#and in chinese once you learn the most common characters

[linghxr]

Advice I would give my past self about studying Chinese

Recently I've been reflecting on my Chinese learning journey and how far I've come. If I could go back in time, these are 10 things I would tell my past self. A few are specific to Chinese, but most can apply to any language

It will get so much easier to learn new characters. I remember feeling overwhelmed because learning new characters was a painful process. Now when I encounter a new character, I can remember it with relative ease—it’s just a new combination of familiar components.

Don't feel bad about having uneven development in different skills. My listening and reading are significantly stronger than my speaking and writing. It’s super common and nothing to be ashamed of.

The best way to get over being too embarrassed to speak is to experience some embarrassment and realize it’s not a big deal. I used to be so afraid of making mistakes that I would avoid speaking in class. It was only by being forced to speak that I got over it. I'm much better for it!

It’s impossible to learn everything, and time is limited. You have to prioritize. You probably don’t need to know how to say “pawnshop” in Chinese, and trying to jam your head full of 100 words you saw once won’t work. They won’t stick.

It will actually be harder to read pinyin than to read characters at some point. When I helped a friend with a script for her Chinese class, I really struggled because she had written it entirely in pinyin. I had to write out the characters to read without stumbling! I know characters are daunting for beginners, but trust me, you will get used to them.

If you haven’t practiced or learned something, of course you won’t be good at it. I remember feeling so frustrated trying to navigate Chinese websites for the first time. In retrospect, obviously, I was going to struggle with something completely new to me!

If something isn’t sticking, move on. Why waste time on a word that’s not clicking when you could be learning five new ones? It will only result in unnecessary frustration. So unless you need to know it for your class or a proficiency test, drop it and move on.

Don’t beat yourself up when you have trouble understanding music, literature, different accents, etc. These can be challenging even in your native language. Of course you’re going to struggle more in a new language.

It's worth it to pay attention to things like stroke order and tones from the start so you don't form bad habits. Don’t stress about get it perfect, but it’s easier to do it right the first time than to have to correct your bad habits in the future.

Instead of feeling overwhelmed by all that you don’t know, learn how to express yourself with what you do know. It’s truly its own skill that requires practice. After all, in life you can’t always stop and pull out a dictionary.

I started learning Chinese a really long time ago, but I became more serious about it in 2018, so 5 1/2 years ago. I'm very proud of how far I've come, but I still have a long way to go! I look forward to revisiting this post in another couple of years 😊

[tokidokitokyo]

四字熟語

四字熟語 (よじじゅくご) or yojijukugo are what are known as "four-character compounds" or "four-character idioms" in Japanese.

These contain four kanji, and the meanings of the individual kanji don't usually have much to do with the meaning of the idiom as a whole. But the meaning of the idiom often comes from a story which explains the derivation of the four characters used.

Like the rest of kanji, yojijukugo come from China. Yojijukugo come specifically from the Chinese Chengyu. However, there are many Japanese-only yojijukugo as well. Each yojijukugo represent the moral of a Chinese story, a Japanese proverb, Buddhist scripture, or an old Japanese story. Therefore to really understand the yojijukugo meaning, you would need to know the story behind it.

Estimates of the number of existing yojijukugo range upwards to 20,000 which is quite a lot of stories to learn. However, some are fairly straightforward and don't require a lot of information to understand the meaning. You can learn some of the most common ones without having to learn every story behind them.

Some Common 四字熟語

一期一会　いちごいちあい Once-in-a-lifetime encounter

一石二鳥　いっせきにちょう Kill two birds with one stone

一生懸命　いっしょうけんめい With utmost effort

温故知新　おん���ちしん Learning from the past

以心伝心　いしんでんしん Without the need for words

花鳥風月　かちょうふうげつ The beauties of nature

初志貫徹　しょしかんてつ Achieving one's original intention

質実剛健　しつじつごうけん Unaffected and sincere

十人十色　じゅうにんといろ To each his own

清浄潔白　せいじょうけっぱく Pure in heart and with a clean conscience

天真爛漫　てんしんらんまん Simple and innocent

日進月歩　にっしんげっぽ Steady progress

臨機応変　りんきおうへん Playing it by ear

These are just a few of the four-compound idioms that Japanese has to offer. What is your favorite yojijukugo?

[gwennafran]

Pale Lights, Book 2 chapter 44 - Reference sheet

I went a bit wild playing with clothing. You might even say I rather overdid it and made two dresses for Angharad. Whops. Not sorry.

Clothing rant below

Fortuna got a hat. Just because. Still rocking her Renaissance wear.

Tristan got late baroque clothing in the style I suspect Asphodel to favour for the simple fact that EE in book one said they had cravats as a big part of their local fashion. And that actually leaves a pretty slim thirty-year long window of fashion, when Word of EE also is that most fashion inspirations are from before 1700. You can actually see how tiny Tristan is in this overcoat. Variation with torn up coat and head injuries. I feel like it’s a universal tule that Tristan is to have bruises on his face at most time. I refuse to flat out add it as part of his character design, though.

Angharad seems to really like outfits that makes her shoulders and upper arms larger. The first one is an amalgam of several Baroque decades as well as pure fantasy. And I’m still not sure it’s quite right. The second one is pretty solidly Renaissance. Angharad also amusingly seems to cover up her chest a lot when given the choice. While gladly taking in the view when other women shows off that part.

Song is rocking a Mind dynasty inspired Chinese hanfu and hairdo. For once she gets to look slightly less controlled than the braid. I generally go with Mind Dynasty for Tianxi inspiration. As the other option for about the same time period has one of the worst male hairstyles in history. Mandated. On everyone.

Maryam got to show off some layers. I originally put a partlet on top of the dark cream jacket, because I figured she’d prefer covering up the otherwise rather revealing deep cut showing off a lot of skin. EE then added a shawl in the next chapter, so maybe I should remove the partlet? On the other hand, I think Maryam really prefer covering up a lot. She’s probably already displeased with the practical three-quarter sleeves. Also, this week I learned blue was one of the few colours that really took to linen. Blue linen aprons were as a result very common among the working class.   The pistol is hilarious. Maryam, you’re not subtle. At all. Even if you left the axe.

[mejomonster]

How did you learn Chinese, like did you use a specific program like Duolingo or did you take classes? How hard was it to read Priest's novels with where you were at in your language learning journey? I want to get back into learning (been wanting to since I watched The Untamed,) but I gave up about 8 months ago 😭

Hey ovo)/ so uh. That's a big question. I have a studyblr @rigelmejo so if you really want the full on journey lol its on there, steps i took and what I studied and progress and study tools I found and used and stuff I've linked for people.

For the shortest tip I can give you? Would be to check out the Heavenly Path site if you're interested in learning to read novels. You'll need to figure out your own way to study about 1000 common hanzi, basic grammar, and basic pronunciation (I link resources on rigelmejo), but after that point the Heavenly Path site has reading resources for graded reading, easier kids novels, easier manhua, webnovels by difficulty level, all the way up! So you can at that point just follow their recommendations and use reading tools they link (like Pleco and Readibu apps which I suggest you download asap - they include tools where you can click a chinese word when reading for translation and audio pronunciation and pinyin). So yeah at 1000 hanzi, just start reading from their suggestions! (Also consider downloading Bilibili Comics app as it has English and Chinese free manhua, so you can start reading manhua earlier, and youtube/viki.com learn mode and Any platforms with dual english/chinese subs and start trying to look up 1 word every 5 minutes or more as curious and practicing reading the chinese words in subs you've learned). I suggest you check out all pages on the Heavenly site, they link a ton of resources.

The short-ish version of what I did the first year I studied chinese? I fumbled a lot, read through an entire grammar guide summary in a few weeks here http://chinese-grammar.com/, watched some YouTube tone videos and went through a pronunciation guide here https://www.dong-chinese.com/learn/sounds/pinyin which took a week or two and I'd do it every few months, read through the book Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1-3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters by Tuttle publishing in about 2 months (I really liked their mnemonics to help me remember hanzi), started Ben Whatley memrise decks 1000 Chinese common words and 2000 common words (took about 2 weeks to finish one then I took a few months break then studied the other 1000, mainly focusing on studying new words and not reviewing until the last week if I had time - in retrospect I think learners would do better with the Chinese Spoonfed Anki deck but the memrise courses I used worked fine for me). I was watching cdramas as usual most weeks, English subs with the Chinese hardsubs on the video file like most youtube cdramas, with Google Translate app on my phone to look up a word every several minutes as curious. Once I was 3ish months in and learning the memrise Ben Whatley 2000 common chinese words, I read some Mandarin Companion graded readers in Pleco app then some more 300-600 word graded readers in Pleco. That gets me to like month 6ish. Then I started reading manhua and looking up words in pleco or Google translate when I needed to in order to grasp main idea overall (or was curious about a particular word). Kept reading graded readers in pleco.

Around month 8 I tried 天涯客 and 镇魂, both brutally hard. I was reading in Pleco in the Clipboard Reader (from websites) or the Reader tool (i bought it for like $20 dollars along with handwriting recognition, OCR, and expanded dictionaries). Mandarinspot.com has a good reading tool too that can add pinyin if you need it, and Readibu in some ways i prefer to Pleco depending on your particular reading needs on a given day. Tried a few easier webnovels, tried a pingxie fanfic 寒舍 which was hard but easier than priest novels (love that fanfic). I kept bouncing between webnovels then around month 10 天涯客 novels took about 1.5 hours to read through a chapter. At that point I brute force tried to read it or 寒舍 daily with 1 chapter a day, got 28 chapters in before i burned out with 天涯客 and 60ish chapters into 寒舍. It was about a year in. I cram studied 500 hanzi in some common hanzi deck with mnemonics I found on anki over a month, hoping if I improved vocab I'd read easier. I also was gradually trying to watch more cdrama with only chinese subs, around month 6 I finally watched Granting You a Dreamlike life full episodes with no eng subs (about 5-10 word lookups an episode), watched 15ish eps, then after that shows got less daunting to try watching.

A little over a year in Word of Honor came out and I watched it in chinese first because I was too impatient for eng subs. After that went decently I got braver about reading, tried Listening Reading Method (see @rigelmejo for those experiments), more stuff etc like extensive reading with no word lookups.

In retrospect I WISH I'd started with easier novels Heavenly Path recommended. However on the other hand? I've seen people who read their first cnovel with Pleco as early as 3-6 months in which blows my mind. So me picking hard novels to start isn't the Hardest thing in comparison lol. This past year (so at start of year 3 studying lol) I actually read like 10 things on Heavenly Paths easier recommendations and it helped immensely in filling in gaps in vocab and reading fluidity I had. So if you do pick a priest novel as your first novel and manage to chug through it without giving up, be aware "easier" novels may still have stuff you can learn later so don't rule them out as reading materials later on.

I've also seen people do literally no study except maybe some curious Google searches on hanzi or grammar or pronunciation, then brute force read novels in Readibu until they improved. A brutal way to do it but possible. (I really recommend at minimum learning hanzi are made of radicals though as it makes recognizing and remembering them so much easier).

I think the best thing I did for learning to read was just being Brave and Trying to read regularly. And it gradually got less hard.

[translations-by-aiimee]

Mistakenly Saving the Villain - Chapter 18

Original Title: 论救错反派的下场

Genres: Drama, Romance, Xianxia, Yaoi

This translation is the product of my limited knowledge of Chinese characters as I attempt to learn the language. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Buy me a Ko-fi ☕

Chapter 18 - Bankruptcy Crisis

Song Qingshi clasped his hands together and said to Yue Wuhuan devoutly, "My test subjects are here!"

Yue Wuhuan was confused for a moment and found that he was looking at six little white mice running around in the cage in his hand. He quickly and carefully placed the cage on the laboratory table and presented them: "Master, this was sent by the master of Night Rain Pavillion. Is it a rare spirit beast?"

"These are the mice I asked him to look for in the mortal world. It was hard to find these ones." Song Qingshi leaned on the table, looking at the cute little guys happily. He couldn't get enough of them, "Wuhuan, do you know this? Mice are 98% genetically similar to humans and are the most used experimental animals in medicine."

Yue Wuhuan opened his beautiful phoenix eyes wide and looked in disbelief at the dirty little mouse in the cage.

This thing is 98% similar to him?

"Now, these are only a few wild ones, and a large amount of breeding will be needed. Then we can cultivate various types of mice, clean mice, mice that don't carry diseases, sterile mice. . . maybe we can also breed high and low cancer-risk mice, diabetic mice, and so on.” As Song Qingshi talked about his beloved little white mouse, his face was radiant, and he didn’t care whether others could understand him or not. He continued muttering to himself, “It will probably take decades to cultivate, but fortunately, high-level cultivators have long lifespans, so I can raise them slowly. Is the breeding container ready? I’ll be living in the laboratory starting today. The mice are very delicate, and I don’t know if they can adapt to the environment of the immortal world. I want to make sure they won't have any trouble. It would be so good for them to have babies. This is the lifeline. . ."

He once had a senior sister who was doing experiments abroad, and the mice that had been cultivated for four years were about to produce results. When encountering setbacks, she was terrified and called every day to complain. Everyone persuaded her to give up the experiment and come back. She broke down and said her lifeline was here, and she wouldn't leave even if she died. Since then, the little white mouse has been nicknamed the lifeline in their laboratory.

Yue Wuhuan understood. He thought about the past rumours and asked tentatively: "Master, no matter how similar a mouse is, it's not a human being, and it's very troublesome to raise it. Why don't you use mortals to test the medicine? This is a common practice for pharmacists in the immortal world, right?"

"Of course, we need to use human beings," Song Qingshi replied casually, now satisfied with the mice. "We need to use mice and other animals to determine the safety of the drug before doing human trials. My teacher liked to try the drug on himself first and then recruit volunteers to try it after he determined that it was safe. I've also tried this several times to confirm its efficacy."

He especially admired his teacher, who was highly respected, incredibly humble and dedicated to public affairs, with a clean reputation. He only sought the well-being of mankind.

Hippocrates once said that medicine is the most beautiful and noble of all technologies.

If a new drug could be developed in medical research, countless patients could be saved from suffering, and it could even change human history.

How wonderful was that?

Song Qingshi looked at the little white mice as if he saw a bright future.

Yue Wuhuan thought for a long time and asked cautiously: "Master, your teacher has tried so many medicines, but now. . . is he okay?"

Song Qingshi answered honestly: "He's in another world."

Yue Wuhuan's face turned pale, and he said anxiously: "Master, please give the test medicine to Wuhuan from now on."

"Okay, I'll let you try if there are no problems." Song Qingshi praised contentedly, "Wuhuan is really a good seedling suitable for studying medicine, smart and kind, with a big heart. Your future achievements will definitely be very great."

Master is good at everything, but he's a little blind. . .

He learned from a medical servant that although the Immortal Medicine King had always been a medical fanatic, burying his head in research every day and speaking and acting in the same strange way ever since he came to Medicine King Valley, the Immortal seemed to be more emotional and he no longer got angry for no reason. He no longer did cruel human experiments, and their trust and love for him have never been higher.

Such a change made him uncontrollably delusional. Today, this delusion was even stronger.

Master doesn't even mind such dirty mice, so could he also. . .

"Master, I'll raise the mice for you," Yue Wuhuan gently pulled Song Qingshi's sleeves and begged in a low voice, "My physique is very suitable for testing medicine. Let me try the medicine for you for the rest of my life, just like these little white mice. . . Okay? I'm not afraid of death, so don't hurt yourself."

When Song Qingshi heard the word "death" come out of his mouth, his mind exploded, and the shadow of failure struck again. He reasoned through their whole conversation and quickly figured out where the communication had gone wrong. He swore firmly that both the mice and Yue Wuhuan were the lifelines and held the same place in his heart. His teacher was in another world because of other reasons; absolutely nothing happened because of the test drugs, and now under his careful control, he wouldn't die.

Yue Wuhuan listened with great satisfaction.

Song Qingshi considered that he was sometimes inconvenient and needed assistance, so he handed over a thick mouse breeding manual to Yue Wuhuan to ensure careful care. Yue Wuhuan cautiously took the manual with one hand and the cage with the other, vowing to take good care of his Master's lifeline.

A medical servant brought the bill for the mice and a letter from Night Rain Pavilion.

Although the mice weren't spiritual beasts, no one had ever asked for this thing before. They were small and hard to find. It took a lot of manpower and material resources to find it before they were finally found on a deserted island overseas.

Combining the above information and so on, in the end, the final price for each mouse was 100 top-grade spirit stones.

"That's not too expensive." Song Qingshi paid the bill without hesitation.

Yue Wuhuan hesitated for a minute before asking: "Master, have you. . . have you read the account book I sent a few days ago?"

Song Qingshi was not interested in the account book, so he threw it on the table and forgot about it when he received it. Hearing him mention it, he picked it up and casually glanced at it, and then was horrified to find Medicine King's Valley's financial deficit. He pointed blankly at the number on the account book, looking forward to the explanation from the almighty secretary.

Yue Wuhuan sighed: "Master ordered a lot of special tools in Tianji Pavillion, which were expensive. And. . . you also bought a lot of precious herbs for research. Most importantly, you have an unknown sum of 200,000 top-grade spirit stones. . ."

Song Qingshi gulped. He used to be a rich trust fund kid. He only cared about spending money and had no idea about the economy. His parents loved him, and he didn't feel bad about spending a million or eight hundred thousand dollars at random to buy drugs for his self-funded research. The laboratory had all kinds of equipment, so he never considered how much drug research costs.

Now that he had travelled through time, after Yue Wuhuan sorted out his industrial accounts for him, he had opened up a lot of ways to make money with promising prospects, so he bought as much as he could, but he didn't think he would become prodigal.

He absolutely didn't want Yue Wuhuan to know that the 200,000 spirit stones were to buy the Ten Thousand Spirit Marrow.

One reason is that he's afraid that he will be burdened psychologically, and the other is that he wants to surprise him.

Seeing that he didn't want to say where the money went, Yue Wuhuan didn't ask and comforted him: "Master, don't worry too much. The main reason is that it takes some time to earn some income. I'll think of a way."

Although he didn't blame him, Song Qingshi still felt extremely guilty. He suddenly realized that he had neglected common affairs for a long time. To reject Golden Phoenix Manor, he pretended not to be open to accepting patients and squatted in his laboratory and study room every day for fun. Yue Wuhuan worked tirelessly to deal with all the things he didn't want to do and even helped him earn money and take care of his basic necessities, so much so that he happily forgot about these responsibilities that should be his own and kept giving the other trouble.

Song Qingshi pulled Yue Wuhuan's sleeves and apologized in shame: "It's my fault. I won't spend money recklessly in the future. I don't want cold silk pajamas. I won't eat dessert. I'll do a good job of restraining myself. I won't buy more research equipment for the time being. I'll stay open later to treat a few wealthy patients. I'll work hard to make money to support you and make sure you won't have to work so hard. . ."

Since he had started following him, Yue Wuhuan, a top-notch beauty, and a super student saw that it was okay to eat and drink very poorly, and he had to work every day despite not recovering from his illness, trying to make money to support his prodigal son and worry about his livelihood.

What kind of peerless scumbag was he?!

What kind of doctor treats a patient like this?!

Song Qingshi became more and more panicked as he talked, his eyes red.

"You don't have to do that." Yue Wuhuan found that Master was about to cry, and quickly explained, "This isn't hard work for me. Master's research is for the benefit of the world, and Wuhuan should give his full support."

Song Qingshi pulled him, not knowing what to say: "But, but. . ."

There was a faint smile in Yue Wuhuan's eyes. He gently held his hand, gripped it, and said softly: "Master, I like to be busy, and it helps me not to think about the past. So, let me do it. I like to do things for Master. . ."

His beautiful fingertips lightly slid across his palm, drawing circle after circle, warm and tickling.

Song Qingshi was touched to his core by the little angel's kindness.

Yue Wuhuan played with his palm and said with a smile: "I just need a little bit of time. I plan to raise funds to buy drug stocks, acquire medicinal materials, and train pharmacists. The low-level elixirs produced by Medicine King Valley could sell just fine, but I have no connections and it's not suitable for me to show my face. It's best to find someone suitable to take care of external affairs."

Song Qingshi knew what he was worried about, and he wouldn't dare let him go out alone for fear of encountering a pervert.

In the immortal world, there were so many things to kill and treasures to steal. Only those with real strength can conduct big business.

Song Qingshi is the only one who can control the market in Medicine King Valley. If he, an introvert with social anxiety, was allowed to negotiate business with an old fox, it would be better to let him die. . .

Song Qingshi pondered for a long time and suddenly came up with a good idea. He found a letter from the pile of letters, ran over and said: "An Long is coming in a few days. He's the master of the Ten Thousand Companions Sect. The Ten Thousand Companions Sect is very powerful in Xilin, and his family has a spirit stone mine, so he's super rich and well-connected. Should we see if he'll be our saviour investor?"

The Song family's father and sister were both domineering presidents. Although he wasn't well-versed in this world, he still knew a little bit from what he saw and heard every day.

Yue Wuhuan glanced at the letterbox and found that An Long's letters accounted for the vast majority. Although it was an academic discussion, there were three or four letters almost every month, and Medicine King Valley's account books often contained gifts exchanged with the Ten Thousand Companions Sect. The gifts from the Ten Thousand Companions Sect were much more valuable than those from Medicine King Valley. He frowned slightly, feeling a little uneasy, knowing he needed to figure this out.

. . .

Song Qingshi didn't hide anything and spent a lot of time explaining clearly to Yue Wuhuan his relationship with An Long.

Recently, the original body's memories had become more and more integrated with him, and he often had the illusion that the two were the same soul. The only thing was that the original body was more indifferent in dealing with things and hadn't learned any morals, so his methods were more radical, but his living habits and learning methods were exactly the same as him. Because the original body didn't care about anything other than research and cultivation, and he didn't care about anyone, the details of many of his memories of An Long weren't clear, but they were generally correct.

"We met more than 500 years ago. At that time, I was still young. He was a small cultivator who had just established his foundation." Song Qingshi organized his thoughts and said to Yue Wuhuan, "I remember that he was older than you, seventeen or eighteen years old, quite a rebellious boy."

Yue Wuhuan interrupted and corrected him: "Master, I had my development suspended by the Acacia Seal when I wasn't fully grown, and my appearance was controlled to look like a teenager. It doesn't mean that I'm actually that young. In fact, I was already an adult when I formed my spiritual foundation."

"Yes, you'll grow normally after the seal is released," Song Qingshi recalled his own lessons and suggested cautiously, "You didn't form your golden core early. Growth slows down after a cultivator reaches their foundation establishment and their golden core is finalized. If you form your golden core too early, you'll become like me unless you specialize in exercises such as body training or when you get distracted and reshape your body. . ."

This immature face is the result of the blood and tears of the original body, who was too talented.

He also didn't want to reshape his body for the sake of appearance, so he had to accept his fate.

"I know." Yue Wuhuan looked at him with satisfaction and licked his lips, "It's good that you're like this."

Song Qingshi took that as comfort and continued the serious topic: "I met An Long when I was collecting medicine in the secret realm. We discussed pharmacology, and I found that he was very insightful and he had a wealth of knowledge about compulsion and poisons, so I allowed him to come to Medicine King Valley as a guest to exchange ideas. But that boy was so naughty. He liked to tease me and also liked to make me angry. After some years. . . After I had grown older, we had a big fight for some reason. He was inexplicably angry, cursed indiscriminately, made a lot of trouble, and finally left Medicine King Valley."

Yue Wuhuan tapped the table lightly with his fingers, not knowing what to think about.

"Two hundred years later, he also reached a high level of cultivation. He suddenly realized his mistake and wrote a letter to apologize. After that, we kept in touch with each other, and our relationship was pretty good." Song Qingshi concluded happily, "Now that I think about it, it's probably because his teenage rebellious phase is over."

Yue Wuhuan asked cautiously: "Master, does he like men. . ."

"Don't worry!" Song Qingshi knew that he had some concerns about this and said firmly, "Although An Long is prodigal by nature and likes to mess around, his orientation is as straight as straight can be! When we were together before, I always saw him flirting with girls, always messing around with either an immortal woman or a prostitute! It's rumoured that he's been involved in many affairs. I've never heard that he has any thoughts about men!"

Yue Wuhuan still had some doubts.

Song Qingshi patted his chest and assured him: "Don't worry! If he dares to put his hands on you, I will break his legs!"

The author has something to say: In this life, the little phoenix has been fighting for favour with little white mice and occasionally loses. . .

If the little white mice had a problem, Qingshi would immediately jump off the bed and rush to the laboratory (no matter what happy things he was doing on the bed at the time)

[ipoxcky]

I WROTE AN INFORMAL ESSAY ON ZILA MADRAN FOR MY SEMINAR CLASS—MAJOR AURORA CYCLE SPOILERS!!!!

Tyler Jones is a human who graduated at the top of his class at the Aurora Academy. He is the squad’s “Alpha,” or commander. He was supposed to get first pick in terms of the other people on his team, but because he went to save Aurora, he ended up with those who remained after everyone else made their pick. He is a White-passing heterosexual cisgendered male. We find out later he is also half-Syldrathi, an alien race that is presumably based on BIPOC ethnicities and practices. 

Scarlett Jones is a diplomat who knows many languages, handles foreign affairs, and negotiation, otherwise known as the squad’s “Face.” Tyler Jones is her twin brother. She has a long history of exes and is ever longingly sarcastic. She is a white heterosexual cisgendered woman. We find out later she is half-Syldrathi as well. 

Kaliis Idraban Gilwraeth is Syldrathi (an alien race in the book) who was born to be a warrior. He is the squad’s “Tank,” whose primary purpose is to fight if need be. Since the age of six, he was trained to defeat his enemies and not tolerate anything less. He is a heterosexual cisgendered male.

Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley is a human girl out of time who was awoken by the squad after centuries frozen in a colony ship, and found herself gifted with dangerous psychic powers. She is Asian-American (Chinese and Irish,) and a heterosexual cisgendered woman. 

Finian de Karran de Seel is a Betraskan (another alien race in the book) who has a heart for all things mechanics. He is the squad’s “Gearhead,” and has a crude sense of humor. He is a disabled bisexual cisgendered male who has pale white skin. 

Zila Madran is the “Brain” of the squad, a medic who knows the body inside and out and is stellar at all things STEM. In the third book, her work allows her to statistically calculate the probabilities of every ideal event occurring and she is eventually the one (with her wife Nari Kim) who saves the entire galaxy from destruction. She is a Black queer cisgendered woman. 

This media analysis will focus on Zila Madran’s role in Aurora’s End, which becomes crucial in the third book and the mechanics of the plot. It will analyze the message that Amie Kaufman, a white woman, and Jay Kristoff, a white man, have delivered to its readers by having Zila, a Black queer woman, be the one who saves the entire galaxy from its demise.

Zila’s character description, thankfully, is one that is not offensive. Unlike the common tendency for white authors to compare Black skin to food, her description in Aurora Rising that we get when we first meet her is simply “dark brown skin and long, tight black curls.”And in Aurora Burning on page 45, there is a conversation between Scarlett and Zila where readers first learn about Zila’s queer identity:

Scarlett: “Yeah. But don't fall in love with me, Zila. I'll just break your heart.” 

Zila: “That does seem consistent with your romantic modus operandi. You are also too tall for me.”

Scarlett: “Wait… you like girls?”

Zila shrugs, scanning the crowd: “Not tall ones.”

However, a closer look at one scene in the book will reveal that Zila’s identifiers are taken into account in the overall plot of the story. In terms of sexuality, Zila is the last one to enter a relationship. The readers have watched every other squadmate enter a romantic entanglement in Aurora Rising and Aurora Burning.  Their relationships grow to become a large, important part of the plot, with multiple chapters dedicated to their development. In the beginning of Aurora’s End, Zila, Scarlett, and Finian get sent back in time to the year 2177 in a time loop. In other words, they are stuck in a segment of 2177 where, after a certain amount of minutes, they meet some sort of untimely death. Most of the time it’s a quantum pulse hitting the station or angry lieutenants deciding to shoot at them. Once they die, the segment of time resets. Each time the segment resets, it gets shorter, and the squad has to figure out how to escape the time loop before they die in it again. In the time segment, they successfully reach out to Nari Kim, a legionnaire of the academy who they find at the station they are attempting to come into contact with. After Scarlett successfully works her diplomat magic before she can get blasted to pieces, Zila gets to work detonating the pulsar with Nari. Meanwhile, Scarlett and Finian decide to start messing around. Prior to this time loop, Scarlett and Finian agreed to enter a romantic relationship, so when they decide to start messing around, their lack of focus makes Zila a bit irritated, so she shouts: “are you two spending precious minutes in the middle of a heretofore unheard-of temporal paradox engaging in frivolous presexual activity?” To which Scarlett replies, “You’re such a hopeless romantic, Z” (Kaufman and Kristoff 185). In the scene, Zila is angry with their lack of consideration for the task at hand. However, it can be argued that she is somewhat romantically/sexually frustrated with the fact that everyone has found love but her. This argument can be supported as she ends up realizing Nari is “not tall” (Kaufman and Kristoff 98), and “as [Nari] keeps speaking, I let myself sink into her voice” (Kaufman and Kristoff 201) Later on, after many romantic events have occurred like this one, she realizes that Nari Kim is the one that future, probability-calculating Zila assigned herself to fall in love with by giving her past self hawk earrings that match the animal insignia on Nari’s vest (it’s quite complicated—I hope that is clear enough. I’d be happy to explain more if it’s unclear.) Her frustrations are then relieved when she learns that Nari feels the same way. At that point, Zila learns that she is supposed to stay in the year 2177 with Nari in order to calculate the events that make up the most optimal timeline: a timeline where her squadmates save the galaxy. 

Arguably, there are a lot of identifiers that shape the scene described above, the one that ultimately is the start of Zila’s romantic journey. The fact that she is the last one to enter a relationship could possibly be due to three identifiers. To start, the eurocentric beauty standard is against her, as she is African American. In 2014, an OkCupid study found that black women were rated the “least desirable” amongst all other races. Second, mainstream society encircles the idea of white queerness being the only queerness to exist. In a paper by the National Library of Medicine, Carmen Logie states that “by representing queerness as white…women of color were rendered invisible in both queer and racialized communities…” and that, as mentioned later on, “women of color were further marginalized by constructions of "real" women as passive, feminine and white, and conversely perceptions of women of color as aggressive, emotional, and hypersexualized.” Due to all of these factors, the ‘dating pool’ shrinks for Black queer women in terms of future partners. Applying this logic, it is quite sensible it would take her a longer time to find the right partner, and luckily, she did. Therefore, the scenes quoted and described above could encompass Zila’s Black, queer, and female identifiers with both their overt statements and what is unsaid by the timing.

Kaufman and Kristoff have successfully established Zila Madran as a strong, self-sufficient, beautiful, bright Black woman who, simply by existing, redacts harmful stereotypes and creates a new image for Black women in the world of science fiction. One stereotype that the Aurora Cycle Trilogy combats with the character Zila Madran is the ‘weird girl’ stereotype. One could argue that the reason Zila is the last one to find a relationship is because she is naturally quiet and not very emotionally available until her character arc near the end of the book. A counterargument is that this is a stereotype which has been romanticized in the media quite often, only that the stereotype requires the quiet stoic girl to be white and heterosexual, and that if she is any other race/sexuality, she’s seen as even weirder. White heterosexual women who fill this stereotype and find romantic interests are Raven from Teen Titans, Detective Jet Slootmaekers in Law and Order, and April Ludgate-Dwyer from Parks and Recreation. Like Zila, they are quiet and stoic, so physical appearance and romantic preference must be the only thing that sets Zila apart from the common narrative. Fortunately, Zila and Nari marry and grow old together once they fall in love. So, Kaufman and Kristoff challenge the ‘weird white girl’ single story stereotype by changing the race of the ‘weird girl’ and writing Zila with a fulfilling queer relationship. 

In addition, another stereotype that Kaufman and Kristoff combat is the stereotype that Black women are unintelligent. Black people, women, and especially Black women have been stereotyped as unintelligent for centuries. As Zora Neale Hurston puts it in Their Eyes Were Watching God, “De n----- woman is de mule uh de world,” meant only to sit and do meaningless tasks that don’t let them build any type of real intelligence or skill. Of course, this stereotype dates back to slavery, where most Black people—especially Black women—were unable to pursue any sort of formal education because they were enslaved. A very small percentage were taught to read and write while they were enslaved. Kaufman and Kristoff combat this by designing Madran’s character with astute intelligence, which is evident throughout the story as she is deemed the military squadron position “Brain.”

A third stereotype is that Black women are aggressive. This stereotype originates from slavery and thrives in lots of pop culture and media. Some examples are Sapphire in Amos ‘n’ Andy, and Florence in The Jeffersons, according to the Harvard Business Review. The stereotype has even been immortalized in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture through the addition of Nene Leakes and her famous eye roll. To fight this, Zila Madran is a medic who heals the wounds of all of the squadmates. She is the one who instructs Scarlett on how to save Finian from anaphylactic shock with only the plastic tube in a ballpoint pen, a gift that was, like Zila’s hawk earrings, planned from Zila in 2177 to be given to Finian in 2380. Zila instructs Scarlett remotely through her earpiece while Scarlett is panicking, and Scarlett describes Zila’s state as “calm in [her] ear” (Kaufman and Kristoff 386). In Zila being the medic of the squad, there is also possibly the irony of the poor treatment of Black women in the healthcare system at play here. The first doctors went years before they expanded their studies of the body to Black people, claiming all kinds of things about how different and underdeveloped their bodies are. They have tried to defend their racism and neglect of Black health with eugenics and other harmful pseudosciences, but the root of the predominantly white field refusing to assist Black people is racism, clear and cut. A recent example is Serena Williams and the birth of her child. Even though she is famous and wealthy, she was still treated poorly in the healthcare system while she was in one of the most vulnerable states a person could be in–postpartum. Unfortunately, racism does not stop for those who financially can sit in the same places as their oppressors. And so, in Kaufman and Kristoff choosing Zila to be the medic, they have established her as a helpful and healing Black woman rather than an aggressive one, and they have supplied her with the skill that her oppressors have continued to systematically oppress Black women with—medicine. For Kaufmann and Kristoff to choose Zila Madran, a queer Black woman, to be the one to find her lifelong partner, to be the “Brain” of the team (literally), to be the one to heal her squadmate’s injuries, and to be the central figure in saving the entire galaxy and founding the Aurora Academy is a huge step towards reversing various stereotypes and is a promotion of Black excellence and Black representation.

[shiningdesignersreflections]

Qin Yi: Southern Wind

Designer's Reflection: Southern Wind

Obtained: Sea of Fantasy Gleam

Rarity: SSR

Attribute: Gold/Elegant

Awakened Suit: Southern Flowers

Story - transcripts from Designer's Reflection

Chapter 1 -Southern Realm Spring

Chapter 2 - Weaving a Dream

Chapter 3 - True Sentiment

Chapter 4 - Flower Dance and Wind Songs

Story - summarized

Qin Yi loves performing... a little too much. It extends past the stage and into his normal life: putting up appearances, feigning interest, never showing his true feelings.

One month, he and the Neverfall Troupe traveled to the southern part of Cloud Empire that bordered with Ninir Kingdom. They performed one of their best plays, and Qin Yi made sure that everyone was moved to bits. The audience loved it.

Except for one critic: Qi Qiu, another actor in town. He claimed that Qin Yi cared too much what others thought and was too closed off to embrace the characters.

So, he went to see one of Qiu's plays. The young actor came out, and he poured his soul into his acting. It reminded Qin Yi of when he was a child: he loved performing for the thrill of it, because it made him happy.

Finally, Yi understood that acting isn't just about fooling others; it can be a tool to share memories and experiences and bond over them. He tried that method the next time he was onstage. It felt great, even fun.

Too bad he didn't have the luxury of fun. Once the monthly tour was over, he reverted to self-isolation. He had a role to play in the Qin family, and he couldn't just leave and do things for himself.

Connections

-Qin Yi ingratiated himself to the Qin family in Mind Maze 3, where he tricks them into thinking he's their long-lost son. He did this to escape his abusive acting coach and his mother's dire poverty, which you learn more of in his Reflection for Out the Phoenix Palace.

-From a young age, Yi had to close off himself and his emotions, choosing a lonely path of survival, all because of his friend's betrayal in Nostalgic Dreams

-The one time he does something for the joy of it, Qin Yi helped a common playwright and a princess get married. He recounts it in Crimson Phoenix, his wedding design.

Fun Facts

-It's never stated explicitly in the game, but Qin Yi most likely suffers from depression: isolating himself, emotionally numb, little or loss of pleasure in activities.

-One of the many traditional Chinese dresses is the hanfu (which you can see in a lot of Jiang Xitong's and Qing Yumo's designs), but this version is poofier, like the Korean hanbok.

[szarolina]

Hiii! I’d also like to take up Japanese, but beyond memorizing the Hiragana and Katakana characters I’m not exactly sure how to proceed with vocab and learning Kanji at the same time.

Do you have a plan/sources that you stick to? I also like how your sheets are organized! Did you do them yourself?

Hi there! ♡

First of all I should stress that my experience may be slightly different since I was learning Japanese via university course, with help from a tutor. However, I'll try to answer the best I can.

Get a textbook. It will provide you a structure and introduce to basic grammar points in suitable order, together with kanji and vocabulary. My knowledge isn't very broad here, because we used a specific series in class which is Minna no Nihongo (probably one of, if not The most common one). The significant disadvantage is that it's written entirely in Japanese, so not exactly the best for total beginners who don't have exercises explained by a teacher BUT there's also an English book "Translation and Grammar notes" which, as it says, includes translations of dialogues, texts, example sentences, etc. + vocabulary lists for every chapter alongside very neatly explained grammar points and grammar structures, so I can't stress enough how profitable it is to get it too. Apart from these, I also came across a kanji book. Fortunately, pdfs can be retrieved from google (hit me up if you're interested and have problems with finding them). I've also seen praising reviews of Genki, I looked it through and apparently also have everything what one could expect from a regular textbook, just better divided on different grammar/vocabulary/reading/so on parts than Minna and, unlike MnN, it's written in English.

About kanji and vocab. You probbaly noticed that things like nouns, verbs, adjectives and such are often written with kanji, so it may seem a natural move to learn all these kanji at once while learning vocabulary. I'm saying - not exactly. The good thing is that for the beginning you can write new words only in hiragana (or katakana) memorize them, and later "match" kanji to them (not like in mandarin chinese, yes, i'm looking at you mandarin). For example, you found out that "to study" is べんきょう する (benkyō suru). It's ok to write it this way and later replace "べんきょう" part with kanji (勉強する). We did it at the course, I had been knowing only hiragana writings for maaaany words and only after some time introduced kanji to them, gradually. Otherwise I would end up having to learn hundreds of kanji early on and I'd definitely feel discouraged by that.

About kanji and readings. It somehoew refers to what I wrote above. Don't memorize ALL possible readings of a kanji without using them in practice. For example, according to a dictionary kanji 人 "human, man, person" has five different readings: ジン, ニン, ひと, り, と. It looks like kun/on readings soup. What's a better way? You learnt that "person" (人) is pronounced ひと. Or "population" (人口) is じんこう (see ジン reading here?). Wait, that's better - "doll/puppet" which is にんぎょう (人形). You see my point?

Summing it a bit up, when making a vocabulary list, firstly write words in hiragana/katakana and if you at some point learn a kanji for some of these words, replace them using that kanji. When learning kanji themselves, sure, learn how to write them, stroke by stroke, even memorize their basic meanings, however, if learning pronounciation (readings), add a word, two, three containing these kanji alongside the full reading.

I'm planning to make a kind of masterlist of resources I personally use but for now I can recommend dictionaries like jisho (online) or kanji dictionary (Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary). For extra grammar explanation "Tofugu" and "Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese" websites or a book "Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" are good sources. The sheets you're asking about I made myself. Kanji are from class and featured in Minna books, verbs as well but mostly taken from another Kodansha book. Like I wrote, I'm going to list everything in a separate post so just give me a moment to compile it :)

Sorry for the lenghty answer, not sure if that's what you expected but I hope I helped!

[weaselandfriends]

hey! Just watched Players, and was interested in hearing more of your thoughts on it--in what respects you found it hewed true to your own research/experience. I've never engaged with eSports, but Players' depiction of "online masculinity" more broadly was very compelling to me, and reminded me of Jay from CQ, albeit with a more balanced/positive slant. I think that sincerity/positivity hurt the show by preventing it from exploring racism/sexism in gaming culture; you catch glimmers of it, particularly in the internet's reaction to Nightfall's replacement of Guru, but the show goes out of its way to avoid couching it in those terms, presumably to show eSports in a more sympathetic light. Race and gender are common themes in your stories; do you think you would have placed more of a focus on them? Also, have you seen American Vandal? That show's first season was memorable to me for its dissonant ending, which placed all that preceded in a new light; Players has a more understated version of the same, in which Organizm's inhuman, unhinged voicemail is shown to have perfectly predicted Creamcheese's feelings, thus humanizing it in retrospect--only for Organizm to reject this, sacrificing everything in pursuit of impossuble perfection. Many of the show's characters are embodiments of some skill/archetype, and it asks what exactly separates these paragons from ordinary people--which I felt closely matched your own style of characterisation. Thanks for your time!

I'll preface this by saying that I haven't actually seen Players. I just know about it, since it was heavily advertised on the LCS stream when it came out. I'll mention a fun fact though: Nightfall's actor is actually an ex-LCS pro named Youngbin, a Korean-American who once played for Team Liquid. As I understand it, the show also has cameos from many other real pros and esports personalities.

I can speak about some of the topics you brought up, though. First up, racism in the esports scene. This was one of the major topics I wanted to cover in my planned esports story. In particular, I wanted to use the story as a vehicle to challenge the idea of American exceptionalism. In League of Legends, the North American region is a distant fourth best, behind Korea, China, and Europe. In the early days of the scene it was possible to chalk this discrepancy up to infrastructure, especially when it came to Korea; having already developed a sophisticated esports scene due to StarCraft, Korea had an organizational and coaching edge over the rest of the world from about 2012, when the game first took off in Korea, to 2017, when big money investors in the other three regions were injecting huge cashflows into teams. This was an era of Korean dominance, where Korean teams won almost every time. To catch up, the other three regions would import Korean players to their regions as much as possible (since 2015 there have been rules in place to limit imports to 2 per 5-man team), and the only region to ever really catch up to Korea is China, which combined high-money importing of top Korean pros with the gargantuan Chinese server population (China loves League of Legends, it's like the national sport) to finally start winning some tournaments.

North America has consistently lagged behind even China and Europe, an issue mainly related to low server population and poor American internet infrastructure, which forces most prospective NA players to learn and practice the game on much higher ping than pros in any of the other major regions. On top of NA being bad, NA is consistently buoyed by high-profile import players, as opposed to "native" North American players. Actual American and Canadian players often take up filler role player positions around imported Korean and European stars, which has led to a general fact of life that Americans are simply not that good at the game compared to the competition. This is in spite of the fact that League of Legends is an American game made by an American company. It's a joke in traditional sports that Americans are only the best at sports they made, but in League, Americans aren't even that. I wanted to center my story around an American role player in a more supportive position like top, who would have to grapple with the fact that despite being in the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% of players, he was simply not good enough to matter beyond that.

Racism in the esports scene is an odd issue, because it's less "racism" and more "regionalism"--or xenophobia. This is due to the league format of professional League of Legends, in which regional leagues (Korea, China, Europe, and NA) feed into a major international Worlds cup. In a sports scene where teams are not tied to specific cities the way they are in traditional sports, this regionalism is often what drives fans to support certain teams, what causes people to root for a team that feels like "theirs." This makes the fan ecosystem closer to the way people root for teams or players at the Olympics or the World Cup, instead of what it's like in the NFL, NBA, etc. Where things get complicated in terms of League is that unlike the Olympics or World Cup, teams from a region are allowed to field players from other regions to represent them. In North America, as I mentioned, this issue is exacerbated because not only are North American teams bad, they're bad often without even being quote-unquote "North American." I mentioned before that there is an import rule that ostensibly ensures every team is 3/5ths comprised of native players. However, due to a variety of loopholes and also the United States' significantly more lenient legal residency and immigration restrictions compared to China, there are many players who were imported to NA solely to play League of Legends who are now technically counted as non-imports. At the most recent Worlds, NA sent three teams, and of the 15 players on those teams, only 3 were "native North Americans," the rest either being imports or former imports who got green cards, making them legally residents. One team was comprised entirely of imports or former imports. Meanwhile, other regions are represented by teams that have a majority of "native" players. So the fan ecosystem is designed around supporting "your region," but NA is in the unique position where "your region" is majority comprised of players from "another region." Hence the point of soreness.

The racism question gets further complicated by the racial makeup of "native" North American players, which heavily slants toward Asian-Americans/Asian-Canadians. Of the 3 "native" players at Worlds last year, 2 were Asian-American/-Canadian (the third was Quebecois). Doublelift, the most famous and beloved North American pro, on whom I believe Players' Creamcheese was modeled, is a Chinese-American whose real name is Yiliang Peng. The breakout rookie star of last year, Jojopyun, is a Korean-Canadian who "native NA" fans held up as the shining hope of native NA talent. Youngbin himself, who plays Nightfall, is a Korean-American "native" pro. This begs another interesting question: Is it racism to support Asian-Americans over Asian Non-Americans? I think this uniquely positioned sports ecosystem creates a complex and interlocking system of identities that is prime for exploration in a narrative format. With the prevalence of European importing, it becomes even stranger. Most of the white players in the North American league aren't Americans or Canadians, but European imports, who are often subjected to the same prejudice and bias among fans as Korean imports. THEN it gets even more interesting when you factor in country of birth, which isn't even tied to citizenship or residency. One of the most famous "native" North American players is Spica, who was born in China and moved to Philadelphia when he was 10 or so. He still has Chinese citizenship and is only considered a "resident" of the United States, exactly like many of those green card-holding "imports," and yet Spica is universally considered "native" talent by fans. Last year, one team (CLG) made a splash by fielding almost entirely "native" talent, and was held up by fans as the "native talent" team--even though one of their players, Dhokla, was born in India. So where is the line? What distinguishes "native" from "foreign"? This is such a complex notion of identity that I feel like I could talk about it for hours.

As for sexism, yeah it's just really sexist.

I guess it's a bit more nuanced than that. League of Legends is like chess in which there is ostensibly no physical reason why women wouldn't be able to compete at the top level, and yet there simply are very few women who do. I follow the League scene from the amateur system to the pro leagues, and it's not like there is a large number of talented female players who are simply being withheld chances to compete due to organizational/player/fan sexism. There have even been instances of major organizations creating all-female development teams, but these teams are generally comprised of players who simply aren't at a level high enough to compete in the major leagues. Every so often you get a female player or two in the amateur or development leagues, but they don't generally stand out enough to be realistically promoted to a major league team.

In all four major regions, there has only ever been one female player who competed at the top level, that being Remilia, a trans girl, whose story is brutally tragic. She was manipulated and abused by the owner of her team, Chris Badawi, who provided for her a botched gender-reassignment surgery that left her with permanent pain for the rest of her life, until she died by suicide some years later. As you might imagine, any fan discussion on Reddit that even tangentially involved Remilia was a graveyard of posts deleted by moderators. The prejudice there, sadly, is about as rampant and overt as possible.

This post went pretty long, especially since I haven't actually seen the show you asked about and wasn't able to give any more specific thoughts on it. Hopefully, though, this provides a bit more context to the strange and complex regional and racial identity issues in the scene.

[sciencespies]

Curse Words Around the World Have Something in Common (We Swear)

https://sciencespies.com/news/curse-words-around-the-world-have-something-in-common-we-swear/

Curse Words Around the World Have Something in Common (We Swear)

These four sounds are missing from some of the seven words you can never say on television, and the pattern prevails in other languages too, researchers say.

“Holy motherforking shirtballs!” a character exclaimed on “The Good Place,” a television show that took place in a version of the afterlife where swearing is forbidden (as it is in this newspaper, most of the time). In a way, this celestial censorship was realistic.

A study published Tuesday in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review found that curse words in several unrelated languages sound alike. They’re less likely than other words to include the consonant sounds L, R, W or Y. And more family-friendly versions of curses often have these sounds added, just like the R in “shirt” or “fork.” The finding suggests that some underlying rules may link the world’s languages, no matter how different they are.

“In English, some of the worst words seem to have common phonetic properties,” said Ryan McKay, a psychologist at Royal Holloway, University of London. They’re often short and punchy. They also tend to include the sounds P, T or K, “without giving any obvious examples,” Dr. McKay said. These sounds are called stop consonants because they interrupt the airflow when we’re speaking.

Dr. McKay teamed up with his colleague Shiri Lev-Ari to learn whether this familiar pattern went beyond English. They wondered whether it might even represent what’s called sound symbolism.

Sound symbolism is when a word sounds like what it means. One type is onomatopoeia; for example, words that describe a cat’s meow or a rooster’s crow are similar across many languages. Globally, words having to do with noses often include the nasal N sound, and words related to smallness often have an “ee” sound (as in “mini” or “teensy weensy”), like the squeaking of a small creature.

To look for patterns in swearing, the researchers asked fluent speakers of Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Korean and Russian to list the most vulgar words they could think of. Once they’d compiled a list of each language’s most frequently used epithets, the researchers compared these with neutral words from the same language.

In these languages, they didn’t find the harsh-sounding stop consonants that seem common in English swear words. “Instead, we found patterns that none of us expected,” Dr. Lev-Ari said. The vulgar words were defined by what they lacked: the consonant sounds L, R, W and Y. (In linguistics, these gentle sounds are called approximants.)

Next, the scientists looked for the same phenomenon using speakers of different languages: Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, French, German and Spanish. The subjects listened to pairs of words in a language they didn’t speak, and guessed which word in each pair was offensive. In reality, all the words were invented. For example, the researchers started with the Albanian word “zog,” for “bird,” and created the pair of fake words “yog” and “tsog.” Subjects were more likely to guess that words without approximants, such as “tsog,” were curses.

Finally, the researchers combed through the dictionary for English swear words and their cleaned-up versions, also called minced oaths (“darn,” “frigging” and so on). Once again, the clean versions included more of the sounds L, R, W and Y.

“What this paper finds for the first time is that taboo words across languages, unrelated to each other, may pattern similarly,” said Benjamin Bergen, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study.

Unlike other cases such as cock-a-doodle-doos or words for “nose,” these words don’t share a meaning, but a function. They’re meant to offend. The results suggest that “not all sounds are equally suitable for profanity,” the authors wrote.

“That’s a new thing,” Dr. Bergen said. “Maybe the things that we want to do with words lead us to expect those words to have particular sounds.”

To make sure the pattern of approximants missing from curses isn’t an accident, it would be nice to find it in an even larger sample of languages, said Dr. Bergen, author of a book called “What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves.” It would also be nice to learn why those consonants are missing. “There may be some deeper explanation,” he said.

A 20th-century linguistic principle held that the sounds of words were arbitrary: Any word could have any meaning. “That’s really supposed to be one of the things that defines language,” Dr. Lev-Ari said. With profane words, though, as in other cases of sound symbolism, the sounds themselves seem to carry meaning.

“This can shape and change our understanding of how languages are formed,” Dr. Lev-Ari said.

French is an exception, she noted — swear words in French have just as many of the gentler consonant sounds as other words. Yet when native French speakers heard pairs of foreign-sounding words, they were still less likely to guess that words with L, R, W and Y sounds were curses.

“This is really something fundamental,” Dr. Lev-Ari said. “There’s something about the sounds that inherently sounds non-sweary.”

#News

[ghostess-with-the-mostess]

Here's a few more! (Granted god knows other posts mention these)

Cheating Men Must Die - A chinese 'system' manhua where a once-spurned rival/villainess character becomes an OP agent who dives into the worlds of third-rate novels to grant justice to other secondary character spurned to downfall by shitty male leads

With One Day Left I'll Break All the Destruction Flags: "Serves You Right!" RTA 24 Hour Record - the reincarnated villainess regains their memories of earth only 24 hours before the condemnation event; she proceeds to completely decimate everything before then ALSO THIS ONE IS COMPLETELY FINISHED

The One Within the Villainess - imagine Hamefura but with two key differences: the heroine is also isekai-possessed by an absolute two-faced bitch that completely reverts the progress the reincarnated villainess made - but also, the original villainess was still conscious in a mindscape where she was comforted by the life and presence of the reincarnator - and once the condemnation occurs and the reincarnator's personality is traumatized away, leaving the original personality to return? She is hellbent on using what she's learned from the reincarnator to completely obliterate the reincarnated heroine in the ultimate revenge.

Endo and Kobayashi's Live Commentary on the Villainess - kiiiiind of skirting the line but two japanese high schoolers find out they're able to talk to the male lead of an otome game and help him understand how cute his tsundere villainess fiancee is and it's GETTING AN ANIME!

The Fed-Up Office Lady Wants to Serve the Villainess - A woman gets fired from her OL job, only to be summoned into an otome game as the Villainess' familiar, to which she makes it her goal to save her from her fate of villainy (though the arc is unfortunately already underway)

Milday Just Wants to Relax - A "reincarnated villainess embraces the condemnation to gain a commoner's life" story where the MC hides away in a small village working a cafe and gets entangled with the beastmen mercenaries that the rest of the town fears while dealing with her own fear of being found by her controlling, horrid family

The Villainess' Slow Prison Life Began with Her Broken Engagement - only a couple of chapters of the original novel were adapated into manga sadly, but its SO GOOD - the villainess gets condemned and locked away in a cell - that she's already filled with every worldly desire she could imagine, and from there she proceeds to absolutely troll and fuck with the male leads in every which way possible while enjoying her newfound freedom to be lazy

May I Ask for One Final Thing? - This villainess is only interested in one, single thing - punching the most punchable of the corrupt nobles, and she has every ability to do so.

Though I May Be a Villainess, I'll Show You I Can Obtain Happiness! - one of various anthology series that do small single-chapter stories with the theme of Villainesses obtaining their Happy End through their lowest point - some are amazing, some are good, and of course some are awful. My personal favorites from this are

- The Tale of the Noble Girl who will go to a Monastery after her Engagement Annulment

- Shall We Walk Hand in Hand Down the Flowery Path of Evil? (this one has been serialized)

- The Villainess Laughs Innocently

- The Art of Rebuilding a Nation Begins with a Broken Engagement!

- You Were Set Up, You Know?

- My Betrothed's Personality is Way Different from the Game!

- It Would Seem You've Broken Off your Engagement in Order to Marry Me, But I have No Intention of Marrying You

- I'm a Survival Gamer Reincarnated into an Otome Game

- Overthrown for My Younger Sister, but She's a Ticking Time Bomb

- Villainess gets Dumped, Doesn't Care, Lives Happily Ever After with her Super Masochistic Childhood Friend

- The Jilted Villainess Becomes a Lady of Justice

Isekai with male protags: "I was a loser on earth but now I'm super fucking strong and gettin mad bitches"

Isekai with female protags:

Reincarnated princess uses earth knowledge to make magitech a thing and romances sad girl

Girl romantically pursues her video game waifu

Girl is tasked to teach actual fucking gods to be more empathetic to humans

Woman reincarnated as the daughter of a magic item crafter uses earth knowledge to advance her trade

"Straight" girl is sucked into a world with zero men and lesbians everywhere and finds out she's sapphic (there's like actual plot but the gay is what matters.... to me)

A ghibli film. Need I say more

Woman reincarnated in video game as doomed villainess desperately tries to change her story

Girl reincarnated as a tiny baby spider kills monsters to level up

Like the male protag one but the lame guy's mom got isekaid with him and she's the op one.

Two normal girls fight urban legends in terrifying danger dimension

[studyjapanese01]

Ultimate Japanese Language for Beginners Guide: Study Japanese Language

Learning Japanese can be an incredibly rewarding journey, whether you're pursuing it for travel, career opportunities, or personal interest. The language has a fascinating history, rich culture, and unique writing system that sets it apart from many other languages. If you’re a beginner, this guide will help you understand everything you need to know about how to study Japanese language, providing a solid foundation to get started. We will cover various aspects, from essential tips to learning resources, and break down each step of the language-learning process.

Why Learn Japanese Language?

There are many reasons why you might choose to learn Japanese language. For some, it could be the desire to immerse in Japanese culture, including anime, manga, traditional arts, and cuisine. For others, it may be career-related, as Japan offers a strong job market for English speakers who also know Japanese. Additionally, learning Japanese can open the door to a world of literature, films, and music that isn't fully accessible in translation.

Understanding the Japanese Language

Before diving into learning, it's helpful to get familiar with the structure of the language. The Japanese language is known for its three writing systems: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

Hiragana: The most basic syllabary used for native Japanese words. Learning Hiragana is the first step for beginners.

Katakana: Used primarily for foreign loanwords, onomatopoeia, and some company names. It’s crucial for reading imported words or terms.

Kanji: Logographic characters imported from Chinese, representing words or parts of words. Kanji can be challenging due to the large number of characters, but they are essential for fluency.

Understanding these writing systems forms the basis of Japanese language for beginners. You don’t need to master them all at once, but it's important to start learning the basics.

Step 1: Getting Started with Hiragana and Katakana

The first step in your journey to study Japanese language should be mastering Hiragana and Katakana. Here’s why:

Hiragana serves as the foundation for reading and writing in Japanese. It is used for grammatical functions and native words, so it's essential to learn.

Katakana, although not used as frequently, is important for reading loanwords. Since many foreign words in Japanese are written in Katakana, understanding this syllabary will help you recognize words that may already be familiar to you.

Tips for Learning Hiragana and Katakana:

Practice daily: Dedicate at least 10-15 minutes daily to practicing the characters. Use flashcards to help memorize them.

Write by hand: Writing characters manually helps reinforce memorization.

Use apps: Apps like Hiragana Quest and Dr. Moku's Kana Mnemonics make learning the syllabaries fun and engaging.

Step 2: Introduction to Basic Japanese Grammar

The next step in learning Japanese language is getting acquainted with basic grammar. Japanese grammar is different from English, but it has a consistent and logical structure.

Essential Grammar Concepts for Beginners

Word Order: In Japanese, the typical sentence structure is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV), unlike English's Subject-Verb-Object (SVO). For example, "I eat sushi" in English becomes "I sushi eat" in Japanese.

Particles: Particles are small words that indicate the relationship between words in a sentence. For instance, "は" (wa) marks the subject, while "を" (wo) indicates the object.

Verb Conjugations: Verbs in Japanese change forms to express tense (past, present), politeness levels, and other grammatical features.

Learning Strategy for Grammar:

Start with simple sentences: Begin with basic sentence structures to understand how particles and verbs function.

Focus on everyday phrases: Learning common phrases can make it easier to grasp grammar naturally.

Use beginner-friendly textbooks: Books like "Genki" and "Japanese for Busy People" provide structured grammar lessons suitable for beginners.

Step 3: Building a Japanese Vocabulary

Expanding your vocabulary is a crucial part of studying Japanese language. Aim to learn a mix of everyday vocabulary, expressions, and some specialized words based on your interests.

Tips for Expanding Your Vocabulary:

Use flashcards or spaced repetition systems (SRS): Tools like Anki or Memrise can help you retain vocabulary more effectively.

Learn words in context: Instead of memorizing isolated words, try to learn them as part of sentences or phrases.

Start with the most common words: Focus on learning basic nouns, verbs, and adjectives that are used frequently in conversation.

Step 4: Mastering Kanji

Kanji can be intimidating due to the sheer number of characters (over 2,000 for daily use). However, mastering them is essential to achieving fluency in Japanese language for beginners.

How to Approach Kanji Learning:

Start with basic kanji: Begin with simple characters that appear frequently, such as numbers and common words.

Learn kanji radicals: Radicals are components of kanji characters, and understanding them can help you remember complex kanji more easily.

Use a kanji learning app: Apps like WaniKani and Kanji Study can guide you through the process in an organized manner.

Step 5: Practicing Speaking and Listening

To learn Japanese language, you must also practice speaking and listening. Understanding the language in its spoken form is crucial for communication.

Techniques to Improve Speaking and Listening:

Listen to native speakers: Watching Japanese shows, listening to podcasts, or even using language exchange apps can expose you to natural spoken Japanese.

Repeat what you hear: Practice shadowing, which involves listening to a phrase and repeating it as closely as possible to the original pronunciation.

Speak with native speakers: Join language exchange programs or use apps like HelloTalk to find language partners.

Step 6: Using Language Resources

There are many resources available for beginners who wish to study Japanese language. Utilizing different types of learning materials can accelerate your progress.

Recommended Resources:

Textbooks: "Genki," "Minna no Nihongo," and "Japanese from Zero!" are great for structured learning.

Apps: Duolingo, LingoDeer, and Bunpo offer interactive ways to learn grammar and vocabulary.

Online courses: Websites like Coursera, Udemy, and Team Languages provide comprehensive Japanese courses for beginners.

YouTube channels: Channels like JapanesePod101 and That Japanese Man Yuta offer free lessons covering various topics.

Step 7: Staying Motivated and Setting Goals

One of the biggest challenges when starting to learn Japanese language is staying motivated. Setting clear goals and tracking your progress can help keep your enthusiasm high.

Setting Effective Learning Goals:

Start small: Aim for manageable goals, such as learning 10 new vocabulary words per week.

Track progress: Use a language learning journal to track the number of kanji you’ve learned, hours spent studying, or lessons completed.

Reward yourself: Celebrate small milestones, like completing a textbook chapter or holding your first conversation in Japanese.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

While studying Japanese language, it’s normal to make mistakes. However, being aware of common pitfalls can help you avoid them.

Mistakes Beginners Often Make:

Skipping Kana and focusing only on Romaji: Avoid relying on Romanized Japanese (Romaji). Learn Hiragana and Katakana from the start.

Ignoring pronunciation: Correct pronunciation is important for being understood. Practice listening and repeating native speech patterns.

Overloading on kanji without understanding radicals: Radicals can make it easier to learn kanji, so incorporate them into your studies.

Additional Tips for Japanese Language Learners

Immerse yourself daily: Integrate Japanese into your daily routine through music, movies, or social media. This helps maintain a continuous learning environment.

Join a language community: Engaging with other learners and native speakers can provide encouragement and additional practice opportunities.

Use mnemonics for memorization: Create memory aids for vocabulary and kanji to make them easier to recall.

Conclusion

Embarking on the journey to learn Japanese language is an exciting endeavor. While it may seem challenging, breaking down your studies into manageable steps will make the process smoother. Start with mastering Hiragana and Katakana, build a solid grammar foundation, expand your vocabulary, and steadily incorporate kanji into your studies. By following the steps outlined in this guide and using the resources available, you can progress from a complete beginner to a confident Japanese speaker. Remember to stay motivated, set achievable goals, and embrace the joy of learning a new language!

[linguisticqurocity]

Learn Chinese Mandarin: Tips, Resources, and Common Challenges

Learning Mandarin Chinese can be a thrilling and rewarding experience. As the most spoken language in the world, Mandarin opens doors to new cultural experiences, career opportunities, and personal growth. However, it is also one of the most challenging languages for English speakers to master. In this blog, we'll explore some practical tips, useful resources, and common challenges you'll face on your journey to learning Mandarin.

Tips for Learning Mandarin

Start with Pinyin : Pinyin is the Romanization of Chinese characters based on their pronunciation. It helps learners understand how to pronounce words correctly. Before diving into Chinese characters, familiarize yourself with Pinyin. This foundation will make it easier to pronounce words correctly and communicate effectively.

Focus on Tones : Mandarin is a tonal language with four main tones: high level, rising, falling-rising, and falling. The meaning of a word can change entirely based on its tone. Practice listening to and reproducing these tones. There are plenty of online resources and apps specifically designed to help with tone practice.

Learn Basic Characters :  Once you're comfortable with Pinyin and tones, start learning basic Chinese characters. Focus on the most commonly used characters first. Recognizing and understanding these will boost your reading and writing skills.

Practice Speaking Daily :  Consistent practice is key to language learning. Try to practice speaking Mandarin every day, even if it's just for a few minutes. Use language exchange apps to find native speakers to practice with, or join a local language learning group.

Immerse Yourself in the Language : Immersion is one of the most effective ways to learn a language. Surround yourself with Mandarin as much as possible. Watch Chinese movies, listen to Mandarin music, and try to read Chinese news articles or books. The more you expose yourself to the language, the more familiar it will become.

Use Flashcards for Vocabulary : Flashcards are an excellent tool for memorizing vocabulary. You can create your own flashcards or use apps like Anki or Quizlet, which have pre-made decks specifically for learning Mandarin. Regularly reviewing your flashcards will help reinforce your vocabulary knowledge.

Take a Structured Course : Enrolling in a structured course can provide a clear learning path and ensure you're covering all necessary aspects of the language. Many online platforms offer comprehensive Mandarin courses that you can follow at your own pace.

Useful Resources for Learning Mandarin

Online Courses and Apps

Duolingo: A popular language-learning app with bite-sized lessons.

Curiotory : A versatile language-learning app for learning Mandarin online

Rosetta Stone: Offers immersive learning experiences with speech recognition technology.

ChineseClass101: Provides audio and video lessons for different proficiency levels.

HelloChinese: An interactive app designed specifically for Mandarin learners.

Language Exchange Platforms

HelloTalk: Connects you with native speakers for language exchange.

Tandem: Another platform for finding language exchange partners around the world.

Flashcard Apps

Anki: A powerful flashcard app that uses spaced repetition.

Quizlet: Allows you to create and share flashcard sets.

Grammar and Writing Resources

Pleco: A comprehensive Chinese dictionary app with handwriting recognition.

Chinese Grammar Wiki: An extensive online resource covering various grammar points.

Listening and Speaking Practice

Pimsleur: Audio-based language learning program focusing on conversational skills.

ChinesePod: Offers thousands of lessons with transcripts and exercises.

Common Challenges in Learning Mandarin

Mastering Tones- One of the biggest challenges for Mandarin learners is mastering the four tones. It can be difficult to distinguish between them at first, and even harder to reproduce them accurately. Regular listening practice and tone drills are essential to overcome this challenge.

Learning Characters - Unlike alphabetic languages, Mandarin uses logograms, which can be daunting to memorize. Each character has a unique structure and meaning. Start with the most commonly used characters and practice writing them regularly. Use mnemonic devices to help remember their shapes and meanings.

Understanding Grammar - Mandarin grammar can be quite different from English grammar. For example, Mandarin doesn't use verb conjugations or articles. Word order is also crucial in forming correct sentences. Studying grammar guides and doing plenty of practice exercises will help you get the hang of it.

Listening Comprehension - Mandarin has many homophones—words that sound the same but have different meanings. Context is crucial for understanding spoken Mandarin. Practice listening to native speakers through movies, podcasts, and conversations. Try to pick out keywords and use context to infer meanings.

Building Vocabulary - Mandarin vocabulary can seem overwhelming due to the sheer number of characters and words. Consistent practice and review are essential. Use flashcards and spaced repetition techniques to gradually build your vocabulary.

Cultural Differences - Language and culture are deeply intertwined. Understanding cultural nuances and social norms is important for effective communication. Learn about Chinese culture, customs, and etiquette to enhance your language learning experience.

Curiotory: Your Best Way to Learn Mandarin

At Curiotory, we understand the challenges of learning Mandarin and offer a comprehensive approach to help you succeed. Our language learning platform combines the best resources, expert guidance, and interactive lessons to make your Mandarin learning journey enjoyable and effective.

With Curiotory, you get access to:

Expert Tutors: Learn from experienced Mandarin teachers who provide personalized feedback and support.

Interactive Lessons: Engage in fun and interactive lessons that cover all aspects of the language, from pronunciation to grammar.

Cultural Insights: Gain a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and traditions, enhancing your language skills and cultural awareness.

Flexible Learning: Study at your own pace with our flexible online courses, designed to fit into your busy schedule.

Community Support: Join a community of fellow learners and native speakers, offering you ample opportunities for practice and exchange

[ooglywooglies]

people in the tags of that asian racism people being like "its always white people" its actually not always white people and thats what sucks

my mexican ex step father dished a decent amount of the racism ive experienced in my life, he once yelled (kind of playfully not angrily but still) at me for not being able to tell what specific ethnicity an asian guy in a movie was and was like "SEE EVEN YOU CANT TELL THEM APART" like i dont think thats what that stereotype means though

i dont really blame the guy in this story i think its funny but once i was meeting my brother in laws aunt and uncle or smth and the uncle was a black guy and he was like "are you oriental?" and i had to be like "thats not really a word thats meant for people" and he was like oh my bad i didnt mean anything by it i just didnt know and the white aunt was like "thats okay hes black!" and it was just crickets....

now that im telling stories though (probably the rest of these will be white people) in high school i was once asked if i had a sideways vagina, like she literally walked across the lunch room and up to me and asked outright in front of everyone

in middle school we learned about chinese foot binding and i was hanging out with one of my friends in a car with my shoes off and i curl my toes bc i got long toes and she looked at my feet and was like OMG IS THAT WHAT THEY DID TO YOU??? like i was born in minnesota and im not even chinese you fuck

when i used ok cupid when i was 18 a GOOD chunk of messages i got opened with "konnichiwa" or compared me to an anime character

when i moved to australia a white weeb girl told me i didnt look asian when i made a self deprecating joke, like very much had an air of "i know what a REAL asian looks like"

not racism but when i got off my flight to australia i was like checking in next to a group of japanese tourists and the japanese lady ushering them wasnt sure if i was with them or not

most of the rest of it is just people being not sure What I Am or me just being around for general racism not directed at me, people doing accents, people making eating dog jokes, people just saying the word chink a whole fucking bunch

oh except when my white family is like comparing me to stoners and calling me a china doll once my white mom called me a sesame cracker, people used to say i look adopted a lot

oh and staring, thats something people in australia thankfully dont do is just fucking stare at me in the grocery store bc theyve never seen an asian before, i grew up in wyoming mostly and every other asian person i knew there was mixed, i actually had a half japanese friend i always thought being japanese was like super duper uncommon in the midwest/plains but i suppose if every asian is rare it doesnt matter, ah i googled it apparently japanese and vietnamese are somewhat similar in distribution in the US

maybe it feels like vietnamese are more common bc no one fuckin likes us lol

[thethirdgenesisbooks]

A Shortcut to Crafting Fictional Languages

Whether it’s Elvish, Klingon, or Dothraki, one big thing that people love about fantasy and science fiction settings is the array of fictional languages that exist in these settings. Tolkien was a linguist, so he was able to use his vast education on the subject to craft the languages in Middle Earth. Professional linguists also crafted the Klingon language from the Star Trek series, but I would argue that you don’t need to be a professional linguist to craft a fictional language for your world.

Here are seven steps to building a fictional language with relative ease.

Start By Picking a Base Language from Real Life:

If you don’t know all the rules of how languages work, it can be difficult to come up with new words and craft things like grammar and sentence structure. So, start by picking a real life language that, in some way, reflects the culture you are trying to portray in your world. If your fantasy novel has an empire that rules most of the known world, then perhaps a good base language is Latin or Mandarin Chinese. Bear in mind, you won’t actually be using this language as the fictional one, but you will be using it as the basis of what you’re looking to build. It helps if this is a language that you already know something about, but it’s not entirely necessary.

Google Translate Is Your Friend:

When writing a scene where certain characters are speaking in a fictional language, write out the bit of dialogue in English first. Once you’ve gotten down what you want your characters to say, copy what you’ve written and paste it into Google Translate, and translate it into the base language you’ve chosen.

Translate the Individual Words:

Once you’ve translated the whole phrase into the base language, open Google Translate again in another window and translate each word back into English individually. In learning what the individual words mean, you’ll learn a little something about grammar and sentence structure in that other tongue. If you keep this in mind, you can prevent your fictional language from simply having the same grammatical structure as English.

Alter the Words One at a Time:

Once you know what each word means, open a Word document, and start putting them one by one into the document. This Word document will serve as your dictionary, which you will build as you write. Obviously, you don’t want to leave the words as they are, unless you’re fine with your fictional language being identical to a real-life one. So, once you’ve got the dictionary built, go through and change just a few letters in each word. Change the consonants to alternative consonants and the vowels to alternative vowels.

You usually only have to make a few small changes in order to craft new words. For example, when crafting a language using Latin as the base, I needed a word that meant “we” or “us.” The Latin word for that was “nos,” so I changed it to “noth.” In another case, when crafting a language that used Hebrew as the base, I needed a word for “human.” I found that one of the Hebrew words for man is “Ysh,” so I changed the word to “Yash,” and had my word for human. For shorter and less well-known foreign words, you need only change one or two letters, but for longer words or for more well-known foreign words, you’ll need to change more letters.

Consider How You Want the Language to Feel:

Fictional languages are meant to invoke certain emotions. The Klingon language, for example, is meant to sound threatening. To accomplish this, it uses a lot of hard consonants, a lot of “K” sounds, and even the vowels tend to be guttural, and the sorts of sounds that could be made in the back of the throat. On the other hand, Parseltongue is meant to be the language of snakes, so it focuses on ��S” and “Th” sounds. Consider what letters you want to make more common in your fictional language to give it the intended feel.

Consider Cultural Implications:

A culture’s language can reveal things about that culture, and it’s important to keep that in mind. One example is the Hawaiian word "aloha." In Hawaiian culture, "aloha" is more than just a greeting or a farewell; it more literally means “love,” “compassion,” “affection,” “peace,” and “mercy.” Similarly, the Hebrew word “Shalom” is used as a greeting but means “Peace.” In German the word for friend is “Freund,” while the German word for joy is “Freude.” These come from the same root words, showing how friends and joy are closely linked in the German mindset. The Rastafarian dialect uses the phrase “I and I” rather than “You and I” or “He and I” because it emphasizes the oneness of all humanity.

So, as you build your language, consider what the meaning of certain words might imply about the culture. In my Third Genesis series, I needed a Fiendish word for the Archons, who are the fiends’ traditional enemies. I had the word for enemy, “Mal,” and the word for sky, “Shah,” so, because archons can usually fly, I created the word “Mal’shah,” literally meaning “Sky Enemy” as the Fiendish word for archons. Similarly, when inventing a language for a culture of robots, I had to consider whether they had a word for “love.” So, as you build your language, consider what words might well have double meanings, or what words you can make minor changes to in order to invent a word with a similar meaning. In a militaristic culture, perhaps the term “friend” and the term “ally” are similar. Little touches like this will make the language seem more “real” and the world feel more lived-in.

Build as You Go:

You might be tempted to build the entire fictional language from the ground up before writing your story. I actually advise against this when you’re using this method for your language building. For one thing, the English language has hundreds of thousands of words. A study conducted by researchers at Ghent University in Belgium estimated that the average English-speaking adult knows around 42,000 words. Honestly, that is simply too many to build ahead of time.

So, write your story, and when you come to a place where characters speak a fictional tongue, stop and translate the specific phrases they are speaking into your fictional language, and build your dictionary over time. Then, as you write more, consult that which you’ve already written to craft conversations in that tongue. If you do it this way, you can even include the dictionary of the fictional language at the back of your book, and dedicated readers can go back and translate the phrases if they want.

With these seven steps, you should be ready to craft a fictional language for your fantasy or science fiction story. Admittedly, linguists will likely be able to point out certain flaws in the language, but most of your readers will not be linguists. Now, go forth and write!

[necromancy-enthusiast]

I downloaded it and got into the mines in Zone 1, it's not so bad yet at least. I imagine things will get more complicated once I get to the characters that have less conventional ways of speaking, that always throws in an extra monkey wrench in translation. I do have to look up quite a bit but like I said, it's a lot easier and faster than looking up Chinese characters, because with the characters I have to open up my Pleco app, draw the character, and then pick the right one from the list I'm given. Usually it's pretty good at picking up which one you were going for but you still may have to try two or three times. But with French I can just type stuff in like with English, I don't even need to download another keyboard program on my phone or computer like I do with Chinese.

I mean I really shouldn't even complain, Pleco is great, and the way you had to look characters you didn't know up before stuff like that came out was in a physical dictionary. Traditional Chinese dictionaries are... Interesting, since Chinese doesn't have an alphabet, it has to sort characters in a different manner. The most common one is sorting by the number of strokes a character is written with, each 'stroke' being the mark you make when you put your writing instrument down and pick it up to write the next part of the character. So as you can imagine, looking things up in a traditional physical dictionary is extremely tedious, especially if you don't know your strokes (but thankfully my professors were pretty fastidious about hammering that into our heads, so I do).

Man I'm not gonna lie, this is bumming me out a bit, like I just taught myself a bit of French based on a whim, like first with Duolingo and then with a textbook and some other stuff online, and it's so much easier to advance than with Chinese, which I learned with some great teachers for two years in college and then when I studied abroad for a bit, and now I have plenty of resources to continue to teach myself with. It's just a proven fact, the more a language is like the one you speak natively the faster you'll progress, and sure French and English may be from different families, but they've influenced each other quite a bit, and English has also been heavily influenced a lot by Latin, which French descends from. Plus I also have some Spanish I learned in high school and from the area I live in, so even though French is notorious for being pretty different from it's nearby family languages, it helps a good bit.

Chinese and English are extremely different and have a very short history together, so it takes longer because there's so much more to learn, and you're retraining your brain to an even larger degree. Usually I'm good at not letting this bother me or slow me down, but right now it's making me kind of sad because I like Chinese a lot more than French. My academic interests (like potentially going to grad school and stuff like that) largely involve Chinese but French is just... You know, a side thing. I just thought it would be useful since there was some history and literature in French I was interested in. And yet despite that much more casual relationship, it's a lot faster and easier to progress. Oh well.

Anyway, I think I'll try and find some videos of the 2.0 and 3.0 Off English translations to compare. This post has already gotten pretty long so I'll make a new one, but I might add a couple of short things to this one later too.

Apparently in the track Silencio from the game Off, the track where you're choosing which world to go to that's mostly just creepy whispering, the whispering is about the apocalypse spoken in French. I tried listening to it a couple of times and basically all I can gather is 'yeah I can kinda pick up on a few individual voices here and there and they sound like they're speaking French but I have no clue what they're saying'. But apparently it's really hard to pick out much of anything even for people who natively speak French, which I'm sure was the intention to begin with. I should download the original French version of Off, my French is still very basic but looking words up in French is much easier and faster than looking up stuff in Chinese so I think I won't get frustrated as quickly, and I know there's a lot of contention about the differences between the 2.0 and 3.0 translations. This track, by the way: