#Language Introduction

[polyglot-thought]

Critically Endangered Language Introduction:

Ainu Language

アイヌ・イタㇰ

Photos provided by AMNH

Some information about the Ainu language:

It’s critically endangered, meaning there are very few native speakers left, who are also elderly, and young people are not picking up the language. Ainu doesn’t have its own original writing system, so Latin script and a modified version of Katakana are used. For this post I will be using both Latin and Katakana script. You can read more about the Ainu language and people on Wikipedia, here and here.

Example Words & Phrases ↓

Provided by Wikitravel at this link

Irankarapte

イランカラㇷ゚テ

Hello/Nice to meet you

E=iwanke ya?

エイワンケ　ヤ？

How are you?

Ku=iwanke, iyairaykere

クイワンケ、イライライケレ

Fine, thank you

E=re hemanta ya?

エレ　ヘマンテ　ヤ？

What is your name?

K=ani anakne ______ ku=ne

カニ　アナㇰネ　_____　クネ

My name is ______ .

E

エ

Yes

Somo

ソモ

No

Amerika-itak

アメリカイタㇰ

English Language (literally: “America Language”)

Kunne

クンネ

Black

Retar

レタㇻ

White

Katuwa

カツ゚ワ

Grey

toy-haru

トィハル

(fresh) vegetables

nikaop

ニカオㇷ゚

(fresh) fruit

Please correct me if I made a mistake

[welcometogrouchland]

I understand that literature nerd Jason Todd is kind of overblown in fanon compared to it's actual presence in canon (a few issues during his pre (and post?)crisis Robin tenure that highlight it) BUT consider that I think it's hilarious if the unhinged gun toting criminal has strong opinions on poetry

[gailyinthedark]

Very legit description of the Tower of Babel incident in my Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European

[onigiri-studies]

✩ Langblr introduction ✩

✩ About me ✩ 

My name is Emilija :)

24 - she/her

I love reading, writing, embroidery

✩ Languages I speak ✩

German

English

Croatian

Serbian

✩ Languages I want to learn ✩

Dutch

Russian

French

Spanish

Italian

✩ How I learn languages ✩

Free online textbooks and other free resources (because I'm on a budget)

Listening to podcasts/watching TV shows/movies

Reading books

✩ Goals ✩

Reach level C2 in German

Reach level C2 in English

Start learning Dutch

✩ Why I created this blog ✩

To share my content with others

Keep myself motivated

Make friends and exchange advice

Feel free to leave a message if you want to talk or if you have any questions!

[breha]

claudia’s birth allows louis to believe that he and lestat have become The Parents (equal status) and so the teacher-student power dynamic has gone away, but really it’s just been repressed and it comes up again like wack-a-mole

[swordheld]

from the introduction to "the sovereign sun" selected poems by odysseus elytis, trans. and introduction by kimon friar. [id in alt text]

[asyastudieskorean]

10.10.2024 — 안녕하세요! I realize I never made any sort of introduction on here, so here goes a short and simple one!

저는 에샤입니다~ It’s pronounced like Asia~ 한국어를 공부하고 있어요. 저는 온라인 수업 대학교에서 공부해요. 저는 25살이에요. 그리고 워싱턴에서 살아요. 네, 저는 Twilight life 정말 살아요. ㅋㅋㅋ

커피, 케이팝, 드라마들, 웹툰, 비, 매운 음식, 그리고 글쓰기 좋아해요. 언젠가 드라마를 쓰고 싶어요. 그게 제 꿈이에요.

저는 대학교에서 1년 동안 한국어를 공부했지만 아직 잘 못해요. 그래서 친구들과 함께 한국어를 연습하고 싶어요. 정말 싶어요! 😭🙏🏻

If you are a Korean student or studying Korean and want to practice messaging in Korean together, please always feel free to message me on Tumblr (seriously please feel free, lol). No pressure, as I am a beginner with only basic knowledge right now. Maybe I’d be okay with voice messaging in the future, too. We could also ask each other study questions, talk about Korean topics, etc. I’m really open to anything if it means practicing!

어쨌든, 만나서 반가워요! 화이팅 여러분~

[secret-life-of-9to5-polyglot]

Langblr & Studyblr introduction~

Hi everyone ✨

I am not so kinda new around here, but wanted to create a new study blog from scratch to document my polyglot journey

About me:

Michelle, but pls call me Mish

Italian 🤌🏻🍕🍝

26 - infj - aries

she / her ; taken

currently working as a junior sales back office

completed BA & MA in languages and cultures for international cooperation // focus: eng & jpn

Languages I speak / study:

ita : native + my local dialect

eng : C1/C2 + major

spa : spain spanish B2

fra : B1-ish??

jpn : B2/C1

kr : A2

ch : mandarin chinese, complete beginner

Current focus:

JLPT N2 on Dec. 2024 // jpn

Blog goals:

find new study friends

connect with the community

document my study & polyglot journey

find new interesting resources & methods

Let’s be friends 🩷

[doseofarabic]

Dose # 1 - Introduction

Facts about the language

It’s a Semitic language, which is a branch of languages that includes languages like Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic and Hebrew among other languages.

It has millions speakers worldwide. People usually refer to 22 countries as “the Arab world” but I personally prefer to talk about “Arabic speaking countries” since it gives a better representation of the countries that speak the language and have Arabic as one of the official languages which are 25 countries in the Western part of Asia as well as Northern Africa.

The 25 countries are: Saudi Arabia, Chad, Algeria, Comoros, Eritrea, Djibouti, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Bahrain, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

People might want to learn for a variety of reasons, whether it is to live in an Arabic speaking country or environment, for work purposes, or for religious purposes. Muslims Arabic holds a special place since it is the language of the Holy Quran.

Variations

Since many regions speak the language. There are a lot of variation in the language which I try to summarize.

To put it simply, on one hand we have the Standard Arabic, which is the formal Arabic. The older variation of Standard Arabic is Classical Arabic, among is the Holly Quran which is the most eloquent, inimitable form of Arabic.  

Here is a small post I made about MSA and Classical Arabic.

I will focus on the modern variant of Standard Arabic which is “Modern Standard Arabic”, or MSA. Nowadays, this variant is used in official correspondence, books, magazines and writings in general. It is important.

There are also dialects which are the “spoken Arabic”, each region has their own dialects but they are usually grouped per region and similarities:

Gulf dialects; Levantine dialects; Maghreb dialects; Nile Valley and Egyptian

Some dialects are not within these groups per se but they are somewhat close like Yemeni and Iraqi (which I would associate with the Gulf dialects).

I could also place Djibouti, Somalia, Mauritania and Chad in a separate category as well

These groupings over simplify the variety of the dialects but it’s to make the concept closer to understand especially for those who are not familiar with it. I spoke about dialects in a post I made a where I tried to provide an explanation for the difference in dialects, if you’re interested read it [here].

Usually, people learn Arabic to be able to speak a certain dialect, I recommend studying the standard Arabic first or at least having some sort of knowledge before delving into the dialects.

In my lessons, I will focus on Modern Standard Arabic, but I do make dialectal posts on my blog as well which can be found [here].

Arabic alphabets

Arabic is written from right to left, and the letters connect to form words. The letters are read as they are written in 99.9% of the cases, except for only very minor exceptions. It's also very phonetically consisentent, very similar to Spanish for example when comapred to English were different letters can be read differently according to the word.

Arabic has 28 letters, and because the writing connects the words together to form sentences, each letter can be written in 4 ways: the isolated form, the initial form (how it would look like if it came at the beginning of the word), medial form (how it would look like if it was in the middle of the word), and finally, the final form (how it would look like if it were at the end of the word).

However, it is important to note that not all letters connect with other letters, for example, the letters (ا / د / ذ  / ر  / ز / و) do not connect to each other, and only connects if the other letters in the alphabet comes before it.

The Arabic letters are simple, and many letters resemble one another, I usually refer to letters that are similar as “sisters”. The resemblance in shape doesn’t necessarily mean that the sounds are similar though.

There are two types of vowels, short vowels or harakat, and these are the diacritics or little accents that can be found on top of each letters; and long vowels or mudood which are three letters ا   (which makes the sound “aah” ), و   (which makes the sound of “oo” like “pool” ) and ي   (which makes the sound “ee” like feel). Usually, when talking about “vowels” people are referring to the long vowels.

The vowel is twice as long as the haraka but it has the same sound.

Grammar & vocabulary

Arabic is a very well structured language, and it has a very consistent grammar, exceptions are not very common and it’s very logical.

A notable thing to note about Arabic grammar is that first of all, there are grammatical cases, like Turkish and German for example.

This means that the end of the word changes according to its role in a sentence. In the case of Arabic, the harakat of the end of the word changes depending on the place and role it plays in a sentence.

So don’t be surprised when you see the same word ending with different harakat. Because it is a language that has this grammatical case system, the sentence structure is flexible.

For example تُوتُ  (berries) is the same as تُوتَ  and تُوتِ . The difference here is the place in the sentence.

Another thing is that Arabic has a root system, most words have a root (most likely made up of three letters), the root has a certain meaning and all the derived words will contain the same three letters of the root as well as a certain meaning that is carried with the derivation.

For example the word كَتَبَ  is the root and it means “to write”, we derive words like كَاتِب  (writer or author) مَكْتُوب (written) and كِتَاب (book) and مَكْتَبَة (library). If you know the verb (root) it’ll be easy to guess the meaning of the word or have a guess on what the word is about.

Arabic letters : how are they arranged?

There are two ways that the letters in Arabic are arranged, the first one is called التَّرْتِيب الأبجَدِيُّ   attartīb alʾbǧadiy. This is the old order of the letters, it was based on the order of the letters in Semetic languages, the order is also used in numbers (similar to roman numerals, how a letter can have a numerical value like (i) which is the number a).

This order is still used when making lists, for example if you’re saying point a) point b) , people are more likely to use this order.

For point c) in Arabic people will say ج)  and not ت.

The letters are grouped in these words, in this same order

أبجد هوز حطي كلمن سعفص قرشت ثخذ ضظغ

التَّرْتِيبُ الهِجَائِيَ attartīb alhiǧāʾiy is an order that was later introduced. This order arranges words in the alphabet according to the similarities between the way the letters are drawn. It’s the one used when studying Arabic.

This is the order of these letters

أ ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن هـ و ي

For simplicity’s sake, I suggest focusing on the second order, but it’s good to know that it’s not the only one.

I hope this has been an interesting introduction to read!

Homework

Complete this small quiz to measure how much you understood from this lesson

Next lesson : we will study the different harakat and vowels.

[teddybeartoji]

why in the fuck is my native langue so weird please how come i feel more comfortable writing in english than in estonian lmao

[polyglot-thought]

Critically Endangered Language Introduction:

Chulym

Ӧс тили

Some information about the Chulym language:

It’s critically endangered, meaning there are very few native speakers left, who are also elderly, and young people are not picking up the language. In writing, Chulym seems to use Cyrillic and or IPA and Latin script. You can read more about the Chulym language and people on Wikipedia, here and here; and on Living Tongues here.

Example Words & Phrases ↓

Provided by Living Tongues at this link, Cyrillic transliteration by me (which may be inaccurate)

по могалак тур-убул

po moɣalak tur-ubul 

this bear is standing (there)

мӕн ал-лик-им палик

män al-lɨk-ɨm palɨk 

I will take (some) fish

иштен-ник-им

iʃten-nik-im 

I will work

көр-бык-тер

kør-byk-ter

they won’t see

Please correct me if I made a mistake

[slightly-sad-sloth]

Little fandom vent; sometimes I get annoyed at the way fandom reduces Damian down to stabby child who only cares about himself and does murder. Like yeah while I get fandom almost always reduces characters down to their funniest or snappiest traits Damian's just doesn't make sense.

Like his whole character is about how much he DOESNT want to be those things.

Damian cares so so so much about other people he just struggles to express it bc it takes a lot for him to trust someone enough to believe they're not going to pull the rug out from under him or betray him somehow. If he didn't care about other people he wouldn't have spent months trying to find Martha's pearls in the sewer, risking his life bc there was a bounty on his head at this point and further ruining his image with Bruce (who thought Damian was just sneaking off and putting himself in danger). He wouldn't have denounced the league and everything he knew to protect a man he'd met less than a year ago. He wouldn't have purposely failed a timed test as Robin to get across the city as fast as possible (a test that would've allowed him to go out alone as Robin and given him more independence one of things Damian values very highly) instead he went over the allowed time by more than 10 hours BC he helped old women with their shopping and walked women home after they were robbed and he sat with a man he saw crying in his apartment for more than 2 hours just having tea with him. I could go on and on about all the genuinely kind things he does bc Damian's empathy and kindness is one of his defining traits actually.

And yeah he used to kill people and he was more prone to violence than the other Robins but he was literally raised in an environment where his worth and by proxy his survival was tied to how well he did murder. I'm pretty sure if you raised any child in an environment where since they were born they were rewarded for killing and violence but punished for showing mercy and told them that it's for the greater good, that they're special and that there's nothing wrong with killing if the ends justify the means they'd end up the same.

Not to mention Damian fights so hard to not be violent bc he doesn't want to be, the people Damian admires most in the world (Dick and Jon) both based their entire personality around Superman (also it's confirmed Supes is his fav justice Leaguer in supersons). Damian wants to be like them so bad and wants to be kind and outgoing and as pacifist as you can get as a vigilante. Damian struggles so much to be that person but it's not as easy as just stopping when you've been conditioned your whole life that killing is the right move and that your worth as a person and the love of those around is dependent on you doing it. He literally keeps a sketch book where he just draws out all the intrusive violent thoughts he gets while fighting villains to get the anger and compulsion out so that he DOESN'T do those things. And Damian feels immensely guilty about all of his past murders which is shown over and over. When he kills no-body (an action he did to protect Bruce) he asks Bruce afterwards how he's supposed to make amends, how he's supposed to live with it.

Which leads me onto the other thing (and hopefully the last cause wow this is getting long) even Damian at his absolute worst only performs extreme violence out of either self defense or logic to him. He doesn't do it out of maliciousness (or at least that isn't the motivating factor). His worst actions were probably in his introduction where he 1) He accosted Alfred and stole the key to exit the batcave 2) Decapitated a villian 3) Attacked Tim

So let's get background on these events from Damian's pov. Damian has never been told who his father is and has to duel his mother every year on his birthday for the chance to find out. And then on his 10th birthday he wins and then that same night he's taken on a plane to go live with this man who he's told about on the plane ride over, then his first impression of him is Bruce fighting a bunch of manbats. His mother says she's leaving him with him indefinitely not telling him when she'll be back. And then this man who he only found out about hours beforehand takes him on another plane to a foreign country where he knows no-one and he finds out his father has other children as well. He's then locked in a small room adjoining a fucking cave full of weapons and told virtually nothing with no-one really talking to him except for them telling him that oh yeah everyone you know and trust is evil and your whole world view is wrong. And then when he yells at Bruce and has what's honestly best described as a temper tantrum (BC oh yeah he was literally 9 years old until a couple hours ago) Bruce in a bid to try and control his anger (since he's not sure how dangerous he is yet) uses league tactics on Damian telling him that he's dishonouring those who taught him. So the literal child whose spent his 10th birthday being flown around the globe to be a dumped in a foreign country with a man he's never met and only knows is a good fighter with a family consisting of an unknown amount of other allies who are similarly trained and then was locked in a room after being told his whole life is a lie might be forgiven for latching onto the only familiar thing here and going 'oh! Now I know how this works'

With the knowledge that Damian definitely decided from this conversation that the bats operate the same as the league it's pretty clear his reasoning is

1) Accosting Alfred and and stealing the key - a) I don't think you'd wanna be locked in a space by a bunch of strangers either no matter how nice the space is b) he probably assumed it was a challenge to see whether he was able to break out and a way they were testing his worth/ability

2) Decapitated a villian - once again assuming this is a test and trying to prove his worth/help his father in the mission to stop crime he was just told about

3) attacked Tim - a) Damian assumes that since Tim is home that he must be the current favourite and it's already known that in the league the way you replace someone is by killing them thus proving you were better than them. B) in the league if you were not the favourite/the best you were disposable c) the only way Damian knows how to earn/receive love is by performing violence, it's pretty reasonable that a 10 year old would try to go above and beyond to earn their new father's love (especially for a child like Damian whose always looking for that unconditional love he's been denied)

From Damian's perspective here he's being the best son anyone could want, he's doing the most past the point he'd be expected to and only being met with anger and disgust. Not to mention that from his view he's literally ensuring his safety since once again in the league Damian was one of the only people whose safety was ensured by proxy of him being the heir/favourite, we literally see them kill other leaguers as part of training.

Like this isn't to excuse what he did or say it's right but it is to point out that it WAS right from Damian's point of view and that he doesn't do what he does out of malice or blood thirst he's just a small child who quite literally didn't know any better.

(also him being mean is similarly a self defense thing, it's fairly common in abused kids. It's the logic of you can't hurt me if I hurt you first/you can't hurt me if I don't let you get close enough)

[emotinalsupportturtle]

Authors who use medical jargon to make their prose more sophisticated are so funny to me.

[palacholic]

Storytime

So...it's time to introduce you to the wicked ways of my weirdness, to show you what it's like to be me, starting from the beginning...

Right now I'm in my first semester at Charles university, Prague. I've been living in the Czech republic for a few months now, I chose to move there right after finishing high school in my home country. I spent years preparing for my life abroad, studying the Czech language, taking care of all the formalities that are necessary to move to a new country, most of it by myself, getting to know the country that I consider my home and I wish to live in for the rest of my life.

Why all this? What made me take such an unexpected choice, leaving behind everything I knew, saying goodbye to my friends and family and to the life I could have had in my home country?

As you could probably guess from my username and the content on my blog, the answer is simple:

Jan Palach

Yes. That Jan Palach. The student who on 16th January 1969 set himself on fire in protest of the apathy and resignation of the Czechoslovak people following the soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. A guy who's been dead for over half a century.

I first heard about him during a time when I was struggling a lot with my mental health. His story gave me strength and hope, what he did reminded me that there are things worth fighting for, things worth living for. I know this sounds kinda paradoxical given that he died because of what he did but that's the point - he was willing to sacrifice his life because he wanted others to live in a better world. He didn't kill himself because he hated life, on the contrary he loved it.

I found something that gave me joy, something I liked doing - reading and watching everything I could find about him. I spent a lot of time researching him and loved every new detail I found out. I started researching him out of admiration for his act and became more and more intrigued by his personality, his interests, the things he believed in...I look up to him a lot. It's incredible how much this helped me getting better mentally and eventually healing from the worst of my mental issues. I started looking forward to the future again, especially after visiting the Czech Republic for the first time.

I came to Prague to pay my respects to Jan Palach, to visit the places where he lived, to say thank you...and fell in love with the city and Czech culture overall more than I expected. I met amazing people and had some of the best experiences of my life, and soon after I realised that moving to Czechia was the right thing to do. That I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't go through with it, that if I stayed in my home country I would never be as happy as I am now.

Two years later I finally packed my things and went on my way...as soon as I left the airport on my arrival I felt that I'd made the right choice and everything that happened since then only confirmed that feeling. Even the bad things. It's not always easy but it feels right, in a way that's hard to convey by words. I sometimes think about how crazy this all is but I'm so glad it happened. I'm thankful for everything I have now, my friends, my hobbies, my new home. I love it every day more. And I don't care how weird it is that all this started because of a guy who died more than half a century ago. Was it only a coincidence that I watched the news that day when they talked about him? Is there more to it? Who knows? Is it relevant? I don't think so.

I hope he'd be happy to know that he saved me and how much he means to me. If I could, I'd thank him for everything.

I started this blog to share my feelings and my journey as an expat in Czechia. You'll find memes, stories of a foreigner's life in Prague and of course a lot of history-related things. I'm happy to answer all your questions and tell you more. I hope to make new friends and find people with whom I can talk about my interests. I'm glad to be here and I love you all, I'm proud of y'all for being here too <3

this post took me waaayyyy too long to write and maybe I'll edit it again sometime in the future, if you read all of this I'm genuinely impressed, please tell me your thoughts in the comments or send an ask if you want to :)

[phasesandplaylists]

Hello whomever might read this,

I've been wanting to post on here for a while. With 2025 around the corner, I decided to use Tumblr to track my goals and document my progress. Hopefully, I'll figure out how to relate that with Twitter(X) and whatever platform helps one land a job these days.

Basic info:

I'm a writer.

My name's Chisom and I'm 25 years (26 next year). I'm Nigerian and a University graduate with a BSc in Computer Science/Statistics. I live in Nigeria.

Other tidbits:

I listen to basically any type of music, but Pop is my main genre.

Fandoms I belong to: Directioner, Nctzen, Potterhead, etc.

I'm currently studying Data Analysis with every intention to land a job in the field next year. Most of my posts will be in regards to studying.

Languages spoken: English, Hausa, Igbo, Spanish (intermediate)

Currently studying: Korean, Swahili, Chinese. Korean takes priority currently.

Song I currently have on repeat:

Nice to meet you♥️

[moeblob]

There was a post I saw about someone who mutually ghosted a guy after a date and kept matching with him and they're not interested but it's the longest "relationship" the person had been in at that point and I'm like. Karen would mutually ghost someone.

She doesn't really tell Brent/Right/Evelyn/Chris his name (he has a double first name, Patrick is not his last name) and just refers to him as "My Guy". Like "Ah damn, My Guy matched again. End my suffering." And when she tries to explain it to Right who does NOT understand how it's different, her logical answer is "it's my God given right to ghost a polite man!"

Also I just imagine her confiding in Paul about Rick and he's like "is his name Patrick" and she's like "kinda". And after that, Paul calls him "Pattycakes" cause he's never even seen the guy so why not give him a funny little nickname. He's allowed to do so at this point probably.