Love, learn, live languages

This period of the year can be a little bit tough for some of us, with the pressure of shcool and the bad weather, so I made a little playlist with “stay strong” songs and songs that can always but you in a good mood :) 

English:

Truce - Twenty-one pilots Missing you - All Time Low Sunrise - Our last night  Hold on till may - Pierce the veil You’re not alone - Of mice and men War - Sum 41  Eye of the tiger - Survivor  Stand by you - Rachel Platten Take my hand - Simple Plan OK - Robin Schulz feat James Blunt  Don’t stop - 5 Seconds of Summer Little things - One direction  Drag me down - One direction Just hold on - Louis Tomlinson  I lived - One republic  Won’t stop running - A great big world Take the world by storm - Lukas Graham

Spanish: 

La vida es un carnaval - Celia Cruz  A dios le pido - Juanes  Musica Ligera - Soda Stereo  Sonrisa - Kendji Girac  Subeme la radio - Enrique Iglesias Bailando - Enrique Iglesias  La Gozadera - Gente de zona  Vivir mi vida - Marc Anthony  Toc toc - Macaco  Paraíso - Dvicio  Casi humanos - Dvicio  Volar - Alvaro Soler  El mismo sol - Alvaro Soler 

French: 

Je joue de la musique - Calogero Liberta - Pep’s  Mon everest - Soprano En feu - Soprano  Tout le bonheur du monde - Simsémilla  Ton combat - Arcadian J’ai cherché - Amir On dirait - Amir  Ca va ça va - Claudio Capéo  Il est où le bonheur - Christophe Maé  La vie est belle - Indochine  On écrit sur les murs - Kids United 

Portuguese: 

Quero ser feliz também - Natiruts 

Italian: 

L'emozione non ha voce -  Adriano Celentano Occidentali’s Karma -  Francesco Gabbani  Roma-Bangkok - Baby K

Greek: 

English

French

Spanish (LA)

Spanish (EUR)

Polish

Italian

Arabic

German

Russian

Hungarian

Portuguese (BR)

German

Japanese

Korean

Persian

Thai

Dutch

Slovak

The 75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences The 200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences The 524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences The 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences The 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences The 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences The 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences The 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences

(Sources: 5 Steps to Speak a New Language by Hung Quang Pham)

This article has an excellent summary on how to rapidly learn a new language within 90 days.

We can begin with studying the first 600 words. Of course chucking is an effective way to memorize words readily. Here’s a list to translate into the language you desire to learn that I grabbed from here! :)

EXPRESSIONS OF POLITENESS (about 50 expressions)      

‘Yes’ and ‘no’: yes, no, absolutely, no way, exactly.    

Question words: when? where? how? how much? how many? why? what? who? which? whose?    

Apologizing: excuse me, sorry to interrupt, well now, I’m afraid so, I’m afraid not.    

Meeting and parting: good morning, good afternoon, good evening, hello, goodbye, cheers, see you later, pleased to meet you, nice to have met.    

Interjections: please, thank you, don’t mention it, sorry, it’ll be done, I agree, congratulations, thank heavens, nonsense.    

NOUNS (about 120 words)

Time: morning, afternoon, evening, night; Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; spring, summer, autumn, winter; time, occasion, minute, half-hour, hour, day, week, month, year.    

People: family, relative, mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother, husband, wife; colleague, friend, boyfriend, girlfriend; people, person, human being, man, woman, lady, gentleman, boy, girl, child.    

Objects: address, bag, book, car, clothes, key, letter (=to post), light (=lamp), money, name, newspaper, pen, pencil, picture, suitcase, thing, ticket.    

Places: place, world, country, town, street, road, school, shop, house, apartment, room, ground; Britain, name of the foreign country, British town-names, foreign town-names.    

Abstract: accident, beginning, change, color, damage, fun, half, help, joke, journey, language, English, name of the foreign language, letter (of alphabet), life, love, mistake, news, page, pain, part, question, reason, sort, surprise, way (=method), weather, work.    

Other: hand, foot, head, eye, mouth, voice; the left, the right; the top, the bottom, the side; air, water, sun, bread, food, paper, noise.    

PREPOSITIONS (about 40 words)    

General: of, to, at, for, from, in, on.    

Logical: about, according-to, except, like, against, with, without, by, despite, instead of.    

Space: into, out of, outside, towards, away from, behind, in front of, beside, next to, between, above, on top of, below, under, underneath, near to, a long way from, through.    

Time: after, ago, before, during, since, until.    

DETERMINERS (about 80 words)  

Articles and numbers: a, the; nos. 0–20; nos. 30–100; nos. 200–1000; last, next, 1st–12th.    

Demonstrative: this, that.    

Possessive: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.    

Quantifiers: all, some, no, any, many, much, more, less, a few, several, whole, a little, a lot of.    

Comparators: both, neither, each, every, other, another, same, different, such.    

ADJECTIVES (about 80 words)    

Color: black, blue, green, red, white, yellow.    

Evaluative: bad, good, terrible; important, urgent, necessary; possible, impossible; right, wrong, true.    

General: big, little, small, heavy; high, low; hot, cold, warm; easy, difficult; cheap, expensive; clean, dirty; beautiful, funny (=comical), funny (=odd), usual, common (=shared), nice, pretty, wonderful; boring, interesting, dangerous, safe; short, tall, long; new, old; calm, clear, dry; fast, slow; finished, free, full, light (=not dark), open, quiet, ready, strong.    

Personal: afraid, alone, angry, certain, cheerful, dead, famous, glad, happy, ill, kind, married, pleased, sorry, stupid, surprised, tired, well, worried, young.    

VERBS (about 100 words)    

arrive, ask, be, be able to, become, begin, believe, borrow, bring, buy, can, change, check, collect, come, continue, cry, do, drop, eat, fall, feel, find, finish, forget, give, going to, have, have to, hear, help, hold, hope, hurt (oneself), hurt (someone else), keep, know, laugh, learn, leave, lend, let (=allow), lie down, like, listen, live (=be alive), live (=reside), look (at), look for, lose, love, make, may (=permission), may (=possibility), mean, meet, must, need, obtain, open, ought to, pay, play, put, read, remember, say, see, sell, send, should, show, shut, sing, sleep, speak, stand, stay, stop, suggest, take, talk, teach, think, travel, try, understand, use, used to, wait for, walk, want, watch, will, work (=operate), work (=toil), worry, would, write.    

PRONOUNS (about 40 words)

Personal: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, one; myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.    

Possessive: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs.    

Demonstrative: this, that.    

Universal: everyone, everybody, everything, each, both, all, one, another.    

Indefinite: someone, somebody, something, some, a few, a little, more, less; anyone, anybody, anything, any, either, much, many.    

Negative: no-one, nobody, nothing, none, neither.    

ADVERBS (about 60 words)

Place: here, there, above, over, below, in front, behind, nearby, a long way away, inside, outside, to the right, to the left, somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere, home, upstairs, downstairs.    

Time: now, soon, immediately, quickly, finally, again, once, for a long time, today, generally, sometimes, always, often, before, after, early, late, never, not yet, still, already, then (=at that time), then (=next), yesterday, tomorrow, tonight.    

Quantifiers: a little, about (=approximately), almost, at least, completely, very, enough, exactly, just, not, too much, more, less.    

Manner: also, especially, gradually, of course, only, otherwise, perhaps, probably, quite, so, then (=therefore), too (=also), unfortunately, very much, well.    

CONJUNCTIONS (about 30 words)

Coordinating: and, but, or; as, than, like.    

Time & Place: when, while, before, after, since (=time), until; where.    

I don’t know how many Swedes follow me, but I HAD to share this. (To be fair, Danes don’t understand Swedes either)

Gimli (in Swedish): I never thought I’d die next to a Dane.

Legolas (in Danish): How about dying next to a friend?

this brand of chips, Lay’s, displays the flavor in spanish and portuguese, resulting in ham-flavored chips looking like this:

with “jamón” being spanish and “presunto” being portuguese

however, “presunto” is also a spanish adjective, meaning “presumed” (or suspected)

The thing that really gets me about monolinguals/people uninterested in linguistics is the strange need to label languages as objectively/inherently difficult.

Any linguistic feature that may seem, at the surface level, to be a challenge, is often that much of a challenge to not have. When learners complain that German/Russian/Greek cases are superfluously complicated, they seem to forget that for those who speak using cases natively, it seems like such a limitation to not have them. Suddenly the precision of who is doing what to whom is murky, and word order is now strictly confined to the chains of SVO.

Many are quick to label the tones of east Asian languages as a nonsensical or a confusing system. For those who use tones natively, it would seem absurd not to have them. To avoid them, many languages are required to make use of an extremely vast phonology, and words become quite lengthy to compensate for this diversity. Imagine having this skill for intonation and having to power it down until the occasional tone used for a question arises.

People are quick to label the verbs of romance languages as pesky and convoluted. It is these seemingly daunting conjugations that allow listeners to know precise specifics about who is doing what, in addition to the time and manner, all in a single word. For speakers of other languages, this would require additional mentioning of subject pronouns, grammatical particles, and time/location words, in order to achieve the same clarity.

In the end, it is the absence of features that can be just as irksome, complicated, or intimidating. Language has been created for humans by humans.

If there were a language so inherently difficult that a native speaker couldn’t easily tackle it before puberty, it would probably be quickly replaced, as soon as a language more suitable for humans came into play.

cher journal - dear diary

- you can talk about how your day was - this is a great opportunity to apply your knowledge of past tenses. 

How to say that you had a good day -

j’ai passé une très bonne journée

j’ai passé une excellente journée

j’ai passé une belle journée

j’ai eu une merveilleuse journée

j’ai passé une journée fantastique

How to say that you had a bad day -

Je n’ai pas eu une bonne journée

j’ai eu une journée affreuse - a really bad day

j’ai eu une mauvaise journée

j’ai passé une journée difficile 

How to say that you had a busy day - 

j’ai eu une journée des plus occupés

j’ai eu une journée chargée

la journée d’aujourd’hui s’est avérée fort occupée

How to say that you had a quiet/relaxing day - 

j’ai eu une journée tranquille

j’ai passé une journée tranquille

j’ai profité d’une journée de détente

Talking about time -

hier - yesterday

hier soir - last night

hier matin - yesterday morning

hier après-midi - yesterday afternoon

demain - tomorrow

demain matin - tomorrow morning

demain après-midi - tomorrow afternoon

demain soir - tomorrow evening

le lendemain - the next day

cette semaine - this week

la semaine dernière - last week

la semaine prochaine - next week

ce mois-ci - this month

le mois dernier - last month

le mois prochain - next month

cette année - this year

l’année dernière - last year

l’année prochaine - next year

when talking about a coming day e.g. next saturday = samedi prochain/le samedi suivant

To add a dash of drama -

et mon cul, c’est du poulet ? - yeah right!

faire du cinéma - to be a drama queen

j’ai du mal à croire que - I can’t believe that

jai vraiment foiré sur ce coup là - I really stuffed up!

je n’arrive pas à y croire ! - I can’t believe it

je n’en crois pas mes yeux - I can’t believe my eyes

je n’en reviens pas ! - I can’t believe it!

mon cul ! - my arse! (when you don’t believe someone, say if they’ve been lying to you)