#learning languages

[bookwyrminspiration]

constantly torn between "i wish I could magically learn this language immediately and speak it perfectly" and "part of language acquisition is the process, and learning it immediately wouldn't have as much meaning or significance to me"

[oediex]

(Languages taken from the top 10 foreign languages learned on Duolingo in 2024.)

I would like to bring your attention to two fundraisers that are near and dear to my heart.

@elhamhamdan-gaza is a young woman trying to survive in Gaza with her family. She was a top student at university until October 2023, when she and her family were displaced from their home in Khan Younis and forced to flee to Rafah. After the invasion in Rafah, they returned to their home in Khan Younis only to find it burned. They had no choice but to live in it. Elham and her family desperately need funds for blankets and clothes, because winter is here and nights in Gaza are very cold right now.

Elham's campaign is very low on funds! So far they have only been able to raise £594 and they desperately need more support. Please donate to them if you are able, and share this post and campaign with as many people as you can.

This campaign was verified by the Butterfly Effect Project (instagram) and is number 1180 on their spreadsheet, which you can access through the link on their instagram profile.

You can contribute to Elham's campaign by clicking on the link below:

Secondly, @drdarine is a young woman who is a medical student in Gaza. Despite being displaced and suffering hardships we can only imagine, Darine is continuing her studies and helping out others in the refugee camps and shelters in southern Gaza. Her family consists of seven people, one of them being my friend @dawoudi who is selflessly and unfailingly helping many other families in Gaza by verifying their fundraisers and promoting them on Tumblr. Everyday I see more campaigns added that he has verified, providing an important service to the many families in Gaza that need our help.

Darine's family has been fundraising since February, which is almost ten months! Despite that, they have only been able to raise $5,765, 19% of their goal. Progress on their campaign is extremely slow, often needing to wait multiple days for another donation to come in. We can do better than that.

This campaign was vetted by @gazavetters, and is number 15 on their spreadsheet, which you can find in the pinned post on their profile.

You can contribute to Darine's campaign by clicking on the link below:

Please support these fundraisers! Thank you!

Tagging for reach, let me know if you want me not to tag you in the future

@commissions4aid-international @funds4gaza @a-shade-of-blue @dlxxv-vetted-donations @kyra45-helping-others

@northgazaupdates2 @bilal-salah0 @imjustheretotrytohelp @devilofthepit @ankle-beez

@lukewarm-lesbian @wellwaterhysteria @appsa @qattdraws @laughteronsilverwings

@felixander-official @nabulsi @mukkie @oursapphirestars @fruitwoodmac

@comrademango @sunflowersmoths @mindchalice @battleteacake @girlinafairytale

[linghxr]

10 movies I watched in Chinese class

This post is the unofficial sequel to 10 iconic Mandopop songs from Chinese class. No one asked for it, but I watched to chronicle what I could remember before more fades from my memory! I saw these movies in Chinese class in high school and college, and I had to do some sleuthing to find some names.

The synopses are from IMDb, revised by me. I put links to watch for free on YouTube when I was able to find one, but they might not work in your country.

1. 《和你在一起》 Together (2002) A violin prodigy and his father travel to Beijing, where the father seeks the means to his son's success while the son struggles to accept the path laid before him.

Watch on YouTube

2. 《谁的青春不迷茫》 Yesterday Once More (2016) Lin Tianjiao, the top student in her class, is struggling to cope under intense academic pressure. After she is nearly caught cheating on a test, she befriends Gao Xiang, a free-spirited slacker.

Watch on YouTube

3. 《活着》 To Live (1994) Based on the novel by Yu Hua, four generations of the once-wealthy Xu family experience the difficult changes of the Chinese Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.

Watch on YouTube

4. 《喜宴》 The Wedding Banquet (1993) To satisfy his parents, Gao Wai-Tung, a gay man in a fulfilling relationship with his partner Simon, marries his female tenant Wei-Wei. Things get out of hand when his parents come to visit.

5. 《饮食男女》 Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) A widowed chef lives with his three grown daughters, who each experience ups and downs in their lives and romantic relationships as they leave the family home.

Watch on YouTube

6. 《哑孩儿》 Dumb Child* (2016) After graduating from college, Fang Yan takes a job as a teacher in a rural area of China. There she meets a young girl named Yaya who doesn't attend school due to her hearing impairment.

Watch on YouTube

*Dumb as in mute. It's not a great English name...

7. 《重返20岁》 20 Once Again/Miss Granny (2015) A 70-year old woman living unhappily with her son's family is magically transformed into her 20-year-old self. She befriends her grandson and decides to fulfill the dreams of her youth.

Watch on YouTube

8. 《北京爱情故事》 Beijing Love Story (2014) Different generations look at love, romance, and commitment, all from a uniquely Beijing perspective. All 5 couples and stories are intertwined a la Love Actually.

9. 《蓝风筝》 The Blue Kite (1993) The lives of a Beijing family throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as they experience the impact of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.

Watch on YouTube

10. 《青春派》 Young Style (2013) Struggling with romantic woes after his plan to confess to his crush goes awry, Ju Ran fails the college entrance exam (gaokao) and is forced to repeat his last year of high school.

Watch on YouTube

[stepstofluency]

MY FAV FRENCH RESOURCES 🇫🇷💌

this my recent post on my studygram and I wanted to post it on here 🧸

follow my studygram for more: @stepstofluency

[nepenthesia]

learning new languages is so fun, but also hard at some points. i have a 460 days streak on duolingo but it’s not enough, do you have tips for learning languages ?

[miltsuuna]

Serious question: how do we read books in our target languages?

Like, does anyone have a strategy?

Do you guys only consume stories you're already familiar with or does it matter to you?

[atlasmountaingirl]

LGBTQ+ TV-SHOWS UPDATE 🌈

Last month I explained how my friend needs feedback for his website Lingopie where you can learn a language watching movies and tv-shows with dual subtitles and effective tools to progress super, super quick! Here is how it works by the way:

I did a poll asking if people would be interested in them obtaining licensing for LGBTQ+ tv-shows and movies…but the problem was that they have limited funds…

98% or so of you were in favor of them adding LGBTQ shows to their learning platform. I passed on all your replies and he was thrilled to see so many of you willing to help. He's been working hard these past couple weeks on adding LGBTQ+ tv-shows in a variety of languages so I am excited to announce you can now learn the following languages in gay!

Japanese 🇯🇵, Korean 🇰🇷, Spanish 🇪🇸, French 🇫🇷, German 🇩🇪, Italian 🇮🇹, Portuguese 🇵🇹 and English 🇺🇸

Video streaming takes a lot of data, so usually there is no free trial but as a thank you, he wants to invite you to test Lingopie 7-days for free and get a big discount when you sign up! This offer is only available for a limited time.

Hope you have fun learning a new language and acing those exams if you have any!

Click here to try it out! ✨

[oshistudy]

tip for improving japanese reading speed!

how about you try some カラオケ???

i've been doing this for a couple years now and i think this has single-handedly made my reading speed in japanese improve to the point of almost being as fast as it is in english (although i still struggle with kanji and katakana sometimes x_x)

to find one, i usually just search on youtube (song name) followed by either カラオケ or ニコカラ. if nobody has made a karaoke for your song of choice, then i'd otherwise search up (song name) followed by 歌詞 (kashi/lyrics) and you'll usually find them that way. i like to use the site utaten.com because they all feature furigana! be a little careful though because while its only happened to me a couple of times, there's been times where the furigana is wrong for one or two words.

i think this is a really fun way to practice especially if you love singing, like i do!! i've never seen anyone else recommend this so i hope this helps

[mrmanbat]

As a child who moved around a lot and learned English as her 4th(?) language I feel like commenting on Dicks experience.

Children pick up on language quickly so it really wouldn’t be difficult for him. Just really annoying.

I like to think that Bruce would bombard him with those textbooks for kids half his age in attempt to get him up to speed with his peers. He probably also had those special ed teachers that would take him out of class once or twice a week to read some dumbass book.

This naturally caused him to hate reading English with a passion. It’s not so much the language barrier with kids his age but the way the adults around him act,

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[todayontumblr]

Wednesday, September 27.

Langblr.

If ever you're in France, accompanied by your kitty cat, and you find yourself unintentionally (and quite unexpectedly) projecting intestinal gas produced within the body by bacteria that has broken down food, and said kitty cat looks a little alarmed, and you don't know what to say, well. Fortune smiles upon you this day. Consider #langblr your knight in shining linguistic armor. Chat, j'ai pété.

It really can happen to anyone. But langblr is here for all your polyglot needs: learning how to say chai tea in Czech, the frankly adorable etymology of peninsula, Greek paleographic fonts, for words of support for those underway with their language-learning adventures, or if you're in need of some support yourself. It is a particularly wholesome corner of Tumblr, for those with an interest in the slow-burn magic of learning another language. 

[oediex]

I love learning new alphabets and I've been thinking about how my name would be written in the two languages I'm learning that don't use a Latin alphabet.

I think in Korean it would be:

우디 or 욷이 (I don't really know if there is a difference in pronunciation between these two)

And I think in Arabic it would be:

ودي

If you know either of these languages, I would love to know if I've guessed right? The pronunciation of my name rhymes with the English "goodie".

[linghxr]

I bought a bluetooth keyboard in Taiwan and thought it was so fascinating how it's labelled for 4 different input methods. It's a very cool and unique souvenir!

Obviously there's the Latin alphabet (QWERTY) in the top left, zhuyin fuhao/bopomofo in the top right, and I figured one of the bottom ones was Cangjie. What the fourth could be was a mystery to me.

After some quick searching, I learned that Cangjie is in the bottom left, and the bottom right is the Dayi input method, which I've never even heard of. Here is a better look.

So far I have only used this keyboard to type in English or Chinese with the pinyin input method, but I’ll have to experiment with one of the other ones sometime—probably bopomofo since I am more familiar with it.

Out of curiosity, I looked up what a Taiwanese MacBook keyboard looks like, and it only has the Latin alphabet and zhuyin. So the 4-in-1 style isn't universal it seems.

[stepstofluency]

Autumn is my favorite season 🍂

Follow my studygram for more: @stepstofluency

[strawberrus0da]

Learning another language is funny bc someone will say something like “sien” and you’re like what word is this. what secrets are you withholding from me. share with me your forbidden knowledge and they just misspelled sein