& Inept In Most Other Things Too

Genuine question, isn’t just a matter of associating it with “go” and “walk”? 🤔 I speak Portuguese so it wasn’t hard to understand these two in Spanish, I guess that’s why I’m confused as to why it is confusing 🙈

In theory, yes ir is “to go” and andar is like caminar 

Though in practice, andar has more uses so it gets weird sometimes for English-speakers because we usually say something like “to go around” or andar implies some kind of habit or a mood or a phase, rather than literal physical motion

Also there are some idiomatic expressions with andar

And sometimes andar just means “to move” or “to go”, like it could be synonymous with ir or it could mean machinery “runs” like no anda “it doesn’t run/move”

It’s a lot. So like:

Anda diciendo estupideces como si fuera su trabajo. = He goes around saying stupid things like it’s his job.

Ellos andan distraídos. = “They’re distracted” / “They can’t seem to focus”. [lit. “they go around distracted”]

Andamos sin rumbo. = We wander aimlessly.

Andan andando. = They just wander around.

Anda de capa caída, la pobre. = She’s down in the dumps, poor thing.

Siempre andas soñando despierto. = You’re always daydreaming. / You always go around daydreaming. [lit. “you always walk around dreaming (while) awake”]

¿Para qué tanto andar por las ramas? = Why so much beating around the bush?

It becomes more confusing for English-speakers because you don’t really get taught about andar. It just shows up one day and it’s randomly irregular in places and you’re like why am I just learning about this now that we’re learning about preterite this would have been helpful why have I been saying caminar all this time then

Spanish word’s gender can be a little tricky, and for that reason we need some tips to remember.  Probably you’ve learned that the words ending in “a” are feminine, and this is true most of the time. But we also have some important exceptions, and if you learn them well your Spanish will be much more natural and accurate. (:

Masculine words ending in -a:

Some words that end in -ma:

el problema - problem el tema - subject el idioma - language el sistema - system el programa - program / TV show el fantasma - ghost el drama - drama el poema - poem el dilema - dilemma el panorama - panorama / overview

*Remember this is not a rule. Most of the words that end in -ma are feminine, but these are the most common words ending in -ma that are masculine. Actually these are the words that come from Greek.

Example sentences:

No hay ningún problema. - There’s no problem at all.

¿Cuál es el tema de su investigación? - What’s the subject of your investigation?

Me gustaría aprender muchos idiomas. - I would like to learn many languages.

Somos parte de un mismo sistema. - We’re part of the same system.

No me gusta ese programa. - I don’t like that program (TV show).

Dicen que hay un fantasma en esta casa. - They say there’s a ghost in this house.

No hagas tanto drama. - Don’t make such a drama.

Te escribí un poema. - I wrote a poem to you.

No encuentro la solución a este dilema. - I can’t find a solution to this dilemma.

Ese es el panorama principal de este proyecto. - That is the main overview of this project.

Professions ending in -a that are done by a man:

el poeta - poet el atleta - athlete el guía - guide el florista - florist el espía - spy el cura - priest

*If the job is done by a woman we just add the feminine article la(s) or una(s) before the noun, except for ‘cura’. La poeta, la atleta, la guía, la florista, la espía.

Example sentences:

Quevedo es uno de los poetas españoles más importantes. - Quevedo is one of the most important Spanish poets.

Los atletas llevan una dieta muy estricta. - Athletes have a very strict diet.

Preferimos viajar con un guía que nos muestre la ciudad. - We prefer to travel with a guide who can show us the city.

Don Francisco es el mejor florista del pueblo. - Mr. Francisco is the best florist in town.

La gente está un poco preocupada por los espías enemigos. - People are a little worried about the enemy spies.

El cura conoce muy bien la Biblia. - The priest knows the Bible very well.

Others:

el día - day el planeta - planet el cometa - comet / kite el mapa - map el tequila - tequila el clima - weather

Example sentences:

He estado estudiando todo el día. - I’ve been studying the whole day.

Me gustaría viajar a otro planeta. - I would like to travel to another planet.

El cometa se podrá ver desde la Tierra. - The comet will be visible from Earth. (You’ll be able to see the comet from Earth)

Creo que estás viendo el mapa al revés. - I think you’re looking at the map upside down.

Un tequila, por favor. - A tequila, please.

¿Cómo está el clima en Guatemala? - How’s the weather in Guatemala?

Remember: 

There are feminine words that begin in “a” or “ha” but we have to write “el“ or “un” before them. This doesn’t turn them into masculine words, this is just to avoid a hiatus. 

For example:

el agua - water // but the plural is: las aguas el alma - soul // plural: las almas el ala - wing // plural: las alas el hacha - axe // plural: las hachas el hada - fairy // plural: las hadas

Example sentences:

Cuida el agua. - Take care of water.

¿A dónde se va el alma cuando morimos? - Where does the soul go when we die?

Este pájaro tiene un ala rota. - This bird has a broken wing.

Cortaron el árbol con un hacha. - They cut the tree with an axe.

Anoche vino el hada de los dientes. - Last night the tooth fairy came.

it’s occurred to me that nobody fuckin knows how to take notes in classes and most advice about it is bad. What the fuck are “key words?”

So anyway here’s how I’ve gotten a’s in all my classes in college so far

I’m not gonna bother too much with telling you to take notes in class. Everyone knows that shit. But most people’s note taking skills suck ass and there are two main types of sucking ass I have observed

The first is the one where your notes look like a list of key terms and words. Sometimes they are underlined or there are dashes that connect them to other words. So if your prof was talking about Henry VIII you’d write down something like

Henry VIII

Church of England—divorce

DON’T DO THAT. Those words are gonna show up on the test, sure, but writing them down isn’t gonna help you with the test. What the fuck does any of that mean? High school is shit and your “key words” can’t help you now.

Here’s the other type of bad note taking:

It was necessary for Henry VIII to have a male heir who could succeed him, but his wife was unable to conceive a son. The Catholic Church

I stopped writing there because your professor moved on to something else. But, tbh, even if you can write fast enough to keep up with the content of the lectures (and you can’t for the entire lecture) it’s not helpful to have a solid wall of Everything That Was Covered In The Lecture, in grammatically correct complete sentences. Are you gonna read that shit again? No!

And honestly most people have like, sentences here and there that look important instead of the whole lecture. Which is also bad.

So what’s the not shitty way to take notes? It comes down to these principles:

Shorthand

Show Relationships of Things

These kind of go together

I cannot emphasize enough that you don’t need to write sentences like a normal person. Shorthand everything, and I don’t mean some fucked up studying shorthand you just came up with like “AmR” for American Revolution, I mean like...fuckin text/memespeak. Don’t write complete sentences, completely abandon formality. Abbreviate anything you would in a text message, you know what it means.

HOWEVER: You Must Show How Things Are Related To Things

To understand broad concepts you gotta understand how the things in them are related to other things.

That’s why writing down “Henry VIII” and “Church of England” isn’t gonna help you, because you’re not learning that there is a Church of England.

Did Henry VIII burn the Church of England? Cheat on his wife with it? Who knows? Definitely not you.

This is why you have to connect stuff like

Catholic Church says no divorce

Henry VIII—starts Church of England

But ya know you can make that more memorable AND more clearly show how one thing caused the other

Henry VIII: divorce >:)

Catholic Church: no

Henry VIII: fuk u *church of england*

I’m completely dead serious about this, this kind of slang is very good at indicating exactly how things relate to things in zero time and you know exactly what it means and you’ll remember it

But furthermore

You have to come up with shorthand to quickly indicate how things are related. Say you write down the definitions of two terms for like, opposing theories on government in class. That’s great but you’re leaving it to yourself to work out the opposing part later from what you write, and your brain’s a flaky bitch.

Like part of what you’re doing it giving yourself help with HOW to study your notes later.

So like. Do something like write a jagged line in between the definitions, indicating conflict. Write “OTOH” or “HOWEVER” in between in big fuckin letters. Writing down “Catholic Church” and what that is and “Church of England” and what that is, is fine. But like, if the main theme is the contrast between the two, “Catholic Church HOWEVER Church of England” immediately tells you the basicest basics. It’s like a tiny outline, telling you what to expect. Sure, you can figure it out reading your notes but I’m telling you how to write skimmable notes that you can glean stuff from even when you’re half spaced out and shit, okay?

Same thing for like, dates and sequences and cause-and-effect and stuff. Even if you’ve got the dates down...be sure to put arrows or something so even at a glance you’ve got basically what’s going on.

Also i know it feels like wasting paper but DONT scrunch all your notes together into small space on the paper. That lil dialogue between Henry and the Church of England is spread out over 3 lines which means if you have ADHD like me you can actually fuckin read it. Turn things into bullet lists. Indent things with little arrows to show things leading to things. If there’s a clear move to a new topic, new page. If you’re actually filling up the paper all the way that shits hard to read and it’s even harder to pick out the Big Important Stuff.

Last word of advice: If you end up like writing down two things and can’t tell what they’re for or how they’re related to each other...ASK QUESTIONS. Like “I’m sorry can you explain how the Church of England is related to the Catholic Church? I didn’t quite catch that.” If talking in class makes you feel like you might be percieved badly, you can frame it like a Nerd Question “So, what kind of relationship would you say the Church of England and the Catholic Church had?” or just play it off like you didn’t hear it like “I’m sorry, what was that last thing you said about the Church of England and the Catholic Church?”

Or just make a mark on your notes to remind yourself that you need more info and to go to your prof’s office to ask questions. I would really not be nervous about that, professors normally really like it when students show that they really want to succeed in the class and that they care. Unless they’re like, a complete dickhead, in which case, fuck what they think, right? You’re gonna ask questions and it’s their problem because you’re essentially paying them for your presence in the class.

“All of this information is obligatory. Chinese doesn’t let me ignore it,” says Chen. “In fact, if I want to speak correctly, Chinese forces me to constantly think about it.”

This got Chen wondering: Is there a connection between language and how we think and behave? In particular, Chen wanted to know: does our language affect our economic decisions?

Chen designed a study — which he describes in detail in this blog post — to look at how language might affect individual’s ability to save for the future. According to his results, it does — big time.

While “futured languages,” like English, distinguish between the past, present and future, “futureless languages,” like Chinese, use the same phrasing to describe the events of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Using vast inventories of data and meticulous analysis, Chen found that huge economic differences accompany this linguistic discrepancy. Futureless language speakers are 30 percent more likely to report having saved in any given year than futured language speakers. (This amounts to 25 percent more savings by retirement, if income is held constant.) Chen’s explanation: When we speak about the future as more distinct from the present, it feels more distant — and we’re less motivated to save money now in favor of monetary comfort years down the line.

But that’s only the beginning. There’s a wide field of research on the link between language and both psychology and behavior. Here, a few fascinating examples:

Navigation and Pormpuraawans In Pormpuraaw, an Australian Aboriginal community, you wouldn’t refer to an object as on your “left” or “right,” but rather as “northeast” or “southwest,” writes Stanford psychology professor Lera Boroditsky (and an expert in linguistic-cultural connections) in the Wall Street Journal. About a third of the world’s languages discuss space in these kinds of absolute terms rather than the relative ones we use in English, according to Boroditsky. “As a result of this constant linguistic training,” she writes, “speakers of such languages are remarkably good at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes.” On a research trip to Australia, Boroditsky and her colleague found that Pormpuraawans, who speak Kuuk Thaayorre, not only knew instinctively in which direction they were facing, but also always arranged pictures in a temporal progression from east to west.

Blame and English Speakers In the same article, Boroditsky notes that in English, we’ll often say that someone broke a vase even if it was an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers tend to say that the vase broke itself. Boroditsky describes a study by her student Caitlin Fausey in which English speakers were much more likely to remember who accidentally popped balloons, broke eggs, or spilled drinks in a video than Spanish or Japanese speakers. (Guilt alert!) Not only that, but there’s a correlation between a focus on agents in English and our criminal-justice bent toward punishing transgressors rather than restituting victims, Boroditsky argues.

Color among Zuñi and Russian Speakers Our ability to distinguish between colors follows the terms in which we describe them, as Chen notes in the academic paper in which he presents his research (forthcoming in the American Economic Review; PDF here). A 1954 study found that Zuñi speakers, who don’t differentiate between orange and yellow, have trouble telling them apart. Russian speakers, on the other hand, have separate words for light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). According to a 2007 study, they’re better than English speakers at picking out blues close to the goluboy/siniy threshold.

Linguistic determinism has inherently racist roots, and its initial proposition was filled with anti-Indigenous sentiments in particular, as it was an attempt to further “other” indigenous peoples - Hopi and Inuit languages are the two I can recall being specifically mentioned in Whorf’s essay off the top of my head. For the most part, linguistic determinism has been dismissed. The more popular idea is that language has a relationship to culture, but not necessarily a causal one; i.e. people who predominately speak Chinese live, for the most part, in China, which has different social norms than, say, England or the United States, which predominately speak English, which could inform the way money is viewed.

I would be really interested in whether Chen found anything concrete to imply a causal relationship! Unfortunately, I’m not finding a study anywhere. I believe this TEDTalk is what the original poster was discussing, and it’s worth noting that Chen is an economist, not a linguist.

So lets say you’re researching something for a paper (or just for fun) and the research paper you want to read is behind a paywall, or the site makes you create an account first, or makes you pay to download, or limits you to only 5 free articles, or otherwise makes it difficult for you to read what you want.

do not fear! copy the link to the article

go to sci-hub.se         (the url is always changing so its best to check out whereisscihub.now.sh to find what the current url is)

slap the article link in there

“When Dominic Onyekachi set out to read his 6-year-old niece a story, he did not anticipate that the simple task would lead him to create a digital collection of African stories.

After going through her mini library, he found that many of her books were foreign and had very little African representation.

Onyekachi told CNN that he wanted her to read books that reflect her culture, so he took it upon himself to write stories for her.“I wrote a few stories for her and I got my friend to illustrate. She liked it, her friends in school liked it too. And that’s when I really thought about writing more books and putting them in a place where many more children can access them,” he said.

The 23-year-old said he realized the unavailability of children’s books reflecting the continent was a much bigger problem after visiting Balogun market in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial center.

Many of the Africa-related books he found at the market were for advanced readers in secondary school, he said.“I spent a whole day checking bookshops and only came out with two books. And when I went online, there were so many complaints about this problem,” he added.

In May, with help from two friends, Fanan and Tolulope, Onyekachi launched Akiddie, a web-based platform providing access to African storybooks for children like his niece.

(I cross mine from R to L, but Jake does his straight through)

I was watching a kdrama and they were tallying a vote and I was just like: 😍😍😍😍

Cus I’d never considered the cultural implications of tally marks. Lol, I just thought lines to five are lines to 5, ya know? Then I read the whole wiki page and now I want to learn more!

For queer and feminist communities in the Middle East, the fight to gain acceptance in society has come in tandem with another conversation: how to define words like gay, bisexual and transgender in Arabic. Some people default to a transliteration of the English words in LGBTQ, others prefer the phrase “mujtama’a al meem” (مجتمع الميم) — or the meem community — a reference to the m-sounding Arabic letter that starts off these terms when translated into Arabic. After years of efforts led by activists in Lebanon, the word “mithly” (مثلي) and “mithliya” (مثلية) for gay is now standard for many media.

Anyways thought that was interesting to see the debate between the use of English and the active disuse of it. The article goes over more cultures as well.

There’s also this arab ace group if you want more ace things in arabic.

I’ve collected study tips from myself and others who struggle with studying. Here’s a masterlist of strategies people use to help :) For those curious, #3 is my personal favourite and is probably the main reason I didn’t flunk all of my classes this year. Feel free to add your own!

Sleep, eat, exercise. The basics. Treating my body right helps me keep a routine and makes me less prone to impulsivity. This makes it a little easier for me to do the things I need to do and fight back my executive dysfunction.

Play idle games while working. Anonymous says “I get bored very, very quickly and need constant stimulation, so every time I have to wait for something, I will immediately divert my attention. Having an idle game running helps me not to lose too much focus, so I get more work done as a result.”

Use a tutor. Since I can’t follow self-imposed deadlines, I create external deadlines by booking tutoring appointments. This forces me to make sure I have at least a basic understand of the material before the session so I know what to go over. Most schools have free peer tutors available, so take advantage (if your school doesn’t, try a study group)! This is a great way to create deadlines you can follow, and it always helps to study with someone who can answer your questions and keep you on task.

Play music. @luminarily says “Sometimes I sit in silence and I get bored of it or I get a song stuck in my head or something. But I have forcibly linked music playlist and actually doing something I need to do so that when I put on music I am automatically forced to do the work I was supposed to do. So it makes the work and the listening more enjoyable both and it’s easier to stay on task… I use unpaid youtube on my phone so I can’t leave the tab or else I can’t listen to music anymore so I can’t go on my phone. And also youtube mobile lets you set watch time timers, so when my music stops I take a break and don’t burn out!”.

Play ambient noise. Similar to #4. I am not stimulated enough when taking notes, reading textbooks, etc., but listening to music can be too much and makes me stressed. I like to play ambient noise (my personal nerdy fave is Slytherin dormitory ambience on Youtube lol). It’s enough to stimulate my brain, but not overpowering to where I get distracted or stressed.

Block out time to do work. @tidal-rose​ says “I find it easy to do stuff by saying ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’ But I don’t mean the procrastinate-y ‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ I mean plan to do it tomorrow. Set aside a block of time when you are going to do nothing but the task. …I just realized this sounds like such a neurotypical answer oh gosh. It really does work to hack my executive disfunction”

Have a plan. If I don’t have a straightforward + actionable plan for right when I wake up, I will just do literally nothing all day. I have to know what I’m going to be doing when I wake up, like “shower, be at the library by 10am, and do practise problems there”. If I only have a vague plan like “study chemistry tomorrow” it’s a lot harder for me to do anything.

Start small. It often feels impossible to do even the bare minimum. When I can’t even get myself to write a single sentence of my paper, I try to do even less than that. Literally just open up a Word document. Even just opening up a blank page is a fantastic start, and starting is the hardest part.

🇰🇷 “내가 상상하고 믿는 대로 이루어질 거야. 정말 할 수 있어.”

🇬🇧 ”That which I imagine and believe will come true. I really can do it.”

~~~~~~~~~~

내가 = I (informal)

나 (informal ”I”)+ 가 (subject particle)—> 내가

상상하다 = To imagine

[verb stem]-고: [verb] and...

믿다 = To believe

대로 = (here) As, In the way that

이루어지다 = To come true

-ㄹ/을 거이다: future tense

-ㄹ/을 거야: future tense (informal)

정말 = Really

하다 = To do

-ㄹ/을 수 있다 = To be able to, To can

[verb stem]+어/아/여: present informal tense

~~~~~~~~~~

[The text is written in 반말, informal language.]