how did you learn all this?

websites and more that i use for learning about linguistics! — by mati ★

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main websites

wiktionary — this is a dictionary that's open for anyone to create entries, edit and stuff. it's like wikipedia if wikipedia was a dictionary, and it's even a sister project of wikipedia (they're run by the same foundation — the wikimedia foundation). i spend a lot of my time on wiktionary, especially since it has etymology info for its entries in every language (yes — wiktionary is multilingual, and you'll find entries from languages as varied as english to tagalog to bengali to russian to portuguese). it's a great resource for any linguistics nerd, but i would recommend double-checking some of their information against other sources, because well... it's an open project, just like wikipedia. and this leads us to...

etymonline — or in full, the online etymology dictionary, is a dictionary that has a host of english etymologies for the most varied words. it's only for english though (i have yet to find a better thing than wiktionary for any other language that is free), so for other languages i usually only use wiktionary. the plus with etymonline as opposed to wiktionary is that etymonline has much more detailed explanations for the sense developments of words, alongside with dates and much more! definitely give it a try if you're interested in etymology.

wikipedia — i don't think i have to say much about this one. this is like the tool of the twenty-first-century nerd. i browse wikipedia recreationally for just about anything, to be honest. that said, it's a good tool for learning about linguistics as well! just be aware of the same caveats as for wiktionary: wikipedia is open, and you should ideally check the sources they give at the bottom of the article if you want to be extra sure about the things they say.

dictionaries

goo辞書 (goo jisho, 'goo dictionary') — this website has a japanese-japanese dictionary, and also two other en-jp and jp-en ones. i don't really use this for linguistics per se and more for learning japanese, but it's still a useful resource.

jisho.org — a japanese-english dictionary. really popular among japanese learners, but beware: don't just use the first word that shows up when you search an english word. this is not an english-japanese dictionary and should not be used like one; also, their example sentences are often awkward and machine-translated, so watch out for those... it has really good term coverage, including relatively recent slang though, so it still remains a useful resource for those reasons.

american heritage dictionary — a good place to check for etymologies. has a really cool index of indo-european and semitic roots you can find in the website!

этимологический онлайн-словарь русского языка макса фасмера (etimologičeskij onlajn-slovar' russkovo jazyka maksa fasmera, 'max vasmer's etymological online dictionary of russian') — etymological dictionary of russian that wiktionary often sources. and sometimes, i don't know, you want to look at the sources instead of wiktionary, so here it is!

piv, short for plena ilustrita vortaro, 'complete illustrated dictionary' — an esperanto-esperanto dictionary

reta vortaro (literally 'online dictionary') — another esperanto-esperanto dictionary, but also contains some translations into various languages (most entries don't have translations though, so it's very much eo-eo). covers neologisms better than piv, like ri [singular they] or droneo 'drone' (little remote-controlled helicopter).

trésor de la langue française informatisé, 'digitized treasury of the french language' — a french-french dictionary. at the bottom of every entry there's usually really detailed information about pronunciation, historical forms, and etymology, which makes this a really useful resource to check for the origins of french words. also the definitions themselves are pretty detailed.

reference books

pmeg (short for plena manlibro de esperanta gramatiko, 'complete handbook of esperanto grammar') — a very complete grammar of esperanto, written itself in esperanto. just so you have an idea how big this thing is, the downloadable html version is 3.1 megabytes' worth of just text.

for typing different scripts

lexilogos (this specific link opens the hangul page) — a website that allows you to type in various different scripts without downloading new keyboard layouts. especially useful for typing on computers, as the keys aren't labeled for every new layout you install. i often use it for korean, arabic/persian and devanagari, but there's a whole myriad of other scripts in there that you can type.

typeit (this link opens the ipa page) — this website is useful for typing mostly latin-script languages whose special diacritics you can't type normally. it can also type russian and ipa (phonetic transcription symbols), and i usually use it for ipa, and occasionally for esperanto, when i'm on my phone. on your computer you can install a little thing that makes it much easier for you to type all sorts of special characters, and it's called...

wincompose — if you want to type basically any special character ever, wincompose's got you covered! from ipa symbols, to esperanto hats, to fractions like ½ and cute stars like ★, wincompose allows you to type those by simple, easy-to-remember codes that start with a "magic key" (mine is right alt). for example, to type ⟨è⟩, you type alt + help me i can't escape the backtick + e, and ⟨½⟩ is alt + 1 + 2! really practical and easy. i love wincompose :)

shapecatcher — not really a scripts thing, this is a unicode thing. you can draw a character in the box with your mouse and try to recognize it, and it will bring up the most similar unicode character. good to use when you see a symbol you don't know how to type with wincompose, or don't know its codepoint, and want to be able to use it.

youtube channels

to do; k klein, nativlang, jan misali, probably some others

twitter accounts

to do; marijn van putten, egas mb, and more

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Pub: 01 Feb 2024 22:58 UTC
Edit: 26 Feb 2024 07:07 UTC
Views: 555