On the Origins of Certain Chinese Ecocidal ComplimentsIf you ever want to compliment a woman’s appearance in Chinese, you have two safest options: cannibalistic 秀色可餐 (literally ‘beautiful to the point of edibility’) and ecocidally apocalyptic 沈魚落雁・閉月羞花 (literally ‘sinks fish, drops geese, shuts the moon, disgraces flowers’).
And as everyone knows, the ecocidally apocalyptic choice is also the most classic one, as it has been distributed between the Four Great Beauties of China·中國四大美人 in the following expression:
西施沈魚»»
Best script for writing QazaqQazaq language has a particular trait of having been written with more than one script throughout its history.
However, this is not a research in history of Qazaq writing systems but rather a conjecture comparing various scripts and trying to assess how well each of them could reveal the features of Qazaq grammar and the spirit of Qazaq culture.
Let’s play the game: if there was a choice, which of the scripts would be the best script for writing Qazaq?»»
Opinionated list of Qazaq learning resourcesSo i’ve been learning Qazaq for some time, and the conditions have ripened to produce an overview of resources i’ve been enjoying.
This is not a complete or authoritative list in any way, and i might be updating it later as i follow my Qazaq learning path.
It should be noted that all resources on the list are either Qazaq only or Qazaq-Russian. The sole reason for this is the existence of historical Russian bilinguism among Qazaqs, and most Qazaq learning resources being primarily targeted at ethnic Qazaqs whose first language is Russian, and to a lesser extent at national minorities of Qazaqstan who also speak Russian.»»
Learning 3D Art: 2021This year have been rather unforgiving towards my aspiration of learning 3D Art. I have experienced ups and downs, at times struggling to find enough motivation, and at time struggling to find enough free time to pursue my dream.
Back to Cycles A lot of good things happened in 3D in 2021, the most recent and grandiose of course being Blender 3.0. Even though i have been a huge fan of Octane for most part of the year, new Cycles makes CPU rendering on my mac almost as fast as Octane GPU rendering.»»
Learning 3D Art: JuneThis June marks the first anniversary of learning 3D art for me. It had not been an easy year. I have learned a lot of the basics: modelling, sculpting, procedural texturing, lighting, compositing. It’s still too early for me to specialise, there’s even more to learn. New exciting areas like VFX and NLE extend before my eyes, while I only taken a few steps in their direction. I’ve had seen some visible improvement in the quality of my works and 3D assets.»»
О мелодическом ударении в японскомМелодическое ударение‧アクセント в японском окружено мифами. Сами японцы спорят и проводят разные эксперименты, насколько оно играет роль для смыслоразличения. Его не указывают в доброй половине словарей и даже учебников. Иностранцы часто не понимают разницу между мелодическим ударением и тонами в тоновых языках.
Мелодическое ударение — это повышение или понижение тона на «ударном» слоге в отличие от привычного нам повышения громкости. На самом деле если сравнивать акустически, в языках с силовым ударением вместе с громкостью повышается и тон, а в языках с мелодическим меняется громкость, разница в их соотношении, и главное, в том как сами носители воспринимают, что именно у них меняется.»»
Cicada shellOne of the characteristic rhetoric devices in Japanese poetry is 掛詞 [かけことば] , a pun word. It utilises homonymy to add another layer of meaning.
古今和歌集‧Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poetry, the first imperial waka‧和歌anthology, has a whole section Acrostics‧物 [もの] の名 [な] where the name of each poem is a kakekotoba that can be heard in that poem.
This is a poem #424 by Ariwara-no Shigeharu‧在原滋春, a son of another famous Heian poet Ariwara-no Narihira‧在原業平.»»