#is adding a toki pona translation too much

[under-the-pondering-tree]

not only am I new to tumblr, I've never been on any social media before- so this has been fun for me toki Tumblr li sin tawa mi. taso toki kepeken toki kulupu ale li sin tawa mi. ona li musi li pona tawa mi

(unless you count youtube, which i dont lol)

[fioras-resolve]

So I've been thinking about translating Pokemon to Toki Pona, and the general linguistic nature of the games.

Like, Pokemon X and Y are very strange to tokiponize, even just down to the titles. Because like, those letters are not part of the Toki Pona alphabet. Yet, the letters are core to its box legendaries, Yveltal literally looks like a red Y, and has Y in its name. How do you translate this? Well, you look up the origin of the name and find an article stating they were named after the x and y-axis. It seems weird at first, but it's fully consistent with the legendaries. Xerneas is a soweli, who travels horizontally, while Yveltal is a waso, who travels vertically. Even the akesi Zygarde, representing the z-axis, moves vertically. I think it's fair to say poka and sewi, aside and up, should be the new titles for Pokemon X and Y, maybe sinpin for front instead of poka, but I'm not sure about the legendaries.

As for other Pokemon, well, I'm actually willing to transliterate in certain cases. This one other post I found has Pikachu as "sowelo", roughly translating to "yellow creature." This is like, fair as a choice, but the name Pikachu is a very iconic one, and if somebody were actually playing a tokiponized Pokemon game, they would instantly recognize this yellow creature. Pikasu just seems like the natural fit, considering it hasn't been localized into anything else. Plus, it lets you set up Pikasuli (suli meaning big) as the name for Raichu. But then we get into much thornier territory when we ask that about literally any Pokemon that isn't Pikachu. There are many other Pokemon that have preserved their original name across localizations. Like, all of the various Pika-clones to show up throughout the series, like Pachirisu and Togedemaru, kept their Japanese name in an attempt to capture the same Pikachu spark. Should they have their names tokiponized as Pasilisu and Toketemalu?

I guess this brings us into a deeper question of the distinction between a Pokemon name being the name of an animal, like a pigeon or a mouse, versus the name of a character/mythological figure, like a Phoenix, Tsuchinoko, or Bigfoot. For example, the legendary Lugia is called that in all languages, but its counterpart Ho-oh is named differently in Korean and Chinese to match those cultures' mythological birds. The Treasures of Ruin have Chinese names (despite them being different in both pronunciation and order across different localizations) and the fact the names are in Chinese and they're part of a quartet indicates legendary status. Except in China, where it doesn't, so they added 古, meaning ancient, to the start of each name. So the question for a Tokiponist is, how do you convey a Pokemon's legendary status through naming structure alone? I genuinely don't know, but I have a few ideas. Perhaps adding suli meaning important or majuna meaning ancient (I know majuna isn't in the original Toki Pona book, but it is in the official dictionary) could convey that status handily. Let me know what you think.

Lastly, wordplay! This is a kind of fun with language that should be preserved. Of course I'm going to translate Ekans as Iseka, the word for reptile backwards. Of course Girafarig is gonna be Nenanen, the palindromic version of nena meaning bump, and its evolution Farigiraf as Anenena. You've gotta be able to preserve the silliness too. Anyway I'm bad at coming up with normal creature names so that's gonna be it for me

[thelanguagecommunity]

“what language should I learn?”

“is it better to learn [x] or [x]?”

“is it worth learning [x]?”

I get this type of question a lot and I see questions like these a lot on language learning forums, but it’s very difficult to answer because ultimately language learning is a highly personal decision. Passion is required to motivate your studies, and if you aren’t in love with your language it will be very hard to put in the time you need. Thus, no language is objectively better or worse, it all comes down to factors in your life. So, I’ve put together a guide to assist your with the kind of factors you can consider when choosing a language for study.

First, address you language-learning priorities.

Think of the reasons why are you interested in learning a new language. Try to really articulate what draws you to languages. Keeping these reasons in mind as you begin study will help keep you focused and motivated. Here are some suggestions to help you get started, complete with wikipedia links so you can learn more:

Linguistic curiosity?

For this, I recommend looking into dead, literary or constructed languages. There are lots of cool linguistic experiments and reconstructions going on and active communities that work on them! Here’s a brief list:

Dead languages:

Akkadian

Egyptian (Ancient Egyptian)

Gaulish

Gothic

Hittite

Old Prussian

Sumerian

Older iterations of modern day languages:

Classical Armenian

Classical Nahuatl (language of the Aztec Empire)

Early Modern English (Shakespearean English)

Galician-Portuguese

Middle English (Chaucer English)

Middle Persian/Pahlavi

Old English

Old French

Old Spanish

Old Tagalog (+ Baybayin)

Ottoman Turkish

Constructed:

Anglish (experiment to create a purely Anglo-Saxon English)

Esperanto

Interlingua

Láadan (a “feminist language”)

Lingua Franca Nova

Lingwa de Planeta

Lobjan

Toki Pona (a minimalist language)

Wenedyk (what if the Romans had occupied Poland?)

Cultural interests?

Maybe you just want to connect to another culture. A language is often the portal to a culture and are great for broadening your horizons! The world is full of rich cultures; learning the language helps you navigate a culture and appreciate it more fully.

Here are some popular languages and what they are “famous for”:

Cantonese: film

French: culinary arts, film, literature, music, philosophy, tv programs, a prestige language for a long time so lots of historical media, spoken in many countries (especially in Africa)

German: film, literature, philosophy, tv programs, spoken in several Central European countries

Italian: architecture, art history, catholicism (Vatican city!), culinary arts, design, fashion, film, music, opera

Mandarin: culinary arts, literature, music, poetry, tv programs

Japanese: anime, culinary arts, film, manga, music, video games, the longtime isolation of the country has developed a culture that many find interesting, a comparatively large internet presence

Korean: tv dramas, music, film

Portuguese: film, internet culture, music, poetry

Russian: literature, philosophy, spoken in the Eastern Bloc or former-Soviet countries, internet culture

Spanish: film, literature, music, spoken in many countries in the Americas

Swedish: music, tv, film, sometimes thought of as a “buy one, get two free” deal along with Norwegian & Danish

Religious & liturgical languages:

Avestan (Zoroastrianism)

Biblical Hebrew (language of the Tanakh, Old Testament)

Church Slavonic (Eastern Orthodox churches)

Classical Arabic (Islam)

Coptic (Coptic Orthodox Church)

Ecclesiastical Latin (Catholic Church)

Ge’ez (Ethiopian Orthodox Church)

Iyaric (Rastafari movement)

Koine Greek (language of the New Testament)

Mishnaic Hebrew (language of the Talmud)

Pali (language of some Hindu texts and Theravada Buddhism)

Sanskrit (Hinduism)

Syriac (Syriac Orthodox Church, Maronite Church, Church of the East)

Reconnecting with family?

If your immediate family speaks a language that you don’t or if you are a heritage speaker that has been disconnected, then the choice is obvious! If not, you might have to do some family tree digging, and maybe you might find something that makes you feel more connected to your family. Maybe you come from an immigrant community that has an associated immigration or contact language! Or maybe there is a branch of the family that speaks/spoke another language entirely.

Immigrant & Diaspora languages:

Arbëresh (Albanians in Italy)

Arvanitika (Albanians in Greece)

Brazilian German

Canadian Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic in Canada)

Canadian Ukrainian (Ukrainians in Canada)

Caribbean Hindustani (Indian communities in the Caribbean)

Chipilo Venetian (Venetians in Mexico)

Griko (Greeks in Italy)

Hutterite German (German spoken by Hutterite settlers of Canada/US)

Fiji Hindi (Indians in Fiji)

Louisiana French (Cajuns) 

Patagonian Welsh (Welsh in Argentina)

Pennsylvania Dutch (High German spoken by early settlers of Canada/ the US)

Plaudietsch (German spoken by Mennonites)

Talian (Venetian in Brazilian)

Texas Silesian (Poles in the US)

Click here for a list of languages of the African diaspora (there are too many for this post!). 

If you are Jewish, maybe look into the language of your particular diaspora community ( * indicates the language is extinct or moribund - no native speakers or only elderly speakers):

Bukhori (Bukharan Jews)

Hebrew

Italkian (Italian Jews) *

Judeo-Arabic (MENA Jews)

Judeo-Aramaic

Judeo-Malayalam *

Judeo-Marathi

Judeo-Persian

Juhuri (Jews of the Caucasus)

Karaim (Crimean Karaites) *

Kivruli (Georgian Jews)

Krymchak (Krymchaks) *

Ladino (Sephardi)

Lusitanic (Portuguese Jews) *

Shuadit (French Jewish Occitan) *

Yevanic (Romaniotes)*

Yiddish (Ashkenazi)

Finding a job?

Try looking around for what languages are in demand in your field. Most often, competency in a relevant makes you very competitive for positions. English is in demand pretty much anywhere. Here are some other suggestions based on industry (from what I know!):

Business (General): Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish

Design: Italian (especially furniture)

Economics: Arabic, German

Education: French, Spanish

Energy: Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish

Engineering: German, Russian

Finance & Investment: French, Cantonese, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish

International Orgs. & Diplomacy (NATO, UN, etc.): Arabic, French, Mandarin, Persian, Russian, Spanish

Medicine: German, Latin, Sign Languages, Spanish

Military: Arabic, Dari, French, Indonesian, Korean, Kurdish, Mandarin, Pashto, Persian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu

Programming: German, Japanese

Sales & Marketing: French, German, Japanese, Portuguese

Service (General): French, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Sign Languages, Spanish

Scientific Research (General): German, Japanese, Russian

Tourism: French, Japanese, Mandarin, Sign Languages, Spanish

Translation: Arabic, Russian, Sign Languages

Other special interests?

Learning a language just because is a perfectly valid reason as well! Maybe you are really into a piece of media that has it’s own conlang! 

Fictional:

Atlantean (Atlantis: The Lost Empire)

Dothraki (Game of Thrones)

Elvish (Lord of the Rings)

Gallifreyan (Doctor Who)

High Valyrian (Game of Thrones)

Klingon (Star Trek)

Nadsat (A Clockwork Orange)

Na’vi (Avatar)

Newspeak (1984)

Trigedasleng (The 100)

Vulcan (Star Trek)

Or if you just like to learn languages, take a look maybe at languages that have lots of speakers but not usually popular among the language-learning community:

Arabic

Bengali

Cantonese

Hindi

Javanese

Hausa

Indonesian

Malay

Pashto

Persian

Polish

Punjabi

Swahili

Tamil

Telugu

Thai

Turkish

Urdu

Vietnamese

Yoruba

If you have still are having trouble, consider the following:

What languages do you already speak?

How many and which languages you already speak will have a huge impact on the ease of learning. 

If you are shy about speaking with natives, you might want to look at languages with similar consonant/vowel sounds. Similarity between languages’ grammars and vocabularies can also help speed up the process. Several families are famous for this such as the Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Romanian), North Germanic languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) or East Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian). If you are a native English speaker, check out the FSI’s ranking of language difficulty for the approximate amount of hours you’ll need to put into different languages.

You could also take a look at languages’ writing systems to make things easier or for an added challenge.

Another thing to remember is that the languages you already speak will have a huge impact on what resources are available to you. This is especially true with minority languages, as resources are more frequently published in the dominant language of that area. For example, most Ainu resources are in Japanese, most Nheengatu resources are in Portuguese, and most Nahuatl resources are in Spanish.

What are your life circumstances?

Where you live with influence you language studies too! Local universities will often offer resources (or you could even enroll in classes) for specific languages, usually the “big” ones and a few region-specific languages.

Also consider if what communities area near you. Is there a vibrant Deaf community near you that offers classes? Is there a Vietnamese neighborhood you regularly interact with? Sometimes all it takes is someone to understand you in your own language to make your day! Consider what languages you could realistically use in your own day-to-day. If you don’t know where to start, try checking to see if there are any language/cultural meetups in your town!

How much time can you realistically put into your studies? Do you have a fluency goal you want to meet? If you are pressed for time, consider picking up a language similar to ones you already know or maintaining your other languages rather than taking on a new one.

Please remember when choosing a language for study to always respect the feelings and opinions of native speakers/communities, particularly with endangered or minoritized languages. Language is often closely tied to identity, and some communities are “closed” to outsiders. A notable examples are Hopi, several Romani languages, many Aboriginal Australian languages and some Jewish languages. If you are considering a minoritized language, please closely examine your motivations for doing so, as well as do a little research into what is the community consensus on outsiders learning the language. 

[langblrwhy]

My goals for 2020

April

This was a bad month. I was all inspired to be productive and stuff, I was in the vibe of writing the whole month, etc. And then I noticed that I made a goal of writing 20 THOUSAND WORDS IN ENGLISH AND 2 OTHER TARGET LANGUAGES. And I went anxious and didn't write at all. Actually, I wrote less I used to write, I barely wrote my stuff in my native language.

And this anxious and depressed vibe affect more than my will to write, but almost my whole month. Things started getting better when I decided starting embroidery, for real, moving my hands relieve my anxiety.

And then I get more focused on the goals when I reread it last week, I remembered the "small" things I wanted to do and did it.

I wrote this intro to excuse myself for why I haven't been productive as I wanted this month.

Sorry Rai, I'll do better in may, I promise.

1 Go out every week (risking for lockdown reasons)

2 Try 2 new foods every month (food, beverage, recipe)

Mango (actually I already ate when I was a kid, but I HATED, mango is the worst fruit ever for me. And I ate again blended with avocado and yogurt and it wasn't that bad).

I also ate pumpkin, cahyote, a purple peruvian potato and a "chocolate" made by jackfruit seeds (it's delicious! It opened my mind to vegan foods with jackfruit)

I'm happy I still able to eat new foods even though I don't get out of my house.

3 Be fluent in esperanto

I've been studying esperanto almost everyday, I have conversations via video every week and I've been chatting more with esperantists on discord and tumblr.

I want to translate more stuff on wikipedia and write my fiction, and chat more on discord and telegram, and via audio. But I think I'm already doing great.

4 Practice having conversations via audio and video

There are days that I talk 2 or 3 times via video (and sometimes via audio) and I already feel confortable doing that. I'm practing almost every other day and I'm happy for doing that. My next step is having conversations via audio, I guess it's a bit hard because I can't read lips.

5 Write a 10k fiction in french and publish it on Wattpad

As I already said in the intro, I didn't progress here.

6 Try to study russian again and focus on the basic

I'm thinking about focusing on french in may, and when I feel a bit confortable in the language, I will focus on russian, probably/hope in june.

7 Watch a movie every week

1. Le Jeu (France, 2018)

2. The Plarform (Spain, 2019)

3. Call Me By Your Name (Italy, US, France, Brazil, 2017) (this was my favorite, probably one of the movies I ever watched)

4. Atlantis: The Lost Empire (US, 2001)

5. Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (US, 1931)

6. Aquarius (Brazil, France, 2016)

Series don't count, but I want to record here that I watched the seasons 1 and 2 of Narcos (I love Wagner Moura).

8 Read 5 books

In the first 3 weeks I read nothing at all. But I read a lot in the last week, I'm reading everyday.

I stopped The Bell Jar because it triggers me :) just 40 more pages and I finish it, the book is great and I want to finish it soon, but not right now.

BUT I restarted Misery from Stephen King, it's an easy reading, I already read more than 90 pages, I feel like I'm in the vibe of reading more now, and it's great, I just feel that I need focus on "easy books" to get used to read again.

("Easy books" = fiction in my native language, contemporary non philosophical stories. I'm not diminishing any books here)

Also I'm in the vibe of reading some non-fiction too, I'll probably read something about astronomy, linguistics, minimalism and low/no waste. I just need to be sure to choose an easy book, otherwise it'll just beat off me even more.

9 Finalize 1 art every month (it doesn't have to be good, just finished)

I finalize 3: with watercolor, with gouache and embroidered.

10 Go for a walking every week While the quarantine lasts, I'll adapt this topic for "doing some exercise every week"

I exercised 1 time (I made in the last week), at least I sunbath almost everyday.

For april I hope I'll watch those yoga videos on french youtube channels.

11 Try to make listening podcasts an habit

In the last week I listened 4 brazilian podcasts (I'll link all of them below) while embroidering or painting, I could focus in both at the same time, I liked and I'll listen to more podcasts while doing art.

1 Colonization of the Hispanic America - Scicast

2 Particle physics and cosmology - Fisicast

3 Cleanliness, care and simplicity - Despertar Zen (With the buddhist nun Coen, she is awesome and she inspires me to be a better person to myself)

4 The importance of the museums - Alô, Ciência

12 Learn toki pona

Maybe I'll study it again in may.

13 Write a fiction in esperanto

I didn't.

14 Try 1 new thing per month

I finally started doing embroidery, I have been thinking about it for a long time and I'm happy I finally started, I loving it, also moving my hands relieves my anxiety, win win.

15 Interact on virtual groups (telegram, tumblr, whatever)

I've been interacting with the Polyglot Group of my city, and a bit active in discord groups of esperanto and I talked to a lot of people on Tumblr.

16 Be more proactice and publish my stuff somewhere online (draw, fiction, whatever)

I started posting my art on Instagram @rraissinha

It's REALLY hard for me to post something, because I focus on the flakes of everything I do and I don't really think someone wants to see what I do, but I try to force myself to post, because my friends encourages me and I want to do it.

17 Finish all duolingo tasks by the end of the year

I advanced to the Diamond League (the last league) and there is a task to win the #1 there, but in the end of the first day people already made 1000xp. In the last day the #1 place get +5000xp in a week.

I like duolingo, but I don't plan to focus my whole week doing that, it will be way more productive for me using all this time studying in other ways.

So, for me, these tasks in this app have no worth at all, I'm the one who put the worth as a way to incentive me to study more, but since ACHIEVING ALL OF THEM WILL NOT BE IDEAL FOR MY STUDIES, I'll probably won't put more effort I'm already putting on this #17 task I created for myself.

But I still want to achieve all the other duo tasks.

I already finished the Esperanto tree to level 1, but now I need to get the whole tree to level 5.

I won't give up on the streak task, I'm already 69 day streak.

18 Sketch every week

I didn't sketch this month as much as I did in march, because I was depressed and then embroidering. But I did sketch every week.

-Because of the Camp NaNoWriMo I added for april:

As my intro said, I didn't wrote at all. Actually, I was hoping for the month ends, so I could write with no pressure again. Disaster!

19 Write 5k words in my french fiction (La professeur de saphisme et quelques cafés)

Actually I wrote 185 words.

20 Write 5k words in my esperanto fiction (Geja Servo)

And I wrote 151 words here.

21 Write 10k words in my english fiction (Aspaldiko) and post, at least a bit, on Wattpad

No idea and didn't post anything, fuck anxiety.

I'll try to accomplish at least 70% every month.

I made 12/20 = 60%

It's not what I wanted, but I'll forgive me since I was anxious. Also, it was very good for me rereading this list in the last week, so I could refresh my memory about all the tasks and try to do something before the end of the month.

I created more goals for the next months:

18 Study spanish, focusing on write, listen and speak

19 Study french, focusing on write, listen and speak

20 Study whatever theories (such as astronomy, lingustics, ecology, whatever)