"No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself." J.R.R. Tolkien
Hei! I'm Crow. I'm an aspiring polymath dabbling with various languages. Norwegian native, English C2, and intermediate at Swedish and Danish by default of being Norwegian. Will post anything language and country/culture related that I find interesting.
Feel free to ask questions or suggest posts ^-^
Masterlist
07.06.23 False friends: Moment
13.10.21 Halloween vocabulary
22.08.21 How to pronounce the kj sound (with examples) Update: practices and more info (added by other people)
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Different ways to say “increase” and “decrease” in Chinese: Pt.1
Want to say increase or decrease but tired of using 增加 and 减少? Here are plenty of other alternatives that you can use:
increase - 增加 - zēngjiā
Context: general increase in quantity, amount, business and economics
Example: 这个月的开支增加了。
This month’s expenses increased.
decrease - 减少 - jiǎnshǎo
Context: general decrease in quantity, amount, health, business etc.
Example: 我想减少每天刷手机的时间。
I want to reduce the time I spend scrolling on my phone every day.
raise / improve - 提高 - tígāo
Context: improving something: quality, ability, efficiency, standards
Example: 她想提高汉语水平。
She wants to improve her Chinese level.
lower / reduce - 降低 - jiàngdī
Context: usually refers to metrics, physical levels, goals etc.
Example: 公司希望降低运营成本。
The company hopes to lower operating costs.
rise - 上升 - shàngshēng
Context: natural rise in numbers, rates, temperature, prices, status, pressure
Example: 最近物价一直在上升。
Prices have been rising recently.
fall / decline - 下降 - xiàjiàng
Context: natural decline in numbers, quality, sales, grades
Example: 效率下降了2%。
The efficiency rate decreased by 2%.
grow - 增长 - zēngzhǎng
Context: usually refers to things that change over time, not suddenly e.g. economy, demand, knowledge, experience
Example: 去年的销售额增长了百分之十。
Last year’s sales grew by 10 percent.
improve / enhance - 提升 - tíshēng
Context: improving skills, abilities, promoting someone
Example: 这次培训提升了我的工作效率。
This training improved my work efficiency.
go up / rise - 上涨 - shàngzhǎng
Context: increase in quantity or degree of indicators e.g. prices/consumption, values, levels, water levels, rent etc.
Example: 房租又上涨了。
The rent went up again.
drop / fall - 下跌 - xiàdiē
Context: mostly financial, economical, or statistical situations e.g. prices, stock value, market data
Example: 这家公司今天的股价下跌了百分之五。
This company’s stock price fell by 5 percent today.
rise / become higher - 升高 - shēnggāo
Context: numerical values, prices, physical states e.g. blood pressure, blood sugar, temperature and other measurable indicators
Example: 今天下午气温会继续升高。
The temperature will continue to rise this afternoon.
ease / lessen - 减轻 - jiǎnqīng
Context: pain, stress, burden, pressure, symptoms, workload
Example: 新系统减轻了大家的工作负担。
The new system reduced everyone’s workload.
reduce / alleviate - 缓解 - huǎnjiě
Context: symptoms, stress, anxiety, tension
Example: 深呼吸可以缓解压力。
Deep breathing can relieve stress.
weaken - 减弱 - jiǎnruò
Context: various scenarios actually, including natural phenomena, signals, physical states and well-being, and abstract concepts
Example: 地下室里的手机信号很容易减弱。
Phone signals weaken easily in the basement.
Hey guys. This account already seems to be reported and taken down, but just be aware that there are scammers that are posing as tumblr staff and tagging people, asking them to verify their identity. If you encounter a post like this, report and block them immediately.
saw your tags @did-sm1-say-catfish and yes, that link is broken! I looked into it, and it's because there are now multiple maps, including a map of India—
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Turquoise is one of the gemstones that is highly valued in Georgian culture. The word piruzi (ფირუზი) came from the Persian firuze / piruze (فیروزه / پیروزه). In addition, the Persian word derives from the Middle Persian word pērōz, meaning "victorious."
Originally, the stone was considered a symbol of victory and good fortune. Turquoise was also used as protection against the evil eye in the Caucasus. Nowadays, both the color and the stone symbolize faithfulness, the majesty of the heavens, and divine purity.
There is a lot of traditional jewelry featuring turquoise. A prime example is Minankari (Cloisonné Enamel)—silver or gold jewelry using thin wire partitions filled with vibrant vitreous enamel.
Theres moreeee, this is so so good.. it makes me emotional realizing that these kids are on the path to being fluent cherokee speakers and will be able to keep the language going.
This family is a part of the little cherokee seeds program, creating new first language Cherokee speakers by paying mothers to just bring their babies and craft and cook and speak cherokee with cherokee elders all day. There are only 1500 first language Cherokee speakers, most of them over 65. They also take donations if you want to help keep them going and doing the extremely important work they do!!
So like. In Brazilian Portuguese we call it fur, not body hair, and so sometimes I catch myself calling it fur in English too and I have to stop and remind myself that this semantic human-animal division is so important in English that the people who identify with animals are literally called furries.
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once again needing to remind some people that mispronouncing foreign words isn't just about not knowing how to say it; if your language doesn't have that sound, in many cases you can't hear it properly. You won't be able to hear yourself say it wrong because you probably can't distinguish between the sounds a native speaker can. It will sound right to you and you will be wrong.
Most languages use relatively similar sound inventories overall, but make distinctions others don't. And the way the our language centers work is they group these sounds together, allowing us to recognize that things within a given range constitute a recognizable phoneme. If your languages groups together sounds another language makes a distinction between, your brain cannot tell.
So everyone on those posts congratulating themselves for looking up pronunciation and saying "It's Not That Hard?" Surprise, you might have still got it wrong and can't even tell. You can look up the IPA chart and still flub it completely because what sounds right to your brain and what a native speaker will understand are totally different things!
"I might have butchered that, please let me know" is sometimes an excuse for lack of research, but it is, unfortunately, also a much more accurate self-assessment than confidently fucking it up after mouthing along to a wav file a few times.
This is one of the reasons that, historically, many people would take on or be granted new names if they stayed any length of time in another culture; it's very common for the names from one language to simply not map to the sounds of another!
Individual language sounds are called phonemes by the way! Most languages have 20-50 different phonemes, though some have as few as 10 and some people count tonal languages like Mandarin as having over 200. English has 44.
The human brain learns to differentiate between phonemes in childhood, so if you weren't exposed to stuff like retroflex consonants as a kid you literally can't hear them yet! It's not your fault but it will take work to teach yourself how to hear and speak them. Foreign music, radio, and film are great for learning to hear new phonemes.
Additionally: marking what phonemes are distinct in a language is called "minimal pairs". Meaning, if you changed this phoneme for another, would the meaning of the word change? Generally, if your language doesn't include the phoneme as a minimal pair, you will have significant trouble being able to hear or make that sound. Like anything else, it can be trained, but it is not so simple as "just do it"/"just look it up".
For example, in English, you don't use the sound ɐ̃ (as in pão). I have yet to meet a native English speaker who can make that sound, usually they just default to a plain a. Even though, in Portuguese, pau (pau) and pão (pɐ̃ũ) are completely different words.
The name of the country Kiribati (kɪrɪbæs) is derived from the surname Gilberts. As in, it is literally the Gilbertese pronunciation of Gilberts. Because their language lacks phonemes for G/L, the name uses the best approximation possible.
Now, that's not to say that you shouldn't try, but just be aware that your Nguyen is probably not the way that it's actually pronounced, and an effort/your best shot is worth a lot. And if someone wants to use a different or 'Westernized' name just fucking go with it.
I forgot to mention in that first reblog: there are over 800 phonemes worldwide! Humans can pronounce around 600 different consonant sounds and 200 different vowel sounds.
Also, the reason English is such a nightmare to pronounce/spell phonetically is because we have 44 phonemes but only 26 letters. Most languages with a written alphabet have one specific letter or letter combination for each phoneme but we don't.
For any given language combination, there's likely to only be a couple sounds that you will never be able to hear, but there are often countless that you can't hear yet. There are countless phenomic rules in your language that contradict with the other language. "Why is that so hard?? [Your native language] has that sound!" Yes, but it cannot put it at the end of a word with no vowel behind it. Yes, but it cannot be combined with that next consonant. You can't hear these well enough to reproduce them either, until you can. And that will take a lot more familiarity than the time it takes to look up a pronunciation, and training of your mouth to reproduce it.
And that's if you can actually, accurately find consistent answers when you do look it up. My own home county and its towns are mispronounced frequently on the local news and weather. They're getting that shit wrong one single county away.
If you're listening to someone mispronounce your native language, you might not even be able to accurately diagnose what the other person did wrong. Sometimes people will claim some phoneme was mispronounced when the problem was the stress was so wildly incorrect that that part of the word sounded wrong, so you assumed it was the phoneme itself. If a native speaker can't correct it, how is are people supposed to figure out the correct pronunciation themselves?
When people act like this is an English speaker only problem, they're telling on themselves. You're either not noticing when this happens in other languages, or you're not listening to other languages at all. Which isn't something to be ashamed of, until you're shaming people for being monolingual. I promise people are pulling the same "I hope I'm saying that right" in other languages. Are adding sounds they don't even hear themselves adding. Are saying something almost correct and then correcting themselves to something wildly wrong.
Here on Tumblr specifically people like to pretend it's a monolingual English speaker only problem. But they're still perpetuating ideas that it's simply a matter of effort and intellect, and you know who that hurts most in the English speaking world? People who speak English as a second language.
ohhhh shit. target is recalling their up & up baby wipes (fragrance free & fresh cucumber scented) because they're contaminated with Burkholderia cepacia complex and Burkholderia gladioli, multiple people are reporting discoloration & infections. i just got a call about it cuz i had purchased those but i've already gone through them 😅 so no refund for me. but im fine. if you have these they're saying you need to immediately stop using them and bring them back to target for a full refund. this bacteria can cause life threatening infections in children/infants and people with compromises immune systems (ESPECIALLY cystic fibrosis!!) and i know lots of other chronically ill people follow me!!!!
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“hana” means flower in Japanese, faucet in Finnish
“kana” is a word for the Japanese writing systems and also a girl’s name (I think?), means chicken in Finnish
“risu” means small twig in Finnish, squirrel in Japanese
“sora” means (among other things) sky in Japanese, gravel in Finnish
“kasa” means umbrella in Japanese, pile or heap in Finnish
“himo” means string in Japanese, lust in Finnish
“kutsu” means shoes in Japanese, invitation in Finnish
“aho” means clearing or glade in Finnish and is the last name of a former Prime Minister of Finland, idiot in Japanese
“Henna” is a not-entirely-uncommon Finnish female first name, means weird in Japanese
the two names above have been combined and cause hilarious results
and then of course my name is Minna which means nothing in Finnish and “everyone” in Japanese which has caused Japanese people to snicker at me in the past
One Finnish lady told me that her husband Teppo was on business trip in Japan and the hosts were all “well that’s a manly name” because it means “iron cannon”, i.e. an arquebus.