#and Latin vocabulary and I think you could need this

[save-the-villainous-cat]

Studying biology is so fun. Like, no sarcasm, it’s just fun because Zoology includes anatomy and medicine and now I have to study bones and the nervous system and just the whole human body.

And like…this knowledge is so good for writing whump -.-

Also having a mom who’s a doctor is good for writing whump.

#I was calling my mom earlier today and she was like oh yeah I have a book for med students about Latin phrases #and Latin vocabulary and I think you could need this #and because youre very good with languages #and I was like ehhh I am not that good #and she was like yes you are that good #and honestly I almost cried -.- #no writing #getting validation from your parents just hits different #dumbass evolutionary trait

[ruggiezz]

— LATINO HEADCANONS : twisted wonderland

[synopsis] twst characters as latinos and things they do as your boyfriend

[characters] ruggie, azul, jade, floyd

[disclaimer] these are NOT meant to be taken as canon, it's just me having fun with characters i hc as latinos (as a latino that lives in south america)

★ RUGGIE BUCCHI (brazilian)

Enjoyed carnavais (carnavals) a lot as a child. It was the highlight of his month, happening every february. He would watch the carnaval every year with the other kids from his neighborhood. Now that he's studying at NRC and he doesn't have the chance to, he just watches through his phone when the season arrives.

Asks you to watch football matches with him. He says he doesn't care much about the result but then you'll find him frowning (if Brazil loses which doesn't happen a lot) while doing Leona's chores. Will also scream when his country scores a goal.

Wears shoes inside the house. Almost all latin american countries (if not all) wear shoes inside the house and it's considered impolite not to, so he probably does, so you'll have to tell him to take them off. Will look at you confused but will comply.

Had one Ronaldinho shirt that was gifted to him when he was younger. It no longer fits him, so he gifted it to another kid from his neighborhood that really likes football. If you enjoy watching football with him he would save money and gift you a shirt from your favorite brasilian player (because it would be very awkward if you were wearing a shirt from the opposite team). It just fills him with pride for his country.

Shares "pé de moleque" or "cocada" with you he made because he missed eating it. Will also be very proud of himself if you enjoy it, but if not, he could always cook another brasilian dessert.

★ AZUL ASHENGROTTO (chilean)

Was born in the Pacific ocean, near the part that Chile and Peru share, in the chilean part. Is used to earthquakes and is scarily calm during them, even when he is in land he just doesn't care about them.

"HOUSEWARDEN AZUL I THINK THERE'S AN EARTHQUAKE WE NEED TO GO TO SAFETY"

"Let me finish my paperwork first, it'll just take 5 minutes"

When he was a kid, the tweels used to say they didn't understand his spanish as a joke-that's-not-a-joke-but-it-is because chileans tend to use "wea" (thing) a lot on their vocabulary. He also speaks very fast in spanish, something that the tweels are used to.

Doesn't care about football, but does care when his team is against Peru because the tweels will force him to watch only to get scarily silent when Chile scores a goal.

"GOOOOL CHILENO" (GOAL FROM THE CHILEANS) and then the tweels both look at Azul in silence. And they stare. And Azul starts sweating.

Watched 31 minutos as a kid and is eager, but he will not admit it, to show it to you too. He will try his best to translate, bare with him, it's not his fault it doesn't have english subtitles. His favorite was Tulio, because the man was just trying not to go broke.

Fights with the tweels over food. The endless "is this peruvian or chilean food" debate. Expects you to take his side, take his side, please, he's your boyfriend.

His favorite food is pastel de choclo.

★ JADE LEECH (peruvian)

Was born in the Pacific ocean too, the peruvian part. His spanish borders more the "neutral" spanish, since he doesn't use much peruvian slang, but a few words do slip sometimes, when he's with Floyd.

Like other peruvians, he's very passionate about peruvian food, and he claims Peru has the best food ever. If you don't agree he will smile menacignly and stare at you.

Listens to cumbia while cleaning Mostro Lounge during closing shift. But he listens to the ones that are about heartbreak and tragic stuff so he can clean dramatically. Will show you a lot of his favorite songs and maybe, even dedicate one to you.

Probably laughs at the memes Floyd sends him about the chaotic things that happen at Peru daily. Like that time Tasha from the backyardigans and Peppa pig fought in the middle of the street.

Got into a fight with Azul over including peruvian food and chilean food in Mostro Lounge, because they couldn't agree over who's country owned the food. At the end they just agreed to not include the food and left it at that because neither side wanted to agree the other was right.

Eats causa de pulpo (causa made of octopus) a lot. Probably his favorite peruvian dish. He will also introduce you to a lot of his gastronomy, it's really good, believe him.

★ FLOYD LEECH (peruvian)

Unlike Jade, his spanish has a LOT of peruvian slang. He also speaks fast, not as fast as Azul though.

Like the average peruvian teenager, he listens to "El faraón love shady: el Dios de la versatilidad", which is a popular peruvian singer that became popular because teenagers find him funny. He sent a lot of his music videos to the whatsapp group chat the three of them have, much to Azul's dismay.

"I AM HAPPY, YA ME SUPERÉ, YA NO ANDO MISIO COMO AYER" (i am happy, i outdid myself, i'm no longer broke like yesterday)

"Floyd please lower your voice, you are scaring the customers..."

He's constantly snacking with peruvian snacks he bought to bring to NRC so he wouldn't get hungry. Floyd spend his allowance in them so he has boxes full of them in his room.

Will confess to you with Azul (against his will) and Jade's (that agreed, amused) help. He will bring a speaker, a sign that has "Will you be my s/o" written with different colors, and a flower bouquet.

So expect to be getting ready to sleep at night in Ramshackle, when suddenly music starts blasting outside your window and you see this:

His favorite food is ceviche.

#ruggie bucchi x reader #azul ashengrotto x reader #jade leech x reader #floyd leech x reader #twisted wonderland headcanons #yeah i got carried away writing these #it was just so much fun #twisted wonderland x reader #ruggie x reader #azul x reader #floyd x reader #jade x reader #twisted wonderland #twst fluff

[oliviax727]

I finally gotten to it, I am finally going to start learning a language (Spanish)

Wait, why should I care?

You don't need to care at all. I just want to keep a public record of my progress and see if I can pull off the effort for long enough to achieve my goals.

If you're not interested, there's no shame in scrolling past this post once a month. And dw, these posts will be at most monthly. So if you're here for something else, this won't clog things up.

If you're concerned about the physics, reminder this is my personal account, and there's another one exclusively for those who just want the science without the shitposting/personal/political stuff.

Though if you're like a linguist or something - or are interested in language stuff in general, I'm sure you can find some value in this post perhaps.

What language will it be?

tl;dr Spanish

Also I love putting all this colour in my post. It satisfies my autism so much.

Now, I've come from a very multilingual background. I learned mandarin between age 5 - 13, and latin in grades 7 thru 8.

Mandarin was a language I could never get the hang of.

It probably had to do with some child-like racism combined with a lack of motivation.

Buuuuut it most likely was a consequence of when I moved from Hong Kong to Australia, my new school did not accomodate the fact I was already experienced.

Nevertheless, I feel as if my Mandarin skills have been overshot, and I don't think I'd be motivated to re-learn it unless I overwhelmingly succeed in this.

Latin was just a dud - I decided to do it because I thought it would be interesting, but dropped it after I realised I had too much on my plate heading into 9th grade.

But Spanish on the other hand, well, there are three better reasons why I choose to learn it:

I never really got an opportunity. I stopped wanting to learn from my abuela when I was 3-5 yo, and my Australian high school also didn't offer it either (my high school's curriculum was dogshit)

A big portion of my relatives are tied to Argentina, with my mum being born from Argentine immigrants. She spent her high school years doing ESL as Spanish was her second language

Aspiring to do Astrophysics is likely going to land me in Chile, as the Andes is home to telescopes-a-plenty

I could've also gone with other languages I'm interested in, like:

German (because my abuela was born from German immigrants - no they were not Nazis, they actually fled in 1936 to avoid conscription)

Croatian (my abuelo was born in Yugoslavia and fled in the 1950s)

Greek (I don't know why it was my "latin is cool" phase, so I guess I wanted to do ancient greek but I don't know how much drift there has been over the last 2000 years thanks to the romans)

And thus I go with Spanish.

But what about regional dialects?

I am very aware that there are various dialects of Spanish within Latin America, and generally, most online methods of learning will teach you Spanish Spanish.

But I think it's more important to first learn a bit of basic vocab, and the grammar, before worrying about my regional dialect. I'm still pretty sure that the most common and important grammar conventions are still shared between languages.

And I already know that people will tell I'm a foreigner, because I'll have an "English"-like accent to it. Learning a specific dialect will only make it harder to tell, not eliminate being "language clocked" entirely.

So what's this going to look like?

Every month or two I'm going to personally report, to myself, via tumblr, my progress in learning. I'll list what I learned, what I still need to work on, and what I wish I could do next.

Effectively this is going to be a public journal of sorts, to make sure I feel like I'm doing this productively.

What's the weather like now?

Given that I've already attempted to learn Spanish twice previously, and being exposed to cultural influences, I already know a bit of Spanish.

Most of it is just random bits of vocabulary, that sound a lot less impressive if you were to try and make me say a sentence:

Custom greetings "Hola", "Buenos Noches"

Expletives "¡Ay caramba!"

The basic conjunction "y"

"Niño, niña, hombre"

Agua (with the "con gas" or "sin gas" tacked on too)

Counting from "uno" to "treinta-nueve"

Some month names like "Mayo" or "Diciembre"

Some colours like "Rojo"

Some utensils and tools like "Boligrafo"

Other stuff that I won't be able to recaly suddenly

And I mostly only understand the pronunciation, most of the spellings I had to look up on google translate. Extra I's like in December or thirty, or that there's no "ph" in pen.

There are other simple grammatical rules that I know of:

Gender i.e. words that end with a you tack on a "La" and for o's you tack on "El". More generally you have to pay attention to grammatical gender

As an educated guess from knowing a bit of Latin, I'm sure there are noun and verb declensions that interact with gender as well

Word order, much like English, is SVO

Clearly, I have my work cut out for me. But I also have a head start over a lot of people primarily because I have experience in other languages related to Spanish, which can help inform me on grammar and common vocabulary. I also have some (minor) knowledge in linguistics.

Another one is that I don't just assume that Spanish is a 1:1 translation of English, where you can just swap words for others. This seems like a trivial fact. But you'd be surprised at how much "English-speaking privilege" can blind people who don't require learning second languages.

It can be much more effective to learn a language when you know your expectations.

What are my Goals?

Well, in the spirit of a SMART goal, I don't really know. Because I don't actually know how long it will take me to get to a desired level of fluency.

Sometimes a language can take years to learn, sometimes it can be picked up in just one. And there are so many different "levels" of acheivement.

Which is why my goals in the long term will be more vapid:

At some point, I want to have a semi-fluent conversation with my abuela in Spanish

I want to be able to speak and understand a proper, unbroken sentence within a few months or a year

Now, what I mean by "Sentence" is really finicky. I don't mean "Las mujers leen; ¡Soy una de las mujers!" (see I'm already learning ha ha). I mean a sentence you'd normally say like:

"Hey X, I'm gonna go to the store, what do you need me to buy? Ok see you in half an hour."

That will be a bit difficult. It requires a lot more vocab to get to that level. But of course, I know it's do-able because millions of people have done it already!

What are my short-term goals? And how will I learn?

For the short term, my goals are a little more simpler. Primarily because there will always be a course or an app that will help me learn.

And for the first few months, my goals are most likely going to align with whatever the app has designed for me to do.

The problem is that I feel like most apps will act as if they can take you from no-knowledge to fluent speaker in like 5 months tops, which for an adult sounds a little fishy if you ask me.

When reading through the recommended applications, I came across two that were appealing:

Duolingo, which is more fast-paced and short-form. It gamifies language but may not be great for formal education

Rosetta Stone, which is advertised as better for natural language learning. And requires more effort.

I decided to use both, mainly because I'm lucky enough to afford it ... for now. I don't have much other means to spend my money regardless.

The reason I choose to use both is simply because I want the best of both worlds, and that I can't tell which one is better until I try it. Duolingo makes it entertaining, Rosetta Stone makes it serious. Sort of the balance I'm looking for.

At some point I hope to stop using at least one or the other. But for now I have nothing better to do.

Anyways, that's all I gotta say on the matter for now. Wish me luck!

#language #spanish #learning languages #learning spanish #l

[moonshinemagpie]

Days 5 and 6 of learning Spanish:

I'm so glad I chose Spanish (I was also considering Arabic or Hebrew—I have relatives who speak all of these languages) because I just found out my aunt, who only speaks Spanish, is making a surprise trip to the US soon. I haven't seen her in ten years except through Facetime and I want to surprise her by not needing my cousins to interpret for us

Randomly met two cool ladies from Honduras who want to learn more English and could potentially be conversational partners (I can't practice Spanish with my family or neighbors until I get better because they just laugh at me lollll 😅)

The above book came in the mail today

Have also been listening to spanishpod101.com podcasts and finding them pretty useful

Listened to Coffee Break Spanish podcast and found them okay but a little less useful (language teachers: repeat yourself more than you think you need to when you have novice students!)

Am so far crazy impressed with the free Destinos videos. Will review in more detail later

Also enjoying the free Dreaming Spanish videos

And really loving FluentU, which shows you real native material videos in your target language and teaches you the vocabulary in them

Overall the abundance of high-quality, engaging materials for learning Spanish is so neat to see compared to the materials used for learning Japanese lolllll

VERY glad I opted to not go the DuoLingo route after seeing a YouTube video of a woman with a 300-day DuoLingo Spanish streak, and literally all she was able to do was translate simple, boring sentences from English into Spanish. Like it doesn't seem like DuoLingo even tries to teach you to be able to do anything else? It seems like it has the rhetoric of a 1940s-style Latin classroom dressed up in a sleek app

My favorite Spanish phrase so far is "quèdate conmigo, amigo," which I heard the boy from Coco say to his dog 🥰

I feel like living in the US will be a richer, more connected experience if I can become a proper Spanish speaker, and it makes me so happy that I settled on focusing on Spanish

#spanish #language learning #langblr

[albeckett]

spanish, 2 months in

so i've been learning spanish for 2 months or so now 🥳 i know that i'm still in that honeymoon phase where im acquiring a lot at once and every small victory feels like a huge thing, but overall i'm really enjoying it. anyway, i wanted to write up a little post because i think in a few more months or years i'll be interested in seeing how i started learning, as well as what did or didn't work out for me.

fwiw, here's what i'm personally doing. everything is free btw:

daily flashcards - i'm using this anki deck for general vocabulary, and i also have a custom deck that i add slang or rare words to. i also plan to start this one to drill verb conjugations. this is probably the biggest time sink, i do it every day for ~25-30 mins.

grammar textbook - i print out and do the pages by hand. the only thing that sort of sucks is that i'm doing the exercises in order, and they introduce conjugations at like the midpoint, which probably could have helped me earlier on? fabulous book so far though! it's all in spanish, but the examples are very clear, and you pick up more vocab/sentence structure this way imo

language transfer spanish - i'm about 4/5 through this and definitely recommend it for general grammar/listening practice. it's not a traditional language course where you learn how to say "hello/goodbye/my name is" in the first lesson... it really guides you into naturally constructing language instead of just memorizing it and spitting it back out. there are a lot of little tricks you learn too, like how english can be "converted" into spanish using their shared latin roots, the host has a ton of linguistics knowledge so it's really rather fun!

audiovisual/written input - this is the part where i get to WATCH STUFF yay!!!! but then i actually have to pay attention to it, boo. i do actively learn from 31 minutos since i have dual subtitles, but otherwise i kinda just vibe and try to learn from anything i'm into that happens to be in spanish... so other shows and song lyrics, etc. im also verrrryyy slowlyyyy reading this introductory bilingual reader, and i try to pick up things from posts on spanish-speaking subreddits like r/mexico, r/argentina, r/chile, etc... i find reading contemporary posts online is a great way to pick up slang and usually if i find a word i don't know i'll put it in my custom anki deck so i learn it 👍

so where am i at after all of this? UM well it's hard to say but i feel comfy saying i'm advanced beginner... i know most of the simple verb tenses (present, future, perfect and imperfect past, conditional, subjunctive) and maybe like 1000-1500 words? and i definitely have a sense now of what parts of speech should look like. i don't explode anymore when seeing se/me/te before a verb either. i think i could communicate with a (patient) native speaker without losing my mind -- my reading is way better than my listening or speaking, but i think this is somewhat common.

some areas that i could improve on:

i don't get nearly enough listening practice sighhhh like i do want to watch stuff but moving has made it very hard. hopefully i can work on it in the winter

same as above, i need more speaking practice... i am actually doing all this for a reason (going on a trip to a spanish-speaking country next year) so i don't really want to be put on the spot. i might try to find some local clubs or cultural exchange groups for this?

i know it's a meme but i can not roll my Rs very well. it's bad out here

one last resource: if you would like to learn a language but are totally overwhelmed by what to do or how to do it, i heartily recommend this guide. it's entirely about how to learn a language, but it doesn't have tips for specific languages, it can be applied to anything. it's also free, open-source, and pragmatic in its approach, which i like. that's all i got for now but thanks for reading 🙇‍♂️ hopefully i return to this post in a few months with more progress!

#this was originally 'spanish 1 month in' and then i had to revise the entire thing because it sat in my drafts and i progressed a lot #so now im posting it NO MATTER WHAT 🔫 #ennisposteando

[welcome-to-oslov]

Hello! I've spent the past couple of weeks enamored, fascinated, and obsessed by Oslov <3

I was wondering, what is your writing/planning/plotting process like? The world is so intricate, there are so many characters and events and moving parts and sinister plots to keep track of, and I'm amazed how you carry them all though with such detailed care. Oslov is like a spiderweb in all senses of the word, and I'm entirely entangled in the best way as a reader. I'm curious, how much planning goes into all these stories, because everything is so wonderfully connected at any distance.

Also, you mentioned in an earlier Tumblr post the Oslov language and an old grammar for it. I love constructed languages, and also construct them for writing, so I'd be sooooo interested in seeing and hearing what the languages in the saga are like (from inspiration to grammar to vocabulary to development to everything). I understand it is rooted mainly in Germanic (and maybe some Slavic languages) and emerged as a mixture/creole or something similar? If you're interested in sharing some of it, I'd love to learn :)

Thank you for this amazing saga! I'm so excited (and terrified) for what's to come in Oslov Unraveled.

Thank you so much for reading!! And that’s so cool that you create languages too. I wrote my “Oslov grammar” back when I was in college, so it isn’t one of those impressive constructed languages that follow real linguistic principles, but I did apply what I learned from studying German, French, and Latin. The whole thing is handwritten—but readable, I think—so I’ll do a separate post soon with some photos. I wonder if I could scan it, lol.

My writing process is chaotic. I would love to have a “bible” for the whole series, but I haven’t had time to do more than make a few outlines. Luckily I can usually remember which stories/chapters I need to review to prep for new chapters, but continuity errors do slip through. (The color of Besha’s scarf is one I just noticed!) I have one ring binder that contains all my Oslov materials, from the grammar and maps I created decades ago to the more recent time lines and story outlines. I do all the outlining in longhand and don’t write in Scrivener or anything nice like that, just Word.

So I rely on my memory of the overall story and character arcs. It’s far from flawless, but because the story was mostly in my head for so long—barely anything was written down until about 2017—I have a lot of practice in remembering. The story has gotten a LOT longer and more complicated since I started writing it. But it still doesn’t feel like work at all, more like daydreaming, which is what it’s always been. And I love that! If I ever published it, I would get more systematic, but I hope it would still be an escape and not work for me.

Anyway, thank you so much for giving me an excuse to geek out about this! 😊

[survivingpierce]

tell us more about the languages katherine learned! why did she decide to learn those languages specifically? did she have any trouble with any of them? which ones did she find easy and which ones did she find harder to learn? did she have any help when she was learning them? how did she deal with shedding her accent?

(sent in probably in addition to this headcanon)

first of all, i want to thank you for your questions (your interest means a lot). i also want to apologize for the late response. ♥

i portray my katherine as someone who is descended from a wealthy and noble family (see headcanon here) which means she already had received an appropriate education. by 1490, she could already read and write bulgarian (and they have the cyrillic alphabet). since noble children usually learn more than one language, she was capable of speaking bits of other languages as well (probably english / french / russian?). the show tells us that she quickly became 'english' once she was banished & lived in england which is why i think she already knew a few basics of this language but perfected it during her stay. i think perfecting an entirely new language (and alphabet) in less than two years is a peak output, especially considering her (emotional) stressful situation. when she talked to the mikaelsons, there was no audible accent and she was capable of communicating with them in perfect english.

there’s also a cut scene in 3x15 of the originals in which katherine sent a letter to elijah asking him if he allowed her to read him the poem 'farai chansoneta nueva' which is in french. which means that katherine spoke and was able to read at least three languages by 1492.

katherine is incredibly smart but she's not really a patient learner. she could never visit a language school or use a vocabulary book. i think she picks up a lot by listening to others whereby she will memorize the usual phrases beforehand to not stand out if she visits a new country with a new language. i can also imagine her having a compelled 'teacher' (or more like a tutor) that helps her translate and learn things.

katherine speaks bulgarian, english, french, german, russian, spanish, italian, and a little bit of czech & latin. while i think she already had (at least) a basic education in bulgarian, english, french, and russian while growing up, she learned the other languages during her flight as soon as it was necessary for her to learn them (mostly whenever she traveled to a new country). she had long stays in france, italy, russia, spain, switzerland, and germany/austria and during this time she either completely learned these languages or perfected her existing knowledge. to her (and her safety) it is necessary to learn the language of the country you hide in. and simply learning is not good enough, one needs to master it, otherwise, you'll stand out and won't be able to blend in. she didn't learn swedish or finnish, for example, because she's not interested in staying in these countries (as they are too cold for her liking).

of all the languages she learned completely new, german was the hardest and this language is still an issue if she has to use it again after a longer time has passed because german has a tricky grammar. the easiest foreign language was russian because it's similar to bulgarian.

she understands bits of czech but didn't bother to master it because she doesn't really like the language (and it also has tricky grammar). she knows a few bits because of her traveler heritage (and traveler spells are in czech which is also the reason why she doesn't like the language). she also only knows a bit of latin because she wants to understand spells in case she requires one (because she doesn't want to be tricked by witches). she doesn't bother to master latin because it's difficult for her to learn as it is a 'dead' language (and therefore she cannot pick it up by listening to others), it's also not really useful to her (apart from understanding certain spells).

shedding her accent is an interesting topic because she had a bulgarian accent in the beginning. but the longer she stayed in countries with another language (and the more she mastered different languages), the unrecognizable became her accent simply because she has so many 'base'-languages. if she would learn swedish now, for example, she wouldn't have a bulgarian accent. i think she definitely would have some kind of accent but i don't think one could pin it down to a certain region. nonetheless, she does recognize if she has an accent (and she will ask her teacher/tutor) and she will train the pronunciation as long as it's gone. again, she is a perfectionist and it's also not safe (as she would stand out and not blend in) if she's on the run and hides in an area where one would easily detect that she is foreign.

another thing that is interesting when it comes to languages is that while katherine might be able to speak the language perfectly, she isn't necessarily capable of also writing it perfectly (reading is usually no problem). for example, she cannot perfectly write in spanish but she can perfectly write in french because there was a time in which a lot of correspondences were in french (especially because she spent a lot of time among the aristocrats).

thank you so much for the interesting questions and i hope i have answered them all ♥

#anon #♕ find the girl beneath the monster ▬ answered #headcanon

[anaalnathrakhs]

Money - what would you do with your life if money was no object?

Hobby - what hobbies do you have or want to get into?

Daisy - do you have any pets? If not, do you want any?

Bees - what’s your go to spring outfit?

Sage - what life advice would you give to someone younger?

Vernacular - what language do you wish you could speak or want to learn?

sorry these are not in order

Money - what would you do with your life if money was no object?

the hard hitting questions first i see :') i think i'd love learning to be a handyman so that i can help around my neighborhood with anything, cause in general i thrive doing straightforward tasks on comission, but that would require a place that needs this kind of help in the first place. my neighborhood currently is nowhere near that close-knit. so i don't know. if it's not about money, that means i can work for a number of hours adapted to my capability, so i think i'd love having a basic fast food job if not for the money/time ratio. or a compromise like mail carrier, or maybe janitor but that's a little more boring cause it's neither outside nor people-oriented.

i think there's some artisanal crafts i would love to learn if i had the peace of mind that i don't need to wear the small business owner hat for it to be a viable career, but most of them i don't think i can develop the skills or the passion for it. and the ones i do i am somewhat seriously considering anyway.

can you tell i have no idea what to do with my life rn

Hobby - what hobbies do you have or want to get into?

Main hobbies are writing fanfic sometimes and baking some stuff when inspiration strikes, so not much. I already sew a little but I'd love to get more into it and develop more skills! I really ought to take classes one of these days. I've thought about going back to doing sports now that I get out of the house more, but no particular one has caught my attention. I've heard rowing is fun, so. Possibly that. And I've been trying to make myself read more again, since that was my number one time sink back when I was a kid.

Daisy - do you have any pets? If not, do you want any?

I do! One cat! I love him but adopting him taught me that I'm not built to have pets lmao so I'm doing my best to take care of him but he'll likely stay the only pet I'll ever have. Definitely the only cat.

Bees - what’s your go to spring outfit?

Same as all year round fdgjfhj baggy yoga pants & powerwolf tshirt i'm not really an outfits person. i do get a little more creative some days but nothing like a go-to outfit unfortunately

Sage - what life advice would you give to someone younger?

That's... complicated. I don't really feel like I've got much figured out honestly, and I'm still very young. I guess my advice is that everything is subjective and also that happiness and open-mindedness and kindess are all virtuous circles. If you make yourself be happy and open-minded and kind and you make yourself like things, it starts becoming real. It's more something targeted towards tweenage me in particular than any younger person tho :')

Vernacular - what language do you wish you could speak or want to learn?

THANK YOU for asking this question omg. Let's get the obvious answer out of the way first, I would LOVE to speak german cuz it's a school requirement and I'm really not doing well so far. But also more good-naturedly, it's a pretty fun language, and likely one that would be useful to speak in my particular geographical situation so to say. It's mostly a problem with learning methods, I did have fun learning the vocabulary when I could do it more on my own.

Beyond that, I'd love to learn latin. I'm a romance language native so it's especially useful for etymology, and I think being able to understand sayings, old texts, church latin, pig latin, etc, better, is so interesting.

Then uh, all the usual answers I guess. Russian and arabic are two big ones, first because seeing scripts I don't understand makes me cranky >:( and also for the number of speakers. Always useful. The other big languages don't appeal to me as much, some of them because I'm a little scared of the complexity (mandarin, japanese) and some of them just cause meh (spanish, portugese is a little more interesting but not much). Of course theoretically I'd like to speak as many languages as possible, but realistically... I'll stick to maybe learning the basics one day. Korean is sorta advertised as a very easy writing system and so with the cultural relevance of korea today I think if I end up trying to be solidly multilignual I might go for it?

The big problem for me is more the learning process than the motivation, so I don't think most of these are realistic enough, at least as far as I can tell. I'll go as far as I can with german and maybe try to pick up another language later on based on what would be useful in my circumstances.

#thank you so much for this ask beloved mutual it's so much fun to answer #asks #arnold layne

[smoosnoom]

was this chapter happier? yes. did I cry anyway? no shit.

“It’s deserved, even, all this burning, if he were to be finally honest with himself, and he doesn’t flinch when the fiery water hits his face.” well, i hope it’s not a projection this time cause mike in this chapter reminds me of.. myself during my depressive episode🧍🏻‍♀️it’s my turn to self-project

“I’m not doing this anymore. I can’t.” i don’t think i said it last time but bc see mikes pov i kinda forget that will canonically is/was in love with mike. and he was trying to push his feelings away during this 4 years. maybe even longer.

“Max steps forward to violently punch Mike in the arm” love that max didn’t hug him. not her style at all

““Seize the day,” Dustin claims, and opens the door, the winter air creeping in.” did dustin become fan if dps or he just learn latin phrases for fun?

“All he has is a bare basement and a sinking feeling in his stomach. He feels vaguely sick.” just stopped to say it’s beautiful

“It stings when he confesses, “I miss you.”” well that was the first time i crying reading this chapter

“When Will returns, he has a styrofoam cup in his hands. “Here.”” he’s clearly hurt but that shows that he still cares and will care about mike no matter what. idk does it make sense?

“Will is almost quieter when he says, “I missed you, too.”” and that where i cried for the second time. i have a thing for “i miss u” ig

“There is, unfortunately, no Steve Harrington behind the counter to sneak them into the movies” i hope steve got real adult job

“Staying in Hawkins for a little before I figured out where I want to go next sounded pretty nice” oh i see where it’s coming

“Loved, he thinks, loved, appreciated, wished –“ “wished” hits HARD

““Of course, I did,” Mike says, not having checked behind the television. “On an unrelated note, I’ll be right back.”” this one made me giggle. but more cause of the thought that they’re coming back to their little bubble, starting to feel comfortable enough to joke around. and it’s happening naturally and pretty fast

““It’s so different down here,” Lucas notes” ok, somehow ive been waiting to tell my thoughts about basement till this moment. i.. don’t think empty walls r bad thing. i think it’s like the omen of the new beginnings? yeah, my old basement was cool but it’s time to make new memories. happier. without the burden of the past. it’s like rediscovering the place u used to visit exclusively with the people u don’t talk now.

““I enlightened him!” Dustin claims, sitting opposite of her, and El snorts beside Mike.” well dustin stays the party member with the best taste 😀

one last thing i wanted to say about this chapter is that ur style has changed. diffidently in a good way. i’ve mentioned one sentence that i like but tbh.. i could choose any of them and that would be true. and i had to check vocabulary more often

oh no 😭 IM SORRY FOR MAKING U CRY ALYA hopefully the next one it is Tears of Joy 🫶🫶

LMAOO if it helps . we can both self project . mom says it's my turn with the self projection

omg that is a Fantastic point bc mike doesn't know !!! at all !!!!!! i tried to make wills frustration obvious for u know . dramatic irony but also that it makes sense for mike even tho he doesn't know the full length of it all 🫡 im so happy u noticed omg

YEYY3A OMG i am so glad u think so too 😭 i rly couldn't write max hugging him it felt Wrong

HELNGPOY dustin dps fan in this au 🫶 it has no relevancy but idc !

thank u alya ☹️ ily

NOOO no more tears . writing only Happy from now on (🤞 no promises ...)

it does make sense !!!!! it does !!!!!!!!!!!!! they're both hurt but they also Care so much !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

characters admitting they miss each other no matter how much it hurts . it will always get to me too </3

HELEP yes steve and robin rooming together and attending to their Adult Jobs

alya i need u to shut down ur big brain so the final chapter IS A SURPRISE OK

wished !!!!! u get it !!!!!!!!!!

YAYYYYY im so glad u thought it was natural, i was kind of second guessing myself bc it felt like Maybe it's too quick for them to joke again . but whenever i meet up with friends i haven't seen in months or even years it is always so easy to slip back to who we used to be, you know ?

"it's like rediscovering" alya u absolute angel . my graham cracker . my vanilla latte . u get it U Get It oh my god it's alll about change !!!! and it doesn't always have to be bad !!!!!!!!!!

U LIKE PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA ????? FIRST THE FRIES AND MILSKSGKES 😭😭 ALYA WHY

im so flattered u think so !!!! i think i definitely took a different tone to this fic and im rly happy u noticed :] it means the world to me and im always so happy whenever u drop by my askbox with a Huge commentary like this 🫶 it means the world to me ive reread this like . nine times !!!!!!

#LOVE U ALYA 🫶🫶🫶🫂🫂🫂🫶🫂 #u make my Day for realsies #/ask #daily alya

[lucidpantone]

Kind of annoys me you never include Omar when discussing their futures in the industry. Even though music is his focus, he has said that he wants to continue in the acting world. He is a great actor and has the versatility to star in spanish english and swedish movies/shows. Let’s not just focus on the white guy.

Firstly if you read the chain the beginning of the chain I didnt discuss omar because the initial anon a few anons back was strictly about edvin and then someone asked about malte and we kept on that line of conversation but since you asked about Omar I have thoughts about Omar actually. Firstly, I appreciate Omar has passion for acting but I do consider him a singer first and foremost. Thats been his profession for a long time (not saying he is a bad actor) am just saying thats Omar's established art form. I don't personally feel like there is enough roles for Omar in swedish media to allow him not to be pigeon holed into a particularly narrative. Now could Omar have a future in spanish speaking media?? Thats a tough call because there is a couple of things he would need to fix first. So Omar's accent is not one that is used in spanish speaking media often. I get it because I have one of these types of spanish accents too. Most spanish speaking media uses the mexican or the spanish style way of speaking so he would need to take some voice lessons which I am sure he could do. Also and i totally get it because Omar probably uses most of his spanish with family if he isnt on tour singing his songs. If you speak spanish and actually listen to him talk he doesnt have the most expansive vocabulary. Which I totally get because I have the same issue I speak fluently but I dont live in a spanish speaking country where am learning new words and expressions and so I tend to repeat sayings and things like that. Also most spanish media exist in madrid or mexico city and so unless he moved to one of these countries his audition opportunities are gonna be few and far between he would need to leave sweden and like really hit the ground running to work the indy spanish circuit and try to work with up and coming directors. Telenovela I think Omar could crush but once again most of those are distributed via Mexico city. I just feel like for now I could easily see Omar always be given the love interest role or the secondary role to a main character instead of being the main protagonist.

Like I just checked my netflix and filter through all the scandi languages and they are a few shows with diversity but its not super pronounced and I get its probably something thats being worked on in swedish media but just makes me wonder if Omar would have enough range in roles in Sweden and he would need to make some big life sacrifices to break into the latin market. BTW I think Omar would crush certain telenovela's and some latam netflix shows too. I just dont personally see swedish media being the best route for his big screen success.I think Omar has the talent to take a role on like what Gael Garcia's breakout role in Amores Perros. Like Omar would destroy a role like that but he just needs to move to an area in the world where that role is up for grabs imo.

#young royals

[a-bored-writer]

I'm always curious to hear about conlangs! Explain away! (I don't think you need an excuse tho but I guess that's up to you to decide)

Thank you thank you thank you-

Okay so, it originates in a 14-island archipelago (more of a cluster than a chain) of semi tropical islands called Itonoa

Here it is on my world’s map^^

I decided to make phonetics as simple as I could, since this is my second conlang and the other one I impulse threw in the trash when I found a big plot hole in the project it originates in, making this the first one I still have access to. I come from an Italian family and I can pronounce most of the sounds in Italian without any problem, so the consonant and vowel makeup is almost identical to Italian, with the added “-s”, “-m”, “-l”, and “-n” word endings.

Even though there’s a phonetic connection (you can tell idk what I’m doing, linguistic words are,,,,A Lot sometimes), Itonoan vocabulary is not based on Latin or any of the Romance languages in particular. I went out of my way to make the words different. That said, I want to keep it simple in a lot of ways, so instead of organizing a new set of verb conjugations for every tense, I decided on “markers”

For example, the word onavera (“to have”, not conjugated) is conjugated based on person. To say “I had”, you would combine the singular first person conjugation of onavera and the prefix “pe-“, marking the past, making pelanbo (l is added because vowels don’t really go back to back in Itonoan)

Same goes for pronouns! Instead of making a whole new set for every form of pronoun (“I”, “my”, “me”, etc. All being separate words), you would add the prefix “di” or “dil” (again, vowels) . Obviously they’ll have a separate alphabet, but while writing in English, I like to capitalize the beginning of the actual pronoun.

“Ello” is the Itonoan word for “he” or “him”. To say “his” (belonging to him, basically), you would say “DilEllo”.

Itonoan has three (? I know they’re not called noun forms but I’m blanking and excited): singular, plural, and paucal (plural being a large number, paucal can mean anywhere from 2 to 10).

Itonoan puts stress on the last syllable and has a CVC syllable structure like Italian. Adjectives come after a noun and the word order is SVO.

Every couple notebook pages I add some example sentences using new grammar or vocab in order to make sure everything is moving, this page came from a list of animal and family words.

I haven’t made any verbs yet besides “to be” and “to have” (mostly bc they’re intimidating) but that’s what tomorrow will probably be dedicated to.

More samples ^^

Itonoan follows a base-10 number system because again I’m a doof who can’t properly build something too far away from what I’m used to

Verb conjugations according to pronoun

#THANK YOU FOR ASKING #itonoan conlang #world building #you fed my ask box #this makes me embarrassingly happy #You’re the best anon #i Did lie in saying back to back vowels are no good #but they only work in certain cases #like ‘fraiella’ is the word for sister but it’s kinda understood that they combine a weird way #‘fry-ell’ #not just. jamming vowels together and pronouncing everything that’s there.

[tipousse]

Still Falling for Her

By Sharon Olds

The phlox in the jar is softening, from the sphere of it a blossom flutters, and the whole sagging thing makes me think of my mother’s flesh, when she was elderly, and it was wilting, keeping its prettiness in its old-fangled gentleness. It’s as if I’m falling in love, again, with my mother, through the gallowsglass of my own oncoming elderliness, as if, now that she has been gone from the earth as many years as a witch’s familiar has lives, I can catch glimpses of my mother, at moments when she was alone with herself, and would pick up her pen, and her Latinate vocabulary, and describe what it was like, on their last cruise, when she rose, by invitation, from the captain’s table, and stood beside the black, grand Steinway, in the open ocean, and sang. I do not need a picture to remind me of the look on my mom’s face, when she sang—extreme yearning, a yearning out at the edge of what was socially acceptable on a ship like that, and you could also see how happy her face was, to be looked at, and you could see her listening to her own voice, to hear if it started to go flat, or anything she needed to do to get the music to its hearers intact as itself, I am falling, and I do not feel that there are rocks, below, I think I may go on falling, like my own flesh, for the rest of my life, and maybe I’ll still be falling for my mother after my death—or not falling but orbiting, with her, and maybe we’ll take turns who is the moon, and who is the earth.

November 27, 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/05/still-falling-for-her

[my-efl-blog]

My Language Learning Journey

Hello! I'm Jay, the owner of this blog. I'm an EFL teacher, currently getting a Master’s in SLA-TESOL (if you don't know what that is, make sure to check out my handy Glossary Post. It has all of the definitions of the various acronyms and specialized vocabulary of this profession, because nothing says inclusion and diversity more than locking people out of your profession with impenetrable piles of obscure acronyms.) BTW, Jay is a pseudonym, and if you find any information on this blog that you think you could trace back to my real name . . . don’t? That’s super weird why would you do that? Don’t do that.

The Beginning

I was born and raised in various small towns in the Midwest of the United States. My parents are monolingual English speakers, and their parents are monolingual English speakers, but nonetheless I discovered my love for learning languages at a very young age. In elementary school, my dad taught me how to count to 20 in Spanish, and my mom taught me the alphabet in sign language, and after that I was hooked. Unfortunately, I went to elementary school in a very rural community with no access to language classes until high school.

Luckily, my parents’ various marriages , divorces, and remarriages resulted in my family moving to a small city, which allowed me to get into a specialized gifted program, which meant that I got to start learning Spanish in 7th grade. I absolutely loved my Spanish classes; I adored learning new ways to express myself, and as an avid reader I had access to a lot of the Latinate vocabulary that was associated with Spanish cognates, allowing me to quickly pick up the meaning of unfamiliar words.

I was always a good student, but in my highly specialized middle and high school programs I was never the best student in any class – except for Spanish. My Spanish teacher was amazing; all of her students moaned that even if they hated her class, they always ended up learning something. I never hated her class. She was actually the ACTFL president while I was in high school, and the year that I was a TA in one of her classes I learned a lot about how to structure a class so that students get the most out of their language learning experience – I credit her with a lot of my teaching instincts, because they were trained up under her experienced tutelage.

My Spanish teacher also invited me on a 2-week study abroad course in Costa Rica one summer. This was my first time leaving the country. I lived with a host family and studied at a local Spanish center in Alajuela, and we went on a few excursions to famous Costa Rican tourist attractions. It was the most magical experience of my life so far. I needed to get back there.

Around the time that the new Star Trek movies started coming out, I encountered a post on Live Journal explaining what xenolinguistics was, what linguistics was, and how that could be applied to the characterization of Uhura in the series. I fell in love with the field, I tried to learn as much about it as I could throughout high school, and I was determined to study it in university. So I did.

University

My university emphasized studying anything that you found joy in, so on top of linguistics, I also pursued Gender Studies and Spanish classes, which led to my 4 majors: Linguistics, Latin American Studies, Spanish and Portuguese Studies, and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. The courses I took for these majors, of course, also greatly influenced my teaching instincts and philosophy. (Personal Anecdote Tangent Time: in one of my first university Spanish classes, there was an assignment with every unit that required us to record ourselves in the language lab as a speaking exercise. I could not do this. Recording myself gave me horrific panic attacks as I listened back and deleted and listened back and re-recorded until I was crying in the language lab for every unit. I broke down and told my teacher, and she allowed me to do the speaking exercises with her during her office hours. This was absolutely a formative experience, and it informs my choice to attempt to always allow my students to complete alternative assignments: as long as they are showing me that they can accomplish the task, the specifics are less important.)

I studied abroad for one semester in university, at a national university in Costa Rica. I was determined to return, and I did. I took classes in linguistics and classes in literature, I made zero friends, and I spent most of my time either in class or in my room. I loved it. It was the first time in my life that I had ever felt truly happy and at peace. I don’t know that my language level improved very much, as I was already at a C1 level, but I enjoyed myself immensely. I will go back again, one day.

While in university, I also took a semester and a half of Portuguese and half a semester of ASL. The Portuguese class was specifically designed for Spanish speakers, and as such the students could be divided into three groups: those of us who were originally English speakers who had had to learn Spanish, those who were originally Spanish speakers who had learned English, and bilingual Spanish-English students. This resulted in an interesting class dynamic: English speakers who had to learn Spanish as a second language were much more familiar with the grammatical rules of Spanish and were thus more able to understand the descriptions of the Portuguese grammar rules, as the languages are very similar. The Spanish speakers who had studied English were more competent language learners, as they were studying in English at an English speaking university, and thus had in general attained a higher level of second language proficiency; they also had a much more intuitive grasp of what “sounded right” in Portuguese, though they were more likely to fall for false cognates. The Spanish-English bilinguals, on the anatomically improbable third hand, also had a great intuitive grasp of Portuguese but had never experienced studying either English or Spanish in the classroom, so the whole experience was new for them. This was one of my first experiences with differentiated instruction in a language classroom, and although I have yet to accomplish DI to the same level as this teacher, I do try to replicate some of her techniques.

EFL Teaching

After I graduated from university, I decided that I needed to finally learn a non-Indo-European language. I also needed a job. I found out about teaching English abroad and decided that I wanted to give it a go. I found a company that offered one-month TEFL certificates in Cambodia with guaranteed placement in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Vietnamese is a non-Indo-European language with tones and classifiers that is written in the Latin alphabet. Perfect. I moved to Cambodia.

I don't remember learning very much about TESOL in this TEFL certificate course. There are many reasons for this: the company was undergoing reorganization due to their main instructor’s recent illness, there were only four students in our course, and unfortunately a lot of teaching and classroom management is simply really hard to learn until you are in the classroom as a teacher doing the work. Most of the lessons were about the English language (vocabulary, grammar, etc.) and were thus focused predominantly on things that I was already aware of as a linguist. Because of my extensive language learning experience in my Spanish and Portuguese classes, I had already encountered a lot of the strategies for teaching the four skills, functional language, etc. What I did learn was a lot more life skills than language teaching skills: I learned that I could survive in a country where I didn't speak the language, couldn’t read the street signs, and had no personal connections. This has served me well in my travels – I’m not afraid of just moving to a new place and trying new things.

Because I was planning on getting a placement in Vietnam, for the last week of the course, the company hired a Vietnamese teacher for me. This is when I learned another life lesson, one that I am still trying to work on. On the first few days, I would ask him questions about the language, and I was not satisfied with his replies. For example, when I asked what letter the tone markers should go on, he could not answer. “They just go over the word,” he would say, “they don't need to go over a certain letter.” I decided he had no idea what he was talking about. Now, as someone who speaks intermediate Vietnamese, I also have absolutely no clue what letter the tone markers are supposed to go over. They just go over the word. He was right. I tend to make (often negative) assumptions about a teacher’s ability if they’re not very knowledgeable about specific linguistic information, but I try now to remember that not every good language teacher is a trained scientist, and that knowing how to teach a language is equally important.

I moved to Vietnam. I had emailed one company, one of the top English centers in Saigon, and had scheduled an interview. I got on a bus from Phnom Penh to Saigon on Saturday. I interviewed on Monday. I taught a demo lesson on Wednesday. I observed a class on Friday. I started teaching on Saturday. For three or four months, I was teaching almost every day: one class in the evenings, and almost every class over the weekend, 7am-9pm. I loved it. It was a steep learning curve, but I enjoyed it so much. I didn't think I would like teaching children – I absolutely adored those kids. I didn't think I would like teaching adults – I still don't like teaching adults, but they're not that bad. I absolutely love teaching teenagers: I love getting students right at the time where their critical thinking skills are developing and helping them learn how to (productively) question the world around them.

My company offered Vietnamese classes for teachers; I took them for a few months, but I did not find them particularly useful. The teacher was a local EFL teacher with the company with no training in teaching Vietnamese. He did not know much about the rules of his own language, and it was evident when he walked into class. So eventually I found a Vietnamese language center which specialized in teaching Vietnamese to people working for consulates or multinational organizations, and I studied with them for around four years. I never achieved a level higher than intermediate, and I don't really regret that? My language learning goal, in general, is considerably different from the majority of people: I want to be able to think in a language; I want my internal monologue to be in a variety of languages, so my ability to communicate with others isn’t as high a priority as it would need to be to get to a higher level. I also view language learning as a hobby. I’m not as invested (Norton and Darvin, 2015) in Vietnamese, as I don’t gain any social capital from speaking Vietnamese in particular, and my future identity, my ideal future self (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009) isn’t necessarily fluent in Vietnamese.

Present Continuous as/and Future

After working and teaching in Vietnam for 5 years, I returned to the US (influenced in no small part by the COVID-19 pandemic, which ramped up in Vietnam in 2021). I got an online CELTA certificate in an absolutely grueling 10-week course, after which I was so burnt out on TESOL that I stopped teaching English for 10 months and became a math tutor. But my local university offered me a part-time teaching opportunity in Summer 2022, and after expressing that I would love to be paid more than a few bucks to teach with them in the future, they offered me a deal – they would pay for my MA in SLA-TESOL, during which time I would teach in their EAP program, and in return I would move to China after graduation and teach for some time in one of their partner programs. I am not the kind of person who turns down a free master’s degree with a guaranteed job placement, so here I am.

I am currently learning Chinese on Duolingo because all of my university’s Intro Chinese courses are taught while I’m teaching English. I’m also learning ASL on an app (Lingvano), and I have plans to start learning Cherokee in the spring (my mom’s family is Cherokee, and she desperately wants me to learn; in another life, I may have become a language revitalization expert in Oklahoma instead of an EFL teacher in Asia). I’m in my second semester of my master’s program, and hopefully with this project I will pass my classes well enough to receive my degree and continue on with my journey.

My ultimate goal is to continue learning languages around the world, and teaching English is a means to that end. Language learning is my passion; I love teaching, and I enjoy the complex socio-political issues that are inherently involved in spreading English around the world, but I admit that I am a bit mercenary in my intents. I will eventually move back to Costa Rica, perfect my Spanish, and learn LESCO (Costa Rican Sign Language), but I want to explore the rest of the world before I do that.

#About Me #Showcase #Portfolio #Linguistics #Practice

[the-pen-is-mighty-and-so-are-you]

Words, words, Words! - from wp blog, 29/02/2020

…as goes the infamous Hamlet quote, sort of. Tis the theme of both this blog post and, it seems, my life.

Oh hello, by the way, my dear visitor. Thought I'd gone for good, eh? Took up and left with my tea and biscuits? Well... there are no more biscuits left, I'm afraid. They're full of empty calories, you know. Help yourself to a square of some hefty dark chocolate. There. Don't you feel like such an adult? So mature... sipping green tea and indulging on chocolate that costs MORE than a quid. No no don't go-

Sorry. I had a diet revelation, realised that feeling tired and crap correlated with how well I was eating. Am I on one of those fad diets? No, not really. Just looked up the balanced diet thing on the NHS website. They teach you that stuff in school but by the time you're this age it's a faded vague mantra of "five a day" in the back of your head. So, I went on the website and I learned - get this - that you need to eat at least FIVE vegetables or fruit a day.

Yeah, I know, I groaned too. How am I gonna do that? But, actually, two tablespoons of dried fruit counts as one, a reasonably digestible amount, so chuck that on a bowl of Crunchy Nut. A couple of vegetables in your lunch, a couple for your dinner, and a piece of fruit as a snack and BOOM suddenly your digestive system works VERY well.

Sorry, you've zoned out, haven't you? Anyway, I do feel so much better now. I eat more, but I eat healthy. Not all the time of course, that's not human. So, if I tell you I secretly do have Lidl's waffles in the cupboard, shall I toast them and cover them in Nutella and make us a wee snack? Yes, sounds like a plan.

So, while you're letting that sugary cotton wool dissolve in your mouth, allow me to say more words... words, words. Sorry, I had to reference the title to make sure you remembered the topic.

I fricking love words. I love how they mediate everything, how I can pour the deepest recesses of my being into something written and it can be expressed and seen. I love how I feel when I write, too: it's like speaking to a god, or something. I can see why the Romans believed in Muses, because how, why else could I feel so compelled by an art form?

Poetic prose aside, I also love the things that contain words - languages. Ugh, can't get enough of them. I love how by learning a language you can learn all sorts about a culture, about the people, about how their tongues and mouths shape the words they speak. There's so many more sounds out there besides English.

In French, I learned that there's a way of talking where you blend sounds together so it's like a relaxed-mouthed song, fluid, constant and most natural when filled with euh's. Words are the flowing river, euh's are the river's banks to keep the conversation on track and natural. You get to a point in French where once you know the grammar and core vocabulary, you can understand a lot of the rest of the language. Except for when you can't, of course.

In Latin, I learned that a lot of English words and a lot of French words come from it. I learned that in comparison every other language's grammar, to generalise, is easier. I think I know how to spell better because of Latin. Learning a dead language also connected me to a dead society, and connected me more to my passion of history (but mainly classics). I also like reading inscriptions out loud and wondering how they were spoken. Are the v's said like v's or w's? An ongoing debate. It's irrelevant, anyway, because the native speakers are dead and we, the learners, are alive, so we can make our own rules.

I should probably delete that last sentence, scholars might burn me at the stake for it.

Ancient Greek gave me a taste for different alphabets - and then I was suddenly on a journey, because Ancient Greek didn't quite click, wasn't quite relevant enough (because Latin is?). But I wanted a code to crack, something hidden, something that looked completely different from the Roman alphabet, something not taught at my school.

I tried Chinese, except not really. Learning all those complex characters seemed a bit too much for fifteen, sixteen-year-old me, so I learned the one for 'beauty' and the one for 'love' and then moved on.

I tried Russian, learned all 33 letters of the alphabet, doodled vocabulary artistically on a page and felt satisfied. I remember a word sounding like 'zoloto', but can't remember the meaning. I think it's something random, like grape or goose. But I couldn't see myself visiting Russia, so I left it after a couple of video tutorials.

My friend J was learning Japanese, I remember, and I did consider that, but at the time the alphabets ("There's two of them? No thanks.") seemed far too complex, and I knew they used Chinese characters which were also too complex, and also Japanese was super trendy at this point in time so it was a bit too mainstream for sixteen-year-old me. Where's nearby? Ahah! Korea!

That's not actually how it happened - I had no clue about the geography of that part of the world, for starters. I'd only ever seen a map of Japan isolated on its own page, so I had no idea who its neighbours were. Actually, a few years ago, my mum's friends from South Korea visited, and that planted the seeds for my future romance with the language. That was the initial Tinder viewing.

Except I'd completely forgotten about the whole experience. I'd rejected the Tinder profile and let it go. The words 'Korea' and 'Korean' didn't connect to anything I knew, so they didn't stick at first. But then I watched a few documentaries, and then I was down one of those internet rabbit holes. I became more interested, and somewhere down the line, I became fascinated, and then somehow it became three years of language passion.

Korean taught me that brains are amazing and can learn new systems of writing and speaking, if you give it the chance, if you have the incentive and interest. I learned how to shape new sounds, how to perform Korean mannerisms, how to be polite and respectful in that culture, what that culture is. I also began to understand words in K-pop songs, and not just the English ones, which is goddamn satisfying even to this day (although nowadays my brain gets confused and can't always tell which language they're speaking).

Now I'm learning Japanese at university, and again the wonder of the brain has been proven to me again. With it, I've found that for each language, there's a different mindset. When I speak Japanese or Korean or sometimes French to myself, I take on a whole new personality - it's like the people I write in my stories. With each new language there's a new language baby inside my head, slowly developing, learning about the world around it in a new way with new words.

It all comes back to words. Words connect me to culture. Words connect me to my characters and stories. Words connect me to people.

That's why my next project is Thai - part of it is an ego thing, admittedly, visitor. I seem to have a 'thing' for languages that look completely different to my native alphabet. I must collect them all, just like Thanos in the picture. But it's also completely different sound-wise, unlike Japanese and Korean which don't have many of their own syllables, and I'm fascinated every time I hear it. It's so interesting listening to a language and not knowing anything at all about it, not even knowing where the words or sentences start or end. It's also a culture I don't know much about, either - I didn't absorb much at three years old when I visited Thailand with Mum. I can't wait to go on the language journey all over again, or rather rollercoaster, with the rush of all the puzzle pieces clicking together, of the noticeable growth, of the sheer amazement at the world when I can finally read what my boyfriend is texting, or understand at least one word when he speaks Thai.

But before then - Japanese. And Korean. And my own fucking language! Jeez, there's so much to learn and absorb and develop, so much character development to be had, but it all takes time and loyalty.

I'm sorry if I have not been all that loyal to this blog, and you, visitor. But you see, sometimes there's just a LOT. Too much. You know? And then I don't know what to focus on, and then... you know? Yeah. You know. Words, words, words.

Anyway, to summarise, I suggest you learn one word from a foreign language, right now. Doesn't matter how, or what, or how long - google it. And then just put that word in your head, hold it, even if it's only for a moment; think about how many different ways of thinking about the world there are. Mind-blowing, right? I go through that every time I study Japanese! (Which, ahem, probably isn't as often as it should be)

Yes, of course you can have another waffle. Sorry visitor, that was a bit of a ramble, but I just have so many thoughts and sometimes in different languages and I just wish I had someone to talk to who knew all the languages I'm learning and- yeah, the Nutella's just over there, with the knife still sticking upright out of it. Sorry, the handle's a bit sticky now. Sorry? I should stop apologising on my own blog? Sorry, I'll try- oh no, I mean, so- no, I mean sorry- sorry! Sorry...

Words, words, words. Have a good week, visitor.

#wholesome #language #i'm still trying to learn thai #i've forgotten all my japanese lol #i still remember some korean tho

[ese350]

Vocabulary Instruction: the Good, the Bad, and Thesaurus

Best Practices for Vocabulary Instruction

Focus on a shorter number of words that are most useful for students to know.

Introduce the words in speech and reading before they come up as “vocab words”.

Avoiding giving stock “advice” like “use context clues” or “just look it up” without actually explaining what that means or how to do it.

Teach specific roots, prefixes, and suffixes in a systematic way across multiple grades.

Combine reading aloud, reading as a class, and opportunities for sustained silent reading so students can encounter words with varying levels of support and across contexts.

Above: comic from xkcd.com

Adolescent Vocabulary Study

I didn’t do much, if any, direct study of vocabulary in high school. In middle school I think we still had some vocabulary quizzes, and in earlier grades we studied Greek and Latin root words, prefixes, and suffixes, but I can’t remember any vocabulary lessons past freshman year of high school. If we came across a word we as a class didn’t recognize, the teacher might ask a student to volunteer the definition if they knew it, or offer it themselves, but we didn’t have vocabulary lists or tests.

As an adult who reads widely and in quantity, I do come across words I don’t know (most often when reading nonfiction or pre-19th-century literature). When this happens, I look up the word; most of my reading is done on Kindle, so it’s really easy to highlight the word with my finger and have it pull up a definition, with the option to switch between the “US” dictionary (I think Merriam-Webster) and the “UK” dictionary (a truncated OED). I read the definition and try to condense it at much as I can, often a one-word synonym but sometimes a longer phrase for more complicated concepts. I save these in a digital document on my phone.

Above: a glimpse into the real heart of darkness, my iPhone’s Notes app. A frightening number of these words are from the same history of colonial Australia that I read (for fun!) this past summer. Some are from smutty historical romance novels.

This method works for me to learn new words for a few reasons that may or may not be true of any given teenager:

I know I’m not going to be tested on these words, and there’s no time limit on when I have to “know them.”

I can read through the list whenever I want, because it’s available on my phone which I almost always have with me.

I’m generating the list continuously based on my own reading which, 95% of the time, consists of books I chose for myself based on my own interests.

No one is forcing me to read (with the exception of the relatively small number of books I read for class each year).

No one is forcing me to use any particular study method, so it’s designed around the way I read and the way I want to study.

I’m a self-motivated adult who enjoys reading and reads as my major media-consumption activity.

For a student, the same method could present problems: lack of motivation; desire to do well on a quiz (and then forget last week’s words, because there’s a new list to learn by the following Friday...); lack of interest in the text; encountering just too many words they don’t know, leading to frustration; lack of familiarity with parsing dictionary definitions, or even understanding the words used in the dictionary; lack of familiarity with the English language itself; and, I’m sure, other reasons. But, I still might encourage students to keep a personal word list or word journal throughout a semester (and to get real weird with it, using as much slang, doodling/logographs, or whatever other elements as they want).

Takeaways from Beers

My three biggest takeaways: expose students to new vocabulary in a variety of ways; stick a small number of actually-useful words; and ask the right questions, so you can figure out what any given student most needs in order to learn.

#portfolio topic 3

[mywifeisbetterattf2thanyou]

it's spooky season, and i want to take a moment to talk to you about hispanic and latino people, and how you can better respect us!

non-hispanics/latinos heavily encouraged to take the time to read this

first, we're going to define some vocabulary since *certain* people cough white people cough don't take the time to check the definition of a word before using it!

latino refers to cultures, countries, or people from latin america! this includes most spanish-speaking countries. the most notable exclusion is spain. it is not included in the definition of latino because spain is located in europe, not latin america.

hispanic refers to cultures, countries, or people that speak spanish! this includes most latino countries. the most notable exclusion is brazil. it is excluded because spanish is not commonly spoken in brazil.

spanish can refer to 2 things: 1. the spanish language with latin roots, closely related to languages such as italian, portuguese, and french 2. the culture, country, or people of spain do not call something spanish when you actually mean hispanic or i will hunt you down <3

how can i better respect hispanics/latinos?

great question!

first things first, make sure you know your terminology. if you don't know something, ask a hispanic/latino person or google it (i'd advise asking an actual person before going to google).

another important thing is making sure that you are using respectful terminology. what do i mean by this? well first things first, don't call us slurs. i think that one's pretty obvious. but sometimes it's less obvious. for example, i'm sure a few people reading this post are going "wHy iS iT sAyiNg LaTiNo aNd nOt LaTiNx?". if you are that person, stop <3 i could rant for days about why i hate the term "latinx" but i'll keep it short: 1. latino is already inclusive of people of all genders 2. "latinx" is literally impossible to pronounce in spanish 3. spanish is a gendered language, and by creating "gender neutral" vocabulary (even though we already have it) you are fucking up the whole language

also, since it's spooky season i feel the need to bring this up: for the love of god, stop dressing up as us, ESPECIALLY if you don't know what you're doing. it's not funny. it's not cool. it's not fashionable. you are being a racist dickhead.

one more thing cause this post is getting long: don't make racist jokes about us please. nobody laughs when you mock spanish accents or when you say "i dOn'T sPeAk bUrRiTo". it's not funny. stop.

have a great day and remember to respect hispanic and latino people. our culture is so diverse and amazing, and if you take the time to appreciate and respect it, i promise you will not regret it.

NON-HISPANICS/LATINOS HEAVILY ENCOURAGED TO REBLOG

#long post #serious post