duncan mak

Since my university doesn't offer any courses in modern Hebrew, I'd like to find a halfway decent teach-yourself book until I can find an actual class on it. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything on my own yet -- does anyone have any good recommendations for a teach-yourself type book for modern Hebrew? I'm fuzzy on the alphabet (both script and print) since it's been years since temple school, so anything that has a section on learning the alphabet is a huge plus, but not necessary. If anyone could recommend a good alef-bet workbook too that'd be great.

Thanks!

I'm looking to get another tattoo in kanji* (like the one in my icon! :) but I want to make sure I have the characters right.
*I'm still unsure whether this is "kanji" or something else. It's the supposedly mandarin chinese from the side of the Firefly class ship in Firefly/Serenity, the characters mean "peace" and "tranquility" which loosely translates to Serenity. I'd like something in the same language, but either Chinese or Japanese will do. Any non-english lettering will do, but I'm looking for something similarly picturesque.

I need another two-character tattoo so it balances. I want it to say "polyamory" or some variation on the theme. I was looking at "many" and "love" in kanji, but then I wasn't sure if using those literal translations together would form something like "giant slut".

So I'd like to know how "many" + "love" would translate, if there is a Chinese/Japanese term for consensual non-monogamy, and any suggestions for a two-character tattoo in the said theme. Any help would be appreciated :)

I've noticed something unusual about my friend that I can't quite put my finger on. She has a range of peculiarities in the way she structures her sentences; here are a couple of examples:

- Saying, "for I can take a walk" instead of what's normally, "so that I can take a walk"
- "Are you wanting to go?" instead of, "Do you want to go?"

There's a few more but I'm blanking on them--these are the most consistent though. Another thing I've noticed is her placement of the primary stress in a word sometimes differs to the pronunciation that a native speaker might have.
What makes me (and her, now that I've mentioned it) most curious is that she is a native English speaker, having been raised in a Southern Californian neighborhood with little to no contact with anyone who might have impacted her learning of the language in a significant manner.

Does anyone have an idea of what, if anything, may have caused these slight irregularities? Or was it just coincidental?

(she is descendant of a fully norwegian family, if that makes a difference).

I was reading this Time Magazine article about what to call this decade that'll be ending next Friday.

So what are your thoughts? What should it be called? For the life of me, I can't seem to choose one that I like. Though, I am leaning towards the "zeroes." While we're on the subject, the next decade will be called "the teens" right?

Also, I'm curious as to what the situation is in other languages... Does this problem exist?

I'm on a hunt, but it's going rather vaguely, so I thought I'd try to narrow my search and just suck it up and ask someone...

I want to buy German manga (comics in the Japanese cartoon style). There is one in particular that I'd want to buy, and it is written, drawn, and produced IN Germany (not translated from the Japanese). However, as I'm trying to continue my study of the German language, I wouldn't mind buying some German translations of other things as well.

So my question is this: Do any of you know of any specific sites from which I could order German comics? I'm looking for something based in Germany (for more variety), but by all means, if you know of one that's based in the US, the shipping savings would be appreciated. =^_^=;

For some reason I always have a really hard time when it comes to learning basic greetings in a language (hello, good morning, what's your name?, how are you?, etc) yet I can dive into things like "Are there any nice restaurants near the plaza?" Does anyone else experience the same thing? Is there a way to get through greetings quickly, painlessly, and effectively?

I've been back in Medway this week, and thinking about phonetics (too much time on my hands for sure!). Round my way, there's almost sound merger between words like Dan and down, but not quite (often represented in writing as things like Saarf London). So aʊ gets turned into just plain a contrasted with the æ of words like cat or the ʊ:w of words like dawn or horse . Is there an official name for this change, along the lines of "trap-bath split" or "cot-caught merger"?

So to make it clearer
Dan= dæn (RP) dan (Medway)
down= daʊn (RP) da:n (Medway)
Dawn= dɔ:n (RP) dʊ:wn (Medway)

What's the deal with how Iraq is pronounced in the west? Where did this "eye-rack" mess come from? "Ee-rock" (sorry, I don't have any formal linguistics knowledge and don't know the proper symbols/terminology for the sounds) isn't difficult or unnatural for English speakers in the US and other countries to manage, so how did this change occur?

It just bothers me so much, partly because I'm Indian-American and sick of people butchering my own not-hard-if you-actually-stop-and-think-about-it name and the names of my friends of various ethnicities. I was so thrilled to hear Obama pronounce "Pakistan" properly, as opposed to "pack-uh-stan"--I get that a short A sound is more common in English, but once again, it's not that hard to pronounce it properly.

Anyway, I guess this was more of a rant than an actual question, but if you have any ideas of how this came about, I'd be interested in hearing them. Thanks!

EDIT: I should add that "ee-rock" is an approximation. I don't pronounce it that literally, but I don't know the terms for the various sounds, and I was focusing far more on the errors in the vowel sounds, since we have access to a very wide range of vowel sounds in our natural vocabularies, but on a day-to-day basis we don't use the same consonant sounds as needed to pronounce "Iraq" accurately according to Arabic. Apologies for not being more specific on that!

I've been wanting to post here for quite some time, but the truth is I'm a bit embarrassed.

I seem to have hit some sort of low-level plateau learning Turkish and I would be eternally grateful to anyone who could recommend some materials or - wonder of wonders - new strategies/techniques.

( That's not the embarrassing part, though. )

Does anyone have any recommendations? I hate the idea that I'm wasting my time here by not taking advantage of +60 million native speakers!

As of this afternoon, I'm the proud owner of the electronic Van Dale Dutch/English/French/German large dictionary set! Yay! My uni uses these dictionaries and I love them, they are easy to work with and contain lots of extra information and idiomatic expressions. They have about 115.000 lemmas per language, I believe. I'm so happy! As much fun it is to leaf through my paper dictionaries, these will help me taking less than an hour on a few lines of text and there's something to say for that too :P


(I realize this sounds like a commercial but I'm just so excited! I'd never have bought them for myself because they're quite expensive, but I've been given them by my department as 'salary' for a tutorial I taught last semester. The Board didn't allow them to officially appoint a TA, but the department had the funds to let me choose a gift worth the pay I'd have gotten. I love how the department is doing everything possible to keep the students on their feet while the Board is ripping it all to shreds. No really, how's firing half the Linguistics staff while telling them to add to the curriculum and teach a 3-fold of the current student load a realistic and even good idea?)

Hi,

I'm looking for books/papers on the use of the diminutive in German and Dutch. I'm mostly looking for (recent) comparative studies on its current use in both languages, but I'd be interested in anything at all about the topic, including suffixes in different Germanic dialects, the popularity of the diminutive in given names, and even just random anecdotes. My uni library doesn't really seem to have anything useful, so... what would be a good place to look?

I hope this is allowed. If it isn't... sorry. DX

Hello, everyone.~

I was having a bit of a think about my (abysmal) learning strategies and methods the other day, and finally decided that I'd had enough of learning so slowly. So... if you don't mind, I have a few questions I'd like to ask so that I can improve the way I learn.

They don't have to be long answers if you don't want to write much; I just need all the help I can get, and I'm sure other people could benefit from your answers too. :)

1. Generally, how long do you study for, per day? Do you take breaks after set periods of time or do you just keep going until you get fed up or tired?
2. Do you learn exclusively from textbooks, take the immersion approach, both, or neither? (In other words, what materials do you use to learn?)
3. How do you go about learning evil grammar rules?
4. Lastly, how do you learn vocabulary (this is my biggest problem area!)? Word lists, flashcards, etc?

Edit: Thank you so much to everyone who replied. :) I can't reply to all of you, but all answers are massively appreciated. Thank you again.

How would I write that in Japanese Characters? (working on a Christmas Present!)

 I've been using the "Integrated Chinese" series to learn Mandarin with relative success and I'm finishing up Level 1 Part 2 in the second (older) edition. I want to purchase Level 2, so should I get the older 2nd edition or the newer 3rd edition (Level 2 Part 1)? Which one is a better resource?

what is the meaning of "nothing ever promised tomorrow today"?
it's from kanye west song, heard them say.
thank you in advance

Hello everyone,

I discovered Josef Hader a few days ago (well, a friend introduced me), and although I'm german I'm really having trouble with his austrian accent. Can anyone help me?



( Here's what I got so far )

Danke schön!

Hello lovely linguaphiles!

A friend of mine is moving to China and since we met in Spanish class I've decided to make him a little (mostly joking) phrase guide for his new travels! Can you guys help me out with the gaps? I need Mandarin help especially. Please forgive my lack of accents with the spanish.

hola - hello - nee how
adios - goodbye - ?
por favor - please - ?
gracias - thank you - ?
me gustas tu - I like you - ?
? - you're hot - ?
? - what's your number? - ?
? - one tequila, please - ?

Thanks so much!

ETA: You are all awesome.