*completely butchers the spelling and grammar and entire system of my native language*

me: haha oops

*makes one (1) typo in my target language*

me:

(breaking it down) instead of (breaking down)

Many languages like to stuff bits and pieces together to create new words. 

The upside is that you don’t have to come up with a thousand sounds (first rule of humanity, and any other life form, is: we’re all lazy af, and will do anything to preserve energy). 

The downsides? 

1) Some languages can get carried away and end up with 23-syllable words (*coughs* German *coughs*) -

- and 2) when you’re learning a language that’s not - or distantly - related to your own, you can’t make sense of those bits and pieces and it all becomes ten times more complicated.

My specific problem rn is that I’m not familiar with Russian word formation, so every time a word’s longer than five letters I start to panic. I finally decided to fight back by making a list of common prefixes and suffixes - the next step is keep learning more words so I have more root knowledge and hopefully can put things together without having a seizure every time.

Anyway, I’m sharing this in case it’s useful for someone else out there.

PREFIXES

Examples: 

  SUFFIXES

Examples:

Vocabulary can be the hardest thing about learning a language, but remember there’s mostly a logical reason behind everything. For some learners, unlocking that reason is a trick to make quicker progress, so if it works for you, go for it!

To everyone making original langblr/lingblr content:

Thank you for all the research, time and effort you put into your content. Whether you post about languages or linguistics and whether your posts get just a few notes or hundreds of them, your content matters and is interesting and important. Without your content, there is no langblr/lingblr community.

Porque, Por que and Porquê

 We write “porque”

a) When it’s causal conjunction (why something happened)

b) When it’s final conjunction (gives a consequence of earlier conclusion). In this case, it’s equal to “a para que”, “a fim de que”, “para”: 

c) When it’s an interrogative adverb

In these direct interrogative clauses, it’s an adverb, because it’s connected to a verb

it’s also an interrogative adverb in indirect interrogative clauses: 

The word porque also is an interrogative adverb after the adverb eis in phrases  like these: 

The word porque is also an interrogative adverb in titles of books, like for example: “Porque Viemos”. “Porque Sou Cristão.”

We write “por que”

a) When por is a preposition and que is a relative pronoun (this is, por que = pelo qual, pela qual, pelos quais, pelas quais). For example: 

b) When por is a preposition and que is an interrogative pronoun:. (1.0)  For example:

c) When por is the preposition and que is an interrogative pronoun: (2.0)

We write Porquê

a) When it’s an interrogative adverb:

b) When it’s substantive. (When it means cause, motive, reason) as in the following phrase:

Esmeralda tu sais

Esmeralda tu sais / You know, Esmeralda

Tu n'es plus une enfant / you’re not a kid anymore

Il m'arrive maintenant / I’m realizing now, 

De te regarder différemment / that I look at you differently 

Tu n'avais pas huit ans / You weren’t even eight

Quand ta mère est partie / when your mother passed

Emportée par la mort / carried by death

Vers son Andalousie / to her Andalusia

Ell’t'a confiée à moi / she trusted you to me

Et avec jalousie / and jealously 

J'ai veillé sur ta vie / I’ve watched over you

Jusqu'au jour d'aujourd'hui / until today

Esmeralda tu sais / Esmeralda, you know

Les hommes sont méchants / men are trash

Prend garde quand tu cours / be careful out there

Dans les rues, dans les champs / in the fields, in the streets

Est-ce que tu me comprends ? / do you understand me?

Tu arrives maintenant / you’ve reached 

À l'âge de l'amour / the age of love.

Rien n'est plus comme avant / nothing is like it was.

(Clopin’s advice to Esmeralda in the musical La Notre Dame de Paris)

#multilingual king

That “say something right now” question that either a) exposes that you know nothing or b) causes you to forget years worth of progress on a language

we feel u tom

I love all of you. Welcome to Sweden!

So many languages so little brain

Portuguese Verbs Masterpost (EU)

I decided to create this cheat sheet on Portuguese verbs because the most difficult part of learning romance languages for me has always been all the verb forms and conjugations. The idea was inspired by @studypuddles post on French verbs

I combed through for spelling errors & mistakes, but alas some do fall through the cracks, so let me know if you see anything!

“Morpheme is the Smallest Meaningful Unit in a Language“

is the linguistic equivalent of

“Mitochondria is the Powerhouse of the Cell”

Nationalities! #3 Africa

Here is a little map again (Síria, Iraque, Arábia Saudita and Iémen don’t count).

NB : /place/ = non recognized by the international community ; *place* = considered africans by the African Union ; +place+ = non independant territories that belong to african countries

You never know when or where you’ll meet a native speaker of your target language so better get prepared and study

Fun Fact

The word “aufbrezeln” exists in the German language. Dich aufzubrezeln means to get yourself all dressed up or all dolled up

gettin all pretzeled up :)))

you know when you’re born in a non-english speaking country bilingualism is kind of a default. we are taught english from a young age so when someone asks me what languages do i speak, i respond with “well croatian and english obv, but im studying french and russian too”. and that bothers me. because english is fucking hard. in my country bilingualism is default, trilingualism is expected, and people get impressed when you speak five fucking languages where as native english speakers are praised for learning one (1) foreign language. i get that english is a major global language and why it is taught, but it bothers me that even if i spoke 5 languages fluently it would be useless if i didnt speak perfect english. and along with that, all of my hard work that i put into my english is dismissed because english is expected of me. rant over.

This is so interesting because as someone that is born in an English speaking country all bilingualism is impressive regardless of what language it is/whether or not it was expected of you to learn more than one. While some of us feel fine only knowing one language, some others feel guilt for only knowing one. I wonder what the perspective would be from a monolingual society that doesn’t expect English??

Japanese Advertising Vocabulary

(Shameless product placement? Not really 😂)

広告（こうこく）- advertisement; announcement

宣伝 (せんでん）- promotion, marketing; publicity

アド (abbreviation) - ad, advertisement; also address (abbreviation for アドレス）

掲載する （けいさい。）- to insert, to put up an (advertisement)

広告代理店（こうこくだいりてん）- advertising agency

広告社 (こうこくしゃ）- advertising agency

新聞広告 （しんぶんこうこく）- newspaper advertisement

就職広告 (しゅうしょくこうこく）- employment advertisement

求人広告 (きゅうじんこうこく）- help-wanted advertisement

募集広告 (ぼしゅうこうこく）- recruitment advertisement

個人広告 (こじんこうこく）- personal advertisement

自己宣伝 （じこせんでん）- self-advertising

テレビコマーシャル - TV commercial

番宣 （ばんせん）- promo

アー写 （。しゃ）- official promotional photo of a musician, model, artist

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