==Translation Thread==
This is a thread for all translation, so, I guess that.
What's the ugliest language and why is it mandarin?
Is learning Modern Greek a viable way of then learning Classical Greek?
Anyone here learning Lojban? I'm beginning today and I'm wondering how much I'll be able to use the language for day-to-day communication. Would anyone be in favor of a Lojban board being made?
false and true cognates and stuff like that
Hey let's have a thread for this.
Basically everything is welcome;
false cognates (words in different languages that look like they could easily be cognates, but knowing the actual etymology tells you they aren't)
distant cognates (I'm saying distant because the interesting part here is where a word travels to the other side of the continent)
false friends (words that are either homophones or close homophones in two languages, but have wildly different meanings — but sometimes they may be true cognates and differ in meaning due to semantic drift)
pic related, cognates like that (or fucking ananas) aren't interesting and therefore not welcome
Grandmaster Laoshu running amok and completely destroyin the language faculty of a Korean university
5:57 will (not) surprise you :^)
Learning Chinese
Hello, I was hoping you guys could help in locating resources to learn Chinese. Us guys at /cyber/ want to learn it and apparently Rosetta Stone is shit (can sorta vouch, their German lessons were terrible).
So yeah, anybody got extra saucy sauces on learning websites/books? Would greatly appreciate it to share with the others.
Teaching abroad
Any of you ever taught a language abroad (almost certainly English)? I was wondering how to get started. I'd really like to experience that.
I have a bachelor's degree in law and some graduate studies in translation (I dropped out, it bored me). I was raised bilingual in English and French so I speak both fluently and without any foreign accent (I speak Canadian English and Canadian French, but in regards to French I can easily modify my accent to make it "international"). Still, I consider my real mother tongue to be French. Given that my English is just as good, will anyone care?
I also have a perfect TOEIC certificate (highest score in every category). I could probably pass TEFL certification easily if needed.
If any of you have any experience, I'd like to know how fierce the competition is, what it's like, how are the conditions, etc. I don't mind relocating to Third World shitholes, as long as they're not in Africa, and learning the local language.
Sharedtalk is back
So, someone just brought back Sharedtalk or what appears to be a clone of it.
In the final days of ST there was a bot message circulating written by the former founder of ST announcing a new site so this could be it.
Check it out.
The right environment for your socially awkward, language-learning chantard. No profile pics and social networking bullshit, an old-fashioned chat site.
sharedlingo.com
Stephen Krashen on Language Acquisition
His talk about the power of reading is also interesting.
Has anyone ever been to one of these Polyglot conventions or plans to attend one?
What are they like?
Language certification
So after monetizing duolingo by crowdsourced translations failed, they are now using their brand recognition which they have established to start a remote language evalutation business that provides certificates for just as low as $20.
>The Duolingo Test Center provides scientifically-proven language certification. Certificate exams are extremely secure with remote proctoring, and the scores are extremely precise. The exam is convenient and can be taken directly at home at the fraction of the cost of other recognized certifications offered.
https://testcenter.duolingo.com/
Has this the potential of acquiring a relevant level of recognition and shatter the overpriced certificate oligopoly?
Linguistics and Language learning
So, I'm not studying linguistics and I know the meme(ur major is linguistics? how many languages do you speak? XD) but I'm wondering how common it is to learn languages that have a certain relevancy to the field.
In particular I'm interested whether it is somehow common or at least a little bit noteworthy that some linguists end up learning Lithuanian for example because of its conservative and indo-European grammar.
If this question doesn't make any sense from the perspective of someone who is professionally involved in the field then just let me know.
How did we collectively lose this intimate experience of nature? This is not a casual question: Abram suggests it may be at the root of our environmental crisis, and may contain the only solution to it. In his book The Spell of the Sensuous, he presents an intriguing hypothesis: he links “nature blindness” to the practice of alphabetic writing. While pictographic scripts like Chinese, Mayan, and Ancient Egyptian refer to natural forms, the Greek alphabet—not to mention the Roman characters you are reading now—reference only the phonemes of human speech, creating an abstract, exclusively human world. Abram compellingly cites studies of oral cultures to show that their speech is inextricably bound with non-human life forms and the landscapes that they inhabit.
Non-literate peoples, he suggests, experience nature immediately, personally, and intimately: a mode sometimes designated by the term “animism.” It is exceedingly difficult,” Abram writes, “for us literates to experience anything approaching the vividness and intensity with which surrounding nature presents itself to the members of an indigenous oral community.”[5] When we began to write and read, Abram claims, “The participatory proclivity of the senses was simply transferred from the depths of the surrounding life-world to the visible letters of the alphabet.”[6] When we read, we unconsciously endow the abstract shapes of letters with an uncanny life, coming to our minds as voices and images, appropriating the vitality with which humans formerly perceived the natural world.
LANG
JUST LANG MY SHIT UP FAM
Conlangs?
Does this board support the learning and/or the construction of fictional or artificial languages?
Linguists have recently reconstructed what a 6,000 year-old-language called Proto-Indo-European might have sounded like. This language was the forerunner of many European and Asian languages, and now you can listen to what it may have sounded like.
https://soundcloud.com/archaeologymag/sheep-and-horses
http://io9.com/listen-to-what-our-ancestors-language-sounded-like-6-0-1403832049
Just a reminder
Turkish can now be learned on Duolingo.The course is still in beta so expect some bugs and inconsistencies.
>Yuchi has noun genders or classes based on three distinctions of position: standing, sitting or lying. All nouns are either standing, sitting or lying. Trees are standing, and rivers are lying, for instance. It it is taller than it is wide, it is standing. It if is wider than it is tall, it is lying. If it is about as about as wide as it is tall, it is sitting. All nouns are one of these three genders, but you can change the gender for humorous or poetic effect.
>A linguist once asked a group of female speakers whether a penis was standing, sitting or lying. After lots of giggles, they said the default was sitting, but you could say it was standing or lying for poetic effect.
What are some other weird language features you know of?
I read somewhere that "iron" is not pronounced "I Ron" but "I earn". This is bullshit, right?
dudes.
duuudees.
we should make a conlang.
Homophones Thread
Post the homophones you know, preferably from different languages.
>"三十一 ", 31 in nip (san juu ichi)
>"sanduíche", sandwich in Portuguese
>tfw can't watch nyaruko-san OP because it sounds like "sandwich sandwich"
>"Суки", bitches in russian, plural of сука (sukee)
>"好き", adjective which means like or love in japanese (suki)
>"く", Japanese sound effect used as laugh(kukuku) or as a groan (ku)
>cu, asshole in Portuguese
>"O pai", something like "Hey dad" in Portuguese
>おっぱい, boobs in nip (oppai)
>manco, someone who can't walk properly in Portuguese
>まんこ, pussy in nip
How long do you think would it take learning Aramaic?
Any Yiddish speakers or students of Yiddish?
Vu bist du lebendik?
Iz Yiddish deyn ershter shprakh?
Bist du Hasid?
This video was on my youtube homepage yesterday, I found it quite informative.
Anthem Thread
This is the Brasilian Anthem converted to Latin, post some kind of anthems!
Hey, /lang/. There's a favor I would like to ask of you that I can't repay.
You see, I've been meaning to get around to learning cantonese, but haven't really made a worthwhile attempt at actually learning the language. Due to circumstances, I'd like to comprehend the language within one to three months from now, if I were starting tomorrow (Its midnight here).
I was wondering if anyone had any good resources they could share? I know its an uncommon language, but I would be appreciative if I had any help besides the one I found with a search engine.
Thanks in advance. I know its not much, but take this semi-relative wallpaper as the only form of repayment I can possibly think of.
Is Welsh a hard language to learn? The language looks like someone smashed their keyboard out came byddym sambys and a whole bunch of other crap. But will this make it harder than trying to learn any other language?
>Pic unrelated
First language wires brain for later language-learning
You may believe that you have forgotten the Chinese you spoke as a child, but your brain hasn’t. Moreover, that “forgotten” first language may well influence what goes on in your brain when you speak English or French today.
In a paper published today in Nature Communications, researchers from McGill University and the Montreal Neurological Institute describe their discovery that even brief, early exposure to a language influences how the brain processes sounds from a second language later in life. Even when the first language learned is no longer spoken.
Post all your language learning resources.
Why did you pick the language(s) you're studying?
I was browsing Kickstarter's technology section and I came across this:
I don't know what to think of it but maybe it might be of interest to some of you.
Je commence!
Russian books
Hey /lang/, what are some good books to learn russian?
Should I get this, /lang/?
Scottish Gaelic
Anyone here knows of good resources (websites, books, even if I have to buy them) to learn Scottish Gaelic?
My grandmother was a Scottish descendant and her own folks spoke Gaelic, but taught her only English because at the time Gaelic was very stigmatized in Canada, so the language was lost and never transmitted to new generations.
It's a part of my heritage I'd like to revisit but there isn't government support to maintain the language in my area as there is in Scotland. I am also a language lover and I just love how written Gaelic looks and how spoken Gaelic sounds even if the orthography is all kinds of fucked up. So is there anything I can do to learn a moribund language without paying huge sums for private tutoring or exiling myself to Cape Breton?
Eternal Archive Project
Hey /lang/, the faggots over at /eternalarchive/ are making a share project against TPP and we would like your help
The fuck's this shit and why should I care?
As you should you the TPP will fuck over pirating and copyright everyfuckingthing.
To counter it we started this, our plan is to hoard shit pre-TPP and then share it around with I2P.
What do I do?
We are still planning shit, so there are four things you can do right now
>hoard shit
To share it afterwards. Movies in your native language, books, anything goes.
>download I2P
Might as well get used to it now
>Suggest shit and help in the board
>spread it around
We need as many anons on this as possible, contact other small boards and chans.
Why I2P?
Because it's TOR on steroids. It's safer than TOR, it has more features(such as torrenting) and it's newer meaning that is isn't called pedo net 2.0 yet.
Why bother, TPP won't do shit
Odds are it will, but even if it doesn't there will be a new TPP. Companies are "losing money" with all these pirates, do you think they won't try to fuck us over each chance they get? We are now doing what we already should have had: preparing for the worst. Even if nothing happens next year, what's to say that it wont happen the year after?
Why /lang/?
This board is full of faggots from different countries who are going to be affected by the TPP or the TTIP, so we'd figure it would be good to post it here.
Ok so why haven't you listed /swe/ yet BO?
Talar du inte svenska?
>mfw people roleplay as curries on /int/ and don't even know about the schwa syncopation
>>>/int/313149
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/saharan.htm
>Many languages, including such early languages as Hebrew and Sanskrit, were created by formulaic manipulation of Basque vocabulary. However, the name Basque, or more accurately Bask because there is no Q in the language, did not exist at the time this language invention was done. There must have been an earlier form of this language available to the linguists doing this manipulation. But where did it come from and what was it like?
>The research done by Dr. N. Lahovary and published in his book "Dravidian Origins and the West" shows conclusively that Basque and the old Dravidian languages of India are closely related. Nyland’s research into the Ainu language of Japan shows the same. The Ainu are thought to have been isolated in the Far East for as long as 8,000 years, yet they retain an early, non-agglutinated, form of Saharan, thus the original language must have been very old. These startling finds seem to indicates that the precursor of the Basque language was spoken very early in Europe, Africa and Asia, just like Genesis 11:1 tells us: "Now the whole world spoke one language". Nyland suggested that the forerunner of the Basque, Dravidian and Ainu languages was the Saharan language and that the language spoken in the beautifully painted cathedral caves in southern France and northern Spain was an early form of the same. However, this early form of the language cannot have been the one used by the early religious scholars doing the inventing of new languages such as Sanskrit. They used a later, manipulated, form that was constructed with agglutination. It employed the vowel-consonant-vowel interlocking principle.
>There seems little doubt that the Basque language is a direct descendant of this original Saharan language and that this language has not changed very much for several millennia, probably because of the extremely careful oral transmission traditions used in their educational system, passing the language on from generation to generation without changes.
Also, I just learned that laranja in Basque is totally not a loan and is a native word, despite that oranges don't grow anywhere nearby.
The dialect thread on /int/ finally hit the bump limit.
pic unrelated
sprekaim tungomiz untriwwijaimiz
Resources
Anyone here have that leddit page with a metric shit ton of resources such as something as simple as dictionaries to children's books?
It looked promising.
Anyone have any general resources?
Cursing, swearing, abuse and bad words general
I find funny how different languages have very creative ways of being unrespectful or rude. So let's have a thread with this dark jewels of our native or target languages. Please add (for added hilarity) literal translations and it's equivalent in as many languages as you can.該死的(gai si de)
Literally "should die" is the equivalent of "Damn it!" in English or "Puta madre!" in (Argentinian) Spanish.
蕩婦(dang fu)
Literally "lustful woman", equivalent of "Slut" in English or "Puta" in Spanish.
你媽的(ni ma de)
Literally "your mother's". I don't know it's equivalent in English but in some places of Argentina almost the same expression is used "A tu madre!". It's obviously an (unspecified) insult to the mother of the other person.
Ung
Ung is a really stupid name for a language, but it just means "speech" in the language that the people that speak it speak, so it kind of makes sense. It's spoken by about 300-500 people in a handful of tribes in central Borneo, and they really like their isolation. They have some weird practices as well, but I'm not gonna go into that since this is a board for languages, unless someone wants me to.
It's a language isolate (or at least seems like one) although it's phonetically pretty similar to some other Southeast Asian languages, but it has some weird grammar and things that I'm really not sure how to explain, that don't exist in other languages I'm familiar with. I have no idea what the language's origins are, or the people's who speak it, since all they say is that they descended from some immortal man-eating half-plant people, so yeah…
Some basic vocabulary:
>appaang = sky
>shwattak = river
>matwang = fruit
>koop = tree
>ngaph = flower
>yobul = eye
>pushang = ear
>muluung = mouth
>balaang = hand
>pataang = foot
>watak = edge
>balaangwatak = spear, knife, etc. anything with a blade that's used for hunting and such
>wattaal = boy
>yammaal = girl
>wambak = man
>yammak = woman
>yamwa = human (regardless of gender)
Here's how you say "the snake bit the man":
Pwagattaam taam bhaawambakpyang pranaamanglappungbyong anganglam papawal.
>wambak = man
>naamanglappung = snake
>anganglam = to eat
>-pyang = marks the object of an action done by the subject
>-byong = marks the subject doing an action
>bhaa- = kind of a diminutive, implies that the word it is attached to is lower in status
>pra- = kind of an augmentative, implies that the word it is attached to is higher in status
>papawal = a little
>pwagattaam = today (pwagat = this)
>taam = day, added to indicate past
Also, the way words are formed is pretty funny sometimes. For example,
>lappung = dick
>naamang = forest
So, snakes are literally called forest dicks.
Plurals are only used when there's a definite number of something. The plural suffix -shwa is used in addition to repeating the last syllable of the thing in question the amount of times that there are of that thing, for example if you wanted to say "three girls", you'd say:
Yammaalshwa maa maa maa.
"Those three girls are picking fruits from the trees by the river."
Shwattakjala kaamatwangpyang kooppyang pwaagit yammaalshwabyong maa maa maa patwallam.
>patwallam = to take, collect, etc.
>-jala kaa- = at, by, near, etc.
>pwaagit = that
As you can see, there is no plural for "this" or "that", and instead of prepositions there are suffix+prefix combinations.
>-jala maa- = inside
>-jala naa- = on top of
>-kara kaa- = far from
>-kara maa- = outside*
*For example, "pragtalkara maangattushmur" means leopard outside the village.
>pragtal = village
>ngattushmur = leopard
Verbs always end in m, and there are no conjugations in the typical sense. Suffixes exist to combine the meanings of multiple verbs or to restrict the range of a verb, and they have diminutives and augmentatives as I demonstrated earlier in the snake example with the particle "papawal". The augmentative particle is "maragwal".
>tarakram = to kill
>tarakram papawal = to injure
>tarakram maragwal = overkill, eg. mutilating a body after killing
Some suffixes to attach to verbs:
>-lung = "soft negation", recommendation to not do the action of the verb
Yamwa tarakramlung = you shouldn't kill people
>-kwung = "hard negation", an order to not do the action of the verb
Yamwa tarakramkwung = you must not kill people
I think that's enough for the first post, let me know if you're interested in more.
how easy is to learn kanjis?
should I focus on learning the radicals?
Language X Language thread
It's time for a LxL thread.Say what language(s) do you speak natively and what language(s) are you trying to learn. Connect with someone (either in-thread of outside of it) and conversate, exchange tips, whatever you need.
OP: Native spanish, CAE certificate, looking to learn asian languages.
Thoughts on Benny the Irish Polyglot, and Laoshu? And other well-known polyglots?
Here they are if you dont know:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1b513hIto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RfxAjtUx8o
What have you done to practice your target language today?
Creating a language
I've always been interested in the theory of languages and have created simple languages in the past whenever I'm bored.
The language I'm currently working on has nouns not as gendered but self-descriptive with articles.
I'm wondering if any of you have done something similar or how your language projects are going.
When I get mine more up to speed I'll post syntax rules and a small dictionary!
I need a bit of help in latin
And not it's not for homework.
Is this spelled properly:
ordo immortalis bellatorum
Oh guys, reading the 4chan q&a right now.
Nishimura fucking sucks at english.
ITT mettez votre polyglot favol
Has anyone ever done a linguistic analysis of Spurdospeak?
I know in Finnish it was originally meant to represent Jonnehood, hence the deliberate typos, but it took evolution of its own once it spread into Anglophone internet culture.
Interestingly, even though there are no written rules I'm aware of, there's a distinct Spurdoness that is unmistakeable, and this makes me think it could be analysed as a dialect (or slang, if you wish) of written English.
For example, where does voicing of stops occur? What about <Ä>, does it always correspond to /æ/ in English, or it there any more complex rule behind it? What about consonant cluster reductions, how do they work? Does the number of <D>s after a <:> (which functions similar to punctuation marks in written English) infer anything, or is it completely arbitrary
If anyone is interested in working on this, first we'll need a huge corpus of Spurdo Spärde pictures, so we have something to analyse. /realbenis/, which functioned through wordfilters, could be used as a rough reference, but I believe it over-simplified some of the rules.
On vowel harmony and dialects
I recently recalled a debate regarding vocal harmony in Resian dialect/language that de Courtenay saw as evidence of Turkic influence in formation of that dialect.
However, further digging revealed that Slovene language scholars found similar vowel assimilation across syllables in most Slovene dialects as the first step in the so-called Modern Vowel Reduction. As modern Slovene orthography doesn't reflex this vowel reduction, and neither does pronunciation of the language standard, this isn't apparent, unless you acquaint yourself with actual spoken dialects.
So, I'm back with more examples to support this counterargument, with words I found in my own dialect (which is somewhere in between Ljubljana and Upper Carniolan dialect group). I've mostly found examples of tensing, where following vowel causes the preceding stressed vowel to be pronounced as tenser, more closed.
daleč ("far away"):
derived form OS *dalekъ. In Standard Slovene it's pronounced /'da.lɛtʃ/, I pronounce it as /'dɛ.lətʃ/ — apparently first step being assimilation of /a/ into /ɛ/, followed by reduction of unstressed /ɛ/ into /ə/.
jesen ("ash tree"):
derived from OS *jasenъ (it is cognate to Russian ясень), irregularly derived in Standard Slovene with this assimilation of /a/ into /ɛ/. In Standard Slovene it's pronounced /'jɛ.sɛn/, I pronounce it as /'jɛ.sən/ because of following reduction.
kakor ("as", "like"):
derived from OS *kako-že ("how-that"); rhotacism occured in early stage of development, already attested in Freising Manuscripts, late 10th century. In Standard Slovene it's pronounced /'ka.kɔr/, I pronounce it as /'ko.kər/ — three steps, first assimilation of /a/ into /ɔ/, then reduction of unstressed /ɔ/ into /ə/, and tensing of stressed /ɔ/ between two velars into /o/, which is regular development of Slovene pronunciation.
There's also one example of a vowel change in a prefix po- which consistently occurs before stressed /u/ and /i/ in my dialect:
poslušati ("to listen"):
In Standard Slovene it's pronounced /pɔ.'slu.ʃa.ti/, I pronounce it as /pu.'slu.ʃət/. Apparently, in this case, /ɔ/ assimilates into stressed /u/ from base word root in next syllable. The last two vowels are victims of vowel reduction, first one is transformed into /ə/, the second one disappears.
popisati ("to write on", "to make an inventory"):
Standard Slovene /pɔ.'pi.sa.ti/, I pronounce it as /pu.'pi.sat/. Again, same assimilation in prefix, but the /a/ doesn't get reduced, probably because the accent is a bit more fluid in this case (other words with same word root can be accented on that /a/).
povedati ("to tell"):
Standard Slovene /pɔ.'ʋe.da.ti/, I pronounce it as /pɔ.'ʋe.dət/. No assimilation in prefix, /e/ isn't tense enough to cause it.
However, this primitive vowel harmony system isn't really productive and only appears in specific cases. Unlike Resian, which instead of going through Modern Vowel Reduction, developed a vowel harmony based on assimilation of tenseness and breathiness (breathy vowels appeared in Resian instead of vowel reduction) of vowels.
So, now that I've described a dialectal feature; let's start a debate on this topic, shall we?
Besides Altaic vowel harmony, there is also one other well known vowel assimilation system: the Germanic Umlaut. But, I'm not interested in those cases. I'd like to hear if you perhaps know of a dialect that does similar wacky stuff with vowels. I'd imagine this happens in dialects somewhat regularly, but rarely carries over onto entire languages in language development. Because as soon as a language starts cramming words together and reducing vowels, some of the quality of those lost vowels should be passed onto its surrounding, to preserve distinctions between words.
Duolingo just launched Swedish for English speakers.
https://www.duolingo.com/course/sv/en/Learn-Swedish-OnlineTime to learn the language of Alexander Skarsgård.
I started learning German
So i started learning german a few weeks ago so i decided i'd practice translating Batman: The Dark Knight Rises
Let's start with the pĺane scene:
Sie sind ein großer mann
Language evolution
Post how your language has changed over time.
Old english
On anȝynne ȝesceop Ȝod heofenan and eorðan. 2 Seo eorðe soðlice ƿæs idel ond æmti, ond þeostra ƿæron ofer ðære nyƿelnysse bradnysse; ond Ȝodes ȝast ƿæs ȝeferod ofer ƿæteru.
Middle english
1 In the bigynnyng God made of nouyt heuene and erthe.
2 Forsothe the erthe was idel and voide, and derknessis weren on the face of depthe; and the Spiryt of the Lord was borun on the watris.
early modern english
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
／ｌａｎｇ／は日本語についてどう思いますか
How do you get in contact with the language you are learning? Basically how do you practice it aside from your actual learning resources (books, programs etc)? For English this is really easy but for other languages not so much.
Best would be to be in a place where the language is spoken but obviously that's rarely the case for learners.
Do you have a friend (irl or online) who speaks the language whom you talk to? How to you get to know this person? Do you browse sites in the language (if so post some)? Are you active on imageboards, communities or similar (if so post some)? Do you watch stuff in the language to not only read but also listen to it?
Personally I'm still searching for this kind of stuff (learning Portuguese). At the moment I'm just trying to understand the general on /int/ etc. Actual talking is way too fast for me (fucking romance languages and their lightning tongues)
Weird message
So I'm writing this message on skype and then suddenly this text appears in the text box:
瑨灴⼺猯整浡潣浭湵瑩潣⽭牰景汩獥㜯㔶ㄶ㤱〸㜵㈷〴㌰椯癮湥潴祲⌯㔷弳弶〲㔶㔹㈵㌰
Now I have no idea which language it is, automatic translation tools can't translate it, and it wasn't on my clipboard. Any help?
Hey /lang/, I want to go learn coptic and I was wondering how long will it take learn it?
Is this board still alive? I'm preparing to learn some new languages in college, and I found this place while fucking around.
Looks like it could be an interesting board, why this lack of activity?
Hey Rusfags of /lang/,
does 'chto toboy takoy' mean 'what's with you?', or what does it mean? My Russfag friends are always saying it to each other.
Japanese thread
desu
Обучение на русском легко!
So I spent the day browsing through a Russian-English dictionary, and have come to realize learning Russian is so fucking easy. Except for the cursive handwriting, which is screwed up.Prefixes and suffixes are helpful.
What I'd really like to get my hands on is a text file of all russian words and let my computer skills do the work decyphering it for the lulz.
I'm not sure if it is the dictionary I'm using or a specific dialect they are examining but this book seems to use the accute accent marke over alot of vowels, and I'm not talking about "ё" and "й" but а, е, и, о, у, ю, я where I see a lot of а е и о у ю я.
This dictionary is about 20 years old. Clinton was president when it was published but no computer or technology terms seemed to made it to print.
The Mandarin Struggle
How are you progressing lads
So tell me /lang/, is there ever any point where learning a language starts to make sense? My sister gave me a book she used to learn and become fluent in Greek and I have put away at least an hour every day into learning it for about a week and a half, and I keep forgetting them, and so far only around 6 or so words have stuck and I'm still on lesson one. Is it this bad for the entire time you're learning the language, or is it like a steep slope before you go down the hill and start picking up words like glue?
Biblical/Classical Hebrew
The language of the Tenakh, Mishnah, and many other scrolls of historical note. Of great use for Christians, academics, and Jews alike. Can't stand the Bible? Read the first two thirds of it in the original language and realize that your awful translations are awful. Discussion of Hebrew and its texts is more than welcome. Extra resources especially so.
Good news! Classical Hebrew has ~4000 words in its vocabulary compared to English's ~800,000 and counting. You can learn more than enough to be fluent and read old texts fairly quickly and just look up the words when you have trouble because it's a dead language and no one really "speaks" it anymore.
Biblical versus Modern
This Israeli puts it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFNZ4aojgv8
That youtube channel as a whole is an okay resource for learning Modern Hebrew, but that's not what we're here for.
The Alefbet
""The Basics:"" The Alefbet is the Hebrew Alphabet, and it's a right to left language. Whereas the alphabet is named after the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Beta, the Hebrew alefbet is named after its two first letters, Alef and Bet.
""Weird quirk #1:"" The Alefbet has no vowels.
>How the fuck do I pronounce it then?
There are two ways. One is to memorize how you pronounce which words or to use the Niqqud (Nee-kood). Hebrew: נִקּוּד
>Gesundheit
Niqqud is basically little marks around the consonant that tells you what vowel sound follows it. Yes, like Tolkien's Elvish. Most people learn the language with the Niqqud and naturally remember how the words without the Niqqud are pronounced after a certain amount of time, and it's just a matter of learning how syllables are pronounced like one would do with Spanish or other languages which are read how they're spelled.
""Weird quirk #2:"" Sometimes the same letter looks different when it appears at the end of the word. Most languages didn't have punctuation 4,000 years ago, so they used to use it to tell when words stopped. That's just a vestige from older times and it's not at all hard to find transcriptions of scrolls and whatnot have spaces and punctuation inserted for reader's convenience.
So far, so good. Much better than English's innumerable rules, subrules, and even more exceptions that tell those rules to go fuck themselves, right? Piece of cake.
""Learning the Alefbet""
Here's some videos for you. I find the Hebrew alphabet song helps. The following all use the Ashkenazi pronunciation which is the most commonly used. There's another pronunciation used by the Sephardi Jews, but there's no difference in word usage and spelling, only pronunciation.
""Alefbet Song from Shalom Sesame:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzjHjXe-2XU
Catchy little song and you can see the letters' shape as they're said. It's a minute long. Pause the video as you need to on your next read-through.
""Complete walk through on the Alefbet in two videos:"" PT 1 https://youtu.be/veaFX9RUK4Y and PT 2 https://youtu.be/-s-CMuNTivY
Alternatively, there's this made by some Israelis, but it it doesn't have the lesson on the last four letters yet, lazy shits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBVpQzvrJ4w&list=PLCCECB0803BCF7CD4
The above playlist has the added benefit of an introduction to the different ways the letters are sometimes written and writing conventions that have developed over the past fuckthousand years this language has been floating around.
Ancient Greek
What do you guys think of Ancient Greek?
I'm considering learning it, out of interest, so I'd like to know a little more about it.
Anyone know this language and/or have some opinions on it?
What language are you learning?
What do you hate about it?
Russian doesn't have a "h" sound. Why?
Social media thread for language learning help/penpals
Your post should contain:
>The language you want to learn
>Your level of fluency
>The means of communication + relevant usernames (can include snapchat, kik,
facefuck, etc)
bicture will always be reladed :DDDD
Recommend good and easy to get media in your language.
>>>/operate/24007
Hotwheels doesn't care any more (I can't blame him), and doesn't even own the domain 8chan.co; for all we know, this site might not be here tomorrow.
I've relocated to https://hubski.com. It's not an imageboard, but it's not a traditional forum either.
Instead of having subforums or categories, posts are identified by tags. You can use existing tags or make up your own.
You can "upvote" posts but not downvote them. Moderation is user-driven and personalised: if you don't like a certain user, you have the options to hide his posts from your feed or forbid him from posting in your threads, but that's it. Posts are not deleted and people are not banned unless they break the law or post personal information related to other users.
The community is pretty nice and smarter than both 8chan and reddit. It's full of leftists, but in practice that's not a problem since they don't have the power to censor your opinions (and they actually seem surprisingly tolerant of different opinions).
Honestly it's the best forum I know of, so I'm letting you know about it. If you do decide to move there, it's best not to mention that you came from 8chan. There's a #language tag, we could use that.
Are there any languages that don't have so many interpretations to the same word given the context being slightly different?
"Stuff" as a noun, for example can be just a bunch of miscellaneous things, while "stuff" as a verb can mean to force something into something else.
This is what tires me about English; It's not that it's difficult to figure out the interpretations, but it feels like there's no elegance or anything to the wording.
Translation
So Im thinking about becoming a translator. I already have english, french and spanish (my first language) and I think I'll do fine with them.
Any other language that could be useful? I love japanese but I suspect it's not as useful as it used to be some years ago.
Russian, mandarin, arabic?
What are you guys reading?
I'm currently reading:
The Way of Kings and what you see in the picture.
>>>/esperanto/ here, just sharing the news that the Esperanto course for Duolingo is now in beta!
Best place/way to learn Mandarin?
Best place/way to learn Mandarin?
My favourite by far is chineasy. It's amazing but it doesn't teach you much vocabulary. It's more about language structure, etc.
Are there any other sites like Gengo where you can get paid for translating stuff?
When speaking a foreign language, should you try to imitate their accent or keep your own? Which choice is less likely to result in your complete and irreversible loss of dignity?
A Dilemma
I want to study a semitic language because of their uniqueness, but I can't decide between Arabic and Hebrew. Arabic is more widely used, but Hebrew seems easier to read, write, and speak and has the added bonus of being the only dead language to ever be revived. what does /lang/ think?
I would love to see this board become more popular. It's sad that so few people are interested in languages.
Are there any ways we can try to motivate others to join?
Resources thread. Post resources and discuss them.
>BaBaDum - https://babadum.com/
It consists of a handful of simple games to help you learn vocabulary. Currently supports 13 different languages. Nice to play when your mind has gotten overloaded and you just want to do something easy to reinforce your learning.
Hotwheels has given board owners the option to create up to 10 static pages, each with its own title and url, like the Rules page. What should we do with them?
Is anyone here learning Greek? Does anyone have any good resources for modern Greek?
Hi /lang/ 'sup?
I'm currently learning german because I really want to travel there someday (and maybe living there if everything goes on well, because my Argentina is falling to pieces as years passes by)
So the thing is, what sources do you recommend for learning it? I'm currently using Duolingo and Rosetta, but I feel like I need something else to add.
Also, how does it feels like living in Germany? + and - if you may…
An experimental script
I'm experimenting with the idea of writing English using Chinese characters, using a mix of using characters for their meaning to represent English words, and using them for their sound to spell out English words. So in order to figure out whether it's viable, I want to see, can anyone here read this? Text is the beginning of a Vocaloid fanfic.
здравствуйте, мои друзья
I have been trying to learn Russian for a long time, and despite my intellectual limitations, refuse to give up.
Can you recommend me some slow Russian music (with vocals, naturally)?
Ca you also point out some famous/traditional children's stories in Russian?
большое спасибо
Unite for knowledge?
Ohai, /lang/! Lurker here.In the course of expanding ones scope of knowledge, and intelligence, I am here to ask if any of you have been to >>>/edu/ ? Its a pretty based board imo. I feel that /lang/, and /edu/ could/would work well together.
kthxbai Based board here, btw
Public service announcement: captchas have been enabled for thread creation since this site is full of idiots who think raiding other boards is fun and totally not a waste of time. As I type this, /b/ has just finished raiding /fem/ and wiping it clean and is now raiding /argentina/ after checking whether its mods are asleep. After they're done with /argentina/ who knows who might be next.
The method is the same that was used to destroy /furry/, /cyber/ and /rule34/, although /b/ is doing it manually instead of using a bot like Bui. They create a big number of new threads in a small amount of time, bumping the existing threads off the board; then they delete their own threads, resulting in an empty board (save for the stickies).
I'm sorry for the inconvenience but with boards like /b/ and /int/ and assholes like Bui around, I think this is now a necessary measure.
Edit: /argentina/ is safe, they had spam protection enabled, as did /christian/.
serious /int/
Are you tired of "/b/ with flags"? Do you want a place like halfchan's /int/? Then check out >>>/international/ !
Spanish Board
HelloI am the new owner of >>>/spanish/
It is for the learning and discussing of Spanish.
I also own >>>/es/ which is for Spanish speakers to have fun on, and for Spanish learners to practice speaking on.
Feel free to drop by!
I am also wanting to collaborate with the owner of /spanishclass/.
Rules and Links.
Interesting links and boardsA board dedicated to the world's best-known artificial language.
>>>/esperanto/
Rules
https://8chan.co/lang/rules.html
I think it should be enough with those but I'm open to suggestions and discussion (in this thread).
If you can provide the board with a translation of the rules in your native language or a language you're fluent in please post the translation in this thread.
What is peniche?
Olá, eu estou aprendendo portugués.
Alguém daqui tambem está aprendendo portugués ?
How do I learn Italian?
Recently I met my father and found out that he's Italian and his whole family is Italian. My grandparents don't speak English very well and I want to learn how to speak with them in Italian, I imagine I can get to a decent level and then I'll be able to stop aggressively learning and just talk to them and consume Italian media.What resources should I use?
Is duolingo/rosetta stone actually good or just a waste of time?
What are some good (free or piratable) courses?
Schools will start teaching typing instead of longhand
TEACHING children to write is transitioning to a computer era, as traditional cursive writing and calligraphy will not be taught at Finnish schools after the autumn 2016 and will be replaced with the study of typing skills, reported Savon Sanomat on 18 November."Fluent typing skills are an important national competence," explained Minna Harmanen from the National Board of Education which is currently finalising the guidelines for the new study of writing.
Harmanen acknowledged that waiving handwriting will be a major cultural transformation, but added that schools will still have room for altering their studies: when the teachers want, they can still teach longhand. Typing should be also easier to connect to teaching everyday life skills than handwriting.
Apart from the curriculum, the schools have different means for teaching children computer skills. There are schools with hundreds of tablets to teach and learn with, but also schools with only one computer class, such as Kasurila primary school in Siilinjärvi.
The principal of the school, Marja Rytivaara said that they will get their first tablets next year, but believes that the children are learning many of the new computer skills outside of school, so the changes in the studies might not have a lot of influence for example on children of unequal position.
http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/12767-schools-will-start-teaching-typing-instead-of-longhand-2.html
does anyone else listen to foreign politicians who speak other languages?
i find this great practice at my level cos they dont talk too fast, always speak clearly, and everything they say is very predictable. So they always go back to the same words, yet its still a good challenge.
Voynich manuscript
>Cracking the Voynich Manuscripthttps://archive.today/H73Ry
So /lang/ do you think it's a real book with using a real language or an medieval scam?
Maybe it's the Necronomicon?
pt
anyone learning portuguese right there?
huh.
Lost in translation general anyone?
/lang/meta
Should /lang/ get its own custom CSS?
any good resources (preferably either free or available as a paid ebook or something) on Modern Hebrew
I know the alephbet and that's it
I for one welcome our strawberry overlords
I am teaching an Argentine friend English. He's learning well so far, and already speaks a little bit. He also is teaching me Spanish. I already speak it (brokenly) and it's better than his English. We learn together, it's fun.
Today he learned "to be" in English. He doesn't understand the "you"/"you guys" thing for "ustedes" very well. He already understands that there is no "usted" in English.
Advice, please?
-
Hola /lang/.
Estoy enseñando a un amigo argentino el inglés. Comprende bastante bien, y ya habla un poquito. Además, él me ensaña español. Ya hablo español (es bastante malo, ¿no?) pero es mejor que su inglés. Aprendemos juntos, es divertido.
Hoy aprendió el verbo "ser" en inglés. No comprende muy bien "you"/"you guys" para la palabra "ustedes." Ya comprende que no hay "usted" en inglés.
¿Consejos, por favor?
Anki Thread
/lang/ you did your reps today?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/11010906/Why-Germany-is-the-home-of-penis-enlargement.html
>More penis enlargement procedures are conducted in Germany than in the rest of the world combined.
>With an estimated total 15,414 procedures worldwide, nearly one in five of all old chap enlargement ops were carried out in the Fatherland.
>Incredibly, the Germans have more penoplasty procedures than the rest of the top ten countries added together.
Who here likes to create neologism? I'm very fascinated by the idea of lingual evolution and new words entering common usage, and thus I really enjoy learning and attempting to create new words. How about you guys?
noisivelt (noun) - any unpleasant noise, often used to refer to music
latigid - highly devoted to a cause
This is a thread for songs that are sung in multiple languages. Either different versions of the same song, or songs whose actual lyrics are multilingual. Enjoy!
Unless you've read a poem in its original language, you can't really say you've read it.
/sg/ - Spanish General
Hola, Spanish general thread.I'd also like to remind you all that >>>/spanish/ is a thing.
Hilf mir bitte.
I am studying German, and I have a hard time with it, because I can't get invested in it. I learned English pretty well because I was interested in all the cultural products of English-speaking countries (TV/Movies/music/books/etc.), but this just does not happen to me with German. Can someone recommend me some fine German TV/cinema, which I could watch in glorious Hochdeutsch with English or Russian/Ukrainian subtitles?
All languages skew toward happiness: Universal human bias for positive words
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150209161143.htmArabic movie subtitles, Korean tweets, Russian novels, Chinese websites, English lyrics, and even the war-torn pages of the New York Times – research examining billions of words, shows that these sources – and all human language – skews toward the use of happy words. This Big Data study confirms the 1969 Pollyanna Hypothesis that there is a universal human tendency to "look on and talk about the bright side of life."
Irish Language
Gaeilge thread.
Grüezi :^)
Does anyone know of some resources I can use to learn Swiss German? Additionally, if anyone here is swiss could you teach me?I plan to immigrate to Switzerland in a few years so I would like to learn ASAP so I can fit in better.
>>>/spanishclass/ here, come chat in Spanish with us!
mi toki lon toki pona.
jan toki Epelanto li ike.
jan toki Epelanto li akesi.
sina wile ala wile e nanpa suli.
sina wile ala wile e nimi mute.
jan toki Epelanto li akesi jaki.
jan Sameno li moli e jan.
toki Epelanto jaki.
Vocaroo thread
Let's talkPut the language you speak in your name field and speakers of this language post some text for you and r8 you and give tips.
Or just have fun with anything
vocaroo.com
Latin
SalveI started studying Latin a couple days ago. Now I'm wondering who else here knows some or wants to
Podcasts for learning languages
I've been listening to 'Learn to Seak Spanish with Discover Spanish' for the past couple of weeks to supplement my Duolingo courses. What podcast, if at all, do you listen to for learning Spanish or any other languages?
/platt/ - plattdüütschfaden
Allens leve to’t vadderdaag!Ick bün langsom?
Mak di dat kommodig, allens!
So german anons
A day or two ago someone in my german class said that if I want to use 'it', it needs to cooperate with the gender of the noun being minimized. For example, if I wanted to use 'it' in the sentence 'der Tisch ist rot.', the sentence would be 'er ist rot'. This is diferent than what I've been taught, where it is always 'es', regardless of gender.
Who's wrong, my friends or me?
I wonder if posting links to file lockers with copyrighted language learning resources are against the 8chan global law. It would be nice to have a thread like that.
Afrikaans
Praat u Afrikaans? Ek begin om te leer om Afrikaans te praat. Ek weet nie baie frases, maar ek kan tel en sê die alfabet.
ITT: Banners
I suck ass at anything graphic but I tried to make a banner for /lang/. All critiques and ideas are welcome.
why is it that arabic is always typed tiny as fuck
Spanish question
Is "¿que te sucede?" pretty much the same as "what's wrong?" "What's the matter?"–is it ever rude, like you're implying the person is overreacting?
Estonian
Anyone here knows Estonian?I'd like to find someone to chat with. I'm not very good, mostly because I can't remember words for shit, and the only way to fix that for me is practice. Maybe we could game together and chat, or discuss shit.
Email attached, and anyway, Eesti general.
Ma ei tea mida siia kirjutada, aga tahaks eesti keeles ka midagi lisada.
How to grammar.
How do you study grammar? It often happens to me that I understand everything I read in the textbook and I can make the exercises without breaking a sweat but after a while (lets say one month) I forget everything I learned.Weird thing is that I can still read sentences and make sense out of them without the need to parse the grammatical structure.
I thought maybe I need to keep doing more exercises but I don't have a teacher or anyone who can help me making them.
Ideas?