zompist bboard

marconatrix wrote:The real problem is that L2 teaching seems to be pretty rubbish in English speaking countries, why?

This may be appropriate.

L2 learning is not rubbish only in English-speaking countries though.

On my side, my birth country is getting worse every single day that passes, and it pisses me off, knowing I'll be going into that. You need to put things into perspective because most levelheaded Americans find Canada to be a paradise, except the cold. But with reasonable politics, more than two pa...

Shm Jay wrote:

Yiuel Raumbesrairc wrote:On my side, my birth country is getting worse every single day that passes, and it pisses me off, knowing I'll be going into that.

You need to listen to the soothing sounds of music played on the harp. https://youtu.be/CvI5oy25QO4

Yeah.

It seems to me that the 'marriage lasts until death do us part' idea worked a lot better back in the day when mortality was higher and it was pretty plausible that you might be a widow/er in 5 or 10 years. Except, which days were those? Now, I'm too lazy to go and do the research again, but I remem...

Why can a bunch of farmers and fishermen on some remote south-western Dutch islands do better than the Irish? 1. Irish has been made official to promote the local Celtic language; in the big cities, English had already replaced Irish, and it was quite widespread; the Gaeltacht are the places where,...

Linguistics apart (totally British), I was laughing my ass out by going through the whole video.

I understand what you're saying, and years down the road when we have money perhaps that is a possibility. But I don't think the lack of a traditional wedding is an excuse. You're there to celebrate the couple. What do you honestly get out of attending a traditional marriage besides a lot of troubl...

Some extracts from the Welsh language blog I referred to above for the benefit of the di-Gymraeg (because I think these issues are not confined to Wales) : "There are a number of Welsh speakers who find fault with the English incomer who has lived in Wales for ten years and still doesn't understand...

What exactly do you mean by talking about if a language "thrives"? I have never been to Japan and know little of the social and linguistic situation there, but to me it seems unimaginable that the influence of English will ever cause the Japanese language to cease to be used there. What language is...

I think the problem is that you have to give people a reason to speak a language. The old Irish approach was basically "it's your duty as part of the fight against the evil english" (which has gradually lost its power ever since independence), supplemented with "look at these depressing books you'l...

Depends... I also think it's weird that French-speakers keep using vous when they're yelling at someone they don't know. In Dutch I'd switch to 'je' a little sooner, but in your example I'd use 'dank u wel!' to make the difference in politeness even more pronounced, distancing myself from him even ...

The names I highlighted in green are Turkish versions of Arabic names... Cihan is from Persian, that means only 3/8 of the names you listed originate from Turkish proper. Seems to me like you might be seeing some Anti-Muslim sentiment more than any name pronunciation issue, or some-such. Also, if y...

sirdanilot : If changing a name is basically pretentious until proven otherwise, then I must say I totally disagree . My name has been years of endless annoyance. So much that it has turned into an inside joke, that I must say "Ugo without an H" over the phone. Really, I am happy here in Japan, whe...

My name is Ugo Lachapelle. The problem is that it is pronounced /ygolaʃapɛl/. Now, live for the first six years of your life in a place where pronouncing a rounded front vowel is not mainstream, and then add the fact most people will want to reduce quite a few vowels to schwa in that string. Instead...

Also, sirdan, you should be fucking ashamed wondering why your high school students who you've presumably been hired to teach English don't know some English words. Why the fuck else are they in your class? Never fucking put someone down for not knowing a word in a language class. While I'd be more...

You got parents; now, let's get the kid speaking. I was raised in a French speaking home, in an English speaking community. (In Canada, where both languages are official, but French less prestigious and in a place where French was not the common local language.) It would seem that until we moved to ...

What clawgrip wrote. Japanese geminate vowels and consonants hardly happen together, this may explain how Japanese handles them in songs and poetry. Also, phonemic length is quite a novelty in Japanese; the fact all derive from previous weird combinations show that Japanese, in the past, probably di...

I'm frankly surprised there isn't more fan fiction about Almea. Considering how many fans it has, nobody has ever tried to create anything related to it except for some of Eddy's weird short stories, and a few contributors to the Almeopedia. Not all of us pay tribute to Mark by fan fiction. I made ...

Viktor77 wrote:Thanks for your advice. I got it down in everything but singing.

In sung Japanese, the preceding vowel is slightly lengthened, and you just retain the consonant slightly longer..

vohpenonomae's rank appears to mean "witch, sorcerer, enchanter", based on the word in the Elkarîl lexicon n'guñ with that meaning. Edit: I think it's interesting that neither lil nor rim is what a human would call "focal green"-- rîm is better than either, IMO. Khil, nij, ñij and jith are pretty g...

In Japanese, a geminated consonant is simply keeping your tongue in place longer than for a non-geminated one. For plosives, it's a longer stop of airflow while for other consonants, it's letting the air pass, put keeping your tongue in space.

Citizenship : Canada, technically a Resident of Quebec Residency : Japan Age and Gender : 29, male Languages : English (native, but see text), French (native, first language), Esperanto (fluent), Japanese (fluent, N1), Spanish (greetings) and Swedish (greetings) I was born in a small town, in North...

I suspect it's because the Eastern languages have been up for longest and have lost the shiny newness sparkle in people's heads. Mind you I'd hate to have to struggle with the Munkhashi & Dhekhnami verb systems. The Munkhashi and Dhekhnami verb systems are rather pretty straightforward to me, thoug...

For reasons completely unrelated to linguistics, Xurnese is my favorite.

I like all languages, though Kebreni is completely spoiled, as I am a speaker of French, English and Japanese.

remember that colonization in the Americas basically ended by the 1800s, turning into immigration. Really tho, what's the difference between those two? And the move west in both the US and Canada (though admittedly I know less about the Canuckistani side) looks suspiciously like colonization to me....