Friends are welcome! котов-бегемотов не предлагать)))

 Hi Im Jade
Ive just joined, Last night actually. Ive had varius lj's over the years but none seemed to stick. Im adventurous caring. I like tattoos, decent music, horror films and 330ml fluids. Im fun, bitterly honest and I would love to meet new people and gain insight into others lives. My journal is going to include, pictures also.


Add if you wish.

Why hello there peoples. I'm Ville, 22, a dude from Porvoo, Finland (about 30 miles east from Helsinki). I'm definitely interested in finding new friends from all across this beautiful world of ours. LJ friends, MSN pals, whatever.

I'm a bisexual, vegetarian, atheist, hippie. At the moment I'm studying computer installing, well that's the name of the course anyway, but it basically covers everything anyone will ever have to know about computers. So I guess it's fair to say I'm a geek. But geeks are adorable, aren't they?

I love music. It's my life basically. Last.fm

Pic of me behind the cut.

If we have some common ground here, then go ahead, add me.

I'm from Oklahoma, and a lot of times while speaking I notice that I omit saying 'that' when I'm beginning certain clauses. For example, 'I found I could....' instead of 'I found that I could...', or whatever. I do use 'that' sometimes, but I never really noticed until I was studying Italian and saying 'che' at times that I should be saying 'that' more in my own speech.

I've tried to listen to others now, and it seems to me that there's a 50/50 chance someone will omit 'that' when beginning certain clauses. Ever notice this?

I have just finished reading 'Mother Tongue', by Bill Bryson, which is a fascinating, fascinating book. [: Was wondering if there were any books you guys could recommend that are similar/linguistics related? [:

And also - I'm a French student who is fairly good at written French, but gets virtually no exposure to spoken French and thus is not up to standard with oral French. =S I really would like to go on exchange to improve this, but would like to improve before this - any tips? I don't really know any native French speakers, which would be the ideal, so... Any tips would be fantastic. <33

Thanks! <33

Dear linguaphiles,

As a mathematician, I find languages to be fascinating structures. I've really enjoyed reading this community and learning something about the variety of human languages, which has (of course) turned out to be much richer than I could have imagined. However, I remain stubbornly and embarrassingly monolingual. I studied French, Latin and Ancient Greek for several years at school; I subsequently studied Czech and Japanese for a few months each, but my level of ability never rose above "miserable" for any of them. My major problem was always vocabulary: I'm good at analysing structure and learning rules, but vocab is just a huge collection of random facts, and my brain sucks at that kind of thing. The result is that I've ended up frankly scared of learning languages, which is not a terribly good position to be in.

I was thinking (once I've finished this *$@&!#% PhD thesis) that I'd like to fix this problem; and further, that it might be a good idea to start by learning Esperanto or some other conlang as a sort of reconnaissance-in-force: something simpler than a real language to allow me to experiment with learning strategies, and which I can use to build morale. So, my questions are:

1. Is this a stupid idea? Bear in mind that you probably find language-learning much easier than I do.
2. Can you recommend any good resources? I have, of course, Searched The Friendly Web, and I'm delighted to see that there are some free Esperanto courses online, but I was wondering if any of you had any experience with them.

Note that I'm not asking about the wisdom of learning Esperanto (or whatever) as an interlanguage, just as a morale- and experience-building exercise.

I'm hoping this is an appropriate question for here, as what I'm looking for is... "anecdotal" isn't the word I want to use... but I'm looking for info from people's informal experience, not just words from books and dictionaries. (This is for a story idea I'm playing with.)

In English, we've got terms like "mother-in-law," which is accurate, but fairly dry and clinical. In contrast, in French you've got "belle mere" or "beautiful mother," which is maybe a bit more vague, but has some flavor to it, some connotation. (Or Korean, in which, as far as I can tell because I don't speak it, you have the words for "mother" or "father," but with a more formal suffix?)

What are some words for in-laws in different languages? Particularly: "in-laws" (as a group), "mother-in-law," and "father-in-law." Endearments, euphemisms, pet names? (And may I ask for the English approximations as well?) It's okay if a language differentiates between paternal and maternal relatives.

EDIT: Any quirky etymology (or hints on where to find it out) also appreciated.

Thanks so much for your input!

thanks everyone for helping me out on my spanish, re: my previous posting. :)

I was discussing the whole 'what am i going to do next with my life' thing with my Mom, and I'm looking into programs for teaching abroad in asia, which i hope to do starting jan. or feb. of 2009. I'm trying to decide where to go, and my decision i think, will largely be based on which East Asian language I'm most wanting to learn. I've asked questions regarding this before, but I'd like to get some more perspective on this: especially as of recently.
I've narrowed it down to either China, Japan, or Korea, and I'm not sure I can handle the Japanese language as the difficulty with the grammar and three writing systems overwhelms me. I'm somewhat musically inclined, so Chinese appealed to me for that reason, but of course, the trade-off is, simpler grammar for more difficult pronunciation/tones. Then there's Korean, which intrigues me only because it seems to be somewhat of a mystery. But it seems like the Korean language is starting to spread more rapidly in various urban areas in the US, so perhaps this would be useful to know, also. And learning to read/write in Hangul I'm guessing is much easier than learning any other East Asian system of writing!

Any thoughts, please share them with me :) also if you've taught abroad in the past or are also considering it, I'd love to hear from you as well!

lebaneselove
A wealth of resources for fans of the Lebanese entertainment world.

scenebyscene
This collaborative screenwriting community will accomplish an entire film script--each scene by a different writer--over the course of one year. It's destined to be crazy. Along the way, a slew of smaller challenges will be offered.

add_foreign_ljs
Looking to practice your language skills? add_foreign_ljs offers users a way to find journals written in a language other than their own.

Hi everyone,

I have a quick question which needs clarification. I just read this book about jargon being euphemistic or dysphemistic depending on certain situations like 1)setting and subject matter (like saying someone passed away instead of died at a funeral) and 2)whether it separates the in-groups from the out-groups.

However, the part which I am quite confused about is that it says that jargon must have certain characteristics before it can be considered jargon and they are vocabulary, grammar and tone (i think) and that Legalese is one of the best example. So how then is saying someone passed away instead of died a jargon? I would think it as being more of a euphemism?

Anyone care to share your take on this?

Hey everyone, first time poster here. If this post is going against rules, tell me and I'll delete it (just in case I mis-read something). I'm having some issues finding an accurate translation on the web of my name; LUZ.

Since I keep running into different characters for each letter I'm not confident that I'm finding accurate or knowing which one is accurate.

Does anyone know of an accurate site for hieroglyphics? Thanks for listening.

This might be a rather stupid question, but can you tell if a name is typically for a boy or a girl in languages you don't speak? I ask because, in my experience, I usually can. That may be because English has borrowed names from many different languages.

Sorry it took so long, but at long last there is now a second part to the recap of this summer's craziness. There is more to come, but I continue to break things up so none of you is bored into a catatonic state.

http://wanderinghome.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/the-summer-of-dave-part-2/

Also, if any of you remembers when I talked about a project idea about rewriting the Bible in its entirety (in my own particularly irrevrant way) I am still considering that idea, and am ready to start posting entries by Friday. It will probably be a post a day for that project, and I will put it on a different blog dedicated to the project. So, if anyone has any questions or comments let me know. I'd love to hear what you all think.

http://wanderinghome.wordpress.com/2008/04/12/coming-soon-bible-20/