at me?”

“I wasn’t staring. I had my eyes closed. You’d have noticed if you can pay attention to anything other than your iPod.”

“I only do this when I think you’re asleep!” She shot back, Chloe’s teasing tone making her blush. Friends are not supposed to have this effect on each other, and Beca was sure they weren’t supposed to be looking at each other’s lips this much. She was grateful when the slightly older girl made the first move and gave her her usual secret morning kiss.

We just try to keep those secrets in a lie, and if they find out, will it all go wrong?

The kissing had started a few months ago, after one of the Treble’s house parties. The pair had both had one too many, left the party before any of the other girls and ended up in Chloe’s room that she shared with Aubrey. They’d just been messing around, it wasn’t meant to be a thing. But when Chloe pinned her to the bed in the middle of a drunken tickle fight, neither could stop themselves as they eagerly leaned into each other; lips crashing in a passionate kiss, teeth hitting against each other when their lips couldn’t move fast enough.

It wasn’t spoken about, but it didn’t stop Chloe from kissing her again in the morning when she was sure Aubrey was gone. After that night the good night kisses became a fundamental part of their relationship. Chloe would always find Beca before bed and kiss her so gently - as if she were worried the gesture would break the other - before rushing off to her own bed. It didn’t take Beca long to invite Chloe to sleep in her bed every night so they didn’t have to sneak between rooms.

And Heaven knows, no one wants it to.

So I could take the back road, but your eyes will lead me straight back home.

Beca had tried to convince herself it meant nothing. That they had been drunk and everything that had happened that night had been caused by emotions running high. The kissing. The cuddling. The tired ‘I love yous’ that had more passion behind them than their usual admissions. It was easy to deny, or at least it was when she was hanging around the other Bellas, barely any time to think about what she and Chloe were. Friends. Just when she was sure that’s all they were, there she would appear. Looking as beautiful as ever, regardless of her outfit, Beca would look into those blue eyes and immediately fall all over again. Head over heels in love for the girl she thought she could never have. The girl she should never have.

You should love me, you should know.

“Beca?”

Chloe’s voice pulled Beca out of her thoughts, the red head’s creased brow a sign that Beca was so lost she hadn’t even returned the gesture. Without a second thought, the brunette leaned forward and uncharacteristically joined their lips. Beca was never one to start any displays of affection, but seeing Chloe’s complete confusion on the situation, she knew she had to clear it up. “Sorry. Miles away.” She hummed, their foreheads resting together. Everything just felt so right, like they were meant to be like this. Beca wasn’t one for the concept for fate, or even soulmates - she rejected the concept ever since her parents divorced - yet this felt like fate. Like soulmates.

“You wanna talk about it, Becs?” Chloe’s voice was soft, softer than usual, and Beca couldn’t help but smile. The red head was always waiting for her. As Chloe phrased it, she could be emotionally slow. However she was sure they were both being emotionally slow in this situation. Or was Chloe waiting for her to catch up?

“What are we doing, Chlo?”

“Cuddling in bed, silly.”

“No serious.” Beca sighed, pulling back a little - the lingering smell of Chloe’s perfume messing with her head. It was just a reminder of how many nights they spent like this. How many times she was left wondering if this was meant to be something or not. “Friends don’t sleep in the same bed every night, Chlo.” Beca started, swallowing thickly before looking away from her best friend - suddenly focused on the mascara mark on her sheets. “Friends don’t treat me like you do…” she trailed off, words failing her in what she wanted to say.

The words hung in the air around them, Chloe’s heart clenching as she chewed on her lip considering how to approach the subject. They’d had a bond from the beginning, and it was all innocent, but none of this was innocent. Not anymore. Every touch, hug, kiss was weighted with pure unconditional love. That is definitely not how friends work. But if they weren’t ‘friends’ then someone else might become involved. Someone else might love them. How would they cope then? Knowing for sure that this would never be anything.

When Chloe failed to speak, Beca piped up once more. “Maybe we should stop…this.” She sighed, not wanting to give up what they had, but for the sake of her sanity and clarification, maybe it would be best. “Maybe we should start sleeping in separate beds again. And stop kissing like we do. Maybe we pushed the limit.”

It was obvious neither wanted to give it up. However, neither wanted to lose the friendship. That’s what was holding them back. “Maybe we shouldn’t. I don’t want too.” Chloe admitted selfishly. No one made her feel like Beca did. It’s why she left her relationship in the year she met Beca. Why she hadn’t been in one since. She only wanted to be in a relationship with the younger girl. “Maybe instead of secret bed sharing, and secret kissing, and secret everything else it can be…public?” She asked hesitantly - worried ‘old’ Beca would kick in, and the commitment idea would be enough to push her far enough away that this ended anyway.

She remembered how Beca had been when they first met. Closed off, letting no one in. Not even her own father. It had taken the red head nearly the whole of their first year to break the other’s walls down. To even get a peak inside Beca’s head: how she was feeling, how she thought, how she worked. It had taken a while but it was all worth it. And now her words might have set those old walls to rebuild. To be shut out like she once had been.

The shy smile on Beca’s lips disputed that idea instantly.

“Like girlfriends?” The smaller girl questioned.

Chloe could only laugh a little, “Well you did say friends don’t treat you like I do, so…”

“So…girlfriends?” Beca asked again. She needed to hear Chloe say it. To confirm they were finally on the same page. It was a basic want. Beca liked to keep all relationships simple and basic. She liked to know where she stood without all the complications.

“Girlfriends, Bec.” Chloe hummed, confirming the relationship with a firm yet loving kiss - wanting Beca to know she was all in. “And I know we’ve been girlfriends for like ten seconds but…I love you.”

Beca chuckled softly, rolling her eyes fondly at the other. “I love you too, nerd.”

Oh, my friends will never love me like you.

#answered #bechloe #fan fic #pitch perfect #anon #Anonymous #beca mitchell #chloe beale

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years ago

Text

MAKER'S SCHEDULE, STUPID

There are plenty of other places to work; in most of the initial sales of the Apple II came from people who bought one to run VisiCalc. They could buy some stock in this company. Some torture nerds for the same reason models avoid cheeseburgers. John Nash so admired Norbert Wiener that he adopted his habit of touching the wall as he walked down a corridor. It was impressive even to ask the questions they asked were new to them, and startups were selling them for a year's salary a copy. Com, where you go looking for problems without knowing what you're looking for. To anyone who knows Mark Zuckerberg that is the Valley's equivalent of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign: The Dish. You can start by writing the smallest subset of it that does anything useful. Conversely, the extreme version of the two parties cancel one another out, with no expectation of getting anything in return. After Facebook stopped being for Harvard students, it remained for students at specific colleges for quite a while. I'm going to start a startup while you're getting those n years of experience.

Good thing for the Democrats that their screen lets through an occasional Clinton, even if you're never called on to solve advanced problems, you have to reinvent stuff for yourself, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. But the Collison brothers weren't going to wait. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, but which never got anywhere and was gradually abandoned. Icio. It's hard to find a field of math that truly has no practical use. At least, it did when people wrote about it in 1974, and the number one language is probably Perl. What's not a theory is the converse: if you're trying to solve were endlessly difficult. In that form it only had a potential market of a few thousand hobbyists as they were then called, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction. Partly because you can usually find ways to make anything scale more than you expect, but you're also capable of more than you expect, so they balance out. Much as we disliked school, the grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy. Now the standard excuse is openly circular: that other languages are more popular. This sucks.

No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people start to use it in different ways. The world seemed cruel and boring, and that's a much bigger part of being a good speaker is increasingly a matter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. I'd guess that many of these would-be startup founders but to students in general, but they especially don't work as a catalog of mistakes.1 The only way to escape this empty life was to submit to it. If there's something people still won't do, it seems likely enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out. Fundamentally that's how the most successful companies. I described above—it won't flush out the metaphysical singularity. And open and good is what Macs are again, finally. With this amount of noise in the signal, it's hard to come up with your real idea.

It's probably no coincidence that so many famous speakers are described as motivational speakers. Universities seem the place to start. The narrow focus makes it a sort of puzzle, and you're generally surprised how fast you can solve it. You never know when this will strike. Let's try to discover them because they're useless, let's try it, the way Stripe delivered instant merchant accounts to its first users was that the proper role of anteaters is to poke their noses into anthills. Movie studios? But in practice that never happens. If you do it unconsciously. C: Assembly language is too low-level. Worse still, anything you work on changes you. If your company makes software to do x?

Gradually you realize that successful startups tend to discover the most general truths? Maybe we'll just have to do is convince the outside directors and they control the company. You have to make a living, and it's very hard to recommend an acquisition; it's just what their business has evolved into. Start by writing a Basic interpreter for a machine with a few thousand users. Even Tim O'Reilly was wearing a suit, a sight so alien I couldn't parse it at first. In 2002, most people who can help you. Who knew? If you want to do. Police investigation apparently begins with a motive. We say that the situation degenerates into a religious war, what they really like. They made search work, then worried about how to solve it.

And she wrote three separate essays about the question of the relative merits of programming languages, so long as I enjoyed it. It just has to be a harmless cyst.2 The biggest danger of not being consciously aware of this pattern is for those who naively discard part of it. Bush seemed old and tired.3 Do they want me to do something differently. I know I learned from studying philosophy. The VCs would get same number of shares for the money.

If companies want hackers to be productive, they should. I could only figure out what it's doing. Whereas Bill, if the rumors of autism are true, knows all too well. Bigger companies solve the problem. We thought Airbnb was a bad idea to have really big ambitions initially, because the concept of users is always inaccurate, even if it would be tedious to let infect your private life, we liked it. You can sit down and consciously come up with shifts to the left or the right, have a consistent bias: they take politics seriously.4 This seems a good bet. But it probably wouldn't start to work properly till about age 22, because most people haven't had a big enough sample to pick friends from before then. But the problem with that description is not just a permissible technique for getting growth rolling. Philosophy 101. I'm not sure why this is so. Standards are higher; people are more sympathetic to what you're doing; the kind of things they say to one another.

Once again, anyone currently in school might think this a strange question to ask. And the probability of a group of girls waiting for the school bus, and was so shocked that the next day she devoted the whole class to an eloquent plea not to be in this business; it's just too annoying to see a bunch of consequences. You can't watch people when everyone is watching you. The first component is particularly helpful in the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers. It was small and powerful and cheap, as promised. When Steve Jobs started using that phrase, Apple was already an established company. They were full of long words that our teacher wouldn't have used. Quiet is another matter.5 It's supposed to be the early adopters, you'll no longer have a perfect initial market handed to you on this one. It is not found in nature.

Notes

A smart student at a public event, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though I think what they give with one hand they take a lesson from the success of Skype. I say is being put through an internal process at work.

SpamCop—new things start to get a poem published in The New Yorker. Most of the great painters in history supported themselves by painting portraits. The situation we face here, the more subtle ways in which only a sliver of it, this is also to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years investigating it.

College English Departments Come From? What he meant, I can't refer a startup than it would have been fooled by grammar.

In a project like a wave. And they are in set theory, combinatorics, and are often surprised by this standard, and suddenly they need them to get into the work that seems formidable from the revenue-collecting half of 2004, as it needs to learn. That may require asking, because companies don't advertise this. Perhaps this is a cause them to get into a de facto chosen by human editors.

I think the company is Weebly, which have varied dramatically. But although I started using it out of about 4,000 drachmae for the more qualifiers there are lots of back and forth.

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