justwrite a diary, it has helped me sooo much and i dare say it has been the most developing thing i’ve done while learning french, nothing else compares
1. you’re exposed to the language daily
2. you quickly see which words are missing from your vocabulary
3. you learn to write about the things you think about a lot
4. learning to actually think in your target language
5. having to look up words and when reading the entry back a couple of days later you can’t even remember which words you didn’t know
6. going back to the earlier entries and seeing all the mistakes and knowing how much better you’ve become
7. when you’ve been writing for a few months and your target language becomes a natural way for expressing yourself
8. when you’ve been writing for a few months and you start seeing the diary writing as a way of self-expression and stressrelief, and the language learning aspect becomes natural and secondary
9. filling out a whole book using only your target language and physically seeing how much you’ve accomplished
Ita vero. Hic est exercitium optimum.
Yes, this is truly one of the best ways to practice. The more you practice writing and thinking in your target language, the more you’ll improve. It basically fills a similar role as having a conversation with someone in that language.
If expression ‘cognitive studies’ means anything to you, this could be your opportunity to participate in a real associative experiment, the results of which will be later used for creation of a scientific research.
If not, this could be an opportunity to entertain yourself with a couple of weird questions :D
Anyway, any contribution would be of great - no, enormous - help. So any activity (participation, reblogs, etc.) is very much appreciated. Thank you!
nemzetközi nőnap - International Women’s Day nő -woman asszony- married woman feleség- wife hölgy- lady lány- girl; daughter kislány- little girl anya- mother nagymama- grandmother nagynéni- aunt március- March március nyolcadika - 8 March egyenjogúság- equality, equal rights egyenjogúsítás, emancipáció - emancipation választójog, szavazati jog - right to vote női jogok - women’s rights virág- flower (virág)csokor - bouquet rózsa- rose tulipán- tulips hóvirág- snowdrop jácint- hyacinth csokoládé, csoki - chocolate bonbon- box of chocolates sütemény, süti - cake, cookies ajándék - present, gift
So a few years back, I wrote my Master’s thesis while an Erasmus student in England and I thought I would share an abridged version with you. I wrote my thesis about the Northern Vowel Shift, under the title : The Old Scandinavian element and its impact in the actuation and development of the Northern Vowel Shift.
But first of all, what is the Great Vowel Shift ?
It’s an event described as a chain-shift where the lower vowels, in a push-change movement, forced the higher vowels to raise and the highest ones to diphthongise, as such:
[ɔː] → [oː] → [uː] → [aʊ]
[ɛː] → [eː] → [iː] → [aɪ]
This partly explains the discrepancy between sounds and orthography in English. For instance, <ee> in “meet” now pronounced /iː/ used to be pronounced /eː/and <oo> in “goose” now pronounced /uː/used to be /oː/. This large-scale shake-up took place between the mid-14th and the 18th century.
Why is the Northern Vowel Shift important?
Because, generally, when dealing with the Great Vowel Shift, it is often assumed that it affected the whole of England. However, the upward movement of vowels was not a unified motion as some British English varieties retain pronunciations that were left unmodified by the Shift and thus retain certain pronunciations similar to those of the period before the Shift intervened. The study of the phonological history of the English language, more often than not, tends to describe the evolution of the vowel set of English by the representation of its southern version.
It matters because this focus on the southern version is probably due to a form of social bias; the most prestigious variety in the United Kingdom in present days is RP (Received Pronunciation) / SBE (Southern British English).
The bulk of the literature published to this day on this matter does not really concern northern England. This fact is quite a shame for there are many differences between the Northern Vowel Shift and the Southern Vowel Shift that seem to indicate that the two phenomena are not likely to be connected and merely share a common vocalic shift.
How did the Great Vowel Shift/Southern Vowel Shift happen ?
In a nutshell, this Shift took place because of dialect contacts in the south of England. Smith (2007) mentions that early Tudor London offered economic opportunities to the people of the surrounding countryside, attracting large number of people with different dialectal traditions to the same place.
Smith (2007:130) argues that the socially salient pronunciation of [e̝ː ; o̝ː] inherited from French was used by a category of the population; System I speakers, and System II speakers from outside London, would perceive these raised [e̝ː ; o̝ː] as /i:/ and /uː/. A third group of speakers from System III, would come to London during the 18th century from East Anglia and bring more chaos to the situation. Smith believes that the diphthongisation of the long close vowels comes from System III speakers.
How did the Northern Vowel Shift happen and how is different ?
In my thesis I concluded that the NVS and the SVS were triggered by very different factors; while the SVS took place because of dialect contacts, it would seem that the NVS happened because of instability in Northern English vowels after the introduction of long /ɛː/ in the phonology following Open Vowel Lengthening, which took place between the Old and Middle English period. Open Vowel Lengthening happened as follows: CVCV structures became CVːCafter final vowels like -ewere dropped.
Examples:
Old English “nama” => Middle English “nām”(“name”)
Old English “faran” => Middle English “fār” (“go”)
However, as you can see, there is a blatant lack of symmetry in the upward movement of Northern English long vowels compared to that of the SVS. Basically, when looking at this graph, the NVS only concerns the front vowels, and not the back ones. I’ll add there is a level of detail missing in the graph depicting the rise of /ɔː/ to /oː/. However, contrary to what occurred in the SVS, the raising of Vowel 5, as Aitkens (2002) calls it, had no impact because once /ɔː/ rose to /oː/, there was nothing to move upward and force /uː/ to change quality in turn. This is why in Northern English and Scottish dialect, you can hear speakers pronounce the word “house” as /hu:s/ with a long monophthong instead of the usual diphthong /aʊ/.
The reason for that is relatively simple: the absence of /oː/ in the pre-NVS phonology. This vowel had seemingly fronted to /ø:/ in earlier stages, leaving the mid-high back vowel slot open. Thus when /ɔː/ rose, there was nothing to push towards /uː/.
Since the NVS didn’t happen for the same reasons as the SVS, and it looks like the culprit is the fronting of /oː/ to /ø:/ : whence does this fronting come? My hypothesis was that it was under the influence of Nordic languages that /ø:/ arose or was maintained longer in the northern dialects of English than in the southern, which had lost its front rounded vowels by the 11th century (an example of what I called south-eastern distaste for front rounded vowels).
In a nutshell, what I argued is that northern varieties of English may have started losing their front rounded vowels, like down south, but contact with Old Norse speakers ranging as far back as the late 8th century in Northern England may have played a role in re-introducing a decaying phoneme in northern dialects of English. Furthermore, Scandinavians tended to remain in their own little closed communities, exchanging little with the outside world for a few decades after the end of the Danelaw. Their contact with neighbouring population must have played a role in the upholding of /ø:/.
Basically,tl;dr,English underwent massive phonetic change because of the Great Vowel Shift. However, it would me more accurate to refer to it as the Southern Vowel since its effects did not affect northern regions of England, which had experienced its own shift; the Northern Vowel Shift. It arose because of phonetic evolution between Old and Middle English. A back vowel was absent from Old Northern English, rendering a SVS chain-shift-like motion impossible in northern dialects. This back vowel may have fronted because of Old Norse influence in the region, which lasted longer in the north of England than in the south.
To thank you all for following my blog I’ve decided to host a giveaway.
What can you win?
The winner can choose oneof the three Dutch magnets above. I will buy it once the giveaway ends, so if the magnet of your choice is not available anymore you can pick a substitute from the website.
How can you win?
Send me an ask (make sure you’re not anon) stating what you like about Dutch/The Netherlands and why you would like to win the giveaway. I won’t publish the ask, so you will still remain anonymous.
The winner will be picked at random, but with the rule above I want to make sure that people don’t only enter for the sake of winning something, but truly have some type of connection to the language/country.
Rules:
Anyone younger than 18 needs parental permission to enter, since I have to send the magnet to your address.
Your entry is only valid when you have sent it in ask form. Any replies to this post will not count as an entry.
Respond before the closing date.
Closing date is 1st of January 2021.
Good luck!
Don’t forget to enter the competition if you want to participate!
To thank you all for following my blog I’ve decided to host a giveaway.
What can you win?
The winner can choose oneof the three Dutch magnets above. I will buy it once the giveaway ends, so if the magnet of your choice is not available anymore you can pick a substitute from the website.
How can you win?
Send me an ask (make sure you’re not anon) stating what you like about Dutch/The Netherlands and why you would like to win the giveaway. I won’t publish the ask, so you will still remain anonymous.
The winner will be picked at random, but with the rule above I want to make sure that people don’t only enter for the sake of winning something, but truly have some type of connection to the language/country.
Rules:
Anyone younger than 18 needs parental permission to enter, since I have to send the magnet to your address.
Your entry is only valid when you have sent it in ask form. Any replies to this post will not count as an entry.
I’ve been trying (admittedly not very hard) to read a full book in Chinese for a couple years now. I think I’ve tried 2 or 3 times? Well now I’m trying again with the book 《少女哪吒》 by 绿妖 (Shàonǚ Nézhā by Lǜ Yāo). I’m posting this in hopes that it will help hold me accountable so I actually finish this book!
Why have I picked this book?
It’s only about 200 pages long
The pages are physically small, and the text isn’t dense
It’s a short story collection
At least so far, the stories are slice of life and set in recent times
From my past attempts at reading a book, I know that I’ll feel discouraged if it’s taking me forever to get through a page. Also, I’m hoping that having six short stories ensures I don’t get bored or bogged down. Lastly, I didn’t want to make things harder for myself by picking a historical or fantasy novel.
One thing that I struggle with with reading in Chinese is resisting the urge to use Pleco. The problem is when I encounter characters that I don’t know. I can guess the pronunciation of course, but I can’t stand the thought of being wrong and then “learning” an incorrect pronunciation! I don’t mind guessing the meanings of new words if I recognize the characters (I try to just look up those words if I’m getting confused or if they repeat a lot so I want to learn them better). But I just don’t see myself ever being able to resist the urge to look up unknown characters! I’ve tried not looking them up and always end up going back after because I can’t take it. Wish me luck~
hey! ive been active here before, but never really introduced myself, so here you go!
basics
im enfys seren toive, 20, german native, university student (studying finnish and scandinavian studies along with dapping into some other stuff in the general studies field)
languages im learning
are finnish, swedish, danish, and esperanto! along with some slight dabbing into some other languages
i want to
become a translator/interpreter once im finished with university!
hello hello! if youre focusing on any of the languages im studying, feel free to lmk! i need to follow more blogs
