Apolyghostjourney - A Polyghost Journey

I have this paradoxical emotional process where listening to music in a language I don't understand is immensely appealing and pleasant to me, and it immediately makes me want to study the language, essentially taking away the reason why I was listening

affirmatives and filler words/sounds are my favorite thing in any language. i love that every language has various noises to make between words & thoughts and in pauses etc. i think they're also called "hesitation forms" (?)

growing up autistic i've always been very prone to language mirroring and i pick up hesitation forms so quickly i often explain upfront that it's not on purpose and i'm not mocking or purposefully mimicking someone in a conversation.

i also pick up affirmatives unintentionally and nearly immediately. in a lot of languages, people have a way of gently saying "yes, yes, yes, yes," repeatedly while receiving a list of instructions. in english this often is along the lines of "yes, mhm, okay, yep. got it. okay."

i took a kendo class in which everyone but me spoke Japanese as a first language and i was expected to answer instructions in Japanese and i began so formal but quickly fell into extremely casual, repeated affirmatives. i have very little experience with Japanese, so note this is only what i picked up in one particular place with this particular group, but it was fast nodding and repeated "ah. mm."

when i lived in norway and learned the language on the fly by immersion, i got completely stuck doing the affirmative H, which sounds like a gasp. i couldn't stop doing it for months after i moved home, and some of my friends near Oslo also used it as a hesitation form, so it was a double whammy.

no point to this, i just love languages and sounds.

I love the way learning a language can make you feel like a kid again

I went for a walk with my grandma and pointed at all the flowers, always saying the Hungarian word or, if I didn't know it, asking my grandmother "Mi ez?" or "Hogy mondják… magyarul?", then she answered me and I wrote it down on my vocabulary list

It's like rediscovering the world

You look at everything, find out everything you know and everything you don't know. You repeat the word with a smile, then you see the same flower, you try to remember the word, and if you do, you're as happy as a child

So simple but so sweet

Masterlist for learning languages

Brick-by-brick language learning challenge

Best language learning tips & masterlists from other bloggers I’ve come across

my tips for a language study plan

topics for new vocabulary

how to find a language partner

my tips for how to practice writing in your target language

Recommendations for Learning Languages & Other Stuff

Learning a language = learning a culture

Vocab list templates: #1, #2, #3

Some easy Fantasy books to read in your target language

Language Learning Tips: #1, #2

6 tips for learning languages

App for organizing your language-learning (and anything else): Trello

Apps i use to learn languages

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Requests / Asks:

-> you can find all my answered asks by searching for #ask, #ask response or #request

Indo-European Language Families

Improving your vocab

German infinitive & when to use it

English word order

How to find a language learning partner

Changing a game to your target language & "harmful" learning strategies

Can you get away with just using "das" the majority of the time in Germany?

Do you have any tips on how to improve your writing in your target language?

Do you have any resources/methods about how to reach an academic level in the language you’re learning (& how to improve your writing)?

Do you have any linguistic recourses on Ruhrpott-Deutsch?

more uncommon topics for vocab lists in your target language:

astronomy

mythology

folklore

obsolete professions

specialized medicine

linguistics

history and artifacts

botany

art styles and periods

oceanography

cryptozoology

esoteric hobbies

etymology

logical fallacies

when I was a teen and first getting more seriously interested in languages and linguistics I encountered those polyglot YouTube videos where people speak all the languages they know and I was so impressed and jealous and wanted to be able to make a video like that too. Now, there are three problems with that: I ended up spending the last couple years specializing in other things, I'm more of a dabbler, and a lot (not all) of these videos are dishonest.

So obviously, as a first video on my imaginary YouTube channel, I'd make a video where I introduce myself in every language I can introduce myself in - even if that's the only thing I can do in that language - and then do a very honest and transparent commentary. How I had to go through my past notes and script this video. How much I actually know in each language. I wouldn't want it to be a video exposing the fakes (languagejones has already done two brilliant videos about this). I want it to be a defense of dabbling, of messy progress, of just having fun with languages without having to pretend you're some genius hyperpolyglot.

SEMANTIC CHANGES IN ENGLISH

Awful – Literally "full of awe", originally meant "inspiring wonder (or fear)", hence "impressive". In contemporary usage, the word means "extremely bad".

Awesome – Literally "awe-inducing", originally meant "inspiring wonder (or fear)", hence "impressive". In contemporary usage, the word means "extremely good".

Terrible – Originally meant "inspiring terror", shifted to indicate anything spectacular, then to something spectacularly bad.

Terrific – Originally meant "inspiring terror", shifted to indicate anything spectacular, then to something spectacularly good.[1]

Nice – Originally meant "foolish, ignorant, frivolous, senseless". from Old French nice (12c.) meaning "careless, clumsy; weak; poor, needy; simple, stupid, silly, foolish", from Latin nescius ("ignorant or unaware"). Literally "not-knowing", from ne- "not" (from PIE root *ne- "not") + stem of scire "to know" (compare with science). "The sense development has been extraordinary, even for an adj". [Weekley] -- from "timid, faint-hearted" (pre-1300); to "fussy, fastidious" (late 14c.); to "dainty, delicate" (c. 1400); to "precise, careful" (1500s, preserved in such terms as a nice distinction and nice and early); to "agreeable, delightful" (1769); to "kind, thoughtful" (1830).

Naïf or Naïve – Initially meant "natural, primitive, or native" . From French naïf, literally "native", the masculine form of the French word, but used in English without reference to gender. As a noun, "natural, artless, naive person", first attested 1893, from French, where Old French naif also meant "native inhabitant; simpleton, natural fool".

Demagogue – Originally meant "a popular leader". It is from the Greek dēmagōgós "leader of the people", from dēmos "people" + agōgós "leading, guiding". Now the word has strong connotations of a politician who panders to emotions and prejudice.

Egregious – Originally described something that was remarkably good (as in Theorema Egregium). The word is from the Latin egregius "illustrious, select", literally, "standing out from the flock", which is from ex—"out of" + greg—(grex) "flock". Now it means something that is remarkably bad or flagrant.

Gay – Originally meant (13th century) "lighthearted", "joyous" or (14th century) "bright and showy", it also came to mean "happy"; it acquired connotations of immorality as early as 1637, either sexual e.g., gay woman "prostitute", gay man "womaniser", gay house "brothel", or otherwise, e.g., gay dog "over-indulgent man" and gay deceiver "deceitful and lecherous". In the United States by 1897 the expression gay cat referred to a hobo, especially a younger hobo in the company of an older one; by 1935, it was used in prison slang for a homosexual boy; and by 1951, and clipped to gay, referred to homosexuals. George Chauncey, in his book Gay New York, would put this shift as early as the late 19th century among a certain "in crowd", knowledgeable of gay night-life. In the modern day, it is most often used to refer to homosexuals, at first among themselves and then in society at large, with a neutral connotation; or as a derogatory synonym for "silly", "dumb", or "boring".[2]

Guy – Guy Fawkes was the alleged leader of a plot to blow up the English Houses of Parliament on 5 November 1605. The day was made a holiday, Guy Fawkes Day, commemorated by parading and burning a ragged manikin of Fawkes, known as a Guy. This led to the use of the word guy as a term for any "person of grotesque appearance" and then by the late 1800s—especially in the United States—for "any man", as in, e.g., "Some guy called for you". Over the 20th century, guy has replaced fellow in the U.S., and, under the influence of American popular culture, has been gradually replacing fellow, bloke, chap and other such words throughout the rest of the English-speaking world. In the plural, it can refer to a mixture of genders (e.g., "Come on, you guys!" could be directed to a group of mixed gender instead of only men).

Silvio Pasqualini Bolzano inglese ripetizioni English insegnante teacher

That's so true! I'm learning Russian and even if I'm still a beginner, I can understand the common words of the other Slavic languages, that's so fun to see!

so a couple months ago i was looking through the channels and saw bbc alba and decided to watch it and something i found so cool was how similar gaidhlig is to gaeilge… i also know some french because i did it in secondary school and i have quite a few brazillian friends that i met online, and something i love is how whenever they speak in portuguese i can understand some words and the sentence structure because i know french, and they are both part of the romance language family. learning languages is sooooo cool and it is so interesting knowing about all the similarities and i feel like whenever you know one language it is really easy to learn the others which are in the same family. anyways ! i love learning languages, i find it all so interesting 🥹

Internet vernacular has completely altered what some words and expressions mean to me. Forevermore, I will hear the words "hear me out" will only and exclusively as "before you cast your judgements prematurely, please pause and allow me to explain how and why I should be allowed to fuck this thing".