#language learning material

[polyglot-thought]

Mandarin learning material recommendations:

My favorite Mandarin dictionaries:

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MDBG

I’m not even gonna try listing all of the features because there’s just so many and I’ve used it for many years now and on a daily basis. Not to mention it is constantly updated. In terms of features and overall quality, MDBG is the best in my opinion.

MandarinSpot’s Annotator

Sometimes has slightly different definitions compared to MDBG, and someone it will have the definition for words that MDBG does not have entered yet. Also, it helpful for anyone who reads Chinese best horizontally as opposed to listed vertically like on MDBG.

Pleco (app)

Most similar to MDBG, but for your smart phone.

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Important Note:

Please keep in mind that none of these dictionaries are perfect and language is constantly evolving, so new terms are not likely to be in any of these dictionaries.  there is not many moderators for these dictionaries so sometimes definitions and words won’t be entered in for weeks or even months.

If you find yourself with some thing that is clearly a word but does not have an English definition entered into either of these dictionaries it works best to look up the definition in Chinese on Baidu Dict or Google, or even check out Wikitionary/Wikipedia. 

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PLEASE COMMISSION ME I BEG YOU

[m0th-g0th0]

I have another piece of translation trivia for you pathologic nutsos

In English, on the night of day 3, Artemy can mention to Lara that he "Served as a medic for a while", refering to his brief military service.

*extremely incorrect loud buzzer*

He doesn't say "medic", or even "combat medic" in Russian. He uses the word Фельдшер, or Feldsher, which is a very specific thing.

A Feldsher is (or rather was) a mid-level (that is, without university education) medical practitioner. They don't have the same authority as doctors, but can perform certain operations or diagnostics. Historically, it was a non-combative position in the Russian Army and fleet. They even made a labor union in 1905!

It gives historical context to the entire setting, because Feldshers are mostly assossiated with the late 19th to early 20th century - the term is anachronistic (I guess that's why it was omitted in English) Edit: The term is still generally used in Russia, as pointed out in the comments, though the current and historical meaning are slightly different. We still have some Feldshers in Poland, as the only country in the EU where that position is legally recognized.

It also makes so much sense, given Artemy's situation - he never finished university but did have some prior knowlegde, so it would be reasonable for him to serve, as it was a common practice back then.

[casualavocados]

Simone Kirby as MARY MALONE HIS DARK MATERIALS 3.05 | No Way Out

[pocketramblr]

you know im thinking. im thinking maybe Yoichi wasn't even that into captain hero as an adult, but AfO kept bringing LITERALLY every conversation back to that because he decided to Be The Demon Lord and so Yoichi like, can't get an argument in unless he uses the same material so he's like 'oh my god i haven't even thought about that comic in ten years but even i know the bad guy didn't win. you should not be basing you whole identity, business model, and world destruction plan on your five-second impression of a comic book bad guy who didn't even win! also you shouldn't kill people!'

[rigelmejo]

Really basic study tips. As in, you have no idea where to start, or you've been floundering for X period of time not making progress.

Total beginner?

Go to a search engine site. Whatever one you want Google.com, duckduckgo.com, or a searx.space site will work (I like search.hbubli.cc a lot). I think a non-google search engine will give you less ads and more specific results though so keep that in mind.

As a total beginner, search for some articles and advice to help you start planning HOW you are going to study a language. Search things like "how to learn X" where X is the language, "how i learned X," "guide to learn X." Ignore the product endorsement pages as best you can, you're looking for personal blogs and posts on learner forums like chinese-forums.com and forum.language-learners.org. After reading a few of these, come up with a list of general things you need to learn. This list will generally be: to read, to listen, to write, to speak. The articles/advice you find will likely mention Specific Study Activities people did to learn each of those skills - write them down! You might not do all those study activities yourself. But its good to know what possible study activities will help build each of the 4 skills.

Now get more specific. Think about your long term goals for this language. Be as SPECIFIC as possible. Things like "I want to pass the B2 exam in French" (and knowing what CEFR levels are), or "I want to watch History 3 Trapped in chinese with chinese subtitles" or "I want to read Mo Dao Zu Shi in chinese" or "I want to play Final Fantasy 16 in japanese" or "I want to make friends with spanish speakers and be able to talk about my hobbies in depth, and understand their comments on that subject and be able to ask what they mean if I get confused." Truly be as specific as possible. Ideally make more than one long term goal like this. And then specify EVEN MORE. So you want to "pass the B2 exam in French" - why? What real world application will you use those skills for. A possible answer: to work in a French office job in engineering. Great! Now you know very specifically what to look up for what you Need to actually study: you need to look up business appropriate writing examples, grammar for emails, engineering technical vocabulary, IN addition to everything required on the B2 exam. Your goal is to read mdzs in chinese? Lets get more specific: how many unique words are in mdzs (maybe you want to study ALL of them), how much do you wish to understand? 100% or is just understanding the main idea, or main idea and some details, good enough? Do you want to learn by Doing (reading and looking up things you don't know) or by studying ahead of time first (like studying vocabulary lists). Im getting into the weeds.

My point is: once you have a Very Specific Long Term Goal you can look up how to study to accomplish that very specific goal. If you want to get a B2 certificate there's courses and textbooks and classes and free materials that match 100% the material on the B2 test, so you can prioritize studying those materials. If your goal is to READ novels, you'll likely be looking for "how to read X" advice articles and then studying based on that advice (which is often "learn a few thousand frequent words, study a grammar resource, use graded reader material at your reading level, extensively and intensively read, look up unknown words either constantly or occasionally as desired when reading new material, and continue picking more difficult material with new unknown words"). Whatever your specific goal, you will go to a search engine and look up how people have accomplished THAT specific goal. Those study activities they did will be things you can do that you know worked for someone. If you get lucky, someone might suggest ALL the resources and study activities you need to accomplish your specific goal. Or they will know of a textbook/course/site that provides everything you need so you can just go do it. I'll use a reading goal example because its a specific goal i've had. I'd have the goal "read X book in chinese" so I'd look up "how to read chinese" "how to learn to read chinese novels" "how i read chinese webnovels" and similar search terms. I found suggestions like these on articles I found written by people who managed to learn to read chinese webnovels: Ben Whatley's strategy had been learn 2000 common words on memrise (he made a deck and shared it), read a characters guide (he linked the article he read), use graded readers (he linked Mandarin Companion), use Pleco app and read inside it (he linked Pleco) and in 6 months he was reading novels using Pleco for unknown words. I copied most of what he did, and did some of my own other study activities for theother 3 listening speaking writing skills. And in 6 months I was also reading webnovels in Pleco. Another article was by Readibu app creator, who read webnovels in chinese just looking up TONS of words till they learned (real brute force method). But it worked! They learned. So copying them by using Readibu app ans brute force reading MANY novels would work. Another good article is on HeavenlyPath.notion.site, they have articles on specifically what materials to study to learn to read - their article suggestions are similar to the process I went through in studying and Im confident if you follow their advice you'll be reading chinese in 1 year or less. (I saw one person who was reading webnovels within 3 months of following the Heavenly Path's guide plan). LOOK UP your specific long term goal, and write down specific activities people did to learn how to do that long term goal. Ideally: you will have some

SHORT TERM GOALS: you will not accomplish your long term language goal for 1 year or more. Probably not for many years. So make some short and medium term goals to guide you through studying and keep you on track. These can be any goals you want, that are stepping stones to the specific long term goals you set. So for the "read mdzs in chinese" long term goal, short and medium term goals might be the following: short term: learn 10 common words a week (through SRS like anki or a vocabulary list), study 100 common hanzi this month (using a book reference or SRS or a site), read 1 chapter of a grammar guide a week (a site or textbook or reference book), medium term: read a graded reader with 100 unique words once I have studied 300 words (like Mandarin Companion books or Pleco graded readers for sale), read a 500 unique word graded reader once I have studied 600 words, read 秃秃大王 and look up words I don't know once I have studied 1500 words (read in Pleco or Readibu or using any click-translator tool or translator/dictionary app), read another chinese novel with 1500 unique words, read a 30,000 word chinese 2 hours a day until I finish it, read another 30,000 word novel and see if I can finish it in less time, read a 60,000 word novel, read a 120,000 word novel, read a novel extensively without looking any words up and practice reading skills of relying on context clues (pick a novel with lower unique word count), read a novel a little above your reading level (a 2000 unique word count if say you only know 1700 words), go to a reading difficulty list and pick some novels easier than mdzs to read but harder than novels you've already read (Readibu ranks novels by HSK level, Heavenly Path ranks novel difficulty, if you search online you'll find other reading difficulty lists and sites). Those shorter term goals will give you things to work for this week, this month, this year. An example of study goals and activities might be: study all vocabulary, hanzi, grammar in 1 textbook chapter a week (lets say 20 new words/10-20 new hanzi,1-5 new grammar points - or alternatively you have 3 SRS anki decks for vocab, hanzi, grammar) along with read and look up unknown key words for 30 minutes a day (at first you may read graded readers then move onto novels). Those are short term goals you can ensure you meet weekly, and they also contribute to being able to read better gradually each month until you hit long term goals.

If you are very bad at making your own schedule and study plans: look for a good premade study material and just follow it. A good study material will: teach reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, all the way to intermediate level. You may need to find multiple premade resources, such as 1 resource for writing/reading (many textbooks that teach 2000+ words and basic grammar will suffice) and 1 for speaking/listening (perhaps a good podcast, glossika, a tutor). Ideally formal classes will teach all 4 skills to intermediate level if you take 4 semesters of classes as an adult (beginner 1, beginner 2, intermediate 1, intermediate 2). Especially if the classes teach in accordance with trying to match you to expected defined language level skills (so formal classes that have syllabus goals that align with HSK, CEFR, or national standards of X level of fluency). So formal classes are an option. The same tips as above apply: make short term goals do do X a week, like study 30 minutes to 2 hours a day, to learn 10 new words a week, to get through X chapters a month, to practice speaking/reading/writing/reading oriented activities to some degree.

My short advice for picking a premade resource if totally lost: pick a starting material that covers 2000 words, basic grammar, and has dialogues if you don't know where to start. That will be enough to cover roughly beginner level language skills. I suggest you study by: studying the vocabulary and grammar of each chapter, listen to the dialogue with and without translation repeatedly until you understand it (listening skills), read the dialogue with and without translation (reading skills), write out example sentences using the new vocabulary and grammar (writing skills, the textbook exercises usually ask you to do this), speak your example sentences out loud (speaking practice), record yourself saying the dialogue and compare it to the dialogue audio - repeat this exercise until you sound similar in pronunciation to dialogue (speaking exercise - shadowing). Most decent textbooks will allow you to come up with similar activities to those listed above, to study some writing reading speaking listening. I like the Teach Yourself books as an example of the most basic version of what you need. Many languages have much better specific textbooks of that language. But if you're totally lost, get a Teach Yourself book and audio free from a library or for 10 dollars (or ANY equivalent book that teaches at least 2000 words and grammar) and go through it. If you buy a language specific textbook: keep working through the series until you've learned 2000 words and covered all basic grammar. For example Genk 1 and 2 cover 1700 words so you would want to work all the way through Genki 2 and ger near 2000 words before branching off to a textbook for intermediate students, or into native speaker materials. (Another example is I found a chinese textbook once that only taught 200 words... as a beginner you would not find that book as useful as one with more vocabulary)

Another adequate premade resource option: if you lile SRS tools like anki, look up premade decks that teach what you need to learn as a beginner. For Japanese you might look up "common words japanese anki deck" (Japanese core deck with 2k or more words is likely an option you'll see), "japanese grammar anki deck" (Tae Kin grammar deck is an option that covers common grammar), "JLPT kanji deck" or "kanji anki deck" or "kanji with mnemonics anki deck" (to study kanji). Ideally you study vocabulary, vocabulary, kanji, and ideally some of these anki decks will have audio and sentence examples for reading practice. Like with a textbook, you would attempt to do exercises which cover reading writing speaking listening. For reading and writing you may read sentences on anki cards, and write or type example sentences in a journal with new words you study and new grammar points. For listening you will play the sentence audio of a card with eyes closed until you hear the words clearly and recognize them, and for speaking you'll speak out the sentences and compare what you say to the audio on the card.

Keep in mind your specific long term goals! If your goal is speak to friend about hobby, you may follow a textbook and still need to ALSO make yourself practice talking weekly (on a language exchange app, with a tutor, with yourself, shadowing dialogues, looking up specific words you wish to discuss). If your goal is to read novels, you will likely need to seek out graded readers OUTSIDE your textbook and practice reading gradually harder material weekly. If your goal is listening to audio dramas, you will want an outside podcast resource likely starting with a Learner Podcast (chinese101, slow chinese, comprehensible chinese youtube channel) then move into graded reader audiobooks, then listen to audio dramas with transcripts, then just listen and look words up.

Once you hit lower intermediate: I'm defining that here as roughly you have studied 2000+ words, are familiar with basic grammar and comfortable looking up more specialized grammar information, and if you used a premade material then you have finished the beginner level material. If you desire to stay on a premade route then pick new resources made for intermediate learners. Do not dwell in the beginner material forever once you've studied it, continue to challenge yourself and learn new things regularly. (No matter what, continue to learn new things regularly, if you do that then every few hundred hours of study you WILL make significant progress toward your goals). Once you have hit intermediate it is also time to start adding activities that work toward your Very Specific Long Term goals now if you didn't already start. If you want to watch shows one day, this is when you start TRYING and get an idea of how much you understand versus how much you need to learn and WHAT you need to learn to do your goal well. If you want to read novels then start graded readers NOW if you havent already and progress to more difficult reading eventually into reading novels for native speakers. If you want to talk to people, start chatting regularly. If you want to take a B2 test, start studying language test specific study materials, practice doing the tasks you must be able to do to pass the test (so you can see what you need to learn and gauge progress over time), take practice tests. Intermediate level is when SOME stuff for native speakers will be at least understandable enough you can follow the main idea. Or at least, if you look up some key words you'll be able to grasp the main idea. Start engaging with stuff in the language now. For several reasons. 1. You need to practice Understanding all the basics you studied. Just because you studied it doesnt mean you can understand it immediately yet, you have to practice being in situations that require you to understand what you studied. 2. You also need to gauge where you are versus where you want to be, in order to set new short term goals. Once you do things in the language, you will see what specifically you need to study more. 3. By doing the activity you wish to do, you will get better at doing it. This is also a good time to mention that: if you wish to get better at speaking or writing now is the time to practice more. Just like listening and reading, you'll have to Do it more to improve.

The leap from using materials for beginners to materials for intermediate learners is harsh. It just is. The first 3 to 6 months you may feel drained, like you didn't learn much after all, annoyed its so much harder than the beginner material catered usually specifically to a learner's language level. Push through. I suggest goals like "listen to french 30 minutes a day" or "read 1 japanese news article a day" or "chat with someone for 1 hour total a week" or "watch 20 minutes of a show a day" or "write 1 page a day" and look up words you dont know but need to understand something or communicate to someone. Do X for X time period or X length of a chapter/episode type goals may be easiest to stick to during this period. Gradually, the time spent doing activities will add up and it will suddenly feel EASIER. Usually around the time you start understanding quicker and recalling quicker what you studied as a beginner. Then it keeps improving, as you gradually learn more and more. At first, picking the easiest content for your study activity will make the transition to intermediate stuff slightly less drastic. Easier content includes: conversations on daily life that only gradually add more specific topics (so you can lean on the beginner daily life function vocabulary), podcasts for learners entirely in target language and podcasts with transcripts, novels with low unique word counts (ideally 2000 unique words or less until your vocabulary gets bigger), shows you've watched before in a language you know (so you can guess more unknown words and follow the plot even when you don't understand the target language words), video game lets plays (ideally with captions) of video games you've played before, playing video games you already have played before and know the story for, reading summaries before starting new shows or books so you know what the general story is, reading books that have translations to a language you know (so you can read the translation then original or vice versa for additional context). Using any tools available (dictionary apps, translation apps like Pleco and Google Translate and click-translate web browser tools, Edge Read Aloud tool, reader apps like Kindle and Readibu, apps like Netflix dual subitles stuff).

Last mention: check in with your goals every so often. You might check in every 3 months, and say you notice you never manage to study daily (if that was your short term goal). That could be a sign it might be better to change your study schedule to study a couple hours on the days your life schedule is less busy, and skip study on busy days. Or it may be a sign the study activity you're trying to do daily is Very Hard for you to stick to, and maybe you should switch to a different study activity. (Example would be: I can't do SRS flashcards consistently, so when I got tired of SRS anki after a few months as a beginner, I switched to reading graded readers daily to learn new vocabulary then reading novels and looking up words. Another example: I love Listening Reading Method but could never do it as it was designed, so after a month of only doing 15 hours of it instead of the 100 hours the method intended at minimum in that time, I decided to modify that study activity into something I could get myself to do daily and enjoy more).

And, of course, its okay if what works for one person doesn't work for you. Everyone's different. As long as you are regularly studying some new things, and practicing understanding things you've studied before, you will make progress as the study hours add up. It may take hundreds of hours to see significant progress, but you Will see some progress every few hundreds of hours of study. I made the quick start suggestions for beginners above, because I have seen some people (including me) get lost at the start with no idea what a good resource looks like and no idea what to study, or how to determine goals and progress on those goals.

[polysprachig]

A note on posting in Irish (Gaeilge):

I was brainstorming what types of posts could be helpful to Irish learners in langblr and came up with the following:

posts where you can listen to a reading with an explanation of some of the trickier grammar points

vocabulary posts which include examples of all 4 noun forms (nom + gen, sg + pl) so there's context

notes on sentence structure/word form where the examples actually use the structure/word you're trying to learn (if you know, you know)

links to videos which include Irish and/or Irish & English subtitles

mini-lessons on grammar with notes on the source references

tags including canúint or CEFR-level, if relevant (especially for grammar or vocab)

Anything I'm missing here? Please share your ideas Gaeilgeoirí agus foghlaimeoirí in langblr!

[guillemelgat]

I just started a new semester, and I'm finally getting the chance to take Malayalam, which I've been trying to do since my undergrad. This is obviously a very exciting development, and it's so delightful to be in a language class again for the first time in ages, but it's also been a very unique experience as far as language classes go. First of all, for me, who is generally used to having very odd personal connections to a language and being the overachieving linguist of the class. And second of all because it's just a very different experience to be in a class largely oriented towards heritage learners and people with some cultural familiarity.

There are five people in the class. Of those five, four have Malayalee family and have had some exposure to Malayalam throughout our lives; the last person is a native speaker of another non-Dravidian South Asian language. Of the four of us who are Malayalee, I'm basically the only one who didn't have a significant amount of Malayalam at home growing up. What this means is that we've spent very little time on the phonetics of the language, because everyone roughly knows how to pronounce it - something which wouldn't be true if there were non-South Asian in the class! (It was a bit comforting to hear all the other Malayalees struggling with aspirated consonants, which have constantly been the bane of my existence, and then to hear the instructor say that few people pronounce them right in spoken Malayalam anyways.) The instructor could ask us to say things on the first day, and the more fluent speakers could say them. There is already Malayalam being mixed in with the instruction. I'm sure by the end of the semester we'll be having extended conversations - especially since the two of us who don't speak have very concrete communicative desires for our outside lives.

It's also a very scary experience for me, personally. Or maybe scary isn't quite the right word, but I've always felt out of my depth in claiming Malayalee heritage - I've always felt that there were so many things which I didn't know which any normal Malayalee would. There is no evidence that this is true, at least insofar as that my cousins with two Malayalee parents have wildly varying experiences and I'm not actually that far outside the norm. In most American spaces, I will never be clocked as white, and most people usually immediately identify me as South Asian. Nonetheless, I know that when I visited Kerala this past December, I was decidedly foreign - to the two guys speaking in rapid-fire Malayalam on the flight from Qatar, to the person at the immigration counter in Trivandrum, even to my own relatives. Part of it is a mental block on my part, of feeling myself foreign and therefore never letting myself belong. Part of it is that I am, ultimately, American. But either way, in this class, I can feel that I'm the American in the room, even when I'm not, even when my pronunciation is just as good as the other Malayalees and there's nothing that's telling me I can't belong. I keep freezing up when asked to say real things, or when people speak to me, because there's some unreachable standard in my brain of Not A Real Malayalee, and everything feels fraught and fragile. So maybe this semester will be about overcoming that.

It's still strange being in a language class where the instructor, on the first day, can look at you all and say, "You know why you're here, you want to be here, we all have a shared experience." But it's also a beautiful thing in its own way, and I'm really looking forward to taking on a language in this way. I love the structure and the logic of language, the puzzle of putting it together, the beauty of making friends in it and watching shows in it and listening to songs in it - but as I get older I find myself really reflecting on what it means to learn and to know a language. And sometimes those barriers to learning and to knowing are only in our minds, not in our worlds. Language is communication and connection, and I hope that Malayalam serves me to these two ends, even as it sometimes feels like a trial by fire at each word.

[wrenhavenriver]

[aaiieell]

You can download this sheet in PDF format here:  

"As a matter of" Idioms & Phrases

Ever notice how phrases like "as a matter of fact" or "as a matter of interest" add depth to conversations? These expressions can clarify, emphasize, or simply add curiosity to what we say!

 Check out the picture below for definitions and example sentences of some of the most popular "As a Matter of..." idioms!

Which one do you use most often? Let us know in the comments!

[autumngracy]

Not me creeping up to the wordcount of the fourth longest book ever written

[leftcoffeeflower]

A while ago I talked to my polyglot friend, who's currently learning Czech, and he asked me for some easy reading materials. As I have offspring and thus my home is overflowing with kids books, it was pretty easy to find something suitable for, say, A1-A2 learners.

Since I've seen a lot of Czech learners on this site, I realized I could share with more people!

So, here's the link to my Google drive folder:

Hope it helps!

(if anyone needs help translating something, feel free to DM me)

[polyglot-thought]

Language Learning Resource! (Video)

I feel like this video is a PERFECT outline of what you should be actively doing to learn another language.

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Here’s the main takeaways with some of my own ideas thrown in:

1. Don’t learn a language with the intent to enjoy fun things in your target language LATER after you gotten to whatever your target level of fluency is: Just go ahead and start now! Watch the TV show you want to watch even if you don’t understand any of it yet, you’ll get there eventually.

2. You do not need to be speaking all the time with others to get good at speaking. It helps, but it should not be solely relied on. OP gives a good example of what he did wrong in the video.

3. Speaking a language isn’t due to knowledge like learning math is, it’s more like a muscle that is always working for the sake of function.

4. You can’t just do 30 minutes days and expect to be fluent eventually. You need to be using your target language as much as possible (aka immerse yourself). Immersion takes much more than 30 specific minutes out of your day. I actually do this all the time, talk to yourself in your target language, read your target language (I follow a lot of social media accounts in my target language so I constantly see it), text others in your target language, watch videos/movies, voice shadowing etc etc. You may even be able to feel when your brain is in (insert language here) mode. Me personally I can tell, and I notice that if I’m in Japanese mode it’s hard to absorb things in Mandarin or other language

5. Mindset is everything. If you think constantly about how hard something is, you will always feel like the task is hard. If you are learning a notoriously hard language, and ruminate about this, it will only hurt you in the long run. When I started learning Mandarin as a kid no one ever told me it was hard before, and I picked it up fast, and I only slowed down when I got frustrated about how hard the language is but sped back up when I reminded myself that input and immersion will get me the results I’m looking for eventually no matter which language.

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[official-rolli-und-rita]

One of the worst things about trying to learn a severely endangered language is that it's almost impossible to find helpful sources and materials outside of wikipedia (specifically ones that aren't in english).

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

The way I wanna learn so many silly hobbies!! Like I wanna be able to walk on my hands and contort and speak fictional languages, just so I can entertain people with a mystery bag of talents

But alas I am poor

no i know right. but. you do know that you don't have to pay to learn how to walk on your hands, right? or speak fictional languages? you should probably pay for a contortionist coach tho yeah

[omegaphilosophia]

The Ontology of Text

The ontology of text refers to the study of the nature, structure, and being of text, focusing on what text is at its most fundamental level. This exploration can span several philosophical and theoretical perspectives, often addressing questions about the existence, identity, and categorization of text as an entity. Here’s a breakdown of key aspects:

1. Text as an Ontological Entity:

Material vs. Abstract: Text can be considered both as a material object (e.g., a book or a written document) and as an abstract entity (e.g., the content or meaning conveyed by the text). The ontology of text thus involves understanding how these two aspects coexist and relate to each other.

Text as a Work vs. Text as a Document: The distinction between a text as a work (the conceptual or intellectual creation) and as a document (the physical or digital manifestation) is crucial in ontology. For instance, different editions of a book may be considered different documents but the same work.

2. Identity and Persistence:

Sameness and Variation: The ontology of text deals with the question of what makes a text the same across different instances or versions. What remains consistent between different editions or translations of a text? How much can a text change before it is considered a different text?

Temporal Aspects: How does the identity of a text persist over time? This includes considerations of how historical context, authorial intent, and reader interpretation might affect the identity of a text.

3. Structure of Text:

Hierarchical vs. Network Structures: Text can be seen as having a hierarchical structure (e.g., chapters, paragraphs, sentences) or a network-like structure (e.g., hypertext or intertextuality). The ontology of text examines how these structures are constituted and how they affect the nature of text.

Units of Text: What are the basic units of text? Words, sentences, paragraphs, or perhaps even smaller or larger units? The ontological inquiry involves defining and categorizing these units.

4. Function and Intent:

Authorial Intent: The role of the author's intention in the ontology of text is a major consideration. Is the meaning of a text tied to what the author intended, or does it exist independently?

Reader Interpretation: The ontology of text also considers the role of the reader or audience in constituting the text. Is the meaning of a text something inherent, or is it something that comes into being through interpretation?

5. Intertextuality and Contextuality:

Intertextual Relations: Texts often reference or build upon other texts. The ontology of text considers how texts are related to one another and how these relationships affect their existence and identity.

Contextual Dependency: The meaning and existence of a text can be dependent on its context, including cultural, historical, and situational factors. The ontology of text examines how context shapes what a text is.

6. Digital and Hypertext Ontology:

Digital Texts: The advent of digital texts introduces new ontological questions. How do digital formats affect the nature of text? How does hypertext, with its non-linear structure, change our understanding of text?

Versioning and Fluidity: Digital texts can be easily modified, leading to questions about the stability and identity of texts in a digital environment. What does it mean for a text to have a version, and how does this affect its ontology?

7. Philosophical Perspectives:

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: These schools of thought provide frameworks for understanding the ontology of text, focusing on the underlying structures of language (structuralism) and the fluidity and instability of meaning (post-structuralism).

Phenomenology: This approach might consider the experience of the text, focusing on how it appears to consciousness and the role of the reader in bringing the text to life.

The ontology of text is a rich and complex field that intersects with many areas of philosophy, literary theory, linguistics, and digital humanities. It seeks to answer fundamental questions about what text is, how it exists, how it maintains identity, and how it relates to both its material form and its interpretation by readers.

[mourninglamby]

im one of those ex dsmps enjoyers who liked artists and fanfics and interpretations, but not really the content itself.

I don’t know really why, i guess it’s because i couldn’t tell when ccs are “ in character “ or not.

they’re all characters to me. in my big fucking game that is