CN/JP Langblr

从 cóng - from, based on

尸僵 shī jiāng - literally "corpse stiffness" rigor mortis

程度 chéngdù - degree or extent

来看 lái kàn - literally "come to see"; in this context "it can be seen that"/ "the conclusion can be drawn that"

Translation: From the degree of rigor mortis, you can tell that..."

Thus, a baby not only has to learn words and their meanings but also learn to segment lots of sounds INTO words. Doyouwantalittlemoresoupyesyoudoyoucutie. Damn.

When she talked about HOW babies learn to segment words our professor said, and I love it, "babies are little statisticians" because when listening to all the sounds, they start understanding what sound is likely to come after another vs which is not.

After discussing lots of experiments done with babies, our professor added something that I already knew somewhere in my brain but didn't know I know: All this knowledge is helpful when learning an L2 as well:

Listen to natives speaking their language. Original speed. Whatever speaker. Whatever topic.

It is NOT about understanding meaning. It is about learning the rhythm of the language, getting a feeling for its sound, the combination of sounds, the melody and the pronunciation.

Just how babies have to learn to identify single words within waves of sounds, so do adults learning a language. It will help immensely with later (more intentional) listening because you're already used to the sound, can already get into the groove of the languge.

Be as brave as a baby.

NEW DAOMUBIJI SERIES STARTS TODAY SCREAMING!!!

Tibetan Sea Flower stars Chen Minghou (from DMBJ's Reunion: The Sound of Providence) who reprises his role as Pang Zi, Zhang Luyi (Three Body) as Wu Xie and Zhang Kangle (relatively new) as Zhang Qiling.

Kàn(姦) / Kàu(哭):

Ai Di's definitely one of the crudest (possibly the crudest) character on the show; he makes the most number of innuendos, and swears many, many times in the series. Specifically, he uses the hokkien (a chinese dialect) word for "fuck" (written as 姦 or 幹, pronounced like kàn in hokkien), and the hokkien word for "cry/damn" (written as 哭, pronounced as kàu) often. He uses them a lot throughout the series, usually at the start or end of a sentence, yet I've never seen it translated in any English subtitles. Kàn is also used as an exclamation to express displeasure or anger, so I'm guessing this is why it wasn't deemed necessary to include in the subs.

As for kàu, its negative association comes from the phrase kàu pěh kàu bù (哭爸哭妈), literally "cry father cry mother", which means to cry for your parents when they have passed away. Using kàu as a swear in Taiwan is like cursing death on someone's parents and is considered extremely rude/uncouth.

Some instances where he says kàn/kàu:

In ep 3 at 11:00, after Chen Yi walks away and Ai Di chases after him for an answer.

Ep 3 again, at 15:48, Ai Di says "kàu ni yao" after Zhe Rui hangs up on him, followed by "kàn, how do I pick you up without an address"

Ep 8.5, at 12:18, Ai Di says "kàu", likely as an expression of anger. And after Zhe Rui chastises him, Ai Di swears "kàn" before storming off.

In ep 9, 13:37, Ai Di says "kàn, I just said goodbye..."

General swearing:

There are also several instances where his swearing isn't translated in ep 9. Right at the start, at 3:48 and 4:26, Ai Di uses the phrase "他妈的", which has similar usage and meaning to "fuck".

At 3:48, Ai Di says "他妈的你什么时候可以清醒一点", which translates to "fuck, when will you wake up and see it clearly?", but YouTube translates it to "when can you wake up and see it clearly?", leaving out the swear word.

And at 4:26 when he says "The only one who looks at you is me" while holding Chen Yi's face. But what he actually says is "看着你他妈的只有我". So what Ai Di actually says is "The only one who fucking looks at you is me".

As for the innuendos, besides his famous "You're impotent" first kiss scene with Chen Yi, Ai Di also makes a similar innuendo here in episode 3.

"He'll be old, and you'll grow up. Grow up." Ai Di repeats 長大 (zhǎng dà) twice, which the english subs translated to "grow up". 長大 can actually have multiple meanings, since 長 means "to grow" and 大 means "big". The first time Ai Di says it, he does actually mean "grow up", as in a child getting older. The second time, he looks downwards before saying it, so I'm sure we all understand what he meant by "grow big"... 👀

And when Ai Di follows behind Chen Yi, he calls him 大哥哥 (dà gēgē). Although the subtitles translate it as "Big bro", he's actually making another innuendo here, using 大 in the same way he did above. 哥哥 on its own means "older brother", and while you can call someone 大哥哥, "big older brother" literally (it can have many meanings, such as a nickname for an older male, or to show respect for a senior - you don't necessarily have to be related to them by blood. For more practical reasons, it can be used to address the eldest among all your older brothers), it's clearly not the meaning Ai Di was intending here.

[Translation] Mysterious Lotus Casebook Wrap Ceremony:

Comedic behind-the-scenes from Shunyao's last day of filming, Shunyao's MLC filming vlog, and Shunyao surprising Cheng Yi and Shunxi at the final wrap ceremony 🥰

The Road to Tokyo

Winter and summer.

I'm not a hater out of elitism. Actually, I think that free language learning resources are wonderful! Back when Duolingo hadn't gone full AI and I was a high schooler on an allowance, it helped me with Spanish 101 ffs. Unfortunately, it seems that the priority is now more on the quirky ad budget and less on actually providing students with a quality learning resource that feels like a game.

Anyways, I'm on lingodeer for Spanish and Korean nowadays (but the app is paid). Bought a year's subscription during a winter sale for $80 USD. The grammar explainers are very clear and the app has limited gamification via streaks. Cake is more focused on speaking and has lots of video lectures. Also paid, got yearly sub on winter sale for $75.

If you're on Webtoon, the international build lets you swap languages without geoblocking (and the Spanish and French sections are pretty extensive, for anyone taking school classes in these). I've found it to be a fun reading practice that displaced my bad habit of social media before bedtime. You can also start an account on Kakao Page for webtoons in Korean. Only caveat is you'll be reading in a mobile browser bc the app isn't internationally distributed and I don't endorse installing from APK. Security issues for the device and I've previously been banned from online games bc this is technically a TOS violation apparently. Can't rec Naver Webtoon (the Korean build of Webtoon) in good conscience bc I found their account setup process too troublesome and quit.

You can take free Korean 101 classes from a public uni via King Sejong Institute's site at iksi.or.kr. I've been finding their explainers very straightforward. They offer both asynchronous and Zoom classes. If your fam has Netflix, also install the Language Reactor extension in chrome for bilingual subtitles and a hover-over dictionary. Start with slice-of-life shows bc they drop lots of useful vocab.

You can also browse around Coursera's language learning section bc yeah, you actually can take a free college class there. It's basically youtube for college classes, I suppose. Including Spanish ones from UC Davis.