Hi, all. I'm (sadly) not a linguist and I have 0 exposure to academic circles of linguistics. However, I'm enthusiastic about learning, especially phonetics and etymology.

Recently I've stumbled across the YouTube channel of Dr Geoff Lindsey. He predominantly calls for a change in the way we represent phonemes in IPA, and his videos are compelling and well-argued. However, as with all YouTube content, it's done in a vacuum, with only references to and from his teacher and colleagues within the videos themselves.

So far, I'm convinced of the arguments he presents throughout his videos, but I'd be keen to hear what other academics or full-time students/scholars of linguistics think about them and whether there are any weaknesses (e.g. it appears to be centred around British English). I'm also curious how well-known and/or well-respected his views are, if only for my own peace of mind. That's not to say that one needs respect to be correct, but if they have a lot of support from peers then that's good to know.

I'm not looking to stir anything up, here, but I trust that my fellow Tildelings know that already. I'd love to see discussion if possible.

Many thanks in advance.

Edit: Here is one of the key videos in which he talks about the issues with some IPA symbols.

I would love to know of your experiences. I do speak multiple languages, but was lucky to learn them through immersion as a child.

I would be super interested to know how people learn languages (with a goal to speak them fluently) as an adult. What techniques worked? What techniques didn't? Do you have any funny stories (perhaps miscommunication anecdotes)? Was it worth it? Or your things generally in relation to language-learning!

A lot of people argue that we should try to protect "minority languages" and support "linguistic diversity", but I struggle to understand why having more languages is actually a good thing.

I would be very interested to hear about concrete benefits in the present to linguistic diversity.

Lots of random musings I had on this

A lot of people say things like "it helps you to think differently" which I have not really understood at all (I speak multiple languages, for context, some quite different), but my sample size is really just me in saying that. They also say things like "protect minority culture" which I think is quite harmful. For example my great-grandmother immigrated to an English-speaking country in the west from Africa (she was Indian-African), and she could not speak a word of English which put her at a massive disadvantage, but also gave other family members a lot more power in their relationship because they could all speak English. [Edit: I think there's a gender aspect where women are expected to maintain the traditional language and the burden is not put on men in the same way]. I get the whole assimilation versus integration, but I think there's a very strong case for trying to assimilate (into the dominant group).

I have yet to see a case arguing why it is better to have more languages (and thus necessarily less mutual comprehension and a more segregated world) rather than a single one (e.g. if everyone spoke English). My issue is not really with high-level philosophy about what would be better in an ideal world, but multilingualism as a practical concern. For example, Tildes does not really seem to 'believe' in multilingualism because it only allows English (which personally I think is better than if we had people arguing backwards and forwards in many different languages, but I am also a native English speaker so that might prejudice my perspective).

Most of the arguments about this that I see are from (usually) French speakers bemoaning the decline of their language (and it's kind of ironic to see France becoming a flag-bearer for linguistic diversity given that they exterminated a lot of languages to force French upon the world).

I grew up semi-bilingual (English as my native language, Spanish spoken at least once a day at home), and went on to study Spanish as my language of choice in middle and high school. Despite this, I would still like to further my Spanish language skills/knowledge with some self-paced coursework, as the Spanish I grew up hearing in the house was much more colloquial and then the Spanish I studied in school was the "from Spain" Spanish, rather than the Central American Spanish my family spoke. I grew up being better able to understand more than what I could speak or write myself.

When I moved onto to college, I wanted to try studying a different language, so I chose French (bad idea; I could never really get the hang of it between the spelling challenges and the pronunciation being so different from the written word). I took one semester and passed just enough to get credit for the class but moved onto to German -- which was a little bit easier than French but more difficult than Spanish. Beginner classes in it were easy for me to learn, but I started to struggle when I got to upper-intermediate. Plus, I'm not always great at spelling in English, and French and German are not "speller-friendly" languages haha.

Now as I approach my midlife, I am thoroughly enjoying my ASL for Beginners course through my local community college. I find it incredibly intuitive whenever I learn new signs ("oh, that makes sense, cool" when I see a new sign). My mother-in-law has known and taught ASL (as well as SEE) for over 20 years so she is very helpful with me practicing and being able to correct any small mistakes I make. I don't know anyone who is Deaf, but have had a few friends growing up who used hearing aids (I don't think they knew ASL).

So what about you? Are you currently learning a new language? If so, what is it, how do you like it so far, and what led you to want to learn it? If not, are there any languages on your wishlist that you'd like to learn someday?

For me, I wanted to learn ASL as a way to connect more deeply with my MIL in our relationship, as well as have some level of ability to sign with those who are Deaf/deaf. I also wanted to learn it because I wanted an alternative way to communicate with my spouse if we are at a noisy event/party/etc. without having to shout to be heard.

The New Yorker has a provocative article asking the question "Can We Talk To Whales?" It boils down to utilizing language learning models to process a dataset of sperm whale clicks, their codas, and crossing one's fingers to see if "ClickGPT" can produce actual sperm whale language.

Which makes me wonder if a language learning model been given a library of Chinese sounds and ideograms, without context, then communicated in workable Chinese?

Using a language learning model to learn to speak to whales is an interesting idea, but I'm thinking any LLM assigned the task will wind up chunking out a word salad or something akin to Prisencolinensinainciusol. I'd like to learn more.

Hello! Привіт! Pryvit!

I started learning Ukrainian on Duolingo in February 2022 following Russia's attacks. It was my first time attempting to learn a language for 10+ years and it just clicked. I grew to love the language, became entranced with the culture, and had desires to keep learning. Prior to Duolingo's redesign, I had a year+ streak and made it fairly far in the course.

The redesign has absolutely killed that passion. Maybe it's just the Ukrainian course, but it felt like I was going in circles and not really progressing as I once had. I've shelved my learning for a few months, but I really desire an alternative to Duolingo. Unfortunately, there's not many options that offer Ukrainian and I want to ensure I am learning the language as intended. I've read into how Russian influences have attempted to modify the language and I desire to learn the form that Ukrainian's would use.

I'm not quite at a level to learn from books or more static resources, and would prefer the interactivity of an app to help get me to that comfort level again. I've tried Pimsleur and wasn't as much of a fan of their format that reminded me of language tapes. One of the things I enjoyed with Duolingo was the verbal parts of it that helped with my pronunciation, and Pimsleur didn't appear to offer that.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated! I have seen old posts referring to a SubStack and other resources, but at this time I need a refresher before I feel comfortable diving into those. I would love to incorporate learning a little bit of Ukrainian everyday again! Слава Україні!

First I thought to myself, "I seem to use too many commas." Now I'm no writer, but I've noticed that professional writers (and editors) clearly use less commas than I do.

For example, here's a sentence in a book that I'm reading: “As the victim was usually unconscious it was obvious they were totally reliant upon third parties and whatever action they took would determine their fate.”

I thought it was interesting, because I would've put a comma after "unconscious" and a comma before "and."

So, I found this helpful resource on grammar rules: https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp. 4a and 5b in particular were situations where I learned I could get rid of commas.

Still however, in the example sentence above, you'd think to put a comma before the "and" to separate the two clauses. I haven't found an explanation for omitting it, other than some writers are grammatically correct in a stricter sense, and others use commas more stylistically.

Is the use of commas more of an art, if you will, than I thought? How do you use commas personally?

Interested to read others' opinions!

So,this has been on my mind for a long time and i have tried some available/widely known methods to learn japanese language.So far iam not satisfied with my results.Can someone suggest me some ways that worked for them preferably for free/cheap.The main problem is the letters or characters.i can comprehend and manage to speak a very basic levels of the language mainly from consuming media from japan,some duolingo and such.....
any and all advice is appreciated
Help me out guys

I committed an embarrassing gaffe today. I had ordered a keyboard online from a store from the Tyneside of north-eastern England: an area with a regional accent and dialect often referred to as ‘Geordie’. I habitually speak in a ‘home counties’ accent, which is sometimes regarded as a contemporary variety of received pronunciation (RP), though it sounds quite different to historical and conservative varieties of that accent. A salesman called me earlier to inform me that the keyboard I wanted was out of stock, but that they would be happy to refund me if I didn’t want to wait for new inventory. Seemingly between the accent difference and the poor audio quality inherent to phone calls I misinterpreted ‘keyboard’ as ‘cable’, insisting with increasing urgency that I have USB-C cables in plenty and that they needn’t worry about supplying one with the order. We both went about in circles for a few minutes until it dawned on me what I was doing, at which point intense embarrassment flushed over me. Oops!

Accent diversity in Britain is rich and regional. It's not hard to place where someone grew up based on their accent. Would you consider your country to be diverse in accents? Even so, are there instances of accent discrimination?