Languages and Linguistics | Polyglots, Language Learners and Linguists!

A while back, my partner (who is a native Italian speaker) started playing with a simple app where you have to find as many English words as possible from a daily nine-letter grid. She often stumbled upon new words by chance, just by selecting the right letters or trying something that sounded plausible. She started using these words in the game even though she didn't know what they meant.

This inspired me to create a similar game in my native language, Italian. My version, however, provides the definitions for the words you find - whether you knew them or discovered them by chance. The goal is not just to entertain but also to teach. For native Italian speakers, it's a way to learn new, less common words. For non-native speakers, it's a chance to learn more about terms they may have heard but never fully understood.

You can find the web app here: https://paroline.click/

Definitions and translations of words are drawn from lexicographic data from Wikidata: in the past few months I have made around 3000 edits, adding new words and improving existing ones, there is still a lot of work to do but all improvements to lexemes stay free and open.

This is still a work in progress, and I would be very grateful for some early feedback from anyone who is learning Italian to see if this method is actually helpful for building your vocabulary.

Thanks for your feedback!

I've been an avid conlanger for many a year, and I've decided I'd like to finally learn a new "real" language. What has always fascinated me about conlanging is the creativity and "fun" one can throw into a language. What are some natural languages that have some of these same cool/interesting features? I already speak English and German.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/33025706

I'm doing some conlanging for a book and I'm having trouble finding the word for how we can take a verb, add -er at the end, and get a word for a person who does that thing. For example, a driver is someone who drives, a commander is someone who commands, a lawyer is someone who laws, and a finger is someone who fings. I am having trouble finding out how other languages noun their verbs in this way since I don't know what this thing is called. Pls halp.

I am trying to work out if this is LTR Arabic, or just gibberish.

From the boardgame Blood on the Clocktower.

Best Random Letter Generator

Just find an perfect online tool, it can gen some random letters, for english, spanish, french, even chinese and japanese. Good for Language learning, maybe you can use this as party games too.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/45444769

The Public Domain Review's article about the book, with embedded Internet Archive viewer of the book

• https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/conjectural-observations/

Directly on Archive.org

• https://archive.org/details/conjecturalobser00davy

About the Public Domain Review:

Founded in 2011, The Public Domain Review is an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.

The articles are usually (but not always) about things available on the Internet Archive.

i watch their videos sometimes but i’ve heard that their accuracy is questioned a lot or has been.

Josh Billings' book was a flop until he rewrote it phonetically (more or less)

Can be on anything really

some ideas for book topics:

• Metaphors and how they effect us in the modern day
• The limits and problems with translation and beauty from fault
• How capitalism effects our language and relations
• The tyranny of the Dictionary
• Philosophy's relationship with language
• How language effect love
• How therapy talk can be suffocating
• Language and colonialism
• The Language of religion

I have been thinking about language more and more recently and how we use it and want to read some theory on it

Hi,

I was trying to translate the song hevenu schalom alechem To some other languages.

English was kinda easy I wish you the peace off our lord x3 Wish you the peace the peace the peace off our lord.

Frensh i found online Nous vous annoncons la paix x3 Nous vous annon-cons la paix, la paix de notre dieux

Also have Dutsh. Ik wens je de vrede van god x3 Ik wens je vrede vrede vrede van de her.

But than i tried it with Arabic... Salam alaikum. X3 Than i was thinking it would be : salam alaikum alaikum alaikum inshallah. Is that the good and translation?

An other language is also welcome btw ;) Tkx

I kept trying to make the connection between "get" in English and Spanish.

For instance "Can you get some apples at the store?".

Google translates this literally to "¿Puedes conseguir algunas manzanas en la tienda?"

Which is completely wrong, and in Spanish sounds really odd to other people, since conseguir means "to achieve" something.

In my classes, and multiple other times native English speakers had the same question as I did. Native Spanish teachers would just say "No we don't use conseguir for that."

But for me it was never really answered until it finally dawned on me...It turns out it is a stand in for an insane amount of actual verbs which is why I think I as a native speaker and others were so confused. We use it FOR EVERYTHING, without thinking about the context.

For those English speakers learning Spanish, or any language for that matter, don't make the same mistake I did! 😀 Just use the actual verb that is intended.

Quick summary of ways to use "to get":

• Obtain – I need to get a new laptop.
• Receive – She got a letter from her friend.
• Buy – I got some groceries.
• Understand – I don’t get what you mean.
• Become – He got tired after work.
• Fetch – Can you get me some coffee?
• Arrive – We got home late.
• Catch (illness) – He got the flu last week.
• Persuade – She got him to apologize.
• Prepare – I’ll get dinner ready.
• Experience – I get nervous before tests.
• Be punished – He got in trouble for cheating.
• Be affected by something – I got sunburned at the beach.
• Cause something to happen – Get the car fixed today.
• Bring – Can you get the book for me?
• Take revenge – I’ll get you for that!
• Hire – We need to get a plumber.
• Have permission – Did you get to leave early?
• Communicate with someone – I can’t get him on the phone.
• Hear/see clearly – Did you get that message?
• Be in a certain state – Things got worse over time.
• Escape/avoid – He got away with it.
• Seize/arrest – The police got the suspect.
• Move (to a place) – Get inside quickly!
• Make progress – I’m finally getting somewhere with this project.
• Be hit by something – I got hit by a snowball.
• Revenge/retaliate – You got me back for that prank!
• React emotionally – That movie really got me.
• Do something successfully – I got the door open.
• Escape from a place – Let’s get out of here.
• Make someone do something – I’ll get him to help us.
• Cause someone/something to move – Get the dog inside.
• Understand in a deep way – I finally get why she was upset.

I've tried a few language-learning apps, but the quality varies depending on the language. I'm more confident in the books that come with CDs.

In the past I would have coded something and added the text and audio to give myself a crude language app with superior content. But I don't think I have it in me anymore so I'm looking for something that comes without the content. Does anything like this exist?

hypothetically, let's say you were tasked with simplifying the English language. how would you go about doing that, and why?

to start with an easy one, the first thing I would do is eliminate silent letters from all words and make it so no letters share sounds. for example, example would become exampel. then, because x would no longer be around or at least wouldn't have that sound, ekzampel. I would also consider eliminating mulit-letter sounds like ch, and replacing them with single characters (probably the ones that got removed).

Hello! I hope this is okay to ask, here!

I'm searching for a well-structured European Portuguese language course -- English to EU PT, that teaches Beginner to A2, or further.

Online, or physical materials that can be obtained online and shipped is a necessity.

I found a course which I already really like, one that's gotten quite popular via its helpful videos, but the full program is just too darn expensive for what I can invest--it may just be overpriced, in general--so I'm investigating all options, and would greatly appreciate any recommendations.

Besides main curriculums, there are many lovely (and a few unhelpful, haha) supplemental materials--websites, apps, videos, books, etc.--for learning and practicing EU Portuguese; I'm familiar with several, but there are always more things to discover. If anyone has suggestions for those, let me know!

Obrigada, desde já!

Note: This is a work in progress and just a place holder for jotting my thoughts down.

Disclaimer: This should not be viewed as being a legitimate source of information, and just as something fun (and I do find it fun, 😊 ). As well as I am getting older, and my hardware is fairly outdated, and the programmers are a joke. So expect a lot of this to be the mere musings of a madman.

I will be updating this, eh, as much as I can. Anyway, let's do this thing.

I have had this idea of writing Tzotzil (as it's the only Mayan dialect I know well enough) with the Mayan characters, and the following are the rules that I am attempting to adhere to.

Basics

1. Abide as much as possible with known Mayan rules and knowledge of their writing.
2. Standardize and simplify the characters as much as possible as if they have continual use into a college setting, internet chatroom setting, written novels, mathematical texts, technical documentation, or children passing notes in grade school.
3. If the need arises to create a character, use only what is known.

(And I've lost my train of thought for the moment. Ok, at least I got this part started).

What I'm working on at the moment is writing down the lyrics to Vayijel's "Kux Kux".

Top: Is a fancier writing and closer to the original Mayan.

Middle: Is a more simplistic shorthand which I am attempting to further simplify the codices written forms.

Bottom: Is a transliteration of the characters used.

Non Modified Characters

a, li, ku, to, la, e, me, na.

Modified Sounds of Known Mayan Characters (That follow Mayan rules).

• vu <= huun (Huun is the Yucatec word for paper, which is vun in Tzotzil).
• s <= u (u is the third person pronoun in Yucatec, and since there are several characters for the sound u, I repurposed one of those characters for s, which is the third person pronoun in Tzotzil).

Modified Characters of Known Mayan Characters (That do not follow Mayan rules).

• xu <= nuuk (I have found a 'xu' character in my "The New Catalog of Maya Nieroglyphs Vol. 2", but haven't implemented it as of yet).
  • Since ku is spelled twice, I added an extra tail onto the character xu to reduplicate it across both ku characters.
• k'o <= o embedded with the letter k'i.

The final word "svulanot", is spelled "s vulan[a] to" with "s" and "to" as affixes separated by a space to the verb vulan[a], but this may change once I start making it possible to write these characters much smaller (as should be for written novels, text books, etc).

(Ok, I've spent what little brain power I've had...Man, I hope I can remember this...I really really enjoy this kind of thinking, heh).

(Also, if ya'll have any questions, just ask. Maybe it will help this aging mind to concentrate a bit better...Anything is possible, 🤣 ).

The Past, Present, and Future of Language Learning in Italy and Great Britain

***CALL FOR PAPERS***
The Case of English in Italy, and of Italian in Britain
9 Nov. 2024
Pembroke College, University of Oxford
Deadline: 2 Sept. 2024
➡️ http://italianstudies.ox.ac.uk//content/cfp
#CfP #languageLearning #languageTeaching #SLT #ELT
@languages

Hi guys! I've made a new community for people learning the main three Scandinavian languages.

So if you speak or are learning Swedish, Danish or Norwegian, head on over to !learnscandilanguages@lemmy.world

I hope it can be a fun place where we can support each other and share resources.

I've used this a use times and it's fairly good. I recommend it.

Here’s the story of how and why I took this language test. I wrote this for friends and family, but others have read it as well. After putting all of this together, I myself am amazed at how long and hard I worked on this. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but when I wrote it all down, it turned out to be quite a lot.

Huh! In my speech, the Tr in "tree" or "trigger" is really close to Chr as in "chree". In fact to pronounce "chree" I have to aspirate so hard to distinguish it from /tr/.

Is this common? [ˈt͡ʃɹi:] instead of [ˈtɹi:]? Why does this happen? Is there something about going from a plosive to an approximant that creates an affricate?