when I was studying Greek I would get frustrated and annoyed because often, at the beginning of a sentence or clause – or just scattered haphazardly throughout – there would be three or four “particles” with no specific meaning. the literal translation might be “so thus and”, but of course you couldn’t put that down. they were just placeholder words, colloquial linguistic padding.
now, of course, I realize that I start sentences with “okay but like”.
you can sing the praises of the Greeks all you want, but the fact is, Plato wrote with all the elegance and grace of an off-the-cuff tumblr post.
my professor literally told us to think of all the “ἤ̂ δ᾽ ὅς”es in the Symposium as “so then he was like”
making fun of ppl’s english,esp when it’s not their first language, is not a funny joke ever,no excuses,and that’s that on that
That sign language in schools post is kinda dumb because yes sign language should be taught in schools but you understand that it’s a funding thing and interest thing, right? A school can’t just decide “we’re teaching a language” and then teach it. They need to pay for staff to teach it and materials, and there needs to be interest in the school for it. It’s just not as simple as “we need to start teaching this”
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
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.
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.
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.
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.)
we, in a manner akin to that of a man who once was, in Rome, an orator of significant skill, who was then for his elegance of speech renowned and now for his elaborate structure of sentences cursed by generations of scholars of Latin, the language which he spoke and we now study, Cicero, write, rather than by any efficiency, functionality, or ease of legibility have our words, our honors, the breaths of our hearts, be besmirched.
i hate writing historical fic because every five sentences you’re googling random shit like “when did billiards become popular in america” & i’ll have you know it was the 1820s
fun fact my pals the word ‘okay’ or ‘O.K.’ (the abbreviation for the old timey spelling of ‘all correct’) was popularized in 1840 by Van Buren’s US presidential election slogan and seeing it in historical fiction before then feels like a little glitch in the matrix, but seeing it in an Old Timey Fantasy setting sends me down the rabbit hole of how a fantasy world language would be brutal to translate, and language in general is a trip, and nothing means anything, probably
I just want to add a correction: O.K. was not an abbreviation for an “old-timey” spelling of “all correct”; it is in fact an abbreviation for an INTENTIONAL MISSPELLING of “all correct.” There was a short-lived period in the 1800s where it became amusing and trendy to flagrantly misspell conversational phrases and then abbreviate them, and “O.K.” is the only one to survive to the present day.
O.K. is an ancient MEME.
OL KORECK!
You telling me like 100 years from now, words like “birb”, “smol”, and “bode” are gonna be actual words?
Well they kinda already are. You say or type them, others know what you mean. That’s what words and language do. Of course we have to make new ones, because we keep finding new concepts. Even if it’s ‘that thing is small but differently small than a normal small.’ Like two different shades of blue.
I love oll korrect for exactly this reason. So much of our language us just what a bunch of cool kids for two years in the 18th century thought was funny
ifesbob 