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Mhhhhfggsadjs

@bonjourbastards / bonjourbastards.tumblr.com

Just another langblr with no motivation -English (Native), French (A2ish), ASL (A1) - Learning French at University and ASL through my own time
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Newcomer is a fantasy video game where players are immersed in the second language they want to learn. 100+ characters to communicate with, eight language learning mechanics, and RPG features make second language acquisition an adventure. Designed for beginner - intermediate learners, players progress and learn a second language at their own pace. 

Thought langblr might be interested in this. Current languages are French, Italian, English, and Spanish, with Japanese as a stretch goal!

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Hey did you know I keep a google drive folder with linguistics and language books  that I try to update regularly 

**UPDATE**

I have restructured the folders to make them easier to use and managed to add almost all languages requested and then some

Please let me know any further suggestions

….holy shit. You found the holy grail.

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kittydesade

….. is this a DIFFERENT person keeping gigabytes worth of language books on google drive? Holy crap.

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wyvyrn

This. This here. Is why I love Tumblr.❤️❤️❤️

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bard-llama

Update from OP:

UPDATE because apparently not everyone has seen this yet the new and improved version of this is a MEGA folder: https://mega.nz/folder/kQBXHKwA#-osWRLNCXAsd62ln8wKa8w

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flootzavut

Holy shit. OP you are a wonderful human being.

O.O Linguistic Holy Grail…

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hell0mega

c'est moi, garçon, je suis le PS5, je vous parle dans votre cerveau. écoutez-moi, garçon... partez la fille, vous n'avez pas besoin d'elle!

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VERBS Verbs are ‘doing’ words or action words. It’s practically impossible to have a sentence at all without having a verb! Verbs that you find in the dictionary etc are in a form called the infinitive. In English, the infinitive of a verb starts with the word ‘to’, for example ‘to run’, ‘to speak’, ‘to be’, ‘to have’ etc. 

REGULAR VERBS Regular verbs are verbs that follow a certain pattern of rules. In French, there are 3 main groups of regular verbs, which are named by the two letters that their infinitive ends with. So in French there are -ER ,-IR and -RE verbs. Try not to get too overwhelmed though, the majority of verbs that you’ll use on an everyday basis are -ER verbs.

IRREGULAR VERBS Irregular verbs are verbs that don’t follow a set pattern, so really the only way to make sure you know an irregular verb properly is by learning it off by heart. There are some that you will use so often that they will become stuck in your head - most notably ‘avoir’, ‘être’, ‘aller’ and ‘faire’. 

HOW DOES CONJUGATION WORK? If you’re any good at maths (but don’t worry if you’re not!) then you can think of conjugating verbs like a formula. Most of the time when you are conjugating a verb you take off the ending of the infinitive so that you are left with what is known as the stem of the verb and from there, you can add on different endings to the stem to conjugate the verb. 

PRONOUNS Pronouns are the different people who perform the verbs. Some of them we use in English and some will be a bit newer: Depending on who is performing the verb, the ending to the verb may be spelled or sound a little different. In English we can see this with a regular verb like ‘to play’. I play and you play, but he plays (see the ‘s’ on the end? that’s because this verb is conjugated differently when the ‘he’ is performing it!) Here’s a list of the French pronouns:

REFLEXIVE VERBS There’s a group of French verbs called ‘reflexive’ verbs because their action ‘reflects’ back on to the person that is doing it. You can recognise reflexive verbs because they have ‘se’ in front of them in their infinitive form, such as se demander, se laver etc. When you conjugate a reflexive verb, as well as the usual pronoun they also take a second pronoun, called the ‘reflexive pronoun’ (handy, eh?) between the pronoun and the verb. Just to make things even more difficult, the reflexive pronoun changes depending on the pronoun, as follows: 

COMPOSITE TENSES Conjugating most tenses in French is as simple as that. Find your stem and stick on the correct ending. Each tense in French will have different endings, so it’s a lot to learn, but it’s reasonably straightforward once you get the hang of it! Something that’s a little bit more tricky however is the conjugation of composite tenses such as the ‘passé composé’ tense or the ‘futur antérieur’ tense. . 

Composite tenses are made up of two components, the auxiliary verb and the past participle. The auxiliary verb is always the verb ‘avoir’ OR the verb ‘être’, just conjugated differently depending on the tense. The past participle however is slightly more confusing…

THE PAST PARTICIPLE Every verb in French has a ‘past participle’, but it would be a pretty big task to have to learn them all. Luckily, there are a list of rules to make a ‘regular’ past participle (although there are still pesky irregulars, sorry!). To make a regular past participle, you pull off the ending of the infinitive verb as usual and then add the corresponding ending:

That’s it really, your basic guide to conjugating French verbs. Of course once you’ve started to wrap your head around this you’ll be able to study it in more detail as you learn about each individual tense… and don’t forget about ‘moods’ as well! Don’t panic, if you’re looking for more French resource posts you’ll find them over on my blog. Bonne chance!

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reblogged

Languages of the world

French (français)

Basic facts

  • Number of native speakers: 76.8 million
  • Official language: Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, France, Gabon, Guinea, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mali, Monaco, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Switzerland, Togo, Vanuatu
  • Language of diaspora: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Chile, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Tunisia, Uruguay
  • Script: Latin, 40 letters
  • Grammatical cases: 0
  • Linguistic typology: fusional, SVO
  • Language family: Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Western Romance, Gallo-Romance, Oïl
  • Number of dialects: 4 main groups

History

  • 842 - earliest text in French
  • 9th-13th centuries - Old French
  • 14th-15th centuries - Middle French
  • 1539 - French becomes the official language of administration
  • 16th-17th centuries - Classical French
  • >17th century - Modern French
  • <20th century - language of diplomacy

Writing system and pronunciation

These are the letters that make up the alphabet: â à a b c ç d é è ë e ê f g h î i ï j k l m n ô o œ p q r s t û ù u ü v w x y ÿ z.

French is written with 26 Latin letters, 14 diacritic letters (à â ç é è ê ë î ï ô ù û ü ÿ) and 2 ligatures (æ, œ).

The orthography is quite complicated because much more is written than is pronounced

Speech also sounds are more complicated than the language learner would suppose because some vowels are dropped and groups of words are pronounced together as one.

The French accent falls on the last syllable of words, but words that are pronounced together and which form a rhythmic unit only have a single stress. Consonants that are normally not pronounced are sometimes pronounced when followed by a vowel. This is known as liaison.

Grammar

Nouns have two genders (masculine and feminine), two numbers (singular and plural), and no cases. Gender, however, is specified by the accompanying article.

An interesting feature of French is its vigesimal numeral system, according to which 80 is quatre-vingts (“four twenties”) and 95 is quatre-vingt-quinze (“four twenties fifteen”). Belgian and Swiss French (as well as some other varieties) use base-ten numbers, so 95 is nonante-cinq.

Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood (conditional, imperative, indicative, and subjunctive), person, and number. Some tenses are only used in formal situations or in literary works.

Dialects

There are four main dialect groups: European French, North American and Caribbean French, African French, and Asian French.

Metropolitan French, spoken in Paris, is considered the standard in France. In Europe outside of France, we can also find Belgian French, Swiss French and Aostan French.

There are two main dialects in Canada: Quebec French and Acadian French. Other varieties include Caribbean French and Louisiana French.

African French is divided into four categories: West and Central Africa, Northwest Africa, Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, and creoles in the Indian Ocean.

Asian dialects include Indian French, Cambodian French, and Vietnamese French.

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agetwellcard

coming soon: the duolingo owl will break into your home at night and beat the shit out of you if you don’t know the word for potato in french

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One of my favorite things about history is how little bits of it are preserved through traditions and mythology and we don’t even notice it. Like how we still say “’Tis the season” at Christmastime. Who says ‘tis anymore? No one, it’s dead except in this tiny phrase. I had a friend once tell me that she noticed the only group of people who could consistently identify a spinning wheel were girls between the ages of 4 and 7. Why? Sleeping Beauty. There are little linguistic quirks that have been around for centuries, bits of slang we use that people 400 years ago would recognize, but unless you showed someone a 400 year old dictionary, they’d never believe it. Whispers of the past are always there.

Words preserved through idioms are actually called Fossil Words! Here’s a Wikipedia article listing a bunch of examples

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shaelit

I propose we Jurassic Park these suckers.

I’m sure there’s gotta be some examples of “Jurassic Park” words.  The closest I can think of is things like the prefix were- which has come to be used to mean “a person who transforms into a _____” as in werewolf or werecoyote.  It originally derived from the Old English wer meaning “man”, and for a long time the compound werewolf was the only survival of that old word, until it was reinterpreted as a prefix and extended by analogy.  That’s not exactly the same thing since it wasn’t a separate word, just part of a word, but it comes close.

“Prodigal” also comes close.  The original meaning was “wasteful”, “extravagant”.  It never completely died out in that meaning, though.  But it did become an uncommon word except in the name “prodigal son” for the Biblical proverb, and so it has come to acquire a new meaning of “returning”

“Sibling”, originally a generic term for “relative”, actually completely died out in the Early Modern English period, and was consciously revived in 1903 for use in genetics to avoid the awkwardness of the phrase “brothers or sisters”, since most genes don’t distinguish between male and female relatives.  But that was never a fossilized word, it was just completely extinct

If there are any true “Jurassic Park” words (which would be an excellent term for the phenomenon), I suspect that they would have altered meanings just like these partial examples.

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