(Part 3) Best language & grammar books according to redditors
We found 3,592 Reddit comments discussing the best language & grammar books. We ranked the 1,452 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 41-60. You can also go back to the previous section.
I wrote a quick script to search the full text of HPMOR and return everything italicized and in title case, which I think got most of the books mentioned in the text:
Book title|Author|Mentioned in chapter(s)|Links|Notes
:---|:---|:---|:---|:---
Encyclopaedia Britannica| |7|Wikipedia|Encyclopaedia
Financial Times| |7|Wikipedia|Newspaper
The Feynman Lectures on Physics|Richard P. Feynman|8|Wikipedia|Full text is available online here
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases|Amos Tversky|8|Amazon|
Language in Thought and Action|S.I. Hayakawa|8|Amazon Wikipedia |
Influence: Science and Practice|Robert B. Cialdini|8|Wikipedia|Textbook. See also Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making|Reid Hastie and Robyn Dawes|8|Amazon |Textbook
Godel, Escher, Bach|Douglas Hofstadter|8, 22|Amazon Wikipedia|
A Step Farther Out|Jerry Pournelle|8|Amazon|
The Lord of the Rings|J.R.R. Tolkien|17|Wikipedia|
Atlas Shrugged|Ayn Rand|20, 98|Wikipedia|
Chimpanzee Politics|Frans de Waal|24|Amazon|
Thinking Physics: Understandable Practical Reality|Lewis Carroll Epstein|35, 102|Amazon|
Second Foundation|Isaac Asimov|86|Wikipedia|Third novel in the Foundation Series
Childcraft: A Guide For Parents| |91|Amazon|Not useful if your child has a mysterious dark side
Also, this probably isn't technically what the OP was asking, but since the script returned fictional titles along with real ones, I went ahead and included them too:
Book title|Mentioned in chapter(s)
:---|:---
The Quibbler|6, 27, 38, 63, 72, 86
Hogwarts: A History|8, 73, 79
Modern Magical History|8
Magical Theory|16
Intermediate Potion Making|17
Occlumency: The Hidden Arte|21
Daily Prophet|22, 25, 26, 27, 35, 38, 53, 69, 77, 84, 86, 108
Magical Mnemonics|29
The Skeptical Wizard|29
Vegetable Cunning|48
Beauxbatons: A History|63
Moste Potente Potions|78
Toronto Magical Tribune|86
New Zealand Spellcrafter's Diurnal Notice|86
American Mage|86
As others mentioned, TVTropes has a virtually-exhaustive list of allusions to other works, which includes books that aren't explicitly named in the text, like Ender's Game
>When a legal distinction is determined ... between night and day, childhood and maturity, or any other extremes, a point has to be fixed or a line has to be drawn, or gradually picked out by successive decisions, to mark where the change takes place. Looked at by itself without regard to the necessity behind it, the line or point seems arbitrary. It might as well be a little more to one side or the other. But when it is seen that a line or point there must be, and that there is no mathematical or logical way of fixing it precisely, the decision of the legislature must be accepted unless we can say that it is wide of any reasonable mark.
–Oliver Wendell Holmes, quoted from here
I believe that gives some perspective on this situation. Yes, there may be an apparent contradiction with the law. However, because a written rule can't precisely cover all possible situations in the world, our legal system may use discretion when applying rules to specific events.
In that way, you may see that the contradiction isn't as blatant, but rather an exposure of the way our system works.
The thorn is for the unvoiced "th" while the eth is for the voiced "th". The way to tell the difference is to say the words "thin" and "then": the only difference between the two words is whether the "th" is voiced or not. Place your fingers on your voice box and say the two words, and you'll notice that with "then" the voice box vibrates with the "th" - that's an eth; with "thin" there is no vibration - that is the unvoiced thorn.
Edit: My source is my language mentor's user-friendly Old English Grammar: Robert E. Diamond (1920-1985), Old English Grammar and Reader (1970). The difference in use between the thorn and eth in Anglo-Saxon and in Old Norse was strictly determined by the sound of the "th"; they were not interchangeable.
edit, amazon explained it better than I did kind of
Well....shit. Never knew that the random book on linguistics I was reading would actually come in handy on reddit some day.
I'm reading a book called "Through the Language Glass" that attempts at forming an argument for the underdog theories in linguistics. I don't remember the premise of the chapter, but there was a section that used Literature to prove that human beings evolved the ability to distinguish colors differently only in the past thousands of years.
It started off by analyzing Homer's poems, and noting he described the sea as "wine colored" as well as the sky. There was also no mention of green throughout his work and only used Reds, Blacks, and Whites to describe colors of things that really weren't the same color at all. Thus one could conclude that maybe Homer himself was colorblind.
But then the author takes it further. He looks at literature over the course of time in several different parts of the world, and they all seem to distinguish colors at different times in their literature. There is no word for certain colors up until a certain point.
The thing is, the way we slice up the visible spectrum is not the way others slice it up. They point out one culture that uses the same word for both Blue and Green. Strange huh ? But consider this. Think of "Sky Blue" and "Navy Blue" - they are both shades of the same color to us. But there was another culture that saw these two as two distinctly different colors and did not consider them to be different shades of the same color. Likewise, the culture that saw both "Blue" and "Green" as the same color saw Blue and Green as being different shades of the same color.
Basically, the pattern that was distinguished by the linguist after looking at works of literature over time was that Black and White were the first colors to be distinguished. Then Red and Green or Yellow. Blue was the last one to be distinguished, and other colors like Orange and Purple didn't come until later.
One reasoning behind this could be that over time our eyes evolved to see different colors of the spectrum, or see the contrast better. So back then, we could not differentiate as well between all the different colors we can differentiate between today.
Another theory, however, is that people did not have uses for particular colors until they learned how to produce dyes. Once dyes were invented and we could pick out the color of what we were making, our language began to adapt to that change and we had to come up with a color for new things that once did not need to be distinguished.
So I believe in both theories. It is interesting to believe that there is the possibility that people thousands of years ago could not distinguish the color of the Sky or the Sea from the color of Wine, which maybe appeared to them as very Dark Red. It is also possible that our ability to distinguish contrast improved over time. Imagine a dark room, can you tell if things are different colors as easily? No. So it is a possibility that people long ago could see all the colors in a dimmer light which made them appear less vibrant.
It is also interesting to consider that people did not necessarily care if something was Red or Orange or Yellow because these colors did not have any practical use to them as separate entities. So back in hunter-gatherer times, we did not need to "pay attention" to the colors of things so we did not register them as separate colors and were able to lump them together under one color category umbrella.
TL;DR Two possible reasons exists for this question, one being that we did evolve over time the ability to distinguish different colors, as evidenced by literature's lack of words for certain colors for extended periods of time until the words were invented. Or the other explanation is that we were always able to distinguish the entire spectrum, but the need to have words for different colors did not arrive until we had a need to distinguish different colors as separate. Either way there is no way of knowing for sure what people thousands of years ago saw, but there is a possibility their world looked nothing to them like ours does to us.
Well, I'm here later rather than sooner. I'll look to see if I have anything to add.
I don't like Andrew Cohen at all, nor Genpo Roshi, nor Marc Gafni, and these are some of the people Wilber associates with. I won't apologize for that, and have no idea why he does.
However, I've read about 5 of his numerous works completely (and read parts of at least 5 others), as well as his opus Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality. He shortened that for A Brief History of Everything, which is sufficient. These, and/or other books by Wilber are available at many public libraries.
Some argue that the "Integral" programs are expensive. Yes, they are. I've never spent any money on them. They don't attract me. I think one can study something, say Buddhism, without becoming monastic or getting a PhD in it.
Integral explained in a nutshell:
I've found that the Integral direction balances Buddhism very well. Although it is hard to describe simply, there are 4 quadrants to consider for life: inner self (I), relationships (we), science (it), and culture (its). Buddhism is excellent on the inner self, the I. However, it's not so helpful in the other quadrants, particularly relationships.
And, if we are really deficient in one of these areas, we really can't progress in the others. If I can't get along with authority, I'll never listen to wise teachers. That relationship issue could limit my ability to learn to meditate. Or, if I were to believe some fundamentalist perspective that my culture espouses (say a Jehova's Witness), I may not pursue modern medicine for proper health. This is limiting.
If one is interested, reading A Brief History of Everything (linked above) is helpful, but an even better place to start is One Taste. The Simple Feeling of Being is worthwhile. The CD set Kosmic Consciousness is quite good. Stay away from Integral Spirituality as well as Integral Psychology. I thought they were not well edited or put together.
If it is of interest, read it. If not, don't.
Thanks for the link!
Edit: formatting
Lots of experience.
First, here are four books I recommend related to this (in rough order of practical to theoretical):
Book Love
Readicide
In The Middle
Free Voluntary Reading
Second, if ALL you did was make sure they read books and developed a love for them, it would be good.
The best way to "keep them accountable" imo is to conference with them semi-regularly to talk about the book they are reading. Something else I do is go around and write the page number they are on. This can give you data on reading rate over time. It also helps to know who is reading and who is faking.
Now, your student population will affect how/when/if you do this. But, I imagine it will be helpful for about 90% of high school populations. Maybe 100. (Free Voluntary Reading backs this up with many many studies)
It can be a struggle, but if you make it part of your culture, you will get buy-in. Consider that I work at an alternative high school with "difficult students". One of my most resistant readers this year ("I ain't reading books. I hate reading..") Has finished like 6-10 books in half a year. She probably hasn't read that many in her last 3-5 years of school combined.
One important key is getting good books.
The most common argument against high school SSR is "I don't have time to that with all the content I have to cover." Depending on how nice I was feeling, I would say, "You don't have time not to." Otherwise, I might say, "Quit wasting student time with so much 'content'. "
A degree is only as useful as you make it after you've attained it.
I could have gotten an MFA (I was offered a free spot in my grad school's program—long story) but chose not to because, frankly, I didn't feel that I needed it.
Don't get me wrong: an MFA can be invaluable. But imo (I can't stress that enough, this is all through my own lens), it's mostly the experience and the ease-of-access to useful tools that makes it worthwhile; not necessarily the degree itself. In other words, the journey to the degree is what gives it value (which I suppose could be said of any degree you earn, but I digress).
When you go for an MFA, you get (most obviously) incredible amounts of workshopping and feedback on your pieces; this is pretty essential to a growing writer. You absorb a lot of information regarding craft and nuance—all things that you could surely find on your own, but are consolidated and streamlined nicely for you in a program geared towards creative writing.
By extension, you also get immediate, intimate, and prolonged access to successful and published writers (instructors, guest writers, temp/visiting writers, etc.), whose brains you can pick quite freely.
And lastly (probably the "most" important thing for aspiring writers), you're given a 'better' platform from which to get published. You'll have all these connections that you can work, and they'll do what they can to help you get in (all the while improving your writing in a sustainable environment).
So, what are some important things an MFA gives you?
Now here's the thing: all four of these things are attainable without an MFA. It'll take more effort on your part, but it's doable.
You can workshop—either on your own, or as part of a community (like this sub). This also opens the door to networking, both with the people who critique your work and with those whose work you critique.
You can make your own schedule—a little harder for those who tend to procrastinate or find it difficult to self-motivate, but it can be done. Buy some books on creative writing (Portable MFA; GWW on Fiction, etc.; I'm assuming you're interested in fiction rather than nonfiction/memoir or poetry), set a schedule for yourself (maybe M/W/F or something). Make your own lesson plan, do the exercises.
If possible, try to find a friend or two to do it with you (even if they're not great writers or really interested in it,
but rather just want to support you)—it's always better with other people. Write on the days in between and the time before and after the lessons.
Sure, you might not have such easy access to people in the industry without going to an MFA program, but at the end of the day, it's more often than not the quality of your writing and the execution of your ideas that will get you places. There are lots of self-published authors on this sub alone. How many of them have MFAs? I couldn't guess, but I can guarantee not all of them have one; they were just determined and diligent. They put in the time and work, maybe got an agent.
Pursuing an MFA is great because it gives you constant exposure to creative writing in what is usually a conducive environment: you cannot afford to put things off or to have writer's block; even if you're at a loss, you have to write.
The problem with doing this solo (i.e. not in an MFA), especially if you have motivation issues, is that creative writing can be an endless time-sink. If you have writer's block and you just think, "Ah, I have no idea where to go with this, I'll just come back later," you can just go off and do something else: play video games, watch TV, see a movie, see friends... or maybe you're just a bad procrastinator. It just becomes an endless loop of minimal productivity.
If you don't get much writing done in an MFA, you will get your ass handed to you. And you might be one of those people who can get by on procrastination, but in a CW program, it's very easy to see who is procrastinating... so your work will likely be sub-par and your ass will get handed to you anyways. Your instructors won't mince words, they will tell you straight up what's bad about your work.
At an MFA, you must produce. At home, doing this alone, you can have days where you only write one page, days where you write 10, and nothing bad will come of it.
When I was getting my MA in English, I had a friend who was in the MFA program (while I was still deciding if I wanted to enroll in it after I got my masters) and he kept talking to me almost daily about his deadlines. He'd have to have a brand new short done by the next week; or 50+ new pages for his novel-in-progress by the week after; the entire novel draft by midterm break; the draft revised by the end of semester; all of this while writing other shorts, workshopping other people's stuff, teaching at the local high school, etc.
My brother-in-law was an Army Ranger and talks about basic training and Ranger school, and when the instructors would make them run or do crazy amounts of push-ups/pull-ups, they'd refer to it as "getting smoked."
Well, in an MFA, your ass will get smoked. You're going to have to write a lot. When there's a deadline to meet and something on the line (your reputation, your grade, etc.), you'll find your motivation fast, even if you have to make it up; this isn't necessarily the case when you're your own boss.
Like I said earlier, I was offered a guaranteed spot in my school's MFA program. I eventually declined, because, essentially, I'm very confident in my prose. The head of the CW department was essentially begging me to join, and I knew that if he thought my writing was that good, I didn't actually need the MFA (although I'd be lying if I said I didn't want one).
Worst-case scenario, if you get your MFA (and even while pursuing it) and everything else falls through, you can get some teaching opportunities at local high schools and temp jobs at colleges. When you get your MFA (since it's a terminal degree), you can teach full-time at the college/university level which does have its perks. But teaching isn't for everyone (:
So, TL;DR: if you're a very motivated person, you don't really need an MFA. If you need a kick in the ass, an MFA may be very helpful (and you'll get some very helpful things along the way).
Also: money. It sucks, but it's also a factor.
Hope this was helpful. Good luck!
~b
Here's what I'd say are the three best ways to learn the language.
I'll add my two cents since this is something I've put some thought into, and will point to some other works you can check out.
I'll go a step beyond McCarthy here by saying I'm a fan of Zapffe's idea that self-awareness might be a mistake, a evolutionary trap:
>Such a ‘feeling of cosmic panic’ is pivotal to every human mind. Indeed, the race appears destined to perish in so far as any effective preservation and continuation of life is ruled out when all of the individual’s attention and energy goes to endure, or relay, the catastrophic high tension within.
>The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by overevolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment.
>In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.
I am very interested in the historical cases of feral children, and the reports of the attempts to re-integrate them after years away from other people. It seems there is a age past which the mind loses a certain plasticity of infancy and learning speech is no longer possible. Though of course the cases are rare and the reports often hobbled by the perceptions of their time, it is also of great interest to me that these children appear to stay at about the same general level of intelligence as the animals that raised them for the rest of their lives (if they were rescued after a certain developmental period). I wonder about the relationship between language and self-awareness and to what degree they depend upon each other. You could learn so much with just a handful of EXTREMELY UNETHICAL experiments.
Other fun notes:
Peter Watt's Blindsight is a recent sci-fi novel with aliens who work entirely "subconsciously" (without self-awareness) and are able to be much more efficient as a result.
People who speak languages with more colors are able to distingush more colors
There is a ton of interesting work out there that has been done about the ways that limited language can lead to limited thought, if you're interested.
I also recommend The Spell Of The Sensuous if this is interesting to you. One of my favorite books. Hopefully we can get to it in the book club some day.
I appreciate your thoughtful comment. I think some of your generalizations about the families I serve are dangerous, though; they're the kind of generalizations I've seen used by teachers and administrators to avoid pushing my kids the way they need to be pushed, and they're the kind of generalizations that people use to justify abandoning these schools and families when it comes time to vote on education policy and spending. A lot of my kids come from two parent homes, a lot who don't have wonderful grandparents, aunts and uncles doing their best to make sure these children have what they need. A lot of my kids have parents and siblings in their homelands; they are here with me because their parents believe that splitting up the family and sending the kid to a Title I school in America is STILL the best thing they can do to give their kids a chance at a better life (and in most cases I tend to agree with them). I taught between 70-80 kids last year and I didn't meet a single parent who I thought was a deadbeat or was doing anything less than their best for their kids under often grueling circumstances. Many of them were marginalized and neglected by their teachers and administrators when they were students and have a hard time trusting educators, and they certainly are at a disadvantage when it comes to navigating the bureaucratic nightmare that public education can be-- especially if English isn't their first language. There are so, so many reasons my students are behind (and truly, I have many students who meet and exceed grade level-- more than people usually assume), a different reason for each kid, and there are so many shitty, negative messages in our culture about who they are and what they are capable of that they really do internalize-- and little to none of that has to do with bad parenting.
That said, thank you for the resources. I think you're spot on about classic drama being a good entry point, I plan on doing Antigone with my kids this year (R+J being a 9th grade text and Macbeth usually reserved for seniors, though I loves me some Shakespeare). And a lot of these modern or urban interpretations can serve as wonderful "hooks" to get kids to be receptive to the classics. I think the problem is when teachers are unable to go beyond what the kids immediately relate to ("oh that dude is rapping. I like rap.") and bring them closer into the text and its original context, as well as how it speaks to our contemporary issues. The truth is that kids at affluent schools like Myers Park aren't being taught Shakespeare in a way that is "easy to relate to" and that in college their professors won't be teaching it to them that way either, the expectation of those students is that they rise to meet the text and the teacher should be giving them a boost. I definitely want to use every resource available to maximize my students' initial interest in the text, but I also want to make sure I am holding my kids to the highest academic expectations possible (which includes habits and mindsets) because that is what is really going to open doors for them after high school.
All of which is kind of aside from the point that all kids need book-rich environments; they need to be surrounded by books that represent lots of interests and skills levels and need to be given time to spend with them freely. This is happening less even in affluent public schools, as the standardized test push makes independent reading seem frivolous and time wasting to administrators and as technology becomes accepted as the cure-all for our education ills. An excellent book about this problem is "Readicide" by Kelly Gallagher (http://www.amazon.com/Readicide-Schools-Killing-Reading-About/dp/1571107800) if you're interested. It has definitely helped me refine what I want to do with my kids this year.
I have this one. Don't really recommend it...Just use grammar textbook vocab instead
https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Chomsky-New-Press/dp/1595581898
No, but funnily enough you're the second person to ask that.
It's from here.
edit: Just realised you're both people.
You might want to check out English Grammar for Students of Latin to brush up on your grammar.
I originally heard about it on RadioLab:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/segments/211213-sky-isnt-blue
They link this book as their source:
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/080508195X/radiolabbooks-20/
As to "westerners view sex the way saudis do"... I mean, we have, historically? For purposes of this conversation, I'm defining the "Saudi view of sex" to mean "women are the property of their closest male relative, and have minimal choice in spouse. Women are sequestered from public life."
Into the early 20th century, public toilets for women were not really A Thing, because women were expected to stay in the home: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_toilet#Social_hierarchies_(access_for_women)
Into the 20th century, it was considered inappropriate for a reputable woman to be out and about without a male escort (or older woman). Women belonged in the home, and their society was focused in the home; they did not have a role in public life. In my grandmother's professional career, she was forced out of her job when she was married, because there was the expectation that married women belonged at home; they shouldn't be out of the house working.
Among rich folks, again into the early 20th century, there was the whole idea of a girl being "out", which signaled they were available on the marriage market, and men could make offers for their hand in marriage. The idea of a daughter as a piece of property to be sold to uphold alliances or strengthen bonds between families has absolutely been part of western culture.
Up until the late 20th century, marital rape was still legal in some US states, because "a husband can't rape his wife, he's entitled to sex from her",which is treating the wife as property.
In my own mother's adult lifetime, married women couldn't open bank accounts or have credit cards because they were seen as just an extension/property of men.
That's kind of drifting from the idea of sex, but it's the ingrained idea that women are property, not people, and thus objects to be acted upon.
And while many of those things I cited above were 100 years ago, that doesn't mean we have cultural amnesia and the values of prior generations have no effect on us.
In the modern day, "Purity Culture" is going strong. You have the trope of the Dad with a shotgun or rifle, scaring off his daughter's suitors. Or purity balls, in which teen women make pledges of virginity-until-marriage, often to their father. Again, it casts women as property, and men as the owners of women's sexuality.
Toki Pona is a very simple constructed language with a small vocabulary, and the creator even has instructions for a pictographic writing system and a sign language if you REALLY want to be secretive.
For funsies, here's a translation of the Sermon on the Mount in Toki Pona, that also shows a literal translation back into English to give you an idea of how a "simple" language works to communicate with a small pool of words.
I took 3 years of Japanese in high school (I went to a 3-year high school), and although we learned vocabulary and our teacher (a 72 year-old Japanese man) told us a lot of great stories about Japan, when I got to college and started learning real Japanese, I found that I'd learned essentially nothing in high school. I had a fantastic teacher in college who was great at explaining the nuances of the language in a way easy for English speakers to understand. The most important thing to remember when learning Japanese is that it is not like English at all. Most early learners (even those with several years of experience) will try to translate from English literally into Japanese. This will almost never work. Even for fairly simple constructions like 私の名前は"name"です, you will learn that this is not the best way to say such things in Japanese.
But even with a great teacher in college, you still need a lot of personal time working on the language if you hope to achieve more than textbook understanding. I didn't discover r/LearnJapanese until after college, but this would've been a prime resource to have. Also, in case your professor hasn't made you do so already, there's a few books you should pick up to help your learning.
Makino's three book series on Japanese grammar is exceptionally helpful for understanding constructions in Japanese (like your ～ほうがいい and ～んです). A good Japanese/English reference dictionary, like Sanseido is also very helpful, but should not be your primary resource for learning the language. These books are good when you can't think of a single word (especially from the English-to-Japanese side). Also, when you get proficient enough in the language, a Kokugo Jiten (a dictionary written in Japanese, with definitions for Japanese speakers) will become your best tool. There are some companies which make good ones, like the aforementioned Sanseido, as well as the version I use, published by Shinmeikai, but I can't find one readily available online for purchase right now.
Most definitely! I'm a Hebrew speaker, and this happens all the time. Also, in Guy Deuthscher's book Through the Language Glass he gives a nice example of a poem by Heine where this comes through. Look at the original poem, alongside several translations. The German song hinges on the fact that "pine" is a masculine noun, while "palm" is feminine, and the English translations choose various ways to accommodate this. In Deutscher's book (I read the Hebrew version of it) there's also a Hebrew translation of the poem, using Hebrew's gendered nouns in a way analogous to that of the original.
Google Evelyn Wood. Top subvocal ~250-400 wpm, then you are getting into more linear reading. It takes a good bit of practice, but 1100 is doable by just about anyone and 2-3k is not uncommon.
That is the book I used back in the day.
http://www.amazon.com/Evelyn-Seven-Day-Reading-Learning-Program/dp/1566194024
What's your level at? I recommend the Dictionary of [Beginner | Intermediate | Advanced] Japanese Grammar, which my program uses as a supplement for material taught in class. It was originally written back in 1995, but it is packed with explanations and examples for a wide variety of grammar structures.
A Brief History of Everything is something that really opened my eyes
This memrise course is good because it has audio: https://www.memrise.com/course/352694/speak-toki-pona-with-audio/
but one with just all the words and definitions from the dictionary would also work.
I don’t think the vocab will really take a whole week, but it depends on your pace.
For the grammar, if you can get the book you should.
If you can’t, the second best right now is probably jan Pije’s lessons, although there are just a few things about his use that are a bit outdated.
And joining a toki pona chat group like on Telegram or Discord will further help with practicing using the language.
First, I would check to see if the language requirements are for entering the program or if they are for achieving candidacy. I know it varies widely by program, but if it is a candidacy requirement (or even maybe a requirement to be fulfilled by the end of the first year), the program you enroll in might have a path to achieving proficiency that doesn't require remedial language courses or self-instruction.
That being said, I am doing this right now. I would recommend a healthy dose of Duolinguo, but also some French for reading books. Karl Sandberg's French for Reading is an excellent resource that is aimed at the academic. Additionally, I have heard that Jacqueline Morton's English for Students of French is great, too. I have also picked up a few side-by-side French/English novels to practice on. After about a month of this (maybe 3-5 hours a week), I am already feeling like I could struggle bus my way through the exam if I could beg another half hour out of the proctor.
There are some informal extension courses offered by some universities for rather cheap, as well. Just googling "French reading summer online" or something like that makes a bunch of them pop up.
Lastly, in the next few weeks I am going to be rounding up some music theory/musicology articles in French that have English translations (or perhaps the reverse) so that I can practice. PM me if you want me to send them to you when I get them.
I hate to say it, but maybe you should invest some more time in reading. You will learn something about story structure from examples.
As for grammar and punctuation, there are certainly resources for that. You might also want to read this, the ebook is free.
If you can write humor, that's actually a better start than some people who have come here asking, basically, "what's funny?" That's pretty much impossible to teach, I think.
Read, Write, Think for your immediate needs (pre-made lesson plans and activities)
Some reading for later:
The English Teacher's Companion and Jim Burke's Website
Readicide and Kelly Gallagher's website
Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling and Emily Kissner's blog
I Read It, But I Don't Get It and Chris Tovani's website
I have more, I just can't find them right now. Hope these are what you're looking for.
http://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/
Japanese has nothing to do with German, though maybe how in German you can string together nouns to make bigger nouns is somewhat how complex nouns are created from simpler components.
Here's a simple Japanese sentence:
これはペンです。
kore-wa PEN desu.
'kore' means "this". 'sore' means "that (near you)" and 'are' means "that (over there)". So you can see how systematic Japanese tends to be.
The は (pronounced 'wa' due to historical reasons) is the sentence topic marker. Japanese has many grammatical markers (for direct objects, indirect objects, and prepositions) and that's what makes the language a LOT easier to learn (and read) than any other. Again, systematic.
PEN is the loanword 'pen', spelled in the katakana script ('ペン'). The great thing about Japanese is that if you don't know a word, you can try the simplified English word and your listener might understand.
Japanese does have a couple of loan words from German, the foremost being http://www.japanese123.com/arubaito.htm
です ('dess', the Japanese tend to drop the trailing 'u' sound on these words) is the copula of assertion.
This-topic pen is.
To say this is not a pen:
これはペンではありません。
ではありません ('de-wa arimasen') is the formal negation of です。
ありません is the negative present inflection of ある (aru), to be. Verbs are very, very regular in Japan and if you peruse a language site you'll see how they are inflected.
>Do you have any books to recommend too maybe?
Books are kinda expensive but I like:
http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546
http://www.amazon.com/A-Dictionary-Intermediate-Japanese-Grammar/dp/B001PS7NL0
as grammar references.
For more info about Toki Pona sound structure you can see the wikipedia page here - (though it does't make clear what's explicitly disallowed by the Toki Pona book and what tends to not happen), or chapter 9 of the official Toki Pona book itself, or the tokiponization guide by jan Sonja (there's a lot of other info there as well).
edit: Oh geeze, posts with embedded images really are awful on old reddit. I'll never do one of those again!
English Grammar for Students of Latin
Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, complete course. Stephen King recommends this in his On Writing. This is the one I have been self-teaching from. It has served me well.
Haha you are echoing my own thoughts and worldview that began with reading the PEAR, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
experiments, onto Ayahuasca experiences, animism and shamanism and realising archetypes are an actual thing, then hefty doses of Jung, and the books of David Abram (Spell of the Sensous especially).
https://www.amazon.com/Spell-Sensuous-Perception-Language-More-Than-Human/dp/0679776397
Then on to the occult driven by this pondering over the role of language in shaping reality and the seeming power of words, symbols, sounds to alter... your perception of reality? Except sometimes they alter objective reality, and the psychological model of Spirits was shattered conclusively for me one night suddenly throwing a whole ecosystem of beings into the mix.
And now I am back where I started, pondering the role of the world of symbols, archetypes and spirits and hidden forces and the implications for, as the guys at Princeton named it, anomolous engineering.
This is the missing key. What humanity and science lacks in order to bring forth, as you say, the Golden Age, is what we today call the occult. It's like mainstream civilization is missing half the picture.
That means we need to apply science to the occult, and the occult to science. We already know that a experiment is affected by the experimenters expectations. We know that the cat is in limbo till the box is opened. We know the placebo effect is better then pretty much every drug at healing. We know that random number generators are affected by crowds. And statistics tell us weather is not behaving like normal on holidays. The mountain of evidence is tall enough and has been for decades.
Now we need theorists, both scientists and occultists to come up with the why, and a new class of engineers to figure out the how and the applications thereof.
As to the spirits, and their nature? Some might be natural universal forces, spontaneously birthed by every complex system you could think of, from stars to planets to animals to plants, to that bend in the brook with a rock that creates a bit of turbulence.
Some might be man made or indeed, once men and women. Some might be current or long dead terrestrials and extraterrestrials, some might be AI's the size of planets built by long gone aliens, some might be interdimensional visitors from each category above. There be multitudes.
As far as I am concerned the first non human contact happened tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago and is ongoing every day all around the world. The norm throughout human history was probably much more contact then we have today. That might be a problem.
尾 is short for 語尾 which means something "end (tail) of a word", so in this case it works as something like a "compound verb", altering the meaning of the preceding verb.
The Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar has a good, albeit very incomplete, write-up on the most common compound verbs in its Appendix 2, so if you own this book you may want to look into it.
> The Vmasu to which another verb is affixed acquires additional meaning such as 'to start to do s.t.', 'to finish doing s.t.' 'to continue to do s.t.' etc.
It uses 'affixed' because you might also come across a 頭 which means the modifying word comes in front of other words.
Unfortunately I can't really name other sources, my teacher wrote her master thesis on compound verbs but it's only available in German.
As for the reverse triangle, I'm not sure, but I think SDream has nailed it, at least in your case these should be examples.
As for the ~watasu you looked up, as a 語尾 it means doing something.. thoroughly? I'm not really sure, but I think if you 見渡す a document you look over the whole thing, etc.
I'd say since you already started AJATT: keep on doing it!
Though I can't tell if you actually found AJATT or MIA (Mass Immersion Approach), because the latter was created by a YouTuber called Matt vs Japan who became fluent through AJATT but improved upon it to make it easier to get into and eventually branched off and called it MIA.
​
The MIA progression, as far as I understood it, starts with immersion and Kanji Study (Seems like you do immerse and already finished the Kanji and only review them).
Tae Kim is only meant as a small start into getting familiar with basic Japanese grammar, sentence structure etc.
From what I've seen, the current recommendation for MIA is to just read through Tae Kim without worrying about mining the sentences in there and to sentence mine from the Tango N5 and maybe the N4 book (N5 here and the N4 here) and alongside that, to sentence mine from the native material that you use for immersion. This is supposed to give you a good foundation in terms of grammar knowledge and vocab. At that point you should have have mined at least 2k-3k sentences and should already be quite proficient in reading.
At that point, you are supposed to do the monolingual transition, meaning that you ditch almost all English in your studies and try to just use Japanese. You do this mainly by sentence mining native material and looking up the Japanese definitions of words you don't understand.
You should never learn single vocab, only sentences, so you learn vocab in context and have a better understanding on how the words are used.
Now that is just a rough outline of the process. While I am definitely not fluent, all I wrote you can verify yourself by watching Matt vs Japan's YouTube videos, in which he goes into more detail (Don't get discouraged by the length of the videos, they can be quite "rambly" but still contain valuable information about the whole process).
Other than that, there is an ajatt sub where people asked all kinds of questions, probably yours as well.
​
All this goes against common sense and is quite different from the traditional, textbook-oriented approach, so don't let people tell you that your approach is wrong and you should do X or Y.
Watch Matt's videos and decide for yourself, whether this method is something you really want to follow.
In addition to university-level classes (where I started learning Japanese), I found that the Japan Times Dictionaries of (Basic / Intermediate / Advanced) Japanese Grammar were invaluable resources to get the core aspects of the language all up in my brain-meats.
Basic
Intermediate
Advanced
I can't comment with any degree of certainty about online learning opportunities, but I do know that Skype chats with native Japanese speakers are popular, as well as any number of browser and smartphone-based kanji flashcards that will help with listening / speaking / writing.
I highly recommend getting a Bachelor's Degree in anything (possibly with some study abroad in Japan), then applying for something like the JET Programme, which will give you more of an immersive opportunity to live and work in Japan. Japanese is one of those annoyingly alien languages to the English-language brain where the best study results will come from full immersion--and even then, it's faaaaar from easy. I've been studying the language for 20 years and fluency always seems out of reach. But you might brain better than I do, so don't let that discourage you!
This is the book i got:
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Vocabulary-Words-Language-Proficiency/dp/4872179811/
best book you could possibly buy is called English grammar for Students of Russian -
http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-Russian-Learning/dp/0934034214
sets you straight in preparing you for the big differences between the languages
If she loves languages for language sake, then she probably would love the toki pona book. It's been the most fun language resource that I have ever bought.
https://www.amazon.com/Toki-Pona-Language-Sonja-Lang/dp/0978292308
English Grammar For Students of Spanish is excellent!
Here are a few I think are good:
Getting Started
On Writing: This book is great. There are a lot of nice principles you can walk away with and a lot of people on this subreddit agree it's a great starting point!
Lots of Fiction: Nothing beats just reading a lot of good fiction, especially in other genres. It helps you explore how the greats do it and maybe pick up a few tricks along the way.
For Editing
Self-Editing For Fiction Writers: there isn't anything in here that will blow your writing away, land you an agent, and secure a NYT bestseller, but it has a lot of good, practical things to keep an eye out for in your writing. It's a good starting place for when you are learning to love writing (which is mostly rewriting)
A Sense of Style by Steve Pinker: I really loved this book! It isn't exclusively about fiction, but it deals with the importance of clarity in anything that is written.
Garner's Modern American Usage: I just got this about a month ago and have wondered what I was doing before. This is my resource now for when I would normally have gone to Google and typed a question about grammar or usage or a word that I wasn't sure I was using correctly. It's a dictionary, but instead of only words, it is filled with essays and entries about everything a serious word-nut could spend the rest of their^1 life reading.
^1 ^Things ^such ^as ^the ^singular ^their ^vs ^his/hers
Publishing
Writer's Market 2016: There are too many different resources a writer can use to get published, but Writer's Market has a listing for Agents, publishers, magazines, journals, and contests. I think it's a good start once you find your work ready and polished.
There are too many books out there that I haven't read and have heard good things about as well. They will probably be mentioned above in this thread.
Another resource I have learned the most from are books I think are terrible. It allows you to read something, see that it doesn't work, and makes you process exactly what the author did wrong. You can find plenty of bad fiction if you look hard enough! I hope some of this helps!
http://www.amazon.com/Evelyn-Seven-Day-Reading-Learning-Program/dp/1566194024
I read this book last week and it has honestly helped me a ton staying with reading. Even if you don't want to speed read at 'super sonic speeds' like the book describes, it gives you a ton of tips to how to stay focused.
For example, I underline with my finger as I read. It is confusing the first few pages you do it, but once you fall into the habit of doing it, you stay much more focused for a longer period of time.
Depending on what language you want to learn, there may be a book that explains the grammar you'll need for that language by connecting it to English. For example: German,
Spanish, Russian.
If there's a term that you're unfamiliar with, you can also poke around on Wikipedia to get a better idea behind some of the concepts. But when things get too technical, just keep looking up unfamiliar terminology and you'll be on your way.
For a little bit of fun, check out:
Split Ergativity,
where you can see this gem of a sentence:
>An example of split ergativity conditioned by tense and aspect is found in the Hindustani language (Hindi/Urdu), which has an ergative case on subjects in the perfective aspect for transitive verbs in the active voice, while in other aspects (habitual, progressive) subjects appear in the nominative case.
I started with Old English Grammar and Reader, by Robert Diamond. I've depended a lot upon a few dictionaries I've downloaded and the wonderful thing that is Wiktionary.
Simplest terms? Given that request and your stated language background, I think English Grammar for Students of Latin would help immensely. A lot of the 'not clicking' part might just be missing out on how grammar works even in your native tongue. You can get it for less than twenty bucks on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-Latin-Learning/dp/0934034346/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1549069987&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=English+grammar+for+students+of+Latin&dpPl=1&dpID=41VGnfQiBBL&ref=plSrch
Apparently it's pretty common for kids to absolutely love reading in elementary school, and then schooling unintentionally teaches them to hate reading.
I read obsessively up until about age 12. I haven't read a book cover to cover in years...
How about Writing Fiction from the Gotham Writer's Workshop. It's got a good bit of useful advice about everything.
I'll second Zinsser.
Finally, maybe something literary criticism-ish and structural. How about Reading Novels by George Hughes?
I have to admit I don't care for either King or Strunk&White. Sorry.
> With all of this being said, I'm very traditional in my grammar when writing academically, to the point of writing subject pronouns after "to be" verbs and the use of "be" in the present subjunctive rather than an indicative present conjugation.
Could you please provide us with a simple pair of contrasting examples that would show what you mean by 'the use of "be" in the present subjunctive rather than an indicative present conjugation'?
.
------
ADDED:
> While "them" as a singular object pronoun is often used conversationally, it isn't specified as a singular pronoun in books like The Blue Book of Grammar. Colleges and college professors often refer to books of grammar like these.
Is "The Blue Book of Grammar" the same book as the one by Jane Straus, The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation?
I loved Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action. Well written and covers a lot of topics. Might be what you're looking for! http://www.amazon.com/Language-Thought-Action-Fifth-Edition/dp/0156482401
Hello. Actually, it does not make sense in English with the blank. ‘Est-ce que Marc en France?’ means ‘Is it that Marc in France?’, which is incomplete. The blank would be ‘is’, which is ‘est’ in French. So, the correct answer should be ‘est-ce que Marc est en France?’.
Also, ‘ils sont’ and ‘elles sont’ are the same thing, except ‘ils’ is masculine and ‘elles’ is feminine.
I highly recommend ‘English Grammar for Students of French’ by Jacqueline Morton for clear explanations, translations, and comparisons of French and English grammar.
I recommend English grammar for students of Spanish
Yes! SSR is an important part of my class. I make sure to give students 20 minutes each day for it, and they have 20 minutes per night, 5 nights a week for homework. They may choose any book they want as long as they read. I work with students who are in grades 9 and 10, but they test at a 6th grade reading level. We also read literature, but SSR is so they can read recreationally and find books that suit their interests. Kelly Gallagher's Readicide is the book that most informed my reading pedagogy. It also cites many studies about the importance of students doing recreational reading.
This kind of book is a rockin' idea: http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-Spanish-Learning/dp/0934034303
I started with this, and also spend a lot of time on Wiktionary.
I need to read the actual texts some more, but I've gotten good enough to recognise when the show Merlin has gotten silly with their spells (that's ridiculously often).
After studying Italian for about 6 months, I decided I really needed to dive into the grammar because there seemed to be a lot of exceptions and general concepts that I wasn't fully understaning. I purchased Practice Makes Perfect and I'm almost halfway through the book. It has helped tremendously thus far.
What I've done is gone through and done all of the exercises in the chapter. I circle the questions that I get wrong and others that I think might be useful and I put them in a Cloze Deletion deck in Anki. When the sentence comes up, I have to type in the missing word or words. Here are some examples:
Front of Anki Card:
Dov'è Diane? Non l'ho [...] per mesi. (vedere)
Front of Anki Card:
Ho dato quegli stivali ai miei amici ieri.
[...] ho dato quegli stivali ieri.
This forces me to type in the missing word to complete the card. It really helps with showing what my grammatical weaknesses are exactly.
Duolingo
English Grammar for Students of French
French videos? I've never used this, but it looks fine
FSI might be a little easy
These grammar charts
Also, for practice with a teacher, you could try a website like italki
You would probably really enjoy reading this book - http://www.amazon.com/The-Spell-Sensuous-Perception-More-Than-Human/dp/0679776397
I originally pmed this, since I have no idea how to source it or such and it's just rambling, but OP said I should put it here anyways so everyone can gain from the rambly insight.
"I have no idea where you could specifically read, it's mostly just gleaned for being very interested in Germanic philology but... Basically, multilingualism was /very/ common and even by the Roman Silver Age people would go to schools to learn written Latin as we have today, rather speaking Vulgar Latin and when we get to the various Germanic (that is, from the Germanic tribes that invaded Rome) rulers, they would speak their language and very soon, inside of 3 generations they'd speak the language of the conquered too (getting wives and such from that population+all their servants...) and sometimes learn Latin. ...but in many cases the nobles wouldn't actually know Latin and would use scribes for that. "Literate" meant solely "literate in latin" (one of the English kings actually tried to get "universal" (that is for free men) literacy in Old English and talks about how it's on par to Latin and so on in the text) (at least in the areas they cared about that, in the east, they used other languages, like Old Church Slavonic and Greek...) when many people would have some comprehension of basic writing in their own languages. There was a wonderful... BBC(?) article on literacy in the middle ages. To that end, there was actually a fair amount of literature written in them, still nowhere near as much as that in Latin though, but... yeah.
Hopefully that was helpful, I'm not sure how to structure it better. :/ http://www.amazon.com/Old-English-Grammar-Reader-Edition/dp/0814315100/ref=cm_srch_res_rpsy_1 this mentions a lot of such things to the side and in texts, just inadvertently mentioning some guy doing this or this... It's of course a different case from what you'd end up with in France, but... Old Norse and Old English were very fluid (not that they're particularly different from another) with a large amount of the population speaking them, and in the Celtic areas Welsh or Old Irish would be thrown in too/be there instead of the Old English portion, depending on where they were. "
Language in Thought and Action
An engaging introduction to thinking about language and communication. I recommend it if you were interested in how Ben Franklin's little rules about communication helped him achieve all he did. (It wasn't intuitive to me).
I also recommend it if you ever make little jokes about the dumb things people say, or have ever puzzled over why we bother with ritualized greetings.
The best book is English Grammar for Students of Latin. I make the students I teach take this book.
https://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-Latin-Learning/dp/0934034346
It helps because you can easily understand what a gerund or a participle is in English so that a gerund or participle in Latin is easier to understand.
It has little exercises at the end of each chapter to help you practice and apply what you learned about English and Latin grammar.
It isn't very comprehensive, so eventually, you want to use Allen and Greenough or Bennet's Latin grammar. You can download those for free here
http://www.textkit.com/latin_grammar.php
However, as you said, grammar is your bane, so this is why I recommend English Grammar for Students of Latin. It's elementary and will get you up to speed with understanding how grammar works in general so that you can grasp Latin grammar more easily.
Until I think of a work of fiction. Try this book by Ken Wilbur...
Brief History of Everything
Edit: and for what it's worth, Camus and Hesse are great, but whether they are on the top 10 list of authors who will help you beat depression is probably open for debate. Though I could imagine an intense discussion with each of them about it!
Sounds like you're looking for curriculum. So google grade level, common core ELA and see what you get. I usually use the California framework to skill build for my boarding kids. Definitely gunge your student's ability level and decide if there skills are at grade level. I've had kids like the one your describing come in a few grade levels below where they needed to be. One good tip is to do an essay and make a list of things to work on with your student so you can show them improvement over time. That way you can manage expectations. Anyhow, here's a list of resources I use:
Use this one to build topical lessons: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Academic-English-Third-Longman/dp/0201340542/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=oshima+writing+academic+english+3rd&qid=1562233499&s=gateway&sr=8-1
​
And this one to load up punctuation: https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Book-Grammar-Punctuation-Easy/dp/1118785568/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=blue+book+of+american+english+and+grammar&qid=1562233598&s=gateway&sr=8-2
​
This series is also awesome for building lessons: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=elements+of+literature&crid=3EMT7657D9UI&sprefix=elements+of+liter%2Caps%2C451&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
Not necessarily just for short stories, but I would suggest the Gotham Writers Workshop Writing Fiction Guide.
https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Fiction-Practical-Acclaimed-Creative/dp/1582343306
Yes it is. But it also has some vocabulary and other notes included to help develop your Italian beyond the grammar.
Practice Makes Perfect Complete Italian Grammar
https://www.amazon.com/Spell-Sensuous-Perception-Language-More-Than-Human/dp/0679776397
favorite non-fiction book, warped my perception of the world for weeks after reading it
British Council: English Grammar gives explanations on everything grammatical; pronouns, possessives, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, nouns, phrases, clauses & sentence structures.
There is a book called English Grammar for Students of Russian but in the long run knowing English grammar inside-out is your best bet if you want to learn another language after Russian.
To stop getting distracted, reward yourself when you reach a goal in Russian to motivate yourself to carry on, also use Reddit to your advantage if you're ever back on Reddit why not pay /r/russian a visit?
I can't seem to find any reviews for Hugo Fluent in 3 months, Colloquial Russian is a very complete & comprehensive book on knowing no Russian to being conversationally fluent, so it's a good book to use as your main reference. Check out /r/Russian's wiki on getting started. for more help on getting started.
All the resources you've mentioned above, put emphasis on different aspects of Russian e.g. Grammar, Vocabulary, Orthography. I'd work through it one chapter at a time, try to practice/implement what you've learnt whenever you can & if it helps write down any notes. This is what I do with Icelandic & it seems to work.
Here's a step by step guide on using Assimil it uses Assimil: Dutch as the example but you can easily use the same process for Russian. Hopefully this helped :)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say yes, a VAST majority of speed reading and accelerated learning courses are based on the general principles put forth by Evelyn Wood. It will take some practice and like any worthwhile acquired skill, there will hills and valleys and plateaus of reading speed but it will kick in. Throw in mind-mapping and eventually you'll start creating images in your head as you head almost as if you were mind-mapping but not drawing it out.
I add in mind-mapping for a few reasons:
Amazon link for Evelyn Wood - don't bother with the reviews
What I did was duolingo and a grammar book (I used this http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-Complete-Italian/dp/0071603670/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422064174&sr=8-1&keywords=italian+grammar , not free obviously but I think it's worth it to make sure you get an analytical knowledge of the grammar) to get started, eventually move on to listening to people on youtube like this guy http://youtu.be/4xXT-ysjrKE?list=PLTvJgY2rGJY8c5MzWbfjrPP2E5-I6F_Hd who makes videos for learners
Then I moved on to reading fables and passages from the Bible. Lingocracy is useful for that. I also started adding the words I didn't know onto memrise and using that daily.
I haven't pursued Italian as much as I should but I gained a moderate amount of reading comprehension doing that within less than two months.
I have A Guide to Old English, Introduction to Old English and Old English: Grammar and Reader at home and they all are pretty useful if you are interested in the language (plus Clark-Hall's dictionary). I've never tried to study it as a live language - I just wanted to read some old texts :)
There is also Complete Old English - not sure how good it is but you may want to look at it.
This book saved my life in college.
Not only does it teach you how to read faster and retain more, it helps you learn how to take notes and study as well.
Unfortunately, it takes more than seven days. Liars.
Also: The Essential Chomsky, another good compendium.
I honestly can not even begin to thank you enough. This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much, again.
EDIT: Found The Elements of Style Kindle edition for free!
I remember using https://tangorin.com/
another good resource is https://ejje.weblio.jp/
it is japanese website but don't worry, search for the word you want and scroll down for the sentences, most of the time they are very short and pretty good..
I can suggest this book , I personally didn't used it, it has 1000 words for n5 with a sentence example.
personal opinion: I think just move on, even when you are not 100% sure about the word usage, specially if you are beginner. The material you are learning now will come again enough for you to fully grasp them while you study other words/grammar. :)
good luck
http://www.amazon.com/Garners-Modern-American-Usage-Garner/dp/0195382757
Alright, here goes nothing! Kinda Long list, sorry for wall of text!
YouTube
Twitch.tv
Sites
Here are all of my books that I bought, I can't find some of the old ones that were given to me though!
Italian movies I recommend
Others
Other resources include the free ones that are giving in the language resources! I also go over to /r/Italy and /r/Italianlearning and read topics and help others with Italian!
To conclude, your main problems here are: lack of structure, action, conflict, risk, loss, suspense, humor, and unique characters.
Now, that might seem harsh, but it's not to discourage you. I think you can write. I think you have that ability in you, like most, but what you lack is keeping the audience on the edge of their seats, and making them scared, and happy, and emotionally involved. I highly suggest that you pick up some books on writing and read them. That's my main advice. It's not that you have to follow exactly what they say, but once you know the rules you can break them, and shape them to your liking.
Anyway, good luck in the future! Keep on writing.
Pick this up, if you can:
http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Fiction-Practical-Acclaimed-Creative/dp/1582343306/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382945522&sr=1-1&keywords=gotham+writers+workshop
It's just the basics, however, can come in handy.
I found this book on speed reading in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble a while back, and it solved the problem for me.
Basically, active reading > passive reading. It's not hard to do, improves your concentration, and speeds up your rate and comprehension, even if you don't get to the point where you can read a page a second.
I think you'll love the book "Language in Thought and Action"
http://www.amazon.com/Language-Thought-Action-Fifth-Edition/dp/0156482401/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
[This book] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195382757?pc_redir=1408272184&robot_redir=1) has at least ten times as many entries as that article.
You can get the kindle version for free too! https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005IT0V8O?storeType=ebooks
This compilation looks good. There's also the classic Chomsky Reader which was my introduction.
Chomsky can be a lttle tough to read, especially the later stuff. The earlier books are quite readable, but starting in the mid-80s it get a bit tougher. He's really at his best in spontaneous interviews. Here is a transcript of an early talk he gave, it lays out his personal political philosophy and its roots very clearly.
This book is my own personal favorite, a big collection of transcripts covering just about everything, even some linguistics.
Alan Watts was an extraordinary human. Definitely one of the most insightful people in the English-speaking world. I can't recommend him highly enough.
I also strongly suggest David Abram. His major work is The Spell of the Sensuous. Watts points out that we've mistaken our map for the territory. Abram begins to teach us how to put the map down.
Ask’s offerings for JLPT vocab are excellent. Words are grouped by theme/situation, sentences are virtually always i+1 and grammar builds progressively also. Audio is available to download for free, and Nukemarine has Anki decks (up to N3, I think) that he’ll give you access to if you send him proof of purchase.
There’s been a lot of discussion around these books and many people believe them to be superior to Core (I am one of those people).
>I am in high school. In europe high school grades matter a lot. And I know it. I am pretty smart I guess but I don't know how to study.
>
>I need to study to achieve better grades. B's and C's arent really enough. And I dont usually study because I don't know how to study.
>
>What study method should I use to study guys?
>
>I've tried reading and taking notes (aka copying from the textbook and altering the word order sometimes),doing exercises isn't working. I want to understand the material and get better grades and learn but idk what to do
>
>What should I do?
I learned note taking from a book called The Evelyn Woods Speed Reading and Learning Program . It absolutely changed everything about how I approached every class. I feel I retain more, and when I choose to I can crank up to about 700wpm when I'm reading and still retain most of the information. (Real speed readers who actually train for it can read 1400+ wpm. JFK was known for reading 1-3 novels a day.)
The Spell of the Sensuous?
I heard about siamese when I read this book http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Fiction-Practical-Acclaimed-Creative/dp/1582343306
I read this in thinking of this question Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Italian-Vocabulary-Thematic-Approach/dp/0764123955
https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-Complete-Italian/dp/0071603670
This will get you to B2, maybe C1. It's what I used when learning Italian, and at this point, I just find online Italian chats to refine my vocabulary, grammar, and what not.
I found it effective to learn the basic grammar before I began vocabulary study. I would write English words with Italian grammar in order develop my grammar skills.
Couple those with Duolingo.
I plan on using the German editions of those while I take German 1 and 2.
Good luck!
(Also, please pardon any poor writing in my response. I'm a bit tired and I'm not focusing very hard)
EDIT: You can find those books cheaper.
This series of book I've heard is good for English speakers understanding foreign grammar for the first time:
https://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-Russian-Learning/dp/0934034214
Definitely check out the Memrise course. 120 words, memorize them, then read through the simple grammar. Or buy a Pu~
Websites:
Books:
There's an interesting book by Guy Deutscher called Through the Language Glass which - among other things - talks about the way that the Ancient Greeks used colors. He discusses how linguists have postulated that Greeks actually perceived colors differently, because they talk about "green" honey, and "wine-colored" sea, which seem really odd to us today. He debunks this theory, and says that Greeks saw color the same way we do, but their word for "green" may have encompassed yellow-y or blue-ish colors as well, meaning they grouped their colors differently than we do. For example, some languages don't have a distinct word for both "green" and "blue," while other languages (like Russian) have a distinct word for "light blue" and "dark blue." This doesn't mean that they necessarily perceive these colors differently (that's still up for debate), but they simply divide their rainbow of colors into different word-groups than we do. It may explain why Ancient Greeks described things the way they did.
I noticed most of these posts are about fiction. I feel like all the books I read change my life, but the biggest ones that changed the way I look at the world have been:
Pop Science books by Steven Johnson (Emergence, Everything Bad is Good For You, Where Good Ideas Come From) and Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, Tipping Point, Outliers). These books changed all of my preconceived notions, and gave me a drive to search for intelligent outside perspectives. Emergence was especially influential. I approach Emergence in an almost religious way, you can see "God" or whatever you would call it, in Emergent intelligent behavior, a more science-friendly conception of God, I feel the same way when I watch Koyaanisqaatsi.
A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber. Most people either like Ken Wilber or hate him. To me, he gives a good model of looking at religion, spirituality, science, society, myth, and the way different people think similar to Joseph Campbell. If you ever wonder why religious people think a certain way, and scientific people and postmodern philosophers think a different way, this is the book.
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. I didn't even finish this book because I got to depressed. It may be pretty biased, but it is really one of the best geopolitical books out there. I learned everything I needed to know about foreign policy and the economic conflict going on around the world.
EDIT: Another great one is The Book by Alan Watts
I like the JLPT Tango vocab books. They have a red sheet so you can test yourself, and you can download audio for the sentences. They have books for N5-N1 vocab- here’s a link to the N5 book
https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4872179811/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_c_HguIDbJ2D2XJR
Me encanta English Grammar for Students of Spanish.
The book is "JLPT Tango N5 1000" also known as "はじめまして日本語能力試験 N5単語1000".
Here's my video review.
Practice. Practice. Practice. I'd suggest starting with writing.
Try to write an article which describes some complex thing you already understand so that someone unfamiliar with the topic could also understand it. Write the first draft. Then edit it. Then edit it again. Keep editing it until you're confident that the content clearly relays the information in a concise manner. Then do it with a few more topics.
Going through this process should help train your brain to sort through many pieces of information, identify the most important ones, and translate your understanding of them into words. The more you do it, the easier it will become. As your brain gets faster at breaking down complex concepts into communicable chunks, it should eventually improve your verbal communication as well.
For a general primer on writing more clearly, Strunk and White's Elements of Style is beyond compare. The Kindle edition is currently free.
Dictionaries are pretty much fully descriptive these days. This wasn't always the case, but it is today, and it means that they stay away from judgments about which definitions are correct and just report the actual usage.
So you can't look to a descriptive source and presume to find prescriptive guidance: the lack of judgment doesn't mean the usage is good, and it certainly doesn't mean that others won't make judgments about your use of a term. E.g., Bryan Garner says,
> When literally is used figuratively -- to mean "emphatically," "metaphorically," or the like -- the word is stretched paper-thin (but not literally).
I and many others would agree with this assessment.
Certainly literally is in as bit of a touchy spot. Perhaps, going back to Garner, literally is in stage two of his categorization of verbal change:
> Stage 2: The form spreads to a significant portion of the language community, but it remains unacceptable in standard usage... Terms in stage 2 often get recorded in dictionaries as variant forms, but this fact alone is hardly a recommendation for their use.
Maybe it has even reached stage three ("The form becomes commonplace among well-educated people, but is still avoided in careful usage.")
But again, this change is not necessarily good, and not necessarily inevitable. And until and if the transformation becomes universally accepted, you have to accept that many people will label the figurative use of literally a mistake. It's their judgment to make, not the dictionaries'.
130597304| > United States Anonymous (ID: YsAOjqlH)
>>130596498 →
I'll throw this in for free:
https://www.amazon.com/Language-Thought-Action-S-I-Hayakawa/dp/0156482401/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1497917429&sr=1-1
It was a textbook I had to get for an Advanced Writing course I took.
If you are in the US:
https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-Complete-Italian/dp/0071603670
Every comment in here is amazing advice to start, but I'd also like to add in the Gotham Writers' Workshop book. It runs you roughly $5-15 on Amazon, but offers you a good way to hone and practice your narrative skills by offering you a diverse story selection with exercises that are geared towards making you think, imagine, and create.
Link to book: Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing School https://www.amazon.com/dp/1582343306/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_.MruzbS4CWM04
Glad you asked! It is a made up language constructed by Sonja Lang beginning in 2001. It's unique in that it only has 120 words in the entire language, making it more of a pidgin than a full-fledged one (and easy to pick up!). However, you can still be quite expressive...you just have to learn to think about things differently.
Website: http://www.tokipona.org
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sitelen/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona
Book: http://www.amazon.com/Toki-Pona-The-Language-Good/dp/0978292308
:)
Sounds like this book is right up your alley. The language you choose won't matter if you don't understand its grammar, in fact that's what seems to be happening with your German. When you're comfortable with explanations of English and German grammar, only then should you move on to something more alien.
English Grammar for Students of French
Many professors/teachers praise this book for French grammar and all its intricacies. However, I bought it way back when I first started studying French and opened it maybe once or twice. Honestly, I think about.com has the best explanations for grammar points. Whenever I come across a weird grammatical structure or am trying to form a sentence a certain way, I google some key words related to it (ex. pendant vs. depuis) and about.com always has the best explanation. If you're just a learner/student of French, I would stick to google/about.com. It's really the best source and all you need plus it's free.
If your understanding of grammar needs work, I highly recommend at a minimum picking up a used Latin grammar (like this one or this one) and reading through the grammar explanation bits. That should give you more solid ground, especially with declensions.
edit: Oh, or maybe this.
You might try English Grammar for Students of Russian. It's a good resource to help with the basics of the language, if that's what you need.
Well, I should say that I learn best when I understand the grammar, both for comprehension and composition. It's like a logic puzzle for me. Plain immersion doesn't do it for me. There's a reason why French school children are drilled in written grammar - it's quite different from spoken. Moreover, I am a firm believer in learning hard core grammar to prepare for standardized language testing - it counts for about 30% of any test, at least. It's the middle section in the TCF.
So, I found french grammar books written for French students - it forces you to work completely in French and improves comprehension faster, I think. It also introduces you to French cultural stuff at the same time. Something like the Grammaire progressive du francais series.
I did lots of random online French website conjugation exercises. There are plenty of them, although they look like sites from 1998.
For listening, I used the TV5 Monde website mentioned above a lot for preparation, first with videos and then just the listening exercises. And then as I started to feel confident, I did their online timed tests. BTW they closely match the real TCF material because they provide the content for the test!
I watched French movies with French subtitles, not English. And I watched French news online - their accents are quite clear.
However, within 60 days of the test I generally listened to radio online, with transcripts if I could find them. Video news becomes a problem because you build a false sense of comprehension for testing. TCF listening tests are audio-only, no video.
Finally, when you get stuck on a grammar point, as I still do, I highly recommend either English Grammar for Students of French or Side-By-Side French and English Grammar.
Good luck!
It sounds to me like psychedelics have catalyzed a stage of development for you that many people reach that way, and others reach in different ways. I came to a similar transition (and I'm still in it) without psychedelics, and then embraced psychedelics from that place.
This stage I think you're entering is called many things by many people -- Kohlberg's "post-conventional stage of moral development" being the most popular term in developmental psychology, but not the most helpful. It sounds pretty bland, but the transition into this stage is anything but boring. It's often experienced by individuals as a struggle, crisis, or catastrophe.
My own transition has been a mix of all three, and has taken (so far) about four or five years. I suspect I'm on the exit ramp headed toward a new kind of equilibrium, but I don't feel stabilized here yet, for what it's worth. I've struggled with nihilism, thoughts of suicide, several career changes, loss of community and common ground with old friends, and dissolution of many closely-held beliefs. It's rewarding, though, discovering more of my own truth at each milestone of the journey. Despite the whirlwind of torturous emotions, I wouldn't trade it for anything.
What most defines this new stage is the ability to define the purpose of life in one's own terms without consulting the conventions or norms of society (and that's going to sound to most people like, "oh hey, that's me! I fucking hate the conventions and norms! I must already be at this stage." Don't kid yourself -- being cynical about the mainstream media doesn't mean you know how to abandon moral conventions, and anyway, I wouldn't recommend doing so without being completely forced into it by your own conscience). The reason this transition comes with such emotional turbulence is that many of us derive our psychosocial stability from those same conventions we're questioning. It feels like standing on the branch you're sawing off. A lot of people back down from the challenge, not daring to upend their stable lives, relationships, or resources.
There's another, more subtle way to cheat yourself out of this evolution: it's possible to experience all these upsets and struggles without actually transitioning to a post-conventional frame of reference or completing the stage transition -- you can simply hop from one set of norms into another. If, for instance, you go from being a traditional neoliberal capitalist with ambitions of success and financial security, to suffering an existential crisis, and then find yourself suddenly caring only about the Earth and committing to live in a hippie commune, then you may simply adopt hippie conventions and an environmentalist ethos without searching your own soul first. If you do so, beware; your developmental urge to be free is still lurking beneath the surface, and you'll eventually have to quit playing the conventional game and tend to your own issues of free will, integration, and self-expression.
Carl Jung wrote wonderfully on this topic, often calling it "the psychic ordeal," or simply, "individuation," and I highly recommend reading up on it -- though his writing is a bit dense and perplexing, it's rewarding. Some other authors have taken deep approaches to this quandary, too, and turned out some very helpful guides. My favorites have been Ken Wilber (A Brief History of Everything is a profound framework for understanding the development of your own psyche), Terence McKenna (whom you're probably well acquainted with, if you're into the psychedelic side of this journey), and unexpectedly, Jordan Peterson (who often rubs me the wrong way, but his Maps of Meaning lecture series is excellent for both scholarship and personal philosophy). Each of these guys has an incomplete map of the territory, and their map is still far, far away from any other person's experience on the journey, but having a few maps is comforting as fuck, and sometimes important to help you orient yourself.
Lastly, even though this journey is completely individual, it helps to know other people who are somewhere on the path, taking a similar journey or looking back at it from a new place. The times I've spent talking even briefly to others in the struggle -- whether they were older or younger, more or less experienced than me, more or less intelligent, or more or less informed -- has been comforting and stabilizing. I've been wholeheartedly surprised and delighted by the depth of wisdom that a 21-year-old will share when confronting nihilism and disillusionment.
If you'd like to connect and compare notes on the journey, or just want to shoot the shit, PM me. I'm not a trained expert, but I've got empathy for your struggle, and could always use a good conversation with a fellow skeptic of convention. Good luck to you, fellow traveler.
No problem! Later today, when I get some time, I'll check through my notebook. I might not have anything useful, or I might not be able to remember the exercises I was writing for, but I'll see if I can find anything.
One exercise I saw on here, actually, looked interesting. What you do is give your student an ending, and then he was to write a story from the beginning that uses the ending.
/u/oneder_woman mentioned maybe finding some things for your student to read that would help him with writing. The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is really considered the most essential, authoritative book on the more technical parts of writing. I'd also recommend On Writing by Stephen King. I don't really care for King as a writer, haven't read any of his other books and don't plan to, but I think it's a great book for writers. It really helped me understand the writing process more, how you think about coming up with story ideas and then how you go about executing them and writing a story. It's a memoir about his life as a writer, but he also writes about his tips for becoming a better writer. I read it for my senior writing seminar in college, but I noticed my cousin was reading it for an AP writing class as a high school senior, so it's good for younger students too.
I've also heard Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury and The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner are good. I haven't read them personally, but I know those are two great authors.
You could read up on the common core standards.
I haven't yet read Readicide but I've heard it's good. It's about how schools systematically destroy the love of reading in students.
The Essential Chomsky - a selection of his most important work.
Well, writing in general with your own ideas is always the biggest plus. But if you're wanting to use a prompt book or something I suggest the 3am Epiphany or Gotham Writers Workshop: Writing Fiction
I've got a copy of French for Readng which I've found helpful. Its focused entirely on increasing reading comprehension and French-to-English translation skills, plus it briefly reviews grammatical rules covered by other materials.
Also, English Grammar for Students of French is an excellent resource for improving your grammatical foundations in both English and French.
nut sure what do you mean by complete but The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation is pretty comorehensive in my opinion:
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducible Quizzes https://www.amazon.de/dp/1118785568/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_-qISCbRT379VQ
Sounds like a great class. If I could recommend a book to you, you should really check out Readicide. It is a great book about how schools are killing reading and it mentions many of the studies you probably talked about it class. Be warned, it does have some Bush bashing in it. Besides the Bush bashing (which I just found annoying) it is a great book and a very quick read that is very informative and gives you many tools you can use in the future to point to studies and data that can help you in the future as (I assume) an educator.
This is an excellent series. I linked to the intermediate book, but there are beginner and advanced versions as well.
A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar
I learned the usage before I started school - my mother is a teacher. I didn't learn the grammatical theory of it till high school, and then only because I learned German, which uses the subjunctive mood more than English.
If you're interested (and know a foreign language at least a little), check out the English Grammar for Students of series - e.g., English Grammar for Students of Latin.
Last November I went to Argentina with essentially no knowledge of Spanish. I started off using this. It's pretty solid. The section on grammar is really short, but it has plenty of conversational phrases, a very basic dictionary, and simple conjugation charts for maybe 15 or so of the most frequently used verbs.
It was pretty helpful. I also used this book as an introduction to grammar: http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-Spanish-Learning/dp/0934034303
You can pick up a decent 2 way dictionary in BsAs, there are bookstores everywhere. Walrus Books sells mostly used English language books but I found a cheap Spanish-English dictionary there as well as one of those "500 verb conjugations" books.
Enjoy your time in Argentina!
Edit: Obviously the book isn't specific to Argentine Spanish, but you'll figure it out quickly.
The vos form is simple; just drop the i from the vosotros form, unless the i is an í in which case there won't a preceding é or á. And in the pretérito vos is identical to tú. And in the imperativo just drop the d of the vosotros form, and stress the final syllable.
There are differences in a lot of vocabulary, but people will understand you fine and fill you in on what the Argentine word choice would be if you ask them to.
Non-mobile: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005IT0V8O?ie=UTF8&redirectFromSS=1&pc_redir=T1&noEncodingTag=1&fp=1
^That's ^why ^I'm ^here, ^I ^don't ^judge ^you. ^PM ^/u/xl0 ^if ^I'm ^causing ^any ^trouble. ^WUT?
> That's absurd.
No. It isn't. And many have written about this subject.
“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.” - Aldous Huxley
I almost bought this last week, but can't justify the cost right now (I'm working at a pretty slow pace so probably can't rent it). I ended up buying two other books:
They're being delivered today so I'm not sure if they live up to the reviews; I can update my thoughts on them later.
EDIT
These are my first thoughts after working through the first few pages of each book.
I started writing Pokémon fanfics back when I was in junior high. Now I'm 26, I'm a produced playwright with some awards under my belt, and I'm doing a second draft of my first novel.
The way you start writing is two fold.
Two books you need to read:
"The Elements of Style"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005IT0V8O?ie=UTF8&redirectFromSS=1&pc_redir=T1&noEncodingTag=1&fp=1
Free on kindle.
Next is Stephen King's "On Writing." You can find that one somewhere. That book inspired me and gave me a good writer's toolbox. I still go back to both of them.
Last piece of advice. Write for you. Write things that you like. At first, it won't matter what other people think because they won't be reading it. Only share stuff when you feel like getting your story broken. The good part about a broken story is that you can always fix it, but it's painful. Writing is 90% rewriting. It's what makes it feel like work.
But writing is one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. It got me through a lot of tough times. It still does. I would be happy to help you in any way I can. Feel free to message me privately (I'll figure out how this works on mobile).
The world needs more writers because writers are adventurers.
By the way /u/theorymeltfool, if you want a nice book about understanding human communication, I highly recommend Hayakawa (1939), Language in Action (amazon).
"Everything that exists is made of something smaller" - This reminds me of the holon philosophy (https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Everything-Ken-Wilber/dp/1570627401) - a holon is both itself a whole while at the same time being a part of a larger whole, so that reality becomes a series of nested holons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_theory_(Ken_Wilber)
http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf
EDIT: And hey, http://www.amazon.com/Garners-Modern-American-Usage-Garner/dp/0195382757, while you're at it.
Response to your edit: You might disagree with those interpretations, but I would argue that your battle is over the appropriateness of the word "racism," not what was actually going on in his statements. That's why I personally don't like using "racism" in that way, it starts angry arguments about language when people should be having discussions about other things. (Like what's happening right now.)
One of my fave authors too! Start here and this one is pretty on topic as well.
I recommend The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducible Quizzes: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118785568/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_8k..BbTMSGQQY.
The instruction is straightforward, and the practice sets are very helpful.
I recommend Garner's book. Avoid The Elements of Style. It's a random group of "rules" and teaches nothing about Standard American English.
Sidenote: This guy?
Buy this
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducible Quizzes https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118785568/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_UP25BbNZXDEMR
That's a very interesting question. I'm not sure specifically about "the black earth," though I have heard a lot about the use of color by Greek poets.
I found the most articulate answer in this segment from Radiolab.
Basically, the Greeks, and other ancient people, simply didn't have the color perception that we do. We don't think it had anything to do with the number of cones in their eyes, though. Rather, they didn't have names for some colors, and lacking labels they the lacked handles necessary for perception. A survey of texts across cultures showed that, for example, red is always the first color to appear in writing, and blue is always the last to be explicitly labeled.
There are several theories as to why. One hypothesis tells us that we only create words for colors we can produce ourselves — creating blue dye seems to come late to most cultures, for example, while humans have never had trouble making red messes wherever they go. But what about the blues in nature — such as water, or the sky? If you look at the works attributed to Homer, the sea is "wine-dark" and the sky is silver or grey, not blue.
There was a book written on the subject, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, by Guy Deutscher. The larger Radiolab episode from which the Homer piece is excerpted is also terrific.
I hope this leads you toward a reasonable and more specific answer to your question.
Edit: I neglected to bring it back around and say that lacking more subtle color labels, such as brown, it would make sense that they'd see the earth as simply black. But that's only my hypothesis.
I recommend English grammer for students of Spanish
FTFY