#as if i learned what a reflexive verb is in english! lol

[duchessofostergotlands]

Trying to work out when to use the word “att” before a verb in Swedish is what’s going to kill me 

#it's because the UK's english teaching is also shit #so the swedish grammar rules will say you use x for a reflexive verb #as if i learned what a reflexive verb is in english! lol #non royal #learning languages #learning swedish

[reflectingiridescent]

32, 24, 17 for the writing meme!

Ask me more writing things!

32. Do you have a word/expression that you always use in your writing?

Omg I might not be the best person to answer this. When I was learning how to write for journalism, I had a teacher who told us that we were only allowed to use the word "of" a maximum of once per piece we turned in or we would get points deducted. That...was really hard. Like if you've never tried it, try it.

(It also means that every time I write the word "of", I lowkey feel...like I've gotten away with something? So that is a peek into what I consider "walking on the wild side" LOL.)

Part of it was a writing for print/newspapers thing: "Lisa's coat" takes up less space than "the coat of Lisa", but the teacher was also of the impression that "Lisa's coat" kept the prose moving better. And I have come to agree with that.

I also had another teacher (or this might be more than one because I can't exactly remember their name) who beat active voice > passive voice into me in a way that I really internalized. To the point where I began to write around using being verbs, and I'd cheat?

So for those two reasons, there a lot of ('s) action happening in my writing hahaha. Lots of "she's going" and "the dog's teeth". Part of it keeps things moving. Part of it's just like, conditioning that I don't think about very often.

24. Thoughts on flashbacks/flashforwards.

I like them! I think you can use them really effectively as long as the reader figures out at the right time that it's a flashback or flashforward? And that can be hard sometimes because it's so much easier to communicate something is a flashback or flashforward on screen than in prose.

I do think that if you're going to jump the reader around like that, you need to have a good plot or emotional reason.

17. Past or present tense? Why?

PRESENT TENSE. This is also something I teach my interns. There's this perception that present tense reads very simply. But I think it's the quickest, dirtiest, and most effective way (imho) to make the reader feel like they're there with you right now in the midst of the action. It makes the prose feel so much more dynamic (by doing very little comparative work, imho), which is amazing whether you're writing a really visceral flashback scene or about...really boring industry stuff which is what we do at work LOL.

Also at work we're writing for people who almost exclusively have English as a second or third language, so it has this side benefit of being easier to comprehend because present tense is usually the first verb thing people learn when studying English (the translators I work with tell me that it's also a little easier for them sometimes to translate when we do it that way, but I have less experience with that).

Also, usually interns come in with that academic writing reflex where they're so used to using twenty words to say what they can in five because of Word Count Reasons, so the quickest way to train them away from that impulse (and help them not get lost in their own writing) is just to be like, take this back and do me a favor: strip it down to present tense, free your mind, and the rest will follow lol.

Like, it's not always appropriate because sometimes you are actually talking about things that happened in the past! But if I have a choice, I nearly always want to pull the reader into the action.

#memes #ask box memes #writing #my interns are really important to me haha #they're so talented!!!

[gatecoeur]

jels’ comprehensive list of french swears and insults

As requested by @therxdeemxr​. Please note that I’ve catered this list SPECIFICALLY to Metropolitan French, aka the French you’d usually hear in Paris, aka the French that most people who learn French in school tend to learn. 

Most of the French-speaking world will understand these, don’t get me wrong, but some of these may be weird to hear in other French-speaking locations, such as Quebec and Louisiana, or even other parts of France for that matter, so keep that in mind if you’re using this list for a character that might’ve learned French from elsewhere. 

Also also, keep in mind that a lot of the words here may need to be conjugated to make sense, depending on what you wanna say. Unfortunately, I can’t go through all of that because French conjugation alone is a whole lesson.

Sources I used to help me compile this list (and that I frankly did a lot of copy-pasting from to help speed this up tbh) come from here, here, and here. They have more stuff than what I put in my list, but tbh some of them I’ve never heard in all my years of learning French, so take that with a grain of salt.

baiser - literally means “to fuck”. This word is one that causes A LOT of confusion for new French speakers, because depending on context, baiser also means ‘to kiss’. A great way to confuse two words, I know. Baiser can be used in the literal sense ( i.e. to refer to sex ), the figurative sense ( e.g. you could say “il m’a bien baisé” to say “he really fucked me (over)” ), and the reflexive sense of the word ( e.g. you can say  “Je me suis fait baiser”, which means “I got fucked over”. )

niquer - another word for fuck. Unlike baiser tho, it can’t be used reflexively, and is used exclusively as a verb. “Nique ta mère” (literally means ”Fuck your mother”, but is usually used in the same context as “fuck off”) is a pretty common expletive phrase to hear.

bite - dick. This word’s exclusively used to refer to the body part tho, not to describe someone as a dick.

chatte - pussy. again, only used to describe the body part. if you wanted to use pussy how we do in english, you can either use lopette, or a slightly less vulgar version, mauviette.

bête comme ses pieds - literally means "to be as stupid as one’s feet", but actually means that someone is REALLY stupid.

branler - to jerk off. 

branleur - wanker.

rien à branler - to not give a fuck

casse-toi - literally means “break yourself”, but is used to say “fuck off”

enculé/enculée - an asshole. Even tho there’s a feminine version of this word, it’s usually used for men only. It’s a very common insult.

chier - to shit. THIS IS THE MOST VERSATILE AND WIDELY-USED SWEAR WORD IN METORPOLITAN FRENCH. Common phrases include the following:

ça/tu me fait chier - literally means “that/you makes me shit”, but is usually used to say something along the lines of “that/you piss(es) me off”

je me fais chier - literally means “i make myself shit”. can be used to either express annoyance of boredom.

je t’envoyer chier - literally means “i send you to shit”, usually is a way to tell someone to shove it

c’est chiant(e) - literally means “that’s shitty”, but it usually used to say “that’s bloody annoying.”

con / conne - idiot. another very versatile word in French, because the severity of the word depends on the context in which you use it. in other words, you could easily use con / conne to mean “asshole,” “cunt,” or “twat”. Interestingly enough though, you can say “c’est con” to mean something along the lines of “what a shame”

roi des cons - this one just deserves it’s own place cuz it means “king of the idiots”

con comme une valise sans poignée - means "as stupid as a suitcase without a handle." pretty self-explanatory lol.

con comme un balais - means "as dumb as a broom." also self-explanatory lol.

connard / connasse - same meaning as con / conne, but is considered to be much harsher.

connerie(s) - mistake(s). “Faire des conneries” is a pretty common phrase, which is versatile in exact meaning but is usually used to say that someone is fucking something up. 

couille(s) - ball(s). This one you might wanna be careful with, as it can be used as a h*moph*bic slur. “Casser les couilles” is a very common phrase tho, and is equivalent to saying that you’re busting someone’s balls. You can also call somone “sans-couilles” to call them a coward.

cul - ass

trou de cul - asshole

bordel de merde - literally means “a brothel made of shit”, but is usually used as a stand-alone expletive

dégueulasse - means disgusting, but is a VERY strong use of the word. If you wanna say something is just a little bit gross, use  dégoûtant(e) instead.

debile - means “idiot”

dégage / dégage-toi - basically used in the same context as “kindly fuck off”

emmerder - literally means “to immerse in shit”, but is usually used in annoyance ( e.g. you can say “tu m’emmerdes” to say “screw you”, or you can as “je m’emmerde” to mean “i’m fucking bored” ). This word is yet another commonly used one.

emmerdeur / emmerdeuse – means “a pain in the ass”

faux cul - literally means “false bottom”, but is usually used to call someone a hypocrite or a liar

aller se faire foutre – used to either say “fuck off” or “go fuck yourself”

foutre la merde – means “to fuck up”. (e.g. “Il a foutu la merde dans sa vie” means “he fucked up his life.”)

ne rien foutre – means “to do fuckall”. Ton conjugate it, it would look like “tu ne fous rien de tes journées”, which means  “you do fuck all with your days”

je m’en fous - means “i don’t give a fuck”

merde - means “shit”. This is easily the most recognizable French swear word tbh. Can be used in a variety of ways, but is also used as a single expletive, like in English.

péter plus haut de son cul -  literally means "to fart higher than one’s ass", but is actually used to call someone arrogant

poule mouillée - literally means "wet chicken", and is used to call someone a coward

putain - literally means “whore”, but is usually used in the same context as “fuck” in English, especially as an expletive. This is the second more recognizable swear word commonly used in French across the board. Common phrases of this word include “putain de merde” and “putain de bordel de merde”. Both are used to express extreme anger, with the latter being even angrier than the former.

fils de pute - literally means “son of a whore”. Is usually used to mean “son of a bitch”, but only as an insult directed to someone and not necessarily as an expletive like it’s used in English

salope - usually means “bitch or “slut”

ta guele - VERY commonly used, and means “shut the fuck up”

tête de noed - literally means "knot face", but is another way to call someone stupid... more accurately, it’s to call someone a dickhead.

BONUS: “il a perdu les pédales” - literally means “he lost his pedals”, but is used to say that someone’s lost their mind, or is crazy. 

#;francais #;ref #(( i vaguely did this in alphabetical order but not really??? )) #(( anyways yeah enjoy this list lol. i had fun doing it ))

[perlamiabisnonna]

10040 Challenge // Day 40

Goal: 92:45 /100 hours ; 40/40 days Date: October 28th Tag: #10040 challenge

Wah! it was that super lazy week I had where I didn’t do anything. I should’ve pushed harder these last five days lol. GEEZE only a little over seven hours short. That really really burns. 

Okay so my initial hopes for the end of the challenge were to:

1. have finished reading/listening to In Other Words because I get lazy and don’t read everyday

I did this! I read the last chapter Friday. I feel like I’ve been reading this book for forever. I think I checked it out of the library back in July and renewed it like four times. If it wasn’t for the challenge to keep me focused, I’d probably still be reading it into the new year. 

2. become more comfortable writing (without looking things up so much)

Well I can certainly say I’m more comfortable with writing than I was when I first started out. That isn’t to say I’m any better at it, however. Before, I used to avoid the writing prompts in the edX beginner’s course like the plague and then when I would sit down to write, it’d take me a super long time to do it. With the past two prompts from the intermediate course, I literally just start writing. I think the few free-writing exercises I did helped with this as well. I don’t think as much. I don’t use the dictionary as much, but I still refer to my notes. And I still have plenty of errors.

3. recognize more words/dialogue when watching tv shows/movies

Hah! hahahahahaha! No, seriously. I didn’t watch as many things in Italian as I wanted to. Actually, I barely did. Sometimes with the the Pimsleur program they would give the speaking prompts in Italian. I don’t understand what the man says; the speaking is still too fast. I just wait until they say the answer or repeat the prompt in English. 

 4. understand grammar and sentence structure better

I mean I think I do. What’s still most confusing is passato prossimo vs. imperfetto, of course. And prepositions with cities, nations and places. Oh and the whole essere or avere with passato prossimo. Recently learning reflexive verbs really was an “AHA!” moment for me though. 

FINAL THOUGHTS 💭

I’m grateful for the challenge because I feel like prior to, my studying was all over the place. Besides the edX beginner’s course, nothing was really structured. The challenge helped me make a plan and figure out specific ways to improve all aspects of language learning. I didn’t succeed in doing everything, but I improved in many other areas. I completed Pimsleur Italian 2 and started the first lesson in Italian 3 yesterday. I got through 12 new skills with Duolingo, only have five more skills to complete and reached level 22, woo! I started listening to Italian music and gained a ton of new vocabulary from reading In Altre Parole by Jhumpa Lahiri, which is the first book I have ever read in a language other than English. 

Moving forward, I think I’ll be, more or less, sticking to the study schedule I’ve got going on. Hopefully in about seven weeks I’ll be finishing up the intermediate course from edX and maybe I’ll be starting the reverse tree (Italian>English) on Duolingo. 

#10040 challenge #my posts #italian langblr #italian #language learning #langblr

[xenoglots]

RANDOM ASS TEXT POST DESCRIBING SOME OF THE SHIT I USE AS MY TAGS BECAUSE THEY ARE WONDERFUL FUN LINGUISTIC CONCEPTS, THANKS.

COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY. a quote from noam chomsky that he wrote to show that a sentence can be grammatically correct but semantically nonsensical. it shows the lack of a connection between the syntax of a sentence and the semantics. he also wrote the next sentence, which was “*furiously sleep ideas green colorless” which, again is nonsense, but also doesn’t make sense grammatically. even though both are not actual possible concepts, we know that the second one is not a correct english sentence. also, there’s the whole idea of the statistics that this was literally the first time this sentence had ever been uttered due to its lack of true meaning, something pretty profound with how long language has been around, but i digress. 

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR is another chomsky thing because when you study linguistics step 1 is to get all up in this dude’s shit, honestly. also referred to as mental grammar, this is the theory that the ability to learn a native tongue is hardwired in every human’s brain, and that as long as a person is brought up in a quote-unquote normal setting language acquisition will manifest. this goes into then the language acquisition period within a child’s life that they can learn native-speaker level of a language, and also goes into the reason why it’s so easy when one is younger to learn a language.  y’all know what a PALINDROME is if you’ve seen the movie, and it’s obvious why i have it as my hannah tag, but my in character tag is also a palindrome. ARE WE NOT DRAWN ONWARD, WE FEW, DRAWN ONWARD TO NEW ERA ? reads the same backwards and forwards. the idea of there being no cohesive beginning or end is a very important concept to this movie and therefore this blog, and also i wanted to make sure for anything ic it’d be a palindrome. i read it even further with the actual context of the sentence irt going forward to a new era and louise’s story, but i will suffer quietly over this on my own, thanks.

a GARDEN PATH SENTENCE is one that starts one way but ends in a way you don’t first expect it to end. they are grammatically correct and usually require a re-reading because your brain, by the end, has to reinterpret it to actually grasp the meaning. one example is “the prime number few.” at first it seems like the syntax is incorrect, but reading prime as the noun instead of prime number as the noun phrase makes it understandable. a PARAPROSDOKIAN is similar in this concept, where the ending word(s) in a sentence completely change the meaning. often humorous, a lot of famous quotes use this. for example, einstein’s “the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

the self tag is REFLEXIVE, aka a pronoun that refers back to the subject. the IMPERFECT INDICATIVE is a verb tense that expresses the concept of habitual actions of the past that are no longer occuring aka lol my ian tag. not every language has an actual set tense for this idea. SEMANTIC SATIATION is the phenomenon where repetition causes one to forget the meaning of a word or phrase. SZALÁMITAKTIKA is not a linguistic concept, but instead referred to in the movie but never said. it literally means “salami tactics” in hungarian, and is the idea of beating your opponent slice by slice before they even realize it.

i think those are all my fun ones okay thank u, have a good night.

#listen i know that no one is literally gonna sit here and read all of this nonsense but u kno what #i dont cARE #but if u want more on any of these concepts lmk. bc sometimes its hard to process how its written and i can break it down better #or just. overall. ask me shit abt linguistics. rememberw hen i got an anon asking me what a wug is #i almost died i want these kinds of asks always #◖ MUFFLED KLOO HORN IN THE BACKGROUND. ◌ ❨ OUT OF CHARA ❩ ◗ #◖ COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS. ◌ ❨ linguistics ❩ ◗ #dw if i missed anything ill reblog this and add it dw im that annoying