project: languages

I actually ended up having a surreal and jarring one-on-one conversation with Luis von Ahn, the founder and CEO, who reached out to me after a scathing critique I posted on Reddit started to get significant traction.

Talking to him was like talking to someone who had been brainwashed by a cult. I told him how I and others in my life had found Duolingo so useful and efficient for language learning, and that its usefulness was evidenced by me noticing a real-world improvement in ability to listen to, understand, and speak the languages I had been practicing, but that recent changes had made it dramatically less useful to where I needed to put much more time in to get the same amount out.

His response was like "But all our metrics are up, our data shows that our changes are working." It was so frustrating. The metrics were all about engagement. He was showing people were spending more time practicing languages, not that they were getting more real-world ability to converse in those languages. Practice time was going up but actual language ability was going down. I tried explaining that to him but he seemed completely unable and/or unwilling to understand my point.

It was like talking to a wall.

I left the conversation with any remaining faith in the Duolingo leadership completely shattered, and I completely withdrew from using the site.

Busuu - Busuu is what I used while studying Chinese and Japanese, and the app is comparable to Duolingo.

MangoLanguages - Many library systems are offering access to this to free! Make sure to check to see if your library card gives you access to this resource.

Great Courses Plus - They also have a ton of language material, and are often offered through libraries!

Linkedin Learning - Multiple language (and other!) options, also available through many public libraries.

Anki - Gives you access to thousands of flashcards and the ability to make your own.

Pimsleur - Pimsleur is one of the most highly recommended language programs, especially if you're working for a conversational level.

Other alternatives to consider are Youtube, often a great place for smaller schools and creators to post content. I supplement my classes with Easy German, and I used to be pretty reliant on EveryDay Chinese to practice my tones. If you're looking to learn it, there's bound to be a channel out there that is tailored toward your language learning.

It's going to depend but you'll see two main words el tazón and el bol

Now, el tazón is the augmentative of la taza which is "teacup/coffee cup" - and generally el tazón is like your typical soup bowl or cereal bowl, generally on the smaller side for individual servings

el bol is typically the larger serving bowl or the bowl you use for cooking like mix everything in a big bowl, that's el bol and then sometimes a huge salad gets served in el bol and everyone takes from it

And then there's el cuenco

But sometimes people use the three with very little distinction, so as long as you know the words you'll be fine

the solid hundred americans saying "idk general american". i dont know what that is so im gonna pretend you mean "I sound like a disney channel character"

shoutout to whoever said "gay". also whoever said "autism".

to those curious; 'newfoundland' accents are what everyone i know says to refer to the stereotypical "canadian accent" that bad american TV has, 'cause you're basically only gonna hear that in a random fishing town on the Maritimes' coast.

the fact that almost every french person called their accent sexy

all my fellow canadians who are saying "canadian but i dONT SOUND NEWFIE" like yes babe we are not all One Single Fishing Town Accent (no hate to the newfies tho ily)

the one who said "i sound like siri. i have no accent" meanwhile siri is So Fucking Accented to my ears

the amount of people with english as a second language in the notes who now love their accents <3 that's great, love urself

everyone going "i'm TOLD i sound british. please not that"

the one person who described their accent instead of just saying a word. they happened to be canadian and i was like "you just. absolutely and totally described how i talk"

the amount of californians going "californian but i dONT SOUND SURFER OR VALLEY GIRL" like the US version of "im not newfie"

Hey guys!

Since I’ve had this blog for about a year and a half now,  I decided to compile them all into one folder on OneDrive so that they would be easier to access :) I’ll be updating it periodically as I post more stuff on here, but feel free to check it out! There’s a bunch of posts that I made ages ago that have been buried under unrelated posts here, so maybe you’ll find something interesting!

As of now, the folder includes grammar posts, vocabulary lists, and a few documents on Quebecois French. 

you want to watch tv shows but don’t really care for speaking with others? yay!! no speaking practice needed.

you want to learn quickly for an upcoming trip? yay! text book phrases and simple grammar.

you’re a beginner and it’s been 10 years? 2 weeks? 6 months? it doesn’t matter. as long as you are working towards bringing YOURSELF closer to what YOU want to achieve, you have succeeded: you are succeeding; you are doing great.

i find that so much demotivation comes from comparison and/or trying to follow other's advice too closely. if anki decks don't work for you, that's fine! if duolingo works well for you, then use it!

this language learning thing, it should be enjoyed. in the sea full of deceptive polyglot stories and videos on top of videos attempting to understand how to learn languages in "the fastest way possible" sometimes we should sit back and ask ourselves, "when is just learning things, enough"?

The word "unicorne" was first reanalyzed as "une icorne"

The definite article was then added, making it "l'icorne"

A fun one in Arabic is the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Quite understandably, Arabic speakers heard the initial "Al" and thought "ah yes, the ubiquitous definite article" and Alexandria became al-’Iskandariyya.

In the opposite direction, Spanish adopted hundreds of Arabic words during the Middle Ages due to Andalusian/Islamic influence, and there are very few Spanish words that start with al- that aren't of Arabic origin (and in fact, many words that start with A without being followed by an L, as in about half of cases in Arabic the L in "al-" is elided).

Reanalysis occurs in many other places besides article-noun combos, of course, but it's an extremely common case.

So, you may or may not know that x-rays were discovered by a guy called Röntgen (or Roentgen, though the ö is the proper spelling). Because of that, they're called "Röntgen rays" in German. Now, the thing is that in the German, the infinitive of a verb is always formed with an -en at the, so, for example, "to run" is "rennen" or "to sleep" is "schlafen." And because of that, it just so happened that the verb for performing x-rays became... "röntgen."

Swahili has a series of prefixes which indicate noun class, agreement, various things. Basically, every noun gets a prefix, and there are many different sets; each class has a dedicated singular and plural form.

One of the many classes is ki-/vi-: kitanda (bed) vs. vitanda (beds), kiti (chair) vs. viti (chairs), etc.

Swahili has a number of loanwords from Arabic. One of these is the word for book - in Arabic, that's kitāb ﻛِﺘَﺎﺏ .