#language textbook

[themoonsaid]

Hindi is not difficult. reading in Hindi is not difficult. writing in Hindi is not difficult. counting in Hindi is not difficult. Hindi numbers are not difficult (१२३४५६७८९०). alphabets क्ष,ष,फ are not difficult. you just consume, are surrounded by and have been taught english and the latin alphabets way more than your native language and script use some sense

(this goes for any language not just hindi btw)

[an-spideog]

Hey if you study/have studied Irish using a textbook, which textbook did you use and what did you like or dislike about it? Reply to me or reblog or send me a message or whatever. I'm interested in hearing about what people think of the various irish textbooks that are currently available. Since I know my own thoughts on them but I imagine people have very diverse feelings.

[eesirachs]

references for reading and studying the hebrew bible (named the old testament for some, the tanakh for others)—

biblegateway makes available most translations. ethical, responsible versions used in academia include the nrsvue (here with commentary) and the jps (here, on sefaria, with hebrew notations). software like accordance is helpful for those familiar with languages.

on languages—here is more on learning biblical hebrew. here are my recs on hittite, sumerian, akkadian (huehnergard, caplice), ugaritic, and aramaic.

holding the narrative alongside introductory material is meaningful—here is a list of many, and here is the book assigned in most syllabi.

finally, oxford offers entries on heuristics and methods that might help move religious study further in meaning. here are recs for my method

[birdyverdie]

ive been itching to learn a vocal language. Sign language is good and very helpful for my stimmy self, but I kinda wanna learn something to speak

[atthebell]

do you have any recommendations/resources to learn spanish?? i've been using busuu for about 104 days now, imo opinion it's actually pretty fun and i like it but i think my main problem with it is that it goes too fast?? it's hard to explain. it's also started to feel kinda repetitive to me. i still love busuu and i'm going to continue with my course, but it'd be nice to also have something else. like, preferably not an app, maybe a textbook or a website or something :D i don't really WHERE to find resources for language learning, despite being bilingual, i never really had to look on the internet to learn the languages i speak now, i picked it up from the people around me you know?

i've also been ''using'' duolingo but tbh, i really hate it. it feels boring to me, everyday it's ''ok what sentence am i going to be forced to write for the 40th time today?'' the single 'square' has 5 lessons and a 'unit' has around 10-8 of those squares and to finish a 'unit' you have to do about 50-45 of those lessons, which is shit because a 'unit' is only going to teach about 3 sentence structures and if you're lucky maybe 5. it's so shit, those greedy fuckers basically made it unusable. i've been using for about 140 days now, every single day i take at least one lesson, and it STILL has not taught me a SINGLE spanish tense. btw, i even had an entire phase where i would finish UNITS in about an hour and a half (1 min or less for every lesson) and still not a single ''pretérito Indefinido'' actual pain 🫠🫠 one day ll delete that app, one day (i guess that's why i like busuu in the first place, it actually teaches you these tenses and even some slang while duolingo makes you write ''papá, quiero visitar a nuestra abuela'' for the 700th time this week)

i want to watch vods and stuff, but tbh, i feel way too embarrassed? like, i don't know enough spanish to really understand them and even when they say basic sentences that i understand, i still have to listen to it multiple times and slow down the clip for me to really get it. the thing with spanish is that i'll understand the meaning of the words being said but i need to take a second or so to really comprehend what they mean together you know? i don't want to have to watch the stream slowed down because that would definitely make me feel stupid 😭 maybe when i have better spanish i'll start watching vods. although i do listen to spanish songs sometimes, it's fun :D

first thing: you don't have to feel embarrassed about needing time to process things/needing to listen to things slowed down. language learning is difficult and there are a lot of obstacles for many people; this is something i do understand and want to stress that i get that it's hard. you are not a bad person or an idiot or whatever for having a hard time understanding things-- you are still learning, and besides that, sometimes hearing things isn't someone's strong suit (it absolutely did not use to be mine, but i've practiced a lot and gotten much better at it. i'm still much much better at reading text in other languages, but it is something you can always improve on). if you need to take extra time to watch things, that is not a personal fault of yours nor does it make you stupid. everyone has different skill sets, and you can always practice to get better.

second thing: my own criticisms of both busuu and duolingo, along with their strengths. duolingo first, because i've used it since like. idk like 2016? not consistently but i've used it far more over the years and i'm very familiar with various changes they've made and the esp, ptbr, and french courses. busuu ive only been using for a few months

to get it out of the way, the recent change to laying off translators and using more AI in lessons. this sucks, obviously, for a myriad of reasons. machine translation cannot match with human translation, and frankly never will be able to. there are vast amounts of nuance and cultural context necessary for translation, along with the fact that an AI led course does not actually hit on all the things someone needs, particularly on a basics/foundational level. and from an ethical standpoint, laying off a ton of human translators because you think you can replace them with inaccurate machine translation sucks and is why so many people have dropped duolingo, myself included.

duolingo also has limitations in terms of format-- it gamifies language learning, which can make it feel more accessible to people and makes people want to open it and practice every day. however, most people use duolingo to do one lesson once a day and that's it. they're not getting in practice from lessons previously completed, they're not drilling vocab or conjugations, they're not actually maintaining or even remembering what they've already learned. obviously there are people (like myself, when i still used the app) who practice far more than that and continue to drill previous lessons, but that's not the majority, and it's not incentivized by the app. the paywalling of completing certain lessons and being able to drill error words also sucks for this reason. basically duolingo is not an ideal setup for actually maintaining knowledge once you go through it the first time and also the way the courses are laid out just. does not, imo, actually make sense. they rarely actually explain what they're trying to teach you and they don't get into enough detail on most concepts. and there is no incentive to review, which is hugely important. not an ideal situation for language learning, especially on its own.

my pros for duolingo: it gets you to practice daily. this is honestly what i use busuu for at this point-- when i get a notif for it, i open it up and flick through a lesson, but i also pull out a textbook or two to look at things there and practice stuff. if whipping out duolingo every day helps you practice a language, that is, at bare minimum, something. preferably you should be studying for at least 15min if not up to an hour or more of a language a day in order to really pick things up and maintain them; you can absolutely use duolingo or busuu for that (busuu i think is far less well formatted and oftentimes the lessons are very specific vocab, at least in the later courses).

for busuu, my issues are like. it's a poorly made imitation of duolingo, aside from a few things. the community aspect is something i REALLY like-- being able to send an exercise to a native speaker and get feedback on what to work on is great, especially with how it's a short answer question that lets you form your own sentences and try out vocab in context. that's a wonderful feature, and i really think it gets at something duolingo is completely missing.

but yeah like i said in terms of the lessons, busuu has very strange ways of teaching things. firstly, it's usually super specific topics and vocab that aren't paired with anything conceptually that helps you progress. usually in a language course, it's best to pair a concept you're working on with either relevant vocab or something that can be used to talk about similar subjects/in similar ways (for instance, subjunctive with food/restaurant vocab, so that you can build sentences both with the new vocab and using the new verbal form in ways that make sense, i.e. "I'll have whatever she's having, If I were to order the pasta, I would get a salad too," "If I were richer, I would always order filet mignon" (side note subjunctive is very difficult for eng speakers so idk if these examples actually make sense 😭))

also busuu will repeatedly teach me something phrased one way or with a certain word and then mark me wrong and insist i use a completely different word/phrase. i cannot figure out why it keeps doing this it's very frustrating. and it has recently been teaching me some european portuguese which is not what the course is supposed to be so i'm just baffled by what's going on there.

another positive for busuu, at least in contrast to duolingo, is it teaches you the vocab and phrases before quizzing you on them, which duolingo does not do. this is like a positive and also an "eh, idk" because i get why duolingo does that-- it's trying to throw you into using surrounding context to figure out what a word means, and that's a very good way to practice, but i think it doesn't necessarily achieve it well and sometimes will just spring random words on you without enough context for you to know what it's referring to without just clicking on the word anyway.

also neither app are good at teaching you verb conjugation or tenses which is really unfortunate for spanish and portuguese in particular, as they're both languages where verbs are really really key AND where understanding tenses and their names are important, particularly for native eng speakers who never got taught tense names or like. any terminology for languages in english 🙃

also here is a thing i wrote up complaining about duolingo & verbs ages ago: Duolingo does not teach you things explicitly. It expects you to pick them up in a semi-immersive style, which works okay most of the time for most people but for many people makes actually learning and understanding parts of a language very difficult. For instance, it won't teach you the exact difference in usage between ser and estar, in Spanish or Portuguese. This difference is something I spent weeks on in Spanish class in high school and continued to review the rest of my time learning Spanish in an academic setting-- it is a key element of two of the most important words in the language. Duolingo also doesn't explain stem changes or irregular verbs and their typical endings-- it simply expects you to pick these up and memorize them through sentence usage. Basically it's very obvious Duolingo was created by english speakers who were never taught key elements of their own language (this is not a dig on their personal fault; i was also never taught any of this shit about english) and don't know how to go about teaching a language, and the limited format doesn't help.

third thing, finally getting to what you actually asked: there are a lot of resources for learning spanish online! i'm not as familiar with them as i'd like, as i learned spanish in an academic setting, but i'll do my best to list some things out and anyone else can feel free to add on. i've been meaning to make a language learning advice post for literally ages and i guess this is going to become it lmao.

here is a video explaining how to make duolingo work for you along with other resources: A Linguist explains how to make duolingo actually work (tl;dr pair duolingo with conversation partners, textbook work, listening to music, watching movies, etc. etc.)

i've tagged this with my language learning tag, which has a bunch of resources including some specifically for learning spanish.

tumblr user salvador bonaparte has a drive of free textbooks you can check out here, including a ton of spanish resources. i also recommend looking around the internet/specifically linguistics tumblr to find more resources as well as looking at used bookstores/amazon/etc. for spanish textbooks to use, as that will provide a more thorough foundation along with other programs/types of learning.

i've never used babbel or any other online program like it, but spanish tends to be one of the more resource-heavy languages because it's so widely spoken, so typically spanish programs on various apps/sites are REALLY thorough (duolingo's spanish program is by far their best course, with a ton more resources than most other programs. you can go up to the equivalent of at least c2 on there i believe, versus many other languages where they don't even list the CEFR levels)

finally, the not-so-online answer: if you're in college/have a nearby community/junior college, consider taking spanish classes there! this option probably costs the most out of any others, but i genuinely think an academic setting is the a great way to learn a language for many people. if you're not one of them, that is totally fine, but an actual spanish course at a college is likely to be the most thorough way to learn the language. also many CCs/JCs offer spanish classes online, so if you can't drive or for whatever reason can't go to in-person courses, you'll likely still have options.

this is everything i can think of right now but i also want to add once again that learning a language is difficult!!! i know that, and i know that i complain a lot about monolinguals, but i am specifically complaining about people who refuse to engage respectfully with languages that are not their own and dismiss anything they don't understand as being stupid/not worth their time/culturally worthless. i am not complaining about people like you, who are trying really hard to engage with non-english content AND are trying really hard to learn another language.

i also think learning languages is one of the most incredible experiences there are and that expanding the kinds of cultural and social boundaries that you engage with is a really important facet of humanity that i wish more people would participate in. i get riled up because this is something i'm really truly passionate about, not because i think anyone is stupid or whatever for not learning. i want people to just try it and give it a chance, even if it's hard for them, and i'm glad that you are trying, anon. <333

[anelaxoxo]

Okay, genuinely ? Tumblr is the like best app/website literally ever. The way I'm constantly discovering new media and free resources on here is crazy. I mean just the other day i discovered the magnus archives podcast and I've been obsessed ever since. I deadass finished like a whole season in less than a week.

Not to mention the pdfs, articles, poetry, language learning resources, book recommendations AND TEXTBOOK LINKS ??!! ALL FOR FREE !!!

Yeah just wanted to say Tumblr is the superior app idc.

[renegade-hierophant]

A table of beginner Ancient Greek courses with chapters collated for parallel study: link to Google Spreadsheet.

[soshadysoquiet]

Five sucks at Math - A Headcanon

This is a personal fav of mine, not necessarily one I think is real in the show, but that I find endlessly funny for an AU and will now provide evidence for.

Sometimes it seems Reggie didn't give Five the same 'break em down' treatment as obviously as he did the others, but boy do we know Five was a frustrated child, so:

Reggie forced this lil toddler to believe his powers were equation-based, meanwhile Five had just Wanted to be in the pantry, what do you mean he needs to do numbers?

As soon as Reggie knows Five is bad at maths, he doubles down - this is why the boy has limitations on his powers that the others don't, Reggie needs to form him into the Correct way of using them.

Five is, of course, useless at maths to the point of near numerical illiteracy initially, not that he Can't learn how to do them with endless repetition and practice, but it does not come naturally, requires a lot of mental energy, and leaves Five extra exhausted and frustrated that he needs to do all this work and One just punches stuff and Two is allowed to work it out from just throwing things not calculate angles (Reggie tried, but we all know he had Zero time for Diego)

That won't stop him from being conceited and prideful: after all the others aren't even doing this kind of math and also it's a defence mechanism.

"Evidence" in the show:

Five can only do so many jumps, and they're very costly to him. The mental strain from calculating even remembered equations on the fly or accidentally slipping and jumping without thinking keeps him tied down.

His jumping is fairly predictable - Lila figures him out in no time, possibly because it was quicker and more strategic for Five to memorise a few set equations than come up with any math on the fly.

He does jump quickly - at what point do we ever see him pause to work out how to avoid being caught in a wall? He automatically jumps away from threat or being thrown (thank you Luther). That speaks to me that it's at least in part instinctual, he defo wasn't doing equations as a bub either.

The most brilliant use of powers Does come at a moment: When he jumps forward at 13, he looks to have no plan for a set destination and just channels his pent up anger and goes. When he rewinds time, he doesn't have time to write on the walls or a book (how we've seen him calculate complex mathematics before) he just needs it and he does it.

Five does not manage to come back from the Apocalypse via maths - now don't get me wrong, It's more complicated than anything I could comprehend and that's very validly the show's reason why. But in the books he Does make it - this Five is bad at math, and he spent horrible years in the apocalypse trying to calculate something he couldn't whilst he was starving and not understanding it.

Why was he forcing himself to find a way out by math if his powers were instinctual? Five says it himself "I told you" he hears in his head every day out there - being frivolous got him stuck, now he needs to follow the rules to get out.

When Five does work it out, he gets it wrong - makes a typo, after having that moment of inspiration. (Again, very valid for Big Complicated Math but stay on this journey with me)

We see him rewind time once, did he stop after this because his abusive childhood training taught him 'shit now I need to work out the numbers before I can do that again don't fuck it up'

Five doing math looks absolutely chaotic (again, many, many reasons for this obvs but lets look at this one) his probability walls produce names out of thin air - where'd you get the names from Five? The phone book? Did the numbers spell that out for you after you'd stared at them long enough? Did you pick some arbitrary people living in the city and work backwards? Complex math yes, but also a brain not wired to do them struggling so desperately to make the numbers make sense. They're meant to make sense. They have to make sense. I wouldn't be in this mess if I had made them make sense the first time-

Five has some little tricks with his powers - swapping a gun with a stapler. That we see him use all of once despite how much of a power move that could be (Viktor's violin? Here's the baguette Klaus was eating) I like to think of this as he found this power instinctually, showed Reginald who Ruined It With Math, and again learned one single practical combat equation that was drilled into him and it was so heinous that he never wanted to play around with more.

SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4.... Five has a doctorate of philosophy on his wall, not a doctorate for math. Powers gone? Awful. No more math? Guess there's the silver lining everyone always talks about.

Anyway, this is just a fun uno reverse that I wanted to write a story about but could never find the full picture for, so here it is.

I liked the idea of in a world with the apocalypse diverted his siblings start to notice Five's struggles with math and gently start helping to re wire that part of his brain that Five didn't have the experience to notice was all Reggie's bullshit.

[littlefankingdom]

Everyone always talks about Bruce's short time in med school, but nobody ever talks about when he went to law school, aka when he tortured all of Gotham U with Brucie Wayne.

Bruce needed to study law, criminology, forensics, psychology, sociology, penology, to improve Gotham, so he enrolled in Gotham U again. However, he was going to play the role of the annoying rich brat, aka introducing Brucie Wayne to the world. HE PAID PEOPLE TO BE HIS FRIENDS. They tried to expel him, he just paid the administration to keep him. But also, he would disguise himself to ask questions to the teachers. And illegally enter the building to go through his professors' belongings to learn more advanced stuffs... You know he showed up "drunk" or "hangover" to class and was loud af about it.

100% Bruce has a degree in law because of his time there, but he bought it (and everyone know he bought it) instead of actually earning it, which he was 100% capable of. (Gotham is corrupted af, he can easily do that)

Yeah, he is the worst thing that ever happened to Gotham U and everyone hates him there. (Yes, worse than criminals. Every college has a couple of graduates that commit crimes later on. How many of them have a rich brat bringing a LAND PHONE, because Bruce was in college before mobile phones existed, so he can loudly gossip on the phone during class, and cannot be expelled because he is the one founding the new library???)

Also, funny to imagine this is when he met Harvey and, for some reason, he was his only real friend. (Maybe they had to work together on a project, and Bruce felt too bad about ruining someone else grade by being a dick, so he did show up to work with Harvey. And even tho he did his best to keep the mask on while not ruining Harvey's grade, he let out how much he actually cares about Gotham and wants to improve it. They bonded over that and now, Harvey is the only one to know that Bruce Wayne isn't a rich brat, but someone who cares about others.)

Btw, him saying that "It wouldn't have done for playboy Bruce Wayne to criticize the entire penology system" means that Bruce disagrees with the penology system in the USA, which is a punitive system, and also the death penalty, as penology modern studies are against it for being immoral and unethical. His education in the subject means that Bruce could actually use researches and works to explain why he is against killing, and I think it would be so funny to have him quoting Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu to Jason.

[snuffalufagus]

(flirting) do you want to get together some time and explore my language textbooks pdf collection 😏

[mantisgodsdomain]

More notes for Roach conlanging. Roach has grammatical gender, in which only Male, Female, and Object are grammatical genders, whereas Worker uses feminine grammar, Queen and King use a slight variant on feminine grammar, and Drone, and Queen-Alate use masculine grammar. This is because King is derived from Queen, due to their similar positions in a colony, and Queen-Alate is derived from Drone, as both are forms of alate.

Queen is an alteration of feminine grammar that functionally just adds a handful of extra syllables to it, and King is an offsprout of Queen that uses the same grammar with different pronouns. Queen-Alate, despite the name, is derived from Drone, as they are both for referring to different types of alate ant.

Most Roach dialects are intelligible to speakers of Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach, but Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach is not entirely intelligable to speakers of Roach dialects due to a mix of the excessively specialized vocabulary caused by the specific needs of its speakers, the fact that its speakers do not necessarily have Roach mouthparts and thus may not pronounce syllables in a similar way, and due to the fact that Inanimate Object is a full grammatical gender that does not exist in any other dialect of roach and replaces a decent chunk of terminology for things that previously had Other Words For Them.

[duncebento]

i need a bigggggg class on rhetoric because the 161 people who liked this, if they are not deliberately being hateful, are immensely stupid. “have self awareness,” “humans will be humans,” “i love everything you encompass,” “this is not freedom” whole time it’s a fundamentally reactionary comment chiding a fashion influencer for being too fat. and this is shawty btw; her style is on the classical end, definitely nothing nearly so crazy as the street fashion other (skinny!) influencers are wearing just fine

[maziijapanese]

Tips to maintain motivation to learn Japanese everyday

Many learners, including yourself, start with ambitious goals and a strong desire to conquer Japanese. But after just a short time studying, motivation can vanish. This is because motivation requires understanding how to create and maintain it.

The first step is to eliminate negative beliefs about Japanese and believe in yourself. Don't get discouraged by misconceptions like needing talent or perfect pronunciation. Perseverance is key, and native speakers have dialects too! More importantly, you don't need to know every word. To understand most conversations, aim for 1,200-2,000 vocabulary words, focusing on commonly used ones first.

Setting specific, achievable goals is crucial. Why are you learning Japanese? Travel, work, or studying abroad? Take online level tests to gauge your current ability. With a clear understanding of your goals and current level, set achievable targets.

Daily progress tracking is a powerful tool. List daily tasks, break them down, and define what "complete" looks like for each step. Track your progress and avoid comparing yourself to others. Focus on being better than you were yesterday – that's success!

Minimize distractions while studying. Games, movies, and anything else that pulls your focus needs to wait. Here's a focus technique to maximize effectiveness: choose a task, set a timer for 30 minutes, and concentrate intensely. After the timer goes off, take a 5-minute break. Repeat this cycle until the task is finished.

Remember, learning goes hand-in-hand with practice. The more you practice, the better you'll become. This fuels motivation by showing your progress. When learning vocabulary, don't just memorize – say the word aloud, build sentences with it, and try using it in daily conversations. Practice turns theory into real knowledge.

This website can also be a great tool to help you learn Japanese, check it out: https://bom.so/wlAF7y

[skystudentartistblogs]

Ways to be Productive after School.

1. Take a break & relax about 40 mins or so.

2. Have a To-do list so that you don't have a excuse to procrastinate and get straight into studying.

3. Listen to music (especially, white noise or lofi beats) while studying which does not have lyrics so that it would not distract you.

4. Start off with the easiest subject so that it will build momentum and you could keep going.

5. If any of these are not working right now then you should watch study with me videos so that you have an online buddy to study with.

6. Get inspiration to study on Instagram or Pinterest, whenever you will see something inspiring about studies you will be down to do it.

7. Set rewards for yourself. When you know that after studying a particular topic, you will be rewarded then you are more interested to do it.

8. Don't have a start time instead have a end time, this is called the Parkinson’s law where you give yourself a deadline.

[nyaa]

[languagelvlup]

anyone have recommendations for anime or j-dramas in an office setting that use a lot of keigo and professional japanese?

i got a new job (my first job in japan that isn't teaching english!) and i need to brush up on my formal speech.