Hey there! Tell us what you like! Share your interests, you might find some other buddies who share interests with you. Either way, think of this as sort of a show and tell. Share as much as you’d like. Feel free to show/link some examples if you’d like. Let’s have fun with it =)!
Linguistics, data hoarding, and when I’m in the mood or have time, gaming and reading.
OMFG, I love LINaskflhasklahsfkhasfkhasf - LOVE! Linguistics. How the fudge popsicles did I forget that!!! I have noticed an awful homogeneous movement in the US when it comes to linguistics. The slang (terminology) might differ, but I think the internet spread a lot of frustrations and shame to the point that many people have opted for SoCal accents over their native spaces and everyone has started to sound like a slurry of shit. Which is really offensive, I know. But I wish we could keep regional dialects going for as long as they can go. I also know that class (and upwards mobility) tends to kill off dialects. And I think that’s because you have to speak a common “white tongue” and “middle class(+)” tongue to get anywhere in business and do relatively financially well. So I guess ultimately shame and capitalism are killing something I love. Which is probably the case across the board so…eh!
But let’s talk linguistics! They’re so freakin’ interesting.
(I also love reading, but it’s been kinda hit or miss lately.)
Two places that are of interest for me recently are Spain and Norway, since both end up being very central for at least understanding somewhat languages nearby. I find it super interesting to understand languages around without studying them specifically, and it also helps drawing an etymological map in my head. =D
Yooo, root languages, that’s a solid thing to trace. All anthropology in general is endlessly interesting. If you’ve got some good scraps online feel free to pass them this way. I love a good read =)!
My study materials, or even the methods, aren’t very consistent, and mostly revolve around trying to interpret posts with languages close to the ones I already know here on the fediverse, checking the etymology of terms I’m curious about (Wiktionary’s usually the first option for that), and watching some channels like youtube’s “Glossonauta” (warning: Brazilian Portuguese channel) and “Living Ironically in Europe” (has some interesting videos on linguistics despite the name).
And after the learning curve I faced thanks to Norwegian (it’s close enough to English that it often trapped me where it diverges), I also developed a habit of, when studying a new language, to think not just how it works, but also why. Like how anything can be shortened into a noun depending if the context allows in Portuguese, or how the politeness of a phrase in Japanese often seems proportional to its length, or how sounds often change in Norwegian to keep a good flow to speech, or how a language is influenced by the history or culture of its people.
Ah, you freakin’ genius! This is some really good brain cheese here. Has me firing on all cylinders thinking about rooting out etymology of terminologies. I love dialects, as I said up there. It’s like staring at the soul of a people. But there’s a huge depth in following the word from it’s current state down through it’s lineage. You’ll surely see a lot of colonization as you head down the rabbit hole. I unfortunately don’t even speak English right, so other languages. Eh. I always figured that’s the terror of the ADHD side coming in. That difficulty of translating something short term -> long term. Best I can say in this camp is when I listen to the dialogue in movies, or the lyrics in songs - I like to break down what I am hearing. It might be hard for me to understand their er…romanticized translations but I do listen to the bits and sit on them. But I’ve listened to a sea of Spanish/Japanese things by this point in my life and I never picked up either. I think the only thing I am going to end up speaking in the end is this bastardized version of Eng and conlangs =P!
Keep on keeping on though <3~!
On breaking down lyrics, reminds me of the English version of Sabaton’s “1648” song. During the song’s bridge, it seems to me that the singing becomes strangely deep for something sang in English, but since the main singer is a half Swede/Czech, a Czech name is used in that bridge, and the singer said he some times confuses the English and Swedish lyrics for that album, maybe that’s why.
And on the matter of colonization, that’s would be, for example, why the main Norwegian dialect, bokmål, is so close to Danish, as Norway, from what I could find, was a Dane colony for a few centuries. And in a similar sense, from what I could find, why the dialects in Spain are so strong, since after dictator Franco’s regime fell, a policy was placed to bring back the dialects he tried to erradicate.
I am having a listen to Sabaton. Oooo, yeah. I hear what you’re saying here. It was the same thing I felt when I was thinking when listening to Gogol Bordello. Well, I meant actually the vocals - the pitch. They sing at a pitch lower than I think most American songs tend to hit. Ah, okay I am seeing now in this lyrics video what you’re talking about. You mean dark as in subject matter, and how it seems to be highlighting some kind of battle (Thirty Years War?) ho-kay do-kay I get you now. I am embarrassed to say but I honestly know so little about European history. I don’t know if we ever touched anything like that growing up. I only even learned a bit about the Thirty Years War recently when looking up facts about a painting I saw. I will say that something we did touch upon in school was the spread of the Normans. Which I thought was more a general expansion yet again but can see it was actually a series of conquests on account of how things were expressed. Hmm.
Thank you my fellow human for poking my brain awake and getting it to bubble and churn.
I always thought perhaps in Europe things spread more by migration than colonization but I suppose it makes sense. When you actually sit and think about that too. You’ve just made me aware of how little I know as a whole, and I’ve got the itch to fill the gap. I will say
So, you had asked about materials to study in a previous comment. While I found no concrete materials yet, maybe looking for questions related to proficiency level tests could be a good start? Like for example in my case, to study materials oriented at norskprøve (for Norwegian), JLPT (for Japanese), or to practice since I don’t get many chances to speak in Spanish, SIELE’s test.