I used to have an app called Mearka, which was a trilingual dictionary between Norwegian, North Sámi, and Norwegian Sign Language, notably including uniquely Sámi variants of signs.

However, I uninstalled Mearka at some point, and when I went to re-install the app, I found that it had been taken off the Play Store. Statped reports that "development on the Android version of Mearka has ceased", so... shame that I don't have an iPhone, then!

This means that for Android users, there is evidently only one offline NSL dictionary left, namely Toleio, which has a lot fewer features than Mearka, and also has a lot fewer entries in its dictionary. I can only assume this is because Toleio is a Duolingo-style app with a dictionary feature "on the side", and more specifically Toleio is a reskin of a whole series of apps teaching different sign languages — thus to keep the curriculum more or less the same between the different apps, each app avoids culturally specific signs, and expectedly doesn'

Only done a few lessons and it's much better than the previous app I tried, Mango Languages (it was free through my library). Hello Chinese is much more holistic in its approach, and starts with more simple sentence structure and repition.

这个多少钱？

{本|běn}：这个{苹果|píngguǒ}多少钱？
{店员|diànyuán}：{三块五|... 3.50 yuan ...}。
本：那个呢？
店员：五块。
本：这个{香蕉|xiāngjiāo}多少钱{一斤|per half kilo}？
店员：{两块二|... 2.20 yuan ...}。
本：那个香蕉呢？
店员：三块。你买不买{呀|ya}？
本：不买。我在学中文。

。。。
我：我也在学中文。

As an exercise in thinking about a language, I like trying to translate something a bit silly, that I can't just look up. Even if the result is bad, it tends to lead in interesting directions as I try to move beyond rote memorisation and end up discovering some new aspect of the language.

Today's target was "beanis".

What I came up with for Japanese was お{荏々|じんじん}. As far as I can tell, this is not in dictionaries, but sounds like an existing word, おちんちん, with extra voicing on the leading consonant, and has "bean" in it, though jisho.org gives some other meanings to the kanji.

I have no idea whether this works or is (more likely) just gaijin nonsense, but I can't think of anywhere else I could possibly post this.

(brief pause while I google this)

Mein Gott, I almost found one.

Beware of occasional liberalism but yeah, I was binging through these, they were pretty easy to follow along on even with only a rudimentary knowledge of Esperanto. I notice that the channel originally consisted of what seems to be short segments of actual radio news, before it went inactive for three years, and then started posting new videos in this format about five months ago.

only posting this because i want people to reply with "wow, you don't even use <really good app that I didn't know existed>?"

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/57995993

Hitting the day streak of the year we’re in feels worth sharing for me.

And yes, I’ve actually been learning with Duolingo, along with some other language apps, and speaking with people in the languages I’m learning, particularly Spanish.

Muzzy in Gondoland was originally created by the BBC for teaching English as a second language. The Esperanto version was published by the International Esperanto Institute in 1995.

I learned this from this video (Note: contains 2000 year old bronze phalli) — although it seems like 祖 used in the sense of penis/phallus is a bit of a formal, literary usage, which is seemingly unattested in Sino-Xenic, so this information won't be of much use to you if you're, say, studying Japanese rather than Chinese. So it's only in Chinese where 祖 can mean penis, and only as a very sort of delicate and academic desexualized term for it in compounds like {铜祖|tóngzǔ} ("bronze phallus"), which was the term used in the video. That's my understanding, at least.

It is interestingly enough apparently believed (as one theory among several) that the right half of the character 祖 may in fact originate from an old pictogram of a phallus, "the symbol of the male ancestor"; on the other hand, the radical on the left-hand side (radical 113) on its own already carries a meaning of "ancestor" or "veneration", coming from an old pictogram of an alta

To be or not to be? Arabic simply said :bugs-no: to verb to be :gigachad-hd:

Yes, we don’t use verb to be (in the present tense).

&nbsp;

In Arabic, we have two types of sentences:

If a sentence begins with a noun (or pronoun), that’s a nominal sentence.

If a sentence begins with a verb, that’s a verbal sentence.

&nbsp;

Let’s talk about the nominal sentence. It refers to the present tense, and does not require verb to be. It consists of two parts:

مُبتَدَأ

mubtada’ the subject of a nominal sentence (literally means the noun that starts the sentence)

خَبَر

khabar the predicate of a nominal sentence “the comment”. The word also means a piece of news. &nbsp;

Examples:

أَنتَ أَحمَد

You [are] Ahmad ‘anta ‘aHmad

&nbsp;

عَلي سَعيد

Ali [is] happy عalii saعiid

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Arabic doesn’t have an in

man manna min mannin munna min l-mannaan

&nbsp;

Some natives might have trouble understanding it even with the diacritics

This &nbsp; ّ &nbsp; is called shadda, it's written above a consonant to indicate that it's doubled. What that actually means is that the consonant should be double the length in pronunciation, e.g.:

فَهَّم

fahham to explain (make someone understand), pronunciation

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Here is a calligraphic writing of the tongue twister in [riq3a](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Let's talk a bit about the verb aspect of the root system:

Being a Semitic language, Arabic has a derivation system, whereby from a single root (defined as a three-letter combination), you can derive a whole array of related meanings. So from the root 3-l-m علم we get the verbs 3alim عَلِم (to know), 3allam عَلَّم (to teach), اَعلَم a3lam (to inform), ta3allama (to learn), ista3lam اِستَعلَم (to inquire).

Furthermore, the way each of these verbs is related to the basic root 3-l-m علم also helps with vocabulary acquisition. So whereas 3alima (to know) is the simple form verb, 3allama عَلَّم (to teach) is a 2nd form verb (the middle root letter ل l is doubled), and we use the 2nd form for causation. So literally 3allama عَلَّم means to cause someone to know, and therefore to teach. Similarly, ta3allam تَغَلَّم (to learn) is the 5th form, which is a reflexive of the 2nd form. So ta3allam literally means to cause yourself to know, and therefore to learn. And again ista3l

:meow-knit: DW natives use only one of them, which I think a lot of you already know :meow-coffee:

In this lesson we will learn about ’alif-hamza أ

We learned about the long vowel 'alif ا in our last lesson.

Now here is a fact: there are no words which begin with a vowel! :walter-shock:

Oh you think I’m talking about Arabic? Go ahead, pronounce 'our, if, it, up, I, on'. In English, the sound you make every time you say a word that begins with a vowel is not a vowel sound, it’s actually called a glottal stop. And the reason why you don't know this is because English has no letter for the glottal stop.

In Arabic, the hamza ء represents the glottal stop and, like other consonants, it can be a carrier of vowel sounds. You wanna practice the sound of a glottal stop? It’s the sound you make every time you say a word that begins with a vowel or the Cockney pronunciation of “little bottle” (pronounced without the t’s)

A glotta

I came across this answer on r/askhistorians:

The grandparent of Arabic script is the Aramaic alphabet (strictly speaking, it's an abjad rather than an alphabet, since it only has consonants). Surviving early examples of Aramaic are "blocky":

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stele_Salm_Louvre_AO5009.jpg

However, there are joined curvy versions of Aramaic script:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peshitta_(1).jpg

Many alphabets (and abjads) have two forms like this: a blocky form, often preferred for carved inscriptions, and a cursive (joined and often curly/curved) form often preferred for writing with a pen or brush. We see blocky and cursive forms of Greek:

Blocky

Cursive

[Cursive](https://commons.wikimedia.or