This post is basically an explanation for how it works. If you're interested or have any questions feel free to ask it.
I posted this here because this is specifically adapted to my native language, Dutch.
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个 maakt er een zelfstandig naamwoord van, 者 wordt een beroep/gewoon iemand die dat doet, 们 maakt er een volledig werkwoord van. Wordt alleen toegepast als er een werkwoord is dat niet “maken” gebruikt.
个 makes it into a noun, 者 into a profession/simply someone who does that, 们 makes it a full verb. Only applies if there is a verb that doesn’t include “maken(to make)”.
画个 = schilderij painting
画者 = schilder painter
画们 = schilderen to paint
Voor het lidwoord “een” gebruik “一” “de” is “個” en “het” “它”.
For the article “een(a)” use “一“ “de(the)” is 個 and “het(the)” “它“ .
De vervoeging “-e” van bijvoeglijke naamwoorden krijgt 的 .
The conjugation “-e” for adjectives gets 的.
Hele werkwoorden en zelfstandig naamwoorden in het meervoud krijgen het achtervoegsel 们, het teken op zich is alleen de stam.
Full verbs and nouns in the plural get the suffix 们, the character on its own is just the stem.
Ik ren 我走， ik wil rennen 我想走们. De tweede en derde persoons persoonsvorm worden niet vervoegd in het schrift. Alle meervoudsvormen ook niet.
I run 我想走们，I want to run 我想走们. The second and third person finite verbs aren’t conjugated in writing. All plural forms aren’t either.
Verleden tijd gebruikt het teken 有. “Ik heb gerend” -> 我有走们 of “Ik rende” -> 我走了.
Past tense uses the character 有. “I have run” -> 我有走们 or “I ran” -> 我走了
Woorden uit het Frans, Latijnse of Griekse afkomst(ook als ze via het Engels komen), worden geschreven in traditionele tekens. Nederlandse samengestelde woorden gebruiken versimpelde tekens, als alle andere woorden.
Words from French, Latin or Greek origin(even if they came in through English), are written with traditional characters. Dutch compound words use simplified characters, like all other words.
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Here are a couple of examples where the lines indicate where the characters stops .
Ik hou van gele auto’s. I love yellow cars.
ik - hou - van - gel-e - auto-’s
我喜乃黄的自们。
Wij gingen in de winter winkelen. I went shopping in winter.
wij - gingen* - in - de - winter - winkel-en
私去了内個冬店们。
Na het eten was konden we de terugweg niet zien.
After the meal we couldn’t find the way back.
等它吃个是了能了私個以背道没见。
Jullie moeten meer Engelse dan Nederlandse boeken gaan lezen en minder Koreaanse muziek luisteren.
You guys have to read more English than Dutch books and listen less to Korean music.
君要更英的比兰国的书们去们读们和无韩的神女艺听们。
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I pray to god someone finds this even remotely interesting, I spent like 10 hours on this...

French conjugation is hard when you have to learn them in one go, there are near 20 different tenses, 3 groups of verbs, and even more subgroups. Today, I'll write a bit (in english) about the basics of the french conjugation in order to help you all understand how it works.

conjugation 101

Verbs in french are oftenly put in their infinitive form (Manger, courir, boire, aller,...) which is composed of a radical with the infinitive termination (mange-[e]r, cour-ir) except the many exceptions of the verbs with an irregular radical (boire, aller,...).
To conjugate a verb, most of the time, you have to choose the verb, the subject and the tense (ex: louer [to rent], tu, imparfait de l'indicatif). Then you take the radical of your verb to which you add the termination of the tense for the subject you picked (ex: the termination for "louer" in the imparfait for "tu" is "-ais" so the conjugation is "tu louais" -> tu + lou[er] + ais)

The groups:

French verbs are divided in 3 groups, each one of them can be separated in various sub-groups. But to put it simply, what are those groups, what is their use and where do they come from?
A conjugation group is a group of verbs that have similar conjugation
The three french groups are simply called Premier groupe (first group), deuxième groupe (second group) and troisème groupe (third group). In this post, I'll use a more obvious name for them "-er" group (1° group), "-ir" group (2° group), and irregular group (3° group)
The "-er" group only have verbs that ends with "-er", but not every verb that ends with "-er" are in the second group.
Same with the "-ir" group, not every "-ir" verbs are in the "-ir" group, but every verb of the "-ir" group ends with "-ir".
For the irregular group, it simply have every other verbs (including être and avoir which are really important to know). There are no thumb rule for this group, so you have to learn the 3rd group verb by heart.
I also mentionned earlier that there are some sub groups in french. Not every french verb of the first group will conjugate exactly like the other, but they are classified in sub-groups, usually refered by one of the most common verb of that sub-group. For example:
Venir is conjugated like devenir and prévenir, so they will usually be put in the same sub-group and in the third group.
Manger is conjugated like ranger, langer, manager,... so they will all be put in the "manger" sub group.
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Historically speaking, there are no "origin" of those groups, as they are just "tools" to learn the conjugation laws. But why do the french verbs are conjugated in 3 ways? Well it's a matter of debate. Latin already had different ways to conjugate certain verbs, so we could say it comes from that, but it could also come from spontaneous evolution.

The tenses:

As I said earlier, there are roughly 20 french tenses, divided in 5 modes: l'indicatif, le subjonctif, l'imperatif, l'infinitif and le participe. Each mode have its own use:
L'indicatif is to indicate that something happened, is happening or will happen.
The subjonctif is there for the wishes, the fears or everything that might or could happen.
The imperatfif is there for orders, advices or indications.
The infinitif is the "base" form of the verb
The participe are either for composed tenses (participe passé) or to create adverbs and adjectives (participe présent)
Each mode have its own amount of tenses for different uses. However, it should be noted that not every tense of every mode is used on a regular basis. the passé simple of the indicative for example is almost never used in day to day french (we rather use imparfait or passé composé).
Why do french have so many tenses? Well for precision. French is a very precise language when it comes to conjugation. If you tell a story that will happen, and that in that future story, you have to mention an action that happened before the story but still in the future, you will use the "futur antérieur" (ex: I'll buy some milk before we'll run out of stock -> j'aurai acheté du lait avant qu'on n'en ait plus). So it's primordial for a french speaker to know how and when to use each tense!
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Since I'll got some free time for the week, I'll try to post a few more posts about french conjugation during the week. I'll try my best to link them together so you won't have trouble finding them.

In my last post, I exposed the very basics of the french conjugation, but today, I'll write about something more specific and problematic: how french conjugation really works?
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In my last post, I already said that french conjugation is simply made like that: subject + verb + termination, so if you want to say "I'll eat", you take "Je" + mange" (radical of "manger") + rai (termination for "Je" in the "futur de l'indicatif" tense) which makes "je mangerai".
I also explained that verbs are divided in 3 groups (1er groupe -> -er group + 2ème groupe -> -ir group + 3° groupe -> irregular group) and each group can be divided in many sub groups (the group of the verbs that are conjugated like "manger", the group of verb that are conjugated like "venir",...)
A comment in my previous post also mentionned the Bescherelle which is a book for french conjugation. You should definitively check it (online version of it) as it will help you find how to conjugate a verb properly.
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So with that in mind, you should be able to conjugate the regular verbs in french with the simple tenses. But, if there are "regular" verbs, there are also irregular verbs. Here is a good list of the irregular verbs for you all. Also, if there are "simple" tenses, there are tenses that are not simple. But dont worry, they are easy if you master the conjugation of "être" and "avoir". Let me explain:
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Composed tense are tenses where the verbal group is like that: "subject + auxiliary + verb (in its participe passé form)". You are probably familiar with that syntax as it is also how the english verbs are conjugated in their composed tenses, and the similarities don't stop there. In french, the auxiliaries are "être" (to be) and "avoir" (to have). The verbs are always in their participe passé form which is made of the radical of the verb and with the termination "é" (-er verbs, not only of the 1rst group), "u" (-ir and -ire verbs) or are irregular (like "être" which becomes "été" or "avoir" which becomes "eu").
In the composed tenses, the auxiliary is the only verb that is conjugated, and in order to master the composed tenses, you will need to master the conjugations of "être" and "avoir" in the following tenses: présent, imparfait, passé simple and futur simple of the indicatif mode; présent and imparfait of the subjonctif mode and présent of the conditionel mode.
There are no thumb rule to know if a verb have "avoir" or "être" as an auxiliary, except for that one "it's almost always "avoir" except for some verbs (that you should know by heart) and even then, it's "avoir" if the verb is followed by a complément d'objet direct".
finaly, the verb in its participe passé form is accorded in gender and in number of the subject if the auxiliary is "être" but not if it's "avoir". For example: "Elles ont mangé du pain" (mangé is still "mangé" even though the subject is feminine and plural) and "Elles étaient parties au restaurant" ("parti" have an "être" auxiliary, so it take the "e" because the subject is feminine and an "s" because the subject is plural)
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And while we're at it, let's talk a bit about when to use the composed tenses, because if you remember from my last post, I said that french aimed for precision when it comes to conjugation, hence the numerous tenses and the importance of knowing when to use them. So here we go:
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Passé composé (auxiliary in its present conjugation) is the most commonly used composed tense in french. It is used as a way to talk about a past action that has ended. ex: j'ai été malade toute la semaine. tu as vu le dernier Avenger? Nous sommes allés ("allé" takes the "s" because the auxiliary is "être" and the subject is plural) en Norvège cet été.
The conditionnel passé (auxiliary in its conditionel présent conjugation) is also oftenly used, so you should know it aswell. It is used to talk about an action that would have happened if a condition was checked (usually a regret or a charge). ex: si j'avais eu un peu plus de jugeotte, je n'aurais pas fait ça. Elle était abrutie ("abruti" takes an "e" because the auxiliary is "être" and the subject is feminine) par le vin hier soir!
The plus que parfait (auxiliary in its imparfait conjugation) is to refer to an action that happen before the narrative time if the narrative tense is already in the past (it's the past of the past). ex: J'étais aux courses et je ne me suis pas rendu compte que j'avais oublié ma liste! Tu avais perdu ton portable.
The futur antérieur (auxiliary in its futur simple conjugation) is as used as the plus que parfait. It is used for an action that happened before the narative time if the narative time is in the future. For example: Tu seras déjà couchée quand je sortirai du travail. (the narrative time is given by "when I'll be out of work").
The futur antérieur can also be used to talk about an action that will happen at a given time (so the time must be given). ex: les travaux seront finis en Janvier.
The subjonctif passé (auxiliary in its subjonctif présent conjugation) is used to talk about an action that might (or might not) have happened. ex: Il faut que tu aies passé ton bac pour aller à l'université.
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And now, we get on the rarely used tenses of french.
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The passé antérieur (auxiliary in its passé simple conjugation) is like the plus que parfait, but only used when you use the "passé simple" tense (which is not commonly used). example: "Quand il eut fini, elle hurla"
The subjonctif plus que parfait (auxiliary in its subjonctif imparfait conjugation) is to talk about an action that might (or might not) have happened in the time of the naration if the time is the past. It is almost only used in litterature. example: Quand je les ai lu, je doutais qu'il eût écris ces lettres.
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And here you have it! One of the most boring part of french conjugation, but a part that you should know. Don't hesitate to share your thoughts or ask for a question :)
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EDIT: L'ironie de faire un post sur la conjugaison sans penser à la vérifier. J'ai corrigé ça grâce aux commentaires de lackaisicalquokka et de Deathletterblues et un peu de relecture.

Introduction

Neobasha (neo "new" + basha "language") is an international auxiliary language on which I am currently working. Neobasha attempts to avoid Eurocentrism and to be easy to learn and understand by having a simple grammar and international vocabulary.

Phonology and Orthography

the phonology of Neobasha makes an effort to be easily pronounceable while also preserving recognizability. let's first look at the consonants.
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	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Dorsal
Stop	/pʰ/ b	/tʰ/ d		/kʰ/ g
Affricate			/tʃʰ/ /dʒ~ʒ/
Fricative	f	s	/ʃ/	(/h~x/ )
Nasal	m	n		(/ŋ/ )
Approximant	w	l	/j/	(w)
Rhotic		r

the rhotic here is the classic "whatever rhotic", allowed to be pronounced as any rhotic sound. it also forms no minimal pairs with any other phonemes, so it can be merged with another sound, like how a Japanese speaker would merge /l/ and / into [ɾ].
is allowed to be silent, and the digraph at the end of a word is allowed to be pronounced either as /ŋ/ or /ŋg~ng/.
for speakers of languages without phonemic affricates, /tʃʰ/ can simply be pronounced as a stop-fricative consonant cluster. this concept will be familiar to speakers of French (the most common language without affricates), who are used to this cluster in English loanwords like "(t)chat" /tʃat/, from the English "chat".
the fortis-lenis pairs form no minimal pairs, meaning they can be merged. for example, an Arabic speaker would be allowed to merge both and into [b].
the vowels are just the good ol' 5-vowel system. a 3-vowel system was considered, but the only major language with only 3 vowels is Standard Arabic, which doesn't actually have any monolingual speakers (and all other Arabic dialects in fact have more than 3 vowels.)
now we can take a look at phonotactics. the syllable structure is (C)(X)V(C), where C is consonant, V is vowel, and X is an approximant or rhotic. this syllable structure allows for recognizability to be preserved while still being relatively simple to pronounce. additionally, to break up difficult consonant clusters, an epenthetic vowel outside of Neobasha's 5vs (suggested to be a schwa /ə/ or a voiceless vowel like in Japanese) can be inserted. a single consonant in-between two vowels, as a rule, belongs to the syllable of the second vowel; for example, "basha" is /ba.ʃa/ "ba-sha", not /baʃ.a/ "bash-a". additionally, /h/ can never come at the end of a word, and the same phoneme may not occur twice in a row.
stress isn't phonemic. by default, all syllables are unstressed.

Vocabulary

the vocabulary makes an active effort to be non-Eurocentric, by deriving from a huge set of sources. any given word should:

1. bear a direct resemblance to the word in at least one language, rather than being a strange smashing-together of words as seen in languages like Lojban.
2. be recognizable to speakers of many languages, be it through a common ancestor or simply by coincidence. for example, the verb “kat” will be recognizable to speakers of Assamese, where the word is “kata”; Bengali, where it is “kaṭa”; English, where it is “cut”; Hindustani, where it is “kāṭnā”; Khmer, where it is “kat”; Swahili, where it is “kata”; Sylheti, where it is “xaṭa”; Wu Chinese, where it is pronounced /ka̱ʔ˥/; and Vietnamese, where it is “cắt”. There is also a resemblance to the Portuguese and Spanish “cortar”, especially when the infinitive suffix “-ar” is removed, and to the Lao “tat”. there are also many words where the connection is due to a common ancestor; for example, “brata”, meaning “brother”, is a word of Indo-European origin which, due to an ancient Proto-Indo-European ancestor, will be recognizable to speakers of English, Hindi, Russian, Welsh, Tok Pisin, German, and more.
3. be a cognate or false cognate with words in multiple language families. for example, "pan", meaning "bread", will be recognizable to speakers of the Romance languages, but has also been loaned into many other world languages such as Japanese and Sinhalese. another example is "de", which, while seemingly purely Romance-derived, in fact is also similar to the words in many other languages such as Mandarin "de", Scottish Gaelic "de", Pashto "də", and many more.
4. preferably also bear a vague resemblance to other languages' words. for example, "myela", meaning "honey", comes from the widespread Romance word "miel", but also bears resemblance to the Mandarin "mì", Russian "mjod", and is vaguely similar to other languages' words like the Hindi "madhu" and Hungarian "méz". another example of this is "kitaba", meaning "book", which is from the widespread Arabic-derived word seen in Swahili, Turkish, Kazakh, Indonesian, and Hindi, but is also similar to the Slavic "kniga" and even to the Japanese "kotoba", meaning "word".
5. orthographically resemble its cognates. for example, "basha", from the Sanskrit "bhāṣa", has cognates in languages like Indonesian, Hindi, Bengali, and Thai. of these languages, only one uses the Latin alphabet: Indonesian, where the word is spelled . although ultimately the word was chosen to be adapted as "basha" instead of "bahasa", as the pronunciation with /ʂ~ʃ/ is far more common than that with /has/, it still looks quite similar to the Indonesian due to the digraph used for /ʃ/.

you can see common words in the language from a huge number of language families. for example, "jan", meaning "person", is from various unrelated sources (mainly those derived from Chinese "人" like Mandarin /ʐən/, those from Latin "gēns" like French /ʒã/, and those from Sanskrit "जन" like Hindi /dʒan/), while "bu", meaning "this", is from the Turkic languages such as Turkish.
there is also a system similar to that of Esperanto, wherein every part of speech (for "content words") has a particular ending.

• nouns always end in -a, -r, or a nasal (including -ng)
• verbs end with stops or -i
• adjectives end with -e or -o (so far there isn't a distinction between adjectives and adverbs, but that may be changed)

every word has a basic form in one part of speech, and may have various other words derived from it. for example, a noun can be derived from a verb in various ways for nouns with various different meanings; for example, the suffix -ing, from the Germanic languages, forms a noun from a verb meaning "the act of (verb)"- for example, "kat" is "to cut" and "kating" is "the act of cutting", while the suffix -sha, ultimately from the Sinitic "者" (and most directly resembling the Japanese equivalent), forms a noun meaning "one who does" (translating roughly to the English -er), so "katsha" is "cutter".
the vocabulary is nowhere near fully developed, but a significant amount has been created.
numbers are in base 10, with the numbers from 1-9 being derived from various common languages and those from 10-1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 coming from the international SI prefixes.
some words i like that have been added so far include "la", a particle placed at the end of a sentence for emphasis from colloquial Quebec French "là" (often reduplicated), Singlish "lah", Malay "lah", and Cantonese "laa¹", "kat" (simply because of how strangely international it is), and "ca" (meaning "tea"), simply because i really like tea.

Grammar

the grammar is simplistic and easy to learn. most grammatical information is conveyed via word order rather than through inflection, like in Chinese.
sentences have a basic order of SVO, an incredibly common word order seen in the 2 most common languages (English and Mandarin) as well as the majority of languages spoken worldwide. adjectives and adverbs come before nouns and verbs, and adpositions are prepositions. for English & Mandarin speakers specifically, a sentence often can be very directly compared; for example, Mandarin Chinese "tā shì píngguǒ" (it is an apple) corresponds directly to Neobasha "ta shi apela", with 2 of the 3 words directly from Mandarin and the sentence translating word-for-word.
verbs don't conjugate. currently, tense information can simply be conveyed using adverbs denoting time, but optional particles like English "will" and "to" might be added to the language.
number is not signified with an affix, but, if necessary, can just be specified with a cardinal number placed before the word, such as "du arbusa" (two watermelons, lit. two watermelon).

Sample Sentence

"Maksha de Neobasha lubi ca."
Translation: "the maker of Neobasha loves tea."
Gloss: "Make-er GEN Neobasha love tea"

Hello, everyone!
I didn't know reddit had a conlang group and that so many people participated, I'm happily surprised!
I've seen some amazing work here over the last weeks, so I wanted to introduce my own work following some guidelines I've read.

STARTING GUIDE TO FINSVEL

Finsvel is an artlang project I've been carrying since my first years in middle school (some 10 years ago) but didn't really take a shape similar to what's today until maybe 2015. In 2015, I decided to incorporate Finsvel to the lore of a novel and some side stories I wrote, even making a bilingual Spanish-Finsvel short story once. The Finsvel I'm describing here is mainly the standard, more accessible version of it, but it features some elements from a more complex classical old variant.
I classify Finsvel as an artlang since I tried to make it a language tied to a lore and a historical context. I like to imagine it is a language born from mega multicultural cities or in a pre-apocaliptic context where different cultures have to get along in a reduced territory and thus blending their languages. I've always identified this place as Congo, in some misconception from when I was younger that that's where humans started to appear. Finsvel has been used mainly for singing (by me), so much of it has been shaped around lyrical use.
Finsvel, at the informal level, is a mildly synthetic language that's naturalistic and open to irregularity. However, at the same time, it coexists with a very strict, more analytic standard. Being a language influenced by radically different natural language families (it goes from Romance to Sinitic influences), it can jump from synthetic to analytic very quickly. Texts might even mix and make redundant features from both sides.

Language name

Finsvel means "End of the world" (In a sort of formal classical variant of the language). I didn't want it to sound too creepy and cliché, but since that was the code with which I started the project I haven't changed its main name. It has other names to refer it to it such as: Weltoww (/vel'tof/, Which also means "language of the World's End" in a modern, less formal variant) and Ntigun (/n'tigun/, "Shared tongue").

Phonology & Orthography

Finsvel phonology is not excessively complex, but it does not try to be a fully-fledged auxiliary language so it hasn't had any restraint in getting a bit more challenging or irregular. As a language born from an extreme multicultural context, it does have a wider-than-expected range of consonants for example. (Charts from Conworkshop)
Don't mind the numbers, those are from notes that relate to ortography on conworkshop.
Vowels don't really get very hard and many of them blend into more relaxed versions (in my experience)
For orthography, ironically, there are two big paths for this Latin-based writing system. One is the classical, etymological writing that features many diacritics, accents, cases, exceptions, additional diphthongs and even Chinese characters. I try to avoid this one since using the language does not really require them all the time. The other is the modern, sleek writing system, that includes some marks especially for cases, diacritics and some artistic options for sound shifting. Orthography does seem to get a bit messy, but I control it to some extent since I don't want to become unusable, to the point it can easily be written without diacritics. I like it when it gets sometimes a bit contradictory because that's what natural languages do. Trust me, it sounds easier than it seems.
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https://preview.redd.it/cdp7qbgowz261.png?width=388&format=png&auto=webp&s=49f332288304262262005a74b91f3a20148aec4c
I prefer to avoid acutes since they're not easy to find on your keyboard.
Sound shifting is a characteristic usually of ethymologic and old writings.
Some diacritics can be used both for sound shifting and for case mark. Sound shifting is part of etymological, classical writing methods. It helps recognition of the original languages (e.g., French "lourd" in classical Finsvel would be "lòurd", keeping the O for that etymological purpose, but in the standard versión it'd be "lurd").

Syllable Structure

Standard syllable structure is VC, CV and CVC. But one can easily encounter isolated consonants due to influence from formal texts and poetic licenses. Cases of isolated vowels are rare.
In the classical, academic variant, structures such as VCC or CCC can be pretty common, due to influence from languages such as arabic or abugida script languages.

Vocabulary

Due to that multicultural context, Finsvel grows from many natural languages but adapts words to its own phonetic system. If I have to make an estimate, I'd say: 30% Romance, 20% Sinotibetan, 15 % Greek, 10% Germanic, 5% Arabic, 5% Japonic, 10-15 % miscellaneous.

Grammar

Since Finsvel brings in words from very different languages, I did have to intervene here constructing a standardized method of giving them morphologic shapes. Morphologic basics are actually pretty straightforward.

NOUNS

Being a language heavily focused on lyrics and rhythm, Finsvel does not push you to use its fixed marks for nouns. There are some fixed suffixes since the artlang brings words from languages so different that some standardization was needed. The most common noun suffix is -ON (from Greek). Finsvel would actually let you add -ON to any word to make it work as a noun, there's no limit. It is interchangeable with other nominalizing suffixes with the exact same meaning but with different etymological background: -UNG (from German) and -AN (Turkic and Spanish prevalence of A nouns). In the same sentence, the same noun could change its nominalizer as to spice the rhythm a bit. Sometimes also one specific nominalizer is preferred for a word (if it relates to its origin for example)
https://preview.redd.it/1nwhrcr6ev261.png?width=346&format=png&auto=webp&s=24d81a597ab94e4bb635456c489fae9fa9cd3d96
When words are used without nominalizers, plural and collective are made just with the same method. -EN and -IA. Below an example of the very same word and all its possible rhymic variants. I included something that it's a bit more advanced, which is the classical variant that sometimes can be seen in informal contexts but that I tend to avoid mixing. The preferred nominalizers in this case are for example "yongon" and "yongungia".
https://preview.redd.it/15ddipcffv261.png?width=370&format=png&auto=webp&s=2618f0898b66256af365d9bf57a0ad70aab08b7c

ADJECTIVES

Adjectives follow a very straightforward pattern when constructed directly from natural languages.

1. They do not coordinate with the noun. No gender, no plural (except for noun adjectives, that's another thing)
2. You add an -e to lexical root.

Even when adjectives not ending in -E are incorporated to Finsvel, the rule is to adapt it to it. And even in lexical roots already ending in -E, adding another -E is recommended.
E.G.
Italian "Pericoloso" ("Dangerous") becomes "pericolosE".
Chinese "特別" (pinyin: tebie, "special") I would recommend to use as "tebiee", but many times I write it just as "tebie".

PRONOUNS

Pronouns are very regular and since the last big "standardization" even some of them fell into disuse in my works. This chart is from 2016, and since then, formal 2nd person and gendered 3rd person pronouns have fused with SÍA.
https://preview.redd.it/j72giih6iv261.png?width=1217&format=png&auto=webp&s=c25c1ff32751556cff1ddd1d5c0121f1291e43e9

VERBS

Verbs are perhaps the most regular point of Finsvel since this tends to be a chaotic point for many conlangs, this is where I tend to be more strict with it. 99% of Finsvel verbs are regular, and so are its suffixes. Since it is one of the first things I crafted for the language, it is very much based on romance languages.
https://preview.redd.it/85na2k5wjv261.png?width=233&format=png&auto=webp&s=3338cdfa1f6d646b3d4933408cb0b1c72df403b9
https://preview.redd.it/jf9tgweshv261.png?width=939&format=png&auto=webp&s=d0b53138c20615e4d2f1bc9ff1244741a6ddf7b1
Basic conjugation of the verb TO BE (S-ER). \"S\" is the root. I included the whole chart, but some cases hardly occur. Conditional, for example, tends to fuse into 1st person for all persons. Desiderative, here in grey, is something I'm growing fond of actually. It is sort of similar to romance languages subjunctive but \"lite\" and optional.

CASES, PREPOSITIONS AND POSTPOSITIONS

Noun cases are also something related to the classical, formal variant, but that sometimes leak into informal context. I find it overwhelming to explain them in detail here, but, basically, case marks are put in the middle of the last syllable, usually in nominalized nouns (but they can be used in any form). They fit after the first vowel of the last syllable. It might sound confusing, but I've guessed this way of making it would actually make case marking something completely automatic yet at the same time not your everyday case marking. The reason why cases are marked inside the syllable instead of at the end is that Finsvel clings a lot to the consonants of the original word.
https://preview.redd.it/ilh7accunv261.png?width=109&format=png&auto=webp&s=6e5735a1b5c8b96430e5890a2825f9d4613595bf
https://preview.redd.it/uuzheiivnv261.png?width=373&format=png&auto=webp&s=dca6688d64bf174a95e805bcad9502b5e3d43c92
Lative is actually rare even in poetics forms.
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https://preview.redd.it/wpdr6bkwnv261.png?width=589&format=png&auto=webp&s=2085d799757e62099f85ef633db8e80089187d92
https://preview.redd.it/ngpyzfw6ov261.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=ece725e8bf34f3ade2e93e470a5db0195a568bb6
So, you might guess, if I'm saying cases are something thought for classical texts, how are these meanings expressed in everyday Finsvel?
Well, for that Finsvel has what I think one of its coolest feature, which is the dual proposition-postposition system. Yes, it has and uses both. It allows for many rhythmic modulations I just couldn't imagine the language without since it had already been built for lyric purposes. Along with articles, it allows for many ways of writing the very same phrase.
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Some irregular postpositions. Most regular postpositions are made using the NA postposition + the original preposition.
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SENTENCE ORDER

As you might have guessed from all the customizable features of the language, word order also is quite flexible. I mostly use these two when writing in Finsvel: SOV, SVO and OSV. But mixing cases, prepositions and postpositions you can do practically any order, though apart from those three, it might get difficult to read.

SAMPLES

I have many samples! For the past years, I've doing fandubs of some songs into Finsvel, which helps to have a fixed background and even inspire some improvements.
YOUTUBE LINK
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjheBGCsAmJ2YSQfa6RbUbh3yCbRZebka
A FINSVEL-SPANISH BILINGUAL TEXT (This is from 2015, so it's a bit outdated, today's Finsvel is a bit more regular and cleaner, but they would be interlegible)
https://www.wattpad.com/235360915-1999-2-ep%C3%ADlogo-finsvel-espa%C3%B1ol-1999-2-finsvel
I usually talk about this little hobby of mine to my friends, but haven't really tried to widespread it. Do tell me what you think, I do think I could some help making things clearer. Thing is a full guide of Finsvel could actually get very thick, since it's been in this "standarized" for at least half a decade now. But all I have is a messy excel.
Thanks for your attention.
EDIT: Corrected some minor mistakes and broken tables (I'm new on Reddit, sorry).
I'll be adding and editing things into this post since there's no limit to editing and I like having this post as main source of basic information for the language.

Hey everyone, I’m utilizing some online resources (duolingo & some websites) to try and give myself a good understanding of French before I take French courses in university next year.
My question is, when conjugating verbs in past tense imparfait, do ‘er’, ‘ir’ and ‘re’ verbs conjugate with different endings? I’ve found one set of endings (-ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient) but are those the proper endings to use with all verbs in imparfait conjugation?

I’m a sophomore and I’m taking French 2 at school.
We learned how to conjugate lots of verbs (être, avoir, aller, suivre, -er verbs, etc.) in French 1 and recently started learning about the passé compose.
To say I was, you were, he was, she was, etc, would you use the passé compose? If so, what is the auxiliary verb and the form of être to use, and if not, why can’t you?
Also, to say I had, you have, he has, she has, etc, can you use the passé compose for that? I did some looking online and found that you can use the subject, present conjugation of avoir, and then eu, like:
J’ai eu Tu as eu Il/elle/on a eu Nous avons eu Vous avez eu Ils/elles ont eu
Can someone please confirm if this is correct to say I had, you had, etc.

Unmarked spoilers for all of Twin Peaks.
Last night, FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole had a Monica Belucci dream. Due to advances in dream-recording technology, you can watch it here.
In that dream, Cole was at a street cafe in Paris. Bellucci's friends invited him for a coffee, after which Agent Cooper appeared. Seeing Cole's reaction, Bellucci began to quote the Ancient Texts, saying, "We are like the dreamer who dreams, and then lives inside the dream." Generating the question: "But, who is the dreamer?"
Luckily, the dream was captured on camera, and you can watch it here.
And today, we finally answer it. My friends, the dreamer is alleged-albino Phoebe Bridgers.
Context
In 1989, the FBI sent Special Agent Dale Cooper to investigate the murder of Laura Palmer.
This is after the dissappearance of two previous FBI Agents, both of whom disappeared after investigating missing teenagers. Those are, of course, Chester Desmond, who disappeared in a trailer park while looking for Theresa Banks, and Philip Jeffries, who disappeared after looking for Judy. Well now, I'm not gonna talk about Judy. In fact, we're not gonna talk about Judy at all, we're gonna keep her out of it.
Cooper eventually solves the mystery, with the help of the executives at ABC. Essentially, Laura was killed by a man named Bob. Bob is Judy's son, but Cooper doesn't know that yet, and doesn't know who Judy is yet.
What is Bob?
Bob is from another place. Many beings from another place enjoy eating Garmonbozia, which is a corn-like substance created by human misery. Most of the beings from another place just sort of watch people hang out and suffer and, because our lives are so miserable already, just sort of eat up the Garmonbozia they can find. So, we're all just shitting out corn every time we watch 90 Day Fiance. But, Bob is eviler than most, because he is Judy's son, and Judy is basically pure negativity. So, Bob goes around causing as much misery as possible. Then there's a whole thing with horses, the discovery channel, living maps, and beef jerky, leading to the reveals that Bob is inhabiting Laura's father, Leland, and Judy is inhabiting Laura's mother, Sarah, and they maybe have a horse? Meanwhile, someone sells shovels.
Back in 1989, Cooper began to date someone named Annie. Annie is fine. While attempting to save Annie from the Black Lodge, Cooper is chased and eventually overcome by his doppelganger, leaving Cooper trapped in the Lodge. Turns out Laura is also trapped in the lodge, because she was wearing a magic owl ring when she died. The magic owl ring makes Bob kill whomever is wearing it and transport the spirit to the Red Room, which is a red room in the Black Lodge. It maybe turned Bowie into a teapot.
So, with Laura and Cooper trapped in the Lodge, she's all "See you in 25 years." I guess they just looked in other directions for the rest of the time.
So he just sits there and waits?
I guess. Cooper is so lazy he doesn't even stand up. 25 years Later, he is still trapped in the lodge, having done shit-all. And they lecture us on entitlement. The Bad Cooper has been out conspiring with Philip Jeffries, who hasn't been seen either in-person or in-kettle since he randomly appeared at the FBI ranting about Judy. BadCoop has been working with Jeffries to find this Judy.
To do this, BadCoop has created a glass box in New York that can capture beings from another place. It clearly cannot capture them for long, but it can get them in one place at one time, which adds a lot of value because time is not strictly linear. Additionally, as Judy is basically a demon, she's summoned by sex magic, which is why there is a casting couch by the glass box. This is what happens in the first episode of the Return, which is why Mia-from-Californication deadface seduces-Discount-Matt-Saracen in the first episode, summoning Judy, and killing them both.
Anyways, long story short, BadCoop is eventually lured to Sheriff Truman - no not THAT Sheriff Truman - and they get rid of BadCoop and Cooper reconstitutes into one being. Or does he? Because I think he poops out a Dougie, so technically part of him is missing.
Appropos of nothing, David Bowie is like, "I'm a sexy tea kettle now, and by the way, I travel through time." Naturally, Cooper goes back in time to stop Laura from ever being murdered. However, the second he alters the timeline, Judy is able to abduct Laura. Next, Cooper decides now is the time to try the ol' sex magic. This is because Cooper still has the memories of BadCoop and remembers that Judy is super into sex magic. So, needless to say, Cooper and Laura Dern go to pound town, and emerge into an alterate reality.
In this alternate reality, Cooper knows karate. So, he finds Laura, who goes by the name Carrie Page. He brings her back to Laura's house, as this will help them catch Judy somehow. They find the house owned by the Chalfont and Tremonds, who are people from another place, which is usually a sign of bad things. Electricity flickers, Dale asks, "What year is it?", and Carrie/Laura suddenly screams, you hear Laura's mother call her name, and the show just sort of ends. Forever.
Is It Future Or Is it Past?
At this point, I know what you're thinking: "Is it future, or is it past?"
Ever since the first episode, we have heard variations on, "Laura is the one." It's even one of the loglines of the Return:

Electricity is humming. You hear it in the mountains and rivers. You see it dance among the seas and stars and glowing around the moon, but in these days, the glow is dying. What will be in the darkness that remains? The Truman brothers are both true men. They are your brothers. And the others, the good ones who have been with you. Now the circle is almost complete. Watch and listen to the dream of time and space. It all comes out now, flowing like a river. That which is and is not. Hawk. Laura is the one.

This has led many to theorize that Twin Peaks may be a dream Laura Palmer is having, noting that, in David Lynch's work, dreams are as signficant as reality. This would mean that Laura has created Bob and Judy, the evil beings that inhabit their parents, as a way to process through her father's abuse and mother's enjoyment at watching the same. She dreams that she's dead, as that provides an escape. The Dale Cooper character is a personification of the dream, as he is the White Knight Archetype who prevents her death. Cooper also appears to know he lives inside a dream, as he says things ike, "We live inside a dream."
That explains why everyone keeps saying Laura has the power to defeat Bob and Judy, as she can do so by waking up.
The ending, then, is Cooper accessing Laura's next dream, with the goal of waking her up, because doing so defeats Judy. That's why, in the dream, everyone's name has changed, but only Cooper (now Richard) remembers everything that happened. This is why Cooper brings Laura back to Twin Peaks, to try and make her remember the previous dream, as realizing that will make her realize these are consecutive dreams, making her know neither is truly real, forcing her to wake up, thereby killing Judy.
That's why one of the last things we hear is Laura's mother calling out for her, because that's how a mother wakes up their teenage daughter. And that's why we see nothing afterwards: the dream is over.
But What if Laura Isn't The Dreamer?
The above rests on an assumption: that Laura is the dreamer. And that's because the Log Lady, among others, says she is the one.
But what if that's not what they're saying?
David Lynch is a known fan of homophones. In a 1969 interview, he was quoted as saying, "I, David Lynch, love homophones!"
So, naturally, what if Laura isn't the one? What if 'One', like so many other things in the David Lynch oevrue, is a homophone? It all goes back to that same 1969 interview where David Lynch said, and again, this is a direct quote, "I, David Lynch, love Juan Pablo Galavais, the 18th Bachelor."
And how many episodes are there of Twin Peaks: The Return are there? 18.
I'll pause for a moment here while you collect your jaw from the ground. Clearly, throughout, everyone was saying Laura is the Juan, in homage to Juan Pablo. They were just pronouncing 'one' like 'juan' because David Lynch loves homophones. This is now the definitive theory of Twin Peaks. If you interpret Twin Peaks otherwise, fuck you, you're wrong.
What Does it All Mean?
In many ways, scientists have disputed any theory of epistemological metaphysics that implies an ontological differentiation between Phoebe Bridgers and Juan Pablo Galavais. Those are words, fuck it. The evidence that smart people who fuck usually cite as evidence that these individuals are the same person is:

1. Juan Pablo works as a bridge in Chile.
   
2. When he works as the bridge, he is bridging.
   
3. Verbs are words that show an action. In France, which is in Europe, unlike England, where Juan Pablo doesn't live, meaning that French Language rules apply, many verbs have an "-er" conjugation. No shit, really.
   
4. Therefore, using the Scientific Method, I have proven that Juan Pablo is a Bridger.
   

Okay, But What Does that Mean? It's so fucking simple:

1. We are like the dreamer who dreams, and then lives inside the dream.
   
2. Causing Laura Palmer's FBI Agent's Boss to ask, "But who is the dreamer?"
   
3. The same FBI Agent who is told "Laura is the One".
   
4. Except we know using the Transivtive Method that due to the Science of Homphones that One = Juan.
   
5. And Juan is an obvious reference to Juan Pablo Galavais, due to the epistemological ramifications of the number 18.
   
6. And Juan Pablo works as a bridge, making him a Bridger.
   
7. Which is an obvious allegory for Between Two Firms: The Movie Star Phoebe Bridgers.
   
8. Meaning that Phoebe Bridgers is the dreamer.
   

Conclusion
There's a lot of ramifications of this. It does appear to mean that Phoebe Bridgers may have similar powers to Judy that she can manifest in our reality. This is mostly just the power to turn people's hair white..
She only appears to have used it on herself and Paramore. There are no other known victims. I checked with Conor Oberst, but he's doing fine, though he's still angry with no reason to be.
That said, in terms of reality, we all still exist in the imagination of Robin Pecknold. He is just imaging Phoebe Bridgers (that's kind of a fucked up power dynamic if you ask me), who is dreaming us, I guess, though the dream may be over, throwing our continued existence into question, hence the apocalypse we are currently experiencing.
But why male models?

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French regular -RE verbs are a small group of French verbs which share a conjugation pattern. Here are the most common regular -RE verbs:
attendre to wait (for)
défendre to defend
descendre to descend
entendre to to hear
étendre to stretch
fondre to melt
pendre to hang, suspend
perdre to lose
prétendre to claim
rendre to give back, return
répandre to spread, scatter
répondre to answer
vendre to sell
Irregular verbs are so named because they do not follow any of the regular conjugation patterns. But that doesn't mean that every irregular French verb is unique; many of them share a conjugation pattern with at least one other verb. By learning how to conjugate one verb in a group and memorizing the list of similar verbs, you'll be able to conjugate all the verbs in that group.
French has five irregular -RE verb patterns - see examples at the bottom of the page:
1.The first group includes prendre and all of its derivations (comprendre, etc). These verbsdrop the din all three plural forms and alsodouble the nin the third person plural.
2.The second group includes battre and all of its derivations (débattre, etc). These verbsdrop the stem's final tin the singular forms.
3.The third group includes mettre and all of its derivations (promettre, etc). These verbs are conjugated just like battre verbs in the present tense, but I consider them a separate group because they are conjugated differently in the passé simple, imperfect subjunctive, and past participle.
(As you can see in the table below, the first three groups take the same present tense verb endings.)
4.The fourth group of irregular -RE verbs includes rompre and its derivations (corrompre, etc). These verbs are conjugated exactly like regular -RE verbs with the single exception of the third person singular present tense, which adds atafter the stem.
5.The fifth group of irregular -RE verbs includes all verbs that end in -aindre (e.g., craindre), -eindre(like peindre), and -oindre (such as joindre). These verbsdrop the din the root in all forms, andadd a g in front of the nin the plural forms.
The rest of the irregular -RE verbs have unique or unwieldy conjugations, so you have to memorize each one separately. Try working on one verb a day until you've mastered them all: absoudre, boire, clore, conclure, conduire, confire, connaître, coudre, croire, dire, écrire, faire,inscrire, lire, moudre, naître, plaire, rire, suivre, vivre.
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French imperfect conjugations are very easy, as the imperfect of virtually all verbs—regular and irregular—is formed the same way: drop the -ons ending from the present indicative nous form of the verb and adding the imperfect endings.
Être is the only irregular verb in the imperfect, because the present tense nous sommeshas no -ons to drop. So it has the irregular stem ét- and uses the same endings as all other verbs.
As in many other tenses, spelling change verbs, that is, verb which end in -cer and -ger, have minor spelling changes in the imperfect.
Verbs that end in -ier have an imperfect root that ends in i, so end with double i in thenous and vous form of the imperfect. This isn't irregular, but it looks kind of weird.
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There are five main kinds of verbs in French: regular -ER, -IR, -RE; stem-changing; and irregular. Once you've learned the rules of conjugation for each of the first three kinds of verbs, you should have no problem conjugating regular verbs in each of those categories. The majority of French verbs are regular -ER verbs - see the next page for a list of some common -ER verbs.
The verb form that ends in -ER is called the infinitive (in English, the infinitive is the verb preceded by the word "to"), and -ER is the infinitive ending. The verb with the infinitive ending removed is called the stem or radical. To conjugate -ER verbs, remove the infinitive ending to find the stem and add the endings in the table below.
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French regular -ER verbs, by far the largest group of French verbs, share a conjugation pattern. Here are just a few of the most common regular -ER verbs:
aimer to like, to love
arriver to arrive, to happen
chanter to sing
chercher to look for
commencer* to begin
danser to dance
demander to ask for
dépenser to spend (money)
détester to hate
donner to give
écouter to listen to
étudier** to study
fermer to close
goûter to taste
jouer to play
laver to wash
manger* to eat
nager* to swim
parler to talk, to speak
passer to pass, spend (time)
penser to think
porter to wear, to carry
regarder to watch, to look at
rêver to dream
sembler to seem
skier* to ski
travailler to work
trouver to find
visiter to visit (a place)
voler to fly, to steal
There are a lot of French verbs that end in -ER and there are a lot of irregular French verbs, but there is only one irregular -ER verb. However, there are three groups of -ER verbs that have some irregularities.
Aller Aller (to go) is the only truly irregular -er verb in French - its conjugations are unique and, according to some, very odd.
Spelling change verbs Spelling change verbs are verbs that end in -cer or -ger. Their stem formation and verb endings are the same as for regular -er verbs, but there is a slight spelling change for pronunciation purposes in certain conjugations.
Stem-changing verbs Stem-changing verbs are -er verbs that take the regular endings but have two different radicals. There are five categories of French stem-changing verbs: -yer, -eler, -eter, -e_er, and -é_er.
-IER verbs There is nothing actually irregular about the conjugation of -ier verbs - they are conjugated like regular -er verbs, but some of their forms look strange.
​
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French regular -IR verbs, the second largest group of French verbs, share a conjugation pattern. Here are just a few of the most common regular -IR verbs:
abolir to abolish
agir to act
avertir to warn
bâtir to build
bénir to bless
choisir to choose
établir to establish
étourdir to stun, deafen, make dizzy
finir to finish
grossir to gain weight, get fat
guérir to cure, heal, recover
maigrir to lose weight, get thin
nourrir to feed, nourish
obéir to obey
punir to punish
réfléchir to reflect, think
remplir to to fill
réussir to succeed
rougir to blush, turn red
vieillir to grow old
Irregular verbs are the bane of every French student's existence, but there is some good news. There are some patterns in the irregularities - once you learn the conjugations for one verb in a group, you shouldn't have any trouble with the other verbs in that group.
There are two groups of irregular -IR verbs:
1.The first group of irregular verbs includes dormir, mentir, partir, sentir, servir, sortir, and all of their derivatives (repartir, etc). These verbs drop the last letter of the radical in the singular conjugations - see example in table below.
2.The second group of verbs includes couvrir, cueillir, découvrir, offrir, ouvrir, souffrir, and their derivatives (recouvrir, etc). These verbs are conjugated like regular -ER verbs - see example in table below.
The rest of the irregular -IR verbs don't follow a pattern - you have to memorize the conjugations for each one separately: asseoir, courir, devoir, falloir, mourir, pleuvoir, pouvoir, recevoir, savoir,tenir, valoir, venir, voir, vouloir
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The passé composé is the most common French past tense, often used in conjunction with the imperfect. The passé composé can express any of the following:
I. An action completed in the past
As-tu étudié ce weekend ? Did you study this weekend?
Ils ont déjà mangé. They have already eaten.
II. An action repeated a number of times in the past
Oui, j'ai mangé cinq fois hier. Yes, I did eat five times yesterday.
Nous avons visité Paris plusieurs fois. We've visited Paris several times.
III. A series of actions completed in the past
Quand je suis arrivé, j'ai vu les fleurs. When I arrived, I saw the flowers.
Samedi, il a vu sa mère, a parlé au médicin et a trouvé un chat. Saturday he saw his mother, talked to the doctor, and found a cat.
The passé composé is a compound conjugation, which means it has two parts:

1. present tense of the auxiliary verb (either avoir or être)
   
2. past participle of the main verb
   

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Imperfect
Quand j'avais 15 ans, je voulais être psychiatre. Je m'intéressais à la psychologie parce que je connaissais beaucoup de gens très bizarres. Le week-end, j'allais à la bibliothèque et j'étudiais pendant toute la journée.
When I was 15, I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I was interested in psychology because I knew a lot of really weird people. On the weekends, I used to go to the library and study all day.
Passé composé
Un jour, je suis tombé malade et j'ai découvert les miracles de la médecine. J'ai fait la connaissance d'un médecin et j'ai commencé à étudier avec lui. Quand la faculté de médecine m'a accepté, je n'ai plus pensé à la psychologie.
One day, I got sick and discovered the wonders of medicine. I met a doctor and started studying with him. After the medical school accepted me, I didn't think about psychology any more.
Indicators
The following key words and phrases tend to be used with either the imperfect or the passé composé, so when you see any of them, you know which tense you need:
The imperative, called l'impératif in French, is a verb mood which is used to
· give an order
· express a desire
· make a request
· offer advice
· recommend something
Unlike all other French verb tenses and personal moods, the subject pronoun is not used with the imperative:
Fermez la porte. Close the door.
Mangeons maintenant. Let's eat now.
Ayez la bonté de m'attendre. Please wait for me.
Veuillez m'excuser. Please excuse me.
The above are called "affirmative commands," because they are telling someone to do something. "Negative commands," which tell someonenotto do something, are made by placing ne in front of the verb and the appropriate negative adverb after the verb:
Ne parle pas ! Don't speak!
N'oublions pas les livres. Let's not forget the books.
N'ayez jamais peur. Never be afraid.
-ER verbs (regular, stem-changing, spelling change, and irregular) The imperative conjugations for nous and vous are the same as the present indicative, and the tu form of the imperative is the indicative minus the final s (but see item 4 on this page):
parler (tu) parle (nous) parlons (vous) parlez
lever (tu) lève (nous) levons (vous) levez
aller (tu) va (nous) allons (vous) allez
Verbs which are conjugated like -ER verbs (meaning that in the indicative the tu form ends in -es), such as ouvrir and souffrir, follow the same rules as -ER verbs.
ouvrir (tu) ouvre (nous) ouvrons (vous) ouvrez
-IR verbs and -RE verbs The imperative conjugations for all regular and most* irregular -IR and -RE verbs are the same as the present indicative conjugations.
finir (tu) finis (nous) finissons (vous) finissez
attendre (tu) attends (nous) attendons (vous) attendez
faire (tu) fais (nous) faisons (vous) faites
*Except for verbs conjugated like -ER verbs and the following four irregular imperative verbs:
avoir (tu) aie (nous) ayons (vous) ayez
être (tu) sois (nous) soyons (vous) soyez
savoir (tu) sache (nous) sachons (vous) sachez
vouloir (tu) veuille (nous) n/a (vous) veuillez
The order of words in a French sentence can be very confusing due to affirmative and negative imperative constructions and object and adverbial pronouns. This lesson will teach you exactly how to order your sentences when using the imperative. Remember that there are two kinds of imperatives, affirmative and negative, and the word order is different for each of them.
Negative imperatives are easier, because their word order is the same as that of all other simple verb conjugations: any object, reflexive, and/or adverbial pronouns precede the verb and the negative structure surrounds the pronoun(s) + verb:
Finis ! - Finish! Ne finis pas ! - Don't finish! Ne le finis pas ! - Don't finish it!
Lisez ! - Read! Ne lisez pas ! - Don't read! Ne le lisez pas ! - Don't read it! Ne me le lisez pas ! - Don't read it to me!
Affirmative commands are more complicated, for several reasons.
1.The word order is for affirmative commands is different from that of all other verb tenses/moods: any pronouns follow the verb and are connected to it and to each other with hyphens.
Finis-le ! - Finish it! Allons-y ! - Let's go! Mangez-les ! - Eat them! Donne-lui-en ! - Give him some!
2.The order of the pronouns in affirmative commands is slightly different from all other verb tenses/moods (see table at the bottom of the page):
Envoie-le-nous ! - Send it to us! Expliquons-la-leur ! - Let's explain it to them! Donnez-nous-en ! - Give us some! Donne-le-moi ! - Give it to me!
3.The pronouns me and te change to the stressed pronouns moi and toi...
Lève-toi ! - Get up! Parlez-moi ! - Talk to me! Dis-moi ! - Tell me!
...unless they are followed by y or en, in which case they contract to m' and t'
Va-t'en ! - Go away!
Faites-m'y penser. - Remind me about it.
4.When a tu command is followed by the pronouns y or en, the final s is not dropped from the verb conjugation:
Vas-y ! - Go away! Parles-en. - Talk about it.
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I'm a bit confused on how verbs and the conjugations work in French. Like the whole er, ir, re, etre, avoir, aller, past tense and stuff like that. I makes absolutely no sense and after like 8 years of taking French class I’m school I still don’t get it.

Many years ago, I taught programming for a few years, at the college intro level in computer science. I took a break, and tried it once again about ten years ago, for a year. Since then, mostly in software development land.
Recently, there was a post about why beginner tutorials are bad. Let me relate a story in reaction to that. About 15 years ago, Ruby on Rails was perhaps at its height, and I attended a conference of sort called "No Fluff Just Stuff". The idea was to have a traveling band of speakers who would talk about anything that wasn't Microsoft. Ruby on Rails fit the bill (Java and Javascript was also popular then, as well as agile, etc).
One speaker making the rounds was Dave Thomas. If you're old enough, he was the Wendy's guy (only, he wasn't). If not, maybe you know him as Pragmatic Programmer guy, and certainly, he did a lot to popularize Ruby. I think he helped translate a Ruby book in Japanese (or at least, some approximation of a translation) into English, and that helped its popularity outside of Japan.
While most of his talks were about building apps for Ruby on Rails, he gave one talk about the differing levels of expertise from novice (complete beginner) to expert. Experts, he noted (much like the guy commenting on beginner tutorials), tend to talk at a high level in shorthand to one another, and this isn't good for beginners. He related a story of where he was a beginner (in flying airplanes) and made rookie mistakes which his instructor warned him about.
Point is, most people who want to create a tutorial know their audience are beginners. They aren't deliberately assuming they've seen a dozen languages and have a Ph.D. in astrophysics. They are making an attempt to explain stuff, at what they think is a beginner level. I mean, if every expert failed to explain something somewhat simply, than why bother have colleges. They are already too far gone to teach. Even people who have struggled to master something sometimes fixate too much on their own issues (which may be kind of obscure and not of general interest to the student) rather than present stuff that might be easy to them, and tough to others.
The biggest problem isn't so much they're an expert that has lost touch (although that is partly true), it's that they need more experience teaching. This means, you need to teach students, and then test them, and see what they do understand and what they don't understand. You need to find out what they're thinking, and what's causing them to have problems. That means (IMO) you need to talk to students, and figure where they're coming from, and try to get them to understand how to think about programming.
The problem, then, is most teachers haven't taught where they get feedback from the students, revise what teach because of the problems they saw. For example, one semester, I was teaching HTML as one part of the course. By the end of the semester, they had pretty much forgotten HTML. So, I made every test (of which there were many) cumulative, and this forced them to review HTML again and again and again, so the second semester I taught it, I think they retained it better (yes, maybe they forgot it 6 months later, but that's another story).
So, lesson of why it's hard to teach. Until you teach in front of students and talk to them, you don't understand where they're coming from, and what misconceptions they have, so you can adjust to what they're learning.
Books
In general, I kinda like books (or webpages structured like books). They have a linear structure, and for physical books, they often have editors that review the content (where webpages often lack this).
Books have a problem, though. Do you want to learn from the book, or do you want to use the book as a reference? Most books attempt to do both, but lean more on being a reference book. For example, one C book I taught from started with print statements in one chapter (and input), then conditionals in the next, loops in the next chapter, then arrays, functions, pointers, structures, etc.
It was split up this way so that all the related information about loops (say, for loops, while loops, nested loops, etc) were in one chapter. Maybe a better way to teach is to only use the while loop for a while, and introduce for loops much later on. But if you do that, then when you go back to review, loops are split up.
What might be better ordering for teaching might be worse for a reference.
Syntax vs. writing a program
If you were to learn a foreign language from a university vs. learning it from some online program, perhaps the biggest difference is the approach. A university is probably going to teach it rather formally, talking about nouns, verbs, conjugation, grammar. They want you to look at the language as a linguist would.
On the other hand, popular language courses are about teaching you useful phrases, and mostly skipping the grammar, or at least, not emphasizing it as much. They are aimed at tourists who aren't expected to reach a level of mastery, but just good enough to communicate and to understand a few key phrases.
This happens with programming language instruction. I'm looking at the intro material for ElixirSchool, and the first several chapters are syntax, syntax, syntax. Here are some libraries. Here are the list of all functions in that libraries. This is the equivalent of teaching grammar in a creative writing course without ever getting to the writing part.
By contrast, video tutorials are like the "learn a few phrases" approach to teaching a foreign language. They sometimes care more about getting some application to work, without worrying too much about the basics of programming, or even what's going on. For example, you might have a tutorial about how to write a blog in Ruby on Rails, but it may not cover what a web application is and how it is basically structured, and why it's structured in a way that a person who just learned Ruby might say is strange.
You essentially learn things at a superficial level (where that detail in learning all the functions of a library might be useful), and when you want to do something different, you don't understand the thinking that lead to the design in the first place. And code is particularly brittle. One little error, and you're left wondering how to fix it.
Dave Thomas said that one thing a novice wants is precision, and a well-defined set of tasks that has visible goals. They don't want to hear that it takes a pinch of salt. Is that 1/8 of a teaspoon, or 1/4? What does it mean "to taste" (many professional chefs would argue the average home cook, scared of salt, undersalts too much food).
So something aimed to beginners should try to follow this mantra.
Debugging? Right
One task a beginner does a lot of is fixing bugs, but I don't recall books ever going into the topic much. They might (but probably not) cover a debugger. The problem with covering a debugger is you need to pick an IDE. Most languages don't define a debugger as part of the langauge. Once you pick an IDE, then the popularity of a book or tutorial probably goes down.
The environment of programming
OK, let's say a book somehow manages to cover some programs. Here's a problem to be solved, here's how to think about it, and here is the resulting program being run.
But, to start, you have to worry about a bunch of things

• how do I install the language?
• how do I know which version to install?
• when should I upgrade the language to the next version?
• what is the workflow? what should I do after I write the program?
• what IDE should I use? Or text editor?

Many books/tutorials start with the single file approach. Your entire program in one file. A very interesting test for a programming language is how it deals with two program files. C had a simple approach.

cc foo.c bar.c baz.c 

If you wanted to compile three C files, then only one should have a a main(), and you add more arguments to the cc (the C compiler) to compile into one executable.
Nearly every modern language had moved to some sort of build tool. They teach you how to deal with one file and how to run it by itself, but it's almost never how you're really supposed to do it. So you have leiningen for Clojure, go build for Go programs, mix for Elixir.
But even beyond that, you have to make a decision on what editor to use or should you use a full IDE. Most books and tutorials shy away from recommending an IDE. After all, what happens if a student says "We don't use that at our college", or "I prefer this other IDE", so they may stop reading.
I've been reading about how Elixir sets up projects. But it's not exactly explained. C didn't really have a notion of projects, so why does Elixir? Many tutorials take it for granted that the language works a certain way, but don't bother to explain why it works that way (probably because the author doesn't know).
Elixir has a directory for having test programs because the consensus is we need testing as part of the language, but there isn't explanation of why testing is needed, or Elixir's approach to testing.
How to read a program
So, most books tend to teach syntax. If you're lucky, they might tell you how to write some programs. But it's rare to see books which chapters devoted to debugging (because then you need a problem, and you don't want it to be so complicated that understanding the problem is hard enough, let alone debugging it).
But how many books cover reading a program, going over line by line what the program is doing. It's almost like programming is only writing, not reading, when most people end up maintaining code other people wrote.
Building a mental model
Suppose you wanted to hire a bunch of people to build a house, and you get to supervise. As you provide instructions, you can see the results, and correct any mistakes hopefully quickly.
But most programming is done somewhat blind. You see the code, but you don't see the values changing unless you get good at using the debugger, or you understand, mentally, what the program is doing.
Imagine you want to build the house, but this time, the house is being built by a robot, and you provide it instructions, but you have to provide it ahead of time, and the robot will build the house away from your sight, and you don't get to look at it until it's done.
I've seen many students who look at their code in a static sort of way, and don't really trace, step-by-step, what their code does. When they fix their code, it's by some random changes. "I don't know what it does. I lack the patience to follow it step by step. Let's try spinning!" (Phantom Menace reference).
Inventing syntax
Young kids, when they hear a foreign language, pretend they can speak it by imitating sounds. Maybe they hear "ee, er, san" when they hear Chinese or "mon dieu" when they hear French. Pig Latin is applying rules that make a faux Latin (I guess).
Quite often, beginners apply rules they haven't been taught, but infer based on personal experience. So, even without seeing this, many students write code like

 if (x == 1 || 4 || 7) { 

to mean if x has a value of 1 or 4 or 7. That is, they feel the equality operator distributes over || (many languages, it doesn't). It comes from a semi-intelligent place, but it happens to be wrong.
Or, Java (and other languages) have a compare method which many things returns -1, 0, 1, but really returns negative, zero, and positive numbers. If you believe the first is true, then you're going to wonder why comparing to 1 isn't giving you the right answers.
A balanced approach
I think you need to balance teaching syntax with writing programs. If it's all syntax, then you sit around doing nothing, and it's probably hard to absorb the material anyway. If you do too many programs, it's possible you don't understand how to read the programs (you're just copying code) nor how to think about writing programs.
Conclusion
To teach to beginners, you need to teach beginners, preferably before you put content on the Internet. Stuff you think is simple might be hard. Stuff you think is hard might be simple. You have to worry about what order to teach, what skills you want the person to develop, and how you intend for them to learn them (frequent quizzing?).
As teachers, we are sometimes rather selfish about teaching. How often do teachers even talk to each other about how to teach. Over the years, I don't recall many conversations about how to teach. We were basically left to our own devices on how to do that. I recall someone who disagreed with how I wrote my tests. I disagreed with her assessment, but we never really had a discussion on the topic.
And, a final reason it's hard to teach programming? Not every "complete beginner" is the same. This is perhaps the biggest fallacy beginners have. Your lack of knowledge of programming may not be the same as someone else's because they may have a much bigger potential to learn it quickly compared to you, despite knowing very little about it.
The other fallacy is there is somehow a best book or best tutorial. That's mostly from the tyranny of choice. When there are so many choices, we fear making a bad decision. We hope there is a "best" out there that will somehow make it easy when others do not, and that also likely doesn't happen.
Finally, learning programming on your own is tough. You can't easily ask questions. You don't get feedback or structure. You're making a lot of decisions about how best to proceed. There isn't someone putting external pressure to make you get things done.

In French, there are verbs that end in ''er''. For example, ''manger'' and ''aimer'', which are regular. If they are regular verbs and have the same ending, aren't they supposed to be conjugated in the same way? In the indicative present, we say ''Nous aimons.'' and ''Nous mangeons.'', but, if we notice the two phrases, we notice that in the first one we removed the ''er'' ending and put ''ons'', but in the second one, we removed just the ''r'' and put ''ons'' in its place. Aren't we supposed to have ''mangeons'' and ''aimeons'' or ''mangons'' and ''aimons''?

Amigano is a language created for a small group of friends, and is based on Esperanto and Lingua Franca Nova, as well as English, Spanish, French, and Italian. I basically took the parts of each language that I like and made a boring Romancelang out of them.
​
Phonology is simple. I haven't defined phonotactics in detail yet, but they'll likely be Italian minus CCC onsets and geminate consonants. Stress falls on the penultimate syllable of a root without exception. Here's the phonemic inventory. Bolded values are the orthographic representation, /forward slashes/ mark the IPA symbols.
​

Consonants	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	m [m]	n [n]
Stop (voiceless)	p [p]	t [t]	tx [t͡ʃ]	c [k]
Stop (voiced)	b [b]	d [d]	dj [d͡ʒ]	g [g]
Fricative (voiceless)	f [f]	s [s]	x [ʃ]
Fricative (voiced)	v [v]	z [z]	j [ʒ]
Approximant	u [w]	r [r]	i [j]
Lateral		l [l]

That voiced postalveolar affricate is there mainly to help transliterate English loanwords and names, and is a marginal phoneme at best. The rhotic sound is canonically an alveolar trill, but can be approximated with whatever rhotic you want.
​

Vowels	Front	Back
High	i [i]	u [u]
Mid	e [e]	o [o]
Low		a [ɑ]

Here's a straightforward five vowel system. These can be pronounced however as long as they're understandable.
​
Grammar (what I have so far)
​
All nouns end in “-o”. All nouns are pluralized by replacing the “-o” with “-i”. Personal pronouns are the only exception.
​
“La umano” the human
“Le umani” the humans
​
Likewise, all adjectives end in “-a”, and are pluralized by replacing “-a” with “-e”. This includes the definite article “la”. Adjectives precede the nouns they modify.
​
“La granda cano” The big dog
“Le grande cani” The big dogs
​
All verbs end in “-er” in their infinitive forms. The present tense replaces “-er” with “-e”, the past tense the same with “-o”, the past participle the same with “-u”. The Imperative is formed with “-ez”, and the optative “Let’s” form is made with “-iamo”. Beyond the last two forms, verbs do not conjugate for person or number, only tense. Unlike in most Romance languages, there are no conditional or subjunctive forms of verbs. These are instead formed with other verbs and words.
​
“Ser” to be
“Io se.” I am.
“Io so.” I was.
“Io ire ser.” I am going to be.
“Io ave su.” I have been.
“Io avo su.” I had been.
“Sez rapida!” Be quick!
“Siamo rapide.” Let’s be quick.
“Si noi se rapide,” If we’re quick,
Adjectives become adverbs with the addition of “-mente”.
“Rapida” quick
“Rapidamente” quickly
​
Word order is strictly SVO. This allows for there to be no accusative, reflexive or dative forms of personal pronouns.
​
“Io ame tu.” I love you.
“Io ame io.” I love myself.
“Tu ame io.” You love me.
“Io dono la libro a tu.” I gave the book to you.
The personal pronouns are as follows:
​
​

	Singular	Plural
1st person	io	noi
2nd person	tu	voi
3rd person	el	eli

​

Do you want to know how to use Italki and Anki in order to learn a new language? In this post I am going to explain what Italki is, and how you can use it together with Anki to learn French.
Why use Italki (or similar speaking services)
One of the most important elements of learning a new language is that you actually use the language. Rather than just memorizing new conjugations, you should also actually speak it. If you want to master a new language then speaking must be a part of it. Also, it’s a lot of fun to speak to people from different countries and new cultures whilst learning a new language at the same time. For these reasons I recommend using Italki, or a similar speaking service
But, what is Italki?
Italki Overview
In a nutshell, Italki is a language platform that provides the following three services:
​

1. Allows you to find tandem partners with which you can practice your target language (French) and your tandem partner can practice his/her target language (the language that you are a native speaker of). This is all for free.
2. Allows you to speak with native speakers that function as a community tutor. This is a service for which you need to pay a low price, around €5-15 p/h or $5-15 p/h.
3. Allows you to speak with professional teachers who will help you with your target language (French). This is a service for which you need to pay a decent price, around €15-25 p/h or $15-25 p/h.

If you are just starting learning French then I do not recommend the tandem partner option. You may need some explanation that a normal native speaker may not be able to provide.
There are three goals that you achieve when you do this:
​

1. Improve and become more comfortable with speaking French.
2. Improve and become more comfortable with hearing French.
3. Create new and targeted flashcards.

The first two goals are quite evident. If you want to learn French you have to be able to speak and understand it. The third is something that will serve you well in your language learning journey.
Choosing A TutoTeacher
The best option is to use the community tutors for everyday conversation and simple grammar, and the professional teachers for difficult grammatical concepts.
In my opinion there are three criteria that you should keep in mind when selection a tutoteacher:
​
1. Cost: how affordable is this person?
For community tutors a rate of €5-15 or $5-15 per hour is reasonable. The rate you go with is a choice you have to make personally as what is affordable differs per person.
​
2. Availability: how much do our schedules align?
The teachers/tutors live all over the world and have their own schedules. Try to see if their schedule matches yours. Having a conversation should fit within your normal daily schedule.
​
3. Linguistically similar: do you have any languages in common?
When you begin learning a language you will know very few words. If your tutoteacher has a common language other than French it can be easier for you to communicate.
Please don’t take this as a cue to avoid speaking French, however in the early stages this can help a lot. When you progress this matters a lot less.
You may notice that I did not mention reviews. This is because the standard rating that people generally give if something is satisfactory is 5 stars. This makes it hard to judge if someone is really good or not.
Moreover, every day new tutors/teachers join. Therefore the best way to find out is to do a few trial lessons.
Search for a community tutor and select 4 people that seem like a good fit for you and request a trial lesson. One person per week.
Once you have done this MAKE AN APPOINTMENT.
The act of choosing someone, settling a date, and then paying is already a big commitment.
After the 4 weeks you will probably have at least 1 or 2 favourites. These are the ones that you will talk to for the coming times.
If none are a good fit then do the same thing again until you find someone.
The Italki Conversation
So, you have chosen someone, but you have no idea what to talk about? And I bet you are a bit afraid because you only know how to order a coffee in French?
Don’t worry, everyone experiences this. I could tell you not to be afraid, but emotions such as fear are a normal part of life. Accept the fear and just do it.
What are you losing? Think about the regret you will feel if you don’t do it. So have a go, if will be a fun experience!
Now, what should you talk about with the tutoteacher? This is a topic that people generally worry over, however it just a simple conversation that you will have. Nevertheless I can give you some tips from personal experience
Why are you learning French? This is generally something that is brought up during the first conversation.
What are your hobbies? You can talk about some of the things that you like to do. Because you do them often you should be familiar with them.
Things that you are passionate about. What do you care a lot about? Maybe it is a green initiative that you are part of, or writing about science-fiction? It doesn’t matter. As long as you feel passionate about something then it counts. This makes the conversation easier and more fun for you both.
Discuss an Article that you have read. Imagine you read an article on SpaceX. The company is sending a rocket into space. What do you think about this? Should there be more done? Or maybe you don’t agree at all? This helps improve your reading skills as you need to read an article and your speaking and listening skills.
Generally speaking once you have spoken a few times the two of you will get to know each other a bit better and this will be easier.
Don’t forget to ask your tutoteacher what he or she likes to do as well. You can practice how to form questions, and learn some more about your tutoteacher.
During the conversation there will be sentences that are difficult/impossible to make. Imagine that you want say: I play the guitar. However you don’t know how. You try but cannot succeed. Your tutor finally helps you and gives you that answer.
Je joue de la guitare
I play the guitar
When this happens tell him/her to write that sentence down in the chat by saying:
Pourriez-vous écrire cette phrase s’il vous plaît ?
You tutoteacher will write it down and after the conversation is done you will have at least 5 sentences.
Use those 5 sentences to make Flashcards with the Language Atlas card format.
This is very important step in your journey of how to learn French.
​
How to make Anki Cards
I believe that the most powerful Flashcards have an image, an explanation, and an audio file.
The image allows you to create a better memory with the word/concept that you are studying. You are linking a concept with a certain image.
The explanation is there so you always understand why something is conjugated in a certain way even if you have forgotten it.
The audio file allows you to understand how something is pronounced in French. This will help you to improve your French comprehension.
I use 4 card types. I urge you to try different formats to see what works for you.
​
1. Know the conjugation/word.
https://preview.redd.it/zzhu18ddytc51.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=ac1a97f7de1ecd7fcdee776eee93e98655c2bc42
You will be faced with a sentence both in French and English.
In the French sentence the conjugated verb is missing.
Between the sentences is the infinitive of the French verb.
You have to know how the verb should be conjugated.
On the back you will find the following
https://preview.redd.it/tbdggvnfytc51.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=c54e65b315904eceeb8c8d98ae2288d507c05505
The answer, translation and an audio file are obligatory. Optional is a conjugation table, general usage and pronunciation guide.
​
2. Know the English translation of the French sentence.
https://preview.redd.it/6qtyh7dgytc51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=8fa800f0ac19d7e053c07b11305ba91e76bcf3d6
You see a French sentence, but what the English translation of this?
This tests whether you know and comprehend French.
​
3. Know the French translation of then English sentence.
https://preview.redd.it/i9nxjomhytc51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=119f33053045c92423ab591b5d0a81e5141515aa
You see an English sentence, but what’s the French translation?
This way you can form French sentences based on information that is known to you
​
4. Type the conjugated French word.
https://preview.redd.it/9wiqs4tiytc51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=40d567a042d889f8ccf839cdc1862b0595432266
This is the same as the first card, however in this one you have to type the correct conjugation.
You will see if you made any errors, or if you were correct.
This helps improve your writing skills in French.
On the back everything will be the same as before but this time there is also a correction.
https://preview.redd.it/ixr48uvkytc51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=aeae9ddc3750477ce04985d40e12f45b20684524
This structure has a bit of translation in it and is quite beginner friendly. When you advance you can consider dropping 2 and 3 if you want to, as at that point you may not need to lean on translations that often.
Please note that you don’t have to make 4 separate cards. With the right card settings you will fill in the field just one time and then 4 cards will be made automatically.
Here’s a video I made on how I make Anki Cards outlining the above mentioned process if this is still too vague. You can find a sample deck here. This deck is about conjugating regular –er verbs. You can download it for free and see if learning with Anki and this decks structure suits you.
If you like this then please don’t miss out on two new decks that I made. They are the French A1 Verbs Anki Deck and the French A2 Verbs Anki Deck. They contain everything you need for French Verbs at A1 & A2 level. They are the only Anki Deck of its kind where everything is structured, and where the cards contain audio, images, and explanations.
In conclusion, using Italki and Anki will tremendously increase your capacity to learn and will make learning French a lot easier. All in all I hope this helps, if you have any questions then please let me know!
- Sam

• Are there unusually many [a...er] or [a...ter] verbs in French ? --- achopper, ajouter, acheter, (accroitre) ...

--------- i'm sure this (above) is unrelated to the

• [SAT Vocab. cramming sequela (after-effect)] -- which most of us suffer from all our lives :
  === tendency to remember all the SAT-vocab words concentrated in the AA, AB... area: abash, abate, abeyance, abstruse, accost, admonish, ....
  

(Many of us don't even get to the B-words -- badger, baffle, banal , bandy, bane, ... )

So iv'e been studying French, and just reviewed the -er conjugation of verbs. What I am wondering is how do you pronounce the infinitive ending of -er? From what I can hear, it sounds like "ey" What is the official sound of this ending? Merci.

Do you want to know how to use Italki and Anki in order to learn a new language? In this post I am going to explain what Italki is, and how you can use it together with Anki to learn your target language.
Why use Italki (or similar speaking services)
One of the most important elements of learning a new language is that you actually use the language. Rather than just memorizing new conjugations, you should also actually speak it. If you want to master a new language then speaking must be a part of it. Also, it’s a lot of fun to speak to people from different countries and new cultures whilst learning a new language at the same time. For these reasons I recommend using Italki, or a similar speaking service
But, what is Italki?
Italki Overview
In a nutshell, Italki is a language platform that provides the following three services:
​

1. Allows you to find tandem partners with which you can practice your target language and your tandem partner can practice his/her target language (the language that you are a native speaker of). This is all for free.
2. Allows you to speak with native speakers that function as a community tutor. This is a service for which you need to pay a low price, around €5-15 p/h or $5-15 p/h
3. Allows you to speak with professional teachers who will help you with your target language (Your target language). This is a service for which you need to pay a decent price, around €15-25 p/h or $15-25 p/h.

If you are just starting learning your target language then I do not recommend the tandem partner option. You may need some explanation that a normal native speaker may not be able to provide.
There are three goals that you achieve when you do this:
​

1. Improve and become more comfortable with speaking your target language
2. Improve and become more comfortable with hearing your target language
3. Create new and targeted flashcards

The first two goals are quite evident. If you want to learn your target language you have to be able to speak and understand it. The third is something that will serve you well in your language learning journey.
Choosing A TutoTeacher
The best option is to use the community tutors for everyday conversation and simple grammar, and the professional teachers for difficult grammatical concepts.
In my opinion there are three criteria that you should keep in mind when selection a tutoteacher:
1. Cost: how affordable is this person?
For community tutors a rate of €5-15 or $5-15 per hour is reasonable. The rate you go with is a choice you have to make personally as what is affordable differs per person.
2. Availability: how much do our schedules align?
The teachers/tutors live all over the world and have their own schedules. Try to see if their schedule matches yours. Having a conversation should fit within your normal daily schedule.
3. Linguistically similar: do you have any languages in common?
When you begin learning a language you will know very few words. If your tutoteacher has a common language other than your target language it can be easier for you to communicate.
Please don’t take this as a cue to avoid speaking your target language, however in the early stages this can help a lot. When you progress this matters a lot less.
You may notice that I did not mention reviews. This is because the standard rating that people generally give if something is satisfactory is 5 stars. This makes it hard to judge if someone is really good or not.
Moreover, every day new tutors/teachers join. Therefore the best way to find out is to do a few trial lessons.
Search for a community tutor and select 4 people that seem like a good fit for you and request a trial lesson. One person per week.
Once you have done this MAKE AN APPOINTMENT.
The act of choosing someone, settling a date, and then paying is already a big commitment.
After the 4 weeks you will probably have at least 1 or 2 favourites. These are the ones that you will talk to for the coming times.
If none are a good fit then do the same thing again until you find someone.
The Italki Conversation
So, you have chosen someone, but you have no idea what to talk about? And I bet you are a bit afraid because you only know how to order a coffee in your target language?
Don’t worry, everyone experiences this. I could tell you not to be afraid, but emotions such as fear are a normal part of life. Accept the fear and just do it.
What are you losing? Think about the regret you will feel if you don’t do it. So have a go, if will be a fun experience!
Now, what should you talk about with the tutoteacher? This is a topic that people generally worry over, however it just a simple conversation that you will have. Nevertheless I can give you some tips from personal experience
Why are you learning your target language? This is generally something that is brought up during the first conversation.
What are your hobbies? You can talk about some of the things that you like to do. Because you do them often you should be familiar with them.
Things that you are passionate about. What do you care a lot about? Maybe it is a green initiative that you are part of, or writing about science-fiction? It doesn’t matter. As long as you feel passionate about something then it counts. This makes the conversation easier and more fun for you both.
Discuss an Article that you have read. Imagine you read an article on SpaceX. The company is sending a rocket into space. What do you think about this? Should there be more done? Or maybe you don’t agree at all? This helps improve your reading skills as you need to read an article and your speaking and listening skills.
Generally speaking once you have spoken a few times the two of you will get to know each other a bit better and this will be easier.
Don’t forget to ask your tutoteacher what he or she likes to do as well. You can practice how to form questions, and learn some more about your tutoteacher.
During the conversation there will be sentences that are difficult/impossible to make. Imagine that you want say: I play the guitar. However you don’t know how. You try but cannot succeed. Your tutor finally helps you and gives you that answer. I learned French, so for me it would be the following.
Je joue de la guitare
I play the guitar
When this happens tell him/her to write that sentence down in the chat by saying:
Pourriez-vous écrire cette phrase s’il vous plaît ?
You tutoteacher will write it down and after the conversation is done you will have at least 5 sentences.
Use those 5 sentences to make Flashcards with the Language Atlas card format.
This is very important step in your journey of how to learn your target language.
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How to make Anki Cards
I believe that the most powerful Flashcards have an image, an explanation, and an audio file.
The image allows you to create a better memory with the word/concept that you are studying. You are linking a concept with a certain image.
The explanation is there so you always understand why something is conjugated in a certain way even if you have forgotten it.
The audio file allows you to understand how something is pronounced in your target language. This will help you to improve your comprehension of your target language.
I use 4 card types. I urge you to try different formats to see what works for you.
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1. Know the conjugation/word.
https://preview.redd.it/9rij57e03uc51.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=dbbedcebd735c1aa19d84b4be9db74a2384755c6
You will be faced with a sentence both in your target language and English.
In the sentence in your target language the conjugated verb is missing.
Between the sentences is the infinitive of the verb in your target language.
You have to know how the verb should be conjugated.
On the back you will find the following
https://preview.redd.it/tl8m6kh13uc51.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=7262d856f40ae91d19e9b03661ecb23d6929d816
The answer, translation and an audio file are obligatory. Optional is a conjugation table, general usage and pronunciation guide.
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2. Know the English translation of a sentence in your target language.
https://preview.redd.it/g38ojr723uc51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=ea730ee47e1139d00badbde05d54e958f8493d4a
You see a sentence in your target language, but what the English translation of this?
This tests whether you know and comprehend your target language.
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3. Know the translation of an English sentence.
https://preview.redd.it/tte6e7w43uc51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=fe56bbeb4efe30ba81e979cb9c69715b07647cb0
You see an English sentence, but what’s the translation?
This way you can form sentences based on information that is known to you
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4. Type the conjugated word in your target language.
https://preview.redd.it/os82lh463uc51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=25a0944b6a600bed82ea917ebc9a9b908663a73e
This is the same as the first card, however in this one you have to type the correct conjugation.
You will see if you made any errors, or if you were correct.
This helps improve your writing skills.
On the back everything will be the same as before but this time there is also a correction.
https://preview.redd.it/t0egvcn73uc51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fdbf0dd0a8aac94a4b620207f2b0578105e3be6
This structure has a bit of translation in it and is quite beginner friendly. When you advance you can consider dropping 2 and 3 if you want to, as at that point you may not need to lean on translations that often.
Please note that you don’t have to make 4 separate cards. With the right card settings you will fill in the field just one time and then 4 cards will be made automatically.
Here’s a video I made on how I make Anki Cards outlining the above mentioned process if everything was a bit too vague. You can find a sample deck here. This deck is about conjugating regular –er verbs. You can download it for free and see if learning with Anki and this decks structure suits you. It also gives you my card structure so you don’t have to make it yourself ;)
If you like this then please don’t miss out on two new decks that I made. They are the French A1 Verbs Anki Deck and the French A2 Verbs Anki Deck. They contain everything you need for French Verbs at A1 & A2 level. They are the only Anki Deck of its kind where everything is structured, and where the cards contain audio, images, and explanations.
In conclusion, using Italki and Anki will tremendously increase your capacity to learn and will make learning languages a lot easier. All in all I hope this helps, if you have any questions then please let me know!
- Sam