#Im not good at decoding

[charmbb]

Something that's been scratching my brain is like

Who's talking to Ralph in this scene? I know Johnny is calling out to Ralph to check on him bc he sees him fall, but I have no clue what this sentence says.

Is it Zimforth or is Johnny saying something??

[littlecrittereli]

Guys.. guys... guys.....

Guys I just finished writing the last chapter of Decoded...

IM SO SAD RN I DONT WANT IT TO END BUT IT HAS TO END BUT OAUHDAHR R R T G GRR GUYS

[stormingfrost]

ITS HERE

[atthebell]

do you have any recommendations/resources to learn spanish?? i've been using busuu for about 104 days now, imo opinion it's actually pretty fun and i like it but i think my main problem with it is that it goes too fast?? it's hard to explain. it's also started to feel kinda repetitive to me. i still love busuu and i'm going to continue with my course, but it'd be nice to also have something else. like, preferably not an app, maybe a textbook or a website or something :D i don't really WHERE to find resources for language learning, despite being bilingual, i never really had to look on the internet to learn the languages i speak now, i picked it up from the people around me you know?

i've also been ''using'' duolingo but tbh, i really hate it. it feels boring to me, everyday it's ''ok what sentence am i going to be forced to write for the 40th time today?'' the single 'square' has 5 lessons and a 'unit' has around 10-8 of those squares and to finish a 'unit' you have to do about 50-45 of those lessons, which is shit because a 'unit' is only going to teach about 3 sentence structures and if you're lucky maybe 5. it's so shit, those greedy fuckers basically made it unusable. i've been using for about 140 days now, every single day i take at least one lesson, and it STILL has not taught me a SINGLE spanish tense. btw, i even had an entire phase where i would finish UNITS in about an hour and a half (1 min or less for every lesson) and still not a single ''pretérito Indefinido'' actual pain 🫠🫠 one day ll delete that app, one day (i guess that's why i like busuu in the first place, it actually teaches you these tenses and even some slang while duolingo makes you write ''papá, quiero visitar a nuestra abuela'' for the 700th time this week)

i want to watch vods and stuff, but tbh, i feel way too embarrassed? like, i don't know enough spanish to really understand them and even when they say basic sentences that i understand, i still have to listen to it multiple times and slow down the clip for me to really get it. the thing with spanish is that i'll understand the meaning of the words being said but i need to take a second or so to really comprehend what they mean together you know? i don't want to have to watch the stream slowed down because that would definitely make me feel stupid 😭 maybe when i have better spanish i'll start watching vods. although i do listen to spanish songs sometimes, it's fun :D

first thing: you don't have to feel embarrassed about needing time to process things/needing to listen to things slowed down. language learning is difficult and there are a lot of obstacles for many people; this is something i do understand and want to stress that i get that it's hard. you are not a bad person or an idiot or whatever for having a hard time understanding things-- you are still learning, and besides that, sometimes hearing things isn't someone's strong suit (it absolutely did not use to be mine, but i've practiced a lot and gotten much better at it. i'm still much much better at reading text in other languages, but it is something you can always improve on). if you need to take extra time to watch things, that is not a personal fault of yours nor does it make you stupid. everyone has different skill sets, and you can always practice to get better.

second thing: my own criticisms of both busuu and duolingo, along with their strengths. duolingo first, because i've used it since like. idk like 2016? not consistently but i've used it far more over the years and i'm very familiar with various changes they've made and the esp, ptbr, and french courses. busuu ive only been using for a few months

to get it out of the way, the recent change to laying off translators and using more AI in lessons. this sucks, obviously, for a myriad of reasons. machine translation cannot match with human translation, and frankly never will be able to. there are vast amounts of nuance and cultural context necessary for translation, along with the fact that an AI led course does not actually hit on all the things someone needs, particularly on a basics/foundational level. and from an ethical standpoint, laying off a ton of human translators because you think you can replace them with inaccurate machine translation sucks and is why so many people have dropped duolingo, myself included.

duolingo also has limitations in terms of format-- it gamifies language learning, which can make it feel more accessible to people and makes people want to open it and practice every day. however, most people use duolingo to do one lesson once a day and that's it. they're not getting in practice from lessons previously completed, they're not drilling vocab or conjugations, they're not actually maintaining or even remembering what they've already learned. obviously there are people (like myself, when i still used the app) who practice far more than that and continue to drill previous lessons, but that's not the majority, and it's not incentivized by the app. the paywalling of completing certain lessons and being able to drill error words also sucks for this reason. basically duolingo is not an ideal setup for actually maintaining knowledge once you go through it the first time and also the way the courses are laid out just. does not, imo, actually make sense. they rarely actually explain what they're trying to teach you and they don't get into enough detail on most concepts. and there is no incentive to review, which is hugely important. not an ideal situation for language learning, especially on its own.

my pros for duolingo: it gets you to practice daily. this is honestly what i use busuu for at this point-- when i get a notif for it, i open it up and flick through a lesson, but i also pull out a textbook or two to look at things there and practice stuff. if whipping out duolingo every day helps you practice a language, that is, at bare minimum, something. preferably you should be studying for at least 15min if not up to an hour or more of a language a day in order to really pick things up and maintain them; you can absolutely use duolingo or busuu for that (busuu i think is far less well formatted and oftentimes the lessons are very specific vocab, at least in the later courses).

for busuu, my issues are like. it's a poorly made imitation of duolingo, aside from a few things. the community aspect is something i REALLY like-- being able to send an exercise to a native speaker and get feedback on what to work on is great, especially with how it's a short answer question that lets you form your own sentences and try out vocab in context. that's a wonderful feature, and i really think it gets at something duolingo is completely missing.

but yeah like i said in terms of the lessons, busuu has very strange ways of teaching things. firstly, it's usually super specific topics and vocab that aren't paired with anything conceptually that helps you progress. usually in a language course, it's best to pair a concept you're working on with either relevant vocab or something that can be used to talk about similar subjects/in similar ways (for instance, subjunctive with food/restaurant vocab, so that you can build sentences both with the new vocab and using the new verbal form in ways that make sense, i.e. "I'll have whatever she's having, If I were to order the pasta, I would get a salad too," "If I were richer, I would always order filet mignon" (side note subjunctive is very difficult for eng speakers so idk if these examples actually make sense 😭))

also busuu will repeatedly teach me something phrased one way or with a certain word and then mark me wrong and insist i use a completely different word/phrase. i cannot figure out why it keeps doing this it's very frustrating. and it has recently been teaching me some european portuguese which is not what the course is supposed to be so i'm just baffled by what's going on there.

another positive for busuu, at least in contrast to duolingo, is it teaches you the vocab and phrases before quizzing you on them, which duolingo does not do. this is like a positive and also an "eh, idk" because i get why duolingo does that-- it's trying to throw you into using surrounding context to figure out what a word means, and that's a very good way to practice, but i think it doesn't necessarily achieve it well and sometimes will just spring random words on you without enough context for you to know what it's referring to without just clicking on the word anyway.

also neither app are good at teaching you verb conjugation or tenses which is really unfortunate for spanish and portuguese in particular, as they're both languages where verbs are really really key AND where understanding tenses and their names are important, particularly for native eng speakers who never got taught tense names or like. any terminology for languages in english 🙃

also here is a thing i wrote up complaining about duolingo & verbs ages ago: Duolingo does not teach you things explicitly. It expects you to pick them up in a semi-immersive style, which works okay most of the time for most people but for many people makes actually learning and understanding parts of a language very difficult. For instance, it won't teach you the exact difference in usage between ser and estar, in Spanish or Portuguese. This difference is something I spent weeks on in Spanish class in high school and continued to review the rest of my time learning Spanish in an academic setting-- it is a key element of two of the most important words in the language. Duolingo also doesn't explain stem changes or irregular verbs and their typical endings-- it simply expects you to pick these up and memorize them through sentence usage. Basically it's very obvious Duolingo was created by english speakers who were never taught key elements of their own language (this is not a dig on their personal fault; i was also never taught any of this shit about english) and don't know how to go about teaching a language, and the limited format doesn't help.

third thing, finally getting to what you actually asked: there are a lot of resources for learning spanish online! i'm not as familiar with them as i'd like, as i learned spanish in an academic setting, but i'll do my best to list some things out and anyone else can feel free to add on. i've been meaning to make a language learning advice post for literally ages and i guess this is going to become it lmao.

here is a video explaining how to make duolingo work for you along with other resources: A Linguist explains how to make duolingo actually work (tl;dr pair duolingo with conversation partners, textbook work, listening to music, watching movies, etc. etc.)

i've tagged this with my language learning tag, which has a bunch of resources including some specifically for learning spanish.

tumblr user salvador bonaparte has a drive of free textbooks you can check out here, including a ton of spanish resources. i also recommend looking around the internet/specifically linguistics tumblr to find more resources as well as looking at used bookstores/amazon/etc. for spanish textbooks to use, as that will provide a more thorough foundation along with other programs/types of learning.

i've never used babbel or any other online program like it, but spanish tends to be one of the more resource-heavy languages because it's so widely spoken, so typically spanish programs on various apps/sites are REALLY thorough (duolingo's spanish program is by far their best course, with a ton more resources than most other programs. you can go up to the equivalent of at least c2 on there i believe, versus many other languages where they don't even list the CEFR levels)

finally, the not-so-online answer: if you're in college/have a nearby community/junior college, consider taking spanish classes there! this option probably costs the most out of any others, but i genuinely think an academic setting is the a great way to learn a language for many people. if you're not one of them, that is totally fine, but an actual spanish course at a college is likely to be the most thorough way to learn the language. also many CCs/JCs offer spanish classes online, so if you can't drive or for whatever reason can't go to in-person courses, you'll likely still have options.

this is everything i can think of right now but i also want to add once again that learning a language is difficult!!! i know that, and i know that i complain a lot about monolinguals, but i am specifically complaining about people who refuse to engage respectfully with languages that are not their own and dismiss anything they don't understand as being stupid/not worth their time/culturally worthless. i am not complaining about people like you, who are trying really hard to engage with non-english content AND are trying really hard to learn another language.

i also think learning languages is one of the most incredible experiences there are and that expanding the kinds of cultural and social boundaries that you engage with is a really important facet of humanity that i wish more people would participate in. i get riled up because this is something i'm really truly passionate about, not because i think anyone is stupid or whatever for not learning. i want people to just try it and give it a chance, even if it's hard for them, and i'm glad that you are trying, anon. <333

[moeblob]

I'm very glad someone adopted Tom Paris and Captain Janeway's salamander children from Emmy-award winning Star Trek Voyager episode Threshold, it wasn't fair to leave them on that planet

(The reptile kinda reminds me of them)

Im going to pretend like I know more words than "reptile" and say yeah! Agreed!

[cat-loving-elf]

:33 < MEW ARE SO CLAWLLLL !1!1!!1!1!-!1!-!!-!1!1! x33 xoD

tysm nepeta!! Bo)) i gotta admit, that if you had like a black hole of coolness then id be the damn singularity B))) also prolly gonna post sum mor fire wizzer lines later, so you better buckle up for a huge rollercoaster of coolness :]

[iced-souls]

Damn the gravity falls deciphering be getting me into a grind huh

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE HAS CIPHERS??? (Languages really but—)

ROTTMNT!!!!!!

Ok so i know someone’s probably made a thing like this already considering it’s been a while since both the rottmnt show and movie have come out, but I couldn’t find any with the searching strategy i was using (looking in the google photos section for something exactly 1 time),

So i decided to do the much easier way of deciphering that is struggling to do it myself!!! Yayyy!!!!!

Now the thing i was TRYING to decipher was this thing on the key:

I didn’t actually end up finding it in the end, BUT I DID FIND OTHER STUFF/ WILL TRY AGAIN ANOTHER TIME

And this is the part I actually find more interesting

On this image for the design of the key’s map thing there’s a bunch of krang letters in it

There’s a very blurry version of the krang alphabet, which imma show the image its found on later but point is—

The alphabet is blurry WHICH IS WHY SEARCHING THE ALPHABET THAT SOMEONE HAS CLEANED UP IS GOOD—

NO you’d be wrong if you thought that because I couldn’t find any that had all/ 100% accurate letters to this image, but there were ones that were semi-accurate so

Credit to this post for the clean thing,

looking at the clearer version plus comparing to the blurry but canon version, I was able to put together this

(Note: I forgot to write it but the faded one at the bottom left is a Q)

I don’t know if the random letters/numbers scattered around actually combine to mean something BUT

COWABUNGA

GYYAAAAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHA GOD DAMN WHY DID NO ONE SPEAK OF THIS TO ME

Frickin theories poppin in, PLEASE dont tell me them past warriors *cough* maybe travel back in time turts *cough* signed off the krang with a cowabunga, ITS ON THE RIM OF THE KEY TOO BRO—

ANYWHO, it may say cowabunga on the rim of the key BUT, the code i was trying to get is on both the bottom and back of the key SO

I now have more clear letters of the krang alphabet. There are more on the page where the alphabet is found which you’ll see i also deciphered at the botttom BUT putting everything together I got this:

Presumably. The letters the key design page gives you are all different “letters”, since none of them fully match with each other. Hell it’s probably just some rune/spell thing, maybe even individual words.I tried seeing maybe its simplified versions of the other language? Cant put together any words with that so far tho.. plus the big symbol seems strange to be on its own.

Anywho i’ve come up with 2 things in this, 1 they either said cowabunga in the past or the turtles were gonna go into the past, and 2 i am going down an unintended rabbit hole. Maybe imma try post an alphabet of me own haha.

Ok have fun with this should you not have already known!!!

[codecicle]

Do you know any good qsmp lore supercuts? I want to watch more qsmp content (since i've really only been following along with liveblogs; i only really watched wilbur's vods almost up to when the eggs were first supposed to disappear) but there's so much to watch and it doesn't all hold my attention.

https://youtube.com/@QSMPInfo?si=FUrtOTX89-XRWLvF

^^ this is the official qsmp lore recap channel!! honestly the best source I think you could get they condense so much of it so well. as for more recent stuff they haven't gotten to yet I'd recommend going on twitter (yeah i know I'm sorry 😔) and looking through your language of choices update accounts!! they're all run by official admins and have translated updates on every streamer per day. its a lot of lore but also liveblogging is how most people consume other lore, since there are people constantly streaming on the server. i look through the qsmp tag when i wake up in the morning and get home from school like a newspaper LMAO

typically I'd just suggest the twitter accounts, the recap channel, picking at least 2 or 3 different streamers to watch casually and looking through liveblogs. im a huge charlie guy obviously but I've literally never seen a cellbit stream before despite him being one of my favorite characters, I only know him through other streams and liveblogging. my spanish streamers don't stream on there anymore (cmon mariana and rubius D:) and so i mainly get Spanish updates from Spanish speakers on here!! point is you're doing great already LMAO just watch some of the recaps and look through the update accounts and you'll be fine.

(plus every stream they have to relay old information from one person to another so eventually you will get a lore info dump if you want to or not)

[tcba]

IM SO TALL!! CANT GET OVER ME!!!!!

IM SO LOW!! CANT GET UNDER ME!!!!!!!

[tiressian]

I miss you 🥺

[hollisofficial]

yk i was worried that watching aotd would diminish my insanity about metalocalypse bc i would finally have an ending, but i think it did the exact opposite. im about to be more autistic than ever<3 peace and love on planet piss

[fakebloodcapsule]

what if i die huh what about that

[zombieweek-g]

Shin ultraman was crazy good

[arkygifs]

Tom Hanks is so much more fun to me when he was just "main character of a trilogy of bad films where Ewan McGregor played a sexy priest once." Forrest Gunp who?

[callmedorkbecausethatsmyname]

decoded bill's arrest photo

input was irregular, used ttf fonts from input cryptogram codex

:)

[nomairuins]

o should proooobably stop for the night. <- puts on the next episode