@bloody-mary-23 / bloody-mary-23.tumblr.com
hi everyone!! for my thesis i’m researching non-native english speakers’ linguistic preferences when it comes to talking about mental health! if you are 18-28 years old and a non-native speaker of english who speaks it fluently, please do me a favor and fill it out here! it should take between 5 and 10 minutes :)
the worst part about studying languages is knowing that you will never be nearly as good at it as a literal baby
The only reason babies are better at language learning is because it’s their full time job and they don’t get embarrassed
This blew my damn mind
welcome to English, where we have an unspoken rule about what order adjectives have to be in, and can have several sentences consisting of a single word repeated because it has enough meanings.
Russian:
“Damn what the fuck? we really talk like that?!”
“Mmhmm”
never let anyone tell u how many commas can go in a sentence, u measure that shit with ur heart
Native english speakers will never know the joy of purposely talking terrible english in your native accent
i was going to say ‘i have no idea what to do with this information’ but then i realized its a handy guide to generate fake words that sound english
What is the language called in English and the language itself? In English, the language is called Javanese. In Javanese, it is called basa Jawa: [bɔsɔ dʒɔwɔ].
Where is the language spoken? Javanese is spoken primarily on the island of Java in Indonesia; home to approximately 145 million people, it is the world’s most populous island. Most speakers of Javanese also speak Indonesian.
How many people speak the language? 82 million people are native speakers of Javanese, making it the largest language without an official status where it is spoken.
Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages? Javanese is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family, however, it is distinct from its relatives. It is most closely related to languages spoken nearby such as Sudanese, Madurese and Balinese.
What writing system does the language use? Javanese is traditionally written in the Javanese script, known natively as askara Jawa, variant of the Kawi script which dates back to around the 8th century, itself a descendant of the Brahmi script. Thus, the script shares similarities with others of Southeast Asia. In the 19th century, Dutch colonisers began to replace the native Javanese script with the Latin script. Javanese now uses the Latin script for practical purposes such as displaying the language digitally.
What kind of grammatical features does the language have?
What does the language sound like? Here is an example of Javanese spoken in the informal register
What do you personally find interesting about the language? I’ve been reading a lot about Austronesian languages recently and have been drawn to Javanese (as well as Balinese) because I find the script so beautiful!
If you could instantly be granted fluency in 5 languages—not taking away your existing language proficiency in any way, solely a gain—what 5 would you choose?
you know when you’re born in a non-english speaking country bilingualism is kind of a default. we are taught english from a young age so when someone asks me what languages do i speak, i respond with “well croatian and english obv, but im studying french and russian too”. and that bothers me. because english is fucking hard. in my country bilingualism is default, trilingualism is expected, and people get impressed when you speak five fucking languages where as native english speakers are praised for learning one (1) foreign language. i get that english is a major global language and why it is taught, but it bothers me that even if i spoke 5 languages fluently it would be useless if i didnt speak perfect english. and along with that, all of my hard work that i put into my english is dismissed because english is expected of me. rant over.
Me: I want to know languages
Person: then study
Me: no study. Only know.
Me, whenever the DuoLingo owl starts harassing me to do my practice
The greatest video since “The History of Japan”
#this goes through so many stages of sounding like#the speaker has#anything from#an italian accent to a spanish accent to a german accent to a swedish accent to an icelandic accent xD#to my ears at least#aka how english would sound if it made sense like the rest of us#english can’t even blame it on ‘having a lot of vowel sounds’ cause swedish has a similar amount (or arguably more)#the difference is that swedish has a proper system and Rules#for when the letter becomes a different sound#in swedish how it’s written is what you get it’s straight forward#english is just put together with duct tape and a prayer (via @erasedcitizen2)
Gender in European languages.
