Journals, Articles, Books & Texts, On folklore, Mythology, Occult, and Related -to- General anthropology,

basic verbs

be - essere / stare there is  - c’è there are - ci sono have - avere do - fare go - andare want - volere can - potere need - aver bisogno think - pensare know - sapere say - dire like - piacere speak - parlare learn - imparare understand - capire

Note - Verbs in Italian change all the time depending on the mood, tense and person. Here’s a useful Italian conjugator.

conjunctions

that (as in “I think that…” or “the woman that…”) - che and - e (if the following word starts with a vowel it is preferred that you use “ed”) or - o (if the following word starts with a vowel it is preferred that you use “od”) but - ma because - perché so (meaning “therefore” as in “I wanted it, so I bought it”) - per questo, perciò, quindi if - se

prepositions

of - di to - a  from - da in - in, a, da  at (a place) - in, a, da at (a time) - a with - con about - circa, su like (meaning “similar to”) - come for (warning, this one has several meanings that you need to take care of) - per before (also as a conjunction) - prima di, prima che after (also as a conjunction) - dopo di, dopo che  during - durante

Note - Prepositions in Italian are joined with the definite articles; e.g. di + la = della, a + il = al, etc.

question words

who - chi what - che where - dove  when - quando why - perché how - come  how much - quanto/-a, quanti/-e which - quale, quali

adverbs

a lot - molto, un sacco a little - un poco well - bene badly - male only - solo also - anche  very - molto  too (as in “too tall”) - troppo  so (as in “so tall”) - davvero, molto so much - tanto more (know how to say “more … than …”) - più  less (know how to say “less … than …”) - meno as … as … (e.g. “as tall as”) - tanto… quanto… best - meglio, migliore  worst - peggio, peggiore  now - ora, adesso  then - allora, quindi  here - qui  there - lì, là  maybe - forse  always - sempre usually - di solito  often - spesso  sometimes - a volte  never - mai  today - oggi yesterday - ieri tomorrow - domani  soon - presto  almost - quasi already - già  still - ancora  enough - sufficiente, abbastanza 

adjectives

this - questo that - quello good - buono bad - cattivo all - tutto no - nessuno many - molto  few - poco other - altro same - stesso different - diverso  enough - abbastanza, sufficiente one - uno two - due first - primo easy - facile hard - difficile early - presto  late - tardi important - importante  interesting - interessante fun - divertente  boring - noioso beautiful - bello big - grande  small - piccolo happy - felice  sad - triste busy - occupato  excited - emozionato  tired - stanco  ready - pronto favorite - preferito new - nuovo right (meaning “correct”) - corretto wrong - sbagliato true - vero

Note - Italian adjectives always have to agree in number and gender with the noun they modify. The above list presents the adjectives in their masculine, singular form.

subject pronouns

To know more about the pronouns, check out this post I wrote a while ago.

I - io you - tu  she - ella, lei, essa he - egli, lui, esso it - esso/-a formal you - Lei we - noi you (plural) - voi they - essi, esse, loro

nouns

everything - tutto something - qualcosa nothing - niente everyone - tutti someone - qualcuno no one - nessuno Spanish - lo spagnolo English - l’inglese thing - la cosa person - la persona place - il luogo time (as in “a long time”) - il tempo time (as in “I did it 3 times”) - la volta friend - l’amico  woman - la donna man - l’uomo money - i soldi  country  - il paese  city - la città language - la lingua word - la parola food - il cibo house - la casa store - il negozio office - la oficina manager - direttore job - il lavoro   work (as in “I have a lot of work to do”) - lavoro  problem - il problema  question - la domanda idea - l’idea  life - la vita  world - il mondo  day - il giorno year - l’anno week - la settimana month - il mese hour - l’ora mother, father, parent - la madre, il padre, il genitore daughter, son, child - la figlia, il figlio, il bambino  wife, husband - la sposa, lo sposo girlfriend, boyfriend - la ragazza, il ragazzo

Note - Italian nouns inflect by gender (masculine and feminine, with some instances of vestigial neuter) and number (singular and plural).

more verbs

work (as in a person working) - lavorare work (meaning “to function”, e.g. “the TV works”) - funzionare see - vedere use - usare should - dovere believe - credere practice - praticare seem - sembrare come - venire leave - andarsene return - ritornare give - dare take - prendere bring - portare look for - cercare find - trovare receive - ricevere buy - comprare try - provare start - iniziano  stop (doing something) - smettere di (fare qualcosa) finish - finire  continue - continuare wake up - svegliarsi get up - alzarsi  eat - mangiare eat breakfast - fare colazione eat lunch - pranzare eat dinner - cenare happen - succedere feel - sentire create (aka “make”) - creare cause (aka “make”) - causare meet (meeting someone for the first time) - conoscere  ask (a question) - chiedere wonder - chiedersi reply - rispondere mean - significare, voler dire read - leggere write - scrivere  listen - ascoltare hear - sentire remember - ricordare forget - dimenticare choose - scegliere decide - decidere be born - nascere die - morire kill - uccidere  live - vivere stay - rimanere  change - cambiare  help - aiutare  send - inviare  study - studiare  improve - migliorare  hope - sperare 

useful phrases

hello - ciao goodbye - addio  thank you - grazie you’re welcome - di niente excuse me (to get someone’s attention) - scusa  sorry - mi dispiace it’s fine (response to an apology) - non fa niente  please - per favore yes - sì no - no my name is … - mi chiamo what’s your name? - come ti chiami? (informal singular); come si chiama? (formal singular)                                  nice to meet you - piacere di conoscerti (informal singular); piacere di conoscerla (formal singular)  how are you? - come stai? I’m doing well, how about you? - sto bene, e tu?  sorry? / what? (if you didn’t hear something) - come? how do you say …? - come si dice …? what does … mean? - che vuol dire …? I don’t understand - non capisco  could you repeat that? - puoi ripetere? (informal singular); può ripetere (formal singular)   could you speak more slowly, please? - puoi parlare più lentamente? (informal singular); può parlare più lentamente? (formal singular) well (as in “well, I think…”) - bene  really? - davvero?  I guess that… - credo che… it’s hot (talking about the weather) - fa caldo  it’s cold (talking about the weather) - fa freddo

King Lear Masterpost

"An Excellent Thing in Woman": Virgo and Viragos in "King Lear" (1998)

Costume Design and Execution of King Lear by William Shakespeare (2010)

Depiction and Function of Madness in Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature (2019)

"Documents in Madness": Reading Madness and Gender in Shakespeare's Tragedies and Early Modern Culture (1991)

Edmund's Redemption in King Lear (1975)

Elements in the Composition of "King Lear" (1933)

Humans And Animals In King Lear (2018)

In Defense of Goneril and Regan (1970)

"King Lear" and Chaos (1991)

"King Lear" and Negation (1990)

Performing Australian Identity: Gendering "King Lear" (2005)

"Service" in King Lear (1958)

See What Breeds about Her Heart: "King Lear", Feminism, and Performance (2004)

“Struck with Her Tongue”: Speech, Gender, and Power in King Lear (2015)

"The Darke and Vicious Place": The Dread of the Vagina in "King Lear" (1999)

The Emotional Landscape of King Lear (1988)

The Emotive use of Animal Imagery in "King Lear" (1962)

The Mirror and the Feather: Tragedy and Animal Voice in "King Lear" (2013)

a collections of links to readings on asian-american gay and lesbian history

“Asian Lesbians in San Francisco: Struggles to Create a Safe Space, 1970s-1980s,” Trinity A. Ordona, in Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology, 2003 [starts on p. 319]

“Tomboy, Dyke, Lezzie, and Bi: Filipina Lesbian and Bisexual Women Speak Out,” Christine T. Lipat, Trinity A. Ordona, Cianna Pamintuan Steward, and Mary Ann Ubaldo, in Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory (2005)

“Slicing Silence: Asian Progressives Come Out,” Daniel C. Tsang, in Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment, 2001

“Sexuality, Identity, and the Uses of History,” Nayan Shah, in Q & A: Queer in Asian American, 1998 [starts on p. 141]

“Subverting Seductions,” Gupta, Unruly Immigrants, 2007 [starts on p. 159]

“Queer Asian American Historiography,” Amy Sueyoshi, in The Oxford Handbook of Asian American History, 2016 [contains discussion of csa]

“Miss Morning Glory: Orientalism and Misogyny in the Queer Writings of Yone Noguchi,” Amy Sueyoshi, in Amerasia Journal, 2011

“Breathing Fire: Remembering Asian Pacific American Activism in Queer History,” Amy Sueyoshi, in LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History, 2016

“Looking for Jiro Onuma: A Queer Meditation on the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II,“ Tina Takemoto, in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2014

”Gay Asian Community Oral History Project“ (abstracts only)

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

|

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?

THE ILIAD: FOR DUMMIES ☀️ MASTERPOST

just kidding you're not a dummy, you're some hot stuff right there! i will be going through the entire iliad and giving you a general overview, some interesting plot points, additional context, and some other analysis tools to better help you understand the epic!

This post will serve as a table of contents (at the end) to my Iliad posts and a general overview that I will be constantly updating! I am using the Richmond Lattimore translation of the Iliad, alongside my companion book by Malcom M. Wilcock

Before we get into analyzing the actual Iliad, we need to get into some essential questions and context about the book

WHAT IS THE ILIAD:

The Iliad was written by Homer (this is actually debated but we can get into that later) around 750 and 550 B.C.E.

At its core, the story is about heros and humans. It's an Iron Age poem about an event, the Trojan War, that was supposed to have taken place in the Bronze age. The Iliad is considered to be a poem comprised of multiple books, 24 to be exact

This story is only a few days of the tenth and final year of the Greek siege against the city of Troy- this means it relies on the audience already knowing most of the basic details about the Trojan war and the gods themselves (don't sorry, I will provide this for you as we go along)

WHO IS HOMER:

The age old question: who the fuck is Homer?

Literally nothing is known about this dude except that he wrote (or was credited with writing) the Odyssey and the Iliad

People have referenced his writings for EONS. Archilochus, Alcman, Tyrtaeus, Callinus, and even Sappho have referenced the poems of Homer in their own works. These also were popular in fine art in the late 7th century B.C.E.

There is a general consensus that Homer was from Ionia- a territory in western Anatolia or modern day Turkey that was populated by Greeks who spoke the Ionian dialect, aka the birthplace of Greek philosophy. Want more info on Ionia? Click Here!

His descendants were called the Homerids/Homeridae

There is scholarly debate on if he even wrote both the Iliad and the Odyssey, or if he only wrote one, etc etc etc. This is due to some very specific differences in the structure of the words used (like the use of short vowels, and the seemingly unimportant semivowel of the digamma being missing from the epics...yeah it's a lot)

The poems were reproduced ORALLY. This means that the poems were passed down by word of mouth, which if I were to sit and listen to this entire book via a guy singing at me...idk man I think I would leave

All of this to say, we really don't know who Homer is. There's a lot more information about what he could have looked like, if he really did write the Iliad, and a million other things, but I've already talked your ear off and we haven't even gotten into the book yet. If you want more information about Homer, check out my sources at the end of the post!

WAS THE CITY OF TROY REAL:

Yeah. There were nine layers exposed at the site of where Troy was expected to be, and nearly fifty sublayers at the mound of Hisarlik

Troy was a vassal state: meaning it had an obligation to a superior state, which happened to be the Hittite Empire

Troy had a lot more allies than original fighters in the city, meaning they had many language barriers- making the army harder to control than the unified Greek enemy.

THE STYLE OF THE ILIAD:

Cause - Effect - Solution

The poem is concluded with a mirror image of its beginning: an old man ventures to the camp of his enemy in order to ransom his child

The poem foreshadows the death of Achilles in MULTIPLE passages! He knows he is destined to die young if he fights at Troy, and the demise of his lover (don't fight me on this) Patroclus gives us an even more extended foreshadowing of the grief that is to come

When Achilles dies, Thetis (his mom) takes his body from the pyre and takes him to a place called the White Island. It's not clear whether he is immortalized BUT the reference to Achilles funeral in the Odyssey states that Achilles is cremated and his bones are placed in a golden urn along those of Patroclus, and the urn is entombed under a prominent mound (tsoa fans...you're welcome)

This isn't really necessary knowledge but moreso something I think is cool: the backstory from the Iliad of an abducted bride also appears in the Sanskirt epic Ramayana (circa 4th century B.C.E.)

okay now here is the ACTUAL important stuff

Humanity is the center of the universe in the Iliad. Humans motivations and concerns generate action in the poem, while the gods are often reduced to the role of enablers or spectators

The style of the poem collaborates with the vision that the speciousness of this epic means that every thought and gesture, spear cast and threat, intimate conversation and lament CAN be recorded. It gives a consciousness behind the demands of the iliad that these interactions MUST be recorded, this attention to detail is another way of showing centrality and the worth of the human experience (Greek OR Trojan)

The Iliad is ultimately a poem about death, the chief elements that distinguish the mortals from gods are: Death shadows every action, and death is neither abhorred nor celebrated. Instead it crystalizes by means of this one theme, death in battle, the essence of what it means to be human (Life is a struggle each person will always lose, the question is how one acts with that knowledge)

Modern readers and analysis blogs will state that one's inner spirit is somehow the "real" self, however the Iliad assumes the opposite: The psykhai (soul, spirits) of dying heroes fly off to Hades while their autous ("selves") are left behind in the form of dead bodies

Glory is INCREDIBLY important in the iliad, why? If mortals could live forever (like gods) then glory would be useless. It's a commodity to be exchanged, and because of this it has an economic and symbolic reality

Companionship is incredibly important

Pity is also very important, it's the concluding note of the poem. Even the gods feel pity

THE GODS AND THE ILIAD:

The Iliad gains depth by the divine dimension shedding glory on the humans at Troy. The gods are so intensely concerned with warriors and their fates which elevates the mortals to a special plane

Mortals are only separated from gods because they grow old and die

The symbiotic bond of gods and mortals is always see-sawing between adoration and antagonism

Humans who get too close to the gods risk being struck down, case in point, Achilles. He's young, well-made, he's a warrior but also a singer/musician (the only hero to be seen doing such a thing), he looks and acts like Apollo. THEREFORE...it's no coincidence that Apollo is ultimately the god who slays Achilles, just as he did Patroclus

Poetry supplemented or even guided ancient Greek religious interpretation much more than the activity of priests due to the lack of any official religious text. This gave ancient Hellenism a very fluid nature

This was a long post, and it's only the first of many! I will continuously update this with more sources about the Iliad and answer any FAQs that come up! I love classic literature, and as a STEM student I need to entertain my passion somehow lol. There is a table of contents at the top of the post, as well as right here. This will be updated for each book of the Iliad I write about, as well as any supplemental posts I make about certain topics and themes as I go along. I am putting a LOT of work into this series of posts, so let me know your thoughts or anything you'd like me to change/add/etc! Happy reading!

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

(This is empty because this is the only post...more posts coming soon)

Sources/Citations/Additional Material

Homer- Britannica

Homerids- Britannica

Who Is Homer- The British Museum (fuck the British Museum)

Ionia Information- World Encyclopedia

The Hittites- Britannica

Ramayana Overview- British Library

Overview of Greek Mythology- Theoi

The Iliad- Overview via Britannica

Thetis- World Encyclopedia

all duolingo irish tips and notes!

BASICS 1

BASICS 2

COMMON PHRASES

FOOD

PLURALS

ECLIPSES

LENITION

POSSESSIVE

VERBS: PRESENT TENSE 1

COLOURS

QUESTIONS

PREPOSITIONS 1

DATES/TIME

FAMILY

VERBS: PRESENT TENSE 2

PREPOSITIONS 2

GENITIVE

NEGATIVES

COMPARISON

PREPOSITIONS 3

PASSIVE

NUMBERS

FEELINGS/TRAITS

VERBS: PAST TENSE 1

CHARACTERISTICS

VERBS: PAST TENSE 2

VERBAL NOUNS

REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS

DIRECTIONS

SPORT

VERBS: FUTURE TENSE 1

IMPERATIVE

VERBS: IMPERFECT

VERBS: CONDITIONAL  

{screencaps by me, do not repost}

do you have any recommendations for really scary and/or disturbing books or movies? especially if they are similar in tone to house of leaves!

alright, if you liked house of leaves you might like— 

existential void-horror (ihumans driven by ambition or curiosity or circumstance venture into dark places and find themselves gazing into a silent and swallowing abyss and being gazed back into until they crack open and are changed into something frightful and fractured and deranged):

in space: moon; sunshine; solyaris and solaris (remake; i prefer tarkovsky ‘72 but both are disturbing), alien; event horizon; 2001: a space odyssey; pandorum; doctor who episode “midnight”; william gibson, “hinterlands”; peter watts, blindsight; terrence holt, in the valley of the kings; dan simmons, hyperion.

terrestrial: the descent; the abyss; the divide; dan simmons, the terror; cube; jacob’s ladder; thomas ligotti, “nethescurial”; jorge luis borges, ”the zahir”, ”tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius”; h.p. lovecraft, the call of cthulu and other stories; edgar allan poe, “the pit and the pendulum”.

haunted houses & hauntings:

shirley jackson, the haunting of hill house; kathe koja, the cipher; h.p. lovecraft, “the rats in the walls“ & ”the shunned house”; stephen king, the shining; richard matheson, hell house; the orphanage; the devil’s backbone; [rec]; session 9; edgar allan poe, “the fall of the house of usher”; henry james, the turn of the screw; ringu; SCP-087; the changeling.

sinister postmodernist metafiction:

vladimir nabokov, pale fire & bend sinister; paul auster, oracle night and the new york trilogy; cabin in the woods; pontypool (also a bbc radio drama); philip k. dick, the three stigmata of palmer eldritch and “second variety“ and every story he ever wrote; franz kafka, ”the trial” (proto-postmodern); eraserhead.

humans turned monstrous:

robert louis stevenson, strange case of dr jekyll & mr hyde; ira levin, rosemary’s baby; john ajvide lindqvist, let the right one in & let the right one in (swedish film); 28 days later; no country for old men; coraline; cormac mccarthy, the road; dan simmons, carrion comfort; jose saramago, blindness; richard matheson, i am legend; stephen king, salem’s lot, pet sematary, ”the jaunt” (short story); peter straub, ghost story; ian banks, the wasp factory; linda addison, how to recognise a demon has become your friend; octavia e. butler, dawn.

girlcoded

winter book recommendations ❄️

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

Death with Interruptions by José Saramago

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig 

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov

The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida by Clarissa Goenawan

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin

buy me a coffee

dropbox containing linguistics textbooks

contains 34 textbooks including etymology, language acquisition, morphology, phonetics/phonology, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, & translation studies

dropbox containing language textbooks

contains 86 language textbooks including ASL, Arabic, (Mandarin) Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hebrew (Modern & Ancient), Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh

dropbox containing books about language learning

includes fluent forever by gabriel wyner, how to learn any language by barry farber, polyglot by kató lomb

if there’s a problem with any of the textbooks or if you want to request materials for a specific language feel free to message me!