#and then for a while i was trying to learn hebrew

[fromchaostocosmos]

The cruelty is the point and the terror is the point. Like that should be obvious given that Hamas is a terrorist group.

Hamas like other terrorists organizations trade in terror.

Instilling fear in the public is the goal and you frankly disgusting people have lionized them, uplifted them, and made them into heroes.

The reason that Hamas had people learn Thai was so weaponize the native language the Thai workers. This adds more terror because now as the events are unfolding you feel you can't trust anyone because you don't know if the person speaking to you in your native tongue is the person trying to kill you.

And that sense of fear, dread, and terror stays with you long after it all over because that is how trauma works.

When you live in a country that speaks a different language you will learn that language just by living there. So Hamas wasn't speaking Thai to ensure that the Thai workers would understand them because these are people who work in Israel and so just by that fact they would have along the way learnt Hebrew and some Arabic.

The reason Hamas spoke to them in Thai was to get them to lower their guard so they, Hamas, could trick the workers and to add even more terror to what was happening.

If Hamas was actually a resistance they wouldn't have killed or hurt the Thai workers. They would have left them alone.

If they were a resistance and not a terror group they would not have murdered civilians, kidnapped children, raped people, and more.

But that is asking for to much thinking skills and logic so I'll stop while I'm ahead.

The reason Hamas murdered the Thai workers is because they dared to work in Israel and that alone made them worthy of death.

And because Hamas does view nor do they value human life in the same way that everyone else does and this is something I need you all to sink into your brains.

Terrorists do not value life and they view human life as being equally valuable. This goes for White Supremacist Terrorists, this goes for Eco-Terrorists, this goes Christian Extremists, and this goes for your Jihadist Islamists.

The do not value human life and they hold that some lives have all the value and worth, some as have no value and worth, and then everyone else falls somewhere in between that. Who gets put where will change for pending on the group.

Life is life and all people have value and worth and the right to live.

“hamas are freedom fighters!!”

oh really lmao. i know the evidence of antisemitism and how they treat jews means nothing to you, so let’s discuss an article written by a non jewish thai man about what his people experienced on oct 7 at the hands of hamas:

they LEARNED THAI. TO TERRORIZE THESE PEOPLE.

they murdered them and kidnapped them. why??? because they could.

they murdered the bedouin man they kidnapped too but you all continue to support them.

[lets-all-calm-down-a-bit]

I think one of my least favorite things ever are language barriers. I'm so incredibly bad at learning new languages. I've tried again and again and it's like my brain just doesn't keep it, no matter how much I practice. And when I'm talking to someone who's first language isn't english, and I don't understand something they're saying? It frustrates me so much because like I WANT TO TALK TO THIS PERSON SO BAD I WISH WE COULD JUST TELEPATHICALLY COMMUNICATE OR SOMETHING.

I feel so bad being like "ah sorry could you rephrase that? I don't understand," because they're already doing so much better than I could with learning a new language- and I don't want them to think I'm annoyed with them.

It's just such a frustrating experience it's like talking to someone through thick glass and I hate it!!! I love talking to people!!! I love it so much!! I wish it wasn't so hard for us to communicate!!!

[mathmusicreading]

@yummysuika @ospreywhite I really appreciate your translation work; can you explain more about shichen timekeeping to me? Because I know a tiny bit of modern Mandarin Chinese, but I can't recognize the shichens as the zodiac animals:

Zi (I don't know "rat", so I actually can't make any argument here.)

Chou (I don't know "ox", but I reasonably could have expected "niu" for "cow".)

Yin (I know "tiger" as "hu".)

Mao (I don't know "rabbit", but to me "mao" is "cat".)

Chen (I know "dragon" as "long".)

Si (I don't know "snake", but now I find it interesting that it sounds like death, like snakes could be seen as evil in Chinese culture similar to how they are seen in the Christian world.)

Wu (I know "horse" as "ma".)

Wei (I know "sheep/goat" as "yang".)

Shen (I don't know "monkey", but I would have expected "Sun" or "Wu" or "Kong" because of "Monkey King".)

You (I know "rooster/chicken" as " ji".)

Xu (I know "dog" as "gou".)

Hai (I don't know "pig/boar" unless "pork" and "pig" are the same "siu".)

I tried asking my parents, but they just starting talking about how the Chinese zodiac is actually a 60-year cycle with the 12 animals and the 5 elements. So are these shichen names the "Pre-Han dynasty semi-descriptive terms"? Is it kind of like the difference between "midday" and "noon" in English? The former is a "descriptor", the latter is a "name", but they "mean" the same thing?

(I tried checking the etymology for "noon" on dictionary.com, so to be fair "ninth hour" is a descriptor, but in Modern English it's not really recognizable as such and so for the sake of my shichen question, I'm calling "noon" a "name".)

Or is this another language/dialect or due to the evolution of language (changing words and pronunciations)?

I was also looking up the Dragon Boat Festival being on the unluckiest day of the year, and it says, "The Chinese name of the festival is pronounced differently in different Chinese languages. Duanwu (端午) literally means 'starting horse'—i.e., the first "horse day" of the month according to the Chinese zodiac." so I was able to get the exact character for "wu". I think it's interesting that Wikipedia says "literally ... horse" but putting 午 into Google Translate yields "midday, noonday, seventh earthly branch, 11 a.m.-1 p.m." It's unfortunate that Wikipedia only says "different Chinese languages" for "Duanwu" instead of specifying them or time periods, but I appreciate it listing different romanizations by country for Cantonese.

Would you say there's any pattern to Chinese writers or English translators using the above terms vs. using "hour/time/head/body/tail of the (insert zodiac animal here)"? Like if one sounds better for a historical fantasy setting, or choosing to use the pinyin in English instead of translating to not be translating literally? ETA: I should have gotten onto a computer sooner. I asked my parents and then you guys because searching "shichen" in Wikipedia just resulted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement. But further digging took me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeeping. I'll probably get answers there (Maybe I'll even be able to explain to my dad why he was thinking of ten stems and not matching mathematically with "60 is from 12 times 5, not 10 times 6" when he was trying to lecture on the 60-year cycle for the Chinese zodiac, lol.), so my apologies for bothering you. I'd still appreciate your thoughts on what was formerly the last paragraph about writing and translation choices!

[feygaleh]

I saw the post from that account that featured you in an ask from like two days ago and so this is a pretty belated response, but I just wanted to say that it made me so angry like I haven’t been in weeks. I cannot stand Zionist Jumblr, every day they seem to stoop to new lows I did not think were possible.

That post made me so mad because it’s like the epitome of everything wrong with Zionism online today, I simply cannot stand it what with their “I LovE JeWs BeING ThE BaD GUys NOw” like they cannot fathom any member of their tribe being capable of great evils, all while they endlessly call out everyone else for doing wrong. And their weird nonsensical whataboutisms that try and pick out even the most menial or nonexistent “flaws” from the people who challenge them “Faygeleh is for gay males only” and “I see you are learning Hebrew AND YET you still dare to criticize the state, hmm curious” so infuriating honestly.

But the worst thing of all is their endless conspiracies and their dogged assumptions that hold no basis in fact, them literally “Theorizing” about your synagogue being a JVP meeting place like KNOW YOU is simply one of the worst examples of this that I have ever seen up to this point, at least that other account they referenced did the only slightly less infuriating cookie cutter “Fake Jew doesn’t support the fatherland, fake Jews is not a patriot, fake Jew is pretending to be Jewish” spiel, at least I’ve seen that one so many times that I’m growing numb to the constant accusations.

These conspiratorial ramblings are all so completely anti-intellectual that it makes me sick to my stomach, and the worst part is that this is almost everything that I see on Jumblr, there’s almost no diversity in opinion, not a single attempt at any kind of nuance (While still constantly claiming nuance when it suits their agendas), it’s all entirely irrational at its core and it’s all anyone ever makes posts about.

I always celebrate to myself when I find an account that is about something else, either one like yours, or one dedicated entirely to just cool Jewish stuff like art, culture, and history, but those seem to be so few and far between these days, it’s all just about antisemitism or Zionism or the state, you’d think these people didn’t care about anything else, like do these people even enjoy being Jewish? At all? Because from the legacies they’re leaving via their internet footprints it would seem that to them being a Jew is more of a curse than anything and it makes me so, so sad.

Apologies for the long rant, but this one really was one of the worst I’ve seen in a while. I’m not even going anon this time, I’m so tired of cowering in the shadow of Zionism and all its religious extremism.

i know exactly the post and i had my own similar reaction because it’s all such cowardly baseless takes they’re making. i have nothing to add here, you’ve perfectly summarized all of my feelings on and about zionist jumblr.

thank you for this message, it is so so uplifting to know and hear there are other people out there reading the shit these people are saying and also thinking they’re being deranged. it’s such a harmful echo chamber they’re in that sometimes i start to wonder if i really AM alone in this because they say it so much. but as long as i’m here and alive and joyfully jewish, there will be a contesting voice.

[jewish-vents]

As a proud Jew and a member of the Iŋalit Iñupiaq people I have never felt as seen as reading a Choctaw Jew's post on here. Christian missionaries hauled my people off of our lands and killed most of us and they didn't even inhabit the land. They didn't even build shit there, they just took it to take it, and I'm supposed to go "ah yes America has no colonizers" and not laugh when these people say "Hebrew is a colonizer language"? Motherfuckers, MY LANGUAGE IS EXTINCT BECAUSE OF YOU! You know who didn't ever try and force a language on anyone? The Ashke Jewish man my great-great grandmother fell for and married. People really expect me to be onboard with their fact-free zero colonialism rewrite of history while my people's lands remain off limits to us, illegal to even visit, the US government holding onto it on the off chance there might be oil there even though they never bothered to even drill for it in over 70 years.

"No other religion acts like this" first of all please read up on Islamic imperialism and get your boot off the neck of my indigenous Middle Eastern brethren and secondly Christian-governed Alaska wouldn't let Native students attend school with "American" children - that is literally how the law phrased it - unless we abandoned our language, our clothes, our songs, our stories, our religion and even traditions as basic as sharing food with poor families in the community. You wanna know how my great-great grandmother met my great-great grandfather? They were both arrested for violating the law and "indoctrinating" children into "Native, anti-European practices" by which I mean THEY WERE BOTH ARRESTED FOR GIVING FOOD TO POOR PEOPLE. They were both arrested by CHRISTIANS!

And people mistake my brown skin for proof of goy status and want to talk shit about how the only good colonizer is a dead colonizer. You're white and you're in ALASKA, you might want to rethink the words coming out of your mouth when most of your ancestors came here to mine gold and get rich and mistreat indigenous people. Even if I accepted the idea that Israel is doing colonialism, which I do not, nobody moved to Israel to get rich and rape indigenous women with impunity to the point where there are words in Inuit languages for gangrape done by white men.

I don't want to hear another thing from a white goy in Alaska about Israel being colonizers when the US bought Alaska from Russia. We were colonized twice for you to get to be here and tell me to my face how colonizers are bad. AND THEN people want to say my Ashke ancestors were colonizers. Fleeing Russia is not colonization, one, and two, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY LEFT?! For fun? What, they heard our weather was nice and wanted to come visit?

I am going to need white goyim to learn US history before they open their mouths.

I'm sorry this is long and I yelled/capslocked but I have had to bite my tongue so many times to not cause a scene because I don't want the university to come up with an excuse not to let me graduate due to poor conduct. It is so tiring. I feel like I'm holding my breath all the time. Graduation is tomorrow. Shabbat shalom.

.

[meshaamem-li]

i'm so curious about this

are native hebrew speakers able to read and understand tanakh like americans are able to read and understand shakespeare? or do y'all need to specially learn biblical hebrew before you're able?

also does your native hebrew ability make it easier to read the siddur and not have to take a long time figuring out how to pronounce something?

that's a really interesting question!

so it's been a while since I read the tanach, but iirc most words are pretty similar to their modern counterparts, until once in a while you get a word that sounds like it's taken straight out of LoTR so you need to read it out slowly.

actually wait I have a tanach ill try reading from it rq

ok so reading it quietly is pretty easy, I can read it fast, but reading it out loud takes more time because:

biblical hebrew has slightly different pronunciation to modern hebrew? or the flow of words is different, a word I'd expect to have an ah sound will suddenly have an eh

ig it kinda has a shakespherean feel to it? some of it does sound like how I'd talk if I tried to sound old timey like shakesphere.

there is no punctuation anywhere. or more like, there is, but in the form of ancient nikkud that isn't taught anymore. all of these symbols symbolize the flow of the text in ways that we can't understand, so I can't tell when to take a break or when the sentence ends. all of those symbols also distract my eyes from the nikkud I do know.

the font is abysmal, ס looks like ם 😭

so tldr yeah it does.

also I could've just answered that I didn't need to learn to read the tanach separately from reading hebrew lmao

[j0kers-light]

Hey <3 What would Joker think about a reader who speaks lots of languages? Does he speak multiple as well? Would he learn some together with the reader? Or does he not really pay attention to that? Have a lovely day~

Hey hi my love!! 🖤✨

It’s a beautiful day actually and my brain is running a mile a minute to answer this. As someone who is trilingual, (and working on learning more) I find it tricky to answer this ask from Joker’s perspective. 

Because on one hand learning a new language is both daunting and fun; anyone can do it! However it does have a tendency to pinpoint origin and define you as a person. 

Joker knowing a different language (in my opinion) is too risky given his strict, “I have an untraceable past” reputation. If he starts speaking a different language, it can be traced back to his past.

So no. I don’t think Joker would bother learning a different language. He speaks English and sarcasm. Now if it were for the betterment of his Light? He might?

Joker believes that pain translates the same across all languages, so why bother trying to understand what a person is saying as they plead for mercy?

He doesn’t have the need to pick up a new language so English it is!

That all changes when he meets his Bunny who is a foreign speaker. And ohh boy, he wasn’t prepared.

Your accent, the speed in which you talk.. Joker finds it downright sexy! Everything you say has a bit of a kick to it.

He doesn’t know a word you’re saying most of the time and you use that to your advantage when you’re upset with him. 

You stop talking in English and rant in your mother tongue leaving Joker standing there like 👁️🫦👁️

Joker is a certified simp. We know this. He instantly bricks up hearing you speak, especially if you say something during sex that he can’t translate. Horn-Y to the point of no return. 🥵

He is in awe how you speak multiple different tongues in the same conversation, simply because you can. 

One minute you are cracking a joke in English, you pause to listen to someone speak (insert language) and then you reply in a third; effectively blowing J’s mind.

You are constantly translating in your head and thinking of the correct consonants and vowels to use while still engaging in conversation.

It takes a sharp mind and loads of patience that Joker greatly admires. How you do it? He’ll never understand but it’s definitely hot.

Joker finds out that you know to sign and can read Braille too by accident; what are you? A walking Rosetta Stone? At this point what language do you not know?

Imagine his disbelief when he discovers you can sing certain songs in several more languages…

Joker dubs you his Google translate and if he needs assistance, best believe he’s asking for your help. 

You turn to glare at your boyfriend in disdain. He really dragged you out of bed for this. “I don’t know Mandarin, Joker.” You say for the fourth time.

Your response isn’t what J was expecting and his wide grin slowly falls from his face. Tense seconds pass as he hides his disappointment. “Bunny… you know a loT of languages..”

“Yes, but not..” You pinch your nose with a sigh. You are not an automated translator that J assumes you to be. You don't know every language! (that would be so cool btw)

The best course of action is letting Joker's hopes and dreams down softly. “It’s a rather hard and complicated dialect to learn, J.”

“And that mumbo jumbo you sang the other day wasn’t hard?!”

You drew a blank at him cutting you off. “J, what are you talking about?”

“Uhh you sa~ng in the car jusT fine, what's stopping ya now?” He grumbled. It took you a minute to remember what he's talking about and even then, you're still confused.

“Joker. That was Hebrew. Completely different language. Omg, are you really that racist?” You ask.

The poor guy that Joker abducted will just have to wait until you and J finish arguing to confess that he's fluent in English. He's too invested in this discussion to interrupt.

So that was a self insert head canon anon sorry not sorry. 🤣🤣🤣🥴 To clear the air. 

I can speak English, Greek, and Spanish. Although I can read and comprehend Spanish better than speaking it. 😭

I began learning French and Russian when I was in school but dropped it for personal reasons. Oh! I totally forgot that my boss was teaching me Vietnamese for two years back in the day lol.

I can sing certain songs in Hebrew, Danish, Latin, Spanish, French, and Japanese. I also poorly translated a few chapters of a book in German out of desperation until the official release was published in English. 🙃 I'm a menace.

[fipindustries]

the more i learn about "the bible" as a historical text the more fascinating it becomes, in a sense the format in which it was written is actually not all that dissimilar from, say, the house of leaves. it is obviously not a singular cohesive text but a collection of different books, some recolections of millenary oral tradition, similar to that of the brothers grimm tales, and other things are semi historical accounts, some of it is myth, other sections are just accounts of genealogies and a lot of it is commentary on second hand accounts of events that happened decades or centuries earlier.

one of the things that kind of blew my mind when i found out is that while the old testament is written in hebrew the new testament was written in greek, that is to say it is written in a place and a language that has nothing to do with the place and the language of the events they are trying to decriv, jesus spoke in arameic. on top of that when people refer to the old testament in the new testament they were reading a greek translation of the original hebrew texts.

learning about these bits of historical and theological analisis of the bible as like, a living historical text, as subject to examination of origin and nature as the texts of herotodus is so much more interesting to me than to get too "euphorically" stuck in all the contradictions it has or the horrible morals it establishes, valid as the excercise may be to blow christians the fuck out, this way of examining the text is so much more powerfully demistifying.

it reminds me of this old theory that the old historical texts of "rise and fall of the roman empire" was actually one of the key contributors to the rise of atheism in modern times because it presented christianity as merely a historical factor amongst many in roman history and not as the end all be all center of human thought and endeavor

[asylumgarden2003]

Learning Languages

Hey! It's Anastasia! I'll teach you how to learn languages, coming from someone who can speak 6 languages, understand 7, and currently learning 2!

Languages I know: 𓉸ྀི english 𓉸ྀི french 𓉸ྀི hindi 𓉸ྀི gujarati 𓉸ྀི marathi 𓉸ྀི hebrew

Languages I understand: 𓉸ྀི all of the above 𓉸ྀི spanish

Language I'm learning: 𓉸ྀི west Frisian 𓉸ྀི italian

How To Start Off With Languages:

𓉸ྀི Find a language you actually want to learn. Motivation is a big thing with language learning. 𓉸ྀི If you find language learning harder, I would suggest finding a language that is closer to the one you speak the most. For example, you may want to try Portuguese if you speak Spanish.

Side note: If you guys would like, I can do a separate post on this.

How To Study A Language:

𓉸ྀི Document your progress! Make your own dictionary with phonetics you can look back on! Write the alphabet, words and sentences you have learned 𓉸ྀི As we all know, Duolingo is a great app for language learning but, Drops is super helpful too! 𓉸ྀི Practice with your friends and watch YouTubers who teach you the language! Repeat after them! 𓉸ྀི Find a TV SHOW/MOVIE you have already watched! Now watch it in the language you're learning! Really helps if it is a show/movie for kids. Like a Disney movie! 𓉸ྀི Learn slang. It's fun!

How To Study While Busy:

𓉸ྀི As a student, I get super busy with homework. I try my best to at least do ONE lesson on Duolingo or Drops daily. 𓉸ྀི I try to translate some of the words I know from my homework into another language. Ex. Drama = Drame (French) Ex. Biology = Biologie (French)

How To Study Multiple Language At Once:

𓉸ྀི As a victim of this, PLEASE don't do this. Even knowing so many languages, I feel overwhelmed that I'm trying to learn two languages simultaneously. Stick to one, move to the next after you've mastered the first.

Thank you so much for reading. We appreciate every like, comment, reblog and follow. Please do follow us for more study, glow-up, and fashion content!

Love, Anastasia

[max1461]

I have a lot of thoughts about epistemology and the nature of procedural knowledge. Studying linguistics really impresses upon you just the sheer amount of human knowledge that is procedural and implicit. Languages are these huge, ridiculously complex systems, and even when it comes to the most thoroughly documented language in human history (English), you can still make an entire career documenting as-yet-unknown minutiae of some corner of a corner of the system. It's very difficult to impress upon non-linguists just how big and ill-understood languages are.

There is no book which explains the whole of English grammar. No one on earth knows the complete rule-set of English grammar. Not even for one dialect, not even for one single speaker. No one on earth could write a comprehensive treatise on English pronunciation. We do not know how English works. We do not know how any language works.

And yet, these systems are, in their entirety, already stored in the mind of every native speaker.

When it comes to synchronic information, I literally already know everything there is to know about my dialect of English. I know the timing of every articulation, the exact rules for verb and auxiliary and quantifier placement, the phonology, semantics, syntax, the lexical variation, the registers, all of it. I can deploy it effortlessly while I am thinking about something else. I can form reams of perfectly grammatical English sentences without a second thought. I can deploy the most arcane rules of wh-movement and quantifier raising and whatever else. With no effort at all.

Tens of thousands of people having been making careers trying to document these things, not for my exact dialect but for varieties essentially the same as mine, for 60 years in earnest. And they aren't close to done. And I already know it all. And so do they! They already know it too! The hard part is accessing it, putting it down on paper. That requires experimentation, systematic empirical investigation—science.

So what this has really impressed on me is how much of human knowledge is procedural. How much of it is known only in the doing. I'd wager that's the significant majority of what we know.

This is related to two thoughts that I have.

The first is about the value of unbroken lines of cultural inheritance. With language, the difference between native speakers and second language learners is stark. I think it's safe to say, per current research, that someone who learns a language in adulthood will simply never have the same command of it as someone who learned it in childhood. There are a variety of tests which consistently distinguish native from non-native speakers. You can get very good at a language as an adult learner, good enough for basically all practical needs (except being a spy), but there's a bar your brain just cannot meet.

The unfortunate fact about language is this: if the line of native-speaker-to-child transmission is ever broken, that language is lost. You can try to revive... something, if you want. Like was done with Hebrew in Israel. But it will not be the same language. And not just in the sense that, by the passing of time, all languages inherently change. In a much stronger sense than that. No matter how big a text corpus you have, no matter how well documented the language is, there is an immense body of implicit, undocumented, procedural knowledge that dies when the last native speaker does. And you cannot ever get it back.

I think, often, about the fact that so much human knowledge is procedural, is used and understood and passed on in illegible, difficult to codify ways. I think about the effect that a rapidly changing world has on this body of knowledge. Is it going to be essential for human prosperity? Probably not. But that doesn't mean that losing it will harmless. Certainly I expect much of it to be missed.

The second thought is about an epistemic distinction that I've had in my head for a long time, a distinction I'd like to refer to as that between a science and an art.

An art is any endeavor for which there is an established methodology, an established set of procedures and rules. These rules can be explicit and codified, like the rules of a game, or implicit, like the grammar of a language. They can be absolute or they can be mere guidelines. But in essence, an art is anything you can get good at. Math is quintessentially an art. Football is an art. Ballet is an art. Painting is an art. An art is any endeavor in which procedural knowledge is acquired and channeled and refined and passed on.

Art contrasts with science. A science is any endeavor in which one is shooting blind. Science is the domain of guesswork and trial-and-error. Sciences are those domains that do not lend themself to practice, because... what would you practice at? You cannot get better at science, because science is not about skill. Science is about exploration. It necessarily involves forging your own path, working with odd and faulty tools and odd and faulty ideas, trying to get them to work. Science only exists at the frontiers; when a path is well-tread enough that a body of procedure becomes known and practiced, that path is now art and no longer science.

This distinction is not a taxonomy. Everything we do involves a little bit of art and a little bit of science. Everything involves both a refinement of known skills and an exploration of new avenues. Of course there's a little bit of science in painting, there's quite a lot of science in painting. Every modern and contemporary art museum is full of it! And there's science in math, every once in a while. And there's art in biology and chemistry. Art and science are two modes of engagement, and different endeavors demand them of you in different ways.

Perhaps science is like a glider (you know, from Conway's game of life?), traveling ever outward, and with enough passes over the same area leaving art in its wake. And I think in some sense that all real human knowledge exists as art, that all endeavors capable of producing true insight are either arts or sciences buttressed by a great many supporting arts. Although maybe I'm wrong about this.

I think history is mostly science, and in large part history as a field seems to be on quite solid epistemic footing. So I don't want to convey the idea that science is inherently dubious; clearly from the above description that can't be my position. Nor is art inherently trustworthy—for instance I think jurisprudence is primarily an art, including religious jurisprudence, which of course I don't place any stock in. But I do think I'm getting at something with the idea that there are a range of epistemic benefits to working within an art that one lacks access to in a totally unconstrained science. This is also closely related to my ideas about abstraction and concretization schemes.

Language is an art, one of the oldest arts, but modern linguistics is more or less a science. Like any good science, linguistics has certain arts unique to itself—fieldwork and the comparative method come to mind—but the most vibrant parts of the field at present are science through-and-through. It's a science whose objects of study are arts, and I think maybe that's part of why I've become so aware of this distinction. Or, language is the ur-example of an art, the art from which (if I were to conjecture wildly) I think the cognitive machinery for very many other arts has been borrowed. But I don't really know.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

[jurakan]

I got a weird prompting to ask for a fun fact about someone who came up with a whole system of writing and then just disappeared. Odd, I know.

Well, you came to the right place, friendo! Today You Learned about Sequoyah.

[I had hoped to do this around Thanksgiving, or for Indigenous Peoples Month, but no one asked for it then so better late than never!]

Okay, maybe you have heard of the man. But if not, here ya go: Sequoyah was a Cherokee man born in Tennessee around the year 1770. When he grew up, his day job was actually being a silversmith, trading with trappers and merchants that came through Cherokee territory. He was pretty darn good at it too, and signed off on all of his work.

Something he noticed, though, was that the Europeans who went through had a written language, and that it was helpful for recording information and talking to people far away. That’s handy, Sequoyah thought. We should have our own written language. Because at that point, Cherokee didn’t have a written language. So, apparently, this man decided to just… make one up.

I say “make one up” as if he came up with it on the spot without thought. No, that’s not what happened. In 1809, Sequoyah began to study English, Greek, and Hebrew, and developed a written system for the Cherokee language. Each symbol represents a syllable, rather than a letter like in the English writing system, leading to a total of over 80 symbols for the alphabet.

Everyone thought he was crazy, but I want to be clear: he did it. This man, a silversmith by trade, created a written language system that within twenty years of its creation became the official written language of the Cherokee Nation. 

That’s insane, guys! Where is this guy’s biopic? If you lived in a place with heavy Cherokee history, like the Carolinas, chances are you’ve heard of him–the NC Museum has a small exhibit on him in their section on Cherokee history, and we covered him in school in an article/essay/non-fiction story (I don’t know what we call those things) called “Sequoyah and the Riddle of the Talking Leaves”, but it’s nuts to me that he’s not a more famous figure in American history, considering this.

Sequoyah actually taught the language to his daughter Ayokeh first, so that he could prove that it worked and made sense. Then he spent a ton of time traveling through Cherokee territory to get people to see its usefulness and learn it. Apparently, it worked.

So the US government thought this was awesome and gave Sequoyah a mansion to live in, right? [/sarcasm] No, you can probably guess from the timeline what happened. He went to Washington D.C. to protest and argue with other Native American leaders against the Indian Removal laws the government was enacting, but wasn’t successful, leading to the Trail of Tears. His interactions with other nations led him to decide to try to create another system of writing for all indigenous Americans to use. I don’t think it ever got completed, but someone with more knowledge on the subject can probably tell you more.

He died in Mexico, on an expedition based on the rumor that some Cherokee had gone there–the reunification of the Cherokee people was a big deal to him, after all.

We think he died there, anyway.

See, we don’t actually know where his body is. Officially, he died in 1845 of a lung infection; we don’t know where his body is. The Cherokee funded an expedition to find his grave in the 20th century, but while they found a grave in Coahuila, Mexico, they aren’t sure if it’s his. In 2011, a newspaper argued that actually he wasn’t buried, his skeleton was found in 1903 in a cave in Oklahoma. 

I found this out by seeing that he’s listed on Wikipedia’s “List of People Who Disappeared” (which I do not recommend reading if you are sitting alone in a house at night).

Well, he’s still an important national figure. He’s got some recognition–his statue is in the US Capitol, he’s got a sculpture in front of the Cherokee Museum in North Carolina, and! Along with several figures from world cultures credited with inventing/teaching writing, he’s on the doors of the John Adams Building of the Library of Congress.

YMMV may vary on whether or not it’s good that he’s on there with a bunch of mythological figures.

[mariacallous]

On a visit to Barnes & Noble in middle school, I asked my mom to buy me “The Book of Jewish Values,” by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. We weren’t Jewish — though my paternal grandfather was — nor religious in any way. But I was fascinated by the book’s instructions on applying moral principles in day-to-day situations, from citing your sources to quitting smoking. As I got older, I would flip past the esoteric Ethicist pages in the Sunday New York Times and go straight to the etiquette column, where I could learn about the real nuts and bolts of ethical daily living. I loved the logical process involved in deducing the best next step from a broader moral rule.

In college, I charged into adulthood believing the rest of the world was engaged in the same ethical study as I was, taking pleasure in trying to match their actions to their principles. “Of course the basketball team should suspend our best player while he’s under police investigation,” I’d say confidently. “Sports are about character, not winning at all costs!” My Midwestern classmates were not persuaded, to say the least. I began to feel like an alien who had learned about life from books.

By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and many people refused to change their lifestyles in the slightest, I thought I might be completely alone in my convictions. I read Holocaust memoirs, trying to learn how to behave in a world devoid of principles. Viktor Frankl’s work encouraged me to believe I always have control over one small corner of the world — my own actions — even though “decent people … always will remain a minority.” I decided to take an introduction to Judaism class and begin attending a local synagogue’s Zoom services.

At the time, my friends and I worked for employers who emailed us anti-vaccine misinformation, logged our every keystroke with productivity software because they felt sure we’d spend every work-from-home day watching Netflix and, in one case, asked employees to donate PTO to a coworker who became gravely ill after being required to work in the office during a known COVID outbreak. I strained to understand the principles behind any of these actions. (Is fear a principle? Is greed?) One day, I received a different type of email, this time from the synagogue.

Synagogue leadership wrote to inform us that they had made the difficult decision to part ways with a core team member for noncompliance with “an important synagogue policy.” Because vaccines had just become widely available, one could surmise what the policy might be. The policy, the email said, served one of the highest values of Judaism: pikuach nefesh, saving life.

The message felt like seeing another traveler in the desert. Even though it was difficult, the rabbis and the board of trustees had started from a shared moral principle, and then acted accordingly — just like in my beloved Telushkin book. Several months later, I converted to Judaism. I took the Hebrew name Gavriella to honor my personal Jewish hero whose principles transcend her situation, former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Joining a Reform congregation made me realize just how breakable my principles had been when I believed they were mine alone. For example, in college, I dated a guy who vociferously opposed any social plan that did not involve alcohol. Whenever I suggested we take the night off from drinking, he would tell me I was lame and that no one would ever be interested in the types of booze-free dates I proposed. At first, I thought maybe he was right and joined him in drinking to excess, with predictably poor results. Then, I was furious with him for being reckless and cruel to me. It was only years later, after he got sober, that I saw how my reactions hurt both him and me. I was engaging with a diseased idea that deserved neither consideration nor debate.

The position I took — that the desire to be cool is not a good reason to take risks with your health and safety — is a time-tested truism that follows the moral principle of pikuach nefesh. It was not “just like, my opinion, man,” to paraphrase a classic film by two Jewish brothers. If I had understood that my then-boyfriend was not fighting me but the fundamental principles of well-being, I might have been able to react compassionately, recognizing his words as a cry for help.

I believe some principles are universal. As the filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille said, “We cannot break the Ten Commandments. We can only break ourselves against them.” Where we should continue to debate and engage one another is the application of the principles, the “wrestling with God” that defines the Jewish people, so that we can fight dogma, stagnation and injustice. Each time I attend Shabbat services, I’m among other people who have carved that moment out of their lives to focus on the big, important things: What can we do to help the sick? How can we bring more peace to our communities? When I re-enter day-to-day life, I feel stronger and more courageous. During the early pandemic, I even found the words to speak up at work about COVID misinformation.

Millennial and Gen Z women are leaving organized religion in record numbers, many citing oppression against women within some branches of religion, according to research by the American Enterprise Institute. Many religious institutions are due for a reckoning. But we also know an individualistic society rarely works. Even the most determined, self-serious 12-year-old who spends her Barnes & Noble money on rabbinical texts will falter without others who share her values. Becoming Jewish has taught me that we need wisdom traditions and we need community around them, or else we are each rowing our own small boat, susceptible to every shift of the wind.

[tzipporahs-well]

Hey it’s @flangstynerd AKA @scinerdwrites but on a new blog. There’s been a lot of changes in my life in the past couple years, and as a result I wanted to make a new blog for jumblr. Several of my friends are on here and I got inspired just to reblog their stuff :D

What’s Changed:

I converted to Reform Judaism from Catholicism in May of this year. I’ve been doing this conversion journey since November 2021, but I didn’t want to announce it to the internet until everything was done and finalized. After 2.5 years, everything is finally official.

I plan to be slightly more active on tumblr than I have been previously. I named my blog based on my Hebrew name (Tzipporah), and how I wish to provide a treasure trove of info.

I would say my ideals of practice are some kind of cross between Conservative and Reform Judaism.

I’ve acquired some chronic illnesses and disabilities over the years. My body has been tough to me for the last couple years.

I have a Jewish podcast that has several eps already now. Our podcast has a tumblr blog, but please dm me for more info for safety reasons.

What is the same?

I’m still Chinese, Hmong, and queer (pronouns: they/she). I’m still culturally Italian as an adoptee. Those are not going anywhere lol.

Still have several varieties of neurodivergence (autism, PTSD, anxiety, psychosis, some kind of unclear mood disorder). My brain likes playing it rough. I have healed a lot of trauma, but the other stuff is still a wild ride.

Still don’t plan to be super duper active as I have a scientist day job. But if I ever see a great jumblr post from one of my friends or otherwise, I’d be happy to reblog.

Still hold a lot of nerdy interests: Disney fandoms (Tangled the Series, Encanto, etc.), classic literature (Shakespeare, 19th century European literature), certain manga/anime (Fullmetal Alchemist and Death Note)

Still can be quite critical of the things I enjoy.

About Me (Jumblr Edition):

Favorite Torah character (first 5 books of Moshe only): Tzipporah (I relate to her so much as someone who came into the tribe and a nontraditional wife; the bridegroom of blood scene is iconic)

Favorite Tanakh character: King Shaul (very relatable for me as I feel like I struggle from similar challenges as him: mental health issues, low self esteem, and paranoia) followed close behind by Esther (she’s a role model for me, and Purim is my favorite holiday)

Favorite Jewish Holiday: Purim (relatable message especially for these dangerous times; also a lot of fun while still being a relatively low stress holiday)

Hamantaschen vs. Latke: hard choice but I have to go with traditional poppyseed hamantaschen. They’re older (~1500s) than the potato latke (late 18th to 19th century) and store better.

Areas of interest: Jewish history, Tanakh discussion, Jewish culture (food especially; I love cooking and baking), Jewish learning (especially more about Jewish life in Israel)

What Jewish value can I improve on? Chesed; I find it hard to always express loving-kindness, and my impatience and temper can get the better of me. I’ve been trying to improve on these for the past two years but 5784 has been especially trying.

What Jewish value is very important to me: Ahavat Yisrael; it is important that we as a people stay united. United we rise, divided we fall. I admire all legitimate Jewish streams (side note: Messianic Judaism is not a Jewish stream)

Important note: If something says #goyim don’t touch, listen and obey! Don’t even try with the antisemitism.

[homunculus-argument]

Hi i hope ur havin a decent day. I like ur posts and wanted to share that the other day i asked my sister what a concerning number of panic attacks to have in one day was and i was shocked when she said any panic attacks are concerning. Like im out here just goin about my day trying to figure out whats normal too and i think thats neat, same hat buddy!

Also arabic calligraphy does slap i grew up in a muslim house where arabic calligraphy was everywhere like a texas house of crosses and its neat. Religion and me are complicated but the art is always a delight. Theres lots of cool reasons why its like that if u wanna wikipedia it sometime or chat to me about it.

Oh yeah I encountered someone's story here, somebody told of how she told her first gynecologist that sometimes the period pain is so bad that she faints from it, and he dismissed her as being dramatic, which she interpreted as "fainting from pain is normal, and there's no reason to be dramatic about it". And she lived like this for years and had a whole baby, and then asked a pediatrician could she at least get painkillers for the periods while she's breastfeeding, because she's scared that she'll hurt the baby while falling when she faints while holding the baby. And this time the response was a far more appropriate and professional "ma'am what the fuck", and it turns out that fainting from pain actually isn't normal.

I've got a tricky relationship with religion too - my father was a militant atheist who hated religions as a whole and christianity in particular. My mother didn't care that much either way. If dad had just once said "I don't want that stuff around my kids", it would have been so. My mother wouldn't have fought it. The only reason why both me and my sister were raised christian anyway was because the thought of protecting his children from something that he deemed harmful literally never crossed my father's mind. It flat-out didn't occur to him that he could or should make the slightest gesture to keep his children away from influences he hated.

I'm currently learning Hebrew on duolingo for some reason, and while I haven't even gotten halfway through the alphabet yet, this writing system sure was not designed with idiots in mind.

[fromchaostocosmos]

אתה בושה לאלוהים.

What are the odds of this not being a not native Hebrew speaker as well as not being Jewish and just using google to translate this message?

For anyone who is a native Hebrew speaker or is fluent in it can you please let me know if ask formatted in Hebrew properly, if the grammar was done correctly, or anything along those lines?

As for anon I won't say I'm perfect or pretend that I am because that is impossible. I am human and imperfection is a part of being human. To be flawed is a part of the essence of being human because that is a part of having free will. As is according to Jewish philosophy.

In the custom of my people, we believe that humans are the only creation out the vast and varied creations G-d made that was gifted free will, which means we will be flawed, will be imperfect, and will make mistakes.

We hold that one does not strive for perfection for perfection is impossible and you ask the impossible of a person because they will stumble and this falls under the concept of "putting a stumbling block before the blind". So then the questions becomes what should we strive for?

The answer is that we should look inwards and learn our flaws and virtues become familiar with them and once we have we should use our flaws in that can do good and benefit the world and hone our virtues and make sure they do not become misused.

We are told in Judaism to accept the reality that we will fall and that we will make mistakes and that is in how we pick ourselves up and what we do after that is what matters the most. How we rectify, how we course correct, and how we learn that is key. What learn that is of value. And how we ask for forgiveness.

Because we Yisrael are a collective and communal people. So much of our laws and learnings and commentary and everything is focused on that kinship, on the bonds between people.

Much of what we do and have been doing for thousands of years has been focused on the societies we build, the communities we make, and how we connect.

The Laws of Person to Person in Jewish Law are the way they are for a reason and we take them seriously. I take them seriously.

So I know I'm not perfect. I know I'm flawed. I try my best and I know I can do better.

All in all I do not think my G-d would look at with shame. I won't dare to say that I can know the Almighty's thoughts. But I do know that while fear death for it is an unknown and it is change I do not fear the Ultimate Court and the Judge of All.

Because as human as I am with all my flaws and imperfections I know that I keep doing my best to live as Hashem asked of me and kinspeople to live. So in that what shame is there.

[nullbutler]

CW: mild body horror

so this is my AI AU...i dont have all of the pieces done yet, but I think this will be part one of 3 little collages I'm going to make hehe...the basic summary of the AU is, What if Black Butler BUT ROBOTS????

R!Ciel and O!Ciel are a pair of extremely intelligent bots made by the company Angel Wing (a company trying to put human sentience into robots to specifically help prolong the lives of sick children). The two of them are called RCL and OCL (R-C-L, O-C-L, pronounced just as you'd pronounce r!ciel and o!ciel, since it's cee el) and they're the newest little toy...

That is, until RCL goes missing from their little padded cell of monitored stimulation and information learning. And, then, a strange nebulous 'virus' infects OCL. Suddenly, he's on the run -- or rather, something is running and he's in their arms!!

Sebastian Michaelis (nicknamed, The Daemon, because he almost exclusively codes in hebrew and it looks Very Intimidating) had his eye on these little bots (called: dolls). He wants to know the true depth of their humanity, whether or not they actually 'have a soul' or if its a big hoax. Consider that a morbid curiosity of his. And so by hacking the mainframe of the company and infiltrating, he's finally able to extrapolate what's going on...

Kinda.

Anyway, while they're on the run, they have to crash at the fantastic transgender catgirl hacker (a very common trope, I know) Grelle's bachelorette pad.

details i can't fit in

OCL is 4'4, RCL is 4'5, they're quite a bit smaller and lighter since they're hypertech robots

They can't walk on their own for very long, their legs are functional but they were not designed for that

OCL...um....can bleed. something. something is going on. they're not really sure what he is.

He doesn't remember anything either

Sebastian's current hacker name is DOG because him and Grelle had a kitty motif for a while, but then he lost a bet. At the end of the month hes nerfing his account (like he'd even last that long before being caught)

characters that are important and WILL show up later: Alois, Jim, Claude, Undertaker, Ash, other important ones

something bad happened to RCL. OCL cannot remember it, though :(

no grelle's ears are not real. its a headband for the aesthetic. shes in her playful era. its between the 50 different shades of crimson eras

I've been calling this thing Cosmo Circuits. If you even care