wilwheaton:

gingersnapwolves:

priscellie:

thefalconawakens:

bystander3:

Can you imagine?

You are moping on your island of self-imposed exile, and then this girl shows up.

• She’s flying your best friend’s ship. The ship that Han thought he lost for ever. The ship that was stolen and passed through so many hands that he was sure he’d never see it again. The same ship that took you away from home for the first time.
• She’s accompanied by your personal droid. The droid you left behind and abandoned. The droid that C-3PO was sure would never be the same again.
• She holds out her hand and she’s holding your father’s light saber. The sword you were sure was lost forever. The light saber that you dropped down a bottomless air shaft on a gas giant thirty years ago. The light saber you knew you would never see again.
• You look up and you see her eyes. Maz Kanata says that if you live long enough, you see the same eyes looking out of different faces. The girl’s face is different, but those eyes are the same. You know those eyes. They’re the eyes you thought you’d never see again.

And that’s when you know it.

You’re screwed.

They say sometimes the Force works in mysterious ways. Sometimes, the Force will send you little signs. Subtle clues.

Other times, the Force will just beat you repeatedly over the head with a gigantic neon sign that says: “You can’t run away from your past anymore, Luke. I won’t let you. Look, here is your past come back to haunt you. Now deal with it.”

You have no idea how much I adore this post with my whole being

I like the idea of the Force sending Luke little signs over the years that it’s time to return to his loved ones, gently increasing in intensity as he ignores them, until it finally gets fed up and shoves the events of Episode 7 into motion, finishing with a flourish of HERE’S YOUR NEW APPRENTICE, SPACE HOBO.

space hobo

s p a c e

h o b o

scrumptiousangst:

raejin99:

prokopetz:

Fun fact: cats don’t just wiggle their butts before they pounce out of excitement – they’re also making tiny adjustments to the position of their feet in order to more precisely aim the ensuing lunge.

Or, in other words: your cat is calibrating.

Loading pounce.exe

Initiating…

Analyzing target coordinates

Trajectory adjustments required, initiate calibration protocol wigglebutt.exe

Wiggling…

Wiggling…

Calibration complete. Initiating pounce in 3…

2…

1…

Pounce initiated

Results: Slammed head first into wall. Please debug wigglebutt.exe

Catlibrating the jump.

amateurlanguager:

thepolyglotblog:

darasteine:

The 75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences
The 200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences
The 524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences
The 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences
The 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences
The 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences
The 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences
The 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences

(Sources: 5 Steps to Speak a New Language by Hung Quang Pham)

This article has an excellent summary on how to rapidly learn a new language within 90 days.

We can begin with studying the first 600 words. Of course chucking is an effective way to memorize words readily. Here’s a list to translate into the language you desire to learn that I grabbed from here! 🙂

EXPRESSIONS OF POLITENESS (about 50 expressions)
     

• ‘Yes’ and ‘no’: yes, no, absolutely, no way, exactly.
     
• Question words: when? where? how? how much? how many? why? what? who? which? whose?
     
• Apologizing: excuse me, sorry to interrupt, well now, I’m afraid so, I’m afraid not.
     
• Meeting and parting: good morning, good afternoon, good evening, hello, goodbye, cheers, see you later, pleased to meet you, nice to have met.
     
• Interjections: please, thank you, don’t mention it, sorry, it’ll be done, I agree, congratulations, thank heavens, nonsense.
     

NOUNS (about 120 words)

• Time: morning, afternoon, evening, night; Sunday, Monday,
  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; spring, summer, autumn,
  winter; time, occasion, minute, half-hour, hour, day, week, month,
  year.
     
• People: family, relative, mother, father, son,
  daughter, sister, brother, husband, wife; colleague, friend, boyfriend,
  girlfriend; people, person, human being, man, woman, lady, gentleman,
  boy, girl, child.
     
• Objects: address, bag, book, car, clothes, key,
  letter (=to post), light (=lamp), money, name, newspaper, pen, pencil,
  picture, suitcase, thing, ticket.
     
• Places: place, world, country, town, street, road,
  school, shop, house, apartment, room, ground; Britain, name of the
  foreign country, British town-names, foreign town-names.
     
• Abstract: accident, beginning, change, color,
  damage, fun, half, help, joke, journey, language, English, name of the
  foreign language, letter (of alphabet), life, love, mistake, news, page,
  pain, part, question, reason, sort, surprise, way (=method), weather,
  work.
     
• Other: hand, foot, head, eye, mouth, voice; the
  left, the right; the top, the bottom, the side; air, water, sun, bread,
  food, paper, noise.
     

PREPOSITIONS (about 40 words)
   

• General: of, to, at, for, from, in, on.
     
• Logical: about, according-to, except, like, against, with, without, by, despite, instead of.
     
• Space: into, out of, outside, towards, away from,
  behind, in front of, beside, next to, between, above, on top of, below,
  under, underneath, near to, a long way from, through.
     
• Time: after, ago, before, during, since, until.
     

DETERMINERS (about 80 words)
 

• Articles and numbers: a, the; nos. 0–20; nos. 30–100; nos. 200–1000; last, next, 1st–12th.
     
• Demonstrative: this, that.
     
• Possessive: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.
     
• Quantifiers: all, some, no, any, many, much, more, less, a few, several, whole, a little, a lot of.
     
• Comparators: both, neither, each, every, other, another, same, different, such.
     

ADJECTIVES (about 80 words)
   

• Color: black, blue, green, red, white, yellow.
     
• Evaluative: bad, good, terrible; important, urgent, necessary; possible, impossible; right, wrong, true.
     
• General: big, little, small, heavy; high, low; hot,
  cold, warm; easy, difficult; cheap, expensive; clean, dirty; beautiful,
  funny (=comical), funny (=odd), usual, common (=shared), nice, pretty,
  wonderful; boring, interesting, dangerous, safe; short, tall, long; new,
  old; calm, clear, dry; fast, slow; finished, free, full, light (=not
  dark), open, quiet, ready, strong.
     
• Personal: afraid, alone, angry, certain, cheerful,
  dead, famous, glad, happy, ill, kind, married, pleased, sorry, stupid,
  surprised, tired, well, worried, young.
     

VERBS (about 100 words)
   

• arrive, ask, be, be able to, become, begin, believe, borrow,
  bring, buy, can, change, check, collect, come, continue, cry, do, drop,
  eat, fall, feel, find, finish, forget, give, going to, have, have to,
  hear, help, hold, hope, hurt (oneself), hurt (someone else), keep, know,
  laugh, learn, leave, lend, let (=allow), lie down, like, listen, live
  (=be alive), live (=reside), look (at), look for, lose, love, make, may
  (=permission), may (=possibility), mean, meet, must, need, obtain, open,
  ought to, pay, play, put, read, remember, say, see, sell, send, should,
  show, shut, sing, sleep, speak, stand, stay, stop, suggest, take, talk,
  teach, think, travel, try, understand, use, used to, wait for, walk,
  want, watch, will, work (=operate), work (=toil), worry, would, write.
     

PRONOUNS (about 40 words)

• Personal: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, one; myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.
     
• Possessive: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs.
     
• Demonstrative: this, that.
     
• Universal: everyone, everybody, everything, each, both, all, one, another.
     
• Indefinite: someone, somebody, something, some, a few, a little, more, less; anyone, anybody, anything, any, either, much, many.
     
• Negative: no-one, nobody, nothing, none, neither.
     

ADVERBS (about 60 words)

• Place: here, there, above, over, below, in front, behind,
  nearby, a long way away, inside, outside, to the right, to the left,
  somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere, home, upstairs, downstairs.
     
• Time: now, soon, immediately, quickly, finally,
  again, once, for a long time, today, generally, sometimes, always,
  often, before, after, early, late, never, not yet, still, already, then
  (=at that time), then (=next), yesterday, tomorrow, tonight.
     
• Quantifiers: a little, about (=approximately), almost, at least, completely, very, enough, exactly, just, not, too much, more, less.
     
• Manner: also, especially, gradually, of course,
  only, otherwise, perhaps, probably, quite, so, then (=therefore), too
  (=also), unfortunately, very much, well.
     

CONJUNCTIONS (about 30 words)

• Coordinating: and, but, or; as, than, like.
     
• Time & Place: when, while, before, after, since (=time), until; where.
     
• Manner & Logic: how, why, because, since (=because), although, if; what, who, whom, whose, which, that.
    

Oh i love this concept!

I love it too! I love it mostly because it makes me feel less overwhelmed. When you break it down like this, everything seems so much more manageable. Like, hey, I could memorize 20 words at a time (even if ‘at a time’ varies wildly for me), and just do that like ten times. That’s a HUGE chunk of a language.

(And since I have the habit of doing languages that are similar to ones I’m already familiar with, the grammar part usually comes pretty easy, too.)