Things That Did Wonders For My Mental Health:

whats the deal with the stigma around giving up anyway. yeah this is hard so i do not want to do it anymore. we don’t keep our hand inside a burning flame just to feel like a martyr. i’m off to get a milkshake 

there is also a wikipedia in your language

it turns out that studying linguistics can change the way you think about gender, if only you’re willing to stretch a metaphor a little bit

Mon coeur, mon tout.

there is no one coming to save you. there is no future version of yourself that will save you. there is no predestined course correction. all there is are the choices you make right now, and your best guess of how things will go. there is no narrative. no winning. only movement. and your convictions. you have no choice but to act on your convictions, your principles. or else the movement will sweep you up. dont be inert.

To say, “This is my uncle,” in Chinese, you have no choice but to encode more information about said uncle. The language requires that you denote the side the uncle is on, whether he’s related by marriage or birth and, if it’s your father’s brother, whether he’s older or younger.

“All of this information is obligatory. Chinese doesn’t let me ignore it,” says Chen. “In fact, if I want to speak correctly, Chinese forces me to constantly think about it.”

This got Chen wondering: Is there a connection between language and how we think and behave? In particular, Chen wanted to know: does our language affect our economic decisions?

Chen designed a study — which he describes in detail in this blog post — to look at how language might affect individual’s ability to save for the future. According to his results, it does — big time.

While “futured languages,” like English, distinguish between the past, present and future, “futureless languages,” like Chinese, use the same phrasing to describe the events of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Using vast inventories of data and meticulous analysis, Chen found that huge economic differences accompany this linguistic discrepancy. Futureless language speakers are 30 percent more likely to report having saved in any given year than futured language speakers. (This amounts to 25 percent more savings by retirement, if income is held constant.) Chen’s explanation: When we speak about the future as more distinct from the present, it feels more distant — and we’re less motivated to save money now in favor of monetary comfort years down the line.

But that’s only the beginning. There’s a wide field of research on the link between language and both psychology and behavior. Here, a few fascinating examples:

Navigation and Pormpuraawans In Pormpuraaw, an Australian Aboriginal community, you wouldn’t refer to an object as on your “left” or “right,” but rather as “northeast” or “southwest,” writes Stanford psychology professor Lera Boroditsky (and an expert in linguistic-cultural connections) in the Wall Street Journal. About a third of the world’s languages discuss space in these kinds of absolute terms rather than the relative ones we use in English, according to Boroditsky. “As a result of this constant linguistic training,” she writes, “speakers of such languages are remarkably good at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes.” On a research trip to Australia, Boroditsky and her colleague found that Pormpuraawans, who speak Kuuk Thaayorre, not only knew instinctively in which direction they were facing, but also always arranged pictures in a temporal progression from east to west.

Blame and English Speakers In the same article, Boroditsky notes that in English, we’ll often say that someone broke a vase even if it was an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers tend to say that the vase broke itself. Boroditsky describes a study by her student Caitlin Fausey in which English speakers were much more likely to remember who accidentally popped balloons, broke eggs, or spilled drinks in a video than Spanish or Japanese speakers. (Guilt alert!) Not only that, but there’s a correlation between a focus on agents in English and our criminal-justice bent toward punishing transgressors rather than restituting victims, Boroditsky argues.

Color among Zuñi and Russian Speakers Our ability to distinguish between colors follows the terms in which we describe them, as Chen notes in the academic paper in which he presents his research (forthcoming in the American Economic Review; PDF here). A 1954 study found that Zuñi speakers, who don’t differentiate between orange and yellow, have trouble telling them apart. Russian speakers, on the other hand, have separate words for light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). According to a 2007 study, they’re better than English speakers at picking out blues close to the goluboy/siniy threshold.

Gender in Finnish and Hebrew In Hebrew, gender markers are all over the place, whereas Finnish doesn’t mark gender at all, Boroditsky writes in Scientific American (PDF). A study done in the 1980s found that, yup, thought follows suit: kids who spoke Hebrew knew their own genders a year earlier than those who grew up speaking Finnish. (Speakers of English, in which gender referents fall in the middle, were in between on that timeline, too.)

Know what's great? Books. Know what's even better? Free books. I meant to put together this list ages ago and was just reminded of it yesterday, so here's just about every method I know of to (legally) obtain free ebooks and audiobooks. I'll add to this list if I come across any more.

Free Ebooks:

*Librivox - Provides access to audiobooks in the public domain, run by volunteers. Mostly classics.

*Project Gutenberg - Provides access to ebooks in the public domain. Mostly classics.

Digital Public Library of America - Provides access to books in the public domain.

hoopla - Free app that lets you access ebooks and audiobooks available through your library. Requires your library card info.

*Libby - Same concept as hoopla. Run by Overdrive.

Sora - Similar concept as hoopla and Libby but instead it's for schools (requires your school info). Also by Overdrive.

The Palace Project - Another app like Libby and hoopla that provides access to library books. This one also allows you to download books from DPLA right from the app if you don't have a library card/your library is not yet signed up with them. The downside is they don't seem to yet have access to as many libraries as Libby or hoopla.

*Riveted by Simon Teen - Provides access to full ebooks and extended excerpts of popular YA books. The books available switch out monthly so you'll have to read in the given time frame.

*Tor.com Newsletter - Weekly emails highlighting their blog, scifi/fantasy news, and short fiction. Occasionally they pop in a freebie that you can download from book depository (I got Gideon the Ninth this way). Just make sure you download the book before the deadline.

*Bookbub - Newsletter that emails you daily ebook deals curated to your tastes, often includes 1-2 free ebooks in most of its daily recs. Also a great way to discover lesser known books.

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*Chirp - Newsletter that emails daily audiobook deals. I've never seen a free audiobook here but I figured they'd still be worthwhile to mention. Prices usually range from .99c to ~$4.99. Must download the Chirp app to listen, but it's a great alternative to Audible.

*currently using these ones myself

Western Zodiac Signs in MANDARIN CHINESE:

Aries:  白羊座 (báiyángzuò)

Taurus:  金牛座 (jīnniúzuò)

Gemini:  雙子座 (shuāngzǐzuò)

Cancer:  巨蟹座 (jùxièzuò)

Leo:  獅子座 (shīzǐzuò)

Virgo:  室女座 (shìnǚzuò)

Libra:  天秤座  (tiānchèngzuò)

Scorpio:  天蝎座 (tiānxiēzuò)

Sagittarius:  射手座 (shèshǒuzuò)

Capricorn:  摩羯座 (mójiézuò)

Aquarius:  水瓶座 (shuǐpíngzuò)

Pisces:  雙魚座 (shuāngyúzuò)

Sources: x  x