Insert Nonsensical Duolingo Sentence Here

I have restructured the folders to make them easier to use and managed to add almost all languages requested and then some

you a bitch

Hullo,

C’est deux oeufs, l’un dit à l’autre “Putain, on se fait chier!” et l’autre répond “Argh! un oeuf qui parle!”

C’est l’histoire d’un têtard qui pensait qu’il était tôt mais il était tard

Que dit une imprimante dans l'eau? J’ai papier

C'est l'histoire de Napoléon qui rentre dans un bar. Il dit "J'ai vaincu". Le barman répond : "Désolé, j'ai que dix-neuf chaises."

Que fait Platon quand ça le démange? Il Socrate

Comment appelle-t-on un jeudi vraiment nul? Une trajeudi

Qu'est-ce qu'une frite enceinte? Une patate sautée

Qu’est-ce qu’une fraise sur un cheval? Une fraise Tagada

Pourquoi la petite fille tombe de la balançoire? Car elle n’a plus de bras

Qu'est-ce qui est vert et qui se déplace sous l'eau? Un chou marin

Pourquoi les anges sont-ils sourds? Parce que Jésus Christ

Quelle est l'arme préféré des vegans? Le lance-roquette

Qu’est-ce qui est orange et qui pue? Une carotte qui a pété

Pourquoi est-ce que Napoléon n'a pas voulu acheter de maison? Parce qu’il avait déjà un Bonaparte

Que fait-on aux voleurs de salade? On les tue

Que dit Frodon devant sa maison? C’est là que j’hobbit

Pourquoi Harry Potter chuchote? Parce que Dumbledore

Qu’est-ce qu’une manifestation d’aveugles? Un festival de Cannes

Qu’est-ce qu’un petit canif? C’est un petit fien

Pourquoi met-on une selle sur un cheval? Parce que si on la met en dessous, on tombe

Zoé demanda à Robinson de la croire et Robinson Crusoé

And scene!

I remember coming back from a whole year studying abroad in Spain. When my Spanish teacher asked my class how we felt and if we had any concerns about our final year of language learning, someone eventually piped up that all their relatives were saying things like ‘I assume you’re fluent now then!’ and they felt embarrassed because that still wasn’t a label they felt comfortable using. It turned out that most people in the class, including me, felt the same, even though I had spent the majority of nine months speaking entirely in Spanish, had no problem with any possible topic/scenario that could pop up, and was so at ease speaking it that I barely had to think about it anymore.

Our teacher pointed this all out to us and asked us why we still didn’t feel fluent. None of us had a good answer. I think that’s when I really realised that fluency in a language is such an arbitrary thing, and that people who do not speak more than one language have a preconceived notion of what it means that doesn’t really reflect the reality. We all had some weird idea that you had to completely, 100%, always-pass-as-a-native-speaker master a language to claim fluency in it, and that’s just not true. Because we hadn’t reached that incredibly high standard we had set ourselves, we still downplayed our language ability.

That moment was a great boost to my confidence and since then I’ve had no problem labelling myself fluent in Spanish, because I am. I say the same about French because I can reasonably handle any speaking/reading/listening scenario in French that I might encounter in life (although my Spanish is much better). Confidence is 70% of language learning and anyone who speaks another language other than their own should be proud of it, whatever level they’re at, because it’s a wonderful thing to be able to do.

Coptic is the final stage of the Egyptian language. It is currently endangered, with less than 300 Egyptians speaking it as their native tongue.

It would mean a great deal to indigenous Egyptians in the Coptic community to have our language preserved, and this would be a huge step forward.

Oral transmission is not the same as it being “lost.” Also, Hebrew manuscripts that predate the Greek translations HAVE been found ^_^.

You’re asking whether we can accurately read ancient Hebrew, because the Hebrew language died and was reconstructed, and so, can we REALLY read ancient texts in Hebrew accurately if our modern Hebrew is a reconstruction. Which is a good and interesting question.

So, Hebrew is a language, and languages evolve over time. As a speaker of modern day English, you wouldn’t be able to read Chauscer in Middle English, and you wouldn’t be able to read Beowulf in Old English. It’s changed too much, because of all the invasions (viking invasions, norman invasion, etc) and because of the influence of Latin as the language of science. However, Hebrew did NOT change that much, in part BECAUSE it “died.”

When we say a language is dead, that doesn’t mean no one can speak, read, or write that language. It means no new words are being added to it, and it has no more native speakers for whom it is their first language. We actually can fluently speak and write many “dead” languages today, most notably Latin, with total accuracy. Hebrew stopped being spoken by everyday people, but it was maintained as a language people had to learn because Jews have always kept the Tanakh in Hebrew and prayed in Hebrew. A language “dying” doesn’t make it lost, it’s more like it crystallizing. Dead languages preserve BETTER because they aren’t changing constantly.

When Hebrew was revived as a living language, it DID undergo some small changes.

We now use SVO sentence order, not the classical SOV. So, what used to be “I to the store went” in classical Hebrew, we would now just say “I went to the store.”

A lot of words got added to the language to describe the things that now existed in the world but not in the Hebrew language, like computer. These mostly have roots in the Hebrew language - we call a computer a machshev, a “thinker,” from the root word for to think. Some though, are loan words, like balagan, which comes from Russian and means “a big mess.”

We less often use pronoun endings, because we now have a word that implies possession. So instead of saying “chatuli” for “my cat” we would more likely say “chatul sheli.” Not always though! Pronoun endings are still perfectly valid grammar.

We use a different construction for possessives. Classical Hebrew uses a construction like this: “chatul Matan” would mean “Matan’s cat.” However, we now have a word for “of” so we would more commonly say “chatul shel Matan.” However, again, both are valid and still used. And the word for of, shel, isn’t as old as the Torah, but it does start to appear in the later books written in the Tanakh.

There used to be two forms of the word “I,” ani and anochi. Now we mostly only say “ani.” Same for “we,” which used to be both anu and anachnu, and now we mostly only say “anachnu.”

Those are pretty much all the differences in grammar. As you can imagine, it’s very easy for modern Hebrews speakers to read older writings with those more formal grammar styles! Easier than for us to read Shakespeare, actually.

There’s a few other considerations though.

Hebrew is now written using a script called ketav ashurit, which developed during the exile in Babylon. Before that, a more angular style called ketav Ivrit was used (and is still used by Samaritans). We have other scripts too, like cursive and Rashi script. However, unlike the development of different scripts for English, each letter directly corresponds to an ancient one exactly. Think of them as different fonts. Most Jews don’t read ketav Ivrit today, but many can, and it’s not hard to learn.

The spellings of some words changed VERY slightly from the ancient to the modern day. Mostly, we added extra ו and י letters to some words, to represent o and i sounds that were already there. Again, unlike English, where spelling was a free for all, these are VERY slight changes, and it’s easy to read them either way.

We aren’t EXACTLY sure about the pronunciation of ANCIENT Hebrew. However, by comparing multiple surviving accents and dialects of Hebrew with what we know about other semetic languages like Amharic, Aramaic, and Arabic, we can make very educated guesses. None of this would effect meaning at all! Just the way it sounds.

There are a FEW very specific nouns in the Torah that we aren’t exactly sure what they mean, because even by the Septuagint was translated people had stopped using those words. We can usually tell from context what kind of word they are - for example, we can’t be exactly sure what birds are being listed as unkosher, or what stones were in the High Priest’s breastplate. But we have very educated guesses from context, preserved in the Talmud.

If your Hebrew isn’t up to snuff and you absolutely have to use a translation, the Targum Onkelos, which is in Aramaic (the former lingua franca of the region) is a far superior translation, and predates the vulgate by a whooping two centuries. You want to bet that 2nd century translators from the region who were still themselves speaking Biblical Hebrew on the regular knew a little more about it than some rando named Jerome who lived in Croatia a couple hundred years later?

Obviously it’s hard to learn Ladino if you don’t have any native speakers to talk to, but videos are still a huge help in learning pronunciation and more nuanced details of how native speakers speak. All of these are from youtube and I’ll point out which have subtitles!

Videos

An entire playlist for International Ladino Day!, lot’s of talks from over the years, definitely worth the watch! (English subtitles)

Jack speaking Ladino, Jack is this sweet elderly gentleman who talks about the Ladino language and his life. (English and Spanish subtitles)

200 ancianos mantienen vivo el idioma ladino en Israel, a (Spanish) news video about the preservation of Ladino in Israel, really interesting! (Spanish subtitles)

The sound of Ladino, a cute little video perfect for beginners! It covers numbers and greetings and also has a little bit of reading with audio 

Everytime we say goodbye, a clip from the movie, in which two sisters have an exchange in Ladino and also Tom Hanks is there idk

The encounter, a group of people who don’t speak Ladino trying to work it out, it’s really sweet. (English subtitles)

Dokumentaryo de Movistar en Estambol, a short documentary on Ladino, I haven’t watched it yet but it looks good

Judeo Spanish Collection, 50!! Videos!! In Ladino!!! so helpful I love it! (English and Ladino subtitles)

Channels

Autoridad Ladino is a channel dedicated to preserving the Ladino language, it even has some lessons in Ladino uploaded!

eSefarad, definitely worth checking out! They do a bunch of videos in Ladino and are super helpful

Ladino Linguist, only a couple of videos on this one but it’s run by this amazing professor who is doing so much to preserve Ladino

Sephardic Brotherhood, I’ve mentioned them previously because they are incredible!

Ladino 21, lot’s of helpful videos in Ladino :)

Generally, Duolingo is a good resource, but not a very good starting point. I'm sorry to tell all the people who expect to learn their target language from Duolingo alone that that is simply impossible.

If you can, always get something like a schoolbook for children or a picture dictionary! Alternatively, start with Apps like Drops, which teach you vocabulary. I use Drops and Duolingo in tandem and it works like a Charm!

Most of the time there are also more specific apps for certain languages like renshuu for Japanese which are more detailed and tailord to the specific language.

Akkadian

Arabic

Aramaic

Church Slavonic

Egyptian (hieroglyphics and Demotic)

Elamite

Ethiopic (Ge’ez)

Etruscan

Gaulish

Georgian

Gothic

Greek

Hebrew

Hittite

Latin

Mayan (various related languages/dialects)

Old Chinese

Old English

Old French

Old Frisian

Old High German

Old Irish

Old Norse

Old Persian

Old Turkic

Sanskrit

Sumerian

Syriac

Ugaritic

I have restructured the folders to make them easier to use and managed to add almost all languages requested and then some

You heard me. Perfect. Pronunciation.

Drumroll….

Boom.

[Retrieved from wikipedia]

I present the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). ( IPA website)

Basically this here is the cheat code for all pronunciation of every language

E v e r y.  L a n g u a g e.

How?? Well, each symbol corresponds to one sound.

The table shows you where the sound is located and what your tongue has to do to pronounce that sound.

Example:

æ is said at the back of your throat while your throat is around halfway closed (indicated by its location relative to the words “open” and “front). This sound is found in “back“ (in the Standard/General American dialect).

ŋ is said by touching the base of your tongue to where the roof of your mouth gets soft (the velum) and exhaling through your noise while making noise (indicated by “velar” and “nasal”). This sound is found “song”.

As you can see, “ng” in “song” is made up of two letters that have different sounds while separate, but together they make a different sound. And English has some letters that correspond to several sounds all on their own! This is the case on many other languages, and trips up a lot of foreign language learners.

IPA ELIMINATES THIS DIFFICULTY BECAUSE EACH SYMBOL = 1 SOUND

lol sorry for all caps but im excited and this is important so

But how will this actually help you? Because dictionaries are amazing.

See that? That’s the entry for “language” in Merriam-Webster.

It shows two ways of pronouncing the word: ‘laŋ-gwij\, and \’laŋ-wij\, and indicates which syllable is stressed by putting a ‘ in front of the stressed syllable.

Pretty cool, right?

Here are some examples of IPA in action in different languages:

French: deux -> /dø/

Korean: 내가 -> /nɛ-ɡa/ or /ne-ga/

Afrikaans: seun -> /sɪøn/

Standard Arabic:  عَيْن‎ -> /ʕajn/

Ready to try this out for your own?

If you just want to only know how to pronounce your target language’s sounds:

Have a dictionary that uses IPA

When you want to look up a sound, go to the interactive IPA chart here

Learn how to say the sounds in your TL by understanding the column/row titles that they are in on the IPA chart (consonants here and vowels here)

Optional (or if you don’t have a dictionary):

Get the IPA charts for your target language (usually on its wikipedia page at “_target language_ Phonology”. If it’s not there then look up “_target language_ IPA transcription”) 

Example of an IPA chart (Afrikaans):

[Retrieved from Wikipedia]

It’s a lot less intimidating when it’s the sounds for only one language, right?

REMEMBER: you don’t need to be able to pronounce every sound in IPA to make use of this chart, just know

how

to make them and what these symbols sound like (more or less) and your life of learning pronunciation will be so much easier

So there you have it:

The Secret to Perfect Pronunication in Any Language

Go, be free my language-learning friends, go pronounce things like natives!

and get rid of that nasty romanization for all my fellow korean learners

(oh and if anyone has any questions about this, send em my way! i know there are a couple linguistics blogs that follow me so if any of yall wanna add smth, plz do!)

For the person who asked about vocabulary differences between French from France and French from Quebec, I’m not from Quebec but I lived a few months there, and here are some of my favorite words and idioms commonly used there.

Some vocabulary:

Une colle : une accolade, un câlin (a hug)

Un bec : un bisou (a kiss)

Une blonde : une petite amie (a girlfriend)

Un chum : un petit ami, un pote (a boyfriend, a friend)

La gang : la bande, le groupe d'amis (the group of friends)

Tomber en amour : tomber amoureux (to fall in love)

Ma matante : ma tata (my auntie)

Mon mononcle : mon tonton (my uncle)

Le déjeuner : le petit déjeuner (the breakfast)

Le dîner : le déjeuner (the lunch)

Le souper : le dîner (the dinner)

Un dépanneur : une épicerie (a grocery store open until very late)

Faire son épicerie : faire les courses (to go shopping - when you buy your food, etc.)

Dispendieux : cher (expensive)

Un sou : un centime (a cent)

Une piasse : un dollar (a dollar)

Le blé d'Inde : le maïs (corn)

Une beigne : un beignet (a donut)

Une pointe : une part (de tarte, de pizza…) (a slice - of a pie, a pizza…)

Un breuvage : une boisson (a drink)

Une boisson : une boisson alcoolisée (an alcoholic beverage)

Une liqueur : un soda, une boisson gazeuse (a soda)

Écouter : regarder (une vidéo, la télévision) (to watch - a video, TV)

Checker : regarder, mater (to check out)

Un pitou : un toutou (a doggie)

Un toutou : un nounours (a teddy bear)

Peinturer : peindre (un mur, une voiture… mais PAS un tableau) (to paint - a wall, a car… but NOT a painting)

Les vidanges : les ordures (garbage)

Un cellulaire : un (téléphone) portable (a cell phone)

La slotche : no word for this in French to my knowledge except “neige fondue” (slush, melting snow)

Words/idioms that you’ll hear A LOT in everyday conversations:

Allo! : Salut ! (Hi!)

Fait plaisir!, Bienvenue! : De rien !, Pas de quoi ! (You’re welcome!)

Eille! : Hé ! (Hey!)

Ayoye! : Aïe !, Oh là là !/La vache ! (Ouch!, Wow!)

Pour vrai? : C'est vrai ?, Pour de vrai ? (Really?, For real?)

Awaile! : Allez ! (Come on!)

Icitte : ici (here)

Ben voyons don’! : Ben voyons ! (Come on now!, I don’t believe you!)

En tout cas… : Enfin bref… (Anyway…)

Fait frette! : Ça caille ! (It’s cold!)

Pogner : attraper, saisir, choper (to catch, to get)

Bonne fête! : Joyeux anniversaire ! (Happy birthday!)

Le monde : les gens (people)

Croche : tordu, de travers, bizarre, louche (twisted, weird, strange)

Magané : abîmé, pas en forme (damaged, tired)

Laite, lette : laid(e), moche (ugly)

Une affaire : une chose (a thing)

Quétaine : kitsch, ringard, de mauvais goût (kitsch, tacky)

Plate : ennuyeux, chiant (boring)

Pantoute : pas du tout (not at all)

Pas (si) pire : pas (si) mal (not (so) bad)

Pas mal : très (very)

Écœurant : génial, incroyable (great, amazing)

Fait que…, Fack… : Ce qui fait que…, Et donc… (That’s why…, So…)

Tanné : en avoir marre (fed up)

Tannant : fatigant, énervant (tiring, annoying)

Ça va faire! : Ça suffit ! (That’s enough!)

Ça pas d'bon sen’! : Ça n'a pas de sens ! (It makes no sense!)

Ouin : mouais (unconvinced/unsatisfied “yeah” or “meh”)

Some vulgar/offensive slang (but so funny!):

Un chieux : un chieur (someone annoying)

Je m'en calisse! : Je m'en fous ! (I don’t care!, I don’t give a damn!)

C'est d'la marde! : C'est de la merde !, Ça craint ! (That sucks!)

Mange d'la marde! : Va chier !, Va te faire foutre ! (F*** off!)

And some slang words to know to avoid any misunderstanding!

Les foufounes : les fesses (the butt) (In France, “foufoune” means “pussy”, but in Quebec, saying “Je me gêle les foufounes” in the middle of the street won’t shock anybody)

Les gosses : les couilles (the balls) (Use the word “gamin” in Quebec if you’re talking about kids!)

Les boules : les seins (the boobs) (In France, if you talked about someone’s “boules”, you’d mean “balls”, but in Quebec, a woman can have a nice “paire de boules”)

La dèche : le sperme (sperm) (In France, “être dans la dèche” means “to be broke”, but for obvious reasons, avoid saying this in Quebec)

Note that you should NOT try to use Quebec slang or idioms in front of people from Quebec, unless you want to sound totally ridiculous and be made fun of!

Alignment chart, french tenses edition