Languages and Linguistics | Polyglots, Language Learners and Linguists!
- LangCorrect | Free online site to practice your target languagelangcorrect.com LangCorrect
Master grammar, spelling, and syntax in the language(s) you’re learning through direct feedback on your writing from fluent, native speakers.
I've used this a use times and it's fairly good. I recommend it.
- How I Passed the Demanding, 5-Part, 5 1/2 Hour, Oral, Paper and Pen, Highest Level (C2), Italian Language Exam
Here’s the story of how and why I took this language test. I wrote this for friends and family, but others have read it as well. After putting all of this together, I myself am amazed at how long and hard I worked on this. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but when I wrote it all down, it turned out to be quite a lot.
- Rendering Tr as Chr ?
Huh! In my speech, the Tr in "tree" or "trigger" is really close to Chr as in "chree". In fact to pronounce "chree" I have to aspirate so hard to distinguish it from /tr/.
Is this common? [ˈt͡ʃɹi:] instead of [ˈtɹi:]? Why does this happen? Is there something about going from a plosive to an approximant that creates an affricate?
- What language is graffiti written in?
I'm not sure if this is something you guys can or want to help with. The bathroom at my current job is completely free of graffiti except for the words "itik nuliak" written very clearly in Sharpie. It's not a language local to where I live and putting it in Google translate doesn't do anything. It's been bothering me.
- Linguists have identified a new English dialect that's emerging in South Floridatheconversation.com Linguists have identified a new English dialect that's emerging in South Florida
It came about through sustained contact with native Spanish speakers who directly translated phrases from Spanish into English, a form of linguistic borrowing called ‘calques.’
- Does anybody use "a scissors"?
I was watching an episode of Monk (S03E12), and in the first few minutes, the detective asks his assistant "Do you have a pliers?" That immediately struck me as weird, but later, towards the end of the episode, he makes the comment "This was cut with a scissors." The only place I've ever seen 'a scissors' was in old Peanuts cartoons, and I've never ever heard 'a pliers', but I guess it could make sense in a way.
I grew up saying a pair of scissors or pliers, which is weird in its own way, since it's a single object. I'm just wondering if anyone else has ever heard these terms.
- What was the first language you got interested in and why?
For me it was Hebrew and it's cool writing system, then ithkuil and how alien it seems. It lead me down a deep rabbithole to where i now make writing systems.
- Why do words in reverse sound weird
By words in reverse, I actually mean the entire word reverse pronounced and not just the letters rearranged. Best example is when you reverse a video, pronunciation of every letter in every word reverses.
Is it because instead of blowing out the air, we're breathing in? Are there any papers related to it? I'm interested to read
- Mutual intelligibility between romance languages
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
Nothing rigorous or scientific, but an interesting test of mutual intelligibility between romance languages, considering Romanian has evolved separately from the other major and minor languages/dialects of southern and eastern Europe. I like that Iulian, the conductor of the experiment, chose mostly non-cognate words to make the game non trivial (except for the "greier"/"grillo" pair) and some of them had slavic origin (e.g. "mândrie" coming from old slavic "mondrŭ") which would have been unintelligible for the average Italian speaker.
- Sites and books I've used for learning the Maya Hieroglyphics
For me personally, the Mayan script is by far the most beautiful scripts on the face of the Earth. How it is writ is just so fascinating. However, unfortunately, I started finding more about it late in life after my mind began slowing down. So, unfortunately, I have not been able to retain a lot of the information. Oh well.
http://www.famsi.org/ This is one site that I frequented a lot in the middle phase. Even tried my hand at learning Yucatec (which is quite different from Tzotzil, which I know the most).
In the early days, http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/med/, this site was the only one I knew of, and had spent a lot of time here.
Later (relatively recently) I began using the books "The New Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphics Vols I & II".
Now, again, I got old (too fast), and the mind wasn't too keen on learning new tricks. So I decided, just for fun, I'd learn to write Tzotzil with the letters. Which, as any who have studied the Maya scripts would know, that wouldn't exactly be a simple task.
The majority of known written words were in Ch'ol and Yucatec. Ch'ol is fairly similar to Tzotzil in many ways, but one thing I have had an issue with, is discerning which characters were used for which prefixes/suffixes in Ch'ol verses Yucatec. Then there are word parts that are not exactly the same as in Yucatec.
Tzotzil ch- is 'ta + x'. Not hard to do in certain circumstances, ta+xi, ta+xa. Simple, easy, can do. However, dealing with ta+x, on the other hand, not so easy. I have not been too fortunate to figure out that one. So what I did, then, is I use the letter for "yax" for the "x" sound.
Another one, is Tzotzil has 's' for the 3rd person, whereas Yucatec uses 'u'. Again, not that difficult, just equate 'u' as 's'. So, I could, in theory (again, just for fun, not to be correct), I could spell a word such as chk'opoj as "ta+yax+[u]+k'o+po+[ho/hi]" (brackets don't necessarily need to be spelled. One of the very fascinating things of the Maya scripts, for me anyway).
And I lost my train of thought.
Just a final summary.
There is a lot that I just don't know, and there is a lot that I will never be able to retain the information for, but I still play around with this idea. I do know I'd have to change some letters' sounds (which is not necessarily un-Mayan). As well as I would have to create new rules (hopefully, fingers crossed, I could find and remember the information for those rules that might be useful and correct enough) in order to make this possible.
Don't know if I'll ever succeed, but no harm in trying, I think, 😅 .
https://imgur.com/a/tq4OaMM Second experiment (Before I realized ta+x = ch).
https://imgur.com/a/npy2Qaw Third experiment.
https://i.imgur.com/Wpvxkqy.jpg "I'm not afraid of not ghosts", "Mu-xixi' ta-ch'ule[lal]" (Characters in the brackets aren't spelled). These, I believe, are pretty decently spelled.
Unfortunately, my mind is not too great, but hopefully someone finds this interesting. 😇
- Hia gayo tsalagi gawonihisdi. (Here's a little bit of Cherokee)
Trying to force my mind to think on something (health issues making brain a wee wonky).
Anyhoo, here's some links to things I've done a long time ago when my mind was more capable.
Some basic grammar.
https://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?t=28886
A Cherokee Phoenix article with literal translations below the translation of each paragraph.
https://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?f=122&t=32262
(And oooooof! Lemmy does that blasted double space for a newline. God I hate that).
Hilvsgi dikahnesdi gvhdi tsalagi. Here's a few words using Cherokee.
gayo, gayotli : A small amount. A little bit. Formed from the word[s], ahyotli, diniyotli (Child, children).
gayo tsalagi tsiwonisgi. I speak a little Cherokee.
Tsalagihas gohlga? Does he understand Cherokee? Gayotligwu. Just a bit.
usdi; tsunsdi : Little, small, baby (human); Little living things, babies.
usdi asgay tsigohti. I see a little man.
usdi tsigohti. I see a little one. I see a baby.
ada, anida : Young animal
anida gitli gatsigohti. I see puppies.
ada ada ada. Wood just said a baby animal. (Trust me when I say I'd have a hell of a time trying to pronounce this, regardless how much I know, but it does crack me up every time I think about it, heh).
Welp, that's a very very small set of words...But meh, I did something, 😄
- toki pona li pona tawa mi
What do y'all think of conlangs? Anyone here know toki pona? I personally speak it, and am wondering.
- A minimalistic spaced-repetion vocabulary trainer (flashcards) for the terminal
I wrote this a while back, it's a probably a niche tool for people who like to stay in the terminal, load their own data from simple tsv files, and still learn vocabulary.
- What languages do you speak? What languages are you learning?
Let's answer this simple question just to get this community started!
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