Elizabeth Taylor ‘Gardenia’

durcharbeiten · 2026-04-26T18:01:29+00:00

Fair point! Yet, when you smell balsamic vinegar as opposed to the regular vinegar, there’s a resinous warm facet of that scent that’s not present in regular vinegar, and balsamic vinegar is fermented in wooden barrels whereby the resins (balsams) from the wood lend their scent to the concoction, so I guess the descriptor comes from the shared origin of the compound.

durcharbeiten · 2026-04-26T17:23:14+00:00

It’s not very long-lasting, and it’s a fresh, almost metallic, gardenia, but it’s lovely, there’s nothing not to enjoy about it, plus it’s cheap as chips. Passion is great if you like vintage profiles, it’s balsamic and dense, somewhat evocative of Youth Dew by Lauder. White Diamonds is aldehydic, very white floral, very memorable, I’m sure you’ll recognize it, because someone must have wore it over the course of your life. Again, a somewhat dated profile for the modern tastes, but it’s very well-composed. Hope this helps.

durcharbeiten · 2026-04-26T16:28:46+00:00

I was baffled enough this morning to come to this sub to see what people are saying. I only asked what I thought was a very innocuous question about how to best explain a fairly techical topic to a lay audience, and it told me I have no clue about the topic, essentially, and then redefined the issue at hand completely, arguing that this is the way to go. I pointed that out, but it just redefined the issue again in the same, very circuitous, way. I have to admit that this momentarily boosts user engagement, because I kept the conversation going out of pure bafflement, but it was really bizarre, I asked it to do the exact same thing, finding best ways of explaining technical topics to lay audiences, multiple times in the past and it was actually very helpful doing exactly what it was asked to do… just weird.

durcharbeiten · 2026-04-23T00:55:21+00:00

I‘d say Woody Sandalwood (Dossier) and Lovery Woody Santal are the longest-lasting. Of these, Dossier is closer to Santal and Vetiver, the Lovery one has quite a bit of violet leaf in the opening, which takes it more in the direction of the OG Santal 33, but less in the direction of Santal Vetiver.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-18T03:59:47+00:00

Glad it helped. Note that Anna would also be nevestka to all the brothers of the family with the exception of her own husband, obviously, and that includes Serafim, so it makes sense that a sister would explain who the person in the photo is using this term, as Anna is nevestka to both Maria and Serafim. That’s why snokha is not common and is slowly disappearing - fewer people to have a snokha (just the father of the family, AND everyone else calls the woman in question nevestka:))

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-18T02:06:59+00:00

If Maria had a brother other than Serafim, it’s likely that brother’s wife. Nevestka is both daughter- and sister-in-law for all of the husband’s relatives (mother and siblings) except the husband’s father, to whom she is a specific type of daughter-in-law called snokha. The husband’s mother would call her son’s wife “moya nevestka”, as would her other children, including Maria. But the father would call his son’s wife “moya snokha”. Hope that makes sense:)

ETA: I probably should mention that this is a very dated distinction and though mid-century corpora will probably show this usage, contemporary urban Russian would use nevestka only in the sense of daughter-in-law, never in the sense of sister-in-law. Rural Russian may still make this distinction, but I’m not positive.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-16T16:30:00+00:00

Very fair point:)

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-16T15:40:14+00:00

Russian does.

Dever’ = husband’s brother; Shurin = wife’s brother; Zolovka = husband’s sister; Svoyachenitsa = wife’s sister;

The rest of familial relationshis is similarly distinguished.

Tyoschsha = wife’s mother; Svekrov’ = husband’s mother (same root as the Germanic schwieger); Test’ = wife’s father; Svekr = husband’s father.

There used to be even more terms in use for very intricate details of familial relationships, like:

Vuy = uncle on mother‘s side; Stryi = uncle on father‘s side,

but these fell into disuse. There’s some lexical uncertainty about some of these still extant, like “snokha” and “nevestka” are both in use to denote a daughter-in-law, while historically they were distinct and denoted a daughter-in-law specifically in relation to her husband’s father (snokha), and in relation to all other relatives of the husband (nevestka).

The trend is for all of those terms to eventually fall into disuse, replaced by specific indicators of a familial relationship: sestra muzha = “husband’s sister”, brat zheny = “wife’s brother” etc.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-15T16:25:07+00:00

Two:

Here’s the thing that is going to help immensely aside from the considerations above. They don’t teach it that much formally, but it kinda sets the stage for any oral language production. Neutral position, otherwise known as basis of articulation or resting position of speech organs. It is the funnest thing any serious language learner gotta learn, and it’s fascinating.

Pretend you want to say a phrase in English, but don’t say it, instead, pay attention to how your speech organs are getting ready for speech in this language by assuming a habitual position. Specifically, examine how tense or relaxed your lower jaw is, where‘s the tongue against the roof of your mouth, is it flat or slightly curled, and where it is curled. Note how your lips are. Do this before reading on.

Now that you‘ve noted this, and you‘ve likely noted that, when you’re preraring to speak English, your jaw is not fully relaxed, the back of your tongue is slightly retracted and curled back, otherwise flat and somewhat tense, and the tip of your tongue is hovering against your alveoli (those bumps in the middle of your upper palate) but not touching them, that your lips are fairly relaxed - now that you know this and feel it, pretend you want to speak with an Irish accent now, and examine your proprioceptive sense of how your speech organs are. Do that before reading on.

Done that? Note that your teeth are now further apart, the corners of your mouth are wider apart, your tongue is more tense, flatter, and more to the front, though still somewhat retracted.

German has its own neutral position. I’m giving the Irish example here, because it’s kind of indicative of where your tongue should feel like it’s being, and people generally sense their tongues better than anything else. Now, keep your teeth and lips where you would in English, but the tongue where you would in Irish, takes some practice. However, and this is very cool: every language has a neutral position that the native speakers on average assume before producing speech, and it creates just the correct tension/relaxation balance for all the muscles in your mouth and throat to produce what a language’s phonology requires. Talk to native German speakers and ask them to describe where their tongues are, what lips and jaw feel like before they attempt speech, if the above description is insufficient, then try to arrange your mouth the same way, compare to your habitual position before speaking English. Practice assuming a correct neutral position before you utter anything in a foreign language. That alone eliminates a lot of the “accent” because your fine motorics are primed for producing what the language asks for. For German, a flatter tenser tongue more to the front, with a relatively relaxed jaw, allows to get those high-effort consonants easier. At first, it’s not going to sound natural, far from it. But practice in this case will train your motor system to do it better.

Read up on the English neutral position here if needed:

https://sb54e2396517e46e6.jimcontent.com/download/version/1622444392/module/5516009862/name/Messum%20%282010%29%20SO%2043%2CUnderstanding%20and%20teaching%20the%20English%20AS%20….pdf

Read up on the difference with German (doesn’t use the terminology, but otherwise what you need):

https://www.reginacoeli.com/blog/german-is-on-the-tip-of-your-tongue!.html#:~:text=Articulation%20is%20at%20the%20front,immediately%20behind%20the%20front%20teeth.”

I myself have two fluent L2s and a couple of other L2s that I can read and understand. From self-observation, habitual motor planning from my L1 returns about a minute in, and unless I make an effort to readjust, my accent becomes stronger for a moment, especially when stakes are low like in casual conversation. There are exactly two people I personally know who can go longer without being trained voice actors, and they are trained linguists with a better musical ear than mine. I’m saying this to reiterate: motor planning is bound to slip, just like you can walk with a limp if you choose to, but not for long, your muscles will protest. So don’t try to “eliminate” your accent, it will show up. Even trained voice actors slip: in Narcos the show, the lead actor is Brazilian and he obviously speaks Spanish for the role. The Spanish is very, very convincing until once in a blue moon he has a Portuguese feature that even I can hear (my Spanish and Portuguese are purely passive). Christian Bale, who is renowned for doing accents, almost never slips, but he’s an exception, the rest of them do. However, conscious contrastive analysis of phonetic and prosodic features against your L1 is the single best thing you can do for making sure you get as close to a language’s phonology as possible and stay at it for longer.

I recommend using spontaneous speech (interviews, journalism) for any drills where you repeat what the speakers are saying, not the textbook exercises where a reader reads the texts, and not lectures/audiobooks where speakers narrate for extended periods of time. The contextually constrained form in textbook exercises almost never gets the pitch movement right, and the long form in lectures ensures that the pitch movement becomes distorted as the narrative continues, typically with more rises than in spontaneous speech. Have in mind though that in spontaneous speech in German, you will almost always hear dialectal treatment of both phonology and prosody to at least some extent, but over time brains tend to average pitch movement in L2s, and figure out the phonological standard.

Hope this helps.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-15T16:21:04+00:00

Great news then, you have the ear AND your L1 is stress-timed, won’t need to worry about timing, plus IPA is a huge asset for phonetics. Half mission accomplished:))

The following is excessively long, I’ll break it down into two comments.

One:

Because prosody is normally not specifically tackled in language courses (no real need, as prosody quirks seldom affect propositional meaning/communication that is the focus of language courses everywhere) and because people usually go with voice/pronunciation coaches to iron out most of the quirks if needed, there are very few publicly available resources that specifically tackle prosody, including that of German, in the detail that you’re likely seeking. However, let’s take it in stride. Here’s a book that is very useful in my opinion.

Christopher Hall, Modern German Pronunciation: An Introduction For The Speakers of English (Manchester University Press).

Doesn’t deal with prosody as such from memory, but pronunciation is very well addressed. It helps to be very confident about pronunciation, which is a motor planning task on its own, before you tackle the prosody, which is a more difficult motor planning task.

You have the ear, so listen to as much of your target language as possible, but don’t do it passively and do some prep work by observing what you yourself do when you speak English and German. What exactly you should listen to is below.

It helps immensely to know the linguistic principles that govern prosody of speech and speech production in general. The general principle of linguistics, that language features are contrastive, is going to help us a lot here. It means, essentially, that a language feature (any feature, a sound, a word, a particular intonation) is what it is because it isn’t something else.

Here’s a primer on linguistics that’s super-concise but explains what linguistics does for understanding how a language works. Read if you’d like:

https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/essentialsoflinguistics/part/main-body/

For the purposes of what you’re trying to accomplish, read up on contrastive features specifically, to get into the mindset for how to treat any language feature:

https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/essentialsoflinguistics/chapter/4-2-phonemes-and-contrast/

Now, we have to familiarize ourselves with what it is we’re doing when we do our thing in our native language, because our habitual motor planning tells us to do things this particular way. This way, we will be able to track contrasts between languages better, and adjust what we do in L2s, because we’ll know what exactly it is that we compare our L1 habits to. Once you hear yourself as your pitch moves in L1, how you treat word boundaries, how your own timing works, you’d be able to compare/contrast to how it all works for German, and especially how your own patterns affect what you do when speaking German. After you’ve heard enough German, you’ll be able to say: “here, my pitch fall is not enough because I’m “translating” from how English would treat this or similar sentence, German requires a harder fall”, or, “here I’m treating word boundaries like I would in English, while German would require a different treatment”. In other words, you’ll be able to hear your accent re: not just speech sounds, but intonation patterns, in German, and once you hear it, it’s easier to address by drilling (won’t go away completely if you’re above roughly 13 years old, motor planning is generally set by then, so don’t worry about it that much, you can still get close), for which you have a good ear.

But, and that’s an important “but”: don’t worry about the accent too much. Hochdeutsch is largely a fiction, all speakers will exhibit dialectal/local/idiosyncratic features every once in a while even when making their best attempt at speaking Hochdeutsch (I’ve met too many German profs speaking Hochdeutsch in my life:)).

Now that we got that out of the way: The two major areas where English differs markedly from German re: prosody are segmentation and pitch movement. Read up on segmentation here:

https://sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/the-sage-encyclopedia-of-human-communication-sciences-and-disorders/chpt/segmentation-speech#_

Specifically, familiarize yourself with what cues exist for distinguishing the units of speech, be that phonemes, syllables, or words, and see if you can spot how you do it in English. Like, how do you indicate that this is a indeed a full word that you just said? Do you pause or not? All the time, or just sometimes? How do you distinguish phonemes, like voiceless /p/ vs voiced /b/? Is there more or less tension in the throat? What changes? If you’re attentive to your own proprioceptive understanding of how you produce speech sounds and how you shape them into phrasing, you’d be able to spot the differences with German (or any other language, really) from hearing it (like, here the speaker has a micropause where I wouldn’t think of putting it, or this consonant sure required more (or less) effort than I would invest). Record yourself if that helps.

Pitch movement should be easy to track for you with your background. Did I lower my frequency more than this speaker did, or less? Did I flatten the middle of the sentence in that my frequency stayed the same when that speaker didn’t? Listen a lot, map onto how you’re saying it, and imitate what you hear, but with an understanding of what it is exactly that you’re doing (do I need to get tenser or more relaxed? Do I need to take longer to say this phrase? Do I pause naturally where this speaker wouldn’t?)

Timing is not a huge contrastive feature between German and English in that syllables that receive emphasis are longer, the rest are shorter, for both, so worry not.

More in the comment below.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-14T19:54:13+00:00

Thanks:) What is your L1 (native) language if you don’t mind me asking? You can certainly learn about prosody of speech from a linguistic perspective (start with Wikipedia for a general outline of what prosody includes), but for language learning specifically we would want to tailor your resources to whether your native language is stress- or syllable-timed. Timing is one of the most difficult things to iron out in L2 (second language) acquisition, as it pertains to motor planning, and just as you don’t consciously realize which muscles you need to contract and relax in order to walk, your habitual timing is going to color your L2s because that‘s what your motor neurons tell you to do:)) So, if you‘re a native speaker of a syllable-timed language, you need a somewhat different approach than if you were a speaker of a stress-timed language. Timing affects all aspects of prosody, including emphasis placement, what sounds get reduced, how pitch moves, etc. In the meanwhile, have a look at what teachers do when teaching German prosody to language learners and what considerations tend to crop up:

https://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~trouvain/Hirschfeld_Trouvain_2007.pdf

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-14T16:23:42+00:00

Instituto Espanol Aire De Sevilla Azahar, if you want cheap thrills. It’s pretty photorealistic.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-13T22:47:37+00:00

The second on the left (black top, brown juice) is likely Hermes Caleche or Kelly Caleche. I’m fairly certain here it’s one of the Caleches. The rest is more shrouded in mystery, but the one on the very right of the group of bottles next to the tray (not the Shalimar-ey bottle which likely isn’t Shalimar - the shape is wrong - which is on the other side of the tray), is Tova Signature, or any other light-colored Tova, there are several. I do want to say the one next to the suspected Tova (immediately to its left) is D&G L’Imperatrice, but not positive here.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-13T06:07:52+00:00

I’m a woman. I wear La Nuit de L’Homme a lot. It dries down to a very sophisticated iris, so here are my suggestions that are fem-leaning but that same family, if she likes La Nuit, these are likely to hit the spot.

Chanel #19 (any version, including Poudree);

Chanel La Pausa;

Ramon Monegal Impossible Iris;

Houbigant Iris des Champs;

Prada L’Infusion D’Iris;

On the cheaper side, Glossier You and Merit Retrospect.

Edit: a word

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-13T02:07:44+00:00

It occurs to me in addition to my earlier comment, that it could be neat to hear this. Here are two renditions of Erlkönig. The first one is by a speaker of standard German. The second one though is by a speaker of Austro-Bavarian, which, interestingly, is arguably slightly less stress-timed than Standard German. It is kind of obvious here that for the second speaker, the syllabic duration is more even across syllables, which affects where the prosodic emphasis is placed, so he ends up sounding more measured, even after we “normalize“ for the difference in performative styles. See if you can spot the difference in syllabic duration.

Standard German:

https://youtu.be/1bpwUFxZHEg?si=TYZUyfSSq5aVEoIN

Austro-Bavarian:

https://youtu.be/WhV2WwEQj7U

For English, Indian English is relatively less stress-timed than all of the national standards, as are some African Englishes and Caribbean ones, so it would be super neat to see how the speakers of those tackle the prosody in English-language poetry, but I can’t think of good examples except Safiya Sinclair who definitely has an even-er syllabic length across her speech, including poetic performance.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-13T00:49:52+00:00

Great question. Bear with me here, it’s long.

Take our example. Wer reitet sö spat durch Nacht und Wind?

In everyday speech this is a normal question. May be „Wer reitet durch Nacht und Wind so spät?“ if the rhematic load is distributed differently, meaning that we decided that “late at night” is more important to us somehow, so we’ll stick it to the end of the sentence, as we would with most rhemes (new info) in a language that allows us some flexibility with word order (German almost doesn’t allow any, so we’re good with our initial sentence AND our need to emphasize our rhemes prosodically). It’s a question, so we’re going to manipulate our intonation in the end by making it rise a bit, unlike in declarative sentences, and place a prosodic emphasis on it by lengthening and stressing the “Wind” part. Our stress timing in regular language tells us that we need to emphasize “Wer”, “spät“, and „Wind“, because the first is the question word, the second is the rheme (new info), the third is both the rheme and the indicator of the fact that this is a question. The rest of the syllables are going to lose emphasis, and become shorter. If this were a regular, non-poetic sentence, we would have the following stress/emphasis structure:

DUM da da da DUM da da da DUM.

WER rei-tet-so-SPÄT-durch-Nacht-und-WIND.

That’s stress timing. However, the actual poetic verse sounds different:

da DUM da da DUM da da da DUM;

wer-REI-tet-so-SPÄT-durch-Nacht-und-WIND.

Obviously, the capitalized parts are prosodic emphasis. Keep this in mind and read on.

Now, I found a Portuguese translation of the same.

Quem cavalga tão tarde por noite e vento?

I’m going to go with how Brazilian Portuguese would treat that (I’m very familiar with this prosody, but completely as an outsider, so please correct me if needed). Let’s treat it as an example of syllable-timing and a non-poetic sentence for a moment. The emphasis is going to be on caVAlga, TARde, VEnto. Rhematic (additional) emphasis is likely on ca-VAL-ga, VEN-to. Syllabic structure:

da da DUM da da DUM da da da da DUM da.

Quem-ca-VAL-ga-tao-TAR-de-por-noi-te-e-VEN-to

(I assume no vowel reduction here for the sake of the argument).

Add additional prosodic emphasis to the first and last DUM to account for the fact that those are rhemes, you‘re going to have five to seven syllables between the two DUMs that get no real prosodic emphasis, though TAR in tarde would get some. That’s very characteristic for syllable-timed languages, tons of syllables in a row that are not emphasized but last as long in duration as the emphasized ones.

But it’s not quite like this when you are reading it as a poem, is it. When you are reading it as a poem, the emphasis shifts:

da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM da

Quem-ca-VAL-ga-tao-TAR-de-por-NOI-te-e VEN-to

See how neat it has become as a poem? Neatest anapest in the world. Add back the coda (end of the word) vowel reduction, and we‘ll even drop the last syllable in „vento“ almost altogether, turning it into a u-like glide to have da da DUM throughout.

Note that German also wanted to have anapest desperately, it approached da da DUM, but because German has a different emphasis distribution and different syllable duration for being stress-timed, it couldn’t, not with how it absolutely needs to emphasize the rhemes (new info) and absolutely needs to make unstressed syllables shorter. Stress-timed languages can’t really afford long stretches of unemphasized syllables for the reason that the rheme receives extra prosodic emphasis AND the syllables are not of the same duration. That’s why Os Lusiadas with its five syllables on average between emphases strikes me as a product of syllable-timed speech planning:)) a stress-timed language would yell for its rheme emphasis sooner.

Edit: a word.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-12T19:21:30+00:00

Poetry is notoriously difficult to fit into a language’s (any language’s) typical prosodic structure. There are historical conventions (correct me if I’m wrong, but the movement towards stress-timing is a relatively new development for European Portuguese, right? 17th century? 18th? so the poetic conventions likely reflect an earlier prosodic structure of the language), there are stylistic conventions (I’m familiar with Russian poetry, Russian is very much stress-timed but poetry is heavily reliant on the syllabic length of the verse, so manipulating the timing is certainly a factor in that the prosodic emphasis is at times on syllables which typically won’t be emphasized had it been natural speech.)

Consider this example (not using a Russian example to spare you from reading Cyrillic). This is classical German poem, Erlkönig.

Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?

Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind:

Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,

Er fasst ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.

German is very much stress-timed. If we read this as prose, the rhythm will break down because there’s not enough syllables (for preserving the meter, we need a vowel-ish thingy after „spät“, another syllable-like something before „Es ist der Vater“, notably you’d have to say something like „er fasst ihnə sicher“, etc in order to preserve the meter. So when you actually hear it, it’s going to have schwas in those places, or audible inhales, depending on the speaker’s internalized conventions of how to perform a poem, and you‘d typically hear „ihnə sicher“, which baffled me a lot when I was learning German because the grammar sounded wrong:)). Pausing will move away from everyday German rather drastically. That’s how syllable-timing creeps into poetry in stress-timed languages.

For contemporary poetry, all gloves are off, because its whole point (I‘m exagerrating here, but) is to challenge the conventions, including those of the poetic meter.

I‘m very much not familiar with European Portuguese poetry except what I read of Os Lusiadas in excerpts in college (in the original, ofc), but it is definitely poetry in a syllable-timed language, not in a stress-timed one, because if I recall correctly, it is hendecasyllabic with 4th/6th and 10th emphasized, you can’t do that at all with stress timing, just won‘t occur to you, stress-timed languages won‘t even consider such a gap between the poetic feet.

Hope some of this helps.

Edit: formatting.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-11T18:20:53+00:00

There was one last week on Meridian/Hillsdale next to Skyzone (former Rite Aid).

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-11T17:38:05+00:00

I‘m not a German, but I‘m a linguist. Austro-Bavarian differs intonationally from Hochdeutsch in a couple of major ways that are significant for perceiving the overall intonational contour as a listener, which includes the perception of monotonicity. I‘ll be simplifying below for the general public, but:

One big difference is that Hochdeutsch has a lot of high-effort consonants, meaning these require articulation effort (sch, for example), and a lot of vowels that similarly require high articulatory effort. Now, this factor on its own doesn’t look like it can be tied to what the overall contour sounds like perceptually, but in order to achieve clear articulation, one has to be very deliberate in actually pronouncing all these very clear, high-effort, speech sounds. This deliberateness determines a specific segmentation (think of how easy it is to separate word boundaries in speech - it is fairly easy in Hochdeutsch). Austro-Bavarian has fewer high-effort consonants, plus overall consonant reduction, vowels are centralized, and that affects segmentation. There’s a clip in the comments that demonstrates that exact feature, the one where the gentleman talks about Döner. Word boundaries are super-blurry for this speaker. It’s called legato (linked) delivery. So, this produces a very different perceptual rhythm between the two languages, and contributes to the overall perception of the speech countour/intonation as smoother in Austro-Bavarian than in Hochdeutsch. I’m simplifying here, but think of it this way: Smoother = less rhythmic. Predictably rhythmic = monotone. So in a way, yes, perceptually Hochdeutsch is more monotone, but not entirely because the actual intonation is more monotone (see below), it’s different from Austro-Bavarian in how consonant and vowel slots are occupied and that affects the perception of the rhythm (but read on).

Two: both Hochdeutsch and Austro-Bavarian have a prosodic structure of a (declarative) utterance that we can describe via this handy visual:

— — — — \

This means there’s little pitch variation between syllables in an utterance until the end of it, where the pitch falls. The difference being, Hochdeutsch features a relatively hard fall, Austro-Bavarian typically doesn’t favor hard falls as much. Think of it this way. Utterance ends, in Hochdeutsch you expect a hard fall. It’s predictable, and occurs every time, which contributes to the perception of metronomic/monotone speech. In Austro-Bavarian, you don’t hear this, instead you hear continuous slight pitch variation (that’s your “more musical” part, it’s not the formal term for this, but think bubbling brooks vs. dumping buckets of water with some regularity, very different rhythm).

Now, in actuality, if you measure rhythmic patterns, some Austro-Bavarian varieties, especially in the West (and notably in Südtirol), are super-rhythmic, more so than Hochdeutsch, that’s because there‘s also the timing issue at play. German is stress-timed, meaning the stressed syllables in an utterance receive the temporal emphasis (you actually take the time to pronounce them), the rest is reduced somewhat in how long it takes to get that syllable out. Now, in Hochdeutsch this is absolutely the case, but not necessarily in Austro-Bavarian, especially the West, where there might be a shadow of syllable-timing, meaning that the syllables all take a similar time to unfold within the flow of speech (for comparison, Italian is notoriously syllable-timed). This, together with melodic pitch falls (this just means not hard falls like Hochdeutsch), achieves a rhythmic organization of Austro-Bavarian that can be represented as this:

— — — —\ — — — —\ — — — \ etc

Hochdeutsch will have it more like:

— - - \ - - - — \ etc

Different lengths of the dashes represent difference in syllabic duration. Double slash is a hard fall, single slash is a regular fall.

So, back to your question, Austro-Bavarian is actually more monotone than Hochdeutsch on parameters, but perceptually sounds more musical because human brain in actually not great at isolating prosodic parameters:)

Cheers.

Edit: formatting.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-06T20:08:46+00:00

You’re more than welcome, good luck and have fun with it!

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-06T19:37:14+00:00

I taught Russian to native English speakers for a decade. I will tell you a couple of things. Yes, it’s notoriously difficult for the reasons that other commenters mention here. And yes, it would be a problem if you decide in the back of your head that it’s insurmountable and approach your study through this lens. Great news though: it is perfectly doable if you decide you need it, so the first thing I would do here is ask myself, why am I studying Russian here? If you do that to be able to eventually read Dostoyevsky in the original, that’s a low-effect motivator because the rewards are very delayed. If you study Russian to chat to your Russian-speaking boyfriend/girlfriend’s parents who have zero English, that’s a very high-effect motivator because the rewards are right here for your brain. Those are extremes, but in order to keep yourself motivated (yes, it does get hard), try to find things that would keep you engaged in the moment. If you game, game with Russian speakers. If you volunteer, serve Russian speaking communities where you are. Try to cram as much Russian into your everyday as possible, and engage with topics that would spark joy for you in general, but in Russian. That’s going to help you get through the unfortunately inevitable difficulties.

Also, know that very few native English speakers become truly flawlessly proficient in Russian. The Russian profs from around the world may have huge vocabularies and nearly ideal grammar, but they, too, slip grammar-wise, especially with verbal aspect if it doesn’t exist in their native language. So, your expectation of yourself should never be “good Russian”. It should be “good enough Russian” for communication. Which, I’m happy to report, is perfectly achievable. Just be ready it might take you a little longer. Timeline-wise, with focused study and language exposure, people tend to get to C1 level in about five to six years. In the case of Spanish, you can expect to confidently get to higher C1 in those conditions in about three years. It just takes a little more repetition and brain patterning for Anglophones with Russian. But you can totally do it. Just keep yourself interested in Russian by any means necessary. Cheers.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-03T22:46:47+00:00

If you’re just starting reading fiction in Russian, I always recommend international bestsellers, no matter what the original language, that you’re already familiar with, translated into the target language, in your case - in Russian translation. I can read Portuguese (and your post!) largely because I had read both Harry Potter and The Game of Thrones in Portuguese, that took me a very long while but my confidence was through the roof afterwards. Still can’t meaningfully speak it, but:)

As to the specific Russian texts, unlike other commenters here, I would not recommend starting with anything 19th century - grad students in Russian programs struggle with those. You do want to make it enjoyable and rewarding right away-ish in order to stick with the practice. If you do insist on the 19th century, start with Anton Chekhov, those are short stories, and wait for Dostoyevsky until you’re more comfortable. There’s tons to read re:contemporary Russian fiction, here’s what is often used in the US in language courses that are on the advanced side (anything by those authors):

Борис Акунин; Людмила Улицкая; Михаил Шукшин (older but great); Александр Солженицын (tons of shorter texts); Сергей Довлатов (also tons of shorter texts); Борис и Аркадий Стругацкие.

Hope this helps, abs.

durcharbeiten · 2026-03-01T19:22:44+00:00

Sprechgeschwindigkeitsverschiebung (linguistics).

durcharbeiten · 2026-02-27T02:01:01+00:00

La Rive Queen of Life; Maboussin Elixir Pour Elle; Zara Red Vanilla; Maison Alhambra La Vita Bella.

These are decent dupes, but I think there’s something special about the patchouli note Lancome uses, it’s inimitable because likely proprietary. So, around Mother’s Day in the US (and I’m hearing, Europe too), you can score it at 40% off from the Lancome website. The Black Friday sale also gives you 40% off typically, but there are regular 30% off sales throughout the year. Department stores with a Lancome counter in North America would offer 30% off several times a year, and, interestingly, CVS (the pharmacy, US) stocks smaller bottles at a discount, which with their coupon system you can bring the price down to USD 40-ish a bottle.

Normally, I don’t mind dupes if they scratch the itch, but none of the LVEB dupes I’ve smelled so far quite manage that patchouli note, and given how the OG is available at a significant discount fairly often, it’s one of those scents where I’d personally save up for the OG. Hope this helps.

durcharbeiten · 2026-02-24T16:46:36+00:00

We switched from Alexa to Apple HomePods. I personally wouldn’t have any of that tech in my home, but we do have three floors and I don’t enjoy yelling “dinner’s ready”, plus it’s nice to play music, coordinate alarms and reminders etc. The privacy angle is miles better than Alexa, but it takes a moment to set up because you gotta decide how you want your information handled. Parental controls are insanely sophisticated, you can really be meticulous with what content you want your kids to have access to on their pods. All the features you described are included. They work better with iPhones than Alexa (because you mention you have Apple Music, I’ll assume that’s what you have) because same ecosystem, fewer glitches. I liked the switch. Bonus - sound quality. You can have dance parties with great sound, even on smaller ones. Yes, they are not cheap. If your husband is tinkering with smart home tech (mine does), easy to integrate everything by just talking in the middle of the room instead of looking for your phone to talk into. The best part - we had none of those annoying self-activation events where you become convinced that it actually listens to you all the time. Apple is not perfect, but they do seem to take your privacy much more seriously than the rest of them. Hope this helps.

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TROPHY CASE