Language Queen

Here you have some words/expressions (in bold) that you can use to show off while speaking Spanish. A native will know them, but if you use these you will impress them. Also, in your writings these words will look quite good. NOTE: Some of them are quite formal and not used in conversations.

similar - semejante, afín, cercano, aproximado, símil, parecido (adj.) (similar)

parecerse - asemejarse, semejar, darse un aire, recordar a (to resemble)

divertido - ameno, entretenido (adj.) (fun)

difícil - peliagudo, arduo, espinoso (adj.) (difficult)

fácil - sencillo, factible (adj.) (easy)

empezar - emprender (to begin)

terminar - concluir, ultimar, finiquitar (to finish)

la misión -  la empresa, el cometido, la tarea, la labor, el quehacer  (mission, duty)

caro - costoso, prohibitivo (adj.) (expensive)

barato - asequible, económico (adj.) (cheap)

distraer, desentender, simular - hacerse el sueco (expression, lit.

to do the Swedish. To avoid doing something that you must do)

enfermo - aquejado, indispuesto, alicaído (adj.) (sick, ill)

la historia - el cuento, la leyenda, la fábula (story, tale)

el cotilleo - chisme, chismorreo, enredo (gossip)

aprender - cultivarse, formarse, educarse, empollar (to learn)

gustar - cautivar, embelesar (to like)

saber - estar al corriente, estar al tanto (to know about something)

siempre - perpetuamente, constantemente, continuamente (always)

malo - diabólico, maléfico, maldito, ruin, infame, sinvergüenza, insolente, maligno, malicioso, depravado, inmoral, pérfido (adj.) (bad, as in “a bad person”)

malo - nocivo, dañino, perjudicial, nefasto (adj.) (bad)

comprar - adquirir, obtener (to buy)

la tienda -el comercio, el establecimiento, el negocio, la botica (shop)

continuar -prorrogar, prolongar, preservar, aguantar, proseguir (to continue)

buscar - indagar, rebuscar, escudriñar, revolver (to search)

contestar - objetar, contradecir, rebatir, refutar, rechazar, disputar, discutir, argüir (to reply, as in refute)

abandonar - marcharse, desaparecer, largarse, ausentarse (to abandon, as in “to leave a place”)

feliz - radiante, contento, risueño, campante (adj.) (happy)

triste - afligido, apenado, desconsolado, abatido, entristecido, apesumbrado, desolado, deshecho, desamparado, mustio, taciturno, tristón (adj.) - sad

antipático - desagradable, enojoso, aguafiestas, pesado (adj.) (obnoxious)

la ciudad - la urbe, la localidad, el municipio, la población

 (city)

el país - la nación, la patria, el pueblo, el estado (country)

la familia - la estirpe, el linaje (family)

los padres - los progenitores, los ascendientes, los antecesores (parents)

Hello! Thanks for the sweet comment! Good luck in advance. Here are some free resources. 

Korean

Korean Class 101How to study KoreanTalktomeinKoreanLingoDeer AppNaver dictionary

JapaneseMaggie SenseiMemrise Random coursesJapanese grammar databaseJisho online dictionary

ChineseChinesepodBBCChinese Skill AppFree course from Cambridge100 most common characters

Some words are difficult to understand when the word seems to have nothing to do with the meaning. It helps to know the 語源(ごげん) word origin to understand how a word like that could have that meaning. Here are some great words to know the 語源 for.

紅一点(こういってん)

紅(red) 一点(speck, dot, point)

the lone women(e.g. a bright flower) in a group

This word originates from Wang Anshin’s poem “ 詠柘榴”; there is a phrase reading”万緑叢中紅一点(ばんりょくそうちゅうこういってん. 万緑 means one surface of green,  叢中 means among the village of green. 紅一点 is one single red flower. The phrase means among one surface of green a blooming single red flower. It’s used as among many a single stand out. Ine the present age it is used mainly to mean the lone girl among many men.

後ろめたい( うしろめたい）

後ろ(back)

feeling guilty, having a guilty conscience 

It comes from 後ろ目痛し(うしろめいたし)  meaning when looking from the back the heart hurts. It means feeling guilty.

私に後ろめたいことは全くありません。

I have nothing to hide.

白羽の矢が立つ(しらはのやがたつ）

白羽(white feather) 矢(arrow) 

To be selected from among many people

According to a Japanese legend, a god wanted a human sacrifice. A white feather arrow struck the targeted girl’s roof.

次期社長として彼に白羽の矢が立てられた。

じきしゃちょうとしてかれにしらはのやがたてられた。

He was singled out as the next president.

稲妻(いねつま）

稲(rice plant) 妻(wife)

lightning 

It came from “稲の夫 (つま), rice plant’s husband

In ancient times, there was a belief when lightning strikes with a lot of thunder they impregnated the rice plants. So, the lightning was the rice plant’s husband.  “つま” used to be a word husband and wife called each other mutually. So with no relation to man or women,つま was said for both “妻”(wife) and “夫"(husband). It is thought in present times, for つま to be used for 妻、it became 稲妻. Meteorologically, when thunder is heavy, there’s many rainfall and sunshine, and the temperature is high, it is convenient for the growth of rice. It seems back then people knew from experience lots of thunder was good for the crops.

Duo: hey it tim–

Me:

Paraguay is a multilingual country, and most people are bilingual to various degrees. Around 88% of the population speaks Guaraní, a Tupi language. Paraguayan Guaraní is unique because it is a case where a non-indigenous population speaks an indigenous lanugage. Urban areas tend to be bilingual, and in rural areas there are more Guaraní-dominant speakers (Gynan 2005, based on the census data). Around 10% of the population speaks Portuguese in the east part of the country.

Guaraní is polysynthetic, but Paraguayan Guaraní as it is spoken an used is less synthetic than Guaraní as used by first nation communities. While there are a handful of other languages spoken by first nations (around 1% of the population) it seems like the map is showing Guaraní and Spanish in contrast to one another when really the whole country is very multilingual. (I can write some about Jopará if anyone is curious sometime.) [West of the Paraguayan river most first nations are Tupí-Guaraní, such as the Guaycuru, Mascoi, Lule  Vilela, Mataco, Arawak and Zamuco and East of the river, most ethnic groups are Tupí-Guaraní (Rendón, 2017)

i’ve seen a few different posts floating around recently about the best ways to memorize characters and, while i do think they contain some good ideas, not everyone learns the same way, so i just wanted to add my two cents 

1. have the right amount of words to work with

usually when you come across vocab lists there’s anywhere from 5 to 30 words on that list. what i’ve found out from experience is that it can be easier to learn new vocab when you divide them into lists of a more manageable length. for me, this is 10 words (if i’m in a time crunch and need to learn a bunch of words then i’ll occasionally push it up to 15 but that’s rare). for you, it might be 5 or it might be 15. it’s really about finding how many words work for you.

i say this first because i’ve found that if i have too many words i’m trying to learn in one go, it’s harder for me to memorize all of the words. 

1. b. have a decent foundations in radicals

before i get to my actual learning methods, i want to include this quick tip. one thing that really helps me with memorizing characters (as well as writing new characters for the first time) is being familiar with radicals. when i say “being familiar” with radicals, i don’t mean learning every single radical and its meaning and its pronunciation all at once. instead, i recommend just scrolling through a list of the most common radicals like this one from hackingchinese.com and looking at the usage examples. 

the longer you learn mandarin, the more familiar you’ll get with radicals but if you’re just a beginner don’t worry too much. i make this suggestion because characters become way less daunting when you’re able to visually break it down into smaller components. once you do that, it’s easier to piece the character together in your memory later.

also, if you want to use a physical dictionary you’ll have to be able to recognize what a character’s radical is bc that’s how you look characters up if you don’t have the pronunciation. so it’s just useful all around

2. write it out

so once i’ve got my list of words i want to learn, my next step is to write the list out. for me, this can range from something as simple as writing just the characters on a post-it note to writing the words, pinyin, and meaning down in an actual notebook. if i do write pinyin and meaning this is the format i use:

我 I, me,  wo3

你 you ni3

i keep the pinyin away from the character so i can try and remember the pronunciation as i read through the list later.

once i’ve done that, i start writing the characters over and over. i do not, however, just do one word at a time 

instead, i do a handwritten spaced repetition method i learned a while back. so i’ll start with an example list: 富，说，受，会，剩. when i go to write this is what i’ll do:

i’ll write the first character/word (富) 3 times. then i’ll write the second character/word (说) three times. then i go back and write the first character once, then the second character. after this i write the third character (受) three times. then i write the first, second, and third characters one time each. and i keep cycling through like this until i finish the list. 

with the example characters i listed, it would look like this: 富富富 说说说 富 说 受受受 富 说 受 会会会 富 说 受 会 剩剩剩 富 说 受 会 剩 

(another way to demonstrate it is to use letters, so: AAA BBB A B CCC A B C DDD A B C D EEE A B C D E FFF A B C D E F GGG A B C D E F G…)

if you prefer to practice just one word at a time, then go for it! i just personally prefer this method because it helps me more than any other method i’ve tried.

3. flashcards

i rarely, if ever, use flashcards to memorize the actual character. instead, i use flashcards to help cement the pronunciation and definition in my mind.

i’ll usually make my flashcard sets on quizlet by consolidating a few vocab lists so i have 25 to 30 words in each set. i put the character on the front of the card, and then the pinyin and meaning on the back once i make the set i’ll just review it a couple times in a row. after that i just come back to it every so often and run through the cards a couple times.

bonus: find example sentences 

if you want extra reading practice, look for example sentences that contain these words. i just think it’s a fun way to learn how the word is used in context.

der Park - park

die Hauptstadt - capital city

die Stadt - city

das Dorf - village

das Auto - car

der LKW (Lastkraftwagen) - lorry

das Haus - house

die Wohnung - flat

der Bus - bus

die Straße - street

der Bürgermeister - mayor

die Stadtverwaltung - city council

der Bürgersteig - pavement

der Laden/das Geschäft - shop

einkaufen gehen - (to) go shopping

das Gebäude - building

das Hotel - hotel

die Kirche - church

die Moschee - mosque

die Synagoge - synagogue

das Denkmal - memorial

die Brücke - bridge

der Verkehr - traffic

der Tunnel - tunnel

die Apotheke - pharmacy 

die Universität - university

die Schule - school

die Hauptschule - type of secondary school in Germany

die Realschule - type of secondary school in Germany

das Gymnasium - type of secondary school in Germany

die Grundschule - primary school 

I’ve been practicing my French and German in the higher and lower skills and it is just amazing. It lets you track your scores in different tests, and also offers verb conjugation charts, vocab lists, flashcards and more. :) Also you can choose the page to track your time or not, and you can decide how long you want the test to be.

pronunciation rules in Korean & further reading

문방구: Stationary

펜: Pen

연필: Pencil

색연필: Colored Pencil

형광펜: Highlighter

종이: Paper

수첩: Notebook

폴더: Folder

숙제: Homework

칠판: Blackboard

지우개: Eraser

자: Ruler

아교: Glue

테이프: Tape

책: Book

사전: Dictionary

계산기: Calculator

컴퓨터: Computer

가위: Scissors

마커: Marker

페인트: Paint

시계: Clock

연필깎이: Sharpener

호치키스: Stapler

크레용: Crayon

필통: Pencil Case

가방: Bag

지도: Map