You Know When You *should* Work But You Are Having Such A Bad Day You Can’t? That’s Me Right Now.

22-27/10/18 - 42-46 days of productivity

Hello all! Just been to Waterstones with my best friend reading, writing German essays and doing some mechanics.

Exciting news this week: I booked flights and a hotel for the 13th-15th January so she and I can stay in Berlin for my 18th birthday on the 14th! I’m so anxious but excited about it :)

I cannot wait to go back to school, but I am very nervous about my Cambridge NatSci pre-interview assessment on Wednesday (as if Halloween wasn’t scary enough without this!).

So this week I’ve been into watching MIT open lectures on YouTube and reading the fabulous book you see pictured: Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B. Carroll. It’s about Evo Devo and I highly recommend this book to everyone remotely interested in the genetics/evolution side of biology.

I am a Cambridge reject

Do you know what? I don’t even care. I did about 5 seconds ago, but it’s my birthday and I am in Berlin and this is nothing more than a minor setback. I’m going to have a good life wherever I go. I am going to firm my unconditional from Birmingham - at least the trains are nicer.

Congratulations to all who got in - I am so proud of you. And to those who didn’t - I’m proud of you too. We are just as good as those who got in x

13/09/18 My sixth form brought sweets for us!

Summer School is hard graft at Cambridge but I love it

Music tag

Rules: Put your entire music library on shuffle and list the first 10 songs, then choose 10 victims.

Thank you for tagging me, @marie-curie :)

1. Hold Me While You Wait - Lewis Capaldi

2. Laughter Lines - Bastille

3. Some Might Say - Oasis

4. Caméléon - Maître Gims

5. Legenden - Max Giesinger

6. Nummer Eins - Stereoact

7. Zeitlupe - Madeline Juno

8. Doom Days - Bastille

9. Angel with a Shotgun - The Cab

10. Borderline - Madeline Juno

There are disproportionately many English songs on this list; the majority of songs in my library are in French and German haha

My victims are: @studydiaryofamedstudent @patriotstudies @problematicprocrastinator @vocative @alettereminuscole @apricot-studies @hastily-written @dusknotes @briellestudies @fluencylevelfrench

(Sorry if you’ve already been tagged!)

OMG I needed this

How to teach yourself linguistics online for free

Wish you were enrolled in an intro linguistics class this semester? Starting a linguistics major and looking for extra help? Trying to figure out whether you should study linguistics and what comes after?  Whether you’re just trying to grasp the basics of linguistics or you’re trying to construct a full online linguistics course, here’s a comprehensive list of free linguistics websites, podcasts, videos, blogs, and other resources from around the internet: 

Linguistics Podcasts

Specific episodes:

The International Phonetic Alphabet and vowels

Constituency

Gricean Maxims and presuppositions

Kids These Days aren’t ruining language

Learning languages linguistically

Phonemes

Prepositions and determiners

Morphemes and the wug test

Podcasts in general:

Lingthusiasm

The History of English Podcast

Talk the Talk

Lexicon Valley

The World in Words

A Way With Words

Linguistics Videos

Modular topics:

NativLang (cartoons)

The Ling Space

Tom Scott’s Language Files

Arika Okrent (whiteboard videos)

Structured video series like an online course:  

Introduction to Linguistics (TrevTutor)

Another intro linguistics series (DS Bigham)

Phonology (TrevTutor)

Mathematical linguistics (TrevTutor)

Syntax (TrevTutor)

Another syntax series following the chapter structure of a free online syntax textbook (Caroline Heycock)

The Virtual Linguistics Campus at Marburg University

“Miracles of Human Language” (on Coursera from Leiden University)

Blog posts

General

How much do I need to know before taking intro linguistics? (Spoiler: not much) 

28 tips for doing better in your intro linguistics course

How to find a topic for your linguistics essay or research paper

For typesetting linguistics symbols: What is LaTeX and why do linguists love it? (with sample LaTeX doc to download and modify).

Further linguistics resources about specific areas, such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition (first/second), historical linguistics, neurolinguistics, prescriptivism. 

Phonetics & Phonology

How to make your own paper model of the larynx

Teaching phonetics using lollipops

How to remember the IPA vowel chart

How to remember the IPA consonant chart

IPA transcription practice

A detailed explanation of sonorants, obstruents, and sonority

A very elaborate Venn diagram of English phonological features

The basics of how Optimality Theory works, with coffee analogy

Allophones of /t/, explained with internet gifs

Several good visualizations and explanations of the vocal tract

How to type IPA on your phone (Android and iOS) 

Various ways to type IPA on a computer

Morphology & Syntax

Morphological typology cartoons

So you asked the internet how to draw syntax trees. Here’s why you’re confused.

Types of trees: a sentence is an S, a sentence is an IP, a sentence is a TP

A step-by-step guide to drawing a syntax tree, with gifs

Distributed Morphology

Garden path sentences: how they work, some examples

Structural ambiguity and understanding people in Ipswich

How to draw trees on a computer (TreeForm and phpSyntaxTree) 

Pronoun typology and “the gay fanfiction problem”

The solution to violent example sentences: Pokemon

Semantics & Pragmatics

The difference between epistemic and deontic, necessity and possibility (with bonus modals as Hogwarts houses)

Why learn semantics? Comebacks to annoying people.

Presuppositions, implicature and entailment, and more presuppositions in Lizzie Bennet Diaries

Gricean maxims in Welcome to Night Vale

Scalar implicature and a duck gif

Giving a shit about Negative Polarity Items, NPIs explained using Mean Girls references, and a follow-up on Free Choice Items

The lambda calculus for absolute dummies

The Lambda Calculator (software for practising in Heim & Kratzer style)

Teaching & Academic/career advice

Linguistics resources for high school teachers

Teaching linguistics to 9-14 year olds

On writing an IB extended essay in linguistics (& follow-up)

IPA Bingo

IPA Jeopardy and IPA Hangman

Practising syntax trees using cards and string/straws

Find a linguistics olympiad near you!

Editing linguistics Wikipedia articles instead of writing a final paper that no one but the prof will read (see also wikiedu.org)

Should you go to grad school in linguistics? Maybe

Figuring out if you actually want to go to linguistics grad school

How to decide which linguistics grad school to go to

How to look for linguistics undergrad programs

How to interact with someone who’s just given a talk

An extensive list of undergrad and/or student-friendly conferences - apply to one near you!

Advice for linguistics profs on increasing enrollment and supporting non-academic careers

Linguistics jobs - a series about careers outside academia

Languages

Linguistic approaches to language learning resource roundup

Will linguistics help with language learning? / Will learning a second language help with linguistics?

The problem with “economically useful” as a reason for language learning

Further link roundups

This list not enough? Try these further masterposts: 

A very long list of linguistics movies, documentaries, and TV show episodes

A list of books (fiction and nonfiction) about linguistics

A comprehensive list of language and linguistics podcasts, from Superlinguo 

A very long list of linguistics YouTube channels and other free online videos about linguistics 

20 linguistics blogs I recommend following

How to explain linguistics to your friends and family this holiday season

A Level hell has finally begun haha

Physical chemistry wasn’t so bad

Damn 😳

Sometimes you're just an introverted loser who sits alone in your room with a cup of tea and a book, has fantasies about morally grey fictional characters, is severely touch starved with a completely fucked up sleep schedule and slowly declining mental health.

Life is mean. It builds your hopes up and then lets them crash and burn in the most brutal way. But pick yourself up, soldier. You are stronger than the harshest disappointment and more resilient than your grief.

8/2/19 Chemistry :D

I hate surprise tests but I know I need to start revising now so that’s what I’ve been doing all evening. Now I’m done I can finally sit down with the book I’ve been wanting to read all day!

I love that feeling of being so absorbed in a book you don’t want to ever put it down. I’ve finally found pleasure in reading again - something I lost when I found out aphantasia wasn’t something anyone else I knew had. I just read because I love words and can feel their nuances rather than see them in action in my head :)

Have a lovely evening!