People that have experienced language attrition of their native language, how difficult was it to relearn your language? And do you have any tips on how to overcome mental blocks and other challenges with it?
If you are learning a new language in general, which techniques work best for you that I can try?
Currently I speak my native language very poorly (about A2 level), but English pretty much fluently. I'm taking lessons and I know native fluent speakers IRL, but it really is a struggle.
Hello there, I may look like 着 but I have four different meanings depending on the context! And just to make things interesting, I even sound different! Just which one am I when you read the text? Well, it's up to you to figure that out! Har Har.
Something I love telling people is that the Mandarin euphemism for ‘being horny’ is ‘I ate your tofu / I want to eat your tofu / they ate my tofu’. I feel like we should popularize that in pop culture. Like, you hear that in TV shows (mainly Taiwanese but also sometimes mainland Chinese)
"Bilingual Mandarin and English speakers living in Singapore also showed a preference for left to right mental time mapping over right to left mental mapping. But [..] also quicker to react to future oriented pictures if the future button was located below the past button – in line with Mandarin. Indeed, this also suggests that bilinguals may have two different views of time's direction – particularly if they learn both languages from an early age. "
#emdiplomacy was a multilingual affair. An #emdiplomat who could speak several languages had a clear advantage - not the least because he could thereby show equal respect to different parties, as this example by @dbellingradt shows. (1/2)
I for one would love to set it as my display #languages in #GNOME but it is not among the choices.
Aboot that, #Firefox has #Scots available fur ye tae wale, and is the most awesome leid in the settins ye can stert yaisin richt noo! 👌 Ah dinnae find #Shetlandic though.
Updated my Infectious global playlist to about 2,300 mid-to-up-tempo songs in English and dozens of other languages, plus a sprinkling of instrumentals. Feeling accomplished and enjoying the music.
> "When I was your age.." is the number 1 thing people hate hearing in Korea.
> People will never make conversations with you ever again.
> Simple
>
> @kenjikundesu
It is similar here in the #Philippines. You don't say, “When I was your age…”, if you want to share information about your time, you say, “Back in my day…”
In English, it doesn't make any sense. However, the local language equivalent of those two phrases comes with it:
Language nuances; and
Cultural factors.
Why?
“When I was your age…” in our local languages:
Language nuances = the delivery is different; the tone; the speech; and
Cultural factors = often used to demean, look down upon, another person (the younger in this case). It implies that, “I am/We are better than you”.
However, “Back in my day…” in our local languages:
Language nuances = the delivery, tone, speech, is different, it is friendlier and open for discussion/sharing; and
2 Cultural factors = not used to look down on anyone.
In the English language, these two phrases are the same, neutral, and thus won't make sense. But not in many Asian languages and cultures.
In addition, while both Filipino and Korean cultures have a deeply embedded respect levels in languages and actions, there is no room for older people to abuse it. We won't show it to you, because again, deeply embedded respect culture. But you can guarantee we're talking behind your back, and in today's world, chatrooms.
Back in my day, in the 80s and 90s, we say, “talk to the hand” and the equivalent action is stretching our arms, showing our palms forward to your face.
Obviously, we don't do that to people older than us. We do it while we're talking about you with our friends.
Today, in the present, at least here in the Philippines, we say, “Whateva'”, with a hand gesture and facial expression. Of course, we do it behind your back, or in chatrooms.
If you're a foreigner learning an Asian language, well, like in any other country, you'll be given a free pass. But, you better learn fast, you never know when you'll be misunderstood (unless you really want to be rude).
(There are actually more nuances in Filipino languages than Korean, for this particular case. And there is a worse way, too!)
Here's a #linguistic fun fact, the #Arabic word for constitution دستور is borrowed from #Persian. And the Persian word for constitution قانون اساسي is borrowed from Arabic.
Japanese has undergone some titanic shifts. And it continues to undergo far more gradual shifts in meaning and usage. As an example, we need look no further than what the youth of Japan have done to the word egui (エグい).
A lot of us get stuck in learning Japanese or other languages. We get bogged down in the tedium of memorizing new words or studying dry grammatical explanations. Learn how sentence mining can help break you free from that drudgery and revive your love of language learning.
When a was peerie a loved learning Shetland dialect - what a didn’t know was just how many accents exist in this island group of ~23,000 folk!
If you’re interested in #shetland dialect check out the link to hear the various accents & sound files! It’s really interesting & I find it really comforting and soothing to listen to. #scotland#scots#uk
Is the #mondly language learning app any good? They have a very cheap offer right now, but they support a huge amount of languages which is suspicious.
#AI#GenerativeAI#LLMs#Languages: "Recently, Bonaventure Dossou learned of an alarming tendency in a popular AI model. The program described Fon—a language spoken by Dossou’s mother and millions of others in Benin and neighboring countries—as “a fictional language.”
This result, which I replicated, is not unusual. Dossou is accustomed to the feeling that his culture is unseen by technology that so easily serves other people. He grew up with no Wikipedia pages in Fon, and no translation programs to help him communicate with his mother in French, in which he is more fluent. “When we have a technology that treats something as simple and fundamental as our name as an error, it robs us of our personhood,” Dossou told me.
The rise of the internet, alongside decades of American hegemony, made English into a common tongue for business, politics, science, and entertainment. More than half of all websites are in English, yet more than 80 percent of people in the world don’t speak the language. Even basic aspects of digital life—searching with Google, talking to Siri, relying on autocorrect, simply typing on a smartphone—have long been closed off to much of the world. And now the generative-AI boom, despite promises to bridge languages and cultures, may only further entrench the dominance of English in life on and off the web."
Japan maintains an "official" list of kanji. But some "unofficial" kanji are also in common use - and chances are you know a few. Here are some of the most popular that most people use and know despite being on the naughty list.
There are very few choices of online translation services that offer translations from and into #Tagalog (sometimes listed as #Filipino even though they are not exactly the same).
How few? #Bing and #Google are the go to online translation services; and that's about it. Popular neural translation services like Naver Papago, DeepL, and Reverso, are yet to offer Tagalog and Filipino translations.
However, there is one that is actually doing it better than Bing and Google, that is Yandex Translation — https://translate.yandex.com.
Translating Tagalog into another language.
So far, my only gripe is that Yandex translates it into past tense. It appears that Yandex still doesn't understand the Tagalog tenses in this translation direction (it does understand tenses when translating into Tagalog).
If you don't understand Tagalog, you also will not notice the tense was changed because the translation into your own language is correct as far as past tense is concerned.
Translating another language into Tagalog.
This one is good. At least based on what I have tested, tenses were preserved. Depending on the source language, the choice of words might be weird, but it makes sense regardless, from a native Tagalog speaker (maybe not for someone learning Tagalog, or Filipino).
Here are sample texts:
First, this is how it should be in Tagalog (compare the translation to this one if you're not familiar with Tagalog or Filipino):
> Hiniling ni Rielene kay John na bumili ng kanilang lingguhang pangangailangan sa supermarket kahapon. Pumunta siya sa pinakamalapit na supermarket ng isang mall; at pagkatapos ay binisita niya ang sinehan ng mall para tignan ang pinakabagong mga pelikula.
>
> Ngayong araw, ang mag-asawa na sina Rielene at John ay masayang magkasamang nanonood ng sci-fi movie na pinamagatang, “Hollow Earth of the Apes: The Scar Wars”.
English (source):
> Yesterday, Rielene asked John to go buy their weekly necessities in the supermarket. He visited supermarket of the nearby mall; and afterwards, he visited the mall's cinema to check the latest movies.
>
> Today, the couple, Rielene and John, are watching the sci-fi film entitled, “Hollow Earth of the Apes: The Scar Wars”, and are enjoying their time together.
Korean (through Naver Papago):
> 어제 릴렌은 존에게 슈퍼마켓에 주간 필수품을 사러 가자고 했습니다. 존은 근처 쇼핑몰의 슈퍼마켓을 방문했고, 그 후, 최신 영화를 확인하기 위해 쇼핑몰의 영화관을 방문했습니다.
>
> 오늘, 릴렌과 존 커플은 "속이 빈 지구: 흉터 전쟁"이라는 제목의 공상과학 영화를 보고 함께 시간을 즐기고 있습니다.
Polish (through DeepL):
> Wczoraj Rielene poprosiła Johna, aby poszedł do supermarketu kupić cotygodniowe artykuły pierwszej potrzeby. John odwiedził supermarket w pobliskim centrum handlowym, a następnie udał się do kina w centrum handlowym, aby sprawdzić najnowsze filmy.
>
> Dziś para, Rielene i John, ogląda film science-fiction zatytułowany "Wydrążona Ziemia Małp: Wojny Blizn" i cieszy się wspólnie spędzonym czasem.
Hebrew (through Yandex):
> אתמול ביקשה רילין מג ' ון ללכת לקנות את צרכיהם השבועיים בסופרמרקט. הוא ביקר בסופרמרקט של הקניון הסמוך; ולאחר מכן, הוא ביקר בקולנוע של הקניון כדי לבדוק את הסרטים האחרונים.
>
> היום, הזוג, רילין וג ' ון, צופים בסרט המדע הבדיוני שכותרתו "ארץ חלולה של הקופים: מלחמות הצלקת", ונהנים מהזמן שלהם יחד.
I’m looking for testimonials from Chinese people regarding their experiences with oral production during #languages classes. It’s to help 1 of my learners, I’m teaching French to adults in Canada. He has a PhD in maths and holds a management position. He arrived here at 12 y. learned English and has lived there for +20 years. With his position he must learn French. I think there is a cultural blockage (?) linked to being afraid of making mistakes, not knowing and it’s very hard for him to speak.