#and then i'd like to learn estonian…

[dulac1882]

!! langblr introduction !!

salut !! i made this langblr to share my language learning progress and to be in contact with other people into languages<3 i'm especially interested in following people who post about their learning progress !!!

about me: - caroline (she/her), 21, finnish, uni student - other than languages i'm interested in almost everything art & culture related :) languages: - languages i'm concentrating on: french (high b1), german (b1), russian (high a2) - languages i'm learning on the side / have learned in the past: swedish (rusty b1), latin, italian (a1) (+ english). not planning on starting any new ones anytime soon..

language goals under the cut :)

some goals for this summer: - french: (1) finish b1 level textbooks and maybe go through grammaire progressive au français intermédiaire and/or avancé (2) get better at understanding natural speech (i can understand radio programmes etc just fine but movies, tv shows and youtube videos are a lot more difficult for me) - german: improve vocabulary, maybe go through a textbook (if i have the time) - russian: catch up on anki (i have over 5k reviews piled up….) and MAYBE finish my (final!) russian textbook - other: maybe try reading a book in swedish and listen to some easy italian podcast episodes, these aren't really that important long-time goals: - french: becoming as good as i am in english (or better..) - german: high b2 or c1 (currently my biggest problems are (1) vocabulary (2) can't speak…..) - russian: being able to read russian lit (+ having basic conservations without too much difficulty) - swedish: reaching a level that's ok/nice for a finnish person…??? as in being able to have a conversation if needed + being able to read contemporary texts (which i mostly am already) - italian: no big goals, i can already understand a lot based on french :) one day i'd like to be able to read italian books with ease and to speak semi-fluently but i'm in no hurry - latin: not forgetting anything i've already learned + finishing OLC 3 at some point (i only have 2–5 chapters to go)

[gu6chan]

the thing that gets me whenever i hear about finnish is hearing that spoken and written finnish is "different". Like when I first heard about this i was like "Yeah duh as it is with literally every language to ever exist" but it turns out it's like ..... DIFFERENT different????? how does that work. what happens if I go to finland and transcript something spoken as is. will they take me out back and shoot me

[talknerdytome18]

my agggtm hc:

Ravi likes learning different languages just so he can give Pip different petnames in like 20 languages

(he is insufferable about this when they're on holiday abroad <3 )

Omg that's actually so cute. I feel like Pip would be annoyed at first (especially if he's insufferable about it lol we love Ravi Singh), but she ends up loving it. It goes well with Pip knowing a lot of random facts and tending to ramble them when she's nervous (we love our girl for her "Pipisms"). If anything I think Ravi needs to teach me a second language I'd love to learn Estonian at some point 😭

[lyssalis-corner]

Some Thoughts on Music, and Women

So, there's a quote floating around the internet from Sandy Toskig, about a particular incident that cause her to wonder how many times she had overlooked Women's Contribution to history. Now, I have some Thoughts about this.

You know what I've gotten really into? Sea shanties. Older folk music. I did a little researching, and learned about what the grand ol' tradition of shanties is for; essentially they're for timing rhythmic jobs, like rowing or adjusting rigging. Now, maybe it's that I'm a musician from a family of fairly musically inclined people, or maybe it's that I'm an ex-ballerina, but do know what I find sea shanties are really good for? Knitting. Sewing. Doing the dishes. Conventionally domestic feminine tasks. And further more, I bet they'd be great for spinning (I don't have the stuff to do this one, so I don't know), weaving, or other tasks that are repetitively rhythmic. But I'm going to focus on the knitting angle, since I have experience with that one.

Knitting is very rhythmic, and if you can find a way to time yourself (with, say, sea shanties for example), I've found it results in far more consistent stitches than just sitting and letting my mind wander. Songs like The Wellerman, or Leave Her Johnny, or (my personal favorite) Jolly Sailor Bold, are all great. They have a sharp steady beat that's easy to follow, catchy tunes that are fun to hum, and lyrics that are easier to remember. They're not complicated musically, either. I've found that there are different patterns that pair well with different songs; The Wellerman is great for knitting Estonian Lace, My Mother Told Me is good for some dishcloth patterns I've been experimenting with, or knitting in the round, Jolly Sailor Bold is also a good one for lace.

Speaking of Jolly Sailor Bold, I've been wondering about this one; it's fundamentally (at least to me) from a woman's perspective. According to Wikipedia, sailors have been singing on boats for at least a couple centuries, but why would a man have written this one? And it seems to me to identify very specific feelings that come from being left behind, when the one you love is off at sea. I propose that perhaps this one is woman originated. Maybe there's even an entire culture killed by the Industrial Revolution or by the Reformation, one of women's songs for knitting and spinning. It's certainly not something I've ever read about (if you've got books or sources on this, let me know, I'd be thrilled to read them!), but it's also something that I have a nearly impossible time believing didn't exist. Maybe many of these songs really have a woman at their origin, or maybe women's music has simply been lost.

Or maybe I just haven't looked in the right places, or hard enough. But it seems to me that there has to have been a culture revolving around these tasks, things done every day, by everyone.

Again, these are just my thoughts and opinions, formulated after some research and some coincidentally gained experience.

[estonian-is-horrible]

Eestiblr Discord

I figured Discord is a decent way to convert Estonian Tumblr from a pile of blogs and a handful of friends into an actual community. So, join up! Let's see what happens.

I know there's Estonia and Estonian Learning servers, and possibly others, but I'd like to have a more focused, less chaotic, and more supportive vibe. Many of us might be strangers, but we're here for each other. There are cat pics and recipes and jokes.

Join up join up join up

[cabfarewell]

26, 37, 43 and 53? for the ask game?

26. Have you ever won a contest?

I won some national awards for my poetry in highschool .. if that counts? god thats dorky.

37. How would you describe your sense of humour?

god i don't know. dark? not in the bigoted-jokes-are-funny kind of way, more of a. you've got to laugh or you'll cry kind of way. people have expressed surprise when i've laughed before, as if they didn't think i could. do that? so i guess i'm kind of stoic? i think mostly i'm just autistic and clinically depressed.

43. Is there a movie you detest for a very specific reason?

BOY IS THERE EVER. I LOVE TO HATE MOVIES. In The Eye of the Beholder (1999) is one that i viscerally hate because it was so bad that it wasn't even funny, it was just sort of nauseating. Like that is probably my least favorite movie ever just because of how much i felt like I had wasted my life and time after seeing it. Head (1968) also sucks, but in a funnier way. I don't really have any interesting movie opinions though. that's more @mylambandmartyr's ballgame

53. How many languages do you speak?

fluently? one. English. I'm conversational in German and Spanish, and i have functional vocab for Japanese, but i'm out of practice. i have a light familiarity with Yiddish, French, Russian, Mandarin, and Inupiat (<- my people's language, not taught in my area bc my sick freak of a father moved to the midwest.)

I'd like to learn at least the basics of Hebrew, Dakota, Finnish, and maybe Polish, Albanian, and Estonian, but thats a lot of languages. I wish I could dedicate my entire life and time to language learning but I don't really have access to many good resources... and people don't pay you to practice tonality and conjugation, generally speaking .

[shro0msquid]

Does anyone ever get bored of a language they've been learning for years? My Spanish is A2 after 15 years and I wanna give up and learn Russian instead. Ugh.

But then I wanna learn so many big languages: Chinese, Japanese, Russian.

And so many smaller languages: Estonian, Finnish, Scottish Gaelic, Georgian

Actually those a kinda medium languages and not small small languages. I'd like to learn a small small language but I'm a bit of a drifter and don't like to be so tied to a geographical place... Hence, I'm also learning Esperanto. Bruh...

[lassieposting]

Ten languages!! bro. how. and what are they

I didn't have any friends until I was like. 18-19. So I used to hide in like a janitors closet at breaks and lunch, jam a chair under the door handle, and learn languages instead. The library had to order in a bunch of language books for me

That was a long time ago but I still remember the very basics of Finnish, Estonian, Egyptian Arabic, Polish, Russian

And I speak/understand decent Dutch, German, French and Spanish

And then there's Trigedasleng, a conlang by @dedalvs because I am a nerd

I always had a great mind for retaining vocab and I pick up accents really well, but grammar was my downfall Every Time. I'd get to a certain point and hit some grammar point (genders in German, different types of past tense in Spanish) that just. Would not compute, and I'd get stuck at that level. I wanted to be a translator at one point but the tism brain just won't grammar well (or translate fast enough). I could get by with like, visiting the countries though

[possessed-nia]

neptune, pisces and 9H ✨🖤

neptune ⇢ are you a rational or intuitive person?

hm, i'd say more rational than intuitive but i do listen to my intuition most of the times especially when it comes to people i meet

pisces ⇢ what kind of art are you good at? (painting, dancing, singing, etc.)

pretty decent at drawing and my friend told me i'm pretty good at singing too, i took some dancing classes for about 6 months but i don't really feel confident about it i'm pretty good with origami, sewing, crocheting, bunch of diy stuff especially friendship bracelets

9H ⇢ what languages ​​would you like to learn?

japanese, maybe estonian and maybe latin i feel like it would be very interesting even though it's considered a dead language

asks from this post

[hasdrubal-gisco]

eurovision '24 semifinal 2 early review

content and spoiler warning for albania, armenia, austria, czech republic, denmark, greece, malta, switzerland, belgium estonia, georgia, israel, latvia, the netherlands, norway, san marino, france, italy, spain

albania - opening witha good and strong song. would have been better if it was in albanian, but albania always brings the heat. albanian and serb are brothers because they are son of same bitch (many are saying this !)/10

armenia - absolute banger. singer doesn't have the classic hayastani spade face which must have hard for her growing up. genuinely This is what eurovision is about. may you drop thousand bombs on baku/10

austria - (watching music video) i liked display of aryan man masculine power energy, sweat dripping down his chest. how this make you feel ? song ? generic, forgettable, this will score no points without mr schutzschtaffel flipping tires. you will never regain lost glory/10

czech republic - Yes i am deadnaming this country. i do not recognize these silly zoomer pronouns like "czechia." NOT REAL ! song is relatively good on its own but to me it its not a eurovision song. it's giving pale waves without the production by mr the 1975 whatever his name is. i think this will be well received by juries but it's not fun in the way we expect from battle royale evropa edition. props to the czech republic for sending a russian girl in these russophobic times. i will not mind hearing this on the radio in the car in the coming year/10

denmark - she's technically white seeing as she's very obviously ethiopian (amhara, not those COLORED varieties). good singer but the song is nothing. relatively dignified considering the scandinavian's propensity for cringe/10

greece - she gave cunt she served she died or whatever it is you kids say these days. it's giving noa kirel if we're being honest. in my top 3 i'd say. no wonder greeks invented civilization/10

malta - for this one my opinion is colored by the fact that going into it i know she's some commercial real estate magnate's daughter who paid her way into the competition. when will people learn, war criminals' nieces are simply better than investor's daughters. don't even thing about being a talentless hack if your uncle isn't exterminating minorities. only positive is the tooth gap/10

switzerland - european college student is not immune to american they/them disorder. if he sings the hard parts well, this could save some of it musically but culturally it's a L. go back to sending kosovar albanians/10

belgium - european man in his 30s is ALSO not immune to american they/them disorder. this is nothing, but we must always keep in mind only a few years ago a good third of the contestants would send ballads so. belgium has no reason to exist, think about it/10

estonia - MICHAEL VSAUCE ?? estonian pitbull be like mr balt-wide. it's above average in an extremely poor year/10

georgia - rising from the ashes like a phoenix is actually referencing the historical period during which georgia did not exist on the map, like poland, but re-emerged as a sovereign state. and this is what they did with it. also the bizarre sour food. below average in an extremely poor year/10

the illegitimate fascist ethnostate of isnotreal - the best of this variety of song we've heard, largely because the music is more subtle and she can in fact sing. this will either get high or no votes from the general public depending on prevailing sentiment on the holocaust du jour. thee mathematical average in a poor year/10

latvia - na-baron, house harkonnen does not know what's coming for it. bro the lisan al gaib's fedaykin are coming for ur bald ass ! this is nothing/10

the netherlands - i will confess this is not bad. TO ME it is a quirky and lighthearted version of a stupid eurovision song, with some self awareness that the finns (both this year and last) sorely lack. unlike other TREASURED MUTUALS i do not consider this man SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE. i will let the senatus populusque tumblorus draw its own conclusions based on the notes of this post. MAGNA EVROPA EST PATRIA NOSTRA/10

norway - i can recognize there is an audience for this and that audience is not me. is it good ? i'll have to ask them. i think this may get an unusually high amount of votes from juries for some reason. feels like the kind of song that would play for a super epic and dramatic ( :I ) final scene in vikings (tv show). eeeh/10

san marino - you can tell she thinks she's quirky from the facial expressions. if i wanted sexy skeletons i'd have played undertale. this sucks, you're san marino you have no identity, genuinely this should be a vehicle for importing flo rida or something. this sucks/10

france - incredible voice. getting a lot of dune princess vibes from the outfit (<- guy who just watched dune). this will get panned because it's france, and somehow american warships have secured total anglo victory in the cultural thousand year war (the hundred year war). liberté, égalité, fraternité/10

italy - i had not heard this as i abstained from san remo, but this is pretty good, it's very ethnic, it's sexy, it has hot blood coursing through its veins. top few (final ranking pending)/10

spain - relatively okay beat/instrumental that's wasted on a nothing singer. send basque opera singers next time. i'm ready to go to sleep/10

final conclusion - there were more good entries than in the first semi, i'll come up with a final list and rough ranking of who i'd like and hate to see go to the final for any undercover jurors reading the die karthagische zeitung. feels like the entries that are good are really good, and there's a lot of blah, but at least we're skirting by with very few ballads. pee breaks speckled in for those of us who have bladders like old women who have somehow had babies (not me tho).

[captaincolossal]

So yesterday at Trader Joe's I learned that one can call ahead to put items on hold. This came up because when the cashier asked if I'd found everything, I was like "yeah, mostly :/" and she asked, and I explained that I'd wanted hashbrown patties and they used to reliably have them and now I can find them literally nowhere. I look at every grocery store I go to, and no one has fucking hashbrown patties and it has been like this for ages. When I can find any, I try to make them last, and then it's usually weeks before I can find any again. Anyway, she said their store usually just sell out real fast, but I can call ahead and they'll hold up to 5 for me??? Delighted with this information.

Although this did make me think of the Community episode (S1:E21) with the chicken fingers? Where the perceived scarcity of the delicious chicken fingers leads to all these deals for secret chicken in return for favors, driving the actual scarcity in the actual lunch line. Like, is there actually no scarcity of hashbrown patties, just everyone reserving them in advance and/or buying extra whenever it's on the shelf. Am I one of the chumps in the lunch line griping about how they always run out immediately?

November (2017)

This is the film titled "November" that's *check's notes*...surreal Estonian arthouse horror. Of course it fuckin' is.

[kedamono-dreams]

i think the first languages i had an interest in learning was classical latin and greek. maybe. the first non english language i learned in school was french,

the second language i went about learning was toki pona (the understanding of the toki pona syntax never really came to me very well and i honestly believe that there's no real reason for it. it's kinda useless as a method of expression for me)

the third language i am trying to learn currently is finnish. i have an extremely limited vocab, only knowing a few verbs, and i have very bad reading and pronunciation skills. i feel like there aren't many good resources to learn finnish, but it makes sense for where i live i think. nobody is speaking finnish here

i kind of want to go and learn a few other languages, but i'd never have anything approaching fluency probably. the ones i think i'd like are

what i should actually do is probably go back and try to learn some more french though. i know a few words still from high school but not very many.

[croutonnet]

18 33 52

18. do you miss how things were a year ago?

half yes and half no... high-school was a very Experience for me and I really liked a lot of people but I got in trouble pretty often and didn't enjoy many of the lessons... now I'm in college I have a lot more free time to indulge in hobbies, schoolwork is more enjoyable because I have the liberty to study courses im actually interested in, and I have the most amazing boyfriend ever :) maybe I don't get out in a social sense as I used to, but honestly I'm not the biggest extrovert ever so I'm fine with going out with just my boyfriend and family, and seeing more people a couple times a month:) I used to be very shy around my boyfriends best friend but I feel like it's less so now

33. something you want to learn?

I'd like to refresh my Spanish because I havent sat down to study Spanish in a while... I want to discipline myself more so I can learn more languages -- ideally Russian or Estonian since my bf is estonian and a lot of his friends are lol. And I want to learn more about classical music and it's history, as well as literary theorists

52. something you're talented at?

id like to say that im pretty decent at theoretical thinking and literary analysis. in more practical terms i have an affinity for cooking and decorating :3

[saratravel]

I have turned in my car and am cozy in my hotel in rainy Tallinn, finishing up a book I picked up yesterday in Tartu - review likely coming soon. This morning, I went to the Estonian National Museum, which I've heard was THE thing to do in Tartu. Since I did have a time limit (my car was due to turn in two hours north), I asked the front desk which exhibition to target. He echoed what I had read online as a must-see, The Echo of Urals.

This exhibit detailed the culture of various groups of people throughout Northern Russia, the Baltics, and Scandinavia. The thread that ties them all together is not their genetics, but their LANGUAGE. Linguists and historians discovered that these cultures' languages are all related in both semantics and structure, which implies a historical connection between them. With my Master's in Communication Sciences/Disorders, I found this FASCINATING.

There was a very neat interactive language tree at the beginning.

It then had set ups for four different areas, including cases showing how they dressed, some replicas of dwellings and saunas, and the tools they used. Most of the pictures I took were of text for me to read through later. I'm the kind of museum-goer that likes to really closely go through everything but with my limited time, I had to make do with snippets and pictures for myself later... I got a few cool pictures, though!

That's all my pictures/travel commentary. From here on out, I'm going to yap about my observations of language usage I've made during this trip. No more pictures, so this is your warning to stop reading if you're not interested in my yapping.

I had noticed some tour guides and locals speak of the historical and linguistic ties that the Baltic Countries have and how they aren't consistent throughout all three countries. Whereas Lithuanian and Latvian have closer linguistic ties, Estonia and Latvia have closer historical ties. The main one I learned about was the medieval history of Latvia and Estonia. I kinda nodded and wondered about it, but it wasn't until this exhibition that it clicked. Language usage over here is hugely significant, I'd argue more so than in my home country of the USA.

One observation I had immediately was how most people in these countries are at least bilingual, if not trilingual, or even more. Usually, it is a mix of the national language (Lithuanian, Latvian, or Estonian), English, and Russian. Lithuania has a number of Polish speakers, and Estonia has a number of Finnish speakers as well. Most kiosks and menus are in at least three or four languages.

The second was all that I've learned about the history of language usage/how much of a theme it is in its literature. As I had mentioned before, written Lithuanian was banned under Tsarist Russia. The book I read was an illegally published Lithuanian story that was published in America.

Latvian did not have the same ban (from what I understand), but for much of its history, German or Russian were the languages of business, education, and power. The first short story from the Latvian book I read heavily featured the importance for the main character's son learning German to secure a financially secure job.

The statues in Tartu, Estonia, consistently memorialized the scientists, writers, and professors who introduced their work into the Estonian language rather than Russian, German, or any other. The Estonian book I just finished is of a Russian woman who mentioned that she felt ostricized for her language as "the younger generation doesn't know it and the older generation refuses to speak it." The languages her daughter speaks are Estonian, English, a little Finnish, and some Russian with her mother.

It is so fascinating to me to watch an area of polyglots just polyglotting around. In America (at least in my part of it), there is usually just English and Spanish. The Spanish speaking population is significant, and similarly, packages and public transit tend to use both English and Spanish, but the languages feel largely separated. You can expect to hear Spanish in the Hispanic neighborhoods and some among families around in public, but the default is English everywhere else. Additionally, English and Spanish are not native languages in the US. They're languages brought over from across the seas. Native languages of the US are very rare nowadays and are largely limited to households and government designated reservations....

But I don't want to get too serious here. These are simply the observations of my home compared to this land foreign to me. One thing that coming here has done, funnily enough, is inspire me to really focus on learning Spanish more seriously. As my family language, the one that would be most helpful in my career, and the second most used language in my country, there really is no reason for me not to know it. I've been planning how I want to study and practice among friends. Perhaps the rest of my summer will go to that project...

The next two nights are here in Tallinn. Thursday morning, take a ferry to Helsinki, where I meet up with a friend! Yes, the same friend who saved my ass 10 days ago when Visa failed me! I look forward to it, but I am more than a little sad that my time here in the beautiful Baltics is coming to an end. It has truly been a fantastic trip.

[gilkohuke]

Watch me do Finnish on Duolingo while in Russian class 

[aaltjelng]

do i want to get my korean to a high intermediate level? yes

do i want to get my french and my swedish to an advanced level? yes

do i want to reach a lower intermediate level in dutch? yes

do i still begin to study a new language? :)))) yes<3