Cuddling With Languages

I thought my German was a lot better than it actually is. This is depressing.

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:05:00 -0400

I thought my German was a lot better than it actually is. This is depressing.

wuglife: syntactician: frenenzacxevalo: cirenel: watchtheskyt...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 21:07:08 -0400

syntactician:

frenenzacxevalo:

cirenel:

watchtheskytonight:

totallyfubar:

Sky is wrong. Moss is wrong. Mint isn’t pale enough. Chlorophyll is much much brighter and more saturated than that. Avocado is wrong. Lime is wrong. Gold is horribly wrong. Salmon is wrong. Baby is wrong. Your pink is really more of a fuchsia. Blue orchids are two colors, neither of which are what’s listed here. Grape is darker than eggplant. Wine is darker than that. Cherries are darker than that. Cinnamon is brown.

You pretty much skipped over most blues, pinks, oranges, and reds.

I am a male artist, don’t fuck with me and colors.

The men of tumblr are the most badass people I’ve ever met

A z-snap is in order

There are either only six colors or a practically infinite number. Anything in between is baseless.

This looks remarkable similar to xkcd’s ‘joke’ version of the chart, taken from Doghouse Diaries (can’t find the original just now in a hurry):

And here is the chart of the results he got:

http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

Color theory is super cool. Not all languages have the same number of color words. This doesn’t mean that we see different colors, just that we group them together differently.

Some languages only have two groups: light and dark. Some group these into warm and cold colors. I believe many Bantu languages use warm and cold groupings, even though they may have more than two groups.

Languages that have three groups generally have light (white), dark (black), and red.

After that, things start to get more complicated. Many languages with four groups add yellow next.

A common fifth color group is something we call “grue”, or the colors that comprise both green and blue. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that people who speak languages with a grue color group think that leaves on trees are the color of water and the sky, they can see the difference. They just have one basic word (like how we call robin’s eggs “blue” but they aren’t the same color as the tumblr dashboard “blue”).

In fact, blue is an interesting case for English. In English, we have 11 basic color terms:

red

orange

yellow

green

blue

purple

pink

brown

black

white

gray (or grey)

In languages like Russian or Hebrew, they have all these color terms, too, but they split our “blue” into two color groups, one for darker blues, like a canonical blue in English, and a second for a lighter blue similar to “cyan”.

Notice that in English, we do have a word for this color, cyan. However, it is not a basic color term because we consider cyan to be a type of blue. Pink is not a type of purple or red, it is a basic color. Brown is not a type of orange, nor is orange a type of red. We may argue whether salmon is a type of red or a type of pink (or orange), but we also know that it isn’t a basic color because we aren’t confused by saying it’s a subset of one of our basic color terms.

So now, if your interest is piqued, ask yourself:

Why would color terms follow this hierarchy of groupings? Although the “dark/black” group would include blue and the “light/white” would include yellow, what makes yellow more likely to be a separate group than blue?

Le Petit Prince, français et espagnol

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:05:00 -0400

Le Petit Prince, français et espagnol:

The Little Prince is one of my all-time favorite books … so what could be better than the original with a Spanish translation?
For reference, the English version is here: http://home.pacific.net.hk/~rebylee/text/prince/

Words that Make Sense

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:44:00 -0400

erizo = animal pequeño y espinoso
erizar = poner rígido algo, como las púas de un erizo

manyworldsmanywords: Woah, where are these followers coming from? Hi, everyone. I hope you like it...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:01:00 -0400

manyworldsmanywords:

Woah, where are these followers coming from? Hi, everyone. I hope you like it here.

Jaja pues también voy aprendiendo el español, junto con otros idiomas, y ya que no hay mucha (ninguna) gente que yo conozca en la vida real que amen los idiomas tanto como yo, me alegro cuando encuentro a personas que también piensan que el español es emocionante y divertido.

Esperanto seems straightforward. One 4-minute song and I can already string together (simple)...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:33:00 -0400

Esperanto seems straightforward. One 4-minute song and I can already string together (simple) sentences.

lavenantanokto: Martin Wiese - SuperbazaroMartin Wiese -...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:29:41 -0400

lavenantanokto:

Martin Wiese - Superbazaro
Martin Wiese - Supermarket

Lyrics:

Estas vespero kaj mi vidas vin, mi vidas vin, kaj nun
(It’s evening and I see you, I see you, and now)
Mi ŝajnas tiom travidebla ke mi hontas
(I seem so transparent that I am ashamed)
Kaj vi rigardas min, demandas min, demandas min, kaj nun
(And you look at me, ask me, ask me, and now)
Vi min riproĉas ke nenion mi rakontas
(You reproach me that I tell nothing)

Refreno:

Sed vi venas al mi kvazaŭ estus mi superbazaro
(But you come to me as though I were a supermarket)
Kion vi volas de mi, kion vi volas de mi
(What you want from me, What you want from me)
Mi ofertu ĝin tuj
(I should offer it immediately)
Kaj vi prenas de mi kvazaŭestus elekto de varoj
(And you take from me as though from a selection of wares)
Kion vi volas de mi, kion vi volas de mi
(What you want from me, what you want from me)
Mi provizu vin tuj
(I should provide to you immediately)

Estas mateno kaj mi aŭdas vin, mi aŭdas vin
(It’s morning and I hear you, I hear you)
Kaj kiom volus mi malfermi mias keston
(And how much I would like to open my chest)
Vi diras ke vi ne komprenas min, komprenas min, kaj mi
(You say to me that you do not understand me, understand me and I)
Mi certe scias ke postulas vi honeston
(I certainly know that you demand honesty)

Refreno:

Mi estas superbazaro
(I am a supermarket)
Mi estas superbazaro
(I am a supermarket)

Notes:
Another Martin Wiese (of Persone and Martin kaj la Talpoj) song. He’s pretty much awesome.
This is the official music video for the song, directed by none other than Roĝer Borĝes, using clips from various pop-culture sources.
There’s not much to say about the translation, it’s a short song and pretty straightforward.

Credits:
Martin Wiese - Singer, Songwriter, Superhero(?)
Roĝer Borĝes - Podcaster, DJ, Musician
Youtube - Hosts the video
Lernu! - Used the dictionary (I always forget Kvazaŭ)

okay so I think I’m just gonna ramble about my foreign languages here okto begin with,...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:45:22 -0400

okay so I think I’m just gonna ramble about my foreign languages here ok
to begin with, esperanto is just kinda weird to me and I don’t know if I should bother with it.

Photo

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 19:38:07 -0400

Take me there.

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:47:06 -0400

Take me there.

Mafia

Sat, 19 May 2012 21:47:47 -0400

It’s a fun game.

When you try to teach it to a bunch of eight year olds, it disintegrates into chaos.

WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD?

Sat, 19 May 2012 18:09:54 -0400

Thank you, tumblrbot, for caring about my problems.

Some inspiring music usually does the trick. Energetic music or music that tells you to get up and go do something. Or pretty music… or dramatic music (Nightwish: Oceanborn)… or really… any music at all.

Hello, world

Sat, 19 May 2012 17:50:00 -0400

Everyone has been saying how great tumblr is, how they spend their whole weekend on tumblr, how they post all these hilarious pictures to tumblr. I’m a little late here, I know. Late by about three or four years.

I wasn’t going to do this, because I thought that most of the stuff on here was unimaginably stupid and a really big, boring waste of time. Then I found a couple actual good blogs that had minimal or no pictures of cats on bicycles. And then I thought, what better way to inflate my ego than make a blog about myself and post important-sounding things?

So I joined. And I made my blog look very fancy and sophisticated and pretentious. A good way to end a Saturday.