People imitate each other. When everyone does it feels safe even if deadly (and people ruin themsleves and each other in many ways). When no one does it must be weird even if it is salvation.

These days there are many more people on my street than during the first week of the lockdown.

Which makes the street look safe. At the same time it was <em>aboslutely</em> safe when there was no one there and, accordingly, is dangerous now:/

A question for those who studied phonetics, vocal techniques or just knows anything.

I wanted to record a couple of Russian sounds: [iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii] and [jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj].

It is common for Russians to choose high pitch when making [iiiii] sound (this is how we imitate mosquitos!) and low pitch for [uuuuuu].

But I discovered that it is extremely hard for me to say [iiiiiiiiii jjjjjjjjjj] without changin pitch:/

Why does it happen?

Does it affect phonetics of human languages?

Does it affect singing and signing techniques? (does it happen during singing at all, that a sound provokes change in pitch? )

It is not necessary about vowels, consonants too. I just never came across anything about this and still don't know where to look.

I often start learnign langauges by analizing song lyrics. Usually I first like a song, then analyze the lyrics and learn it by heart and only then want to learn a lnaguage;)

Several songs is several hundreds words and grammatical constructions. Most are not very common but many are basic grammar and vocabulary.

After this language doesn't appear "alien" to you.

One song is.. say half a hour. And you like it anyway.

For example, I know several Italian songs by heart without intent to learn Italian.

One of them (Bocca di rosa by Fabrizio de Andre) is 200+ unique words! Ye,s it is a long ballad:)

That is my Italian vocabulary is already around a 1000 words (and some grammar). And it is langauge I never learned.

P.S. (took a few evenings)

Everyone commenting there is immediately blocked for a while, then his account is reinstalled.

On new Italki site I can't see the list of threads started by a particular member in member's profile. It makes finding old threads (whose authors I often remember) hard.

Do you have the same problem?

Is it the same in Italki app?

There is actually a way to see such a list. You can find 15 my most recent discussions here:

<a href="https://www.italki.com/api/user/6097046/discussions" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.italki.com/api/user/6097046/discussions</a>

What you get is a list formatted this way:

{"performance": "4.78 ms", "meta": {"has_next": false, "current_page": 1, "page_size": 15}, "server_time": 1573959951000, "data": [{"view_count": 1, "update_time": "2019-11-17T03:05:43+0000", "language": "english", "title": "list of discussions by a user", "content": "On new Italki site I can't see the list of threads started by a particular member in member's profile. It makes finding old threads (whose authors I often remember) hard.Do you have the same proble...", "comment_count": 0, "device_type": 0, "id": 221823},..........

It is data in JSON format. There are some tools and browsers (e.g. Mozilla Firefox) that display it in "prettier" way:)

"title": "list of discussions by a user" is the title of my most recent discussion.

"id": 221823 is the ID of my most recent discussion. Change an URL of any discussion to this:

https://www.italki.com/discussion/221823

and you can see my discussion.

If this user has posted more than 15 discussions you can call it with parameters:

<a href="https://www.italki.com/api/user/6097046/discussions?page=1&page_size=50" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.italki.com/api/user/6097046/discussions?page=1&page_size=50</a>

where

6097046 is user ID

page=1 is page number and

page_size=50 is discussions per page (max 50, when parameter is not specified, 15)

.....?page=5&page_size=50 would give you discussions 201-250.

This all is not very convenient. I can make a page that would give you a clickable discussions list when you enter a user ID.

Would it be very useful?

Would it be harmful?

I find beutiful (mathematically) and beautiful (in other ways) the following solution:

Men use "she" for a person whose gender is not known.

Women use "he" for a person whose gender is not known.

This would work with langauges other than English too. As most people don't do it this way, I chose a pronoun by mood. (my mood, not grammatical mood:)).

It seems that there are two groups of people here (judging from discussions "which gender you prefer" etc.):

People who are more open with same-sex partners.

People who are more open with opposite-sex partners.

Personally, the set of things I can share/discuss with people of my gender is an exact subset of what I can share/discuss with the opposite gender. A romantic partner is the extreme (we can share romantic feelings - something I can't share with anyone else).

But there are some things I just wouldn't share with same-sex freinds, and they won't do this either.

Of course in a segregated society it is impossible to be this way. When men watch football and girls watch telenovelas - a girl and a boy can't discuss football and can't discuss telenovelas.

In sociology there are terms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosociality

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosociality

and

bisociality

Could you recommend me some Turkish folk songs?

Actually, any genre would be great, as long as you like the song! Not necessary folk song. It is just that I'm guarranteed to like a folk song even if I don't like it (if you understand what I mean):)

(it is about English, I'm just using "Russian" as general discussion forum)

Some speakers start every new paragraph in their monologues with "so".

And... this habit is very convenient when you're trying to format transcripts of videos into something you can comfortably read with your eyes:)

As an example: a chunk of text (itself a part of a larger chunk of text!). In comments I will post the same chuck so-formatted.

<em>so right now I'm gonna show you the magic this is the most important part of the entire language acquisition program so you need two things number one you're gonna need magazines you need to get as many magazines as you can find and number two you need children's stories again you need to get as many children's stories as you can find so let me talk first about magazines so it doesn't matter what language the magazines are in and it doesn't matter what language the children stories ring the important thing is that the magazines have tons and tons of pictures now this magazine is Sunset magazine I love Sunset magazine for language acquisition and the reason I love something magazine is it has tons of great pictures Sunset magazine is a Travel Magazine which means it's gonna have pictures related to travel food clothing accessories ads etc this magazine probably has around 200 to 300 great words that I want to acquire so when you sit down with your language friend you're gonna ask him or her to lovingly describe all of the pictures in the magazine and while he or she's doing that of course you're gonna want to participate and the way you participate is this he or she's gonna ask you simple yes-or-no questions about the pictures in the magazine and then you are gonna ask some super simple questions to and the most simple questions are what is this what's that what's he doing what's she doing and why why is the most important question in any language so let me talk about children's stories and storytelling in general storytelling is the most powerful way to acquire a me language I cannot say enough good about storytelling for language acquisition now storytelling children's stories this is going to be the bulk of your language acquisition program I would say about 80 to 90 percent you're gonna be working on children's stories now just like magazines and like I said it doesn't matter what language the children's stories are in the important thing about children's stories is that the pictures are very big and the text is very small now you're the language partner your language friend here she's not gonna translate the story in fact I don't recommend he translate this or he or she won't need to translate the story because the pictures are very big it's very easy to follow it it's a children's story so she'll suck magazines he or she is going to lovingly retell you the story in the target language and here she's gonna ask you simple yes-or-no questions and then just like magazines you're gonna want to participate so you're gonna ask what's this what's that what's he doing what's she doing and why now let me tell you something you don't have to do you don't have to retell the story in fact you never have to retell the story in fact retelling the story is probably going to be extremely difficult remember language acquisition is all about listening and not speaking so when he or she is retelling the story you're acquiring the language through listening and not speaking so you do not need to reach out the story ever children's stories storytelling in general are the way to go </em>