THE TALLEST KNIFE

An Overview of Note-Taking Styles

Hi all, it’s werelivingarts. I just stumbled across this method called ‘eat the frog’, which means you get the most difficult or important task out of your way first. I actually have been using this method for a long time, hope this post gives you a new way of managing your time and productivity! 😜 ❤️

often when someone expresses eagerness to learn finnish finns answer with ”ok i need to teach you how to swear” and everyone who’s interested in learning finnish should know that we swear. a lot. we have a huge amount of swearwords so here’s a post of what i’ve heard used in western finland, i’m sure that we have more swearwords around our country and the use of these words differ so feel free to add to this post!

paska - shit / use: ”voi paska” - ”oh shit”, ”haisee paskalta” - ”smells like shit”, ”haista paska” - ”smell shit”: this is an insult; you’re so angry to someone that you want them to go smell some shit. this insult can be answered with some variation of the phrase ”sieltä päin tuulee” - ”the wind is blowing from your direction”: implying that the person insulting you smells like shit.

helvetti - hell / use: ”voi helvetti” - ”oh hell” (used like oh shit), ”painu helvettiin” - ”go to hell”.

saatana - satan / use: ”voi saatana” or just ”saatana”; this is the kind of swearword you’d use if u stubbed your toe or when you’re angry or frustrated.

vittu - pussy: this is originally one of the most powerful swearwords and it means ”old woman’s vagina”, old women’s genitalia was seen as powerful in old finnish lore and shouldn’t be talked about in vain. / use: this word is the most used swearword in finland and used like ”fuck” in english, often so that ”vittu” sounds like a comma, but it can also be used like the word ”pussy” but i wouldn’t advice that if you’re sexting or whatever since it’s really crude. a lot like ”fan” in swedish. another finnish word for pussy is ”pillu”, while this word is also crude it’s somewhat better for sexting purposes.

Jumalauta - ”god damn” or ”god help me” this word has no real translation to english, but it is a combination of the words jumala - god and apua - help meaning ”god help me”. the power of this word comes from saying god’s name in vain. one uses it when one is really frustrated. this is the sort of word your mother would use when she’s the only one cleaning: ”onko se jumalauta niin vaikea auttaa kotitöissä?” ”is it so goddamn hard to help around the house?”

perse - ass / use: like in english this isn’t the worst swearword, often seen more like a grown up version of the words pylly/peppu (butt) and takapuoli (backside). lately i’ve heard a lot of this word used when faced with a mild misfortune: ”voi perse” - ”oh ass”

helvetin kuusitoista - hell’s sixteen, the real spelling of this swearword is ”helvetin kuustoista” but for clarity is spelled it like the number 16 since that’s what it means. it’s said that this word comes from the mild swedish swearword ”fy sjutton!”/ ”sjutton också!” since sjutton sounds a little like kuustoista even if sjutton is swedish for seventeen.. this is likely bc not only is sweden right next door, finland is also bilingual with (currently) 6% of our population swedish speaking. / use: ”no jo on helvetin kuustoista!” ”well isn’t it hell’s sixteen”: one would use this phrase when seeing something unbelievable/when something unbelievable happens. the phrase can also be used in the beginning of sentences: “helvetin kuustoista joku on varastanut lompakkoni!” “hell’s 16 someone has stolen my wallet!”

kulli/kyrpä - dick / use: both of these words mean penis but one shouldn’t use them in health class! lately these words, much like perse, have been used in the ocurring of a small misfortune ”voi kulli”/”voi kyrpä” - ”oh dick”

runkata - to wank / use: while this is more like a slang word for masturbating and often also used about a jerking motion not related to pleasing one self (like when someone is trying to open a locked door without a key) i am featuring this swearword in this post only bc of my favourite insult ”runkkaa sukkaan” - ”go wank in a sock”

First, all old finnish swearwords are of pagan origin. Even those that sound christian (like saatana, piru, helvetti...), these words were later adopted by the church because they already had a paganic meaning and hence were easy to adopt.

Perkele does not mean lucifer, but is a word derived from baltic languages, which in paganic finland would have carried similar dark paganic sensibilites as the devil we know now. Vittu doesn't directly mean old woman's vagina but vittu was like a titel one's vagina would earn after giving birth, especially to a son. These vaginas were believed to have a stronger väki, a sort of magic, than that of a bear & women working on the fields were believed to protect other workers from beasts.

Much of why swearing is frowned upon is based on the belief that using these words would have called upon darker forces, see: paganic sensibilities, and a synonym for swearing is noituminen, witching.

one extra way for finnish people to swear is to use an aggressive - like "vittu mä mitään juonut" "[vittu] i drank anything" / "i did not drink anything" where the swearword turns into a playful negative. highly interesting.

Wish you were enrolled in an intro linguistics class this semester? Starting a linguistics major and looking for extra help? Trying to figure out whether you should study linguistics and what comes after?  Whether you’re just trying to grasp the basics of linguistics or you’re trying to construct a full online linguistics course, here’s a comprehensive list of free linguistics websites, podcasts, videos, blogs, and other resources from around the internet: 

Linguistics Podcasts

Specific episodes:

The International Phonetic Alphabet and vowels

Constituency

Gricean Maxims and presuppositions

Kids These Days aren’t ruining language

Learning languages linguistically

Phonemes and palatalization

Prepositions, determiners, verbs

Morphemes and the wug test

Why do we gesture when we talk?

Syllables

Podcasts in general:

Lingthusiasm

The History of English Podcast

Talk the Talk

Lexicon Valley

The World in Words

A Way With Words

Vocal Fries

Linguistics Videos

Modular topics:

NativLang (cartoons)

The Ling Space

Tom Scott’s Language Files

Arika Okrent (whiteboard videos)

Structured video series like an online course:  

Introduction to Linguistics (TrevTutor)

Another intro linguistics series (DS Bigham)

Phonology (TrevTutor)

Mathematical linguistics (TrevTutor)

Syntax (TrevTutor)

Another syntax series following the chapter structure of a free online syntax textbook (Caroline Heycock)

The Virtual Linguistics Campus at Marburg University

“Miracles of Human Language” (on Coursera from Leiden University)

Blog posts

General

How much do I need to know before taking intro linguistics? (Spoiler: not much) 

28 tips for doing better in your intro linguistics course

How to find a topic for your linguistics essay or research paper

For typesetting linguistics symbols: What is LaTeX and why do linguists love it? (with sample LaTeX doc to download and modify).

Further linguistics resources about specific areas, such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition (first/second), historical linguistics, neurolinguistics, prescriptivism. 

Phonetics & Phonology

How to make your own paper model of the larynx

Teaching phonetics using lollipops

How to remember the IPA vowel chart

How to remember the IPA consonant chart

IPA transcription practice

A detailed explanation of sonorants, obstruents, and sonority

A very elaborate Venn diagram of English phonological features

The basics of how Optimality Theory works, with coffee analogy

Allophones of /t/, explained with internet gifs

Several good visualizations and explanations of the vocal tract

How to type IPA on your phone (Android and iOS) 

Various ways to type IPA on a computer

Morphology & Syntax

Morphological typology cartoons

So you asked the internet how to draw syntax trees. Here’s why you’re confused.

Types of trees: a sentence is an S, a sentence is an IP, a sentence is a TP

A step-by-step guide to drawing a syntax tree, with gifs

Distributed Morphology

Garden path sentences: how they work, some examples

Structural ambiguity and understanding people in Ipswich

How to draw trees on a computer (TreeForm and phpSyntaxTree) 

Pronoun typology and “the gay fanfiction problem”

The solution to violent example sentences: Pokemon

Semantics & Pragmatics

The difference between epistemic and deontic, necessity and possibility (with bonus modals as Hogwarts houses)

Why learn semantics? Comebacks to annoying people.

Presuppositions, implicature and entailment, and more presuppositions in Lizzie Bennet Diaries

Gricean maxims in Welcome to Night Vale

Scalar implicature and a duck gif

Giving a shit about Negative Polarity Items, NPIs explained using Mean Girls references, and a follow-up on Free Choice Items

The lambda calculus for absolute dummies

The Lambda Calculator (software for practising in Heim & Kratzer style)

Teaching & Academic/career advice

Linguistics resources for high school teachers

Teaching linguistics to 9-14 year olds

On writing an IB extended essay in linguistics (& follow-up)

IPA Bingo

IPA Jeopardy and IPA Hangman

Practising syntax trees using cards and string/straws

Find a linguistics olympiad near you!

Editing linguistics Wikipedia articles instead of writing a final paper that no one but the prof will read (see also wikiedu.org)

Should you go to grad school in linguistics? Maybe

Figuring out if you actually want to go to linguistics grad school

How to decide which linguistics grad school to go to

How to look for linguistics undergrad programs

How to interact with someone who’s just given a talk

An extensive list of undergrad and/or student-friendly conferences - apply to one near you!

Advice for linguistics profs on increasing enrollment and supporting non-academic careers

Linguistics jobs - a series about careers outside academia

Languages

Linguistic approaches to language learning resource roundup

Will linguistics help with language learning? / Will learning a second language help with linguistics?

The problem with “economically useful” as a reason for language learning

Further link roundups

This list not enough? Try these further masterposts: 

A very long list of linguistics movies, documentaries, and TV show episodes

A list of books (fiction and nonfiction) about linguistics

A comprehensive list of language and linguistics podcasts, from Superlinguo 

A very long list of linguistics YouTube channels and other free online videos about linguistics 

20 linguistics blogs I recommend following

The tip: Copy down (entire) passages of text

Why it works: You get WRITING SKILLS since you are writing down every word. You become familiar with the spelling, grammar, different writing styles, script (if you are unfamiliar with it), etc. You get READING SKILLS because obviously you are reading, exposed to the written text in context. You can even incorporate SPEAKING and LISTENING SKILLS by listen to the audio format (you can try google translate audio if you find nothing else) and/or read it aloud to yourself. Since you are limited by the speed of your writing, you will pay more attention to pronunciation. *Also, everyone knows you retain more information when you write by hand.*

How to:

1. Select a text. Make sure it is appropriate to your level and desired new vocabulary set. If I want to know more political vocabulary, I will read a news article. But for colloquial language/slang, I will read a YA novel.

(Btw you can find tons of texts for novels online if you search: “title name” + pdf)

2. Get a paper and writing utensil (you can dedicate a notebook to this if you want).

3. Don’t stop until the text is done or your hand hurts

4. Limit looking up vocabulary. If the text is more challenging for you, allow yourself to look up about one word per paragraph. If it is at your level, then wait to the end of the session to open the dictionary. Chances are, you’ll figure out the word’s meaning a few lines later.

4. Go back to the text later to review and/or make vocabulary lists from what you learned (flashcards like anki or memrise would be great especially if you put the sentence on one side with the word indicated and a representative picture on the other side

Ex. Side one: I planted a *rose* today

Side two: picture of a rose in a pot)