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Posts by Urban Chicagoan

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This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

3 weeks ago 18354 6935 168 254
A cat wearing glasses and a decorated Christmas tree.

A cat wearing glasses and a decorated Christmas tree.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and very best wishes to everyone for the festive season.

🎨'Cat and Christmas Tree' - Inagaki Tomoo.

3 months ago 96 14 1 0
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AI slop is Macquarie’s 2025 Word of the Year. I applaud the choice – but was bored by the shortlist AI slop was the clear winner with honourable mentions including another AI-related word: clanker. But where are the colourful expressions of previous years?

Macquarie Dictionary has chosen AI slop as its Word of the Year.

Defined as “low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors & not requested by the user,” it captures a linguistic & technological shift we’ve been living through.

🔗 tinyurl.com/3uf7ps4j

🧵👇

#langsky

4 months ago 8 2 1 0
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The Costs of Instant Translation AI might soon rob us of the thrill and challenge of cross-cultural conversation.

AI increasing the dominance of English worldwide means greater cultural complacency for native (US) English speakers leading to "the assumption that their perspective is universal because they haven’t had to struggle to express themselves in someone else’s terms."
#langsky #translation

5 months ago 4 3 0 0

正解です🙂

5 months ago 1 0 1 0

¡Usted puede hacerlo!

6 months ago 2 0 0 0

Can confirm.

7 months ago 2 0 0 0
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Friday morning along the Chicago River
#Chicago #DowntownChicago #UrbanLandscape #PaisajeUrbano #都市景観

7 months ago 3 0 0 0
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"Freshly Kept Fade We Design" by Marcellous Lovelace: mural under the Metra tracks along 53rd Street in Hyde Park, Chicago. #Chicago #mural

7 months ago 3 0 0 0
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Vintage residential stone engraving in Lincoln Park, Chicago: "eyes on the street" #Chicago

7 months ago 4 0 0 0
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What if Gratitude Was Built Into the Grammar? Another Japanese marvel

What if Gratitude Was Built Into the Grammar?

aethermug.com/posts/what-i... #langsky #polyglot #100daylang

8 months ago 3 3 0 1

The book was indeed eventually delivered, but way later than the initial delivery estimate.

9 months ago 1 0 0 0

*fwiw

9 months ago 0 0 1 0

Fwtw I've had a similar issue on Amazon ordering a specialized linguistics title from a UK publisher, only this one has long been in print. ("Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to Interference and other Problems" by Cambridge University Press, 2001)

9 months ago 1 0 1 0
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What’s the Point of Learning a Language? For me, it’s always started with a feeling. A leap into somewhere unfamiliar. A desire not just to visit, but to understand. Not just to speak, but to connect. It’s never been about ticking boxes, …

I didn’t learn languages to get somewhere; I learned them to be somewhere. I’ve done it for the taxi rides, the balcony conversations, the glances of shared understanding. Not to perform, but to belong. To connect. That’s the real point. And it changes everything. albarolanguages.com/2025/06/21/w...

10 months ago 46 15 7 2

Yes. If nothing else, you could only advance by embracing the act of sounding like a blithering idiot. Repeatedly. For years. If this didn't cultivate within you a proper modicum of humility, I don't know how to help you, pal.

10 months ago 2 0 1 0

A practice that works for me is talking to myself in the language (out loud, though maybe softly depending on the environment). What am I doing right now, what's going on around me, how do I feel about all that. That way I'm keeping the brain working on it even when there's no conversation partner.

10 months ago 0 0 1 0
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Fluency is only one of the benefits of learning a language.

You learn how to learn. You deepen maturity, patience, & commitment.

You learn to navigate desire & despair, embarrassment & break through.

You learn pacing, structure & organization.

Probably humility, as well

#langsky

10 months ago 35 6 0 0

そうやで。

10 months ago 1 0 0 0

Spanish teacher friends are the best, always & ever 🙂

10 months ago 1 0 1 0
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SpanishDictionary.com SpanishDictionary.com is the world's largest online Spanish-English dictionary, translator, and reference tool.

I would suggest SpanishDictionary.com will probably be a good deal more helpful (or at least I find it so). In the case of "to think" for instance, on the one hand it presents even more alternatives, but it also has proper example sentences that provide a better sense of the nuance of each.

10 months ago 1 0 1 0

An overheard conversation on the train is a code breaking challenge.

11 months ago 1 0 1 0
speaking without an accent is as impossible as typing without a font

speaking without an accent is as impossible as typing without a font

#langsky

1 year ago 39 8 1 2
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"The best way to learn a language...is to live it! Study French and German abroad"
The El in Chicago on a chilly April morning
#Chicago #DowntownChicago #langsky #PublicTransit

1 year ago 3 0 0 0
Meme:
Tumblr user Wylfċen
A door blows open in your mind when you learn about the suffix -le, it explains so much. People used to add it to verbs to mean ‘more than once’ or continuously—so originally, to ramble is to ‘roam’ on, to jostle is to joust repeatedly, and to sparkle is to emit lots of sparks.

-le.
A frequentative suffix of verbs, indicating repetition or continuousness:
crack - crackle 
daze - dazzle 
draw ("to drag") - drawl 
game - gamble 
grope - grapple 
hand - handle 
nest - nestle 
nose - nuzzle 
prate ("to talk") - prattle 
scribe ("to write") - scribble 
sniff - sniffle 
wrest ("to twist") - wrestle

Meme: Tumblr user Wylfċen A door blows open in your mind when you learn about the suffix -le, it explains so much. People used to add it to verbs to mean ‘more than once’ or continuously—so originally, to ramble is to ‘roam’ on, to jostle is to joust repeatedly, and to sparkle is to emit lots of sparks. -le. A frequentative suffix of verbs, indicating repetition or continuousness: crack - crackle daze - dazzle draw ("to drag") - drawl game - gamble grope - grapple hand - handle nest - nestle nose - nuzzle prate ("to talk") - prattle scribe ("to write") - scribble sniff - sniffle wrest ("to twist") - wrestle

One of the (many, many) things I love about language is the creativity, the way a little tweak to a word can create a subtle change in meaning, or even a big one. Hopefully this won't leave you baffled or boggled, though it may cause cackling or possibly heckling!

#linguistics #langsky #xl8 🌐

1 year ago 48 14 2 0
A street scene at night, people walking and cherry blossoms.

A street scene at night, people walking and cherry blossoms.

'The Ginza on a Spring Night' - Kasamatsu Shiro, 1934.
#JapaneseArt #shinhanga

1 year ago 202 30 1 0
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The river at night
El río por la noche
夜の川
#chicago #UrbanLandscape #PaisajeUrbano #都市景観

1 year ago 2 0 0 0
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1 year ago 81 19 4 1
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Multilingual street signage in Seattle's Japantown area
#Seattle #langsky

1 year ago 12 1 0 0
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令和七年春季本尊御開帳のお知らせ - 真言宗 大本山・隨心院 春季特別御開帳期 間:令和7年3月1日(土)~3月31日(土)時 間:9:00~16:30拝観料:大人500円

【御開帳】
隨心院(京都市)
春季特別御開帳
本尊 如意輪観世音菩薩坐像(国重文)
2025年3月1日(土)~31日(月)
9:00~16:30
www.zuishinin.or.jp/2025/02/%E4%...

1 year ago 5 3 1 0