I’ve seen a lot of posts on my dash tonight about users who are threatening suicide, with other Tumblr members posting in effort to try to get ahold of them. I think you all should see this:

IF THERE IS EVER A TUMBLR USER WHO HAS POSTED A GOOD-BYE MESSAGE, SUICIDE NOTE, VIDEO, OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT, PLEASE FOLLOW THIS POST.

1. Scroll to the top of your dashboard.

2. See the circular question mark icon at the top? It’s the third one over from your home symbol. Click on that, and a screen similar to the one in the picture will come up.

3. Where you can type in questions, the box with the magnifying glass at the top, type in the word “suicide.”

4. Click on the first link that shows up. It should say, “Pass the URL of the blog on to us.”

5. Type in the user’s URL and tell Tumblr admin that the user is contemplating suicide and has posted a message indicating that they are going through with it or will be attempting. Hit send! Tumblr administration will perform a number of actions to contact the user and take the necessary steps to prevent the suicide.

TUMBLR: THIS COULD SAVE A USER’S LIFE. PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE SUICIDE THREATS.

help.

Engelsgeduld: (lit.: angel's patience) great amount of patience

Feierabend: (lit.: party-evening) the rest of the day that remains after work

Fernweh: the desire/longing to travel to faraway places/ foreign countries

Fingerspitzengefühl: (lit.: fingertips-feeling) good skill in handling things/ sensitivity and empathy

Geborgenheit: more than safety, protection and invulnerability, it symbolises peace, warmth and calm you feel especially when you're with the people you're close to (e.g. family, friends)

Gemütlichkeit: feeling of comfort

Habseligkeiten: valuable and personally important possessions

Innerer Schweinehund: (lit.: inner pig-dog = weaker self) the part of a person that they have to overcome to be productive

Kitsch: objects with superficial beauty that are actually useless but are appreciated nonetheless

Konfliktfähigkeit: (lit.: conflict ability/skill) ability to deal with conflict / ability to constructively solve interpersonal conflicts

Kummerspeck: (lit.: grief/sorrow bacon (fat)) gained weight from emotional overeating (especially after a breakup)

Lebenslüge: (lit.: life's lie) a lie that you tell yourself to make life more bearable

Mitdenken: (lit.: with-thinking) ability to think for yourself and do more than what you were demanded to do / trying to find a conceptional solution to a problem together with other people

Sehnsucht: intense inner longing for somebody, something or a place

Schnapsidee: (lit.: schnapps idea) a ridiculous and crazy plan/idea you have while you are drunk or an idea that is so stupid that people think you had it while being drunk

Sprachgefühl: (lit.: language feeling) feeling/sense of language, instinctive feel for a certain language / intuitive feeling of what is linguistically appropriate

Stehaufmännchen: (lit.: little stand up man) someone who doesn't give up and begins anew

Torschlusspanik: (lit.: gate-closing-panic) the fear of missing something important / not being able to do some things (because you're too old)

Verschlimmbessern: (lit.: verschlimmern=exasperate, verbessern=improve) improve something for the worse / make something worse but with having had the intention of improving it

Vorführeffekt: (lit.: demo effect) the effect that something you're actually able to do doesn't work when you want to demonstrate it to other people

Waldeinsamkeit: (lit.: forest loneliness/solitude) the seclusion/solitude of the forest

Warmduscher: (lit.: warm showerer/ somebody who showers with warm water) a wimp / a person that doesn't like to leave their comfort zone

Weltschmerz: (lit.: world pain (world weariness)) gratuitous melancholia / kind of feeling experienced by someone who believes that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind / the feeling of anxiety caused by the ills of the world

- just as much of a quality education as you would get at a state school or uni 

- much more affordable 

- usually more night classes that make going to school while working and/or taking care of kids much easier 

- transfer students actually have a higher graduation rate than students who have been at a university all 4 years 

- there is nothing wrong with aspiring to go to a community college 

- there is nothing wrong with being proud of attending a community college 

And the brand new mulitmillion dollar business building at the university didn’t have places to plug your laptop in, but the community college had multiple outlets at every table.

Anon requested me to share my secrets with you and I will try my best to do so. I don’t use all of these resources very regularly, but I think they could all help you with your studies. Some of these resources will be in Dutch, because that happens to be my native language. I included them because there might be Dutch speakers reading this and some resources might also exist in other languages.

Dictionaries

Invest in a good dictionary!

Online dictionaries can prove very useful because they’re faster, but books are often more accurate

I use both, but am yet to find a good online Dutch-Italian dictionary

(For native Dutch speakers: I highly recommend Van Dale)

Duolingo

Vocabulary and grammar (app/website)

Took me about 6 months to finish

Use the desktop version: it’s where you can find the grammar

Take notes of the grammar!!

It’s not always 100% accurate but the basics are explained very well

Write down the vocabulary

I made a word document that went article + Dutch word/article + Italian word/article + Italian plural

(shoot me a message if you want it!)

I finished the tree before starting books, because I don’t like the idea of working with two (or more) different “full” resources at the same time

With “full” I mean that they’re not additional information you look up so you can understand a concept better, but actual resources that you’re going to study as a whole

Tinycards

Flashcards (app/website)

This app is also from Duolingo: for Italian, they’ve got flashcards for the Duolingo tree, so you don’t have to make them anymore! Sadly I only discovered this months after I finished the Duolingo tree so it wasn’t useful for me anymore, but honestly I think that’s a blessing if you want to repeat vocabulary! 

You can also make your own flashcards: you can keep them private or not and they’ve got audio.

Memrise

Vocabulary (app/website)

I heard a lot about it, saying it was good for vocabulary so I thought I should give it a try.

I didn’t like it, I don’t really know why: I think it’s a good app, it just didn’t work for me.

Quizlet

Flashcards (app/website)

Make your own flashcards or use decks made by others.

There are also other things like diagrams but I haven’t tried that so I wouldn’t know how it works

Tandem

Conversation practice (app)

It’s an app to chat with natives of the language you’re learning

Possibility to send voice messages, there’s an in-app dictionary, you can send pictures, you can video chat or call and most importantly: if there might be any problems, you can report and block.

I have not encountered a single person who is not there for learning, a problem that apparently exists on other apps.

You can also pay to get classes by teachers on there, and they’ve also got Tandem Pro without adds and probably some other advantages, but the free version is great as well

Beelinguapp

(Audio) books (app)

It’s mostly short stories and fairy tales

Some are paying, some not

You can turn on the audio

La Repubblica

Newspaper (app/website)

I turned on notifications for this one, so I can see what the important stuff is in Italy right now

I don’t often read whole articles, but I should because it’s great reading practice + you learn about politics, culture…

Newspapers often use a more difficult language, so I recommend this to people who are intermediate

Assimil Italian

Vocabulary + grammar (book)

I started this after finishing the Duolingo tree and then it’s not useful, because it starts from scratch.

Good alternative if you don’t like using apps like Duolingo

It has audio’s

(Got it from @lovelybluepanda)

Colloquial Italian

Vocabulary + grammar (book + CD)

I only got the book and not the CD (I got the book from lovelybluepanda‘s account, idk if she’s even got the CD?)

I liked it, although too easy because I had already finished Duolingo.

Very good grammar explanations

Modern Italian Grammar

Grammar (book)

Just plain grammar, but great explanations

I started taking notes from it, but rn I’m redoing it because 1) I should revise my grammar 2) the first notes I made were awful 3) I didn’t even get to 1/3 of the book

It’s a lot, but I love it

It has a workbook! Great exercises!

I also got this one from lovelybluepanda

Snelcursus Italiaans: grammatica

Grammar (book)

As you might have guessed, it’s in Dutch. But because it’s a translation from German (Durchstarten in Italienisch-Grammatikk) I thought there might be other translations out there :)

I use it to look up stuff, not so much to actually study from

Qui Italia più: corso di lingua italiana per stranieri: livello medio (quaderno di esercitazioni pratiche)

Exercises (book)

This one is completely in Italian

Varied exercises

Nuovo progetto italiano: quaderno degli esercizi

Grammar, vocabulary, exercises (book + CD’s)

Got this one at my language school in Rome and I quite like it (I got the B2 version)

Lots of different exercises, listening practice, reading, conjugations…

Diary

I’m not the type of person who keeps a diary but I’m trying to keep one for Italian and Norwegian. Just talking a bit about your daily/weekly activities, feelings… can make you feel more familiar with the language

If you’ve got a bullet journal, maybe you can do it in Italian?

Visit Italy

Easier said than done? You’re right about that.

I’ve recently spent 3 weeks in Rome with a language school while staying in a host family and honestly I learned so much. I don’t speak Italian with anyone here and speaking Italian all day long improved my level so much.

So if you have the possibility: plan a trip to Italy, talk with natives (in my experience: they’ll be more than happy to chat with you).

If people start to talk to you in English, don’t be scared to switch to Italian. Most of the time they’re very excited you speak the language!

Other tips

Switch your phone/tablet/computer/… language to Italian

Learn the alphabet!! 

A thing I was too lazy to do so after 1.5 years I still don’t know it and believe me, that can be annoying

Look for other resources! Especially in your native language!

Do not solely rely on this one post please

Follow as many Italian langblrs as you can: search for Italian vocab lists/grammar posts/… and follow the people who made them, there are also posts out there with lists of Italian langblrs (I’ll make a list with the ones I follow below)

Translate: I like to translate parts of wikipedia articles, Dutch to Italian or Italian to Dutch

Make a topic jar: lovelybluepanda has got a post with topic ideas

Listen to music, podcasts…

Watch Italian tv! Italian tv is unbelievably shitty but I like to watch quizzes in particular because if you don’t understand one part, that’s no problem: the next part will be about something different.

Read books! You can start with children’s books, from B1 books like the first Harry Potter books are doable, What I also find a good idea is reading a book in Italian that you’ve already read several times in your native language. That way you already know the story line and it’s not a problem if a certain part is too difficult for you

Italian langblrs/tumblrs

The Classics

Browse works by Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and other famous authors here.

Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.

The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.

Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.

Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.

Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.

Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.

Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.

Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.

The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.

Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.

Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.

Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.

Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

Textbooks

If you don’t absolutely need to pay for your textbooks, save yourself a few hundred dollars by reviewing these sites.

Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.

Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.

KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.

Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.

Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.

MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.

Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.

Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.

Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.

eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.

oh hell yes…. a good compromise

You are a writer, no matter if you write 3000 words a day or wrote a story that you were passionate about back in 2008. Don’t let word count or consistancy devalue your efforts as a writer.

Whether you have a fire burning within you or a tiny voice whispering in the back of your head, you are a writer. If the everyday and extraordinary events that happen in your life inspire you to create stories, if something touches you so deeply that you have to scribble down a few words, if you’re even scrolling through tumblr looking for inspiration you are a writer!!!

I know the whole rat race of being a writer is really intimidating. I understand this better than you know, because thoughts of self-worth in my writing career are the thoughts that keep me awake at 3 am. It consumes me.

So maybe this is just a letter to myself or maybe I struck a chord.