I'm Convinced People Who Don't Trust Nuclear Energy Don't Actual Know Anything About It Beyond Chernobyl

In my L1-acquisition class two weeks ago, our professor talked about how only 9% of the speech a baby hears is single words. Everything else is phrases and sentences, onslaughts of words and meaning!

Thus, a baby not only has to learn words and their meanings but also learn to segment lots of sounds INTO words. Doyouwantalittlemoresoupyesyoudoyoucutie. Damn.

When she talked about HOW babies learn to segment words our professor said, and I love it, "babies are little statisticians" because when listening to all the sounds, they start understanding what sound is likely to come after another vs which is not.

After discussing lots of experiments done with babies, our professor added something that I already knew somewhere in my brain but didn't know I know: All this knowledge is helpful when learning an L2 as well:

Listen to natives speaking their language. Original speed. Whatever speaker. Whatever topic.

It is NOT about understanding meaning. It is about learning the rhythm of the language, getting a feeling for its sound, the combination of sounds, the melody and the pronunciation.

Just how babies have to learn to identify single words within waves of sounds, so do adults learning a language. It will help immensely with later (more intentional) listening because you're already used to the sound, can already get into the groove of the languge.

Be as brave as a baby.

You don't even have to pay special attention. Just bathe in the sound of your target language. You'll soak it up without even noticing.

“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

Wavy diamond

She's an icon

This is a minor thing but it is very annoying to me when people replace every instance of "th" with þ, while ignoring the existence of ð. Like those indicate very different sounds I'm sorry you are not really saying "þat, þis, þose" unless you are hosing me down with saliva

“The worst thing in the world can happen, but the next day the sun will come up. And you will eat your toast. And you will drink your tea.”

— Rhian Ellis

It's the end of a (very wonderful) era...

NOOOOOO, GURAAAAAA....

We will all miss you and we all hope you have a wonderful journey after this graduation

Thanks for the wonderful memories ❤️ ♥️ 😢 🫡