The hedgehogs dilema

It’s like when I was a kid I had two furbies and when you put them next to each other they’d just natter nonsensically past one another for a bit and then at some point one would abruptly recognize the other with its furby sensor or w/e and it would shout “DANCE!” and the other one would flap its ears and reply “HEY, DANCE” and then, in perfect unison, they would begin to rock back and forth while chanting “doot doot doo doot doot doo”

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.    

Seen on many different social media platforms such as pinterest, tumblr, and tik tok, many non-black repost accounts have labeled ‘cyber street-wear’ or black people in ‘y2k’ which is a style black people have curated, as ‘cyber ghetto’.

Cyber ghetto was a word that was first created by a black tumblr user, Ruth, whose blog no longer exists. Her intention with this name was to fuse ‘elements of seapunk, kawaii, grunge, and late 90s early 00s urban fashion, oldskool as well as late hip-hop and electronic music.’ (Generation Bass) On her tumblr blog, she liked to reblog content that she deemed fit this aesthetic that she created. This was an outlet where she could reblog things that represented her being, her music taste, and her fashion sense. The internet being the way that it is, took this term and began to contort it to mean something opposite to what Ruth’s intentions were.

Ruth:

Although this term was coined and introduced to the internet by a black woman, here’s why we should not label cyber street-wear or black y2k as such.

As years have gone on, non-black repost blogs on tumblr have contorted the meaning of this word and labeled any black person they see with a certain aesthetic as ‘cyber ghetto.’ Now when we look closely, we all know why they label many of these pictures as ‘cyber ghetto’ … you guessed it, it’s because they are black. As a person whose pictures have been labeled as such, I was very confused as to why they would label my style and pictures as cyber ghetto when it’s nothing of what Ruth defined it as. My style is all over the place but it’s mainly bubblegum Y2K or mcbling.

Tiktok. Where to begin … Tiktok is a cesspool of ignorant teenagers who follow the trends of the week. One week they love a person or love a particular style and then the next week they all decide they hate that person or trend. When the term ‘cyber ghetto’ hit the tik tok streets, they all ran with it. It first started out with the pinterest repost pages posting black people wearing street-wear or y2k and captioned it as cyber ghetto pushing the wrong definition into these impressionable minds.

(these are examples of what they would label as ‘cyber ghetto’. this is just cyber street wear)

The biggest problem with the recent push of the new meaning of ‘cyber ghetto’ is that black y2k girls are being pushed out of the aesthetic they are aiming for and being pushed into the cyber ghetto box. As we know, black women are the blueprint for most of the early 2000s trends. Some icons that pushed many of these trends are Meagan Good, Missy Elliot, & Kimora Lee, just to name a few. Although black women are the sole reason for y2k trends, we’re being pushed out of those spaces. If you look up y2k, or even BLACK y2k aesthetic, there are barely any pictures of black women in these spaces. On the contrary, when you look up cyber ghetto black women show up.

All in all, non-black people need to stop overstepping and stop pushing black people out of the spaces that we created. Cyber ghetto is not a term that should be used to define black women who enjoy street-wear or wearing y2k pieces. If this term is going to continue to be used, use it the right way or don’t use it at all.

peace,