ce-langblr

片刻 (pian4ke4) - a moment

独自 (du2zi4) - alone

伫立 (zhu4li4) - to stand for a long time

改变 (gai3bian4) - to change, to alter

Paying attention in Japanese

When talking with Japanese people, in English or Japanese, you might notice that they frequently nod or interject something like はい or yes frequently while you are talking. This participatory style of communication characterizes spoken Japanese. With あいづち (aizuchi) or short interjections, the listener is letting you know that they are following you.

If the listener doesn’t show any reaction during a conversation, a Japanese person might feel uneasy and stop and ask if you understand. In some cases they may repeat what they said if they assume you don’t follow the conversation. Over the telephone this might happen if the listener doesn’t respond enough, with the speaker asking もしもし？ to see if the listener is still there.

あいづち is an important part of Japanese conversation, and even if it seems strange at first, with enough practice it will become second nature.

Examples of あいづち

はい (does not necessarily mean “I agree” when used as あいづち; formal)

ええ (less formal than はい)

うん (more casual than はい and ええ; sounds closer to a short, hard “mm” sound in English)

ああ (”ah, I see”; less formal)

へえ (”no way”; casual)

そうですか (”is that so?”; formal)

そうですね (”I see”; less formal)

そうっか (”I see”; casual)

そう (”I see”; casual)

そうなんですか (”oh really?”; expresses with extra emphasis)

ほんとうですか (”is that true?”; formal) 

ほんとうに (”oh really?”; less formal)

マジ (”really?”; casual)

なるほど (”I see”, “that’s right”; formal)

So someone asked me yesterday for some Ukrainian vocab lists. Since I’m not a native speaker and don’t feel comfortable giving people grammar information when I make seven thousand mistakes every day (can’t wait until immersion!), I figured I might start by compiling a list of Ukrainian resources I’ve found either through poking around the internet or here on Tumblr. Enjoy! Gamified Apps: BliuBliu Clozemaster Duolingo Internet Polyglot (can also learn Ukrainian from other languages) Loecsen Lessons: Culture Talk Funky Ukrainian (good audio, I don’t like the transliteration and $$$) Goethe-Verlag Learning with Texts  My Languages Omniglot Read Ukrainian Ukrainian Grammar (in Russian) Ukrainian as a Foreign Language (in Russian) Ukrainian as a Foreign Language (again!) University of Toronto Ukrainian resources Dictionaries: Cybermova Lexicool Transliteration for Ukrainian News in Ukrainian: BBC Українська служба UNIAN Громадське Радіо Свобода (RFE/RL) ТСН  Textbooks: Beginner’s Ukrainian  Modern Ukrainian (a little outdated but from UofM so I have to include it)  Ukrainian Language: 150 Ukrainian Verbs Ukrainian through Its Living Culture

University Resources: Eurasian Regional Languages Program Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute Indiana University Summer Language Workshop

Overview

Ukrainian Pronunciation Dictionary

History of the Language

Ukrainian Alphabet

Practice Cursive Ukrainian

Grammar & Lessons

Advanced Ukrainian

Memrise Courses

Most Common Words

Мова – ДНК нації (a great website)

Read Ukrainian

Ukrainian 101

Ukrainian as a Foreign Language

Ukrainian Grammar

Ukrainian Lessons

Ukrainian  Lessons & Phrases

Ukrainian Phrasebook

Ukrainian Phrases

Ukrainian Vocabulary

Ukrainian Vocabulary Builder

Verb Conjugation and Noun Declension

Verb Conjugator

Books

A Comprehensive Grammar of Ukrainian

Colloquial Ukrainian + Audio

Conversational Ukrainian

English-Ukrainian Phrasebook

Intro to Ukrainian

Learn Ukrainian

Let’s Learn Ukrainian

Peace Corps Ukrainian Courses with Audio

Teach Yourself Ukrainian

Ukrainian Grammar

Ukrainian for Speakers of English 

Ukrainian for Speakers of English - Oral 

Ukrainian for Speakers of English - Written

VocabuLearn Ukrainian

Граматика української мови*

Ласкаво Просимо*

Практичний курс української мови*

Українська мова*

Українська мова для іноземців*

* = taught in Ukrainian 

Dictionaries

Cypermova 

ectaco

freelang

lexicool

lingvozone

Media

Hit FM Radio

ICTV Online TV

nrcu radio

Radio Emmanuil

Shanson Radio

Ukrainian Stories

Ukrainian Kid’s Games

Youtube 

Easy Languages

Easy Ukrainian 

Learn Ukrainian With Roman

Learn Ukrainian

Lessons with Olga

Mova - Cartoons

СловОпис

Apps

Clozemaster

Duolingo

Loecsen

Mango Languages

Mondly Languages

Soooo I made myself an infographic to remember those tricky Japanese Counters.

口調（くちょう）- tone (of voice), (verbal) expression

唐突（とうとつ）- abrupt 

拒絶する（きょぜつする）- to reject sth/sb

誤解を解ける（ごかいをとける）- to clear up a misunderstanding

General Plan:

Weeks 1 and 2: Purpose:

Learn the fundamentals sentence construction

Learn how to spell and count

Start building a phrase stockpile with basic greetings

The Alphabet

Numbers 1 - 100

Subject Pronouns

Common Greetings

Conjugate the Two Most Important Verbs: to be and to have

Basic Definite and Indefinite Articles

Weeks 3 and 4: Purpose:

Learn essential vocabulary for the day-to-day

Start conjugating regular verbs

Days of the Week and Months of the Year

How to tell the time

How to talk about the weather

Family Vocabulary

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 5 and 6: Purpose:

Warm up with the last of the day-to-day vocabulary

Add more complex types of sentences to your grammar

Colours

House vocabulary

How to ask questions

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Forming negatives

Weeks 7 and 8: Purpose:

Learn how to navigate basic situations in a region of your target language country

Finish memorising regular conjugation rules

Food Vocabulary and Ordering at Restaurants

Money and Shopping Phrases

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 9 and 10: Purpose:

Start constructing descriptive and more complex sentences

Adjectives

Reflective verbs

Places vocabulary

Weeks 11 and 12: Purpose:

Add more complex descriptions to your sentences with adverbs

Wrap up vocabulary essentials

Adverbs

Parts of the body and medical vocabulary

Tips for Learning a Foreign Language:

Learning Vocabulary:

What vocabulary should I be learning?

There are hundreds of thousands of words in every language, and the large majority of them won’t be immediately relevant to you when you’re starting out.Typically, the most frequent 3000 words make up 90% of the language that a native speaker uses on any given day. Instead try to learn the most useful words in a language, and then expand outwards from there according to your needs and interests.

Choose the words you want/need to learn.

Relate them to what you already know.

Review them until they’ve reached your long-term memory.

Record them so learning is never lost.

Use them in meaningful human conversation and communication.

How should I record the vocabulary?

Learners need to see and/or hear a new word of phrase 6 to 17 times before they really know a piece of vocabulary.

Keep a careful record of new vocabulary.

Record the vocabulary in a way that is helpful to you and will ensure that you will practice the vocabulary, e.g. flashcards.

Vocabulary should be organised so that words are easier to find, e.g. alphabetically or according to topic.

Ideally when noting vocabulary you should write down not only the meaning, but the grammatical class, and example in a sentence, and where needed information about structure.

How should I practice using the vocabulary?

Look, Say, Cover, Write and Check - Use this method for learning and remembering vocabulary. This method is really good for learning spellings.

Make flashcards. Write the vocabulary on the front with the definition and examples on the back.

Draw mind maps or make visual representations of the new vocabulary groups.

Stick labels or post it notes on corresponding objects, e.g when learning kitchen vocabulary you could label items in your house.

How often should I be practising vocabulary?

A valuable technique is ‘the principle of expanding rehearsal’. This means reviewing vocabulary shortly after first learning them then at increasingly longer intervals.

Ideally, words should be reviewed:

5-10 minutes later

24 hours later

One week later

1-2 months later

6 months later

Knowing a vocabulary item well enough to use it productively means knowing:

Its written and spoken forms (spelling and pronunciation).

Its grammatical category and other grammatical information

Related words and word families, e.g. adjective, adverb, verb, noun.

Common collocations (Words that often come before or after it).

Receptive Skills: Listening and Reading

Reading is probably one of the most effective ways of building vocabulary knowledge.

Listening is also important because it occupies a big chunk of the time we spend communicating.

Tips for reading in a foreign language:

Start basic and small.  Children’s books are great practice for beginners. Don’t try to dive into a novel or newspaper too early, since it can be discouraging and time consuming if you have to look up every other word.

Read things you’ve already read in your native language. The fact that you at least know the gist of the story will help you to pick up context clues, learn new vocabulary and grammatical constructions.

Read books with their accompanying audio books. Reading a book while listening to the accompanying audio will improve your “ear training”. It will also help you to learn the pronunciation of words.

Tips for listening in a foreign language:

Watch films in your target language.

Read a book while also listening along to the audio book version.

Listen to the radio in your target language.

Watch videos online in your target language.

Activities to do to show that you’ve understood what you’ve been listening to:

Try drawing a picture of what was said.

Ask yourself some questions about it and try to answer them.

Provide a summary of what was said.

Suggest what might come next in the “story.”

Translate what was said into another language.

“Talk back” to the speaker to engage in imaginary conversation.

Productive Skills: Speaking and Writing

Tips for speaking in a foreign language:

If you can, try to speak the language every day either out loud to yourself or chat to another native speaker whether it is a colleague, a friend, a tutor or a language exchange partner. 

Write a list of topics and think about what you could say about each one. First you could write out your thoughts and then read them out loud. Look up the words you don’t know. You could also come up with questions at the end to ask someone else.

A really good way to improve your own speaking is to listen to how native speakers talk and imitate their accent, their rhythm of speech and tone of voice. Watch how their lips move and pay attention to the stressed sounds. You could watch interviews on YouTube or online news websites and pause every so often to copy what you have just heard. You could even sing along to songs sung in the target language.

Walk around the house and describe what you say. Say what you like or dislike about the room or the furniture or the decor. Talk about what you want to change.This gets you to practise every day vocabulary.

Tips for writing in a foreign language:

Practice writing in your target language. Keep it simple to start with. Beginner vocabulary and grammar concepts are generally very descriptive and concrete.

Practice writing by hand. Here are some things you can write out by hand:

Diary entries

Shopping lists

Reminders

What could I write about?

Write about your day, an interesting event, how you’re feeling, or what you’re thinking.

Make up a conversation between two people. 

Write a letter to a friend, yourself, or a celebrity. You don’t need to send it; just writing it will be helpful.

Translate a text you’ve written in your native language into your foreign language.

Write a review or a book you’ve recently read or a film you’ve recently watched.

Write Facebook statuses, Tweets or Tumblr posts (whether you post them or not will be up to you).

Write a short story or poem.

Writing is one of the hardest things to do well as a non-native speaker of a language, because there’s no room to hide. 

There are lots of ways to improve your writing ability, but they can be essentially boiled down to three key components:

Read a lot

Write a lot

Just because something works for you doesn’t mean it necessarily works for people on very different language learning journeys. Likewise, just because a technique works for other people doesn’t mean you have to try and force yourself to use it. People learn in very different ways, language learning is not one size fits all. 

I’m all for trying all of these different methods (properly trying, not giving it a day and writing it off as too hard), but it’s important to remember that not everything will work for everyone the same way.

here are a few study tips on how to learn a new language 💻☺️:

1. start speaking as soon as possible. even when you haven’t learned too many words yet, the most important part of studying a language is not being afraid of using it. so download apps like hellotalk to get in touch with natives! of course, it’s even easier if you already have friends or family members speaking your target language.

2. study the most frequent words! there are tons of free so-called “frequency lists” online that prevent you from studying vocabulary you don’t need in the long run. with only 500 of the right words you could already have basic conversations!

3. get a lot of native exposure - through podcasts, videos and movies. there are so many recommendations on the internet, no matter what language you’re learning. the earlier you start immersing yourself in native material, even if it’s children’s books, the faster you’ll find yourself having fluent conversations!!

4. keep a weekly or daily diary to practice writing in your target language. even if it’s only composed of basic sentences, it’s the best way to use the vocabulary you’ve learned!

qotd: what language would you like to study next? i really look forward to studying Italian once I have a little bit more time!! 💕

Thank you for your ask!

I personally still struggle to pick up pitch differences and have internalized the pitches that people in Hokkaido use (which doesn’t vary much from Standard Japanese), as well as forced myself to memorize specific common words, like 雨 and 飴 (ame). 

Sentence intonation and certain word intonation vary dialect to dialect. I understand that Kansai-ben and Kyoto-ben have sentence intonation that varies from Standard significantly, but I can’t pick out specifically what is different haha.

Japanese people certainly feel like something is “off” if you use the wrong pitch, but if it’s in a sentence, the context gives them the info they need. However, if you’re just saying one word, they may get confused. One time I was playing shiritori with a friend and I said うえ with a downwards intonation, and they were like, “WHAT?!” I had intended to say 上 ue, “above,” but I had instead said 飢え ue, “starvation.” 上 has a rising intonation, while 飢え has a falling intonation. As I was still an intermediate learner, they were startled that I knew the word for famine haha.

Oh, and a super important one is たまたま (tamatama). With one intonation, it can mean “by coincidence.”

With another intonation, it means “testicles.”

I can never remember which intonation is which and I am TERRIFIED of using the wrong one, so I just never use the word tamatama. Proceed with caution lol.

I’ve been studying this language for a ridiculously long time, and not a single teacher ever went into pitch accents. Recently I looked them up, wondering if my Japanese was missing something fundamental. To my surprise, I realized I already follow these rules, even without explicit study.

It might seem daunting at first, but eventually you begin to align your pronunciation and intonation with what you hear around you to sound more and more natural, and that’s where pitch accents start to seep in.

la quarantaine- quarantine

le confinement- lockdown, shelter-in-place

l’incertitude (f)- uncertainty

le désinfectant pour les mains- hand sanitizer 

une infection des voies respiratoires- respiratory tract infection

un virus à arn- rna virus

l’immunité collective (f)- herd immunity

annuler- to cancel

reporter- to postpone

immunodéprimé- immunocompromised

rester- to stay

protéger- to protect

aplatir la courbe- to flatten the curve

企鵝 「きが」 penguin

人鳥 「じんちょう」 penguin

Not sure which combo is funnier.

企

On'yomi • キ

Kun'yomi •くわだ •てるたくら·む

undertake, scheme, design, attempt, plan

鵝

On'yomi • ガ

Goose

人

On'yomi • ジン • ニン

Kun'yomi •ひと • 〜り • 〜と

Person or human

鳥

On'yomi • チョウ

Kun'yomi • とり

14 Day Langblr/ Languages Challenge by lass-uns-studieren

On a whim one lazy morning, I thought I ought to create a langblr challenge. You don’t see many of these around as you do regular studyblr challenges so I felt like making one specifically for all the langblrs out there. Have fun!

Your target languages and why you want to learn them

Favourite word in your target language(s)

Post a progress pic from Duolingo or Memrise or Quizlet

Make a recipe in your target language. If you can’t do that, translate a recipe from your native to your targer ot vice versa

Fave quote in your target language(s)

Show us your language resources/ exercise books

Hardest thing about your target language(s)

Your favourite songs/bands in your target language(s)

Show us how you write in your target language(s); in any alphabet

If your native language wasn’t x, what’d you want it to be and why? If you like your native language, why would you stick with it? 

If you could wake up one day speaking another foreign language, what’d it be? (it can’t be any of the ones you’re currently studying!)

Read the news in your target language(s) and summarise what you’ve learnt of current events

What is your favourite untranslatable word/phrase and why?