#fluent english speaker

[ci-lan]

Do this if you're not to fail in IELTS Speaking

[willyhoos]

scenes from hetaoni that im overthinking:

1) japan describing this (most traumatic incident of italy's life) as an "adventure" to italy's face. that's a load-bearing "..."

2) italy successfully redirecting everyone's opinion about the clocks. ⭐achievement: friends manipulated!!

3) ...until japan calls italy's claims into question (twice) and both times italy gets so upset, unsure of how to improvise, that he starts visibly panicking and finally has to leave the room.

the first time, after japan asks if he's okay, he immediately leaves. you ever had someone ask you "you doing alright?" and you just burst into tears? im convinced italy left to have a cry break here

the second time, he's not interested in receiving any pity, and gets like... violent. yelling and slamming the door on his way out. well done italy youre the picture of mental health!

4) before the Big Showdown after the ladder room, america made a big show out of being Too Cool to Get Hurt... but canada noticed :,) such a good brother. not to be sad, but i'm sure there's been other loops where america gets himself mortally wounded and canada blames himself, so maybe he's even more attentive than usual!

5) its never stated exactly how long the timeloop has been (theres that One Post i love but, as it says, it only accounts for a small portion of loops) but. uh. this is definitely indicative of.. something.

i used to think that hetaoni having a potentially several-years-long loop would be far too much, but considering that the nations are, well, immortal, and canonically have a very strange and understandably warped view of time... maybe it really has been much longer than we know. after all, it's not like germany started building this on loop #1... how long before he even BEGAN construction?

5) "everyone has noticed that italy is acting weird but no one wants to say anything because we don't want to deal with the freakout"

-> implying they've been gossiping about him behind his back. my poor sweet spaghetti child . youre so horrible at this .

6) even in timeloops where the nations are all AWARE that they're in a timeloop, and italy is presumably open with what he knows... he doesn't tell them that it's his fault they came to the mansion in the first place.

i imagine he doesn't WANT to hide the info he knows thru timeloops (locations of keys, supplies, secret passages, etc) unless he feels he HAS to. but the truth that everything is his fault? he deliberately tells no one. that's not strategy. that's shame.

[melikes-reads]

To German speakers

Serious question: how do you think, before you talk?

I've been watching German tv series and reading German fics, so my reading and listening comprehension is improving.

But.

German syntax is puzzling. Extremely so.

I know the grammar rules, I do! But my mind automatically goes subject + verb + object + conjunction + subject + verb + object when I want to speak.

When I write, I have time to reflect about the correct order of each word (and pieces of a word!), but trying to speak and remember where every part of the speech goes, and the right declensions… Impossible.

So, any advice?

[qrichas]

btw! from twitter, some context from qforever and qcellbits convo

[tricksterlatte]

The Phantom Thieves doing their English homework

[serpentface]

Do you conlang? I was wondering if you had naming languages (or possibly even more developed ones) for pulling the words you use. I tried to search your blog but didn't find anything, wouldn't be surprised if the feature is just busted tho. Your worldbuilding is wonderful and I particularly enjoy the anthropological and linguistic elements.

Ok the thing is I had kind of decided I was not going to do any conlanging because I don't feel like I'm equipped to do a good job of it, like was fully like "I'm just going to do JUST enough that it doesn't fail an immediate sniff test and is more thoughtful than just keysmashing and putting in vowels". And then have kinda been conlanging anyway (though not to a very deep and serious extent. I maybe have like....an above average comprehension of how language construction works via willingness to research, but that's not saying much, also I can never remember the meanings of most linguistic terms like 'frictives' or etc off the top of my head. I'm just kinda raw dogging it with a vague conceptualization of what these things mean)

I do at least have a naming language for Wardi (and more basic rules for other established languages) but the rudimentary forms of it were devised with methods much shakier and less linguistically viable than even the most basic naming language schemes, and I only went back over it LONG after I had already made a bunch of words so there's some inconsistencies with consonant presence and usage. (This can at least be justified because it IS a language that would have a lot of loanwords and would be heavily influenced by other language groups- Burri being by far the most significant, Highland-Finnic and Yuroma-Lowlands also being large contributors)

The 'method' I used was:

-Skip basic construction elements and fully move into devising necessary name words, with at least a Vibe of what consonants are going to be common and how pronunciation works -Identify some roots out of the established words and their meanings. Establish an ongoing glossary of known roots/words. -Construct new words based in root words, or as obvious extensions/variants of established words. -Get really involved in how the literal meanings of some words might not translate properly to english, mostly use this to produce a glossary of in-universe slang. -Realize that I probably should have at least some very basic internal consistency at this point. -Google search tutorials on writing a naming language. -Reverse engineer a naming language out of established words, and ascribe all remaining inconsistencies to being loanwords or just the mysteries of life or whatever.

I do at least have some strongly established pronunciation rules and a sense of broad regional dialect/accents.

-'ai' words are almost always pronounced with a long 'aye' sound.

-There is no 'Z' or 'X' sound, a Wardi speaker pronouncing 'zebra' would go for 'tsee-brah', and would attempt 'xylophone' as 'ssye-lohp-hon'

-'V' sounds are nearly absent and occur only in loanwords, and tend to be pronounced with a 'W' sound. 'Virsum' is a Highland word (pronounced 'veer-soom') denoting ancestry, a Wardi speaker would go 'weer-sum'.

-'Ch' spellings almost always imply a soft 'chuh' sound when appearing after an E, I, or O (pelatoche= pel-ah-toh-chey), but a hard 'kh' sound after an A or U (odomache= oh-doh-mah-khe). When at the start of a word, it's usually a soft 'ch' unless followed by an 'i' sound (chin (dog) is pronounced with a hard K 'khiin', cholem (salt) is pronounced with a soft Ch 'cho-lehm')

-Western Wardin has strong Burri cultural and linguistic influence, and a distinct accent- one of the most pronounced differences is use of the ñ sound in 'nn' words. The western city of Ephennos is pronounced 'ey-fey-nyos' by most residents, the southeastern city of Erubinnos is pronounced 'eh-roo-been-nos' by most residents. Palo's surname 'Apolynnon' is pronounced 'A-puh-lee-nyon' in the Burri and western Wardi dialects (which is the 'proper' pronunciation, given that it's a Kos name), but will generally be spoken as 'Ah-poh-leen-non' in the south and east.

-R's are rolled in Highland-Finnic words. Rolling R's is common in far northern rural Wardi dialects but no others. Most urban Wardi speakers consider rolling R's sort of a hick thing, and often think it sounds stupid or at least uneducated. (Brakul's name should be pronounced with a brief rolled 'r', short 'ah' and long 'uul', but is generally being pronounced by his south-southeastern compatriots with a long unrolled 'Brah' sound).

Anyway not really a sturdy construction that will hold up to the scrutiny of someone well equipped for linguistics but not pure bullshit either.

[annoyingcat413]

I’ve been translating the Sherlock and co scripts to Spanish and right now I have only almost finished episode 1.

It has taken me around 3 weeks?

Hopefully I get faster at doing this.

If not I’ll never finish this haha

Maaan why didn’t I start sooner.

Hopefully I can set up a kind of schedule? Idk maybe force myself to translate 5 pages per day?

That way I could translate one episode per week probably.

I could try and find one more person to help?

I wouldn’t try to organize a whole group. I don’t have the time for that. Just one or two people to assign episodes and then review together. Idk something like that I guess.

I’m really just making this because I really love the podcast and want more people to be able to experience the show. My friends irl don’t speak English and I would love to share the show with them.

Also I want to expand the fandom! It would be cool wouldn’t it? It’s already big but it can be even bigger!!!

The translated scripts could work like subtitles or as a companion to the transcripts.

I’ve listened to many Japanese audio dramas that way.

[tu-es-gegg]

I don't know if I've said this before but one of my pet peeves in qsmp fics is making the dialogue of the non English speakers so like eloquent. Like English as a speaking language is like, real fuckin hard to get down if you don't primarily watch and understand english.

My mother tongue is Malay and when I was trying to speak it I had to communicate in VERY basic sentences that basically consist of noun, verb, maybe conjunction, maybe preposition then done.

"I eat an apple" type stuff, that's the level I could do and to communicate simple ass stuff, that was serviceable, complex ideas had to be summed down to it's BARE essentials, and that's the case in for non English speaker speaking english

Like there's no fancy stuff like idioms and metaphors and sayings, even basic stuff us English speakers look over:

Complex words (esp those that are hard to pronounce when reading it litterally): interested, supposed, achieve

Sayings, idioms and weird conjunctions: for what it's worth, go nuts, given that...

Every verb tense form combo ever: have burnt, have BEEN burnt, have BURNED

Look up any grammar chart for English and pretend it's in a language you barely know, do you understand how that feels

There's a certain level of having consumed English media and studied a WHOLE lot more than just Duolingo to even get to that level of fluency, hell even get this level of WRITING IT

Speaking it, being aware of pronunciation and enunciations and other oral shit, trying very hard to translate it all in your head, is so much harder

It gets real hard for me to hear them and feel they are the characters when they speak so....perfectly. it's not wrong to write a character who is kinda poor in English, just as it's not wrong to write a character being terrible in another language!!! In fact the poor language is a part of that characterisation to me!!! PLEASE I BEG

[magicalgirlfia]

Here my unofficial translations of short stories included in the Official Guilty Gear Anthology which was released as a 2024 April Fools joke.

Thank you very very much to @solradguy for the scans of the issue! You can find a link to the archive page at the very top of the document.

[coquelicoq]

eva green is a native french speaker???

[ahalliance]

god remember when étoiles showed up and just kinda won best fighting game streamer at a international event

[sailoryooons]

This is a gentle reminder that not everyone on this website has English as their first language and may not have as great of a command of the language as you.

[athetos]

Also yes I’m reading Babel by R F Kuang and I’m hooked I did not expect to get this invested as I’m not typically a fan of alt history or any period pieces but i feel like ive been to 19th century Oxford like I’m a dark academia blogger who ships lord Byron with Percy bysse Shelley. I’ve heard so many conflicting opinions on this book I know it’s very divisive but regardless of how I much I enjoy it once I finish at least I can impress my friends by reciting the etymologies of random words.

[im-thekeeper]

peculiar thing

english seems to be my comfort language? ¿

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

I don’t get why people feel like the Duolingo owl is threatening, if I ever feel like he is I just get mad at him. I could fight an owl. I don’t know if I’d win, but I don’t think I’d lose (two things that can apparently coexist). I think I’d survive at least and that’s not really winning but also not losing.

You wanna be so threatening? Da bør du drepe meg!

[alicefromwhichplanet]

THIS.

(Been trying to find the original post but failed on tumblr. But I want to repost this so much. Tell me if the author thinks it’s a violation of their copyright. I’ll delete it.)