soy un huevo

Hey dear, you don’t bother at all!

New things and concepts can be very intimidating. For me as a language learner, it’s very important to know what am I going to face when learning the language. Therefor I suggest you to read about the target language, it’s grammar and what is special about it. Here are some examples for Chinese:

THIS BOOK (very very good resource)

THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO (easy introduction)

THIS ARTICLE

People tend to focus on the hard side of the languages. But isn’t it amazing that Chinese doesn’t have cases? And no verb conjugation?No masculine and feminine? I can’t tell you all the advantages, but watch THIS video to see them.

Basically, first get into the touch with the language. And then you can plan out your studies and how the process of learning it will be. I suggest you buying a good text book. I’ve seen one for Chinese I’ll probably buy, but first I’ll see how my school course is. 

Also about Korean, I can definitely suggest you the free PDF book “Korean from Zero”, you can download it HERE. I’m currently working with it and it is amazing, just as the “japanese from zero” books. 

Don’t be too scared and just jump into the cold water. I hope this helped.

Such a wild thing to observe: SKorea has developed so rapidly that our language has become riddled with foreign loanwords that our Northern counterpart can no longer understand - even if we speak the same language.

Narrator: “27,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea.”

[Students introduce themselves in Korean]

Narrator: “What is it called?”

[Students name objects in Korean]

Narrator: “Through 70 years of separation, languages of the two Koreas have grown apart. Would you mark any unfamiliar words? North Korean defector students could understand less than 50% of the terms in the textbooks. This led to them being neglected from regular education, and that led to disparity in employment and income. Even Google Translator could not solve the discrepancies in the language. So then we came to create our own translator. South Korean-North Korean translator. We designed it so that a simple scan of an unfamiliar South Korean word with a smartphone would translate it into North Korean. Translating several words all at once is also possible. It was hoped that with this app, the North Korean defectors would be able to get proper education. We of course plan to continue to help them adjust well to life in South Korea. Koreans were shocked, saddened, but motivated after seeing the translator for what had been the same language.”

[Dr. Huttman speaking German]

So while the video paints a picture of North Korean dialect as ass-backwards compared to modern, loan-word loving South Korean, I think that’s an unfair depiction.  For a nation built around narratives of cultural and ethnic purity, it’s actually kind of necessary, if not downright brilliant.

Also, it’s my understanding that if you said “South Korea” in the north you’d get in big trouble.  You’d be acknowledging that there are two separate countries, carved up by US fiat way back when, in fact, they are and always have been one – according to the North Korean narrative, natch.

france, for example, has tried to impose neologized french words for a number of english ones as well as anglicisms, sometimes successfully (e.g. ‘ordinateur’ for computer), sometimes less so (’courriel’ for email, or mél).

in fact, there’s hardly a country in the world that hasn’t been impacted by a large number of english loan words in the last few decades. several, such as france and north korea, have taken political measures to limit them.

these are certainly artificially imposed, but it would be a mistake to assume that the proliferation of english loan words is a ‘free’ and ‘natural’ state of affairs. english words are imposed by cultural and linguistic hegemony. no one in south korea ‘elects’ to study english. 

the limitations on the use of chinese characters isn’t just a north korean thing. in 1970 park chung-hee also banned the teaching of chinese characters in schools and though the ban was eventually lifted, the use of chinese characters in south korea has never really recovered. look at any korean newspaper before the 1970s and you’ll see a lot more chinese there. a lot of south koreans in their 50s, even well educated ones, sometimes struggle to read chinese characters.

i would hope that a reunified korea would adopt some of the north korean words. i think 어름과자, for example, is preferable to 아이스크림. most european languages simply use their own word for ‘ice’ to designate ice cream, and i don’t see why korean should be an exception. 

causa de - because of, on account of

a continuación - below, following

a partir de - from the time that, as of

caracterizarse por - to be characterized by

consistir en - to consist of

conviene - it is fitting, suitable, convenient

de hecho - in fact, as a matter of fact

de la perspectiva de - from the perspective of

de veras - really

ejemplificar - to serve as an example

en conexión - in connection

en realidad - really, in fact

es necesario - it is necessary

por ejemplo - for example

por la mayor parte - mostly, for the most part

bien pensado - well thought-out

de verdad - really

de vez en cuando - now and again, (every) once in a while

mejor dicho - more exactly, rather

querer decir - to mean

servir para - to serve to

significar - to signify, to mean

sugerir - to suggest

tanto mejor - so much the better

tener que ver con - to have to do with

todavía - still, yet

al fin y al cabo - in the final analysis, in the end, after all 

como consecuencia - as a consequence, as a result, due to

de lo anterior - from the above

después de todo - after all

en breve - in short

en conclusión - in conclusion

en resumen - in conclusion

en todo - all in all

es preciso - must, it is necessary

llevar a cabo - to accomplish

parece que - it seems that

por consiguiente - therefore

por lo tanto - for that reason, therefore

por último - lastly

se ve que - one sees that

al final - in the end, finally

con cuidado - carefully

del punto de vista de - from the point of view of

de modo queso - so that, in such a way that

de nuevo - again

en cambio - on the other hand

mientras tanto - in the meanwhile

por fin - finally

Not really a case…

Like you have the regular numbers… uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco

Then you have the ordinal numbers… primer(a), segundo/a, tercer(a), cuarto/a, quinto/a

And the the partitives which are medio/a “half” or la mitad “a half”, el tercio “one-third”, el octavo “one-eight” / “octave”…

And then basically anything past 10 gets an -avo for partitives.

So… doce = 12, duodécimo/a = twelfth, and el doceavo means “one-twelfth”

Or cien = 100, centésimo/a “hundredth”, and el centavo is “one one-hundredth”… which is why el centavo means “penny” in English. Since 100 pennies = 1 dollar, it’s un centavo 1/100

Basics

Introduction to Pinyin

Pīnyīn.info (a guide to the writing of Mandarin Chinese in Romanization)

Pinyin

Pronunciation

Mandarin Chinese Pinyin Chart with Audio (click on the pinyin to hear it pronounced)

Pinyin chart (similar to the first pronunciation link, but you can also see the IPA)

Yoyo Chinese Pinyin Chart (similar to the first pronunciation link, but you can watch video demonstrations of many of the sounds)

Reading

Chinese Annotation Tool (annotates Chinese character with the pinyin and translations)

Chinese Pinyin Phonetic Transcription Converter (converts simplified or traditional characters into IPA or pinyin; does other cool things like highlight HSK levels!)

Writing

Pinyin Editor (allows you to write pinyin directly on your computer)

Pinyin Tone Tool (converts pinyin with numbers into pinyin with tone marks)

There are 6,3 times more people learning Irish (882k learners) than there are native speakers of Irish in Ireland (140k speakers);

There are about 16,665,000 people learning German on Duolingo - that is almost the population of Austria and Switzerland combined (16,724,721 people in 2014, according to World Bank)

There are about 39,774,000 people learning Spanish on Duolingo, while the number of native Spanish speakers in Spain is of about 38,352,500 (82% of Spain’s population) according to this report 

Duolingo User 1: “"Stasera sceglie lui il ristorante.“ Is there a grammatical reason for it to be “sceglie lui” instead of “lui sceglie?” Or are both correct?

Duolingo User 2: In this order it implies an imperative, so it’s more akin to “let’s let him choose”, while “lui sceglie” is matter-of-fact “he chooses”.

Duolingo User 3: “This is a great brainstorm for a sentence that can be somewhat confusing, so let’s flesh it out:

“Stasera lui sceglie il ristorante.” - Basic structure. He is making the selection and this is a fact. Because of the way simple present works in Italian, you’re right guiletheavenger, in English “will” or “is going to” would work as well.

“Stasera sceglie lui il ristorante.” - Moving the subject pronoun after the verb provides emphasis to who is doing what. That’s the simplest explanation for this strange structure and it works most other times you see it as well: emphasis. 

Here are other sentences you might see:

Guido io. I’m driving (not you)

Andiamo noi. We’re going (we can take care of this)