I just saw an article like, Finnish people are so rude you’ll recognize one by the fact they never say “please”

I’m sorry, the word “please” doesn’t exist in the Finnish language, we just never got the instinct to use it, we’re not trying to be rude 😭

Yeah, politeness is expressed differently in our language. So using words like “please” is not something that comes naturally to us.

Same with how native Finnish speakers often mix up he/she in conversation, especially if they have to juggle between using both. We do know the difference, but it’s not something we’re used to doing. Our language does not make a difference between he/she, we only have hän which can be either. (No, this does not mean we don’t have words like man and woman, but I’ve seen people getting confused thinking this must mean we don’t have words like boy and girl.)

(x)

Just to give some very basic examples, let’s say you’re in a coffee shop and want to order a cup of coffee. In English, you might say something like “a cup of coffee, please”. But we don’t have the word “please” in Finnish. To make “I want a cup of coffee” polite in Finnish, there are several things you can do (we’re adding an extra layer of politeness with each sentence):

“A cup of coffee, thank you.” (Kuppi kahvia, kiitos.)

“I would take/have, a cup of coffee.” (Ottaisin kupin kahvia.)

“I would take/have, a cup of coffee, thank you.” (Ottaisin kupin kahvia, kiitos.)

“May/can I have a cup of coffee?” (Saisinko kupin kahvia?)

“May/can I have a cup of coffee, thank you?” (Saisinko kupin kahvia, kiitos?)

“Could I have a cup of coffee?” (Voisinko saada kupin kahvia?)

“Could I have a cup of coffee, thank you?” (Voisinko saada kupin kahvia, kiitos?)

i like that the coffee gradually becomes hypothetical like hey i understand the labor is immense to make this object exist and that is why it is you that i am now entrusting to make it be in my hands, thank you?

and then this person who’s now the elemental of that object is like hey sure thing bud

You know how in English you can also use ’please’ to beg and plead? Us Finns don’t often go that far, but we also have a special phrase to emphasise our distress. So instead of saying please, we ask the other person to be kind, ’ole kiltti’. So we get things like:

”Be kind and help us!” (Ole kiltti ja auta meitä.)

”Be kind, don’t yell.” (Ole kiltti äläkä huuda.)

You can also shorten this by using only the word for kind, ’kiltti’. Better even, in this context it also translates to ’a kind one’, which gives our pleads a nice ring don’t you think?

”Don’t hurt him, kind one!” (Älä satuta häntä, kiltti!)

A "Don" By Any Other Name...

Ok, so. I was just thinking about how the title "Don" is used in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, specifically for high ranking members of the Juarez cartel, and how it confuses me.

Now, admittedly, I am a "no sabo kid" half-Mexican with a very minimal grasp on the Spanish language, gleaned from three years of high school Spanish a million years ago and talking with my Mexican side of the family, none of whom use titles like this (or slang).

But, based on what little knowledge I have, I've always found it odd that kingpins in the Juarez cartel like Hector, Juan Bolsa, and--of course--Eladio, are all addressed with the honorific of "Don". But, Gustavo--arguably equally high ranking, though not a founding member like the other three--is *never* addressed as Don, though he uses the title for all the others. Even Don Juan, who respects Gustavo the most out of all the other capos, never addresses him as "Don Gustavo".

So...is the lack of "Don" to address Gustavo simply because he's not a founding member of the cartel? Or is it a slight; an intentional disrespect done to him by the other members because of his rocky start with the cartel, and to remind him of his outsider status (as a non-founding member, an up-start, a Chilean, a black man, and a queer...), no matter how much money he earns the cartel? A little of Column A, a little of Column B? Something else entirely?

The whole matter of titles is made even more confusing (to me, at least...) because, while Don Hector and Don Juan are titles of respect, Eladio is *the* ultimate "Don" of the Juarez cartel--the head of the organization. So, in his case, the title of "Don" doesn't just denote general respect and high status, but marks him as the Tony Soprano or Tony Montana of the whole shebang.

I don't know why this was just on my mind. But it got me wondering enough to do a little light Googling for linguistic edification, and according to a helpful short article, "Don" was indeed originally a title for men of high status. In modern Spanish, it can be used as an honorific for just about anyone--especially older men--as a sign of respect, similar to "señor". I'll link the article in question, if anyone is also curious (or confused, like me, haha).

Anyways, thanks for joining me in this little linguistic corner of BrBa/BCS fandom.

#justice for DON Gustavo! He deserves the title as much as the rest of the capos, damn it!!

tumblr: on languages

The thai for “5″ is pronounced roughly “Ha”, and so where english internets would generally put “lol” or something, they put “555555555″.

I was looking for this post for so long

Finally it has returned

why are british people always so mad when people make jokes about their accents. sorry you say yewchube. it’s funny though innit

This is something I’ve been dying to talk about.

There’s something called culture. People (especially USAmericans) think of culture as cultural dress, cultural food, cultural music. These are culture, but they are only the very superficial aspects of it. Like the icing on your cake. Far more deep rooted is the more meaty bits of culture: the attitudes, the ideas, the taboos.

There’s a guy on tiktok who has done a series that shows this very well, of Germans Vs Irish. In one video the German offers the Irish person two kinds of tea, green or black. The Irish person keeps putting off the choice with things like “Oh sure whatever is easiest”, “Which have you more of?” and, “Ah sure I don’t want to cause a fuss” whereas the German just wants a straight answer. This is a cultural difference of politeness.

Here in the UK, accents mark your class very openly. They let everyone know where you’re from (though this has become less pronounced in the last 50 years,) and what your background is. A lot of people (especially northerners, but also a fair contingent of working class southerners) face discrimination on the basis of their accents.

Some of us (myself included) even change register (though I believe USAmericans call it code switching) in and out of our regional accent and a close approximation of RP. We learn to do it because it makes us seem more intelligent (even though it shouldn’t) and helps us be taken more seriously.

Thus, our country carries a lot of baggage when it comes to accents. Especially those of the working class who have had their accents made fun of, or have faced discrimination based on it.

So when someone outside the country (usually USAmericans) makes fun of our accents they’re stepping on a lot of cultural taboos and boundaries. Especially because the “It’s Chewsday, gonnae wot-ch sum yewchube innit” is a working class accent.

Now, that’s not to say we can’t take a joke, but this is the kind of joke you share with someone who you have been friends with for a while. My boyfriend often will pick up on the way I say certain words, in much the same fashion I pick up on his idiosyncrasies of speech (English isn’t his first language so he says stuff like close the lights, which is adorable.) If we aren’t predisposed to liking you, then the joke you’re trying to make is more like an insult.

The way I like to think of it is if you were in a pub, and made those sorts of jokes to someone. If they knew you, and they liked you, they’d probably laugh along. If they didn’t like you or know you, they would punch you in the jaw.

HOWEVER: I recognise this post as a joke. I don’t personally find these jokes offensive, but then no one really makes fun of me or considers me stupid because of my accent.

Oh that actually makes a lot of sense! It’s like how it’s assumed in media that the southeastern Appalachian (‘hick’ or ‘redneck’) accent is audible shorthand for ‘this American character is stupid.’ That sentiment reinforces negative stereotypes about that region which has historically been home to a large working class population that has suffered from an underfunded education system and other systematic abuses. It is ultimately an underhanded joke, but not everyone from America (or even the region necessarily) considers it to be offensive despite its classist nature.

yes, that’s basically it! it grinds my gears when certain Very Online Americans will quite rightly say that europeans have no right to mock the us’ lack of healthcare/gun control and working-class accents…but then turn around and act like working-class british accents and foods are hilarious and should be mocked ‘bc of colonialism and the bp oil spill’ as though all british people are directly responsible for the oil spill. and then some of them conveniently forget that there are in fact british people of colour - in the wake of brexit, a smug american blog defended saying that british people upset by the referendum were getting ‘karma’ for the british empire, even when british poc pointed out that they were the ones most likely to be negatively affected by brexit, by saying ‘obviously i don’t mean you’, to which said british poc responded ‘THEN WHY DID YOU SAY BRITISH PEOPLE’

The hatred, by the privileged of England, towards Scotland and any Scottish accent was so pervasive that my mother wouldn’t let my brother and I develop a Scottish accent. She was born in Jamaica but her family moved to London when she was 11. She moved to Scotland when she was pregnant with me. Both my brother and I were born in Scotland and spent out entire childhood there. Mum was adamant that neither of us would have the local accent. It was “common” and “low class” and “would hinder us in the future”. She used to fine us half our pocket money if we used any Scottish slang or said anything in a Scottish accent. I got bullied at school for having a “posh English accent” but she thought my job prospects were more important than a modicum of happiness at school. My outsider status was doubled by that. I was brown and “English”.

Even now, after decades in Scotland, I still don’t sound Scottish. The English hear a slight lilt but that disappears as soon as I spend any time with them.

I feel alienated on two fronts now, skin colour and accent. And one of those was avoidable if it hadn’t been for the prejudice against against perceived lower class accents. Even in Jamaica Mum learnt to speak in an English accent like the white girls at her school. She could switch between the two. Jamaican with her parents, posh English everywhere else. Why couldn’t I have had that?

The fact that a lot of regional actors are expected to code-switch their accent patterns the a kind of neutral English accent in Britain shows how pervasive the classism is.

When Christopher Eccleston was cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who, people were surprised that he used his own northern accent, instead of performing with an accent like every Doctor before him. That was only 15-ish years ago.

Even now, this still happens - James McAvoy made a very vocal protest a couple of years back about a critic who complained about the use of Scots accents and only applauded the “plummy English” accent of one character in a play.

Regional and working class accents were used as joke accents for decades in British media. Look up old broadcasts and notice how many people only speak RP English (ie. the formal pronunciation that smacks of elocution lessons and enunciation). As media accessibility and productions expanded, there have been more regional accents showing up, but it’s still a big problem.

Putsimply when you mock “innit” you’re mocking poor people and often people of colour. Boris Johnson doesn’t say “innit bruv”.

I would like to add that there was a study by the Worcester College that found that people talking with a Birmingham accent were twice as likely to be accused of a crime as people who speak RP. Accents carry huge baggage in Britain.

I think another aspect of this that causes problems is the ways in which British characters have been depicted in American media with no distinction paid to what their accent says about them (and frequently by actors who aren’t always doing a very good job of sticking to one specific accent reliably). It has led to a situation where many, many Americans cannot particularly distinguish between two wildly different British accents (certainly not with anything NEAR the same accuracy as a British person could), and then we ascribe the same cultural stereotypes of British characters in American media across all British accents. So like the classic stereotypes for British characters in American media have been the “cool, intelligent, sophisticated supervillain” or the “snobby rich person”, yes? And the accent is part of how those qualities are coded to the audience, yes?

Because of this, your average American has no idea what a Liverpool accent sounds like, or a Yorkshire accent, or RP. To the American ear, all those accents blur together and register as some degree of “ah! fancy and smart :)” unless accompanied by powerfully obvious visual coding for some other class – but even then it doesn’t always work, because our cultural recognition of class differences hinges on different signals, and our cultural understanding of class is already a lot weirder and shakier than in the UK. I would wager real money that if you show your average American a lower-class character with ANY British accent and a middle-class character with ANY American accent (even possibly Standard) and ask them to talk about each character’s background, your average American will 100% assume that the British character is either higher class or at least equally middle class with the American one.

ANYWAY. What all this means is that when Americans make fun of British accents, a lot of them genuinely, truly, sincerely think they’re punching up and that this is not a harmful or hurtful thing to be doing. This is obviously a problem for a number of reasons, and I am not writing this whole discussion in order to excuse the behavior – I’m merely pointing out an element of HOW and WHY this thing is happening, and to point out to my fellow Americans what processes might be going on in their own heads so that they can do a better job of unpacking some of their cultural assumptions.

The audiobook version of Gideon the Ninth is narrated by a British woman called Moira Quirk (despite the fact that the author Tamsin Muir is from New Zealand and has gone on record as saying that the Nine Houses are ‘Kiwis in space’-it would have been really good to get a Kiwi narrator, but alas).

Muir Does Voices for the characters, including different accents for some of them. In the case of Gideon, the protagonist, though, the accent she uses is RP, or not far off it. It is definitely on the posher side of English accents. Harrow, the deuteragonist, is also voiced with a very similar accent. (Which makes sense; the two characters grew up in the same place, raised by the same very small group of people.)

However, I have noticed American fans of the books consistently fail to identify audiobook!Gideon’s voice as RP. One person said that she sounded ‘Cockney or Irish’ which made me boggle extremely hard…but I think I know the reason for their confusion.

If you’ve read the books, you’ll know that Gideon Nav is of low social standing, uninterested in scholarship or politics, unapologetically horny (and very awkward about actually flirting), given to swearing a lot, and generally very casual/disrespectful about how she talks.

She doesn’t fit the stereotype of the kind of person who has that accent. So when she’s voiced with it, people who aren’t familiar with British accents fail to parse it.

You can probably imagine why I am Not Happy with this.

I think it's funny that in French the word for "unicorn" is "licorne" because:

Before any anglophones get on the French people's case on this, consider for a second what y'all did when you reanalyzed the Spanish "el lagarto" ("the lizard") as "alligator."

Reanalysis is fun.

Oh yeah, everybody does this*. Another English example is "apron", which was once "napron" until we reanalyzed the initial N as part of the indefinite article (a napron -> an apron).

A fun one in Arabic is the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Quite understandably, Arabic speakers heard the initial "Al" and thought "ah yes, the ubiquitous definite article" and Alexandria became al-’Iskandariyya.

In the opposite direction, Spanish adopted hundreds of Arabic words during the Middle Ages due to Andalusian/Islamic influence, and there are very few Spanish words that start with al- that aren't of Arabic origin (and in fact, many words that start with A without being followed by an L, as in about half of cases in Arabic the L in "al-" is elided).

Reanalysis occurs in many other places besides article-noun combos, of course, but it's an extremely common case.

*citation needed, but reanalysis is extremely common

Oh, this actually explains something I'd just attributed to a quirk of sequence constraints or something; why Alexander is realized as Iskander/Iskandar in Arabic! It makes sense to analyze it as al-Iskander in Arabic!

Same thing happened with the word alchemy! Started out as the Arab term "al-kimiya", and when it was transported to Europe, it became "alchemy". This is actually really interesting, because as the term evolved more, it became "chemistry", effectively un-reanalyzing the word!

Oh actually there's another layer of fun there: the Arabic "al-kimiya" is actually a loan of the Ancient Greek χῠμείᾱ (khumeíā), which was used to refer to the art of alloying metals. Arabic borrowed a lot of Greek terminology owing to Arabic translations of Greek classics (many of which were actually lost in Europe until they were retranslated from Arabic). So, yeah, the Greek khumeíā made a round trip through Arabic, then into medieval Latin as "alchemia," and from there we eventually do get chemistry!

Not quite the same thing, but this reminded me of one of the funniest phenomena in the German language.

So, you may or may not know that x-rays were discovered by a guy called Röntgen (or Roentgen, though the ö is the proper spelling). Because of that, they're called "Röntgen rays" in German. Now, the thing is that in the German, the infinitive of a verb is always formed with an -en at the, so, for example, "to run" is "rennen" or "to sleep" is "schlafen." And because of that, it just so happened that the verb for performing x-rays became... "röntgen."

ich röntge, du röntgst, er/sie/es röntgt, wir röntgen, ihr röntgt, sie röntgen

In the X-rayed lab, straight röntgin it

why are british people always so mad when people make jokes about their accents. sorry you say yewchube. it’s funny though innit

This is something I’ve been dying to talk about.

There’s something called culture. People (especially USAmericans) think of culture as cultural dress, cultural food, cultural music. These are culture, but they are only the very superficial aspects of it. Like the icing on your cake. Far more deep rooted is the more meaty bits of culture: the attitudes, the ideas, the taboos.

There’s a guy on tiktok who has done a series that shows this very well, of Germans Vs Irish. In one video the German offers the Irish person two kinds of tea, green or black. The Irish person keeps putting off the choice with things like “Oh sure whatever is easiest”, “Which have you more of?” and, “Ah sure I don’t want to cause a fuss” whereas the German just wants a straight answer. This is a cultural difference of politeness.

Here in the UK, accents mark your class very openly. They let everyone know where you’re from (though this has become less pronounced in the last 50 years,) and what your background is. A lot of people (especially northerners, but also a fair contingent of working class southerners) face discrimination on the basis of their accents.

Some of us (myself included) even change register (though I believe USAmericans call it code switching) in and out of our regional accent and a close approximation of RP. We learn to do it because it makes us seem more intelligent (even though it shouldn’t) and helps us be taken more seriously.

Thus, our country carries a lot of baggage when it comes to accents. Especially those of the working class who have had their accents made fun of, or have faced discrimination based on it.

So when someone outside the country (usually USAmericans) makes fun of our accents they’re stepping on a lot of cultural taboos and boundaries. Especially because the “It’s Chewsday, gonnae wot-ch sum yewchube innit” is a working class accent.

Now, that’s not to say we can’t take a joke, but this is the kind of joke you share with someone who you have been friends with for a while. My boyfriend often will pick up on the way I say certain words, in much the same fashion I pick up on his idiosyncrasies of speech (English isn’t his first language so he says stuff like close the lights, which is adorable.) If we aren’t predisposed to liking you, then the joke you’re trying to make is more like an insult.

The way I like to think of it is if you were in a pub, and made those sorts of jokes to someone. If they knew you, and they liked you, they’d probably laugh along. If they didn’t like you or know you, they would punch you in the jaw.

HOWEVER: I recognise this post as a joke. I don’t personally find these jokes offensive, but then no one really makes fun of me or considers me stupid because of my accent.

Oh that actually makes a lot of sense! It’s like how it’s assumed in media that the southeastern Appalachian (‘hick’ or ‘redneck’) accent is audible shorthand for ‘this American character is stupid.’ That sentiment reinforces negative stereotypes about that region which has historically been home to a large working class population that has suffered from an underfunded education system and other systematic abuses. It is ultimately an underhanded joke, but not everyone from America (or even the region necessarily) considers it to be offensive despite its classist nature.

yes, that’s basically it! it grinds my gears when certain Very Online Americans will quite rightly say that europeans have no right to mock the us’ lack of healthcare/gun control and working-class accents…but then turn around and act like working-class british accents and foods are hilarious and should be mocked ‘bc of colonialism and the bp oil spill’ as though all british people are directly responsible for the oil spill. and then some of them conveniently forget that there are in fact british people of colour - in the wake of brexit, a smug american blog defended saying that british people upset by the referendum were getting ‘karma’ for the british empire, even when british poc pointed out that they were the ones most likely to be negatively affected by brexit, by saying ‘obviously i don’t mean you’, to which said british poc responded ‘THEN WHY DID YOU SAY BRITISH PEOPLE’

The hatred, by the privileged of England, towards Scotland and any Scottish accent was so pervasive that my mother wouldn’t let my brother and I develop a Scottish accent. She was born in Jamaica but her family moved to London when she was 11. She moved to Scotland when she was pregnant with me. Both my brother and I were born in Scotland and spent out entire childhood there. Mum was adamant that neither of us would have the local accent. It was “common” and “low class” and “would hinder us in the future”. She used to fine us half our pocket money if we used any Scottish slang or said anything in a Scottish accent. I got bullied at school for having a “posh English accent” but she thought my job prospects were more important than a modicum of happiness at school. My outsider status was doubled by that. I was brown and “English”.

Even now, after decades in Scotland, I still don’t sound Scottish. The English hear a slight lilt but that disappears as soon as I spend any time with them.

I feel alienated on two fronts now, skin colour and accent. And one of those was avoidable if it hadn’t been for the prejudice against against perceived lower class accents. Even in Jamaica Mum learnt to speak in an English accent like the white girls at her school. She could switch between the two. Jamaican with her parents, posh English everywhere else. Why couldn’t I have had that?

The fact that a lot of regional actors are expected to code-switch their accent patterns the a kind of neutral English accent in Britain shows how pervasive the classism is.

When Christopher Eccleston was cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who, people were surprised that he used his own northern accent, instead of performing with an accent like every Doctor before him. That was only 15-ish years ago.

Even now, this still happens - James McAvoy made a very vocal protest a couple of years back about a critic who complained about the use of Scots accents and only applauded the “plummy English” accent of one character in a play.

Regional and working class accents were used as joke accents for decades in British media. Look up old broadcasts and notice how many people only speak RP English (ie. the formal pronunciation that smacks of elocution lessons and enunciation). As media accessibility and productions expanded, there have been more regional accents showing up, but it’s still a big problem.

Putsimply when you mock “innit” you’re mocking poor people and often people of colour. Boris Johnson doesn’t say “innit bruv”.

I would like to add that there was a study by the Worcester College that found that people talking with a Birmingham accent were twice as likely to be accused of a crime as people who speak RP. Accents carry huge baggage in Britain.

official linguistics post

This cat's name is Peaches, and she is my role model. But let's talk about Russian phonetics.

My neighbours once told me that they honestly believed that her name is Bitches. When I call her home, this is what they hear: Bitches. And there are at least two linguistic reasons why this happens. First, in Russian, we don't have tense and lax vowels. It took me a while just to learn to hear the difference between 'shit' and 'sheet', and I am still tying to re-train my articulation apparatus to make this distinction when I speak. So, "peaches" may well sound like 'pitches' to my English speaking neighbours.

But why B? Well, in Russian, we put a lot of energy to consonants, and we don't aspirate. Even though P is devocalized, the energy I put in P is enough to confuse my poor neighbours. Russian is simply more energy-fuelled and less "breathy" than English.

Well, anyway, Peaches is very independent, always knows what she wants, always looking to make the most of the moment and enjoys life to the fullest. She turned 11 years old a couple of weeks ago and is the happiest cat in the world.

why are british people always so mad when people make jokes about their accents. sorry you say yewchube. it’s funny though innit

This is something I’ve been dying to talk about.

There’s something called culture. People (especially USAmericans) think of culture as cultural dress, cultural food, cultural music. These are culture, but they are only the very superficial aspects of it. Like the icing on your cake. Far more deep rooted is the more meaty bits of culture: the attitudes, the ideas, the taboos.

There’s a guy on tiktok who has done a series that shows this very well, of Germans Vs Irish. In one video the German offers the Irish person two kinds of tea, green or black. The Irish person keeps putting off the choice with things like “Oh sure whatever is easiest”, “Which have you more of?” and, “Ah sure I don’t want to cause a fuss” whereas the German just wants a straight answer. This is a cultural difference of politeness.

Here in the UK, accents mark your class very openly. They let everyone know where you’re from (though this has become less pronounced in the last 50 years,) and what your background is. A lot of people (especially northerners, but also a fair contingent of working class southerners) face discrimination on the basis of their accents.

Some of us (myself included) even change register (though I believe USAmericans call it code switching) in and out of our regional accent and a close approximation of RP. We learn to do it because it makes us seem more intelligent (even though it shouldn’t) and helps us be taken more seriously.

Thus, our country carries a lot of baggage when it comes to accents. Especially those of the working class who have had their accents made fun of, or have faced discrimination based on it.

So when someone outside the country (usually USAmericans) makes fun of our accents they’re stepping on a lot of cultural taboos and boundaries. Especially because the “It’s Chewsday, gonnae wot-ch sum yewchube innit” is a working class accent.

Now, that’s not to say we can’t take a joke, but this is the kind of joke you share with someone who you have been friends with for a while. My boyfriend often will pick up on the way I say certain words, in much the same fashion I pick up on his idiosyncrasies of speech (English isn’t his first language so he says stuff like close the lights, which is adorable.) If we aren’t predisposed to liking you, then the joke you’re trying to make is more like an insult.

The way I like to think of it is if you were in a pub, and made those sorts of jokes to someone. If they knew you, and they liked you, they’d probably laugh along. If they didn’t like you or know you, they would punch you in the jaw.

HOWEVER: I recognise this post as a joke. I don’t personally find these jokes offensive, but then no one really makes fun of me or considers me stupid because of my accent.

Oh that actually makes a lot of sense! It’s like how it’s assumed in media that the southeastern Appalachian (‘hick’ or ‘redneck’) accent is audible shorthand for ‘this American character is stupid.’ That sentiment reinforces negative stereotypes about that region which has historically been home to a large working class population that has suffered from an underfunded education system and other systematic abuses. It is ultimately an underhanded joke, but not everyone from America (or even the region necessarily) considers it to be offensive despite its classist nature.

yes, that’s basically it! it grinds my gears when certain Very Online Americans will quite rightly say that europeans have no right to mock the us’ lack of healthcare/gun control and working-class accents…but then turn around and act like working-class british accents and foods are hilarious and should be mocked ‘bc of colonialism and the bp oil spill’ as though all british people are directly responsible for the oil spill. and then some of them conveniently forget that there are in fact british people of colour - in the wake of brexit, a smug american blog defended saying that british people upset by the referendum were getting ‘karma’ for the british empire, even when british poc pointed out that they were the ones most likely to be negatively affected by brexit, by saying ‘obviously i don’t mean you’, to which said british poc responded ‘THEN WHY DID YOU SAY BRITISH PEOPLE’

The hatred, by the privileged of England, towards Scotland and any Scottish accent was so pervasive that my mother wouldn’t let my brother and I develop a Scottish accent. She was born in Jamaica but her family moved to London when she was 11. She moved to Scotland when she was pregnant with me. Both my brother and I were born in Scotland and spent out entire childhood there. Mum was adamant that neither of us would have the local accent. It was “common” and “low class” and “would hinder us in the future”. She used to fine us half our pocket money if we used any Scottish slang or said anything in a Scottish accent. I got bullied at school for having a “posh English accent” but she thought my job prospects were more important than a modicum of happiness at school. My outsider status was doubled by that. I was brown and “English”.

Even now, after decades in Scotland, I still don’t sound Scottish. The English hear a slight lilt but that disappears as soon as I spend any time with them.

I feel alienated on two fronts now, skin colour and accent. And one of those was avoidable if it hadn’t been for the prejudice against against perceived lower class accents. Even in Jamaica Mum learnt to speak in an English accent like the white girls at her school. She could switch between the two. Jamaican with her parents, posh English everywhere else. Why couldn’t I have had that?

The fact that a lot of regional actors are expected to code-switch their accent patterns the a kind of neutral English accent in Britain shows how pervasive the classism is.

When Christopher Eccleston was cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who, people were surprised that he used his own northern accent, instead of performing with an accent like every Doctor before him. That was only 15-ish years ago.

Even now, this still happens - James McAvoy made a very vocal protest a couple of years back about a critic who complained about the use of Scots accents and only applauded the “plummy English” accent of one character in a play.

Regional and working class accents were used as joke accents for decades in British media. Look up old broadcasts and notice how many people only speak RP English (ie. the formal pronunciation that smacks of elocution lessons and enunciation). As media accessibility and productions expanded, there have been more regional accents showing up, but it’s still a big problem.

Putsimply when you mock “innit” you’re mocking poor people and often people of colour. Boris Johnson doesn’t say “innit bruv”.

I would like to add that there was a study by the Worcester College that found that people talking with a Birmingham accent were twice as likely to be accused of a crime as people who speak RP. Accents carry huge baggage in Britain.

official linguistics post

Can confirm, mocking your accent is incredibly rude in the UK. It's a thing racists do to immigrants, posh people do to the working class, and Londoners do to the regions. It's not harmless banter, it's vicious.

So yeah, that's why posts by terminally online Americans mocking British accents do not go down well.

I was wondering what the best way to translate "clapback" in French was; I think it's one of those terms that doesn't translate precisely, so you have to either use a generic word like riposte that sheds the connotations, or else import the English word directly. However, that's precisely the kind of word where lost-cause linguists like to come up with approved coinages in a vain effort to sway the Youth of Today, and I really did want to see if anyone had tried that.

There's nothing official, but a fun place to look for how translators grapple with extemporaneous slang is the record of parliamentary and senate proceedings, which include all the stupid debate grandstanding and must all be translated into both official languages by law. Often this is kind of workmanlike because god, who cares, but it's a fun window onto people's approaches nonetheless. So I tried that and (un?)fortunately I happened upon this deeply cursed thing from this year's senate proceedings (44th parl 1st sess vol 152 num 204). Here's the English original:

et voilà:

Someone had to come up with that! Ultimately this doesn't answer my original question at all, but it's an important reminder of the danger that Senate staff face every day from occupational cringe exposure.

not only are there no bad languages there are also no bad or annoying dialects

Every dialect you don’t like is a friend you haven’t yet made

everyone who wants to suggest a language that’s actually a bad language. No ❤️

official linguistics post

i love it actually when nonnative speakers make mistakes that reveal how their native languages work.

lots of koreans online say they "eat" drinks which would assume they only have one word which covers the concept of consumption.

arabic immigrants in sweden (my mother included) have a hard time differentiating between "i think/i believe/my opinion is" which suggests that in arabic these different modalities of speaker agency is treated as one or at least interchangeable.

swedish speakers in english will use should/shall/have to/must with much higher nuance precision than native english speakers, to the point where they sound well awkward, because the distinction between these commands in swedish is much clearer than in english. i make mistakes between is/am/are and has/have constantly because swedish only has one pronoun covering all grammatical persons.

i've heard speakers of languages without gendered pronouns (finnish, the chinese dialects, and a tonne more) make he/she mistakes because it's hard(!!) to learn two or more gendered pronouns and when to use them correctly.

how neat is that?! it add a charm to international english usage in particular and make our appreciation of both our native languages and our learnt ones stronger...!!

i love this! one thing i notice with a lot of people (native speakers of polish, romanian, french and others) is no differentiation between present simple (i go) and present continuous (I am going), because those languages only have one present tense to cover both. it's so lovely every time i hear it

i always think one of the most fun things about learning languages is that it teaches you how weird your own is! especially english phrasal verbs (the very different meanings of stand up, stand down, stand off, stand up to), or trying to explain the difference between being up to something and being up for something to my french friend. I love it!

another tag reminded me of how spanish speakers often mix up /v/ and /b/ because in panish they pronounced identically!

I wish more people had the ability to become bilingual because you're right, it makes you understand your own language at a more intimate and analytical level!!

People whose native language is heavily gendered often apply gendered pronouns to English words that don't have them. For example, my Brazilian sports coach referred to my knee as "she" instead of "it". It's even more interesting when you realise that Old English did have gendered nouns, much like German, and we've essentially lost that entire element of our language.

Gotta start treating english like monolinguistic english speakers treat other languages

Did you know English doesn't have a word for the Irish word 'mar'? Instead they have to say 'is the cause' of or 'because' for short

On this, i think its HILARIOUS that English lost the singular/plural you distinction and like, unanimously, almost every dialect re-evolved a plural you pronoun, be it ye, yall, yis, yous

[ID: tags reading #sure I'll hop on this #english doesn't even have 'tu' AND 'jūs' #imagine having only one 'you' which has to be used for one person and for multiple people]

official linguistics post

english doesn't make a distinction between ser and estar and have to make do with to be

eu sou feliz(i am happy) and eu estou feliz(i am happy) are so, so different

This proves that the native english speaker can't distinguish between permanent and transient states, forever stuck in a flow of existence where all states of being carry the same weight. This cognitive dysfunction explains not only the political but also socioeconomic turmoils in the lands where english speakers are native.

Someone in the notes said that English has 30-something words for ‘rain’! That’s wild! A fascinating glimpse into their culture. It shows that rain is a part of their everyday life and important to them.

Did you know that the English language does not have words for 'przedwczoraj' i 'pojutrze', instead having to use cumbersome constructions like 'the day before yesterday' and 'the day after tomorrow' to express these simple temporal concepts? How bizarre!

as a native english speaker reading the notes on this post i’m like oh good idea good idea oooh adding that one to the lexicon just

@racethewind10 you have the best tags :D

Stage 1: using your native language's idioms in English out of habit/lack of knowledge

Stage 2: using English idioms as much as you can to prove that you're good at English

Stage 3: using your native language's idioms in English because they fuck actually

“either take off your cross or put on your underwear” (ukrainian) to say that you can’t have both things at once is my favorite expression to ever exist in any language. i needed to put this out into the world so bad, im finally free.

I'm gonna write some:

"you can't put doors to the countryside" referring to something you cannot control

"to honour which saint?🤨" A response to someone doing such a bizarre thing that you can only assume it's for a very specific god ritual (what my mom says when I'm caught cooking a full meal at 3am)

"my mouth is dryer than Christ's sandals" or nsfw version "dryer than a doll's underwear"

"never say from this water I shan't drink" like never say never.

"to write the dots on the i's" to make a negotiation very clear, point out flaws.

"you have to feed him separately" as in 'this person is a handful'

"it's like throwing daisies to the pigs" wasteful, or useless, unappreciated act

"no one gave you a candle in this burial" you don't have permission to talk/give your opinion

"it's like going to pee and not letting even a drop" pointless, absurd, waste of time

"when the devil is bored he kills flies with his tail" when someone you hate is suspiciously idle and seems innocent (and you KNOW!!! they'll do something)

"my saint went back to the sky" meaning you were so distracted/zoned out that you didn't even notice a saint had descended to help you until it left lmao

"I'm more tied up than a Roman's leg" (refering to Roman knee high sandals) it means you're very busy

Welsh has a couple that absolutely slap, but the best one is:

"There's no use lifting your petticoats after you've pissed" - essentially 'don't cry over spilt milk', what's done is done so you just have to deal with it

I WISH english had an equivalent for "leglo kao budali šamar"

Which is basically "it landed/fit/belonged like a slap on an idiot's face" all at once. Like, tfw a meal was so good and satisfying you'd compare it to the satisfaction of slapping an idiot.

fun fact about languages: a linguist who was studying aboriginal languages of Australia finally managed to track down a native speaker of the Mbabaram language in the 60s for his research. they talked a bit and he started by asking for the Mbabaram word for basic nouns. They went back and forth before he asked for the word for “dog” The man replied “dog” They had a bit of a “who’s on first” moment before realizing that, by complete coincidence,  Mbabaram and English both have the exact same word for dog.

on a similar note, a traditional Ojibwe greeting is “Nanaboozhoo” so when the French first landed in southern Canada they thought that they were saying “Bonjour!” Which is fucking wild to think about. Imagine crossing the ocean and the first people you meet in months somehow speak French. 

Given that we famously don’t know the origin of the English word “dog”, I have decided to adopt an utterly batshit folk etymology conspiracy theory. As a treat.

For a while I just assumed that the English “potluck”, was derived from Chinook Jargon “potlatch”. Both describe comparable practices of guests contributing resources to a larger community-wide feast. But a little digging quickly reveals no etymological relation; instead of one, I got TWO! interesting linguistic insights into distinct cultures.

Here’s some more!

‘Ciao’ is from what now.

Per Wiktionary—

Okay then!

things english speakers know, but don’t know we know.

WOAH WHAT?

That is profound. I noticed this by accident when asked about adjectives by a Japanese student. She translated something from Japanese like “Brown big cat” and I corrected her. When she asked me why, I bluescreened.

What the fuck, English isn’t even my first language and yet I picked up on that. How the fuck. What the fuck.

Reasoning: It Just Sounds Right

Oooh, don’t like that. Nope, I do not even like that a little bit.  That’s parting the veil and looking at some forbidden fucking knowledge there.

How did I even learn this language wtf

I had to read “brown big cat” like three times before my brain stopped interpreting it as “big brown cat”

I’m kinda reading “brown big cat” as “brown (big cat)”, that is, a “big cat” - like a tiger or lion or other felid of similar size - that happens to be brown. “Big brown cat”, on the other hand, sounds more like a brown cat that’s just a bit bigger than a regular housecat - like a bobcat or a maine coon cat or something like that.

yeah, a brown big cat is almost certainly a puma. a big brown cat is probably a maine coon.

yeah, if you put the adjectives out of order you wind up implying a compound noun, which is presumably why we have this rule; we stripped out so much inflection over the centuries word order now dictates a huge amount of our grammar

Just looked up why we do this and one of the first lines in this article is, “Adjectives are where the elves of language both cheat and illumine reality.” so I know it’s a good article.

Things this article has taught me:

TL;DR: No one knows why we do this adjective thing but it’s pretty hardwired in.

@deadcatwithaflamethrower Linguistics tidbit.

"That sounds like a good idea......."-"Is there something bothering you with the idea?"-"No, the idea is GOOD.....🙂"

Can someone explain this to me?

Old people use quotation marks to indicate emphasis, as a substitute for italics (which many of them could not produce on the old typewriters they learned to write on), whereas young people use them to indicate sarcasm or falseness. They’re used as “scare quotes”.

And old people use ellipses simply to indicate a pause, or for some other incomprehensible reason I’m not aware of. But young people use ellipses to indicate passive-aggression.

So an old person could type something like:

and what they mean is

But a young person would interpret that sentence as

The linguistic difference across generations is beautifully explained here thank you

contrary to popular belief, someone who is fluent in their second language (L2) is unlikely to slip into their first language (L1)  in these circumstances:

it is slightly more common in these circumstances:

that being said, it is very common for people to intentionally use their first language in front of people who don’t speak it for a variety of reasons (they might use a short expression they only know in L1, call their partner pet names, dirty talk during sex because their partner finds it attractive) – but this is on purpose!

also this doesn’t account for people who grew up in an environment where people often mix multiple languages in their speech (e.g. spanglish or franglais) – in that case, they may accidentally drop an L1 swear into an L2 sentence, though they’ll still generally stick to L2 when speaking to people who only speak that language

also: if you for some reason forget a word in L2 (or L3 or L4) in many cases your brain will automatically try to recall it from the last language you learned, not necessarily your mother tongue/L1. it’s a really nifty little phenomenon that has the bane of my existence for some time.

also: it’s more likely (at least to me & other bilingual people I know, and ESPECIALLY if your second language is english) for you to slip into L2 while speaking L1, or to pepper L2 terms into a L1 conversation because you happened to forget how to say those words in your native language.

Also if you grew up around multiple languages (especially when they’re being mixed a lot), you might not know for sure which word is in which language. I certainly don’t. Like, I learned in my mid-thirties that something I thought was a Tamil diminutive was actually a bit of Kannada that my family used as a diminutive? And that two words I thought meant slightly different items, were actually just the Tamil & Hindi words for the same thing?

Also! Small bi/multilingual children will mix things up in the cutest way. Hathiphant is my fave example :) (Hathi is Hindi for elephant)

official linguistics post

I once read some complaint about how Hercule Poirot slipped into French at all the most unrealistic times (exclamations in the middle of sentences; epithets for people; greetings; etc.) and my first thought was… He is Hercule Poirot. He was never accidentally slipping. He would not, either accidentally or on purpose, say things in a language his conversation partner would not understand, that would be just counterproductive… which is why he deliberately picked all the French words most likely to be understood from context by a non-French-speaker. And why? Because he’s a vain little silly who’s absurdly proud of his nationality and wanted to show off. So there.