what if it all worked out?

netflix subtitles are great for when you want to read a caption with like 50% resemblance to what's being spoken

character in a movie: buddy, i'm gonna tell you what i've got to do

netflix subtitles: i'll say what i must do

character in a movie: *exhales*

netflix subtitles: (blows raspberry)

character in a movie: ciao!

netflix subtitles: (in italian) bye!

no no no it’s more like

character in a movie: ciao!

netflix subtitles: [speaking foreign language]

automatically generated transcripts that aren’t corrected manually make for such shitty captions and subtitles, especially for dialogue spoken in dialects that are underrepresented in AI training. it sucks seeing captions that blatantly don’t understand something that a human could easily parse based on context. AI is improving its ability to re-analyze its own responses but if it’s mainly being trained on languages and accents that we consider to be the standards, everything else falls to the wayside

Be gay do crime but in Barvaria and we're putting these everywhere

For those of you who don't know about the current discussions in German politics:

German is a heavily gendered language, with distinct female and male forms for a lot of words. While it's been pretty common to just use the 'generic male' term for, say, occupations (i.e. just using the male version of a word to refer to mixed groups of people), there's been a push in the last few years to use more gender-inclusive (or gender-sensitive, whatever you want to call it) versions of terms.

In written form, this usually means that you'll 'merge' the two terms with a * indicating that you're referring to a mixed group.

For example, if you're talking about teachers, instead of just using the generic male term Lehrer, or using both male and female (Lehrer und Lehrerinnen), you just write Lehrer*Innen (or LehrerInnen, or Lehrer_Innen, depending on preference).

The Bavarian state authorities, who are traditionally Christian maniacs, have now decided that this is unacceptable. They're arguing that this inclusive language goes against freedom of speech, that you need to be able to "have unrestricted discourse in a liberal society", and that an ideologically-influenced language like this would prohibit that. And so, in the name of freedom of speech, they are banning the use of the gender inclusive terms by schools, unis and state officials. It's as insane as it sounds.

This shit has been going on for like three years in schools in Saxony. I once got an official warning by my headmaster because I referred to students as Schüler*innen in a mail to a parent. (The parent complained.)

As far as I know, this rule refers only to "schools and their project partners", meaning that as long as a company adresses parents/kids in a school context (for an internship for example) they are forbidden from using this kind of gendered language.

This includes also projects working with students on LGBT+ topics, which is so stupid I don't even have words for it.

Actually, interesting addition: since students aren't really allowed to use it either, at my school some kids started using the female form as generic. I think it's funny as shit.

I’m so supportive of the hundreds of little linguistic revolutions about gender happening around the world

my biggest pet peeve wiht the english language is that you don’t have sin/sina

in swedish if u have two people who use the same pronoun u can always tell whos doing what bc its like ‘han tog sin väska’ (he took his[own] bag) and ‘han tog hans väska’ would be that he took the other persons bag

but in english its like if u have 2 ppl w/ the same pronoun:

“she took her bag” whose bag????WHose BAG was it her OWN bag or the other her’s bag??????????????

“he ate his donuts” were the donuts his own???? did he fucking eat someone elses donuts??? YIU DONT KNOW bc english is a bullshit language 

its funny that people are calling this the gay fanfiction dilemma bc thats literally why i made this post. i was writing a gay fanfic. 

if you give “stupid” characters rural/southern accents i don’t like you and if you give “smart” characters rural/southern accents but it’s a punchline i don’t like you even more

the other day I was out at lunch with some people I don’t know too well & they got talking specifically about West Virginian accents in the context of a movie that takes place there & that the movie opted out of doing accents & one of them laughed and said “I mean, can you imagine if characters sounded like that in serious moments??” I was like yeah I can because everyone where I’m from does sound like that. Y’all are so annoying.

no need for a more specific word because it all falls under classism and/or racism.

west virginia is home to some of the strongest labor & union movements in U.S. history, from miners’ strikes to the 2018 teachers’ strikes (where 20,000 teachers went on strike together with community support).

For the last 100 years it has become very beneficial to those in power for the rest of the country to think of us as very stupid, backward, “inbred,” etc. It’s not an accident. there were real efforts made to create & proliferate the stereotype of the stupid hillbilly.

Likewise it’s not an accident that dialects like AAVE are treated as a joke. Easier to dismiss civil rights leaders if you think what they say is inherently comedic or uneducated.

accent prejudice is a real field of linguistic research and rightly so because it’s something that so many people suffer from and never put into words. one of the most socially acceptable forms of prejudice remaining