language-minded

well, it depends on how far back we want to go and matters of... uhm... legality in terms of sourcing... uhm... produce...

ahem. anyway.

one thing my granddad used to do was take his oldest sons with him and go and liberate some cabbages and such from a nearby farmers field (this was well over 35 years ago jsyk) and he’d buy some bacon from the butchers, a big hunk of it. boiled bacon with green vein cabbage. it was something he could cook, would make a lot of, and honestly, not a single one of the household went hungry for several days.

more recently, ala in my lifetime, my mother used to live on toast in order to make sure my brothers and i at least had a decent meal. most of our food was tinned, sometimes frozen, rarely fresh vegetables. the thing about uk vegetables is, as far as i can tell, it’s easier to source vegetables here than in the us for example. so fresh produce is possible to get. but we were poor af (still are lbr) but my mother was making do with £20 a week for three kids and herself in terms of food. it wasn’t easy. she’d make sunday dinner and it’d be a big thing because it’d have roast potatoes, some meat (usually chicken breast), and plenty of vegetables (all frozen in bags from farmfoods). but that was more of a One Time A Week thing. regular dinners would be simpler. especially with one kid (me) who was a picky af eater and two boys (my brothers) who would honestly eat anything in huge af quantities. she’d spend a good £5-6 on a sack of potatoes that’d last the week and use them to make chips, roast potatoes, jacket potatoes, mash and whatever else she could to go with whatever frozen veg she had and the meat she’d bought. more often than not, i remember dinners being simple affairs. tin of baked beans and sausage in that sauce with toast. perfectly suitable for me, less so for my brothers. they’d get corned beef hash which would knock my mother sick to make because he hates corned beef, but she’d be able to make a large amount that’d last two days at a time for my brothers.

most of the time, she heavily relied on my primary school feeding us. free school dinners made sure we were able to eat during school hours and made it easier to feed us when we got home. during the times when money was really scarce and my mother couldn’t actually feed us properly, she’d get us sorted out and we’d hike up to my auntie’s and we’d eat there. i didn’t realise it as a kid, neither did my brothers really, but if it weren’t for my aunt, we honestly wouldn’t have eaten a damned thing some days. food at my aunt’s was almost like having a sunday dinner every time we visited. she’d have a root through her giant ass freezer where she hoards frozen food (still does btw) and bring out sausages and bacon and frozen bread, frozen milk. just all sorts. 

the most common meals we had when i was a kid were usually things easy to cook in the oven with minimal attention paid because my mother had only herself to look after three kids, one of who was an absolute shit head when left alone for five minutes (my middle sib has not changed). 

chips and two or three slices of pizza were exceptionally common. and also one of my favourites. i had an absolute weakness for the mini party pizzas that farmfoods used to sell. 

My favourite thing was cut up hot dog sausages boiled in garlic VH sauce and water....

Also a dessert that was just like slices of white bread with cream and brown (or maple) sugar. That was like a fancy poor people dessert because cream is expensive I guess? (When you live in quebec and know 50 people who have maple farms, maple sugar is not expensive lol)

drink more water instead of more coffee.

weekly goals are bullshit. set yourself 3-day goals. you’ll be less laid-back.

don’t just mindlessly stare at words. before you start studying, know your approach to it. have a plan.

summarizing the concept in your own words is the key part of taking notes. don’t just copy things down, convert them into your own way of talking, your own vocabulary, no matter how dumb and unprofessional it sounds.

don’t let the “studyblr aesthetic” fool you. studying doesn’t have to be pretty. summaries and notes can be messy as long as they’re comprehensible. you can always rewrite and reorganize them later. (honestly, you better do. and you better keep them.)

don’t throw away the papers you’ve solved your problems in. staple them to the fucking textbook. you need to see them constantly. cause you’ll need reminders of how far you’ve came, when you’re feeling discouraged.

don’t be an armchair analyst for your issues. if you have an idea then act on it.

remember: the exact point where it becomes difficult, is where your growth begins. take a deep breath, and try to focus on the paragraph in front of you.

get off your high horse and understand that if you’re a zero, you won’t go to 100 in a couple of days. first, you’ll need to reach 30, then from 30 to 60, and then from 60 to 90. nobody is 100 everyday. that happens very rarely.

you need to have fun everyday. you need to have peaceful time every single day. even on exam night. especially on exam night, actually. so make sure you’ve studied enough so you can have some time to yourself.

once you’re on a roll and in need of some challenge to stay on track, start writing down your studying hours. tell yourself you’re not allowed to do less than 80% of what you did yesterday. whatever the hell it was, even just one hour. so if yesterday you really studied for like, say 8 hours, today your goal is to study for at least 6 and a half hours. if you can’t keep up with that, make it 70%, or 60%. 

no    =    “No,” she said. 

no.    =    "No,” she said sharply.

No    =    “No,” she stated firmly.

No.    =    “No,” she snapped.

NO    =    “No!” she shouted.

noooooo    =    “No,” she moaned.

no~    =    “No,” she said with a drawn-out sing-song.

~no~    =    “No,” she drawled sarcastically.

NOOOOO    =    “No!” she screamed dramatically.

*no* = “No,” she said emphatically. 

*nopes on out of here* = “No,” she said of herself in the third person, with a touch of humorous emphasis.

~*~noooo~*~ = “No,” she moaned in stylized pseudo-desperation.

#no = “No,” she added as a side comment.

“no” = “No,” she scare-quoted.

wtf are you kidding no = “No,” she said flatly. “And I can’t believe I have to say this.”

no no No No NO NO NO NO = "No,” she repeated over and over again, growing louder and more emphatic. 

nooOOOO = “No,” she said, starting out quietly and turning into a scream.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE: Colonization.

L: Is it modernization? Urbanization?

IP: Genocide. Denial of sovereignty.

L: Economic development? Migration?

IP: Ongoing oppression. Racism.

- If you want to learn one language and practice a few times a week, that’s fine.

- If you want to study 7 languages at once and practice every day, that’s fine.

- If you like to go out and use your target language, that’s fine.

- If you just like to watch movies or youtube in your target language, that’s fine.

Different things work for different people.

Some things may be scientifically proven to work better, but not everyone has the time or the energy.

Esperanto (Esperanto lingvo)

Basic facts

Number of speakers: between 100,000 and 2-3 million (100,000 speak it fluently and 2-3 million have studied it)

Official language: in international Esperanto congresses and meetings only

Minority language: Esperanto speakers live in more than 120 countries. They are not an officially-recognized minority anywhere

Language of diaspora: Esperanto society can be compared to a diaspora. Esperanto speakers live all over the world, and have their own culture but no legal status

Alphabet: Latin, 28 letters

Grammarical cases: 2

Linguistic typology: agglutinative with isolating traits, free wordorder

Language family: Neo-latin language

Number of dialects: no dialects

Longest word: kontraŭkolektivismobatalantoj (anti-collectivism fighters)- 33 letters

History

1878 - the first primitive version of Esperanto, which was named Lingwe Uniwersala, is completed

1887 - “Unua Libro”, the book introducing modern Esperanto, is published

1889 - the first Esperanto magazine is published and the first Esperanto club is founded

1905 - the first World Congress is held and the “Fundamento de Esperanto” is published

1908 - Universala Esperanto-Asocio, the World Esperanto Association, is founded

2009 -  It is possible to pass international Esperanto exams at three levels (B1, B2, C1)

2012 - Google Translate added Esperanto as its 64th language

The language was initiated by Ludwig Lazar Zamenhof, who created the grammar on the basis of European languages with a minimal quantity of exceptions. The vocabulary is mostly based on Romance languages, although there are also words from Germanic and other languages. Two decades later, the first children speaking in Esperanto with their parents were born, the first native speakers of the language. It is a language created for international communication, which later became creolized and is nowadays the language of a diaspora of Esperanto speakers.

It was created on the basis of the vocabulary of Indo-European languages, but was intended to be easy to learn. For this reason, its grammar is agglutinative, a characteristic feature of Turkic and Finno-Ugric languages, and at a deeper level it is isolating, as in Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese. This means that its morphemes can be used as independent words. It has a completely regular grammar and allows the creation of a large quantity of words by combining lexical roots and about forty affixes. 

The main parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) have consistent endings that always allow the recognition of all parts of speech. Its regularity makes it particularly easy to learn, and its streamlined capacity to create new words make it one of the most productive languages, with a potentially unlimited number of words, is capable of expressing all new ideas or states. 

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the alphabet: a b c ĉ d e f g ĝ h ĥ i j ĵ k l m n o p r s ŝ t u ŭ v z.

Esperanto is read as it is written. Each letter always has the same sound, the same sound is always expressed by the same letter, and the stress is always on the next to last syllable. Diphthongs such as aŭ, eŭ, oŭ or aj count as one syllable.

Special letters in Esperanto are translitarated into English in the following way: ĉ = ch, ŝ = sh, ĝ = j, ĥ (ch as in Scottish loch), ĵ = zh (or French j).

Grammar

All nouns end in -o, all adjectives end in -a, all infinitive verbs end in -i, and most adverbs end in -e.

In the present tense, the ending is -as, while the past tense ending is -is and the ending for the future tense is -os.

In addition to the nominative case, there is also an accusative ending which is used for nouns, adjectives and pronouns in both the singular and plural: -n. Thanks to the accusative, the word order is free.

Un lieu :

About the way a place is used for 

About a event that is going to take place there

About a destination

Ex : lieu du crime (crime scene), lieu de travail (workplace), lieu de vacances (holiday destination)

Un endroit :

About a piece of something bigger

About a piece of something specific

About the sides of a two-dimension object 

Ex : endroit du monde (place on earth), endroit du corps (body location), remettre ses chaussettes à l’endroit (put one’s socks the right way out)

Une place :

About what can be occupied (by people or things)

About what should be done in the name of tradition, values or events

Ex : place du marché (market place), ne pas être à sa place (to be out of place)