TAC 2021 - Vijay

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-08-18, 22:07

Dormouse559 wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:EDIT: Oh, also, fun update! I think I've ended up leaving the Zompist Bulletin Board.

Oh, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I’m not on the ZBB (just the CBB), so I don’t have direct knowledge of how things are on there.

It's bad that I felt compelled to leave but probably better for my mental health. It may also be good in the sense that the white men in charge of it now see that keeping racists there will drive POCs out.
I didn’t know you were involved with the conlanging community.

I just joined because I was banned here, it has a linguistics section, and their ban policy is far less strict (ironic, I know).
Do you partake in the secret vice?

Unless this counts, no.

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-08-19, 13:57

David's attempt to help me get business did not pan out, but no worries; just saying that here in case anyone was curious. :)

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-08-29, 18:02

I'm starting to think maybe trying to review all my languages isn't such a great idea compared to just reading things in each of them, or finding other ways to improve in languages that I don't know as well.

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-08-30, 17:01

I've started trying to get myself to read more in languages other than just Malayalam and Chinese, though I think I've been more successful so far at just getting myself to listen a little bit more to media in languages other than English (including Malayalam, Mandarin Chinese, and some of the other languages I'm studying, as well as some languages I have never really studied at all such as Albanian thanks to The Death of Yugoslavia :P).

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-09-09, 15:55

I've been trying to read more in all of the languages I've been studying (admittedly not with that much success!) in addition to learning languages I don't know at all. I'm also a mod on a Discord server for learning Guarani. It's been growing fast and getting a lot of activity lately, including from native speakers from different parts of Paraguay who speak Guarani rather differently from each other!

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-09-22, 21:16

Been dealing with a lot of racism online over the last month, which has been very demotivating. Struggling to come up with something interesting to post to engage people on Twitter. Considering talking about Lnuismk, even though all I really have to say about it is "idk wtf to call this language in English, and the only resources I've found are kinda shit," which also feels risky because I don't want to piss off Mi'kmaq. The Guarani Discord server has been pretty active, but the owner shows up rarely, which leaves me kind of demotivated in terms of participating there. We partnered up with the r/paraguay server, which I think has screwed us over by canceling the partnership behind our asses. We haven't canceled it on our end, and it's definitely given both servers at least a few new people.

In general, still not really sure wtf I'm doing apart from just reading shit in Malayalam and Chinese and trying to surround myself with good friends.

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby Saim » 2021-09-25, 0:12

vijayjohn wrote:
In general, still not really sure wtf I'm doing apart from just reading shit in Malayalam and Chinese and trying to surround myself with good friends.


Aren't we all?

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby dEhiN » 2021-09-25, 16:28

Saim wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
In general, still not really sure wtf I'm doing apart from just reading shit in Malayalam and Chinese and trying to surround myself with good friends.


Aren't we all?

We're all just reading shit in Malayalam and Chinese and trying to surround ourselves with good friends?! :whistle: :D
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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-09-25, 16:31

dEhiN wrote:
Saim wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
In general, still not really sure wtf I'm doing apart from just reading shit in Malayalam and Chinese and trying to surround myself with good friends.


Aren't we all?

We're all just reading shit in Malayalam and Chinese and trying to surround ourselves with good friends?! :whistle: :D

Yes, of course. Aren't you? Get with the program here! :rotfl:

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-09-25, 16:33

I am very curious to hear what everyone else is reading in Malayalam and Chinese! :D

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-09-25, 20:48

vijayjohn wrote:I am very curious to hear what everyone else is reading in Malayalam and Chinese! :D

Unfortunately, I'm not sure yet. I have to look up every single word, and I know neither Chinese characters nor the Malayalam script, so it's slow going. I haven't finished reading the title page yet. :silly:

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-09-25, 20:56

All I've done today is read a little bit more of that grammar in Malayalam I've been reading. Oh, and try to start a Backwards Translation Game or FUBAR game here! No one is responding, though. Maybe I should start a new Discord server for it instead.
vijayjohn wrote:
Dormouse559 wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:EDIT: Oh, also, fun update! I think I've ended up leaving the Zompist Bulletin Board.

Oh, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I’m not on the ZBB (just the CBB), so I don’t have direct knowledge of how things are on there.

It's bad that I felt compelled to leave but probably better for my mental health. It may also be good in the sense that the white men in charge of it now see that keeping racists there will drive POCs out.

I can now honestly say that the admin for that forum seems completely oblivious to the effects of keeping racists around.

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby dEhiN » 2021-09-27, 16:43

Linguaphile wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I am very curious to hear what everyone else is reading in Malayalam and Chinese! :D

Unfortunately, I'm not sure yet. I have to look up every single word, and I know neither Chinese characters nor the Malayalam script, so it's slow going. I haven't finished reading the title page yet. :silly:

That's ok, I know the Tamil script and I still have a hard time reading the Malayalam script. I swear, sometimes when Vijay is like, "oh, this character in Malayalam is the same as this other one in Tamil", I'm like, "I still don't see it, but ok..." :D. I'm also more partial to Tamil since it doesn't have the aspirated/non-aspirated distinction that Malayalam has which I imagine it picked up from Sanskrit influence? As far as I know, Proto-Dravidian never made that distinction.
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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-10-01, 23:01

dEhiN wrote:I swear, sometimes when Vijay is like, "oh, this character in Malayalam is the same as this other one in Tamil", I'm like, "I still don't see it, but ok..." :D.

When did I say that?

I'm kind of waffling at this point over which languages to review now, perhaps in large part because none of my online friends seem particularly interested in working on one these days. Maybe I can post something on Twitter soon about European Portuguese but also something about Oirata and something about Ternate. (Oirata and Ternate are both Papuan languages spoken in the Maluku Province in Indonesia, although on opposite sides of the province).

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-10-02, 1:09

And now I've apparently started reviewing some Japanese?? I also tried to listen to a bit of European Portuguese today (including from a video or two that I'd already seen probably a few times).

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby Saim » 2021-10-05, 2:36

vijayjohn wrote:I am very curious to hear what everyone else is reading in Malayalam and Chinese! :D


I was mostly joking, but I have actually been dabbling in Malayalam a bit and have gotten back to doing some Chinese after a huge hiatus. I wouldn't count it as "reading" though -- for Malayalam I just add phrases from uTalk to Anki (it's the only beginner's source I've found with text and audio), and for Chinese I just plug random words from news articles into Anki and Memrise (so I guess it's a bit of reading, even if it's only like two or three sentences a week).

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-10-05, 2:38

Saim wrote:I have actually been dabbling in Malayalam a bit

for Malayalam I just add phrases from uTalk to Anki (it's the only beginner's source I've found with text and audio)

I have actually been dabbling in Malayalam a bit

I have actually been dabbling in Malayalam a bit

:totalshock: :burning:

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby Saim » 2021-10-05, 2:51

Dayavaayii, enikka kaappii matii! ;)

(Now you'll tell me the translation is inaccurate and my whole learning plan will collapse. :P )

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-10-05, 2:56

Did you mean 'please, coffee is enough for me'?

This is indeed how they would teach learners how to say that, just not how people actually say it. :D In particular, no one ever says dayavaayi, and I'm not entirely sure why people keep claiming that means 'please'; it means 'mercifully'. IRL if people wanted to be polite in that context, they'd just smile and mumble ayyo... (granted, the first thing that comes to mind as I'm describing this is a middle-aged man also doing a head-wobble while saying it. Lmao).

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Re: TAC 2021 - Vijay

Postby Saim » 2021-10-05, 4:14

Еnikka kaappii matii is supposed to mean "I'd like a coffee"; I added the dayavaayii, they only taught it as an isolated word and not as part of the phrase. I guess I'll have to crosscheck everything with you to know if it's accurate.

This is indeed how they would teach learners how to say that, just not how people actually say it


Based on my experience with Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi it seems that phrasebooks and beginner's textbooks go out of their way to teach you the most unnatural phrasing possible (especially phrasebooks, since politeness is expressed totally differently in South Asia compared to Western cultures), so I was kind of expecting this. I was mainly planning on using uTalk to see how much about the pronunciation, alphabet and grammar I can glean from it, not necessarily to learn phrases I would actually say.
Last edited by Saim on 2021-10-05, 23:38, edited 1 time in total.


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