#Langblr

[wonderful-language-sounds]

Websites to learn languages by reading

Hyplern

Language Crush

Readlang

Vocab Tracker

[literaryvein-reblogs]

a few more commonly confused words

Afflict - to cause suffering or unhappiness (something a disease does) Inflict - to force pain or suffering (like if you smack someone) (Both cause pain)

Allude - to refer to something in an indirect manner Elude - to evade

Alone - no other person is with you Lonely - you are alone, and sad as a result

Amicable - a friendliness or goodwill between people or groups Amiable - friendly disposition

Arise - happen or occur Rise - to go up

Assent - refers to agreement Ascent - a climb

Aver - to affirm Avow - to openly declare

Correlation - a relationship Corollary - more like a consequence

Disassemble - to take something apart Dissemble - to hide your true self

Discreet - under the radar, careful Discrete - individual or detached

Disinterested - unbiased; out of the loop Uninterested - don't give a hoot; bored

Disperse - to scatter Disburse - to pay

Eminent - famous Imminent - refers to something about to happen Immanent - inherent

Exalt - to glorify or elevate something Exult - to rejoice

Expedient - something helpful Expeditious - speedy

Extant - still here Extent - the range of something

Faze - to disturb, bother, or embarrass Phase - a stage or step

Fictional - literary Fictive - specific Fictitious - just plain fake

Imply - to hint at something Infer - to make an educated guess

Ingenious - smart and clever Ingenuous - innocent and naive

Insidious - something that lies in wait to get you Invidious - something offensive or defamatory

Loath - unwilling or reluctant Loathe - to hate

Morbid - describes something gruesome Moribund - the act of dying

Paradox - a logical puzzle that seems to contradict itself Oxymoron - a figure of speech—words that seem to cancel each other out (e.g., instant classic)

Parameter - a limit that affects how something can be done Perimeter - the outline of a physical area

Practical - sensible Practicable - possible

Pragmatic - you're practical Dogmatic - you follow the rules

Premiere - the first public performance of something Premier - the very best

Prescribe - to recommend Proscribe - to forbid

Rebut - to try to prove something isn’t true Refute - to actually prove it isn’t

Reluctant - resisting or unwilling Reticent - quiet, restrained, or unwilling to communicate

Sources: 1 2 ⚜ More: Writing Basics ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs ⚜ Part 1

[ruhua-langblr]

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

[salvadorbonaparte]

German Reading Comprehension: Memes my mum sent me

[alien-with-headphones]

learning another language is always beautiful, no matter how long it takes. like, what do you mean you are crying because you had to read a sentence twice to get it, when at the beginning you had to do it five times? kicking yourself because you had to listen to an audio at .75x to understand it fully, when two months ago you could barely understand one or two words, even at your second try? getting mad because you had to research how to spell a word, when a few days back you didn't even know how to pronounce it? hell, that's amazing. keep going. you'll get there.

[frenchiepal]

22.04.24. 💐🎻 🍎 the second week of the semester has started! so far every course has been really interesting :) i've also my violin practice longer and noticed progress practically immediately which is very motivating

[tayalla]

there's this word in Serbian 'vukojebina' which literally means 'the place where wolves go to fuck' but they use it to mean 'in the middle of nowhere'. it sure does the job well, but the visual stayed with me longer than I would have liked it to.

[indigostudies]

my friend and i were going to study a language together and wound up having to cancel our plans due to scheduling pressures, but! through research we came across a really cool resource for reading in a TON of languages: bloom library!

as you can see, it has a lot of books for languages that are usually a bit harder to find materials for—we were going to use it for kyrgyz, for example, which has over 1000 books, which was really hard to find textbook materials for otherwise. as you can see it also has books with audio options, which would be really useful for pronunciation checking. as far as i can tell, everything on the site is free as well.

[wittywords]

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞

A sample of participants in research selected on the basis of their accessibility rather than their representativeness.

[victusinveritas]

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Another List of "Beautiful" Words

to include in your next poem

Avidulous - somewhat greedy.

Breviloquent - marked by brevity of speech.

Compotation - a drinking or tippling together.

Crimpy - of weather; unpleasant; raw and cold.

Desiderium - an ardent desire or longing; especially, a feeling of loss or grief for something lost.

Dyspathy - lack of sympathy.

Ebriosity - habitual intoxication.

Epitasis - the part of a play developing the main action and leading to the catastrophe.

Fantod - a state of irritability and tension.

Graumangere - a great meal.

Grimoire - a magician's manual for invoking demons and the spirits of the dead.

Hiemal - of or relating to winter.

Illaudable - deserving no praise.

Impluvious - wet with rain.

Innominate - having no name; unnamed; also, “anonymous”.

Juberous - doubtful and hesitating.

Noctilucous - shining at night.

Poetaster - an inferior poet.

Psychrophilic - thriving at a relatively low temperature.

Quiddity - the essential nature or ultimate form of something: what makes something to be the type of thing that it is.

Repullulate - to bud or sprout again.

Retrogradation - a backward movement.

Semiustulate - half burnt or consumed by fire.

Tenebrific - causing gloom or darkness.

Unparadiz’d - brought from joy to miserie.

If any of these words make it into your next poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

More: Lists of Beautiful Words ⚜ Word Lists ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[i-wanna-study]

I have three days left before my entrance exam. I didn’t study much today, but I’ll try my best to complete at least one English book.

[mediocrelanguagelearner]

Þingvellir, Iceland, April 2025

Probably my favourite place I’ve seen on Iceland, a national park with a long history. For some reason I was really taken by the atmosphere of the place and my imagination was running wild. We were lucky and there were almost no other people so we got to enjoy the place in peace and quiet.

[spanishskulduggery]

Hi! is there any word for a furnace besides el horno? Oven and furnace are the same word? is there a more specific maybe regionalism used? Or is it Just determined through context use? Thank you!

To the best of my knowledge it's usually el horno which does mean "oven" and "furnace" - sometimes it's the diminutive el hornillo

See the issue here is that English has more variation, but horno is related to the word forno which is "furnace" but also an "oven" [the word "oven" is most likely more Germanic rather than "furnace" which is Latin]

There are specific types of horno for different things like sometimes el alto horno is a "blast furnace" for industrial things, and for pottery you might see it as el horno (seco) which can get translated as "kiln"

The only other word I know of that is sometimes translated as "furnace" is that la caldera can be "boiler" like the hot water maker, though it literally means "cauldron"... but that's specifically for hot water as far as I know, not a furnace in the general sense. It's the part of the tank that boils water and releases it or releases steam, not the heating mechanism itself which is usually el fogón

-

If you're talking about furnaces like for a steamship, the word is typically either el fogón or el hogar

el fogón which literally means "big fire" is a firepit or it can be a chamber that creates heat [fogonero/a "stoker" was someone who shoveled coal into the furnace for example]; today you usually see el fogón in relation to appliances like a heating mechanism or a burner on a stove, or it can be another word for "campfire" [the other word is la hoguera which can be "bonfire"]

The general word is el hogar - which you will know as "home", but it literally means "hearth" - see el hogar used to be written with an F, and it's directly related to fuego; hogar meant "the place fire is kept" so it meant the hearth, and came to mean a building that could keep you warm and then euphemistically came to encompass bringing people around a fire until you get the idea of "home"

Depending on context, el hogar can be a type of oven itself

...

All these words, el hogar, el fogón, la hoguera... it's all related to el fuego "fire" etymologically

[sympathischeufos]

Ich hab letztens noch gesagt "es wäre sozial desaströs, aber linguistisch brauchen wir eine deutsche Entsprechung für 'bless your heart'"

Ich bin ja Deskriptivist und finde Sprachwandel und Fremdwörter total in Ordnung aber manchmal denke ich auch wir könnten ruhig mehr "eigene" Wörter benutzen oder erfinden. Muss ja nicht so lächerlich staatlich geregelt werden wie bei den Franzosen aber manchmal höre ich das neuste englische Wort der Woche und denke so. das könnten wir besser.