#I think I'm decent at Mandarin pronunciation!

[cutflower-sound-podfic]

My chosen example word is "dizi" -- a type of Chinese flute. In English, the obvious pronunciation is "dee-zee." In Chinese, it's something like "dee-z'h," the second "i" muted in a sound English speakers don't typically make. Which is better: to be accurate, despite the English words on either side? Or be inaccurate, but potentially smoother to the ear?

#podfic #fanfiction #and because the relevant fandom is pretty obvious: #mdzs #this is sort of a hypothetical preemptive concern of mine for AFTER I finish Becoming Eden #but i think about it a lot #I think I'm decent at Mandarin pronunciation! #but a) I'm sure it's not perfect and b) I worry it would sound Weird to suddenly switch phonetics mid sentence for a single word #on principle I want to be accurate but maybe that's not the thing to do here #polls

[jeglaerenorsk]

Hey peeps ☺️ I want to hear your thoughts on LANGUAGES!

I really like Hebrew, Italian and Greek.

But none of them are useful for my day to day life or spare time. So I want advice.

I am pregnant, I know some Swedish, Danish and Arabic(only oral Arabic), when I started this blog I was decent level of travel Spanish and could read news in Spanish.

I have family who speak French and Spanish but together we speak Norwegian & English.

Quite a few of my friends do speak Arabic so the baby will definitely hear Arabic a lot but also Arabic mixed with different languages.

English baby will learn naturally at school and just life. Norwegian too. We learn a third language when we are 13 and can pick between Spanish, French and German (and some schools have more languages too to pick from).

But I'm thinking I want to give my baby best possible beginning of language learning. I have been raised around languages from all over world and even though I don't speak many languages fluent, I understand many words from many different languages and it has meant a lot.

French is smart language to pick but I personally struggle so much with pronunciation and I'm the opposite of a Francophone 😅 and people I know who speak it are often very arrogant, that they are better because they know French which I don't like. But it gives many school and work opportunities and can be good for travel too, especially Africa and France.

Spanish, this will be easy for me to atleast participate in teaching. But I only have family who I see maybe 4 times a year that speaks it around me. And traveling to South America is not very likely financially for me with the baby so then it means Spain and I don't know if it's worth it... I don't see it as a language in my country that will help my baby for work or education. Only for entertainment and vacation.

Then it's Arabic, I think I definitely will teach my baby it because it's good to know when spoken, only risk is of course understanding when someone talks bad. It can be good for work and daily life because baby will know many who speak it and in most of Europe you will now be able to find someone who speaks it if you are lost.

Chinese (mandarin). If I'm thinking of the future then of course I believe Chinese is maybe smartest language to learn. But I don't have friends or someone close from China. And I'm not very into their cuisine. It's a very different culture from mine and way of thinking but again, China is the future, it will prepare my baby for the future to learn their culture and language. On the other hand, I will not have money to go to China and I don't know anyone who could help to practice the language.

Russian is also a language I like and internationally and some part of the country it's useful. But not for education. And it's difficult to find people where we live, to practice with because it's not practical where we live. And it's not likely to travel much there either.

I want my baby to learn another way to read and write other than the Latin scripture. But Greek and Hebrew are not useful for work (like of course it depends what kind of work but if it's about the future and not history then I believe it's not useful)-but I do enjoy music from there and enjoy listening to their language. Italian is good for travel and Greek is good for travel, but again, it's only in their respective countries its spoken, it doesn't create many opportunities 😓. So I want help and advice.

#Help #lang #language learning #arabic language #english language #languages #language #Spanish #French #hebrew #arabic langblr #langblr norsk #langblr #langbr #langblog #Swedish #chinese #Mandarin #russian #Greek #Arabic #Italian