Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Liberation Shoes were worn during the depths of the Cultural Revolution for their affordability and durability.
Now, unfortunately, they seem to be making a comeback among the fashionable elite and have become popular in Europe and Japan. Which, of course, grates my nerves because of lots of reasons.
But here, have a picture.
(Though serious side-eye to all non-Chinese who wear the new, ~ upgraded ~ ones, and a good deal of Chinese who wear them too. 1) If you have no claim to that period of history what makes you think you have the right to take what is one of the symbols of the era (an era, I might remind people, characterised by suffering and massive anti-intellectualism) and turn it into ~fashion~? 2) Seriously? Ospop distributes them now for $75 USD. They used to be under 10 RMB. Talk about stripping the significance from something and then selling it for loads more than it was when it actually did mean something (i.e. shoes you could afford because your family was dirt poor because everyone was dirt poor because this was China in the ’60s and ’70s). 3) Why would you ever feel nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution? It’s not as if it were a wonderful, lovely time. Well, okay. I understand if you lived through it and feel nostalgic for certain elements of it — I certainly can’t fault people for that. But the young folks who feel that everything was “simpler” back then? Ew to you and don’t talk to me.)
我現在很忙
wǒ xiàn zài hěn máng
I now (am) very busy
我 I
wǒ
現在 [现在] now
xiàn zài很 very
hěn忙 busy
máng
*Notes:
In Chinese, it is very important that subject is first, time is next, and verb is last. Therefore, I (subject) now (time) am very busy (verb) is the correct order, and it is key to maintain this form.
When traditional characters and simplified characters differ, simplified characters are written in brakets.
This sounds so much better in Chinese.
Even though the translation is insane, it’s still pretty awesome.
Download it here!
One of my friends discovered last year that ‘Friday’ could also be made to sound pretty good in German, so perhaps the issue was language as well as autotune. :P
So you chose languages because there’s no math involved? What a sweet illusion…
At least in Japanese, it’s just adding and a shi—>yon switch once you hit 14 (I’m ignoring the date system right now), and in Spanish you have that slightly-odd formula-switch in the middle of the teens, but French… MMMMEEEEERRRRRDDDDEEEE. “Ninety-six? Don’t you mean ‘Four score plus ten-and six?’”
(Granted, I only spent ~3 months studying it.)
French
- http://www.laits.utexas.edu/fi/home - I absolutely love this website. It has everything!
- http://french.speak7.com/
- http://www.bonjour.com/ - Shows pronunciations of words/phrases (which is extremely helpful) But it has limited vocab
- http://www.french-at-a-touch.com/Words-Phrases/basic_phrases_links.htm
German
- http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0„9572,00.html -You have to register, but it’s a great way to learn German
- http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~joyce1/abinitio/index.html
Italian
Spanish
- http://www.lingolex.com/spanish.htm
- http://www.123teachme.com/ - Has games, verb conjugations, text translator, grammar, quizzes, and more!
- http://www.studyspanish.com/
- http://spanish.speak7.com/
Chinese
- http://www.chinese-tools.com/learn/chinese - What I love about this site is the pinyin to character tool
Japanese
- http://www.freejapaneselessons.com/
- http://www.learn-japanese.info/
- http://www.learnjapanesefree.com/
- http://www.learnjapanese.com/ - Has slang expressions, grammar, common phrases, vocabulary and more
- http://japanese-phrases.sakura.ne.jp/
Greek
- http://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexicon - Greek to English, English to Greek Dictionary (Modern and Ancient Greek)
- http://www.101languages.net/greek/basics.html
Sign Language
Esperanto
General Language Sites
- http://www.fodors.com/language/ - Has Spanish, French, Italian, German, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese
- http://www.omniglot.com/ - Has basic phrases in almost any language along with idioms and sayings
- http://www.wordreference.com/ - Any language (French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, etc.) to English dictionary
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/ - Basic phrases and vocab in French, Spanish, Greek, Chinese, German, Italian, and Portuguese.
- http://www.languagehelpers.com/ - Has Chinese, Czech, French, German, Latvian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish
- http://www.smartphrase.com/index.shtml -Has Italian, French, German, Spanish, Greek, Dutch, and Portuguese. Random phrase generator
- http://www.101languages.net/vocabulary/vocabulary.html - Has Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Spanish
- http://www.livemocha.com/ - A few people have suggested this site, and it’s incredible. If you want to learn a language on your own, you need this. And it’s free!
GET ON MY DASH, YOU SEXY RESOURCE.