Update

human_language.md

@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ This section lists some of the most notable human languages. In the brackets the
     - **Afrikaans** (~7 M native speakers, *Wat is jou naam?*): Very similar to Dutch and English.
     - **Danish** (*Hvad er dit navn?*): TODO
     - **Dutch** (Netherlands, [ena], *Wat is jouw naam?*): Similar to English but with added "grunting" pig sounds.
-    - **[English](english.md)** (~400 M native speakers, [eta], *What's your name?*): Most spoken language in the world (considering also non-native speakers), very simple grammar, no letters with accents, pronounces "r" as if "having a hot potato in mouth", awkward spelling of words, can't say the Spanish "j", is the universal world language of modern age, a must know for everyone.
+    - **[English](english.md)** (~400 M native speakers, [eta], *What's your name?*): Most spoken language in the world (considering also non-native speakers), very simple grammar, fixed word order, no letters with accents, pronounces "r" as if "having a hot potato in mouth", awkward spelling of words, can't say the Spanish "j", is the universal world language of modern age, a must know for everyone.
       - **Australian**: Very similar to UK.
       - **Irish**: Most prominent feature is probably pronouncing "th" as "t" or "d", pronounce "r"s.
       - **New Zealand**: Pronounce certain letters differently, e.g. "pen" sounds like "pin".
@@ -56,45 +56,45 @@ This section lists some of the most notable human languages. In the brackets the
         - south: TODO
       - ...
     - **German** (~100 M native speakers, [eni], *Wie heißt du?*): Hard and rough staccato rhythm sound, unpleasant, very long words, identifiable by characteristic rolling "r" and articles like "das", "der" etc.
+    - **Swedish** (~10 M native speakers, [ean], *Vad heter du?*): Mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish.
     - ...
   - **Romance languages** (~1 B native speakers): Evolved from Latin, not the hardest to learn.
     - **French** ([esa], *Comment tu t'appelles?*): Very unique and distinctive [gay](gay.md) sound of French shows to what degree a serious language like Latin can degenerate, especially notable is the soft "r" and phrases like "ooo la la!", duckface when speaking, one the most easily recognizable languages.
     - **Italian** (~60 M native speakers, [eai], *Come ti chiami?*): Pleasant and melodic, very similar to Latin, sounds like singing, lots of vowels, stresses many times on first syllable. Body language such as waving hands in the air is a big part of speaking Italian correctly, recognizable by iconic phrases such as "spaghetti al dente, mamma mia!".
-    - **Portuguese** (~250 M native speakers, [aeo], *Como te chamas?*): Basically Spanish with funny pronunciation.
+    - **Portuguese** (~250 M native speakers, [aeo], *Como te chamas?*): Basically Spanish with funny pronunciation, speakers of the two languages can understand each other to a high degree.
     - **Romanian** ([eia], *Cum vă numiți?*): Sounds similar to Italian.
     - **Spanish** (~500 M native speakers, [eao], *¿Cómo te llamas?*): Extremely fast, quite pleasant and similar to Italian, has normal and hard "r" (written *rr*), can't pronounce "h" (it's always silent), recognizable by patterns like "El XXXo", "Los XXXos" etc. Described by [Uncyclopedia](uncyclopedia.md) as "essentially Latin for retards", nonetheless spoken all over the world (it's the second most spoken native language) and therefore very useful to learn.
     - ...
-  - **Slavic languages** (~300 M native speakers): Hard to learn, many grammatic cases, spoken in central/east Europe and north Asia.
+  - **Slavic languages** (~300 M native speakers): Hard to learn, many grammatical cases and inflections, spoken in central/east Europe and north Asia.
     - **Bulgarian** (*как се казваш, "Kak se kazvash?"*): TODO
     - **Croatian** ([aio], *Kako se zoveš?*): Kinda similar to Czech/Slovak/Polish, seems to have a lot of "ch" (as in "chicken") sounds.
-    - **[Czech](czechia.md)** ([oea], *Jak se jmenuješ?*): Very similar to Slovak but has a harder sound, contains the infamous "r with an arrow above it" which some consider the hardest sound to pronounce in any language.
+    - **[Czech](czechia.md)** ([oea], *Jak se jmenuješ?*): Very similar to Slovak but has a harder sound, contains the infamous "ř" which some consider the most unique and possibly most difficult sound to pronounce in any language -- by this it can be recognized.
     - **Polish** ([iae], *Jak się nazywasz?*): Similar to Czech/Slovak, has many "sz", "sh", "ch" sounds, stress usually on penultimate syllable.
-    - **Russian** (~150 M native speakers, [oea], *Как тебя зовут?, "Kak tebia zovut?"*): Written in cyrillic, characteristic sounds like "blj", speaking with duckface.
-    - **Slovak** ([aoe], *Ako sa voláš?*): Super similar to Czech (mutually intelligible), sounds much softer and more pleasant, especially e.g. the letter "l".
-    - **Ukrainian** ([oan], *Як тебе звати?, "Jak tebe zvati?"*): Different than Russian but sounds the same.
+    - **Russian** (~150 M native speakers, [oea], *Как тебя зовут?, "Kak tebia zovut?"*): Written in Cyrillic, characteristic sounds like "blj", speaking with duckface and long end and middle parts of words.
+    - **Slovak** ([aoe], *Ako sa voláš?*): Super similar to Czech (mutually intelligible), sounds much softer and more pleasant, especially e.g. the letter "l", also compared to Czech doesn't have [bullshit](bullshit.md) like "ř" and vocative case.
+    - **Ukrainian** ([oan], *Як тебе звати?, "Jak tebe zvati?"*): Different from Russian but sounds the same.
     - ...
   - ...
 - **Other languages**:
   - **Arabic** (~400 M native speakers, *ما اسمك؟, "Ma ismuka?"*): Sounds fast, weird script written right to left, difficult to learn.
   - **[Chinese](chinese.md)** (~1 B native speakers, *你贵姓大名?, "Ni quixing daming?"*): Considered the hardest language ever, has many variants and dialects that are even mutually unintelligible (and as such is actually sometimes rather considered a language family), most notably Cantonese and Mandarin, has most native speakers of all languages, has many soft sounds like "shii", "shoo", "chii", plus those "ching chong" sounds along with weird intonation (the language is tonal, meaning pitch changes meaning of words), writing system is a disaster (one character per word).
-  - **[Esperanto](esperanto.md)** (~1 K native speakers, [aie], *Kio estas via nomo?*): Most famous constructed language, even has a few native speakers, sounds similar to Italian.
+  - **[Esperanto](esperanto.md)** ([aie], *Kio estas via nomo?*): Most famous [constructed language](conlang.md), even has a few native speakers, sounds similar to Italian, in general resembled Romance languages, is very easy to learn thanks to completely regular grammar and vocabulary borrowed from many existing languages.
   - **Finnish** ([ena], *Mikä sinun nimesi on?*): TODO
   - **Greek** ([aoi], *Πώς σε λένε?, "Pos se lene?"*): Famously using the weird Greek alphabet, its old version is very historically significant.
   - **Hebrew** (*מַה שִּׁמְךָ?, "Ma shimkha?"*): TODO
-  - **Hindi** (~350 M native speakers, *तुम्हारा नाम क्या हे, "Tumhaara naam kya he?"*): Sounds quite fast, has that very specific "clicky" pronunciation of certain sounds like "t", "r" and "d", weird script, women talk in high pitch squeeking.
+  - **Hindi** (~350 M native speakers, *तुम्हारा नाम क्या हे, "Tumhaara naam kya he?"*): Sounds quite fast, has that very specific "clicky" pronunciation of certain sounds like "t", "r" and "d", weird script, women talk in high pitch squeaking.
   - **Hungarian**:  Super gibberish, many "sh" sounds.
-  - **Interslavic**: Constructed language to be understandable by speakers of any Slavic language.
-  - **Japanese** (~100 M native speakers): Very characteristic sound, recognizable by keywords like "desu" and "ka", can't pronounce "l", everything ends with "u", women talk like squeeky toys, brutally difficult writing system (one character per word, but unlike Chinese at least includes scripts for writing words by sillables).
+  - **Interslavic** (*Kako je tvoje ime?*): [Constructed language](conlang.md) to be understandable by speakers of any Slavic language. { As a Czech native speaker I can understand it very well without ever having studied it, especially in written form, it sounds like Polish or Croatian that I can actually understand. ~drummyfish }
+  - **Japanese** (~100 M native speakers, [rnu], *お名前はなんですか?, "Onamae wa nan desu ka"*): Very characteristic sound, recognizable by keywords like "desu" and "ka", can't pronounce "l", everything ends with "u", women talk like squeaky toys, brutally difficult writing system (one character per word, but unlike Chinese at least includes scripts for writing words by sillables), has many different "politeness" levels of speech, famously "doesn't have swearwords" (which apparently isn't completely true, they just "insult each other differently").
   - **Klingon** (*nuq 'oH ponglIj'e'?*): Fictional constructed language from Star Trek, in real life spoken mainly by [boomer](boomer.md) [nerds](nerd.md). Learning the language will make you [never get laid](wizard.md).
   - **Korean** (~80 M native speakers, *이름이 뭐에요?, "Ileum i mwo eyo?"*): Sounds like Japanese but isn't Japanese (can be recognized by lack of "Japanese keywords"), simple writing system, starts to incorporate many English words.
   - **[Latin](latin.md)** ([eit], *Quid est nomen tibi?*): Officially not spoken anymore but many enthusiasts learn it, [historically](history.md) significant, similar to Italian, everything is written WITH CAPSLOCK, doesn't have the letter "U" (uses "V" instead), characteristic word endings such as "us", "um".
   - **[Newspeak](newspeak.md)** (*Question [moderated](censored.md) for [privacy](privacy.md) concerns.*): Language from a famous dystopian sci-fi book *[1984](1984.md)*, a version of English formed to serve brainwashing and thought control. At the time of writing the book the language was fictional, [nowadays](21st_century.md) it's already being implemented.
-  - **Sanskrit** (*तव नाम किम्, "Tavva nama kim?"*): TODO
-  - **Swedish** ([ean], *Vad heter du?*): TODO
+  - **Sanskrit** (*तव नाम किम्, "Tavva nama kim?"*): Old language, nowadays spoken only by few, sacred most notably to Hinduism, important to Asia where it's something akin to what Latin and old Greek is to Europe.
   - **[Toki Pona](toki_pona.md)** (*nimi sina li seme?*): New constructed language claiming to be highly [minimalist](minimalism.md), however also looks kind of [SJW](sjw.md).
   - **Turkish** ([aei], *İsmin ne?*): TODO
   - **Vietnamese** (~100 M native speakers, *Bạn tên gì?*): Typical Asian "meowing" sound, tonal (pitches distinguish meanings of words).
-  - **Yiddish** (*װי הײסטו, "Vi heystu?"*): TODO
+  - **Yiddish** (*װי הײסטו, "Vi heystu?"*): Language spoken by [Jews](jew.md), developed in Jewish diaspora, an interesting "Frankenstein monster" mix of German, Hebrew and other languages.
   - ...
   
 TODO: average word length, longest word, number of letters in alphabet, ...
@@ -116,6 +116,7 @@ Here are some tips for learning foreign languages:
   - **Watch movies with subtitles in the language you're learning.** Do NOT put on subtitles in your native language, that will just make you read them and not focus on the language you're learning. It may be cool to watch movies you already know and like in the foreign language dub, you will just know what's going on and you'll likely at least remember the memorable lines.
   - **Watch [memes](meme.md), videos etc.**
   - **Move to a country that speaks the language.** Obviously, works probably 100% of the times, but takes some dedication.
+  - **Passive "consumption" doesn't really work.** Like [Luke Smith](luke_smith.md) points out oh his website, you will probably learn next to nothing by just having audio playing in your room without actually paying any attention to it (just like you won't learn to program just by sharing a room with a programmer) -- it's good to have the language around, but to learn it one must concentrate and interact with it at least sometimes.
   - ...
 - **"Comprehensible input"** is a method promoted by many teachers nowadays, and it seems to be very effective. It basically says: "consume" as much "content" in the language as you can, i.e. watch videos, listen to music, watch TV etc., but you must understand it at least a bit -- this doesn't mean you must understand every word and every sentence, on the contrary if you do, you'll probably learn nothing, but you also mustn't be absolutely clueless about what's going on (so just don't go reading medieval poetry right away). The point is you seeing people talk about things and naturally deducing what words mean e.g. from their body language, AND getting the "feel" for the structures used in the language -- by listening to the language you build the intuiting for knowing when something "sounds wrong", even without knowing the exact rules, and this is how you learn the grammar without memorizing it.
 - **Create a steady habit, it's a long run, not a sprint.** It is ideal if you make it a habit to actively study the language EVERY SINGLE DAY, even if it just means watching one 10 minute video every day. You think it's a burden but you'll get into it quickly after a week or two and then it will be as natural as brushing your teeth. It is better to study 10 minutes every day than 70 minutes once a week -- spread the time evenly, this way you'll firstly put in more focus (fully focusing for 70 minutes is impossible, but completely doable for 10 minutes) and secondly you won't allow yourself to ever fall out of the language. Remember: you CANNOT learn a language in a week, not in a month, you need at least several years. If you dedicate 10, 15 minutes to the language every day for three years, it is IMPOSSIBLE you don't learn it at least at some intermediate level.
@@ -131,3 +132,7 @@ Here are some tips for learning foreign languages:
 - Especially if you're learning your first foreign language: be ready, make no assumptions about the new language based on your native language, different language may break all the rules of your language and importantly: different language is not just different words and grammar, it is also a **different [CULTURE](culture.md)**. Forget EVERYTHING you think you know and that you assume should hold, many words and sentences will be UNTRANSLATABLE. There will be many rules that make ZERO logical sense, for example a word may have different spelling in different contexts just because, or there will be many words for something that in your language only has one name, just don't ask why, it simply is so. The new language may for example have various politeness levels -- different ways of says "you" for instance, depending on whom you are addressing -- which will have no counterpart in English; there may be completely different tenses and cases, grammatical concepts you never heard of, words may have unclear translations or unexpected connotations, it may be uncommon to make [jokes](jokes.md) you're used to make (for example in [Czech](czech.md) it's not common to make [puns](pun.md) as much as in English), certain phrases will be used much more or much less frequently (e.g. in English it's pretty common to hear family members say "I love you" to one another, but this isn't common in many other languages), in some languages it's very common to greet strangers with many different phrases etc. Don't try to understand these differences logically, these are historical and cultural features which are sometimes untraceable leftovers from something that's already gone, you just have to learn it all by listening and using the language, you can't memorize it.
 - ...
 
+## See Also
+
+- [programming language](programming_language.md)
+- [lrs dictionary](lrs_dictionary.md)