Languages3 min read
Northern vs Southern Vietnamese: Pronunciation, Tones and Vocabulary
Northern vs southern Vietnamese: how d, gi, r and v sound, the merged hỏi and ngã tones, final consonants, everyday words that differ, and which to learn.
120 articles · page 2 of 5
Languages guides, page 2
Articles 25–48 of 120, newest first. The introduction to this reading list, its topic hubs and the guides other articles cite most are on the first page.
Languages articles 25–48
- Languages4 min read
Passato Prossimo vs Imperfetto: Choosing the Italian Past Tense
Passato prossimo vs imperfetto: single events against habits, states and background, how each tense is formed, and why sapevo and ho saputo differ.
- Languages4 min read
Russian Adjective Endings: Gender, Number and Case
Russian adjective endings in one table: -ый, -ая, -ое, -ые through all six cases, soft stems like синий, the хороший spelling rule, and short forms.
- Languages3 min read
Russian Greetings: Zdravstvuyte, Privet and Formal Address
Russian greetings by situation: formal здравствуйте and casual привет, good morning to good evening, ты or вы, name and patronymic, and saying goodbye.
- Languages4 min read
Russian Numbers: Counting, and the Case That Follows Each Number
Russian numbers from zero to a million, and the rule that matters most: why it is один рубль, два рубля but пять рублей, and what happens after 11 to 14.
- Languages4 min read
Russian Personal Pronouns in Every Case
Russian pronouns in all six cases: я, ты, он, она, оно, мы, вы, они and себя, the extra н- after prepositions, со мной and обо мне, and formal Вы.
- Languages4 min read
The Russian Soft Sign and Hard Sign: What Ь and Ъ Do
The Russian soft sign ь softens the consonant before it (брат vs брать) and marks grammar after ж, ш, ч, щ; the hard sign ъ splits a prefix from я, е, ё, ю.
- Languages4 min read
Thai Classifiers: Khon, Tua, An and How Counting Works
Thai classifiers explained: the noun, number, classifier order, common classifiers for people, animals, books and vehicles, and asking how many with kii.
- Languages4 min read
Thai Consonant Classes: High, Mid and Low, and How They Set the Tone
Thai consonant classes in one reference: the 9 mid, 11 high and 24 low letters, the seven sound pairs, the single low letters and the silent leading ห.
- Languages3 min read
Thai Greetings: Sawasdee, the Wai and What to Say When
Thai greetings explained: sawatdi with khrap or kha, how are you, thank you and goodbye, using khun with names, and when and how to return a wai.
- Languages3 min read
Thai Numbers: Counting, Thai Digits and Prices
Thai numbers from 0 to a million: the Thai digits ๐ to ๙, when one becomes et and two becomes yi, building big numbers, and reading prices in baht.
- Languages3 min read
Khrap and Kha: How Thai Polite Particles Work
Khrap and kha explained: which one you say, the high-tone kha for questions, where particles go in a sentence, and the friendlier na, cha and si.
- Languages3 min read
Thai Vowels: Long and Short, and Where They Sit Around a Consonant
Thai vowels explained: the 32 traditional vowels, nine short and long pairs, signs before, above, below and around the consonant, and hidden vowels.
- Languages4 min read
Vietnamese Classifiers: Con, Cái and Counting Things
Vietnamese classifiers explained: cái for objects, con for animals and moving things, the shape classifiers, where the classifier sits and which nouns skip one.
- Languages4 min read
Vietnamese Greetings: Xin Chào and Choosing the Right Pronoun
Vietnamese greetings in practice: why xin chào sounds formal, chào plus a kinship term, dạ and vâng, cảm ơn, xin lỗi, and goodbyes beyond tạm biệt.
- Languages3 min read
Vietnamese Numbers: Counting, the Tricky Fives and Tens, and Prices
Vietnamese numbers explained: một to mười, why one becomes mốt, five becomes lăm and ten becomes mươi, big numbers in thousands, and prices in đồng.
- Languages5 min read
Cantonese Sentence-Final Particles and What They Actually Add
Grammatically correct Cantonese still sounds wrong without particles. What sentence-final particles do, why they are not tones, and how to start using them.
- Languages6 min read
Dictation Drills: Turning What You Hear Into What You Write
Dictation is the one drill that joins listening to an unfamiliar script. What it tests, what the research supports, and how to run it in ten minutes a day.
- Languages6 min read
Heritage Learners: Studying the Language You Half-Remember
A heritage learner arrives with listening ahead of reading and gaps in between. Why that profile needs a different study plan, with Shanghainese as the case.
- Languages6 min read
Lao Numbers, Prices and Counting at a Market Stall
Lao numerals, the words from one to a hundred, the irregular twenty, and the thousand-and-above units that carry prices when you are buying something.
- Languages6 min read
Learning English From Marathi: Using a Course in the Other Direction
What changes when a bilingual course is switched round: explanations in Marathi, a new script to decode, and the specific gaps a Marathi speaker starts with.
- Languages6 min read
Malay Reduplication: When Saying It Twice Changes the Meaning
Repeating a Malay word can mark plurality, signal variety, or form a word with no single half. Telling the three apart, with dictionary-checked examples.
- Languages5 min read
Reading Shanghainese in Characters When You Only Know Mandarin Readings
A character on the page is a written unit, not a pronunciation. What happens when you can read a Shanghainese sentence in Mandarin but cannot say it in Wu.
- Languages5 min read
Spoken Cantonese, Written Cantonese and Standard Written Chinese
Cantonese learners meet three systems, not one: what you say, colloquial Cantonese written down, and Standard Written Chinese read aloud in Cantonese.