kerryrenaissance:

amateurlanguager:

thepolyglotblog:

darasteine:

The 75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences
The 200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences
The 524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences
The 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences
The 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences
The 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences
The 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences
The 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences

(Sources: 5 Steps to Speak a New Language by Hung Quang Pham)

This article has an excellent summary on how to rapidly learn a new language within 90 days.

We can begin with studying the first 600 words. Of course chucking is an effective way to memorize words readily. Here’s a list to translate into the language you desire to learn that I grabbed from here! :)

EXPRESSIONS OF POLITENESS (about 50 expressions)      

• ‘Yes’ and ‘no’: yes, no, absolutely, no way, exactly.    
• Question words: when? where? how? how much? how many? why? what? who? which? whose?    
• Apologizing: excuse me, sorry to interrupt, well now, I’m afraid so, I’m afraid not.    
• Meeting and parting: good morning, good afternoon, good evening, hello, goodbye, cheers, see you later, pleased to meet you, nice to have met.    
• Interjections: please, thank you, don’t mention it, sorry, it’ll be done, I agree, congratulations, thank heavens, nonsense.    

NOUNS (about 120 words)

• Time: morning, afternoon, evening, night; Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; spring, summer, autumn, winter; time, occasion, minute, half-hour, hour, day, week, month, year.    
• People: family, relative, mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother, husband, wife; colleague, friend, boyfriend, girlfriend; people, person, human being, man, woman, lady, gentleman, boy, girl, child.    
• Objects: address, bag, book, car, clothes, key, letter (=to post), light (=lamp), money, name, newspaper, pen, pencil, picture, suitcase, thing, ticket.    
• Places: place, world, country, town, street, road, school, shop, house, apartment, room, ground; Britain, name of the foreign country, British town-names, foreign town-names.    
• Abstract: accident, beginning, change, color, damage, fun, half, help, joke, journey, language, English, name of the foreign language, letter (of alphabet), life, love, mistake, news, page, pain, part, question, reason, sort, surprise, way (=method), weather, work.    
• Other: hand, foot, head, eye, mouth, voice; the left, the right; the top, the bottom, the side; air, water, sun, bread, food, paper, noise.    

PREPOSITIONS (about 40 words)    

• General: of, to, at, for, from, in, on.    
• Logical: about, according-to, except, like, against, with, without, by, despite, instead of.    
• Space: into, out of, outside, towards, away from, behind, in front of, beside, next to, between, above, on top of, below, under, underneath, near to, a long way from, through.    
• Time: after, ago, before, during, since, until.    

DETERMINERS (about 80 words)  

• Articles and numbers: a, the; nos. 0–20; nos. 30–100; nos. 200–1000; last, next, 1st–12th.    
• Demonstrative: this, that.    
• Possessive: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.    
• Quantifiers: all, some, no, any, many, much, more, less, a few, several, whole, a little, a lot of.    
• Comparators: both, neither, each, every, other, another, same, different, such.    

ADJECTIVES (about 80 words)    

• Color: black, blue, green, red, white, yellow.    
• Evaluative: bad, good, terrible; important, urgent, necessary; possible, impossible; right, wrong, true.    
• General: big, little, small, heavy; high, low; hot, cold, warm; easy, difficult; cheap, expensive; clean, dirty; beautiful, funny (=comical), funny (=odd), usual, common (=shared), nice, pretty, wonderful; boring, interesting, dangerous, safe; short, tall, long; new, old; calm, clear, dry; fast, slow; finished, free, full, light (=not dark), open, quiet, ready, strong.    
• Personal: afraid, alone, angry, certain, cheerful, dead, famous, glad, happy, ill, kind, married, pleased, sorry, stupid, surprised, tired, well, worried, young.    

VERBS (about 100 words)    

• arrive, ask, be, be able to, become, begin, believe, borrow, bring, buy, can, change, check, collect, come, continue, cry, do, drop, eat, fall, feel, find, finish, forget, give, going to, have, have to, hear, help, hold, hope, hurt (oneself), hurt (someone else), keep, know, laugh, learn, leave, lend, let (=allow), lie down, like, listen, live (=be alive), live (=reside), look (at), look for, lose, love, make, may (=permission), may (=possibility), mean, meet, must, need, obtain, open, ought to, pay, play, put, read, remember, say, see, sell, send, should, show, shut, sing, sleep, speak, stand, stay, stop, suggest, take, talk, teach, think, travel, try, understand, use, used to, wait for, walk, want, watch, will, work (=operate), work (=toil), worry, would, write.    

PRONOUNS (about 40 words)

• Personal: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, one; myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.    
• Possessive: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs.    
• Demonstrative: this, that.    
• Universal: everyone, everybody, everything, each, both, all, one, another.    
• Indefinite: someone, somebody, something, some, a few, a little, more, less; anyone, anybody, anything, any, either, much, many.    
• Negative: no-one, nobody, nothing, none, neither.    

ADVERBS (about 60 words)

• Place: here, there, above, over, below, in front, behind, nearby, a long way away, inside, outside, to the right, to the left, somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere, home, upstairs, downstairs.    
• Time: now, soon, immediately, quickly, finally, again, once, for a long time, today, generally, sometimes, always, often, before, after, early, late, never, not yet, still, already, then (=at that time), then (=next), yesterday, tomorrow, tonight.    
• Quantifiers: a little, about (=approximately), almost, at least, completely, very, enough, exactly, just, not, too much, more, less.    
• Manner: also, especially, gradually, of course, only, otherwise, perhaps, probably, quite, so, then (=therefore), too (=also), unfortunately, very much, well.    

CONJUNCTIONS (about 30 words)

• Coordinating: and, but, or; as, than, like.    
• Time & Place: when, while, before, after, since (=time), until; where.    
• Manner & Logic: how, why, because, since (=because), although, if; what, who, whom, whose, which, that.   
  

Oh i love this concept!

I love it too! I love it mostly because it makes me feel less overwhelmed. When you break it down like this, everything seems so much more manageable. Like, hey, I could memorize 20 words at a time (even if ‘at a time’ varies wildly for me), and just do that like ten times. That’s a HUGE chunk of a language.

(And since I have the habit of doing languages that are similar to ones I’m already familiar with, the grammar part usually comes pretty easy, too.)

As a writer, this also strikes me as useful to know if you are constructing a language.

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sludgejudy:

sludgejudy:

sludgejudy:

whys that one dog from the secret life of pets look like the babadook

this one

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rage-quitter:

I was getting pretty fed up with links and generators with very general and overused weapons and superpowers and what have you for characters so:

Here is a page for premodern weapons, broken down into a ton of subcategories, with the weapon’s region of origin. 

Here is a page of medieval weapons.

Here is a page of just about every conceived superpower.

Here is a page for legendary creatures and their regions of origin.

Here are some gemstones.

Here is a bunch of Greek legends, including monsters, gods, nymphs, heroes, and so on. 

Here is a website with a ton of (legally attained, don’t worry) information about the black market.

Here is a website with information about forensic science and cases of death. Discretion advised. 

Here is every religion in the world. 

Here is every language in the world.

Here are methods of torture. Discretion advised.

Here are descriptions of the various methods used for the death penalty. Discretion advised.

Here are poisonous plants.

Here are plants in general.

Feel free to add more to this!

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lunararcher:

princessparadoxical:

k-loulee:

fozmeadows:

hollowedskin:

derinthemadscientist:

languageoclock:

deflare:

penfairy:

Throwback to the time my poor German teacher had to explain the concept of formal and informal pronouns to a class full of Australians and everyone was scandalised and loudly complained “why can’t I treat everyone the same?” “I don’t want to be a Sie!” “but being friendly is respectful!” “wouldn’t using ‘du’ just show I like them?” until one guy conceded “I suppose maybe I’d use Sie with someone like the prime minister, if he weren’t such a cunt” and my teacher ended up with her head in her hands saying “you are all banned from using du until I can trust you”

God help Japanese teachers in Australia.

if this isnt an accurate representation of australia idk what is

Australia’s reverse-formality respect culture is fascinating. We don’t even really think about it until we try to communicate or learn about another culture and the rules that are pretty standard for most of the world just feel so wrong. I went to America this one time and I kept automatically thinking that strangers using ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ were sassing me. 

Australians could not be trusted with a language with ingrained tiers of formal address. The most formal forms would immediately become synonyms for ‘go fuck yourself’ and if you weren’t using the most informal version possible within three sentences of meeting someone they’d take it to mean you hated them.

100% true.

the difference between “‘scuse me” and “excuse me” is a fistfight

See also: the Australian habit of insulting people by way of showing affection, which other English-speakers also do, but not in a context where deescalating the spoken invective actively increases the degree of offence intended, particularly if you’ve just been affectionately-insulting with someone else.

By which I mean: if you’ve just called your best mate an absolute dickhead, you can’t then call a hated politician something that’s (technically) worse, like a total fuckwit, because that would imply either that you were really insulting your mate or that you like the politician. Instead, you have to use a milder epithet, like bastard, to convey your seething hatred for the second person. But if your opening conversational gambit is slagging someone off, then it’s acceptable to go big (”The PM’s a total cockstain!”) at the outset.

Also note that different modifiers radically change the meaning of particular insults. Case in point: calling someone a fuckin’ cunt is a deadly insult, calling someone a mad cunt is a compliment, and calling someone a fuckin’ mad cunt means you’re literally in awe of them. Because STRAYA. 

case in point: the ‘Howard DJs like a mad cunt’ meme.

I recommend this bloody good article by Mark Di Stefano of Buzzfeed Australia about the origin of John Howard’s DJ skills: We Found The Guy Behind Australia’s Greatest Ever Meme.

1. I work for the Australian National Audit Office as a federal performance analyst and literally everyone in the office refers to each other by their first name. Even the Auditor-General gets called by his first name, and he’s an independent officer of the Parliament, appointed by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit (JCPAA) and the Prime Minister.

2. This is like the fourth time I’ve reblogged this due to additional A+ commentary.

This is wild, haha!

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penfairy:

reblog if u agree

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