#and swedish is super similar to german and norwegian

[elnotwoods]

me, studying korean for a year and a half now: can barely speak it

me, watching young royal 4 times in a row: can speak casual everyday swedish

[possession1981-moving]

Hi! I'm a fairly new follower of yours and also swedish 👋 I saw that you mentioned xenophobia against Finland and I realised that I've never heard of it before which made me a bit worried tbh. Ignorance and all that 🙃 Would you mind elaborating a bit or maybe pointing me in the right direction for where I can read up on it?

hey, i mean first of all there’s the fact that scandinavian people tend to get so very offended whenever someone accidentally includes finland in the precious precious exclusive club of scandinavia... like people can get downright hostile about it and i think it’s quite clear that it stems from a deeply engrained xenophobia that has a very long history that i am not quite equipped to delve into in detail and i don’t have time to find citations but this is like... pretty basic stuff you can easily google your way to. anyways, not only did sweden rule finland to different extents between the 13th and 19th centuries, but this history also includes the long cultural imperialism and forced assimilation of finnish-speaking populations in at least sweden and norway to the point that many of the ethnic finnish populations in these countries have become completely removed from their language and the finnish culture. there is also the fact that when the swedes invented state eugenics finns were one of the main targeted populations for investigation and deemed as inferior to the germanic swedish population (along with the sámi of course, romani populations and others). finnish was also banned in places like schools for a long time, until the mid 20th century, and children who spoke it (or meänkieli, which is technically a separate language but which linguistically derived from finnish and is spoken in tornedalen by an ethnically finnish population) would often be ruthlessly punished for it (a similar history exists with the kvens in norway as far as i know, but i am not super knowledgeable on that), and this directly stems from the eugenic idea of finnish people as racially and intellectually inferior to other nordic populations, aka the swedes, norwegians and danes (icelandic people i think are a bit of a different story, and i am not at all as familiar with the history between iceland and the rest of the nordics so i shall not speak on it) largely because of their ethnic origin (baltic/finnic as opposed to germanic) and their perceived “easternness” (i believe they were historically derogatorily referrred to as “China Swedes” in America) which is pretty obvious when one considers stereotypes about finnish people (primarily men) as alcoholics, violent etc. that persist to this day at least in sweden (i used to hear them constantly living farther north where there was a closer proximity to finland and also to communities of ethnic finnish people). Finnish speaking populations in sweden do have minority language privilege today, like for example the sámi, but that privilege honestly does very very little other than give access to some public services in their native language, despite the huge amount of ethnic finnish people living in the country.

edit: there’s a film called elina, som om jag inte fanns which deals with the erasure of the finnish language in sweden which if you can get your hands on it it’s not a bad watch. it’s directed by klaus härö who is a swedish-speaking finnish director and who also made a film called den nya människan about life at a eugenic women’s institution (i have seen it referred to as a swedish girl, interrupted but i shan’t comment on that...) and mother of mine (i can’t rmr the swedish or finnish title rn) about a finnish boy sent to sweden during wwII as many finnish children were, as well as a few other films. he’s not a groundbreaking filmmaker by any stylistic means or anything, but i think he tells these stories that not many people have wanted to touch upon in the nordic popular culture so i like to plug his shit.

[ravenlesslangblr]

So I did all of the Duolingo placement tests

Related to this post I saw a few requests to post the results of all my placement tests, so let's go! Long post and a lot of rambling ahead! So my friend and I did the tests chronologically (leaving the High Valyrian and Klingon out until the end in case we got too tired), but I'm going to group them up here in an order that makes sense.

Each of the numbers means the number of skills I've tested out of/the number of 'crowns' I got in each language. Since I got to complete the placement test 37 times in total, I could actually find out how it works. It is pretty hard to try and cheat your way through it with a language you don't know, because if the test picks up on a fact that you messed up a 'beginner sentence', it immediately sends you back to the basics. Due to this, some results were a tiny bit upsetting, but later on, I realised that this is just how the test works and is not necessarily reflective on one's language skills. Another thing that is super important - the test reflects your knowledge of the Duolingo course rather than your actual language knowledge. I could actually prove this 'theory' to myself later on with some results.

My 'main' languages aka the languages I did well on and I kind of expected to:

Irish 48 French 42 German 51 Honestly, I was a bit more open not to do so well on French since it's become quite rusty and I'm experiencing some kind of a mental block with it, but I still did quite well! As for German and Irish - I would have been so upset had I gotten a single mistake. And it has not happened in either case.

My native language: Czech 31 This one honestly made me lol, because I have made 2+ mistakes and the Duolingo course is just strange. It called me out on my use of nějaký and některý where I was like 'There's a difference? o.O' and at one point it used the verb 'left' for 'forgot', which I did figure out correctly, but it was yet another sign that the course/placement test isn't very accurate yet when it comes to Czech. Languages I did well on because they are similar to a language that i already speak: Spanish 12 Italian 14 (well, I briefly studied Italian, so some credit there as well) Portuguese 3 (surprising since I mostly guessed) Polish 24 Ukrainian 17 Yiddish 5 (I LOVED the Yiddish placement test! I will definitely try the Duolingo course)

Other languages I have done before: Welsh 3 Esperanto 9 I was quite disappointed in both of these (Welsh broke my heart!) but I think this is just a testament that the placement tests aren't reflective of your language knowledge, but of your Duolingo topics knowledge. I haven't done much of Welsh or Esperanto on Duolingo since I studied them at university. I'm not fluent in either, so it really boils down to what I was taught. More proof are the next languages Dutch 22 Scottish Gaelic 20 These are the two lanuages I have studied almost exclusively on Duolingo only. I also definitely have a better knowledge of Welsh and Esperanto than Gaelic and Dutch. But the tests went much much better for these, because I already knew the topics that Duolingo was going to ask me. And now for the Nordic languages: Swedish 18 Norwegian 16 Danish 7

Honestly, I think it's hilarious that I did better at Swedish than Norwegian, when the only reason I did well at Swedish was because of Norwegian. Also, the articles are still super confusing to me and it was a source of many frustrating mistakes! Speaking of mistakes - I don't think that the test takes into account what kind of mistakes you made. It could be a missing article (which imo is a pretty minor one) or you could pick an adjective for a verb and both of the mistakes will be marked down the same. This one was pretty frustrating and prevented me from doing well on languages that I was actually okay at. Languages I've failed and it was quite upsetting: Korean 0 Russian 0 Latin 0 I have been learning some Korean on Lingodeer (mostly reading Hangul), so I expected to utilise some of these skills on Duolingo. Not the case. My Russian - I can read and understand - just like Ukrainian that I did pretty well on in comparison.... and it all boiled down to me confusing some things and not knowing what 'a horse' was. Boom, 'let's start from the basics'. Same with Latin - I have studied it briefly and was able to understand, but I haven't touched it in a while and completely forgot some minor things, which the placement test picked up on immediately. Also! When you're not doing well, the placement test almost taunts you! They keep giving you the same stuff over and over until you remember it and it feels like there's some hope for you. But no, still back to basics! it's quite mean! haha And here's the languages I have also failed, but it wasn't surprising:

Japanese 0 Mandarin 0 Hindi 0 Arabic 0 Turkish 0 Greek 0 (this is an example of the one I thought I was doing well on) Vietnamese 0 Hebrew 0 Indonesian 0 Hawaiian 0 Finnish 0 (bit sad since I really want to learn Finnish) Romanian 0 (I was super surprised here since I somewhat expected to be able to understand it more) Swahili 0 (again I really enjoyed it! Will check out the course on my actual account) Hungarian 0 (another one i thought I did well on haha) Navajo 0 (also will check out the course!) And the fictional ones - no one's surprised, even though High Valyrian was giving me some hope: High Valyrian 0 Klingon 0 Also, is this a testament of how eurocentric my language interest is? Yep, pretty much. I am quite aware and I'd like to broaden my interests, but then again, it's not that easy. Still all in all, this was so much fun, even though it was a bit tiring and frustrating at times. However, once you find out that there's no point in trying to bs the languages you don't know/recognise anyway, then it gets a bit easier. Let me know if you try and honestly, congrats if you've read up until here, I don't even have the patience to re-read this post :D @dutch-polyglot , @anthropologicle and everyone else who liked/reblogged :)

[willowgast]

hi! i’m very interested in history and would love to study it in college, but i don’t know what careers i could get with a history major besides being a teacher. are you planning on becoming a teacher, or do you have other career suggestions for those studying history? tysm if you respond!

so, here's a testament to how terrible i am at running this ramshackle blog - i just found this in my drafts after goodness knows how long and frankly i dread to count back and find out. but it is a very good question and i am very, very sorry for taking probably months to do this, and even if this no longer interests you (i apologise again) i'm going to post anyway in case it interests somebody else. going under the cut because this might become a tad long-winded - there's also a tl;dr at the very end of the post for those who don't want to sift through my stream of thoughts.

i am not personally planning on becoming a teacher, at least not in a high school level or younger - still have far too many Spicy Memories from that age to want to return to a school setting in any capacity. academia does appeal to me a lot more as an option - i'm loving my dissertation work and there are lots of areas within my broad field of medieval northern europe with room for fresh, new research. i could specialise in any number of areas, but right now what appeals to me most is literary history and archaeology. unfortunately, my course isn't running the archaeology paper it usually offers as part of the second year setup this year, so i won't get to try out specialising in it, but it's something that's grabbed my attention more and more over the course of my first year of study.

beyond remaining within academia or going into archaeology, i've also considered museum work and archival work. my interest in working in a museum has sprung from a similar place to my interest in archaeology - i've discovered that staying holed up writing at a desk all day, every day can be very draining and, more importantly, that working with physical, material history right in my hands and before my very eyes is Really Super Cool and Exciting. i would very happily look into options for working in a museum in curation or conservation, helping to preserve artefacts and make them accessible to the general public. archival work comes from a similar place, too - i guess it combines my interest in literary history with the feeling of intimacy and immediacy that comes with working with material history.

steering away from fields directly relevant to history, i'd also love to spend some time working in a library - any kind at all, from my local public library to something more academic. one of the papers i'm taking is palaeography, the study of manuscripts, which i've developed a much greater fondness for than i expected to when i started. it's made me really interested in working in an academic library that curates and cares for collections of older manuscripts, i guess like a crossover of a library and a museum.

there's a few areas too that aren't directly related to my degree, but are helped and supplemented by it - these are translation, publishing, and creative writing. languages and literature have always been my strongest subject in school, so it helps a lot for me that my course is interdisciplinary, combining study of medieval languages, literature, and history rather than being strictly a history degree. i maintain a good standard of french and german from when i studied them at school and i'm also learning danish, norwegian, and swedish on the side. the last three are mainly just for reading purposes as i sometimes get set academic articles to read in those languages, but i'd love to work and study in norway some day so i'm practicing norwegian to a more proficient/practical level. at some stage, probably once i've completed my degree, i'd like to save some money aside to take exams and hopefully get qualifications in some of those languages - probably german and norwegian - just to have some formal acknowledgement of my work to hand if i ever want to pursue any programmes or qualifications in translation studies. literary translation, working with creative literature rather than formal documents or academic writing, is something i'm very sure i would enjoy.

publishing is harder to describe, i guess. i have a small role as the editor of my department's silly little student magazine and i'd like to expand and apply to editorial positions at other, marginally more respectable student publications - it's certainly a role i'm enjoying a lot, although i haven't done much research into the professional publishing industry yet. it's on the backburner until i pull my life together enough to properly research career options there.

alternatively, the one thing that has always been my go-to dream job since i was a kid is just 'writer'. i love writing fiction and poetry, i have spent at least some of my free time each week writing whatever comes to mind for as long as i can remember. i have a big fantasy project on the go at the moment that i don't really talk about on this blog, but i do now have the beginnings of a world anvil page talking about it which is linked in my pinned post. i'm not banking on it or considering it as a very reliable option, but i will keep slowly and lovingly building it until it's ready to share, and then i'll simply see what happens next.

(if it took off though, i would drop everything else in my life like a hot plate and live out my silly little childhood dream to its fullest potential. tween magnus deserves some justice in this life.)

anyways - TL;DR now:

jobs i'm personally interested in:

academia/professional scholar

museum curator or conservator

archaeology

archivist

librarian

literary translator

something in the publishing industry idk

writer

general history-degree-related advice:

there are more options out there than just teaching which are directly related to the field of history. the more you dig into your area of interest, the more weird and whacky jobs you never expected to exist will crop up on your radar - i'm sure there are plenty of obscure things i've missed out here. unless you become a tenured professor or senior curator or secure a job at a particularly fancy/prestigious institution, none of these jobs pay particularly well, and academia especially is known for treating everyone who isn't a tenured senior academic like mud. therefore you pretty much have to be in these jobs out of passion rather than a desire to live comfortably and with above-average financial success. finally, most people i know at university, regardless of their field, aren't aiming to find careers directly relevant to said fields (apart from like, med students and lawyers and that kind of thing). especially in the humanities. none of us really know what we're doing. if you're comfortable studying these subjects for the pure passion and joy of it, fantastic, i'm right there the same with you - if you want something that has a more stable degree-to-career progression, humanities right now probably aren't top subjects. there's a whole ongoing cultural debate about how criminally undervalued humanities degrees and jobs are, and i hope that soon we'll see some tangible results from this - among them that all of the jobs i've listed above will be marginally better paid, and junior academics better treated within their fields.

history is wonderful. come join us. (also if anyone else doing humanities has points or advice that i've missed out, please feel free to add them, my scope of experience is still very limited)

[sunscreenstudies]

why those languages ? (the ones listed in your bio, im assuming you're learning them or learnt them)

Hey anon, thanks for the ask!

I have like an entire rant about why these languages but I also don't want to bore people so to keep things simple:

German

Had to choose between this and French in school cause unfortunately I wasn't allowed to do both and German is the most commonly spoken of the two. I started learning it for practical reasons but quickly grew to love it, and now I willingly choose to study it at college cause it is honestly such a beautiful language no matter what 'oh german sounds so angry' haters say! TL;DR Reason why: To travel Europe more easily & read original literature

Norwegian

German and English gets me through most of mainland Europe, but not Scandinavia so I decided to learn a language from there. I was stuck between Icelandic, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Russian, but then I read somewhere that if you know Norwegian then you can understand like 30% of spoken/written Swedish/Danish so it seemed like a win-win! It's also the most similar of the list to German (which has as many upsides as it does downsides) TL;DR Reason why: To visit Scandinavia & Norsk Disney songs are great

Esperanto

It's the most modern purposefully invented langauge there is which is reason enough! It's also hella beautiful while still making practical sense and it has a lot of loan words from the Romance languages, which I hope will give me a leg up with French/Spanish/Italian/Portuguese. Also: No grammatical genders!!! TL;DR Reason why: To help with other languages & learn the only constructed language we have

Dutch

Again, a super beautiful langauge (i just think all languages are beauiful, okay) as well as being another Germanic language. For some reason, I can learn Germanic languages like x10 times faster than any other branch of the language tree so that was also a bonus. It's also like the halfway point between English and German, and lends itself to Afrikaans as well! TL;DR Reason why: To learn another Germanic language & it’s similarity to German & English

French

I know I said I suck at learning Romance languages but I genuinely love them so so much that I still have to try no matter how difficult it is. I've never been a huge fan of the way Spanish sounds, and Italian gender articles give me nightmares, so I was stuck between French and Portuguese. Then I remembered that I had a super basic French textbook from when I had to choose between it and German back in school, and the decision was made for me! I think French is just as beautiful as German and visa versa, just for different reasons. TL;DR Reason why: To learn a romance language, watch French shows, & its hella pretty

And I was meant to keep things simple...

[rotzaprachim]

now you've got me super curious. how many languages are you actively learning and what attracted you to each one? <3

OHHH so i have absolutely no focus but hypothetically

- i have some stuff for school that’s hyperspecific in a way i don’t want to talk about on the internets but am fine with in DM’s 

- i studied italian for two years as part of a requirement but haven’t really kept it up and want to! i love it, i started doing it dragging my feet a little but i really love it and its actually the one i’ve studied that i’ve gotten the most use out of by far. i love the sound of it, the vibrancy/specificity and emotion, the literature and poetry, and also the mix of dialetti/accenti (yes i very much know they’re seperate languages) and interplay of that, the diversity within it in everyday terms and the way i never feel finished learning.... 

- i started welsh casually about a month ago! i’ve always wanted to learn it and have had some contact with it for a while, hearing it and seeing it about etc and thought. well i’ll probably never have this much time again. i love welsh music and the coziness and hominess of how it sounds

- casually I dabble in norwegian and send text messages to my friend in it, but I understand swedish a bit better for various reasons. it’s similar enough to english i find it very satisfying to make quick progress, also I found that dabbling/learning in a romance and a germanic language has given me a deeper knowledge of English syntax, vocab, and grammar than grammar books or class have 

- I’ve been working on modern hebrew (and classical hebrew) for about a year and a half now, i just love it especially the roots system and the ability to access a wider range of Jewish writers and texts, both across time and across space/area, and the sense of interconnectivity and tangible earthiness (??? not sure if that’s the best word) i feel when I speak/read/write in it. LOVE roots 

thank you so much for the ask!!!!

[offtopicoverload]

Soo 🖋+ Clover, if you want to talk about her a bit more. I am really curious and interested. 😁💙

I’d love to talk about her a bit more

She’s pretty similar to Hannah, but considerably more practical

Instead of fairy tales and fiction, she gravitates towards more academic things I’d say, and obviously she’s obsessed with languages

She can speak English, Danish, German, Swedish, Norwegian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin (she insists its not a waste), and some Tamil for the most part, but the first four are definitely her specialty and she tends to translate for Danish, German, and Swedish most often

She’s trying to learn Italian, Mandarin, and Arabic primarily, but she keeps getting stuck on Mandarin I feel like? I dunno, but it seems the most different, but I have no idea

She grew up trilingual with Danish, Tamil, and German, but the Tamil was always a bit rough, she just didn’t use it that much

She likes the idea of being able to talk to anyone in the world, so she started learning other languages from a young age 

In her mind words are super powerful, and being able to share words with someone is super special and cool

She also can play guitar or something, I’m pretty sure that’s a connection? I honestly don’t remember if that’s true, it might be math and music I’m thinking of lol

But she had a friend in primary school that spoke Swedish and Norwegian and learned from her, since those three are super connected

She actually moved to the UK in like Grade 7 or so, and already knew some English from media and stuff, but she had a hard time when she was still learning it more in depth, and was kinda isolated because of it

So when a French kid also moved to her school like two years later, she literally spent weeks staying up way too late learning French to talk with him and help him out

He taught her French, she helped him with English and taught him some German and they were best friends in school

They’re still super close and were roommates for a while, like they’re both introverts that aren’t great at opening up, but they’ve had so many deep 3 am chats that I don’t even think she could count them lmao

So languages have always been important to her and she ended up throwing herself into them in uni to the point that she graduated early, and then again with her career

[vikinglanguage]

Got any recommendations for easier languages to learn? Would you ever learn Esperanto?

Got any recommendations for easier languages to learn?I mean, the easiest languages to learn always depend on which languages you already know. For an example, as a native Danish speaker I would most likely be able to learn both Swedish and Norwegian from just exposure, with no formal study what so ever, even at the age of 20.I also find that I understand a lot of written Dutch just because of my knowledge of Danish, English, and German.

In my language learning experience so far, I’ve definitely found English the easiest to learn. The grammar is quite simple when it comes to verbs (though a bit more complicated than Danish, which only has 6 verbal forms, but much simpler than ie. Spanish, which has 58), there are no noun cases outside of attaching ‘s or ‘ to stuff or using different pronouns, nouns don’t even have a grammatical gender, there’s no declension of adjectives, the word order is always SVO outside of questions etc. The phonetics are AWFUL, but the availability of EVERYTHING in English makes up for it fantastically.

I’ve heard that if you are a native English speaker, Dutch and Afrikaans should be some of the easiest languages to learn, though I don’t know if there’s anything to that claim, as I’ve never tried to learn either. They SOUND very similar to English as well. I think if you’re good at finding resources for niche languages, Frisian is the closest relative to modern English, so that should be fairly easy?If you want something that’s easy to spell and also very LOGICAL in my experience, I’d say Spanish is a good bet. Everything is spelled exactly how you’d think, and all the rules that I’ve encountered so far make sense. I cannot remember the last time I guessed the gender of a Spanish noun wrong. However, there are 58 verbal forms, which is... a lot. Like English, Spanish is also a language that has quite a lot of stuff readily available, because it is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, and there are a lot of people who are learning Spanish.I actually also don’t think Danish should be a very hard language to learn, if you already speak a Germanic language (English, German, Dutch, Swedish). Though we do have some weird sounds (soft d, ø) and our spelling is often completely WACK, we do only have 6 verbal forms, 2 grammatical genders (unless you speak WEIRD AS HELL dialects) and NO NOUNS CASES (Honestly, the cases are my least favourite part of German. I get why they’re theoretically handy, but it’s just... hard). But honestly, I wouldn’t know. I mean, I have no recollection of learning Danish, but it seems to have been a fairly easy feat for my Austrian roommate so far.

Would you even learn Esperanto?BIG TIME YES! As a native speaker of a European language, a fluent speaker of another, someone who won’t get lost in another two European language and also just an enormous language nerd, I think it’s really interesting. It is actually something that I’ve already been dabbling with, but considering where I’m currently at in my life, for now it makes more sense for me to focus on really trying to learn German.That being said, when I first learned that Esperanto existed when I was? Maybe 14 or something like that, I was instantly very fascinated! The main thing about it that bugs me, is that it has noun cases, because it’s the thing I’ve always despised about German and I see no reason to include it, when you can... not... However, I do think that the spelling and pronunciation is 👌👌👌, so that makes it more ok. I think conlangs are super cool and would definitely be very interested in learning Esperanto at some point, but I don’t think that point is right now. I don’t know, I haven’t though about it for a while.

[thewosopost]

What are the Most Exciting National Leagues to watch?

The 2019 Women’s World Cup was the biggest one so far, but now fans must wait four more years for another one. Luckily, the 2020 Olympics begin this summer and later the Euro Cup in 2021. Along with these large tournaments, there are plenty of national leagues to follow. (This list doesn’t follow any particular order)

NWSL

The NWSL is the American women’s soccer league and arguably the most competitive one. Every USWNT player from the 2019 World Cup plays in the league. The NWSL runs from April to October, each team having 24 regular-season games scheduled plus the semifinals and finals. Only the top four teams make the playoffs each year. The current winner is the North Carolina Courage, you can read about the team’s success on an article of ours named “Why are the North Carolina Courage So Good?.” Aside from the World Cup USWNT, players you should really look out for in the league are Debinha, Lynn Williams, Casey Short, Christine Sinclair, Kristen Hamilton, and Yuki Nagasato.

You can watch the league on ESPN or Yahoo sports if you live in the United States. Check out our article on “International fans vs the NWSL” for more information on the subject.

WSL

England’s national league (WSL) has 12 teams competing for the championship. Unlike the NWSL, this league is currently in season, running from September to May. The WSL’s current champion is Arsenal with their 3rd title. Top players including Vivianne Miedema, Danielle Van de Donk, Magdalena Eriksson and recently signed to Chelsea, Sam Kerr, are all part of the Women’s Super League, along with many other high-quality footballers. If you live in the United Kingdom or Ireland, the WSL has partnered with BT Sport for the broadcasts of the matches, for the international fans, an app called “FA Player” allows fans to watch all of the WSL games for free anywhere in the world. BBC Sport also airs one game a weekend via their iPlayer and website.

Primera División

The Spanish league, also known as Iberdrola, started in 1988 but got its current name and format for the 2011-12 season when it was decided that the former group-based system was no longer going to be used, instead, there would be 18 teams playing double round-robin to decide the champion, for the 2012-13 season it was shortened to 16 teams. The current champions of the league are Atlético Madrid with their 4th title. Players such as Mapi Leon, Jenni Hermoso, Lieke Martens, Caroline Graham-Hansen, Sofia Jakobsson and Kosovare Asllani can all be found playing in Primera División. The two lowest placed teams are replaced with the two highest in the Segunda División. The games are broadcast through GolTV, ETB 1, Esport3 and BelN Sports(Spain only), but streams may also be available on YouTube.

Division 1

The French league runs from September to June, with its 12 clubs playing 22 games each, mostly on weekends. According to UEFA 2018-2019 women’s association club coefficients, Division 1 is ranked the best women’s league in Europe. The current winners are Olympique Lyonnais, a team that includes great players such as Amandine Henry, Lucy Bronze, Ada Hegerberg and Dzsenifer Marozsán. The team holds their 17th title, making them the most successful team in Europe! Just like the previously mentioned leagues, the winner of Division 1 is the team with most points by the end of the season – four points are given to the winner of each match and two points if the teams tie – if more than one team ends of with the same number of points, the tiebreaker is goal difference and then goals scored. The two lowest-placed teams are relegated to the Division 2 league, being substituted by the two highest-placed in D2, the same way as in the Spanish league. Division 1 has partnered with France Télévisions and Eurosport for the broadcasts of the matches.

Damallsvenskan

The Swedish league is similar to the other European leagues. Twelve teams compete to gain points and stay on top of the table to win the championship, on a system of promotion and relegation with Elitettan. The current champions are first-time winners Piteå FC, and FC Rosengård leads the number of championships with 10 titles. Not many famous players can be found in Damallsvenskan, but fans can see some like Norwegian Vilde Bøe Rosa, Sweden’s NT captain Caroline Fischer and Swedish forward Olivia Schough. Matches can be watched on Damallsvenskan TV, but unfortunately, it isn’t free.

Frauen Bundesliga

That is the German league, which also works just like the other European leagues. Whichever two teams stay at the bottom of the table are replaced with respective two top placed in the 2. Frauen-Bundesliga, and the team that ends up with the biggest amount of points is the champion. Vfl Wolfsburg won their 5th championship on the 2018-19 season, and FFC Frankfurt is the most successful team with 7 titles. 2019 Women’s World Cup Best Young Player Giulia Gwinn is part of the league, along with Alexandra Popp, Hedvig Lindahl, Pernille Harder, and Lina Magull. The league has partnered with Eurosport and DAZN for the broadcasts of the matches, some can also be found on YouTube.

W League

The Australian league includes many players that are also found in the NWSL since both leagues seasons don’t run at the same time. It starts in November and goes until February. Each of its nine teams play 12 games. Just like in NWSL, the top four teams of the regular season advance to the knockout semifinals, followed by the Grand Final which decided the Champion. The current champions are Sydney FC, holding their 3rd title and the current premier champions. The teams with most premier titles are Canberra United and Brisbane Roar. The W League has partnered with Fox Sports and ABC to broadcast their games, international fans can watch through ESPN+.

The winner and runner up on each European league qualify for the UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL)

Writer: Isabella Almeida @ isabellagomesa on Instagram

Editor: Alex @ ar1212__ on Instagram @ Aaroth12 on Twitter

[nickshermancollab]

From German translator Johanna Pichler:

The idiom: Tomaten auf den Augen haben. Literal translation: “You have tomatoes on your eyes.” What it means: “You are not seeing what everyone else can see. It refers to real objects, though — not abstract meanings.”

The idiom: Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof. Literal translation: “I only understand the train station.” What it means: “I don’t understand a thing about what that person is saying.’”

- could end on this. everything gets super crazy, screen is full of random literal idioms then the main character sees a train stations and everything melts away. he/she gets on train. end credits of departing train. 

The idiom: Die Katze im Sack kaufen. Literal translation: “To buy a cat in a sack.” What it means: That a buyer purchased something without inspecting it first. Other languages this idiom exists in: We hear from translators that this is an idiom in Swedish, Polish, Latvian and Norwegian. In English, the phrase is “buying a pig in poke,” but English speakers do also  “let the cat out of the bag,” which means to reveal something that’s supposed to be secret.

From Swedish translator Matti Jääro:

The idiom: Det är ingen ko på isen Literal translation: “There’s no cow on the ice.” What it means: “There’s no need to worry. We also use ‘Det är ingen fara på taket,’ or ‘There’s no danger on the roof,’ to mean the same thing.”

The idiom: Att glida in på en räkmacka Literal translation: “To slide in on a shrimp sandwich.” What it means: “It refers to somebody who didn’t have to work to get where they are.”

- This one is funny.

The idiom: Det föll mellan stolarna Literal translation: “It fell between chairs.” What it means: “It’s an excuse you use when two people were supposed to do it, but nobody did. It has evolved into the slightly ironic phrase, ‘It fell between the chair,’ which you use when you want to say,‘Yeah, I know I was supposed to do it but I forgot.’”

- could be used as a transition.

From French translator Patrick Brault:

The idiom: Sauter du coq à l’âne. Literal translation: “To jump from the cock to the donkey.” What it means: “It means to keep changing topics without logic in a conversation.”

- another way for the character to move in the animation. whilst trying to get away. he/she could have to jump from animal to the next to get away.

The idiom: Se regarder en chiens de faïence. Literal translation: “To look at each other like earthenware dogs.” What it means: “Basically, to look at each other coldly, with distrust.”

- could be a pause in the chaos. character looks at something. camera is POV. turns back to front view. character has turned into a dog. tries shaking head. transforms back into character. 

From Portuguese translators Gustavo Rocha and Leonardo Silva:

The idiom: Pagar o pato Literal translation: “Pay the duck.” What it means: “To take the blame for something you did not do.”

- Seedy business duck could be fun

From Korean translator Jeong Kinser:

The idiom: 똥 묻은 개가 겨 묻은 개 나무란다 Literal translation: “A dog with feces scolds a dog with husks of grain.” What it means: “It’s a bit like, ‘People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.’”

- Good

The idiom: 오십보 백보 Literal translation: “50 steps are similar to 100 steps.” What it means: “I think of it as, ‘Six of one, half a dozen of the other.’”

-what?

[whittlebaggett8]

10 of the most powerful weapons NATO has to take on Putin’s Russia, Defence Online

For seven decades, the NATO alliance has practiced collective defense and deterrence.

NATO’s most “powerful weapon,” according to Jim Townsend with the Center for a New American Security, is the “unity of the alliance.

NATO needs to prepare for a high-end fight as Russia modernizes, pursuing hypersonic cruise missiles and other new systems, another expert said.

For seven decades, the NATO alliance has practiced collective defense and deterrence against evolving international threats, and over the years, its capabilities have changed accordingly.

NATO’s most “powerful weapon,” according to Jim Townsend with the Center for a New American Security, is the “unity of the alliance,” but the individual allies also possess hard-hitting capabilities that could be called upon were it to face high-level aggression.

Heather Conley with the Center for Strategic and International Studies believes that Russia is likely to continue to press the alliance through low-end influence and cyberwarfare operations. Still, she explained to Defence Online, NATO needs to be seriously contemplating a high-end fight as Russia modernizes, pursuing hypersonic cruise missiles and other new systems.

So, what does that fight look like?

“I’ve always likened it to a potluck dinner,” Townsend told Defence Online. “If NATO has this potluck dinner, what are the kinds of meals, kind of dishes that allies could bring that would be most appreciated?”

“If a host is looking to invite someone who is going to bring the good stuff, they are for sure going to invite the United States,” he explained, adding that “in all categories, the US leads.”

Nonetheless, the different dinner guests bring a variety of capabilities to the table. Here’s some highlights of the many powerful weapons NATO could bring to bear against Russia.

F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter

caption

Capt. Andrew “Dojo” Olson, F-35 Demonstration Team pilot and commander performs a dedication pass in an F-35A Lightning II during the annual Heritage Flight Training Course March 1, 2019, at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.

source

U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Alexander Cook

“The air side of the NATO equation is led by the United States with the F-35 and other various aircraft,” Townsend told BI.

The fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is an aircraft that rival powers have been unable to match its stealth and advanced suite of powerful sensors.

Read More: US Air Force F-35s wrecked their enemies in mock air combat – even the new pilots were racking up kills against simulated near-peer threats

While some NATO countries are looking at the F-35 as a leap in combat capability, others continue to rely on the F-16, an older supersonic fighter that can dogfight and also bomb ground targets. And then some countries, like Germany, are considering European alternatives.

Eurofighter Typhoons

caption

The RAF Typhoon performs a low flyover at Liverpool airport prior to landing.

source

Getty Images

The Eurofighter Typhoon is a capable mutli-role aircraft designed by a handful of NATO countries, namely the UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain, determined to field an elite air-superiority fighter. France, which walked away from the Eurofighter project, independently built a similar fighter known as the Dassault Rafale.

Observers argue that the Typhoon is comparable to late-generation Russian Flanker variants, such as the Su-35.

While each aircraft has its advantages, be it the agility of the Typhoon or the low-speed handling of the Flanker, the two aircraft are quite similar, suggesting, as The National Interest explained, that the Eurofighter could hold its own in a dogfight with the deadly Russian fighter.

Bombers

caption

A B-52 Stratofortress deployed from Barksdale Air Force Base, La., sits on the flight line at RAF Fairford, England, March 14, 2019.

source

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Tessa B. Corrick

The US provides conventional and nuclear deterrence capabilities through the regular rotation of bomber aircraft into the European area of operations.

Read More: A big batch of B-52 bombers is flying into Europe amid heightened tensions with Russia

American bombers have been routinely rotating into the area since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, according to Military.com. That year, the Pentagon sent two B-2 Spirit bombers and three B-52s to Europe for training. The B-1B Lancers are also among the US bombers that regularly operate alongside NATO allies.

US P-8A Poseidon

“There’s also the maritime posture, particularly as Russia continues to rely on a submarine nuclear deterrent. We need a stronger presence. That’s why we’re seeing Norway, the US, UK do more with the P-8As,” Conley, the CSIS expert, told BI.

Read More: Submarines are increasingly lurking in seas around the world, and the US Navy’s high-tech Poseidon is there to hunt them

Facing emerging threats in the undersea domain, where the margins to victory are said to be razor thin, NATO allies are increasingly boosting their ability to hunt and track enemy submarines from above and below the water.

While there are a number of options available for this task, the US Navy P-8A Poseidon patrol plane, which was brought into replace the US military’s older P-3 Orions, are among the best submarine hunters out there.

Frigates

caption

Norwegian frigate HNoMS Helge Ingstad (front) leads Turkish frigate TCG Oruçreis, Belgian frigate BNS Louise Marie and a Swedish Visby-class corvette during Trident Juncture.

source

NATO/LCDR Pedro Miguel Ribeiro Pinhei

Another effective anti-submarine capability is that provided by the various frigates operated by a number of NATO countries.

“The NATO allies, in particular Italy, France, Spain, all have frigates that have very capable anti-submarine warfare systems,” Bryan Clark with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments told BI.

“They have active low-frequency sonars that are variable-depth sonars. They can find submarines easily, and they are very good against diesel submarines.” These forces could be used to target Russian submarines in the Eastern Mediterranean and into the Black Sea.

“Norway and Denmark also have really good frigates,” he explained. “They could go out and do anti-submarine warfare” in the North Sea/Baltic Sea area, “and they are very good at that.”

AH-64 Apache gunship

The Apache gunship helicopter, capable of close air support, has the ability to rain down devastation on an approaching armor column.

The attack helicopters can carry up to sixteen Hellfire missiles at a time, with each missile possessing the ability to cripple an enemy armor unit. The Hellfire is expected to eventually be replaced with the more capable Joint Air-to-Ground Missile.

The Cold War-era Apache attack helicopters have been playing a role in the counterinsurgency fight in the Middle East, but the gunships could still hit hard in a high-end conflict.

German Leopard 2

caption

The Leopard 2A7 main battle tank of the German Armed Forces participates in the ‘Land Operations’ military exercises during a media day at the Bundeswehr training grounds on October 14, 2016 near Bergen, Germany.

source

Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

The Leopard 2 main battle tank, which gained a reputation for being “indestructible,” is a formidable weapon first built to blunt the spearhead of a Soviet armor thrust and one that would probably be on the front lines were the NATO alliance and Russia to come to blows.

While this tank, a key component of NATO’s armored forces, took an unexpected beating in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, it is still considered one of the alliance’s top tanks, on par with the US M1 Abrams and the British Challenger 2.

Observers suspect that the Leopard 2, like its US and British counterparts, would be easily able to destroy most Russian tanks, as these tanks are likely to get the jump on a Russian tank in a shoot out.

US Nimitz-class aircraft carriers

caption

The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) and ships assigned to the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (HSTCSG) transit the Atlantic Ocean while conducting composite training unit exercise (COMPTUEX) on February 16, 2018.

source

US Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Scott Swofford

A last-minute addition to last year’s Trident Juncture exercise – massive NATO war games designed to simulate a large-scale conflict with Russia – was the USS Harry S. Truman, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, and its accompanying strike group.

The carrier brought 6,000 servicemembers and a large carrier air wing of F/A-18 Super Hornets to Norway for the largest drill in years.

“One thing the NATO naval partners have been looking at is using carriers as part of the initial response,” Clark told BI. The US sails carriers into the North Atlantic to demonstrate to Russia that the US can send carriers into this area, from which it could carry out “operations into the Baltics without too much trouble,” he added.

Read More: The US Navy’s Truman carrier strike group is bringing 6,000 more sailors to NATO’s biggest war games in years

America’s ability to project power through the deployment of aircraft carriers is unmatched, due mainly to the massive size, sophistication and training regimen of its carrier fleet. The UK and France also have aircraft carriers.

PATRIOT surface-to-air missile system

PATRIOT, which stands for “Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target,” is an effective surface-to-air guided air and missile defense system that is currently used around the world, including in a number NATO countries.

There is a “need for an integrated air and missile defense picture,” Conley told BI. “That is certainly a high-valued protection for the alliance.”

Read More: Poland signs nearly $5 billion deal for US Patriot missile system facing Russia

NATO is also in the process of fielding Aegis Ashore sites, land-based variants of the sea-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, that can track and fire missiles that intercept ballistic targets over Europe.

US Virginia-class submarines

caption

The U.S. Navy submarine USS North Dakota (SSN-784) underway during bravo sea trials in the Atlantic Ocean.

source

U.S. Navy Photo

Virginia-class submarines, nuclear-powered fast attack boats, are among the deadliest submarines in the world. They are armed with torpedoes to sink enemy submarines and surface combatants, and they can also target enemy bases and missile batteries ashore with Tomahawk cruise missiles.

These submarines “could be really useful to do cruise missile attacks against some of the Russian air defense systems in the western military district that reach over the Baltic countries,” Clark told BI.

“You can really conduct air operations above these countries without being threatened by these air defense systems. So, you would want to use cruise missiles to attack them from submarines at sea.”

The post 10 of the most powerful weapons NATO has to take on Putin’s Russia, Defence Online appeared first on Defence Online.

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[eggindenmark]

Iceland

MAY 14TH: Golden Circle Tour

Upon arriving to Iceland I noticed that the weather was predicted to be super rainy everyday I was here and let me tell ya… if you drive 15 mins in any direction you are guaranteed different weather. Also the sun here rises at 4AM and sets at 10:30PM. So even arriving at my guesthouse at 10:50PM on Saturday night it was still pretty light out! During the summer they have 24 hours of sun so that is insanity.

Anywho the first stop on my Golden Circle Tour was at a geothermal heated greenhouse called, Friðheimar. They grow different varieties of tomatoes and cucumbers. Nearly 90% of Icelandic homes are heated via geothermal springs that are piped into houses across the country. In fact there is a town called Hot Springs that if you dig about 6ft down you are guaranteed to hit steam. Thus, there are little steam pockets all along the mountain ranges and some power plants as well to harness the energy supply. Furthermore, Iceland is extremely proud of their ground water; however, I can tell you firsthand it is SO high in sulfur. A scent I smelled ever so clearly on our next stop along this tour at the Geysir (dormant) and Strokkur (active geyser). Strokkur goes off about every 5 minutes and released water into the air that is 80 to 100°C (176 to 212°F aka boiling). So the group was warned to stay clear of the southern wind that carries the boiling water past the marked off area. Anywho it was our first stop that I saw mountains in the distance and I was totally floored…little did I know this would be a regular occurrence.

Next stop was Gullfoss, “foss” in Icelandic means waterfall and let me tell ya there are plenty of “fosses” to go around. This country is COVERED in them. Also another reason why they have hydro-power stations scattered around the island. They also tried to turn Gullfoss into a hydro power station; however, the owner of the land at the time denied it and now it is a national park and protected from such actions. Anywho Gullfoss was gorgeous and the mist coming from the falls was insane I thought it was raining - honestly couldn’t tell the difference.

Our last stop was in Þingviller National Park, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. These waterways lead into the largest lake in Iceland that was created by….you guessed it a GLACIER! Anywho this entire area is ridiculously scenic and I was able to get up close and personal with some gorgeous rock walls. Also side note Icelandic as a language has some funky letters and even more funky sounding. My tour guide described it as a Germanic language that is similar to the Nordic languages (Norwegian, Danish and Swedish), but would be the equivalent of someone speaking Latin to a Spanish/Italian/French native speaker. She said that they learn English and Danish in school as a requirement; however, they are not very good at speaking Danish (that makes two+ of us). Also it’s basically a given for teens to go away for college and possibly live abroad for some time because the 6 universities on the island do not offer everything. Our tour guide lived in France for 8 years and worked for the French embassy and police department before returning back to Iceland to work in tourism - a much happier job she said. She also noted that the unemployment rate in Iceland is 2% so it’s a lot more appealing to come back home.

Also Iceland is easily the most expensive country I have ever visited. Their gift shop prices jump from $12 to $39 to $79…for what you ask? Hmm maybe just ya know a small wool felted sheep that is a magnet…$45. HAHA NO. Nope. No thanks. Nej tak! It is far more expensive than Denmark so I consider that impressive. However, the tours are well worth it and my guides have been really lovely!

Also after I got dropped off at my bus stop, which is located at the famous church in Reykjavik… the Hallgrímskirkja. I decided to take a few pictures. Also featured in front of it is as statue of Leif Erikson.

P.S. There are WAY more photos than this!

[airlinepolyglot-blog]

another infrequent update

NOTE: a few links and whatnot are missing from this post, several YouTubes, etc. I will add them very shortly, and if I do not, then please remind me!

Hello everyone, I know it’s been awhile once again. It’s not that I haven’t been doing language things (quite the contrary), but rather that I don’t have time to tell you about them. A quick rundown of what I’ll be talking about here:

Travels and how language related:

-my trip to Toronto

-my trip to Hong Kong

-a brief mention of my trip to Cancun

What I have learned, language wise, since my last update:

-Norwegian

-German

-Welsh

-Hungarian

-Russian

-Turkish

I went to Toronto with my girlfriend Marisa since my last update. Toronto is of course an English majority city so there isn’t a ton to write about that, but it’s worth noting just how bilingual Canada is in many ways. Most people in Toronto can’t speak French, or rarely speak it, but it’s as prevalent as Spanish is in the US. Everything is cosigned in both languages, and of course the government enforces Canada’s bilingualism, which was extremely interesting. I’ll be interested to visit a really bilingual city in Canada, like Ottawa or Montreal, where everyone can speak both languages.

Hong Kong had been one of my top cities to visit after I got the airline job (and before that, too). There was obviously absolutely no way it was going to disappoint, and luckily it didn’t in the slightest. Definitely the best place I have been to to date (lovely English right there!), on so many levels. It’s extremely welcoming and inviting to an outsider, insanely easy to get around, very safe, etc. But to the world tourist, the level of English spoken in Hong Kong is extremely impressive. Literally everyone in Hong Kong spoke English that I spoke with, to a very good degree. Curiously, the Filipino domestic helpers spoke some of the poorest english (they stuck to Tagalog), and more obviously, the mainland tourists spoke very little (if any) English. I used Mandarin a few times, but interestingly I used German quite a bit (there’s apparently quite a bit of German expatriation in Hong Kong). I was caught off guard with the German, considering I was fairly out of practice (but usually made out just fine!), but I came armed with the Mandarin. Using HelloChinese and a few audio resources (Living Language) I had a conversational amount down, though I never used it to that degree (it would just be pointing someone in the right direction or making small talk), after really seeing Mainland Chinese in action in Hong Kong, I felt very motivated to really work on my Mandarin. Sadly, I haven’t much since my trip ended, but I’m sure I’ll pick it back up at some point - I love Mandarin and always preach how simple it is to everyone and tell people it’s far easier than people think. Because it is...once you accept that the characters are an “over time” thing. And as expected, the little Cantonese I spoke (“ni ho”, “mh’goi”, “ching”, etc) was received very well, but considering how widely English was spoken, it was just my sign of gratitude to the natives.

I did visit Cancun, Mexico with Marisa as well, because it was affordable, accessible, and warm. While it wasn’t great (we had a good time together though), I’ll of course cover the language situation there. Largely of course English to cater to tourists, a few people did indeed lead with Spanish, which was surprising. I had an Uber driver who only spoke Spanish and so he and I pieced through a conversation together, and he was helping me learn. But still, the Spanish language and I don’t really click sadly. A shame, as I want to visit Madrid, Colombia (any city), Santiago de Chile, and of course return to Buenos Aires. But luckily Marisa knows and likes Spanish, so she can come with me and help out with that until I’m back on track.

Okay, now an update on my language study stuff. I could post Duolingo stats but eh I don’t think those give as accurate an estimation as me describing my progress. So, I’ve been focusing on Norwegian a lot recently, which is without question my favorite language. I’ve been really focused on finishing the tree, and am at Level 17 on Duolingo. Admittedly, Duolingo is the only resource I’m using for Norwegian right now. No books, no YouTube, no audio, just Duolingo. So the terrible robot voice that Duo uses is my only way of hearing the language at the moment, but I’m doing that on purpose. Going to finish the tree and really have this language down, and then see how quickly I really pick up on it when I hear it spoken by actual people. It’s such a simple and logical language on almost every level that it’s amazing. The grammar is just so much more simple than any other language. The verb conjugations (or relative lack thereof), definite articles (which are suffixes), word order, negation (just “ikke”) just all make so much sense. The amazing Paul (Langfocus) did an awesome video about Norwegian and its relation to Swedish and Danish, with a lesser extent Faroese and Icelandic (both of which are far more complicated grammatically than the other three). In an ideal world, the Vikings and their successors would’ve pushed for Norwegian (or Swedish, but I like Norwegian and the culture of Norway just a bit more) to be the universal language of the world instead of English. Norwegian is an easier and better language than English, and it’s far more logical in ways (grammatically and pronounced) than English ever could be. It (as well as Swedish and Danish) also lacks the case system that comes along with German, which makes it much easier to learn than the main language of its family. Through Norwegian, you can almost fully understand Swedish. I haven’t done Swedish on Duolingo at all, but I can read Swedish text incredibly well, point out and translate words in IKEA, and breeze through Memrise and Tinycards decks, thanks to my understanding of Norwegian. I can understand written Danish to the same degree, but it’s a wildly different language when spoken. I haven’t studied Danish much, but I’m sure once you’re used to how they pronounce things (like Spanish/Portuguese differences), you’ll be in great shape. I can’t wait to hopefully visit Oslo this summer, as I still have not gotten to speak Norwegian in real life at all yet, but am confident I can do so….well, confidently. We will find out soon.

I am returning to Germany in a few weeks, and in preparation I’m of course going through my German resources again. Reguilding Duolingo, going through some advanced levels on Memrise, playing around on Babadum, and things like that. German is annoyingly difficult/tricky in so many ways (and after learning one of the North Germanic languages, it will frustrate you more once you’ve learned just how simple it all can be!!!), but I’m convinced the language runs through my blood and is almost second nature to me at this point, which I’m extremely grateful for. I can jump into conversations often, understand it when I hear it (even Swiss German!), and generally carry myself along. I just wish it wasn’t so difficult for new learners who aren’t picking it up in a classroom setting - it really is a difficult language to teach yourself, especially if you’ve never dealt with a three gender language AND one that has a case system, no less. Plus, “sie” can mean she/formal you/they, which I’m sure can certainly trip anyone up. That’s just a bit impractical, but luckily I have that advantage I guess.

I dabbled briefly in Welsh on Duolingo. A very fun and surprisingly simple language, I put it on hold temporarily due to my desire to focus on other languages. Nonetheless, I found it super interesting, though of course often difficult to pronounce. The “dd” sound in Welsh is maybe the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted to pronounce, and I’m convinced only natives will ever master it. I want to see this language kept alive, so certainly give it a shot - the Duolingo course is wonderful and very well designed, and this YouTube video (linked within the course) will teach you how to pronounce the language very well.

My last three languages I’ll sort of talk about together. They are Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish. Three languages from different families (but I guess a similar part of the world), but damn are they a lot of fun to me. I’m actually glad I waited a week to write this post, as I attempted to look at Turkish again last night for the first time in ages and it suddenly made tons of sense to me - being an agglutinative language and all, just like Hungarian and to a lesser extent Russian. All three of these languages are pretty “out there” for an English speaker, and I’ll agree, some of the trickiest for an English speaker to learn, as they have a lot of rules. But honestly that’s a lot of the fun, once you get the rules down and can form sentences and work with the case system (all three languages feature a case system), you feel really accomplished speaking these beautiful languages. Russian always tends to amaze me, the amount of loanwords and similar vocabulary in Russian will really surprise you. Once you master the Cyrillic alphabet, I bet you could look at a Russian text and point out so many words that are similar to the Romance or Germanic languages. This makes for fun learning once you figure out the Slavic twist to put on each word. The lack of articles in Russian and verb “to be” is of course a massive advantage - once you dig into the language you realize just how much of a blessing this is. I’m really enjoying Russian, and while I still make plenty of grammar mistakes and still struggle to pronounce some things, I can’t wait to really get this language down and be able to speak it with confidence. While I won’t be able to speak Hungarian with sure confidence probably for a long time, it’s an extremely fun language to me. It has something like 15 cases - definitely an extreme amount, and not a language for the faint of heart, but if you’re really into this kind of thing you may want to look into it. The alphabet and pronunciation are quite simple once you get them down, and word order is very free thanks to the case system (similar to Russian!). Plus, the Hungarian people are great and amazed anyone attempts to learn their very hard language. I’m going to see for myself when I go to Budapest next month and attempt to drag some Hungarian out (they’re also attempting to learn English widespread, as tourism in Hungary amongst Europeans is climbing), and we’ll see if the rumors are true about how happy Hungarians are that we even let out a “szia” (hello/goodbye) or a “köszönöm” (thank you) in conversation. If you’re scared off by Russian’s foreign alphabet and Hungarian’s crazy amount of cases, then maybe Turkish is a good place to start if you’re interested in an agglutinative language that differs wildly from English and the languages similar (romance/germanic). Turkish follows a Subject+Object+Verb order which is kind of fun because you know the action is always at the end, and the vocabulary is very cool (and apparently features tons of Persian and Arabic loanwords). While I haven’t dove too deep into Turkish, by the time my next update rolls around, I believe I will have more to tell you, as I plan to get right back to Turkish on Duolingo once I’ve posted this. While neither Turkey (political situation) nor Russia (complicated visa issues) would be suitable to visit now, Azerbaijan would be a good place I think, as a large part of the population still speaks Russian, a lot speak English (thanks to all the expats), and their native language, Azerbaijani (or Azeri Turkish) is apparently very close to Turkish, so someone who knows Turkish well can quickly pick up on Azerbaijani. I wonder if the differences are as close as Norwegian to Swedish or more like Spanish to Italian. Maybe I’ll know by the time I write here next.

I also am attempting to learn the Greek alphabet because why not (the lowercase letters are throwing me off big time - why must they be different from the uppercase?!) and of course still looking at Italian, French, etc from time to time. I don’t have any decent observations on these developments.

Hopefully I’ll write to you all again soon. Follow me on Instagram or something if you’d like more frequent updates about my life.

[stinkman-garbageboy]

Hey, this is for the bilingual thing. I'm fluent in Danish and English - and while Danish is my first language I dream and think pretty much exclusively in English. For me I sometimes switch to English mid sentence without really thinking about it, bc honestly a lot of things sound much better in English lmao. And while I know a lot of my friends do it as well it's not a common thing in Denmark even tho most of the population is bilingual - some even trilingual bc of the similar languages (1/?)

(2/2) bc of the similar languages around us like Swedish and Norwegian but a lot also tend to learn German from young age so. Like the other anon mentioned forgetting words is a serious thing and it's super frustrating but it happens a lot - I once forget a Danish word during my Danish oral exam and it was a mess. But yeah idk if this helps lmao but I hope it does!

okay cool! yeah, don’t worry it helps a lot! thank you so much! Seriously, this is all super interesting and really helpful for my writing! (and more general knowledge as well, obviously)

So is the more common switching-into-english-thing a generational thing? Like, do younger people tend to talk in English sometimes more than older people?

(Obvs you don’t have to answer I’m just kind of wondering to myself, but if anyone feels free to add their two cents, feel free! And again, thanks!)

[realtorfox43]

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3 PDF OCR Modes

PDF OCR supports 3 PDF OCR modes, single page, page range and All page ocr(batch).

10+ Languages Supported

Besides English, PDF OCR Also supports German, French, Spanish, Italian and many Languages else.

What is PDF OCR?

PDF OCR is based on OCR technology to convert scanned PDF paper books and documents into editable electronic text files fast and easily. PDF OCR has a build-in text editor which allows you to edit ocr result text without MS Word. PDF OCR also supports batch mode to OCR all pages of pdf file to text at a time. PDF OCR has a Scanned Image To PDF Converter, which means you can create your own scanned PDF books.

File Size: 40.8 MB OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7/8/10 or Later (64/32)

Discover What PDF OCR Software Program Can Do for You

The PDF OCR software is rather common these days and it is based on extremely useful OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology. Its work is to turn PDF documents and paper books into an editable electronic text file. The tool is super quick and easy to use. Even if you lack Microsoft Word, you can edit your converted OCR text via a built-in text editor. Just like several other PDF tools, the OCR application offers a Batch Mode that can let you process files quickly. If you have several PDF file pages, you can convert them into editable text files in an instant. To create your own scanned PDF books, make use of the tool's Scanned Image to PDF Converter. To say the least, this is one of the handiest PDF tools you should have.

System requirements of PDF OCR

To use your PDF OCR software effectively, ensure that you have a supported Windows OS. The acceptable ones include the following: - Microsoft Windows XP SP3 - Windows 2003 - Windows 2000 - Windows ME - Windows Vista - Pentium Processor - Pentium 4 or higher Having the right OS is not all; the PC has to have enough RAM and hard disk space. In this case, you need 128 RAM or more. The much recommend is 256MB RAM. Second, you need 20MB of hard disk space to install and store your OCR program.

Advantages of PDF OCR

If you decide to download your PDF OCR program today, there are special benefits to expect. - After turning your scanned PDF files to an editable electronic file, go on and correct it. It has an integral Text Editor that can let you amend text without MS Word or WordPad. - With only two clicks, you will be able to OCR your PDF file to a text file. So the program is easy to use. - PDF OCR uses an extremely quick OCR engine that is ninety-two percent quicker than any other OCR software tool. In forty-five seconds, you can process more than 10 pages. - It offers three modes: single page, page range and All page ocr/batch Mode (enables you to convert one file or several PDF file pages at once). The fact that it can do page selection is advantageous and convenient. - The program supports more than ten languages. So, apart from English, the PDF OCR is compatible with French, Italian, German, Spanish and other popular languages. This makes the tool universally useful. - Supports any Page Size. Hence, you can OCR your A4s, A3s, B3s, B4s, B5s and other types of PDF scanned pages.

Note of PDF OCR

We need to be honest about that the PDF OCR program doesn't only have advantages. First of all, it can't recognize text one hundred percent correctly. Hence, its Optical Recognition Technology can only recognize text from images and graphics at a RR (recognizable rate). This rate largely depends on the PDF text fonts and background among other things. Note that PDF OCR is only capable of identifying text from PDF files and that it sees images and graphics as text as well. This is why you are likely to receive some unknown characters that you can remove in your Text Editor. So, get your OCR program today and turn your PDF files into electronic files you can easily edit.

PDF OCR Review: Convert Any PDF Document into Editable Text PDF OCR How-to Article: How to Convert Scanned PDF to Text

PDF OCR Awards

What is OCR?

OCR is abbreviation of Optical Character Recognition, which is the electronic translation of images to editable text.

PDF OCR Features

PDF OCR To Text

Easy To Use

OCR PDF Fast

Build-in Text Editor

10+ Languages

Other Tools

Contents

What is Capture2Text?

Capture2Text enables users to quickly OCR a portion of the screen using a keyboard shortcut. The resulting text will be saved to the clipboard by default.

Conceptual illustration:

Capture2Text is free and licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Download

The latest version can be found on the Capture2Text download page hosted by SourceForge.

System Requirements

Supported operating systems:

Windows 7

Windows 8/8.1

Windows 10

Note: Windows XP support has been dropped as of Capture2Text v4.0.

How to Launch Capture2Text (no installation required)

Unzip the contents of the zip file.

Double-click on Capture2Text.exe. You should see the Capture2Text icon on the bottom-right of your screen (though it might be hidden in which case you will have to click on the 'Show hidden icons' arrow).

Installing Additional OCR Languages

By default Capture2Text comes packaged with the following languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish.

Follow these steps if you would like to install additional OCR languages:

Download the appropriate OCR language dictionary.

Open the '.zip' file you just downloaded with 7-Zip or similar decompression software.

Drag all files contained within the zip file to the tessdata folder:

Restart Capture2Text.

The following OCR languages are supported:

Afrikaans (afr) Greek (ell) Odiya (ori) Albanian (sqi) Gujarati (guj) Panjabi (pan) Amharic (amh) Haitian (hat) Persian (fas) Ancient Greek (grc) Hebrew (heb) Polish (pol) Arabic (ara) Hindi (hin) Portuguese (por)Assamese (asm) Hungarian (hun) Pushto (pus) Azerbaijani (aze) Icelandic (isl) Romanian (ron) Basque (eus) Indic (inc) Russian (rus) Belarusian (bel) Indonesian (ind) Sanskrit (san) Bengali (ben) Inuktitut (iku) Serbian (srp) Bosnian (bos) Irish (gle) Sinhala (sin) Bulgarian (bul) Italian (ita) Slovak (slk) Burmese (mya) Japanese (jpn) Slovenian (slv) Catalan (cat) Javanese (jav) Spanish (spa) Cebuano (ceb) Kannada (kan) Swahili (swa) Central Khmer (khm) Kazakh (kaz) Swedish (swe) Cherokee (chr) Kirghiz (kir) Syriac (syr) Chinese - Simplified (chi_sim) Korean (kor) Tagalog (tgl) Chinese - Traditional (chi_tra)Kurukh (kru) Tajik (tgk) Croatian (hrv) Lao (lao) Tamil (tam) Czech (ces) Latin (lat) Telugu (tel) Danish (dan) Latvian (lav) Thai (tha) Dutch (nld) Lithuanian (lit) Tibetan (bod) Dzongkha (dzo) Macedonian (mkd) Tigrinya (tir) English (eng) Malay (msa) Turkish (tur) Esperanto (epo) Malayalam (mal) Uighur (uig) Estonian (est) Maltese (mlt) Ukrainian (ukr) Finnish (fin) Marathi (mar) Urdu (urd) Frankish (frk) Math/Equations (equ) Uzbek (uzb) French (fra) Middle English (1100-1500) (enm)Vietnamese (vie)Galician (glg) Middle French (1400-1600) (frm) Welsh (cym) Georgian (kat) Nepali (nep) Yiddish (yid) German (deu) Norwegian (nor)

How to Perform a Standard OCR Capture

Follow these steps to perform a standard OCR capture using the capture box:

Position your mouse pointer at the top-left corner of the text that you want to OCR.

Press the OCR hotkey (Windows Key + Q) to begin an OCR capture.

Move your mouse to resize the blue capture box over the text that you want to OCR. You may hold down the right mouse button and drag to move the entire capture box.

Press the OCR hotkey again (or left-click or press ENTER) to complete the OCR capture. The OCR'd text will be placed in the clipboard and a popup showing the captured text will appear (the popup may be disabled in the settings).

As with all OCR captures, you must manually select the language that you would like to OCR from the settings.

To change the OCR language, right-click the Capture2Text tray icon, select the OCR Language option and then select the desired language.

To quickly switch between 3 languages, use the OCR language quick access keys: Windows Key + 1, Windows Key + 2, and Windows Key + 3. The quick access languages may be specified in the settings.

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When Chinese or Japanese is selected, you should specify the text direction (vertical/horizontal/auto) using the text direction hotkey: Windows Key + O. If auto is selected, horizontal will be used when the capture width is more than twice the height, otherwise vertical will be used. The text direction also affects how furigana is stripped from Japanese text.

(For Japanese) Capture2Text will attempt to automatically strip out furigana.

How to Perform a Text Line OCR Capture

Capture2Text can automatically capture the line of text that is closest to the mouse pointer.

Follow these steps to perform a Text Line OCR Capture:

Position your mouse pointer on or near the line of text to capture.

Press the Text Line OCR Capture hotkey (Windows Key + E).

Capture2Text will outline the captured text and save the OCR result to the clipboard.

Example:

How to Perform a Forward Text Line OCR Capture

Capture2Text can automatically capture the line of text starting at the character that is closest to the mouse pointer and working forward.

Follow these steps to perform a Forward Text Line OCR Capture:

Position your mouse pointer on or near the character to start at.

Press the Forward Text Line OCR Capture hotkey (Windows Key + W).

Capture2Text will outline the captured text and save the OCR result to the clipboard.

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Example:

Optical Character Recognition Download For Mac Computer

How to Perform a Bubble OCR Capture

Capture2Text can automatically capture text contained within a comic book speech/thought bubble as long as the bubble is completely enclosed.

Follow these steps to perform a Bubble OCR Capture:

Position your mouse pointer in the empty part of the bubble (not on the text).

Press the bubble OCR Capture hotkey (Windows Key + S).

Capture2Text will outline the captured text and save the OCR result to the clipboard.

Example:

How to Specify the Active OCR Language

To specify the active OCR language, right-click the tray icon, click on OCR Language, and select an OCR languages from the list:

Translation

To enable the translation feature, start by opening the settings dialog (right-click tray icon and select 'Settings...'), and clicking on the Translate tab.

Check the 'Append translation to clipboard' checkbox to append the translated text to the clipboard using the provided separator.Check the 'Show translation in popup window' checkbox to display the translated text along side the OCR text in the popup window. For example:.

Each installed OCR language may be translated to a different language.

Note 1: Some OCR languages do not have translation support. Unsupported languages will not be displayed.

Note 2: The translation feature requires Internet access.

Settings

Right-click the Capture2Text tray icon in the bottom-right of your screen and then select the 'Settings...' option to bring up the Settings dialog. You may hover over many of the option labels to display a helpful tooltip explaining the option.

The Hotkeys tab allows you to specify which key and modifiers to use for each hotkey. To disable a hotkey, select '<Unmapped>' from the drop-down list.

Current OCR language: Specify the active OCR language to use. You may also specify the active OCR language in the tray icon menu.

Quick-Access Languages: The languages to use for each of the quick-access language hotkeys.

Whitelist: Inform the OCR engine that the captured text will only contain the provided characters.

Blacklist: Inform the OCR engine that the captured text will never contain the provided characters.

Text Orientation: The orientation of the text that will be captured. This option is only used when Chinese or Japanese is set as the active OCR language. If Auto is selected, horizontal will be used when the capture width is more than twice the height, otherwise vertical will be used. The text direction also affects how furigana is stripped from Japanese text. You may also specify the text orientation in the tray icon menu or with the Text Orientation hotkey.

Tesseract Config File: An advanced feature that allows you to specify a Tesseract config file.

Trim Capture: During OCR preprocessing, trim captured image to foreground pixels and add a thin border. OCR accuracy will be more consistent and may even be improved.

Deskew Capture: During OCR preprocessing, attempt to compensate for slanted text found in an OCR capture.

Contains options for configuring the automatic captures. Hover over the option labels for more information.

Allows you to specify the colors of the OCR Capture Box. The transparency can be changed by adjusting the 'Alpha channel' value in the color selection dialog.

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Allows you to specify the preview position, color, and font. You may disable the preview by unchecking the 'Show Preview Box' checkbox.

Save to clipboard: Save the captured OCR text to the clipboard.

Show popup window: Show the captured OCR text in a popup window:

Keep line breaks: Check this option if you don't want carriage returns and line feeds to be stripped from the captured text.

Logging: Allows you to save all captures to the specified file in the specified format. The following tokens may be used in the format: $(capture), $(translation), $(timestamp), $(linebreak), $(tab). The default format is: '$(capture)$(linebreak)'.

Call Executable: An advanced feature that allows you call an executable after OCR is complete. The following tokens may be used: $(capture), $(translation), $(timestamp). Example:

Allows you to perform text replacements. Supports regular expressions. The text on the left will be replaced with the text on the right. Different replacements may be specified for each OCR language.

See the translation section.

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This page allow you to enable the text-to-speech feature, set the volume, and select the options (voice, rate, pitch) to use for each OCR langauge.

Enable Text-to-speech: Enable text-to-speech when text is captured.

When this option is checked and the voice is not set to '<Disabled>', the 'Say' button will appear in the popup dialog:

Volume: Master volume of the text-to-speech feature. Applies to all languages.

OCR Language: Specify speech options for the selected OCR language.

Rate: Rate of text-to-speech voice.

Pitch: Pitch of text-to-speech voice.

Voice: Voice to use for the text-to-speech feature. Set to '<Disabled>' to disable the text-to-speech feature for just the selected OCR language.

Preview: Preview the current rate, pitch, and voice.

Command Line Options

Troubleshooting & FAQ

I'm getting a message about a missing DLL file when I double-click Capture2Text.exe.

Solution: Install the Visual Studio 2015 redistributable.

Capture2Text doesn't work at all. What can I do?

Possible solutions:

Make sure that you have unzipped Capture2Text. Search Google if you do not know how to unzip a file.

Make sure that your Anti-virus software is not blocking Capture2Text. Refer to the documentation that was bundled with your Anti-virus software.

Make sure that you have downloaded the latest version from SourceForge.

Restart your computer.

Ask one of your grandchildren to help you :)

I found a bug!

Great! Create a ticket and describe the bug.

I want to make a suggestion.

Great! Create a ticket and describe your suggestion.

Capture2Text is outputting garbage characters.

Solution: Specify the correct OCR language.

The language that I'm interested in doesn't appear in the OCR language menu.

Read Installing Additional OCR Languages.

I don't see the Capture2Text tray icon.

Click the 'Show hidden icons' button (it looks like a triangle or a ^ character).

I've clicked on the Capture2Text tray icon but it doesn't do anything.

Right-click it instead.

Capture2Text isn't working on my Mac.

Capture2Text is a Windows-only software. If you have a technical background, feel free to port it (but don't ask me to help).

Where is the uninstaller?

There isn't one. Capture2Text doesn't have an installer either. To remove Capture2Text from your computer, simply delete the Capture2Text directory.

Where is the settings .ini file located?

Type '%appdata%Capture2Text' into Windows Explorer.

You may delete it to restore default settings.

How do I make Capture2Text portable?

Call Capture2Text.exe using the --portable option. You may want to create a shortcut for this. Setting this option will make Capture2Text store the .ini settings file in same directory as Capture2Text.exe (as opposed to '%appdata%Capture2Text' which is the normal location).

Where is the source code located?

The source code is located on SourceForge.

Related Tools for Japanese Language Learners

JGlossator (Windows)

Automatically lookup Japanese words that you have OCR'd with Capture2Text. Supports de-inflected expressions, readings, audio pronunciation, example sentences, pitch accent, word frequency, kanji information, and grammar analysis. Supports both EDICT and EPWING dictionaries.

OCR Manga Reader (Android)

Free and open source Manga reader android app that allows you to quickly OCR and lookup Japanese words in real-time. There are no ads and no mysterious network permissions. Supports both EDICT and EPWING dictionaries.

[bostonianinminneapolis]

Translating Minnesota for New Englanders Coming to the Super Bowl

  by Joanne Meehl

If you’re coming to the Super Bowl, here are some things about Minneapolis (and Minnesota) you’ll want to know, translated by this former Bostonian. I may meander a bit as I write a section but in the end, it all helps you better navigate the place and the culture.

Note: For all Super Bowl events, see this guide: https://www.mnsuperbowl.com/events

Here we go, in no particular order:

1.26.18

The WIND

It’s almost always windy here. Which is no fun when it’s super cold and/or when it’s snowing. We don’t get as much snow as you do in Massachusetts but it stays around longer because it’s colder. It was in the 40s yesterday and will be so today, but the temps predicted for game day will be closer to zero. So be sure to bring the right headgear or you’ll be miserable. On bad days I wear a knitted hood/scarf under my hooded jacket. You know that heavy-duty parka in the back of your closet that you save for Mt. Washington or the colder slopes in Vermont or Maine? Bring it.

And that’s why there are about 8 miles of Skyways in Minneapolis and St. Paul, each. The Skyway connects you from building to building at the 2nd floor in most cases and often there are stores and restaurants and companies along the way, almost a second city. If it’s going to be that cold leading up to the game, you’ll learn to love the Skyways.

But Winter’s Fun, Doncha Know

Minnesota makes winter fun with the “Bold North” theme. There are many outdoor activities at this time of year and in “the cities” especially near the stadium it’s very walkable. There are many guides being published online and elsewhere that list “best of” restaurants and other venues, such as at Trip Advisor. There’s a lively music and theater scene (more live theater seats here than anywhere outside of NYC), tons of breweries, university/college culture. Politically we lean left but not nearly as much as Mass., and people here are typically thoughtful and considerate. And yes, nice. Predominate heritage here is German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Lutheran so you won’t find the outgoing-ness of the East Coast.

Architecture

Before I ever visited the area, I had this image of boxy Midwestern buildings. Wrong! Even in the suburbs, there is very cool architecture and building lighting here. Definitely not Boston red brick colonial.

Also, many cities here built their Main Street just like other streets. Don’t look for the town green with the old white church. 

Terminology 1 - Parking

Parking garages: They’re called “parking ramps” here. And they smell better than in Boston. And amazingly, in many places in the denser suburbs, they are free. And in the city (or St. Paul, nearby) the cost of parking is way lower than it is in Boston. But expect them to be full. Easiest: Park outside the city, take the light rail in. You know, like parking in Newton and taking the Green Line into Boston.

 Terminology 2 - Food

Soda is called pop here. Casseroles are called “hot dish”. 

 Terminology 3 - The cities and geography

Minneapolis and St. Paul (the state’s capital) are known of course as the Twin Cities. People here just say “the cities”. Minneapolis is a bit more cosmopolitan and modern, St. Paul more Old World and a bit lower profile skyline. St. Paul is often called “the last city of the East”, and Minneapolis “the first city of the west” because of where they are located on the Mississippi. So you’ll find TV and radio stations here that are like WCCO (St. Paul, east of the river) and KARE11, west of the river. BTW, I watch KARE11 for news and they’ll be broadcasting all week up to the game from Nicolette Mall, a bunch of streets in Minneapolis currently dedicated to the Super Bowl. The media here is pretty sophisticated.

Terminology 4 - Native Americans

Native Americans here prefer to be called Indians. So if you hear Minnesotans referring to Indians, they are not being politically incorrect, they are just using the preferred terminology. Unlike in the Northeast, here Indian tribes wield economic and political power. They run most if not all of the casinos in the state. 

 Radio

For THE best music radio station anywhere, even beating the college stations in Boston/Cambridge, don’t miss 89.3 The Current. It’s a Minnesota Public Radio station dedicated to indie/local/cutting edge rock and new artists, though they’ll surprise you with Billie Holiday or classic blues every now and then. Their hosts know their stuff, too. My favorite place for jazz and similar: The Dakota. Great food there, too.

 Finding your way around

The grid of streets in Minneapolis is pretty easy to understand. In some suburban cities (yes, there is such a thing here – think Weymouth or Framingham, for comparison), such as Plymouth (Minnesota) and Maple Grove, street names are used over and over again – so there might be 4 Norwood Lanes but what separates them is their numbers (always 4 or more) so you’ll find Norwood Lane in the 6000s is a whole different location than the Norwood Lane in the 7000s. Oh, and you will find that Minnesota has cities or towns named Andover, Bellingham, Cambridge, Lexington, Melrose, Randolph which still weirds me out when I stumble upon them.

 The Mississippi

Although the Charles River through Boston is pretty wide there at the Zakim and other bridges, when you see the Mississippi you feel its might. It’s figured into so much of our nation’s history, including here in Minnesota. To see it, go to the Guthrie Theater at the north end of Minneapolis, and, well, just look down. The theater is worth a tour all on its own – someplace I take everyone who visits here, because of its cool history, the actors who’ve played there, and the performances, of course. Great little gift shop and restaurant, too. An hour or two south, the river is even wider and truly awe inspiring.

 Prices

It’s generally less expensive here than in Massachusetts/New England but people *are* raising prices for a week or so before and after the game. If you’re renting someone’s apartment while here, know that what you’re paying they will use to pay their mortgage for a few months. Hey, you’re from the East Coast, you can afford it, right? ;)

Religion

Lutheran Lutheran Lutheran -- it’s the main denomination here for white people. But that means a wide range, from old fashioned Garrison Keiller-style Lutheran church ladies to very right-wing Christian. There are many stand-alone Christian churches who while outwardly nice are largely anti-gay, anti-liberal, man-in-charge-of-the-family type churches. People here in general assume you are Christian and wear their Christianity pretty openly, even at business meetings, which I found jarring when I first moved here. And still do. 

There is a large Muslim population, Ethiopians and other Africans who’ve settled here over the years, who are now running for office and taking leadership roles. 

Guns

When I first moved here and saw signs at the doors of many restaurants and stores and elsewhere that said “No guns allowed here”, I was like WHAT?! GUNS?! Know that here in the northern Midwest, you are not in Massachusetts, and that you are now in “most of America” which is a gun culture and that’s really clear here. Minnesota is not an open-carry state (so far) so you won’t see people brandishing their weapon.

 Yes, it’s worth it to go to the Mall of America

It was built inside a former baseball stadium so you get the idea of size. Four stories, three levels of stores (some are in the mall twice because it’s so big), hotels, restaurants, and a full amusement park at its center. The light rail (surface rail line, like the T only way cleaner!) comes right to the mall from downtown. Ikea is right next door. You’ll definitely get your steps in no matter where you go there.

 Minnesota is HUGE

Minnesota is larger than all of New England put together. It has 87 counties (vs. 14 in Mass., and I can still name them all). If someone here says they are “from outstate”, they mean they’re from outside the metro area. The state was settled in the 1800s and became a state in 1858, relatively recent times to those of us from New England who are used to dates from the 1600s and 1700s in our states’ histories. 

The state is 1/3 mostly pine forest (north), 1/3 deciduous trees (the middle third, most like the Northeast US, including maple trees), and 1/3 plains (south). It’s flat or rolling with some elevation in Duluth, about 2.5 hours northeast of the Twin Cities and a cool industrial chic college town. North of there on the way to Canada is the Sawtooth Range, a low “mountain” range along Lake Superior. 

Lake Superior: Seeing any Great Lake for the first time is an absolutely freaky experience: it’s the ocean, you think, because there’s waves and seagulls and an unlimited horizon. But then again it doesn’t smell like the ocean. Many in the Minnesota-Wisconsin-Michigan-Illinois area refer to this part of the country as “the central coast”, because the Great Lakes really feel like the ocean, including expensive property prices if you want a house on the shore.

 Taxes

Minnesota is the most heavily taxed state in this north central part of the US. Result: highly educated people, a rich diversity of industries, many free options including a strong county-based library system and amazing outdoor activities like trails everywhere even in the hearts of most cities. But compared to the tax rates back east, they’re pretty moderate, so when I first arrived here and people said “Oh, our taxes are so high!”, I laughed at them. I then pointed out how many services they have and the quality of life. New buildings, beautiful ball fields and sporting facilities, family activities, free movies and music on town stages, large civic centers, STEM schools, much more than I used to see back east. 

So quality of life is high here. There’s a saying that real estate people here use: “When people are asked by their company to transfer here, they usually are against it. But they take the transfer. Then when their company wants to transfer them elsewhere later, they refuse because they love the quality of life so much, and they stay”. 

 More about the people here

Yes, there’s “Minnesota nice”, people who will help you in all kinds of ways even if they don’t know you. But Minnesotans have a rigid circle around themselves: They tend not to live elsewhere, meaning they go to college in Minnesota and get married here and stay here, even if they are transferred around by their company, they vacation here. So family is central to their lives and their best friends are family, not necessarily someone they work with. 

If you’re outside that circle you get to experience Minnesota Ice… in Massachusetts, you meet someone and pretty early on you’re inviting them over for dinner so you can get to know them better. In the 8 years I lived in one neighborhood here, no one ever had us over for dinner. I learned not to take offense because, as one native told me, they don’t invite EACH OTHER over for dinner – because they’re not family. I took some exercise classes and normally have an easy time striking up converations with people but not here: the women who were 100% of the class, after I’d say hi, would turn away and resume converations with their friends they came to class with, and not introduce you to the others. So it’s hard to make friends here if you’re not from the family!

 Minnesota Drivers

Minnesota drivers are maddening. At stop lights, they stop at least one car length from the line at the lights. You wonder if the light will get tripped by the first car being so far back (it does, somehow). The light turns green, and the person ahead of you now seems to be making a decision: Can I go? Is it OK to go? Will I be considered obnoxious if I go? For this still-impatient Bay Stater, it makes me nuts they are so slow on the green light. I don’t use my car horn to push someone but jeezelouise, after a few moments you want to  Even if you are about to crash into them, they WILL NOT use their horns; they would rather you hit them than they be careful and use their horn – because, dontchaknow, that would be being aggressive.