Around the 7th century, Japanese underwent a change, ditching the self-referential kanji 倭 (wa) in favor of the 和 (wa) you see today that references "Japanese" things such as washoku (和食/Japanese food), wagyu (和牛/Japanese beef), and washitsu (和室/Japanese-style room).
Sharing etymological roots in pairs is particularly true when it comes to the word for "raspberry": For example, Lithuanian avietė & Latvian avene. it comes from Proto-Balto-Slavic *áwis "sheep", because to them, raspberries resembled sheep.
BINI members Maloi from Batangas and Aiah from Cebu challenge each other to guess the meaning of common phrases in their native languages Tagalog (Batangueño dialect) and Cebuano.
The current frequency of language usage on the Web (e.g. 52% of websites in English) doesn't reflect the diverse cultural and linguistic needs essential for global access, highlighting the importance of internationalization (i18n).
Fuqiao Xue, @w3c i18n activity lead, gave a comprehensive report of past and future @webi18n work, collaborating with spec and #browser#developers to address gaps, particularly for endangered scripts and #languages.
If you are into languages, you are probably familiar with those conversations with your multilingual friends: you take arbitrary elements from the languages you both speak, and randomly squeeze them together into sentences.
That is any regular Monday for the Swiss. Schwyzdüütsch, a.k.a. #Swiss German is a colorful amalgamation of German, French and Italian.
What’s a word or phrase in a language you speak that describes someone who is nervous? Not just nervous about an exam or something but like, you’re at an airport and the person next to you is shuffling anxiously not wanting to miss the boarding announcement even though it’s at least an hour away, and they just can’t stop shuffling? More a way of being.
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.