My husband just linked me to this article/post, which I found quite interesting, and relevant to this comm, so I thought I'd share it with you guys.

Legos & language

Quick summary to decide if you want to click:
A father and son use Legos frequently; son has friend over and they have minor incident over the "name" of a type of piece - father realizes children tend to name them, but clearly different children choose different names - makes a simple survey of a few children to compare what they call all the pieces.

It sounds a little dull from that, but it really was an interesting read, and some surprising differences & similarities arise in the children's naming. Check it out. =)

So, I have a tongue-tie, aka ankyloglossia. If you aren't familiar, it basically means my tongue is tethered far too far forward. I can't stick my tongue out more than maybe at most a centimeter. And even then, only in a V-shape since the tip of my tongue is held back by the tie. Most of my childhood I had to go to speech therapy classes because I wasn't able to make "TH" sounds and "F" sounds distinctly different. (Needless to say, it was pretty freakin' rotten to be an elementary kid in 'speech therapy'.. endless taunting, but that's beside the point.)

The problem is, I'm trying to learn Arabic and my pronunciation sounds awful because I can't perform the proper trilling motion with my tongue to roll the "R"s. Makes me rather embarrassed to even try speaking in front of anyone.

Has anyone else dealt with this problem in Arabic or any other language that rolls their "R"s? Anybody got any suggestions on how I can make this sound? Or at least some way to fake it? It's extremely frustrating. I've contemplated getting surgery to correct it, but it's rarely done on adults (usually this problem is corrected shortly after birth) and it's expensive (and probably not covered by my insurance either.)

So... any suggestions out there? Rolling "R"s with a tongue tie, anyone? I'd really appreciate some guidance, thank you! =)

Hi all!

I've taken CHIN 111 and CHIN 212, the first two courses in the sequence for Chinese for heritage speakers, at my university. However, because of a class conflict, I wasn't able to take CHIN 313 and won't be able to take the next class in the sequence next semester because of it. I still want to learn Chinese though and get up to a level of fluency.

So I was wondering—what online resources (or books that I can look for at my library) do you guys recommend for a heritage speaker learning Chinese? At my school, completion of 212 is equivalent to completion of 204, or four semesters of Chinese, putting me at roughly an intermediate level. So either materials that teach Chinese for heritage speakers or intermediate-level Chinese would be great. Also, this is a little nitpick, but I prefer learning traditional characters.

Thanks in advance for your recommendations!

Current Mood: curious

Dear Linguaphiles,

This may be a somewhat unusual request... I'm trying to convince my (French Major) advisor to let me change my senior project. We've been reading nothing but Molière's plays, and next semester we'll be expected to write a paper on a topic having to do with Molière.

I enjoy Molière, but this has been done SO OFTEN. And I know I'm not well-informed enough to be contributing anything new to the field. I hate feeling like I'm wasting my time.

One of the women doing Honors in the major (which I should have done, but was misinformed...) is translating a book that she had read for a previous class. I don't know what it is, but it's a collection of (autobiographical?) stories by French-speaking Algerian women, I believe. She's translating the book into English, then writing a short paper on the life of Algerian women, plus another short paper on her experience translating the book.

... I WANT TO DO THIS.

However - and here's where my real question comes in! - I have no idea where to find French books that haven't yet been translated. As far as I can tell, I have to pick something either really obscure or really, really recent. I'd like something *worthwhile* - does Camus have any unpublished works or letters? What about Sartre, Hugo, Racine, even Molière? Or is there a particularly interesting collection of letters somewhere - perhaps by one of les précieuses? - that has NOT been translated into English before? I'd like a book of between 50 and 250 pages, if possible... Those are probably the absolute limits.

Any suggestions of books, or of resources? A novel, a collection of letters, a critique, an analysis... something having to do with French history, philosophy, or culture, if it's not actual fictional literature.

Thanks so much for anything you can suggest!! I want to have some ideas before I try to convince my advisor that this would be a good alternative project for me, even being proposed this late in the year.

Current Mood: pensive

I have a question about the imperfect subjunctive in Spanish.

As far as I know, the two sets of endings are equally used in Spanish, but the Mexican people I know never use the -ese/ -ase endings.
I personally much prefer the -ara/ -iera endings, but my teacher would rather I used -ese, to be sure I'm not using the future tense instead of the imp. subj. I however, want to avoid things like sintieses, because that sounds strange to me.
He says use whichever, as long as you stick to one.

My question is, essentially, which do you prefer to use (and what kind of Spanish do you speak)? Is there any difference? Can you mix and match -iera with -ase between -er/ -ir and -ar verbs?

Any help you can give me would be thoroughly appreciated, as we got ourselves into a real semantic dilemma! Thank you.

I recently met a native speaker of Bengali and she says she's willing to teach me any number of words and phrases in Bengali. What are some sentences I could ask her to translate so I get the most out of Bengali grammar and conversation?

While searching for Malay grammar material, I found this rather interesting multi-lingual website:

http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lessonj/doc/mylanguage.html

There's a set of 30 basic grammatical sentences, and the site allows you to view the phrases in two languages side by side. The options are: Japanese (hiragana), Japanese (regular), Malay, English. Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish. Some of them come with .au audio files. Enjoy!

I am a university student looking for volunteers in order to exam methodically the constitution of the lexical variations of french dialects. The need for warm bodies is needed in order to examine these variations in regional language unknown to others. If anyone citizen of a country part of the Francophonie is interested of just giving their own interpretation of a few words in their local speech, please leave word. Would appreciate any help that may be given. 

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who responded to my earlier question about the age of an 'old woman', it really helped a lot. This is a really fantastic forum :)

(and in case any of you were wondering, I was looking at translations of the Mrs. Pepperpot stories. In the Norwegian original stories, I would assume her to be in her early fifties, whereas the constant use of 'old woman' to describe her in the English translations seemed to age her in my opinion.)

Thank you again

-Gry

Possessive *it's
Plural *city's
The mind-boggling, nonexistent *its'
Conjugation *say's

Is it getting worse, or have I become hypersensitive to this? One thing that I've noticed is that it rarely presents as an error of omission. There is a very strong tendency towards error of addition. I've even seen signs where two plural words are side by side, but one of them (and not the other) inexplicably includes an errant apostrophe to form the plural. I can see how a misunderstanding would lead to the error here and there, but what reasoning drives this misuse to appear in side by side plural words, neither of which requires an apostrophe?

Yes, this is venting. But I'm also genuinely curious. It has come to the point that when I come across the spelling it's and there is no error in usage, it gives me pause. I silently thank the writer before I move on.


Edit to add asterisk to city's.

Hi, everyone. I was just wondering if you could look over these sentences that I had to write for my (high school) Italian class and offer any corrections. I hope this is okay! My teacher gave us a couple of stipulations for each sentence but he let us write whatever we wanted; they're not translations of anything.

( Read more... )

This is a peculiar question, I know, but it's something I've got a sudden curiosity about.

Are there any particularly brilliant phrases or words in your dialect that you think are region specific to the extent that would probably make no sense to no-one outside your own area (language permitting, I mean)?

The reason I ask is, my Nanna finally explained to me the meaning of a phrase that I've heard all my life here in Grimsby, England, but that I never questioned:
"Eggin' ba o' Doigs" [Egging at the back of Doigs']
Used to evade a question, particularly if you think someone is being nosey. For example:
Person A: Where are we going? / Where were you last night?
Person B: Eggin' back o' Doigs'
I've only ever heard this once or twice, but it can also be used to describe something that is futile:
Person A: I tried to get ma lass out o' bed fo' school this mornin', it were like eggin' ba o' Doigs'...

Back when my Mum was a kid (early 50s) and most people were hard up in the town, people would steal birds' eggs out of trees ['egging'] (back when this was still legal and not morally questioned). Doigs' was a shipyard in an industrial estate, so obviously bereft of wildlife, and therefore it wasn't possible to go egging at the back of Doigs', because there weren't any trees. It's giving an answer without giving an answer, and essentially a way of saying "mind your own business!". It used to do my head in when I was little because my Mum would say it to me all the time and I'd never heard of egging (outside of the modern term of throwing eggs at buildings as vandalism), or of this shipyard (as far as I know it no longer exists). To make matters worse, she would evade my question about evading the question by evading the question...
Me: Where are we going?
Mum: Eggin back o Doig's.
Me: Where?!
Mum: Eggin back o Doig's!
Now that I understand it though I think it's ace, and inventive on the part of whoever made it up!

I can think of other similar phrases and words in Grimsby's dialect too that would fly over peoples' heads without an explanation like the above, and wondered if other towns, cities, states, whatever, had their own :) I'm aware from having an ex with a very VERY strong Black Country dialect that they have a ton in that dialect. I'm kind of fascinated!

Hi, linguaphilians!

I'm about to write my course paper on problems of English poetry translation. The practical part of the paper will be a translation of Dylan Thomas's verse into Ukrainian, and comments on it. But I have no idea, what references should I use for the theoretical part of the work.

So the questions are:

1. Could you kindly advise some books in English, where the problem of rendering English poetry into various languages is discussed? Poetry translation theory, rendering stylistic devices etc.

2. Could you advise one or two books of critical essays about Thomas's poetry, maybe a stylistic analysis of his poetic devices and language in general? There are hundreds of books, but I'm looking for really useful ones.

Thanks!

I know this sounds like spam, but there is a reason why I'm asking, i promise.


How old is an old woman? i.e. if you saw the phrase "old woman" used to describe someone in a story, what age would you assume that person was?



I'm trying to comment on a translation of some Norwegian childrens stories, and I think they might have aged the main character, but I need the opinion of native speakers in order to really say anything about it :)

Thank you
-Gry

Which of these sounds better/is more correct?

Choose the category that better fits your document.
Choose the category that best fits your document.

or total rephrasing?

Choose the category that fits your document best.

Edited to add: Has ended up being rephrased to:

Choose the category that best describes your document.

Thank you all for your help!

I went through the tag and memories looking for other posts on the Romany language and none of them had replies. But none the less Im hoping someone could give me a hand. I would like to know if someone knows how to say "forever" or even "always".

I understand there are dozens of dialects. I am trying to keep from giving a huge story so to be breif; Im looking for something around the Hungarian/Romanian area. More or less Northern Vlax.

Any help is appreciated!! And thank you in advance!

A friend of mine wants to design a computerized course of English for beginners, and he needs the actual course (text, questions, exercises etc.) that he will put into the software. Do you know anyone who holds a copyright to such a course and would be willing to enter into a strategic partnership to produce and sell the learning software? Or maybe you would like to write such a course yourself. Any other advice and ideas are welcome.

Hello does anyone know a nice way to type Russian phonetically w. accents on OS X?
Thanks.

What does this sentence mean? 快调足球赛的台。Is it "Quickly change it to the soccer match channel" or "Quickly change it from the soccer match channel"? I made it up to practice the words 调，足球，and 赛, but I'm not quite sure what it means ;)

EDIT: Thank you all! The dictionary doesn't always (but sometimes!) tell if a word is American or British English but I've got the answer now! :)

Which word is best - cellphone cell phone or mobile phone?

Context: X-files fanfiction; Mulder gets a phonecall when he is arguing with Scully:

"The sound of Mulder’s [---] put an end to their argument."

This is silly, I know...... but as I am writing this thing, I should probably pay attention to the details. I just can't remember right now (as if I haven't watched so much TV in my life!) which alternative is used more. Maybe it doesn't matter at all?

Thanks to everybody who helped with that ghastly paper of mine. Could you please have a look at this short list of key skills and tell me whether I am using the right words here?

Konzentration: concentration
Kontaktfähigkeit: ability to communicate well communication skills
Kritisierbarkeit: ability to react well to handle criticism
Teamarbeit: team work
Ausdauer: stamina perseverance
Misserfolgstoleranz: tolerance to failure persistence in the face of setbacks
Selbstständigkeit: self-reliance
Sorgfalt: diligence
Verantwortung: responsibility
Antrieb: impetus
außerdem: Rechnen, Schreiben, Lesen: furthermore: calculating, writing, reading literacy and numeracy skills

All these skills (or competencies, ahem) and some more are supposed to be essential in becoming fit for a job. (So if e.g. "stamina" is only used for athlets, or if "diligence" is too goodie-goodie a word in this context, then please tell me.)

Thank you!

By the way, over the years we learned that we cannot teach/practice impetus. All we can do is offer seminars to our students that seek to let them experience the enjoyable sides of a job.

In a university translation course, the professor included in the back of the course manual several contacts for finding translation work. This was years ago, and I've lost track of that course manual. One of the contacts was for the government, but the way it worked was quite interesting. It sounded like you could take on a document at a time and turn it in as your time allowed. When you next find your schedule light enough, you request another document. Even contract work sounds too strict for the way this was described to us. Does anyone know of a system like this?

Thanks.

Hello again.

I have a question about color. In Spanish, brown things have always been 'carmelita' to me. My family has always used this word (my parents and I were born in Cuba, though I only lived there a year), and within my Spanish-speaking community this has always been the word for brown.

However, I see that 'marron' and 'cafe' are more common outside of Cuba. The first sounds too much like 'maroon' for me to use it, and using 'cafe' just feels weird. 'Carmelita' comes naturally.

Now, my parents told me that a possible explanation for 'Carmelita' was a group in Cuba called the Carmelitas which wore brown robes. I haven't been able to find anything about carmelita being brown (not even a wiktionary entry) or having to do with this group (or maybe I'm just really dense). Does anyone else use this word? Does anyone know the origin of this word? Why is it so obscure outside of Cuba?

Hi all,

Wonder if there is someone who can clear this confusion I have about information in this book i'm reading.

The book; Lingua Latina by (need I go on) Hans Oerberg.

My confusion:

In the beginning chapter of the book even, we see examples of singular and plural forms of words. For example, Oppidum (town)

"Brundisium oppidum est. Brundisium et Tusculum oppida sunt."

Here you can see that the word ending changes from -um to -a  from the singular to the plural respectively.

This is clear.

However, when I look in the index where the vocabulum is listed, I read;

oppidum -i n 1.33


Now, the 1.33 explains the first occurrence in the text,
the 'n' explains that it is of neuter gender,
and I thought the other part was to show the plural ending of the word.
However, if that is so, it is wrong.
But I assume they didn't get it wrong.

What does the -i   mean in this case? Anyone? 

thanks in advance, and kind regards,

sean
 

I studied Russian for about 5 years (some 10 years ago now, scarily enough) and a bit of Serbian in college, and as a result I can decipher Cyrillic script with relative ease, however when it comes to long words or generally reading fluently it's a bit more of a challenge. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to increase reading speed in Russian besides brute-force finding things to read (e.g. common Cyrillic roots, prefixes, suffixes, etc.).

Also, if anyone knows how to pronounce the characters added to the cyrillic alphabet in former Soviet countries (or how some of the pronunciations of existing ones shifted), that's be neat, too!

Thanks in advance!

I´m reading a book about Heian Japan /the world of the shining prince by ivan morris/ and its in this sentence:
"....Bureau of Divination (Yin-Yang Bureau as it was called), which was in charge of astrological, calendrical and aleatory calculations, the discernment of good and evil omens and similar activities that were supposed to help the government shape its policy by acting in accordance with the fundamental process of growth and change in the natural world."

thank you for your advice.

Hey all,

I have a question about the word for a homeless person in Russian. I heard a few days ago that the russian word for homeless person "бомж" is an acronym for "без о... место жить" (without ... place to live). Can someone tell me the word for the letter "o" and tell me if this is true, or if the acronym established itself after the word had been in use for a while. Also curious to me is the similarity between the word "бомж" and the english word "bum", or is this just coincidence?

Thanks for the input.

A little Osaka-ben question! If you don't know how to read Japanese, just hover over the text for a transliteration.

As I recall, true Osaka-ben substitutes 〜へん for 〜ない (as opposed to Osaka-fied Tokyo-ben, which changes it to 〜ねぇ), however for a moment tonight I got stuck on what to do for ない on its own (e.g. 時間がない "I've got no time"). Using へん on its own sounds off, and I seem to recall hearing あらへん a couple times in that context, but I thought I'd check here and see if someone else knows for certain.

While we're on the subject, thought I'd also inquire as to how it came about. My best guess is that it evolved from 〜ません to 〜まへん, then shortening to simply 〜へん, but that's just a guess.

Thanks!

Current Mood: curious

A howdoyousay question: "dancing is living" in a variety of languages. Not simply "dance is life", but the more active sense of the original phrase--that is, to dance is to live and be alive; when you're dancing, in that moment, you are truly living/enjoying life.

(...when such a distinction is possible; I know the phrase won't work that way in every language.)

Eastern languages/scripts are preferred, as this may be for a bellydance t-shirt design, but anything and everything is appreciated.

Hi! I love arctic foxes / snow foxes (they're sort of my mascot, I guess) and I've looked online, but I can't find an answer to this: is there some word for them in Japanese? I was wondering if maybe it was just a compound of the kanji for snow and fox, but... I know that such a term would have to be fairly recent in its development, because arctic foxes (as far as I know) never live in Japan, so perhaps the name is katakana? :/

If anyone knows, I'd really love the kanji, kana and romaji names for arctic fox. I use "snowfox" as an online handle, and I've joined several Japanese-language websites, and it would be really convenient to know the kanji etc. for my favorite animal...

Also, they're just awesomely fluffy.
This part is solved. Snow foxes are ホッキョクギツネ. Thank you! :D

PS: Is there a Japanese-language term for tabby cats / domestic cats with striped patterning? What about grouper fish? They're my other favorite animals.

^^; Thank you in advance.

I bought some teacups at the goodwill last weekend, and I was wondering what they say, if anything? I have no knowledge of this language whatsoever, any help would be appreciated. Thank you!



( rather large image, so here's the cut... )

Firstly -- I know いざなう usually means to ask or to tempt/lure, but are there any times when it can be interpreted as "to guide" in a more benign way?

Secondly, a question about compound verbs using 〜込む. I know that typically compound verbs of this type tend to add a specific meaning onto the verb -- 〜だす usually means to begin to do the verb and 〜あう usually adds a meaning of reciprocation or mutualness (抱く meaning to embrace and 抱き合う meaning to embrace one another). But what I can't seem to figure out is what 〜込む adds to the meaning, especially since the verb by itself has so many different meanings. Is there a consistent meaning it adds to compound verbs, or does it tend to vary based on the verb, unlike 〜だす and 〜あう?

Thanks!

I'm duly ashamed of the following translation. I'm aware that many terms are jargon. The paper is directed at visitors from Finland and Belgium. My coworkers are going to explain things orally as well.

Please correct the most outstanding howlers, if you care to take a look. (And please don't tell me that I should look for someone professional to do this. I know this is an imposition, but there is no budget for this.)

( under the cut )

I know that all of this is unpleasant to read, both in German and in English. Fortunately that's not the main point, but I'm particularly concerned about headlines like "(Self-)Reflection and Documentation of Performance in the Context of Training Self- and Social Competences". Surely there has got to be a better way to say this?

Thanks in advance!

(The banner above is from berlitz.ch.)

Friends, i just wonder if anyone in the community knows bengali. If yes, how many people are there?
Товарищи русскоговорящие! Здесь кто-нибудь знает бенгали? А то и не знаю, стоит ли задавать вопросы по этой теме.

From one indian (West Bengal) source i got a list of flowers or flower related words. I'm not able to translate some words into russian. Please help me:
Night-Jasmine
Jasmine
Night-Queen
Chameli
China-box
Malati
Well, jasmine is understood, i just gave it not to mix it up with Night-Jasmine (what's the difference between Jasmine and Night-Jasmine?). Some words look like non-english, but actually they all are in english only. There's no context. Thanks

Dear Linguaphiles,

Would you say (regardless of whether you think it's true or not...) 'Snakes are dangerous more than spiders are'?

Is it (much) worse than 'Snakes are more dangerous than spiders are'?

(And of course I know that both sound pretty odd and you'd probably just say 'Snakes are more dangerous than spiders', but unfortunately I'm only interested in the full sentences :P)

Thanks :)

The PRC Hong Kong government always tell people Cantonese is a useless language. 
Quite a lot of HK local people hate being Cantonese native speaker as 
it is very painful to learn Mandarin, which is an unintelligible language to Cantonese. 
Nowadays, some kindergartens in Hong Kong ban children from speaking in Cantonese even during recess time. 
What would you do to save Cantonese?
Would you call that cultural genocide?

I'm doing a small research project this semester in my syntax course on the garden-path effect. Basically, they are sentences that are perfectly grammatical but fluent speakers have difficulty understanding them on the first try - sometimes because of ambiguous word choice ("The old man the boat," in which "old" is a noun and "man" is a verb) but more often because of an ambiguous embedded clause ("As Anna dressed the baby spit up," in which "the baby" is first thought to be the object of "dressed").

I have a decent amount of research on English, but I was wondering if anybody knows of this effect in other languages? I'm sure it happens, but I'm not sure where to start looking. Any ideas or references would be hugely appreciated.

A study of French and German newborns finds that infants cry with the same prosody used by their parents within one week of being born:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/newborns-cry-accent-study-finds/story?id=9006266

I thought this was pretty cool. Any thoughts?

I've heard in passing that Australian or English people singing in English will often sound American to an American audience (or something to that effect). I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this, or if you know of any research done on the subject, especially in relation to languages other than English?

quodque aliena capella gerat distentius uber
(Horace, Satires 1.1.110)

A friend taught me a new word today: "eeueoueooieuiers". That's "centuries-old ewe's udders" in Afrikaans. Kindly note the fourteen consecutive vowels.

Current Mood: silly

Is there an explanation why most Chinese characters for internal organs (e.g. 脳 肺 腹 肝 臓 脾 腸) have the 月-radical?

P.S. "Semitic" tag was accidental, but now I can't delete it :)

Hello, I hope my question will not be inappropriate. :) I'm writing a story in which one of the characters is deaf. I need something that would translate to "like fingernails on the chalkboard" in ASL. I don't know, is there anything like this? This phrase refers to the sound, but as an idiom, it also means something extremely unpleasant, right? Of course I need it in writing, so the exact signs are not necessary, more a translation to a written language.

Geez, I hope I make myself clear. I'm not even English! *head!desk*

After looking for some new groups to join I came across this one and was close to doing a dance. I LOVE learning about/listening/watching different languages and I'm kind of a nerd about it. So I joined and thought I'd post a small introduction on myself. I also had a question to ask but that will come later. I study American Sign Language(at a college level), and I am taking my 3rd semester of it right now! I also know some Spanish from when I took it in Elementary school and High School. I may be learning Italian and Italian Sign Language this summer for a study abroad program and may come back to this community for some advice before I go! Thats a bit about me and my language history.

My question is about German. I am looking for a good book to help me learn German better. My very good friend is a German Major and she is teaching me and is very skilled at the language, having studied it for 8 years and been to Germany. I really would like some form of text book to help me out and didn't know if anyone here could help me find something for a reasonable price that would be helpful. I appreciate all the help! Thanks. :)


Also, if my grammar isn't the best tonight I apologize. I've been writing papers all day and the sentences that look fine in my brain may not look so great to everyone else's.

Current Mood: tired

Hello,

I'd like to know how to pronounce "kotek" (kitten) in Polish. My dad had Polish parents and he pronounces it "kwatek" or something like that, but his Polish is rusty to say the least, so it would be nice if somebody could tell me what the actual pronunciation is! Please note that I don't speak Polish at all.

Thanks a bunch :-)

Hi everybody,

I'm trying to learn Telugu, but I can't find any good resources online or otherwise. There don't seem to be many books available either. Does anyone have any suggestions? I would like to learn the alphabet and everything but that's not nearly as important to me as the ability to speak it, as my boyfriend was born in India (Andhra Pradesh) and speaks Telugu fairly well. I just want to be able to converse with him at a basic level... although I do have an interest in the grammar and everything... I'll probably end up learning more than I originally intended.

I'm studying French right now, and I just notice a huge disparity between the amount of French material available and the amount of Telugu learning materlals. The difference there is definitely understandable, it's just kind of nervewracking in a way. Any advice? I'm particularly interested in audio.

Thanks for your help everyone. :)

Current Mood: cheerful

Have you ever found yourself in a puckaterry or felt wambly after a drink or two?

If so, you're one of a dwindling breed - a user of an English regional dialect.

Where once your vocabulary would tie you definitively to a particular part of the country, the social upheavals of past few decades have stretched those verbal ties to breaking point.

Now dictionary maker Collins is launching a project - using that most modern form of communication Twitter - to try to identify whether there is any life left in a selection of weird and wonderful words.

The full story here.

Current Mood: amused

A couple of weeks ago I posted a questionnaire, but as it was rather long and complicated, I didn't get as many responses as I'd have liked... so I decided to simplify things a bit.

Compare the next few sentences:

1a) Justin is unbelievably weird (adverb modifying an adjective)
  b) Justin is an unbelievable weirdo (adjective modifying a noun)

2a) Justin is terribly weird
  b) Justin is a terrible weirdo

3a) Justin is surprisingly weird
  b) Justin is a surprising weirdo

1a and 1b mean the same, as do 2a and 2b: 'Justin is weird to a terrible/unbelievable degree'. However, whereas 3a means 'Justin is weird to a surprising degree', 3b has no such interpretation. We have to interpret 3b as something like 'Justin is weird, and also surprising' - whatever that may mean.

I'm interested in similar constructions in as many languages as possible (except English and Dutch, for which I have already gathered quite enough data), with these language's (approximate) equivalents of 1) unbelievabl{e/y} / incredibl{e/y}, 2) terribl{e/y} and 3) surprising(ly). Does your language's equivalent of 'Justin is a [adjective] weirdo' have the meaning 'Justin is a weirdo to an [adjective] degree' or not?

Can you please provide example sentences and a literal translation?

It's for my MA thesis, and of course anyone who provides me with data will receive a mention in the acknowledgements :)

ETA: other than 'weirdo', other nouns that work the same way are 'nerd', 'Motörhead fan', 'knitting enthusiast', 'idiot', etc. - basically any noun that describes something that one can be to a certain extent.

I was wondering if anyone knows where I can find online information on Korean phonology (or just general Korean linguistics), preferably in English, French or Spanish (I guess Korean would also be fine). Mostly I'm trying to find out more about standard Korean phonemes and what they may correspond to in the hangeul alphabet.