Another Damn Polyglot Blog

👏you👏won't👏remember👏shit👏if👏you👏try👏to👏learn👏100👏words👏in👏one👏go

Don’t tell me what to do!!!

I mean

Our slutty whores vs their useful rentals

When I was 14, I was in an exchange programme between my Dutch school and a German school. We all stayed at each other’s houses, we were each other’s host families. On day two of us Dutchies being in Germany after arriving in the city the evening before, we were on a bus. 25 German teens, 25 Dutch teens, and two teachers each from each school.

The driver starts driving us to the first excursion. The German teacher who was in charge of the whole programme takes the microphone and asks the whole bus the question:

“Seid ihr gestern gut klargekommen?”

In German, this means as much as: “Did you all get along well yesterday?”

Suddenly the 25 Dutch kids burst out into hysterical laughter.

The German teacher looks at us helplessly, no idea what he’d done wrong. My own teacher jumps up from his seat, and grabs the microphone from him, and yells in Dutch:

“HE WANTS TO KNOW WHETHER YOU’RE GETTING ALONG OKAY!”

You see, in German, “klargekommen” means “got along”.

In Dutch, “klaargekomen”, which is pronounced exactly the same way, means “had an orgasm”.

To these Dutch kids with only basic levels of German knowledge, this unknown teacher just asked them if they all had a good orgasm last night.

En Anglais, on ne dit pas “quatre vingt dix neuf”, on dit “ninety nine” qu'on pourrait traduire comme “Hurr durr, regardez mois, j'ai un système de numérotation fonctionnel” et je crois que c'est magnifique.

in an interesting case of linguistic convergent evolution, the english words scale, scale, and scale are all false cognates of each other

scale as in „to climb“ comes from the latin scala, for ladder.

scale as in the measuring device comes from the old norse skal, for a drinking vessel sometimes used as a weighing device

scale as in the dermal plating on the skin of some fish and reptiles comes from the old french escale, for shell or husk.

Three languages enter, one language leaves.

official linguistics post

Listening to native speakers of the language you’re trying to learn

Although written records are rarely regarded as part of sub-Saharan Africa’s heritage, important bodies of Ajami texts (records of African languages written in Arabic script) have existed in Africa for centuries. Ajami writing traditions around the world follow the geography of Islam and are varied. They have played critical roles in the spread of Islam in Muslim communities beyond Arabia and continue to be used for both religious and non-religious writings. Ajami sources document intellectual traditions, histories, belief systems, and cultures of non-Arab Muslims around the world. Despite similar origins in spreading Islam, each Ajami system followed its own trajectory shaped by local cultural, social and political factors. The neglect of African Ajami traditions is due to a number of factors, including the lack of an Ajami public depository, the limited number of scholars with the necessary skills to study Ajami manuscripts, and the pervasive overemphasis on African oral traditions in academia.

Random, but I personally find it irritating that African languages are often treated in writing for international audiences as if they were some sort of irrelevant parenthetical. And when it comes to the biographies of distinguished people, these languages are treated as some minor part of someone's exotic past or whatever while English and French are deemed markers of intellectual accomplishment and seriousness. What a shame. And I suspect that even among folks who don't hold condescending attitudes towards African languages, there is a sense that there's something deeply regional, esoteric, and unknowable about them. But this is of course not true, and you would be surprised by how much you learn if you are even a little bit curious.

English speaker: Vixen is such a beautiful name!

Me, a German:

Explanation: "wichsen" (pronounced the same way as Vixen) means "jerking off"

Wait why is no one in the comments pointing out that vixen is also a word with sexual/sensual connotations in the English language?? And no one would ever name their child Vixen?????

my friend and I are going to play a bizarre psychological prank on our other friend who is studying german when we see her next. and this prank is simply learning german. we are going to speak it in front of her and have a conversation which will weird her out because when did we ever study german? she knows we haven’t? surely it wasn’t just to have this one conversation in front of her to make her question the average person’s knowledge of german? (it is). this project is largely infeasible and not very funny at all. however we are going to do it

Well actually I guess I'll just share this more generally if anyone is interested. Collected by a number of people on Twitter including @touchlnggrass and @frankenvy. Hopefully useful for someone studying, and feel free to lmk if you are interested in African languages, linguistics, etc. because I am as well and I haven't really come across others on this platform lol

What's the point of being able to speak in 5 languages if I have nothing meaningful to say in all of them.

the dutch language loves its latin calques. for instance where english or french are happy to use light variants of "subiectus" for the word subject, dutch breaks the latin word down to its raw components (ie. "something that is thrown under") and translates those, resulting in "onderwerp", literally "under-throw". also this guy who looked at the words for mathematics and chemistry every other language used and decided hmm. mmmm no we're not doing that

Daniel Brühl on his ‘Inglorious Basterds’ audition