#im just saying that as a native chinese speaker the way they talk to each other is NOT shifu & disciple at all

[hualianisms]

on twitter here and here, forayuarchive has been talking about how LLH & FDB really act like an old married couple, and i couldn't stop thinking about it too. as a native chinese speaker, the level of informality, familiarity and bickering, in how FDB and LLH speak to one another (especially in the later episodes) are reminiscent of how bickering old married chinese couples are often depicted.

when FDB is angry/upset at LLH, he calls him "死莲花" - "Damn Lotus/Damn Lianhua". the way FDB says it is in a manner where you might imagine old spouses scolding one another when nagging/bickering (to clarify, it's not romantic per se, but it's extremely informal & familiar).

for example, in ep 35, FDB calls him Damn Lotus in the note he left LLH when he went to look for the styx flower. CN fanghua fans on weibo managed to painstakingly transcribe the note (see forayuarchive's tweet about it here with the eng translation) - it's extremely informal and reads like a short note a spouse/partner would write when leaving their shared home in a hurry.

i also still can't believe LLH calls FDB "xiaobao", it speaks for itself. 小宝 Xiao Bao (literal meaning is "little treasure") is usually something you call literal babies/children AND is FDB's family nickname for him so if you're calling a grown man that in front of his parents and his colleagues and strangers and literally everyone, then he's either your biological family or he's your bf/partner. (it's a level of intimacy that would make me feel embarrassed as a third party hearing LLH call FDB that in front of everyone😭)

and not to mention the deleted line of FDB calling a sick/unconscious LLH "xiaohua'er". (see video & meta of the deleted line by forayuarchive here, translation of the deleted line by ttiesanjiao here). xiaohua'er is so intimate, definitely something one might call a lover 😭

(*for more name meta, see forayuarchive's twitter thread meta about all the names that FDB and LLH call one another, and in what situations each particular name is used)

in any case these are NOT what a disciple calls his shifu or a son calls his dad. these nicknames are far too informal and familiar - no son talks to his father like that and no disciple talks to his shifu like that. (now, an angry spouse however...)

(there's also the fact that FDB explicitly rejects their relationship as being anything other than that between 2 adult equals - when LLH jokes that FDB should bow to him as disciple, FDB immediately rejects the idea, saying that he was only joking about wanting to be LLH's disciple, that FDB is too old now. he firmly sees himself as an adult equal to LLH.)

tl;dr within months of knowing each other, LLH & FDB act as familiar as an old couple 10 years married, skipping the entire courtship stage 😭

[thosch3i]

Hi hi! So the lost tombs and chronology all super confuse me. So tlt2 ended on a cliffhanger that was not resolved by tlt3 which is ultimate note, but now there is another tlt3 that I am guessing is made by the same studio as tlt2 (but not UN) that actually follows tlt2? And it has the same WPZ as tlt2 (but sadly different WX, ZQL though I’m sure these guys are great). You seem to know what you’re talking about so I’m hoping you can help!

UN also ended on a cliff hanger so I’m wondering if they’ll get a sequel from their studio that comes before tomb of the sea.

ahhh hello anon! yes ahaha the dmbj dramas are certainly very confusing--because they keep switching the screenwriters/entire production team between dramas. huanrui did tlt1 (2015), tlt2 (2019), and the sequel to tlt2 (2021). they're also technically the production company for un (2020), but linghe did like all the directing/casting/writing so its significantly different in tone and quality from the other dramas huanrui produced. npss (dmbj author) did sha hai (2018) and tltr (2020), with sha hai being in collab with linghe, so you can see lots of parallels with un and shared cast. (gonna add that i dont know much about the m9 because that’s not what im personally interested in, so i’m only going by stories with wu xie & the iron triangle.)

unfortunately, the dramas pretty have no continuity as a result of all the weird shit and multiple studios doing different dramas and messy stuff going on behind the scenes. the author's production company currently has all the rights back for filming future dramas, which is......imo, a good thing for book fans who love the author but a 😬 thing for book fans who like the original story more than what the author is now doing with it. I'll uh avoid saying too much opinion stuff though so no more on that 😅

that aside! yes 云顶天宫 “explore with the note” part 2......is the direct sequel to tlt2 and done by the same studio. unfortunately the writers are different and im not sure how much of the production team is the same either. idk how much you know about the novels so brief summary here--for the chinese version, the main story has 9 parts split among 8 books (though the official eng tls have each part being a different book) with some important content being as follows:

official eng title “cavern of blood zombies” (first time wx goes into a tomb, first t3j meeting)

official eng title “angry sea, hidden sands” (xisha seabed tomb, introduce a-ning)

official eng title “bronze tree of death” (bronze tree in qinling, wx & lao yang solo adventure)

official eng title “palace of doom” (heavenly palace on the clouds, introduce bronze gate)

official eng title “deadly desert winds” (golmud, introduce hei xiazi, desert, rainforest, tamutuo)

official eng title “graveyard of a queen” (the rest of that arc, wu sanxing & xie lianhuan reveal, jade meteorite, amnesiac xiaoge and escape, sanshu vanishes for good--also i think the official eng tl covers a couple chapters of the beginning of the next part too)

阴山古楼 (searching for xiaoge’s memories in banai, miluotuo cave, i think introduction of wu erbai)

邛笼石影 (auction/hotel iron triangle fight, introduce xiao hua & xiuxiu, wx & xh on the mountains alone while pz & xg go with granny huo)

finale (rescue from zhang family mansion, changbai mountain goodbye, 10 years promise)

after the main story are the main sequels:

zang hai hua (tibetan sea flower; unfinished & abandoned) covers wu xie a few years after xiaoge has entered the gate, searching to understand xiaoge’s past

sha hai (tomb of the sea; unfinished & abandoned) covers wu xie’s plan to wipe out the wang family, after zhh

chongqi (reunion: the sound of the providence) covers wu xie’s lung disease and how he recovers from that, set after they pick up xiaoge again from the bronze gate. thunder city and everything.

灯海寻尸&万山极夜 (still updating on wechat) don’t worry about this one since it’s still a WIP lol

btw between sha hai and chongqi there’s also ten years later (a short story) that covers how wu xie and pangzi pick up xiaoge from the bronze gate and take him home

the dramas Do Not Connect To Each Other At All, which the exception of tlt2 & tlt2 pt2 somewhat, but they go in this order:

盗墓笔记 / the lost tomb 1 (2015): covers part 1 but with major OCs and filler, and includes the auction scene from part 8 for some reason, so introduces xiao hua early.

怒海潜沙&秦岭神树 / the lost tomb 2 (2019) technically “explore with the note”: covers parts 2 & 3 but with major OCs and filler, introduces xiao hua & xiuxiu (and hei xiazi briefly) early. last couple episodes also cover the beginning of part 4. not a direct sequel to tlt1 despite being done by the same studio.

云顶天宫 / heavenly palace on the clouds (2021) technically also “explore with the note”: covers part 4 with major OCs and filler (and the same changes carrying over from tlt2). some episodes are identical to the last couple episodes of tlt2. works as a direct sequel only if you ignore the last couple episodes of tlt2 that take place in the snowy mountains. (those episodes of tlt2 were filmed after this drama was filmed, and im still not sure why they dragged the wu xie and xiaoge from tlt2 back to changbai mountain to film those episodes.)

终极笔记 / ultimate note (2020): covers parts 5-8 with minor OCs and minimal filler, also introduces xiao hua & xiuxiu early. the only adaptation that resembles its source material most of the time.

沙海 / tomb of the sea (2018): covers the second sequel with major OCs and filler. includes some bits from zhh and the short story “three days of silence”.

重启之极海听雷 / the lost tomb reboot (2020): covers third sequel with major OCs and filler.

in addition there is the prequel series mystic nine (2016) and side movies for the dramas that the author produced. there is also a single standalone movie--time raiders (2016) that is....well it’s. very strange. it’s fully subbed on youtube if you’re interested?

the best way to watch the dramas is to assume each one is its own self-contained AU set along different points of the dmbj timeline because even the dramas the author himself worked on don’t have continuity LOL (and with the exception of ultimate note & sha hai most of the time, also assume most characters are pretty OOC from the novels).

i uh regret to inform you though, that ultimate note will not be getting a sequel unless the author magically decides to not care about making money anymore and sells the rights to film the finale to linghe or something ^^;;;; it’s....unfortunate bc un is the most highly-rated dmbj adaptation on douban by A Lot, but it’s an adaptation that the author had literally nothing to do with whatsoever.

more information on some of the side movies/stage plays/manhua/donghua here.

summaries of the main novel stories (currently through zhh) here.

edited mtl (some of which has apparently been looked over by native cn speakers) of the novels following where official eng tls end here. (there are many scattered extras as well.)

you can get the official eng tl books/ebooks on amazon or elsewhere(?), but if you have problems purchasing them or like you just dont wanna support amazon or something, dm me off anon. (also i dont want to be mean but frankly the official tls are kinda bad too ^^;;;)

a rough timeline (spoilers galore) for the dmbj novels here. (fair warning im not 100% sure how accurate all of this is--they put three days of silence as 1991 but looking at the info in zhh, it seems like it should have been before the 1950s...but it’s more than fine as a general overview.)

anyway i hope that was helpful in some way? dmbj is a Very Confusing thing to get into ahahaha, one of my twitter mutuals has made a few carrds if you think they might be helpful: book, dramas (slightly out of date bc it says heavenly palace hasn’t aired yet), ultimate note (got its own carrd by virtue of being the only adaptation aside from sha hai sometimes that most og book fans acknowledge lol ^^;;;)

also anon if anything wasn’t clear or if you had more questions feel free to ask again sorry ahahaha im kinda tired rn @.@ 

[alwaysabeautifullife]

How did you learn so many languages. Do you have any tips?

Yes!!!! Yes I do!!!

Everything I wish I could tell myself before starting my language “journey” lol:

🦩Dont be intimidated

Don’t be intimidated, specifically by doing listening or speaking practice. I know in the US (or for most English speakers), when we hear someone that speaks perfect English but merely has an accent we think “they don’t speak English”, but from experience this mentality is not shared with other languages. When you know even a little bit of a language or can’t speak it very well, natives speakers are really really encouraging. I think since we view not being 100% fluent without so much as an accent, as “not knowing any of a language” we are hard on ourselves and give up pretty easily.

🦩Listening practice is as important as studying vocabulary and grammar

When you listen to native speakers talk, you are training your ear even though you don’t understand it. Listen and listen, eventually your brain stops picking out English words that aren’t even there, but rather, starts to catch patterns in the language (for example, the same words sticks out to you over and over).

🦩Set realistic and doable goals or you’ll get discouraged and quit

If you are a busy person, make small goals to fit language study in. Don’t tell yourself that you need to master _____ within a week. Instead give yourself 15 mins of reading in the evening, and 25 mins of language listening in the morning. It’s also easier to add the language into stuff you do on a daily basis anyway. For example if you are religious, find your prayers you pray daily in the language you are learning.

🦩learn to read the language first (obviously this tip might not be applicable for character based languages like Chinese)

I know everyone says “immersion is the best and most important part of language” but honestly, a lot of our native speaking knowledge comes from our literacy education. When we are taught how to read, it’s through reading we can discover new words through context. It’s also easy to pick up new language reading since it’s available anywhere, where immersion is only available when you are surrounded by native speakers. The first thing I do is learn how to read and write the language, then the entire language becomes accessible to me.

🦩Spend time perfecting the sounds of the language that are most difficult for you

The vocal sounds of a language is the foundation of a language. I know we are all impatient and want to simply learn as many phrases as possible as fast as possible, but if you get down the unfamiliar sounds of a language that don’t exist in English, you’ll have a better foundation of the language and your speaking and listening will be better from the very beginning. So take the time to practice those weird sounds by looking into the position of the tongue and where the sound comes from, from the chest to the lips. Look into how tense the mouth is, how much air comes from the lips, what the sound is like next to other sounds. When you master this speaking becomes more instinctual and it’s easier to pick up the language.

🦩Search YouTube, google, Instagram IN THE LANGUAGE YOU ARE STUDYING.

Don’t search “korean music” or “korean kids tv” or even “korean vegetables” in google. Just translate how to say them in a translator app, then copy and paste them into the search bar. This way native korean information, videos, posts will come up. For example, if you’re in the mood for some horror comics, and want to read/watch them in the language you are learning, go to the translator app, and figure out how to say them, then search it. It works way better, even if the translation isn’t correct or more natural, you’ll still get the information, posts, and videos you want to see.

🦩Find ways to practice speaking the language (I use HiNative) and don’t be discouraged by corrections.

Getting corrected does not mean you’re wrong, corrections are the most useful part of learning a language. If you are the type of person who is sensitive to criticism, you need to remind yourself corrections are NOT criticism. They are NOT a reflection of your progress, they are NOT you failing! You will always be corrected as a language learner and the sooner you are gentle with yourself in learning the sooner you will learn more. Get those first corrections out of the way, allow yourself to butcher pronunciation, get corrected for the first 10 times, let it sting a little and move on. Eventually you will be begging native speakers to tell you every little detail in where you went wrong!

🦩Tv and Books seems to be more useful for immersion and listening practice then music does

So far in my experience music is its very weird and abstract, and the things said in music aren’t really useful in speaking? It’s good for gathering vocab, but if you want music listening practice that’s music based try searching for rap in that language, although obviously you’ll be picking up a lot of informal language in music/rap. Tv shows however are typically how people really do talk, so turn off English subs and just listen! Books are really useful for learning new vocabulary, but sometimes written language is different than spoken (often), although when you speak it the way you’ve learned from a book the worst you’ll sound is “formal and poetic”.

🦩Look up “insert language you are learning phrases and words that aren’t useful or correct”

There so many programs and books that teach you phrases you’ll never use or that are only appropriate in very specific situations. I don’t know why language programs do this, but learning which ones are weird or only in specific settings before you start learning really helps. Chinese Especially does this...like I learned so many phrases and words that natives will never use and have no purpose???

🦩Know the different subjects of learning a language and which apps to use for that

Everyone uses Duolingo, but this app alone won’t make you speak a language. Duolingo and Memrise are great for memorizing vocab, but, is it vocab that in the context of your reading and listening practice? Are you learning words you are hearing and reading all the time? Duolingo is a lot of fun but I feel like the vocab is so broad and it doesn’t go deep enough into the language. Feel free to use it at first to get used to the sounds of the language, but try using flash card apps like quizlet or Anki instead where you can write down and study words you are hearing constantly. Memrise does have actually study sets for many language books and lessons! So you can study words you are hearing in specific programs and books which is pretty useful in regards to vocab.

There obviously is more than just learning vocab. What about grammar, listening practice, speaking practice and reading? If you are wanting to use primarily apps find out which apps are available for your language. Here is an example of the apps I use for each subject. Be aware some languages are not available on them.

Vocab: quizlet, anki

Grammar: books (printed or kindle), YouTube grammar lessons, websites

Reading: books (printed or kindle), beelinguapp, instagram (posts that have text), Netflix/YouTube with both subtitles in the language you are learning and spoken in language you are learning, epic app

Writing: just use paper and pencil/pen

Listening: audio books (beelinguapp/epic/kindle/YouTube), tv and movies (Netflix/YouTube etc with no English subs), conversations on YouTube (search in language you are studying, don’t search “Spanish conversations” or “Japanese conversations”)

Speaking: HiNative (pretty much all I use since it’s all languages, quick, and you get immediately answered and corrected by native speakers), get friends in language you are learning through lots of apps

Translator: it’s really hard to find a good one, most of them are really weird so only use them for words and the most basic or simple phrases and sentences, otherwise use HiNative to ask native speakers directly, or ask people on the apps that connect you to native speakers

🌱I should note that for talking to native speakers I only like HiNative, since it’s built to NOT be a form of social networking at all. It’s not personal in anyway, and there’s no way to private message or speak to other users outside a asking questions publicly. The people on there are only about learning or teaching a language, not usually making friends. I’ve found the sites that are built to make native speaking friends aren’t useful to me personally, as most of the native speakers are either dudes looking for a woman to date or people wanting to only practice English with you, so they wasted a lot of my study time. People who are willing to help you learn are there, but it takes time to filter everything else out. If you would find it helpful to make friends by all means use them but I don’t really use it myself.🌱

You don’t want to really study EVERY SUBJECT every single day (unless you have the time). It can get really overwhelming, and you don���t really absorb information that if you are just cramming. While I would say it’s good to read and listen daily, spread subjects out over the week. Grammar on Monday and Friday, vocab on Tuesday and Thursday. Take one day to review all of what you’ve learned all week. Pick a day you have the largest block of free time. Bi-weekly works fine too.

I have an old post on how I organize my study time for multiple languages: https://alwaysabeautifullife.tumblr.com/post/182817883372/what-do-you-use-to-learn-your-languages-im

🦩Write sentences daily of everything you’ve learned (no THIS I RECOMMEND DAILY)

Write as many as you can. Use all the grammar you’ve learned, the words you’ve learned, everything! Write them in your notes and submit them to be corrected in HiNative. The sentences they correct, put them in flash cards!

🦩It’s ok to abandon languages you aren’t passionate in

So you’ve learned to read the language, and you know basic phrases, and now you just don’t want to do it anymore. If you can’t think of any reason to maintain it and don’t know why you are studying it, learning some of the language is good! Fluency does NOT need to be everyone’s goal. You can hold a conversation, and that’s good enough for you. Feel free to try out various languages, there will be one or some that really are your passion, it’s fine to have the goal of fluency in those and conversational in others.

Don’t abandon languages however because you feel discouraged. Discouragement is just a bump to get over, when you train your brain to maintain study habits through the days you feel discouraged, you make it habitual. Habits are harder to break and abandon! Evaluate your reasonings for wanting to speak a language, and your reasons for abandoning them if you want. Don’t let difficulty, disorganized, discouragement, or poor time management get in your way!!

🦩With all that said it’s ok to take breaks

It’s ok to get overwhelmed and take breaks from language learning. If you can still maintain what you’ve learned by listening to music in your language or staying connected in some way that’s good, but the “you’ll loose a language” isn’t entirely true. I’ve taken year long breaks and refreshing what I learned previously is pretty easy! Your brain really does go “oh yeah I do remember this!” when you’re studying information you studied years ago.

🦩Be gentle with yourself

Be gentle with yourself. People that claim to be fluent in 6 months are selling something or want to be an influencer. Don’t compare yourself to them. Language learning even for natives is a lifetime education. It’s not something you do for 6 months then stop. It’s continual and that looks different for everyone (yes native speakers included). Don’t bother watching YouTube videos on how to learn in 10 mins or 3 months, you’ll only get discouraged about your own amazing progress and all the work you’ve done.

🦩Plan your “can you say something in it” phrase now

This one is just for fun but after hearing you are learning a language the first thing you’ll get asked is “oh cool you speak (insert target language here)? Can you say something in (insert target language here)?” It does not matter what level of fluency you are at, you will absolutely forget the entire language and your own native language when you are asked this because it sends your brain to another dimension. So think of some funny phrases to say to people who ask, master them, then when they ask what they mean you can have a laugh. Other wise you will say something stupid of jumbled words (my go to was ‘we women are fruit’ for some reason thanks brain you’re incredible) you’ve learned that don’t belong in a sentence, or even worse you’ll run a blank and you’ll just look at them like:

🍳👄🍳

So think of inside jokes to tell your friends, funny phrases, even goofy insults! Memorize them and tell them at your friends and family to torture them because they can’t escape sound waves! It’s a good way to memorize the language but also to become confortable speaking it!

Please excuse any errors I don’t wanna go over my mistakes so pretend u can’t see them 🙈

[ohoshi]

omg first i need to talk about nct at song festival (gayo daechukjae) umm first of all mark and taeyongs rap was so good but ofc we all knew they would kill it. and then in nct U class, teacher taeyong looked so good...the way he bit that pointer stick thing in the beginning was so sexc (and the hair and the glasses ahdsfasjf) 😳 but also sungchans rap in that?? i was not expecting that but why am i even surprised anymore.. and also misfit live?? i loved nct's school uniform concept too for some reason ahahaha

and then xiaojun in resonance!! wow yes go shine xj!!! (also idk why but i found it so funny when it was doyoung's turn after xj, but xj was kinda blocking dy (who was really walking with a PURPOSE) so dy lightly pushed him out of the way) and then omg shotaro!! offstage he is so 😊 but damn in hard carry he was so good!! ahh and then also the thing where all the kpop artists at gayo daechukjae sang that song was so cute (i smiled so hard when nct came up 🥺)

yea for my job situation i think it will be okay, i talked to some people i know/mentors about it too and i think things will work out...they always do in the end right? 😊 now about anime LOL this is making me wanna start/rewatch an anime now hahahah! honestly i kind of have phases where i alternate between kdramas and animes, but i havent rly watched anime much lately besides haikyuu (which i was also surprised was still airing (but it's only season 2 so far?)). kpop (aka NCT) has been consuming my life lmao but im here for it 😂

weightlifting fairy was also my first kdrama!! yes i can totally give u some kdrama recs! besides the ones i mentioned before (which are most of my top ones), i also liked chicago typewriter, marriage not dating (i love the fake relationship trope hahaha), dinner mate, sky castle (it's kinda intense but it's so good and an iconic kdrama), cheer up, another miss oh, kingdom (if you like zombie things)...i heard startup is good and i want to watch it soon too! also i continued watching more of uncanny counter these past few days and i love it (but it's ongoing so no binging)

okay now svt: i watched some of your recs and youre so right all their choreos are so satisfying?! i also actually agree with you about black on black, i liked black on black and it was cool but it only featured like 5 members lmao and in the svt choreos it does feel like all of them are featured in some way in each performance? plus their choreos are just so great to watch!! also i've had left and right stuck in my head since i watched it LOL but i agree it's objectively better than dynamite (not an army though; also pls nobody come at us for this lmaoo)

also super random but can you tell me who is the one in the red/purple plaid shirt in the svt home dance practice?? i am kinda attracted by his dance moves LOL and i havent learned names yet 😭 i will continue watching all ur svt recs though hehehe and update you on the status of my fangirling :))

omg wait also i would never have guessed that you're not an english speaker just from these messages!! how did you know that i was prob a native speaker haha (i guess *technically* cantonese is my first language, but then i learned english in school so now i'm obviously more native in that lol and english is the only language i can read/write in)

OMGGF IKR as a multi stan i really enjoyed the rap collab especially because i really love monsta x's rap line (esp i.m!!! his rapping skill 😍) and of course mark and taeyong!!!! 😭 our boys 😭 our golden rappers 😭 SLAYED IT! omg the nct u got me 😳 taeyong looked so good???? wtf? and also sungchan? damn that boy keeps surprising me! the interesting part to me was when one member(johnny if i remember correctly) bumped into taeyong but it was done on purpose and how he uhhh kinda shook his body and his head but it all looked so cool and he never stopped rapping!!! love how they all 'performed' misfit manifesting wild teenagers in school (as they are tbh) IT WAS SO FUN AND COOL!!!

XIAOJUN!!!!!!!!!!!!! WAS SO!!!!!! GOOD!!!!!!! THE CONFIDENCE??? THE STAGE PRESENCE????? XIAOJUN CENTER???? XIAOJUN BEING RELEVANT????? i live 😭 he was so good he looked so good i was so happy and i'm so proud of him 😭 from here the only way to go is up! i hope he keeps surprising us! and omg i haven't noticed that part when doyoung pushed him bc he blocked him?? and i just rewatched it and it looks funny 🤣 but they held everything professionally 😌  no surprises there 😌

OH MY GOD THE HARD CARRY PERFORMANCE!!!!!!!!! first of all our boy shotaro DAMN 😳 he looked so good you couldn’t say that he just debuted a few months ago!! such a dancing machine! (but honestly i am not surprised because in make a wish he was rly good and he debuted as a dancer i expected from him to be good™ as he is!) and i love the duality od him <3 yk that kind of idol that you want to protect at all cost but the next second they're the one you seek protection from? yeH sign me uP! and don't even get me started on hyunjin, juyeon and moonbin!!!!! but i mean all 3 of them are main dancers of course they would look good™ 😌 (yeah shotaro performed with 3 main dancers of 3 different groups i mean the honor??????)

the end of the festival was so wholesome! It was a serotonin boost and me too i also smiled the whole time! so cute 😭 and ot23 were cutiesssss

yes! everything will work out in the end! don't stress about it!<3 oh haikyuu only has 2 seasons? wtf hsgsjsgs ok then i just watched when it had like 13 episodes, WHEN IT FIRST CAME OUT that's when i watched it lmao

OMG OK I HAVE WRITTEN DOWN ALL OF THESE DRAMAS (and from the previous ask) IN MY NOTES SO FAR im mostly excited about the fake relationship one 👀 i love fake relationship trope, too 🤧 oh no binging?? is that your thing?? usually i love to wait for the show to finish airing and then i binge watch it in a few days (or one day depends how busy i am)

SEVENTEEN!!!!: yeah all of their choreos are so satisfying (pointing this out one more time) they always pay attention to details (for example in home, bc you're familiar with it, they even choreograph the hands and pay attention to them while most of the other kpop choreos very often freestyle the whole arms sjagaj) here's a fun fact abt svt that makes me love them so much agsgsj: they're self produced! they produce their own music and they even come up with their own choreos!! (of course not on their own, woozi is a producer but he's not making songs on his own he coproduces them with [a producer name bc i guess that's irrelevant but if you’re curious: bumzu], they come up with their own choreo (to be precise, hoshi does! he is 1/2 main dancers in group and he is the main choreographer! he doesn't do everything on his own of course, he gets help from the rest of the performance team (which is a svt subunit consisted of their 2 main and 2 lead dancers: hoshi, dino, the8, jun) and of course some other infamous kpop choreography teams) and i think that, by now, all the members were credited at least once for the lyrics

I'M SO GLAD YOU HAVE LEFT AND RIGHT STUCK IN YOUR HEAD HAGSJSSGSG but i mean of course you would it's soo good and soo catchy (yeahhh no worries, this army has already gotten minor hate for having controversial opinions™ and for criticising her faves so idc anymore 💁🏻‍♀️ it's my opinion as a dancer and i stand by it, even can't you see me by txt is better than dynamite so literally 3 dance performance were better!!!! in a way!!!! and neither of the 3 won!!! yes i am salty!!!!!)

the guy in the red/purple shirt (the center guy when they do the 3 dances for the first time right??) IS DINO!!!! he's the maknae and 2/2 main dancers in svt so!!! of course you would be attracted by his moves!!!!!! JSGSJSN i'm curious to see if you end up staning svt and biasing dino hsfsjsgsha

CANTONESE IS YOUR FIRST LANGUAGE? damn i thought you couldn’t get more interesting here's a dumb question: can you understand xiaojun, hendery and lucas without titles??? not that i would know if they ever speak cantonese in front of the camera for i don't know the difference between chinese dialects</3

[sagemoderocklee]

Ooh, directors commentary on TAOL?? I know it's an epic so maybe just on the chapter where Lee and Gaara are traveling in Jade Country :3

sorry for letting this sit in my ask box for a couple days. i got kinda sidetracked and then had to go back to work today, which is not a fun time tbh but the evils of capitalism and so on....

anyways, im thrilled you asked for this particular part of TAoL because I absolutely loved that chapter (x) and put a lot of work into it between building up the culture of Gyokukakushin and making sure all the Arabic and Chinese I used was legit (which is partly why it took like 4 months to write). plus the chapter has a lot of great GaaLee moments that make me really happy.

one of my biggest downfalls as a writer is how long it takes me to actually finish anything. as i think most people who follow my writing know, i tend to prefer lengthier stories with lots of heavy politics, and that tends to mean that the build up of romance takes a while... which is again how i like it. i prefer a slow burn--a proper slow burn, not these 2k fics tagged slow burn. i mean, 100k into the story and the most you’ve got is an accidental hand brushing another and some intense eye contact... which admittedly TAoL has given more than just a little bit of physical contact and intense staring, but my point is that when i say slow burn i mean S L O W

anyways, onto the actual director’s commentary

So, Jade Province--as it’s not a country in itself, but a province within Wind Country--is a sprawling section of the south-east portion of Wind. I started building Jade Province and its capitol, Gyokukakushin sometime before I started on Ch10 of TAoL, but it was all a very loose idea. I’d initially conceptualized some things about it for the one shot I wrote, Keepsakes, because I’d been doing some background work on the Kazekage lineage and the culture surrounding the Kazekage family--such as arranged marriages, treaties, etc.

My idea is that Karura and Yashamaru are actually from Gyokukakushin. They would have been the children of a person in the political sphere within the capitol, and the marriage between Karura and Rasa would have been arranged early on and she would have been sent to Suna as a pre-teen or teen so that she would feel that Suna was home. I imagine she and Rasa would have married sometime when she was between 18-20. This was the main reason Rasa was able to take on the roll of Kazekage, based on the family tree I built up for the Kazekage line--he was the only one who was married and could produce heirs.

Not that any of this ever comes up during TAoL. In fact, Gaara doesn’t even realize that in going to Gyokukakushin he’s actually visiting half of his ancestral home. However, there’s a lot of fun hints about his connection to Gyokukakushin if you recall the many mentions of the color the same shade as Gaara’s eyes in that chapter. This was a specific nod to his heritage, and something that the locals definitely would have been fascinated by because there’s lots of significance surrounding that particular color in the region. I also wanted to use the reference to his eyes to highlight Lee’s particular fascination with Gaara’s appearance, and especially the element of Gaara’s eyes and the many ways he looks at Lee.

The biggest challenge within this chapter, of course, was the fact that I was using languages I’m not familiar with and had to find a good place to gather resources. Thanks to @ghoste-catte I discovered that reddit (of all places) has a translation subreddit which I was able to use to help bring that aspect of the story to life in an organic and respectful way. My Japanese is rusty, but I have a much better grasp on it than I do Chinese or Arabic, and so I spent many, many, many, many, many..... many hours searching for resources, watching YT vidoes, at the bookstore--I even bought a small book on Arabic. In the end, the subreddit was way more helpful than anything else because it allowed me the chance to get more concrete explanations from native speakers, so I could understand exactly why something was said the way it was. Most of the phrases used in that chapter aren’t really Gaara saying anything special--things like “be quiet” or “stop”--which I usually alluded to with Lee racking his brain trying to drudge up the vocabulary Gaara has taught him.

However, there’s one line--which I hope people did not turn to google translate for--that makes me especially happy, and that line really would not have been possible without that subreddit. I think the best part about being able to successfully navigate the challenge of using other languages is creating the same confusion Lee feels for those readers who doesn’t know those languages, and for those who do, offering them a nice glimpse at what’s going on that Lee cannot grasp. It’s fun and really changes the experience for each reader.

Language is such a beautiful and intricate aspect of people and culture, and my biggest fear with approaching the use of Arabic and Chinese was not only saying the wrong thing, but being disrespectful. So it was an incredibly good experience, and I was incredibly lucky to receive the help I did!

Building up the tension between Gaara and Lee was something I’d really wanted to execute well, too. It’s not often I write stories where the romance doesn’t start from scratch. With TAoL, Lee needed to already be in love with Gaara, and that was a big stress for me because I’m constantly asking myself: is this earned? I think one of the biggest failings of fanfiction is that people don’t ask that question. You really have to ask if your romance is earned. If your character growth is earned. If a redemption arc is earned. And I constantly worry that I’m moving too quickly with romance in particular, especially for Gaara and Lee. I’m not big on putting them together without a lot of development, and I’m not big on established relationship fics (that aren’t sequels) for them either. I like the work it takes to get them together, I like the journey of getting them together. And I don’t like it to be easy.

But for me, TAoL is one of my best actualized works. I think Alliance really helped me build the skills I needed to execute a story like TAoL on so many levels--from the complicated political landscapes, to the cultures, to the relationships between each character. And so I do feel like Lee being in love with Gaara at this point in their lives makes sense, and does work despite the fact that we didn’t see him fall in love with Gaara during the course of this fic. There are subtle nods to his feelings for Gaara in the early chapters, but I didn’t go too hard at indicating those feelings until really the second Lee chapter, this chapter I’m talking about now. I think there were some hints in the first Lee chapter--the chapter where he broke Gaara out of prison and whisked him away from Suna--but I tried to keep those things to a minimum, partly to not over do it and ease people in to that, and partly because I wanted to keep the suspense alive surrounding the real purpose for Lee being in Suna.

So when they get to Gyokukakushin, it really gave me a much better chance at showcasing his feelings. There were moments prior to Gyokukakushin, but those were from Gaara’s PoV--like the moment within the destroyed village, Myoujou, where they’re hiding from the group of shinobi and Gaara’s trying desperately to get Lee to focus his chakra enough to mask it.

But the success of that particular moment is lost on Gaara because he doesn’t really know how Lee feels about him at that point in time, so his impact on Lee is entirely lost to him....not to mention he’s dealing with a lot of grief and trauma, so he hardly has the wherewithal to be paying attention to whether or not his rescuer is secretly in love with him.

One of my favorite tender moments is this one:

“Do you have a favorite word?” Lee asked, before a yawn interrupted him.

“In Indigosi? Or in general?”

“Both.”

Gaara glanced at Lee from the corner of his eye. “Affection,” he murmured, almost as though he were afraid to admit it. “In Indigosi...” Gaara was silent, his gaze shifting away from Lee to the window. A warmth spread across his brown skin, a blush rising on his high cheekbones. “Rohi.”

He looked down at Lee, something bright behind his eyes.

Heat burned Lee's face like an inferno. “What does that mean?”

Gaara looked away again, hiding from Lee in plain sight. “My soul." The words hung in the air with some other meaning, one that Lee could not decipher. Gaara would forever be a paradox, an ever expanding puzzle for Lee to piece together. He didn't ever want to figure him out completely, but he would never stop trying to get as close to epiphany as he could.

“That is beautiful,” Lee told him as another yawn overtook him.

“I should let you sleep,” Gaara said, moving to get up.

Lee stopped him with an imploring hand against Gaara's forearm. “Stay? You did not finish telling me about your trip to Dusk Country.”

“You kept interrupting,” Gaara teased lightly, settling back into place.

Lee smiled up at him, ever so slightly cheeky. “I promise I will be quiet.”

“You're going to fall asleep,” Gaara corrected.

“Probably. It is very late.”

I love so many of the emotional scenes from this particular chapter, but I love how simple and sweet this moment is. There’s such a wealth of affection in small actions, and I really wanted to highlight that Lee and Gaara have grown closer during their time traveling from Myoujou to Gyokukakushin, and things that were born of necessity (like sleeping close together for warmth) are now things done because they want to. There’s comfort in the closeness of sitting next to one another, there’s something peaceful about Lee falling asleep while Gaara talks to him. It’s a nice moment, less high emotion and more quiet contentment, which I think is much needed after everything they’ve been through.

I think that my other favorite scene would be the scene on the beach, right after they’ve watched the sand artist and Gaara makes his model of Suna. That scene is a complicated affair for Lee because he’s both enjoying his time with Gaara and feeling guilty for enjoying that time together. And of course Gaara’s got a lot going on too, which Lee can only guess at.

One of the other things I really enjoyed about this chapter is the fact of Lee and Gaara being in disguise, and really the use of their aliases. I particularly like any excuse to get Gaara to call Lee “Ren”. I’m particularly in love with that stroke of genius regarding Lee’s alias, and there’s a certain emotion, a certain connection that I really hope I could convey with how they use each other’s aliases.

I could probably talk about this chapter forever, but unfortunately there’s also thins I don’t want to say at the risk of spoiling future chapters since this is still a WIP (and probably will be for a while longer, though we’re almost halfway there! Two more chapters to the halfway mark!) Thank you so much for sending this particular ask anon! I had fun chatting about it and I hope you enjoyed reading my comments! 

[wickymicky]

i should reblog more gahyeon

i think one of the reasons that she’s been the member that i’ve been the least interested in is just cause i didnt really know what her personality was. also cause she’s the maknae and i generally am less interested in maknaes, but like, she’s older than both my loona biases lmao so that’s not really an issue. i had the same issue with yoohyeon and handong for a long time actually... like, before i watched a lot of content from dc, all i had to go on were music videos, performances and fancams, and gifsets i would see on tumblr and stuff lol. 

and for whatever reason, i just didnt know what yoohyeon was all about, i didnt know what she was like, i didnt have a strong sense of her personality. this is baffling to me now, lol. absolutely baffling. she has one of the clearest personalities to me now lol, she’s like one of the easiest to do an impression of, for instance haha. realizing that she’s the clumsy eccentric goofball who everyone calls stupid but she’s actually smart as hell and is just on another level from these normal human beings made me like her a lot more, such that actually she might be pushing in front of jiu and dami in my bias order haha.... we’ll see.

handong took me a little bit too because like... since she’s not a native korean speaker, she didn’t talk as much on variety shows and things like that, which was most of the content that i watched before diving into their vlogs and vlives and stuff. i assumed she was kind of shy too, but actually im not sure that she is? she’s possibly the biggest jokester of the group actually, and is actually really outgoing and talkative, at least when she feels comfortable. i think i was getting her somewhat confused with vivi and tzuyu, who are chinese speakers and are shy,  whereas with handong... maybe she’s shy on variety shows in much the same way that dami seems to be sometimes, but like in vlogs and stuff, when she’s just around her friends, she’s laid back and having a good time and joking around. that helped me understand her more. 

with gahyeon, idk, i feel like i’m only just beginning to understand her. i knew she was loud, i knew she was the maknae, but idk how much i could have described about her before the scream promotions. right now i think... she’s like... a little more serious than the others a lot of the time? especially in contrast to yoohyeon lmao, they’re an interesting duo. gahyeon’s the responsible one haha. she’s loud and she likes being cute and she likes being sexy. she’s loud, yeah, but actually she’s not as hyper-energetic as the stereotypical maknae would be... her loudness is different from sua’s yell-outbursts haha. 

tbh, my first bias was dami, but actually i feel like i mischaracterized dami for a long time too. i thought she was calm, reserved, above-it-all, serious, kept to herself, etc, and some of that is partially true, but like... she’s actually the most outgoing member haha. she might be introverted, it’s hard to tell cause i don’t actually know her, but like... she’s been collecting female idols as friends like they’re pokemon haha. she’ll say she wants to be closer to someone on a stream or something, and then a couple days later she or the person she mentioned will say that dami like approached them and directly and suave-ly asked to get to know each other better and so now they are, haha. she’ll just basically tell someone “we’re friends now” and then they are. she’s also not above being cute with her friends, and she’s extremely clingy, she just doesn’t like aegyo haha.

jiu, siyeon, and sua though i’ve pretty much always had an understanding of what they were like and that hasnt really changed HAHA. i’ve just gained more appreciation for the nuances, especially jiu’s dad-jokes, siyeon’s deadpan effortless funniness, and sua’s himbo-ness. 

anyway, i should reblog more gahyeon.

[stuclyblrs]

hi, would you have any tips on getting started with chinese? i would love to have a tutor and i think that would be the best way of learning but im completely broke, so which other ways would be good? i know its super difficult and im a complete beginner so i have no idea about pronunciation or symbols or anything so i need a good place to start. Thanks!

你好! so sorry about the late reply!! i started studying chinese with classes at uni so im not 100% the best person to ask about self-studying but i’ll do my best !!!

first learn pinyin and tones

pinyin actually isnt as hard as it seems tbh tones on the other hand are something i struggle a lot with even after a semester of college level chinese so dedicate a lot of time to this !! i recommend this playlist by yoyo chinese/yangyang chen. the first several videos cover tones which is followed by pinyin itself. i also recommend this video by her as more pinyin review (its very lengthy so i recommend watching it in chunks) and this video by her for tone practice. she also has a pinyin chart which is soooooo helpful! it has audio recordings of each syllable w/ the 4 tones + quick videos for the harder syllables (strongly recommend her youtube channel in general)

writing/learning characters

this basically comes down to practice practice practice !!! when ever you learn a new character look up the stroke order and only write it that way. it will make your characters look nicer and if you write the same way every time you’ll build muscle memory making it much easier to remember (writing characters that you’ve studied will come naturally this way) i use this website to look up stroke order for each character (you can look up the rules for stroke order but tbh i dont understand them so i just look up for each character). i suggest learning the 40 most common radicals first. understanding these will make learning meanings of new characters easier.

in terms of actually practicing i strongly do not recommend flashcards. i think flashcards are great for vocab in any other language but not chinese. they’ll help you recognize characters and associate them with meaning and pronunciation but when you go to write you’ll blank out (if you only look at the pinyin/meaning side and write the characters i think they’re okay but its kind of a lot of work) when i learn new words, i would write out about two lines worth of the character over and over again (i usually used printer paper rather than lined cause some characters are big and its kind of a squeeze - many people use hanzi grids to write). once i did that for every character in the lesson, i would write out the dialogue once or twice. after this i would look at the pinyin for the dialogue (covering the characters) and write it out again a few times until i made sure that i remembered every character. i like doing this because it ensure that i actually know the character and then im learning it in context rather than just knowing meaning. i also then look at the dialogue and write the whole thing in pinyin (covering the pinyin and looking at the characters) just to make sure i remember that too!

textbooks

for self studying i think getting a textbook and following it is one of the best ways to learn. it will have vocab and grammar that goes with it and will allow you to stick to a more precise learning schedule rather than getting lost on what you should study and what order to learn things. there are a lot of different books so i would look at ones that interest you and read reviews/watch video reviews on youtube to determine which is the best to use

the only textbook ive used is integrated chinese since thats what we used in class and i believe its a very popular one to use but i havent used anything else so i dont have anything to compare it to. there is a pdf of the third version here (dont think there are major differences between the third and fourth tho) i have seen people say that its not super good w/out a teacher but idk :// i feel like how my professor taught class wasnt completely based on the book - more her taking the vocab/grammar in each lesson and then making her own explanations/lessons based on that

other textbooks that i have pdfs on (have never used so cant give opinion on)

modern mandarin chinese grammar and a workbook (original post)

folder with a lot of stuff (original post)

another folder with a lot of books (original post)

helpful apps

pleco - dictionary app that includes simplified and traditional, example sentences and audio recordings of the words

hellotalk - im using this for korean rn and have had a general positive experience with it ! you can talk to native speakers learning english w/ the chat function and post “moments” publicly for others to correct. its super easy to correct sentences w/in the app (some people have had issues w/ this app in terms of people only contacting them to try and date but i havent encountered that yet) i used the moments feature a lot to post scripts and other writings for class so someone can look over it before i handed it in :^)

chineseskill - i actually havent used this yet but pretty much every chinese langblr recommends it! chinese duolingo essentially

other

some various other things that might be helpful for studying !

if ur interested my general tag for chinese, vocab, and grammar

favorite blogs @liu-anhuaming and @langblog

making a langblr/studyblr !! its fun, theres lots of resources, vocab lists, other people learning on here and making ur own posts is helpful in seeing where you lack some understanding about certain topics and for learning new vocab 

listen to music and watch tv shows/movies! its good for listening practice and lets you learn more in context

reading practice site - has different levels, you can hover over words for instant translation, and there is an explanation of more complex grammar

masterposts that i like (x) (x)

i hope this is helpful and if you have any more questions please feel free to message me again. good luck with your studies 加油！

[huntershe968]

Whisper Game Phrases

Jimmy Fallon Whisper Game Phrases

The Whisper Game Phrases For Adults

Examples Of Chinese Whisper Game Phrases

Phrases For Telephone Game Office

Whisper Game Phrases Clean

You load a wrong way to get here?

…come again?

Ahh, you rode a long way to get here. Gotcha.

Having a hard time understanding your students?

If you, the teacher, can’t understand their ESL pronunciation, you can assume that many others won’t be able to, either.

Try using a tongue twister in a game of Telephone, where each student whispers the phrase to the next. It will become delightfully tangled and you may end up with a whole new twister to use in class. Create your own worksheets so students can dissect the phrases and figure out what they mean. This is great practice for learning that sometimes. Mar 5, 2020 - If you are doing the whisper challenge and you want to make it hard for the other person to guess correctly, try these fun whisper challenge phrases. The facilitator then whispers a message to one neighboring person. The message will now be passed round the circle by whispering to the next person and the next, until it reaches the last person at the other end of the circle (just before the facilitator). Ask the last person to say the sentence aloud.

How do you remedy this problem? With tongue twisters!

These fun phrases can trip up even the most fluent speakers with alliteration and confusing combinations of words. Students of all ages love learning with these phrases, and they can add a whole new level of learning to your class.

The first step to pronunciation mastery? Identify the issues!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Common Troubles with ESL Pronunciation

The first language a student speaks is the one that will set the tone for their English pronunciation. So you’ll want to watch for languages that don’t have all the same sounds as in English. For example, in Spanish, “b” and “v” sound the same, though both letters technically exist. Likewise, Koreans and Chinese tend to have difficulty with “l” and “r.” Understanding your students’ native language will help you select the areas they need to work on. The trick is to identify the problems caused by the first language, and then you can choose the best tongue twisters to work with.

Some of the more common issues for English students include:

Aspiration: In English, we use a small expulsion of air to enunciate some letters. Try saying “P” or “Ch” or “K” to test this. You’ll notice a puff of air leaves your lips.

Mouth Shape and Tongue Position: Many foreign languages require very different mouth shapes for words. This results in difficulties for those learning English. Make sure your students know where their tongue needs to be and how to shape their mouth.

Throat Vibrations: In English, certain sounds make the throat vibrate. Try saying “g” to feel this for yourself. Now try saying “k.” While your mouth is exactly the same for each of these, they sound different. This can be difficult for students to differentiate.

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Introducing Tongue Twisters to Your Class

Are you ready for the good fun of everyone tangling their tongues up in knots? These activities can result in rambunctious laughter, so be prepared! They’ll have a blast and so will you. But first…how are you going to set them up?

Listening or Reading?

Whether you’re working on listening skills or reading ability, you can always find tongue twisters to match the weaknesses of your students. However, keep in mind that a combination of both listening and reading practice is necessary for beginners to keep their level balanced. Their understanding of pronunciation will benefit greatly from being able to read the words as they hear them, particularly when there are words that they may not recognize. You might try this by writing a phrase on the board and then asking your students to let you know what they think it says.

While there’s no real reason not to work on the meaning of each word, keep in mind that a lot of these twisters are just for fun and most don’t make a lot of sense. They’re just good practice!

Tip: It’s good idea to practice any tongue twisters yourself before presenting them to the class so you won’t stumble over them. Embarrassing!

Implementing Your Tongue Twisters

Whether you decide to simply say the tongue twister or write it out, there are a ton of great methods for making use of all the the fun.

Try using a tongue twister in a game of Telephone, where each student whispers the phrase to the next. It will become delightfully tangled and you may end up with a whole new twister to use in class.

Create your own worksheets so students can dissect the phrases and figure out what they mean. This is great practice for learning that sometimes, words are just for fun.

Another good idea is to take some time to examine the letter sounds in the twists you use. Have students repeat the difficult sounds (v or b, l or r, etc.) a few times before attempting the whole thing.

Why not hold competitions to see who can fire off a twisted sentence without tripping up? The student with the fewest mistakes wins!

Tips for Pronunciation Success

The majority of the twists shown here are for specific sound types. You’ll want to make sure your students understand how to pronounce each sound, so take a minute before you start to go over the letter sounds you think they’ll find difficult.

For letters that require aspiration, try having students hold something light like a tissue or streamer in front of their face. When they say the letter properly, the item should move as they let out the burst of air.

A mirror can also be very helpful in allowing students to shape their mouths correctly and to see that their tongue is in the correct position. You may also want to draw the correct positions on the board and make sure you form your letter sounds very precisely so students can copy you effectively.

If a twister is less than five words, it’s usually a good idea to have students repeat it three times. This will tend to trip your students up. Start slowly, by pronouncing each word carefully and having them say it after you, then speed things up as they get the hang of it.

While tongue twisters in general are excellent for pronunciation, you can use specific ones to work on specific weaknesses. If your students tend to have problems with consonant blends, for example, you’ll want to use twists that encourage the correct pronunciation of those.

Get your quiet students talking with a few of these beauties!

Consonant Blends

Two consonants that form a blended sound can be hard for new English speakers. Build up their confidence with these:

She sells seashells by the seashore

I saw a kitten eating chicken in the kitchen

I thought I thought of thinking of thanking you

Slim slam slap

A big black bug snoozed on a big black rug

He threw three free throws

Thin sticks, thick bricks

Fred fed Ted bread and Ted fed Fred bread

L vs. R

Some of your students may have difficulty saying L and R. Asian language speakers often confuse the two letter sounds, so these tongue twisters are perfect practice.

Red lorry, yellow lorry

Truly rural

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream

Rolling red wagons

Red blood, bad blood

B vs. V

Spanish speakers frequently pronounce these two letters the same way, making it very hard to hear the difference. These rhymes will get your students speaking clearer.

Blue blurry vines blind

Betty loves the velvet vest best

Barber baby bubbles and a bumblebee

Burnt base, vicious vase

Vivacious Val vacuumed Violet’s very vivid vehicle

Vowels

The correct pronunciation of vowels is essential if your students are going to be fluent in their new language. These tongue twisters will give them plenty of practice with enunciating their vowels. Ilightshow.

Eddie edited Earl’s easy music

Gooey gopher guts

Excited executioner exercising his excising powers excessively

Annie ate eight Arctic apples

An orange oval spooks the odd operative

An awful aardvark and an aching ape ate an antelope

Bonus Twists

These ones can be a good way to fill a little extra time between classes or simply to break the tension in a classroom. Better yet, ask your students to share tongue twisters in their native language, too. Nothing is more entertaining than seeing the teacher attempt a funny twist in another language!

Printed papers under pressure make pens prickle

The poor boar pours batter over his putter

Six sticky skeletons

Thunder sunders thick sticks

If you find success with this pronunciation practice, make sure you always keep an eye out for more twisters to help your class speak as accurately and accessibly as possible.

Everyone loves a good jumble…you can even make your own!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Oh, and One More Thing…

If you’re excited to teach with these tongue twisters, you’ll love FluentU! FluentU takes real-world videos—like music videos, cartoons, documentaries and more—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons for you and your students.

It’s got a huge collection of authentic English videos that people in the English-speaking world actually watch on the regular.

There are tons of great choices there when you’re looking for songs for in-class activities. You’ll find music videos, musical numbers from cinema and theater, kids’ singalongs, commercial jingles and much, much more.

On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully annotated for students. Words come with example sentences and definitions. Students will be able to add them to their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are used in other videos.

For example, if a student taps on the word “brought,” they’ll see this:

Plus, these great videos are all accompanied by interactive features and active learning tools for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun games like “fill in the blank.”

It’s perfect for in-class activities, group projects and solo homework assignments. Not to mention, it’s guaranteed to get your students excited about English!

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach English with real-world videos.

It's that time of year again – time to enjoy a few Christmas party games, buy presents, and of course get together with cherished friends and beloved family.

Christmas games may play an important role in your Christmas party, so you want to make sure you have some crowd favorites as well as some unique games that people may not have played before. The types of games you choose also depend on your guests – if you're throwing a family Christmas party, you want games people of all ages can enjoy, or you may want to arrange some separate Christmas party activities for the kids to keep them occupied while the adults eat and talk. But of course, there are also plenty of Christmas games for adults.

With the right choice of games you can make your Christmas party one your guests will never forget.

The Gift Wrapping Race

Although there are many classic Christmas party games that have been played around the world for decades, we don't all want to follow the crowd. If you have a fairly off-beat group of friends or family together for Christmas, you might want to try unveiling a unique game they haven't heard of before. Here's a good one, courtesy of the Moms Who Think website: turn wrapping gifts into a Christmas party game. You don't need to use actual gifts for this – empty boxes will do the trick. You need the box, wrapping paper, scissors and tape. Put each of these items at a different place around the room (you need one of each per team – in other words, for two teams you need two rolls of wrapping paper, two pairs of scissors, and two rolls of tape). The game works as a relay race. There should be one box for everyone competing, as well as one person to referee and judge the competition. The judge says, 'Start,' and then the first person from each team must race to wrap their box. Once the first person finishes wrapping their 'gift,' the next person in the team can begin – until everyone on each team has wrapped a box. Obviously, the main aim is to wrap all the boxes faster than the other team – but the fastest team doesn't necessarily win. That's what the referee is for. Points can be won not just for speed, but also for how good each gift looks and any other criteria the judge wants to use, like points for wrapping style, straightness of taping, or how good each team looks with their boxes at the end of the game. This is a game better played with older guests – rushing around with scissors doesn't work so well for young kids :-)

Christmas Games for Kids - Hilarious Scavenger Hunts

Many of the other Christmas games here can be played with kids, but you just have to simplify them a little bit.

Charades is a good idea – it can work with kids, but if it's too hard they'll get bored straight away. The problem is, if you make it too easy any adults playing will get bored. That's why it can be good to have separate games for adults and kids to play, so everyone is entertained. When it comes to kids' games, the sillier the better! Scavenger hunts are always a big hit with younger kids, and they're perfect when you have a big group of kids that needs to be kept entertained. Before anyone arrives, hide a whole lot of candy all over your property – not just in the house, but in random places in the back yard and garage as well. When all the kids have arrived, tell them there's candy hidden all over the place.. they'll keep themselves occupied for quite a while (depending how much candy you put out, of course!).

What's In the Stocking? Christmas Bingo and Christmas Charades

You don't have to buy a bunch of props and extras for great Christmas party games – we all know our finances tend to get stretched to the limit around Christmas time, so here are some suggestions for good free party games to play during Christmas.

One good free game is called What's In The Stocking?

It's very simple – find some random objects from around the house, and get a stocking ready for the game. One person plays at a time. Blindfold the person who is playing and put an object in the stocking – make sure they don't see!

They then have to feel the object through the stocking and try to guess what it is. This is a great one because it can work with people of all ages. Obviously the downside is that you have to take turns, so let's look at a free group game.

A popular choice is Christmas Bingo.

It can work with big groups and can be played with guests of any age. Most people know how to play Bingo – the twist with Christmas Bingo is that instead of numbers, everyone has Christmas words on their card. One person can be the game leader, pulling words at random out of a hat. As each word is called out, the guests note it on their score card (this can be done by placing a button on each word, rather than marking the card, so you can use the cards over and over again). When someone crosses off every word along a column or row on their card they yell out, “Bingo!” and the game is over (until the next round). Of course, one easy way to find free Christmas party game ideas is to simply take non-Christmas games and give them a Christmas theme.

Christmas Charades

– why not play charades where everything relates to Christmas?

You can watch your friends, coworkers or family members trying to imitate Rudolph the Red-nose Reindeer or try to mime what 'snow' looks like – should be a funny experience! The same can be done with Pictionary, although you'll have to choose some topics that won't be easily guessed from a simple picture.

Trivial Pursuit with a Christmas Twist and Christmas Whispers

It can be tough to choose the right party games when you have the whole family gathered together, young and old. Games like charades often don't work very well when you have a group that spans three generations, so it's a good idea to keep a few whole-family games in your back pocket.

If you don't have any very young kids in your group, a good family game is trivial pursuit – with a Christmas twist, of course.

You'll need to do some planning for this, coming up with plenty of questions and answers and writing them on cards. For question ideas, think about common Christmas songs, the story of Santa and Rudolph, and the story of the birth of Jesus. A good example question could be: 'Who helps Santa make his toys?' (Answer: the elves.) Obviously, you'll want to tweak the difficulty of the questions depending on your group of guests. If you have very young and very old together, throw in a few questions only they will know the answer to – for instance, a reference to a 1950s Christmas song for the older people, and a reference to a Disney movie for the kids. Look up some Christmas facts and trivia online to get ideas for tricky questions. A tougher question could be something like: 'The Three Wise Men brought the baby Jesus frankincense, myrrh, and what?'

Christmas Whispers is another good Christmas party game for the whole family

You probably have some idea of how it works: you all sit in a circle, close enough to whisper to each other. The first person makes up a phrase that has something to do with Christmas – it should be fairly long and complicated. They tell it to the person on their left, in a quiet whisper, and then person number two tells the next person in the circle, and so on, until the phrase goes all the way around the circle. The last person in line then says the phrase out loud. The whole idea is that usually the original phrase gets lost in the whispers, and the final phrase is completely different – and often hilarious. The bigger the group, the better.

Games for Adult Christmas Parties - Silly Christmas Boat Race and The Dress Up Game

Work parties or gatherings with close friends give you a chance to kick back and relax, and not worry about doing anything 'inappropriate' in front of the kids or grandparents.

So there are quite a few games for adult Christmas parties which are a little more 'risque' than the ones we've talked about so far.

One idea is a bit like the 'boat race' drinking game

There are two props each team is given to play the game: balloons, and a pair of pantyhose. Divide your group into two teams – it can be played with large groups but it's better for smaller parties of eight to ten people. The aim of the game is to blow up your balloons and stuff them inside the pantyhose until no more can fit. When the pantyhose are full of balloons, one of the team members puts them on their head like a pair of reindeer antlers and yells out, “Rudolph!” You can add some extra fun by having red noses for the two team leader to wear. Be warned – this game can get very competitive! :-)

Another game we like is known by many names, but let's call it the Dress Up Game

Here's how you prepare for the game: you choose a prize, and put it inside a small box and wrap it up. You then put that wrapped box inside a bigger box, and wrap that. Keep doing this – try to get six or seven layers of boxes. Now, to play the game itself, you need some props. You can choose and Christmas-related clothes – Santa hats, a coat, even some silly glasses if you like. The most important thing, though, is oven gloves. There needs to be something for people to put on their hands that makes unwrapping the boxes tricky. You all sit in a circle, with the wrapped up prize in the middle. You roll a dice, and whoever rolls a 6 has to put on every item of clothing and all the props, including the gloves, and start trying to unwrap the prize. As this is happening, everyone else keeps rolling the dice – until the next person rolls a 6. When that happens, the new 6-roller has to take all the props off the other person, put them on, and start unwrapping the boxes. Whoever unwraps the prize wins. This Christmas party game works best when no one knows what the prize is. If you choose the prize, it can be funny to choose something silly and worthless, but talk it up as if it's something really valuable. Then watch your friends go crazy trying to unwrap it.. only to discover it's actually something lame.

Ideas for Christmas Decorations and Arrangements

Let's look at a few more general Christmas party ideas. After all, games are important but they don't make a party on their own – good parties need things like food and drinks, comfortable seating arrangements, gifts and so on. Decorations are one aspect of a good Christmas party that allow you to let your creativity run wild. Your choice of decorations can also link in with the games you choose to play – if you really plan it well, you can create a 'theme within a theme' for your party where the whole party becomes one big game. It's your Christmas party, you make the rules – literally, you can make up all kinds of crazy rules to do with food, Christmas crackers, giving presents, wearing Santa hats – whatever you can think of. Obviously, you need to be careful with your arrangements for seating and tables – make sure you have enough room for any food you'll be eating as well as areas cleared for playing games before guests arrive.

Arrange a 'kid's table' if the children will be eating separately from the adults. This can make the whole affair a lot easier. For decorations themselves, colored lights are always a hit if you have the time and money to put into them. If you're not willing to spend a bunch on ornaments and lighting, you can always make your own simple decorations – some colored paper and creative cutting are often enough to bring the Christmas feel to a dining room or living room. Plastic reindeer or a little Santa Claus make for great front yard ornaments. Beyond that you'll also want to be selective with food and drinks. If you're planning to put on a whole meal, you might want to enlist a few helpers – arrange Christmas dinner is rarely a one-person job. If it's just a casual party for adults, you can stick with light finger food – but you may want to make sure there's plenty of champagne on hand :-)

Other Christmas Party Activities - Christmas Tree Decoration and The Secret Santa

Everybody expects activities when they go to a Christmas party, even if it's something basic like pulling Christmas crackers. Activities are especially important if there will be a few people at your party who don't know each other – Christmas party games are a great ice-breaker and let people relax and enjoy themselves.

But activities don't have to be limited to games – there are plenty of other ways to have fun together around Christmas time. Christmas carol singing is one example, where a group of you knock on random doors in your neighborhood and sing Christmas songs. Many people appreciate this show of goodwill at Christmas time. Tree decorating is another great one for the family to participate in. If you have young kids, let them play a part in decorating the tree, and give the littlest one a boost to put the star or angel on top – this is a little thing to grown-ups but it can be a big deal to a kid. As we get older we often forget it's the little things that make Christmas special for children. The Secret Santa is another fun activity, which is perfect for work places. Everyone gets designated a 'secret Santa' who has to buy them a gift – but no one is allowed to know who is buying for them, even after they receive the gift. This gives you a chance to play an anonymous joke on a work friend, and no one will ever know it was you! (Unless you tell them, of course.)

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[langblog]

11 questions tag

thank u @lemonadeandlanguages & @amor-fusion (i kno u tagged me a while ago and i told myself i would get to it eventually so here i am!!) for tagging me!!

rules:

1. post the rules
2. answer the questions given to you.
3. make 11 questions of your own.
4. tag 11 people.

@lemonadeandlanguages questions:

1. what languages have u studied?

mandarin, french, portuguese, spanish, a couple years ago i learned how to read hangul, & when i was in like 7th grade i learned a couple of signs in asl (idk if that counts lmao but w/e)

2. if you could have one wish granted, what would it be?

hmm this one is kinda hard bc up to now one of my greatest wishes was to see fob live and i did on sunday !! i guess maybe have a successful career and be financially stable 🤔

3. whats your favorite season? why?

i havent experienced seasons in years tbh over here is just Hot and Humid but i guess i would say fall 🍂

4. what language are you most comfortable speaking in?

english

5. did you ever sleep with a stuffed animal? how old were you when you stopped?

wym stop i still do sometimes when i get really scared at night 😤

6. do you spend a lot of time on tumblr?

hell yea i do i have 3 different blogs that i run

7. if you could study anything in university, what would it be? why?

if this is referring to just one class i guess portuguese bc i was really looking forward to taking it next semester but i had to switch it out for psychology 😔

8. whats your favorite tv show?

wow well rn im obsessed with stranger things i finished season 2 last night and it was just amazing i would DIE for the whole cast BUT my fav show ever would have to be the office

9. have you ever visited a country where you didnt speak the language? how did you communicate?

yes!! i’ve been to a couple of countries where i dont speak the language but fortunately in france, italy, portugal, and brazil, a lot of people speak spanish so thats how we got by. but in russia & the czech republic, we got by through our tour guides who did speak english and they showed us around the cities

10. are you shy?

yes definitely i am and surprisingly im more shy on the internet than in real life bc all my mutuals seem like such cool people that i want to talk to but i get way too intimidated so i kinda just keep to myself most of the time lmao

11. whats a fun fact about yourself?

i hate scary movies and getting scared so much but its ironic bc my fav movie of all time is a horror movie (the shining)

@amor-fusion questions:

1. what target languages do you want to learn?

well apart from the languages i already am learning i would like to learn asl, arabic, japanese, & italian in the future

2. whats the funniest word in your target language(s)?

mandarin: 屁 pì - fart (im literally 10 years old guys)

portuguese: borboleta - butterfly (its not really as funny as it is amusing the way its pronounced idk)

italian (its not a tl of mine but still): burro - butter (i find this funny bc burro in spanish is donkey)

3. what advice would you give to aspiring polyglots?

dont give up!!!! no matter how hard it gets!!! also dont feel bad if u need to take a break and come back later ur target language isnt going anywhere

4. would you learn a minority/ endangered language?

tbh i wouldn’t im just not very interested in them atm but who knows maybe i’ll change my mind later

5. what places do you wanna visit?

wow so many places but im too lazy to list them all lmao

6. do you have friends in your target language?

yes! i have one friend in brazil who i met in my junior year he actually inspired me to learn portuguese lmao

7. would you consider working in a field related to languages?

yup im actually aspiring to be an interpreter

8. is there a holiday you like in your target languages?

im assuming this question means holidays in the countries where my tls are spoken and yess i really like the chinese new year & mid autumn festival as well as carnaval in brazil

9. whats your favorite food?

pancakes 🥞🤤

10. if you had to convince a person to learn one language (any language), what language would it be and why?

M A N D A R I N like its such a beautiful language and its so fun??? plus its the language with the most native speakers so why not 🤷🏻‍♀️

11. are there any memes in your target language(s) that you would like to share?

umm yea but they’re videos on instagram so idrk how i would share them here :-/

ok now my questions:

1. what is your fav song in each of your target languages?

2. what is your fav method of studying your target language(s)?

3. are there any tongue twisters you know in you target language(s)?

4. do you have any hobbies?

5. who are your favorite bands/artists/groups?

6. if you could become fluent in any language that isnt your target language what would it be?

7. what is something that most people dont know about you?

8. how long have you been studying your target language(s)?

9. what is your dream job?

10. what would you do if you woke up and realized you were in a country whose language you did not speak?

11. what do you like the most about your native language?

i tag @somalang @watashiwahaksaeng @woailanguages @rosyrevision @stuclyblrs @spanishland @aspoonfuloflanguage @chat-got-your-langue @bonbonlanguage @lukas-langs @languagemoon

[language-obsession]

In Canto how widespread is this "lazy sounds"/懶音 phenomenon & what's your opinion on it e.g. Letting it just happen or trying to "correct" it? I've heard things like "nobody ever says 我 as ngo or 五 as ng anymore" but idk

AHAAAAAA this is a REALLY REALLY good ask !!!!!! I’ve gotten into some heated discussions with Cantonese speakers about “懶音” but as a (baby) descriptive linguist I just sit back and enjoy the show tbh. Humans have been complaining about the deterioration of human language since the beginning of human history, this is nothing new or special LOL. The change is actually very exciting, because it is a fairly recent shift, with a huge wave of pronunciation differences happening sometime after World War 2. Of course, sound shifts, like any other language shift, happen in layers over time, so the majority of speakers who have merged certain sounds together are still within the younger generation. Also, maybe you’d find it interesting to note that an earlier change occurred sometime in the 1800′s to early 1900′s, where sibilants got depalatalized in words like 張, 昌, 傷, in contrast to its non-palatal counterparts 將, 搶, 相; a distinction that still exists in many Northern Mandarin varieties (the classic zh/z, sh/s, ch/c), but in modern HK Cantonese we would pronounce the sets 張/將, 昌/搶, 傷/相 as zoeng1, coeng1 and soeng1 respectively, with no clear distinction within each set. (although some non-HK varieties have maintained the distinctions - older GZ generations still keep some distinctions I believe, but the younger GZ generation would speak similarly to people in HK)

My speech actually has most of the sound changes, because when I was younger I tried to imitate a HK accent in an attempt to make myself sound more native, so the way my brain interpreted “more HK sounding” was to adapt as many of these sound changes as possible LOL (oddly enough, before I even knew “懶音” was a thing). For example, I do find myself:

deleting ng initials a lot while also adding them where they weren’t originally (愛 oi > ngoi, 眼 ngaan > aan, 銀 ngan > an) 

I have the gwo > go, kwo > ko shift (過 gwo > go, 國 gwok > gok)

sometimes i mix up final k/t (like in 特別 dak bit > dat?k? bit or 突然 dat jin > dak jin - funnily enough, i struggled for a second when i typed out 突然 just now in jyutping lollllll)

and i also have the classic n > l merger (你 nei > lei，奶 naai > laai，男 naam > laam) 

The one change that I don’t find myself doing too much is the final ng > n merger, although I’ve heard this particularly in stereotypical 港女 speech (靚 leng > len, 橙色 caang sik > caan sik/sek, 正 zeng > zen).

One “argument” against sound change in Cantonese that I’ve heard time and time again is that we are going against what the Qieyun or Guangyun rime dictionaries have written down, since we’re losing sound distinctions. and for some highly prescriptivist Cantonese linguists, this is extremely disastrous, because once the change has occurred and a large population of people have adapted to the change, it’s very very difficult to change back the way millions of people speak. But of course, I see absolutely no problem with that, because Sinitic varieties have been changing for THOUSANDS of years. The Qieyun and Guangyun were written in 600 AD AND 1000 AD RESPECTIVELY, why are we prescribing how people should be speaking based off of thousand year old records? That being said, the Qieyun/Guangyun dictionaries are EXTREMELY EXTREMELY important in learning about Chinese phonology and to Sinitic linguistics in general, but I think it’s problematic to assume that somehow we are magically going to maintain all sound distinctions with no losses. That’s why I roll my eyes when I see Youtube videos about 粵語正讀 like “pls spare me from ur overly prescriptivist ways i do nut need u to tell me how to do the spek”

On a relevant note, if Old Chinese had never lost its derivational affixes, the Chinese varieties MIGHT (key word: MIGHT) not even have developed tones, although ofc it would be 100% impossible for a language to remain completely frozen in time for thousands of years, especially if people were actively using it on a daily basis. As well, ever since the rime dictionaries were written down, we have been merging a lot of initial consonants, and we actually lost the entire voiced consonant set in some Sinitic varieties (we have no b, d, g initial consonants in Cantonese OR Mandarin, contrary to popular belief - shocking, I know - although there’s still b, d, and g in Taiwanese Hokkien and Shanghainese for example). Some people act as if the “懶音” of today are some kind of new event started by the Youth of Today™ but it’s been happening since the time of Confucius and even way before that. Humans generally use language creatively and efficiently: we may shorten things, simplify articulation, introduce new sounds, mix things up, etc etc., and that’s all a natural part of language development, which is why old Cantonese linguists who can’t get over these so called “懶音” drain the life out of me LOL ;;; 

I assume you’re a Canto speaker as well, so next time someone tells you to stop speaking with lazy sounds, you can rant about natural language change hahahahhaa 

This is more of an afterthought actually, but some non-HK varieties of Cantonese have already undergone initial ng- dropping and certain vowel changes, even faster than some of the changes in HK and GZ Cantonese !!! On the other hand, some other Guangdong varieties have maintained a lot of sounds (even sounds that we don’t pronounce in HK/GZ Cantonese anymore). Like in 中山 and 珠海 Cantonese, they still pronounce words like 魚，驗，研，語 with an ng- initial (which is actually closer to the reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciations), even though we’ve reduced it to a y- initial in HK/GZ Cantonese, although no one would even try to argue that /ŋ-/ > /j-/ is a detrimental sound change to Cantonese.

tl;dr - im hella salty about extreme cantonese prescriptivists and i’m excited to be part of a modern sound change !!! speak however you want bc it literally doesn’t matter !!! language is cool and dont be afraid to embrace change !!! 

Edit: I have been informed that TW Hokkien does not have a d-initial I AM A GOOF, I should’ve double checked that oop. Thanks @bessely for pointing that out though!! (Also YES I WAS GONNA MENTION THE HAKKA STUFF TOO but I don’t know enough about it to talk about it confidently hehe)