one of the things my little brother and i do to each other is announce our presence by yelling HEWWO??? whenever we get home but. this has now caused our dad to also, upon getting home from work, throw the door open and yell. in the daddest voice possible. HEWWO???
You Canned These Worms. Now Lie In It
me, flirting: do you wanna hear a cool etymology
me but i’m not even flirting i just want to tell you about etymology
i just saw a picture saying “dø or die” and it literally translates to die or die
#do u want to die in danish or english
*Hamlet sweats nervously*
any spanish speaker: cojer
méxico and argentina:
méxico: cuantos años tiene? (how old is he?)
argentina: ni idea, pero es un pendejo (idk, but he is a pendejo)
méxico:
(pendejo in mex = insult. pendejo in arg= young boy)
méxico: wait a sec, i’m gonna eat a concha.
argentina:
(concha in mex = a type of bread. concha in arg = pussy)
spanish woman: hi, my name is concha
argentina:
(concha in spain = seashell and a female name. concha in arg = pussy)
mex: i love cajeta, it’s so sweet!
arg:
(cajeta in mex = dulce de leche [caramel]; cajeta in arg = pussy)
spanish speaker: h-
Oh, oh, this reminds me of the only known bilingual palindrome:
Anger? ‘Tis safe never. Bar it! Use love.
Spell that backward and you get:
Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!
Which is Latin for:
Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!
The opposite of “bonfire” is, presumably, “malice.”
One of the ballsiest things Tolkien ever did was write 473k words about some hobbits called frodo, sam, merry, and pippin and then write in the appendices that their names are actually maura, ban, kali, and razal.
This just in: Eowyn and Eomer’s names actually start with the letter “L.” [source for other nerds]
No, they have Westron names and English names.
What you’ve got to understand is that everything Tolkien wrote was him pretending to merely translate ancient documents. He was writing as if the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were actually been written by Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam (or Bilba, Maura, and Ban) and he was just some random contemporary academic translating it all into English for us.
There are many languages in his books, but generally speaking, everything written in English in the books is a translation of the language “Westron.” Therefore any names that come from Westron, he translated. Names coming from other languages, like Sindarin, he left as they were. Why? IDK. Maybe because the stories are from a hobbit perspective and hobbits speak Westron, so he wanted the Westron parts to sound familiar and the other languages/names to remain foreign?
“But Mirkwoodest!” you cry, “The word ‘hobbit’ isn’t an English word! And the names Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck” all sounds super weird and not like English at all!”
Psych! They are in English! (Or Old English, German, or Norse.) Once again you underestimate what a nerd Tolkien was. Let me break it down:
In Westron, hobbits are actually called “kuduk,” which means “hole-dweller,” so for an English translation, Tolkien called them “hobbits” which is a modernization of the Old English word “holbytla” which comes from “Hol” (hole) and “Bytla”(builder).
“Maura” is a Westron name which means “Wise.” Weirdly enough, “Frodo” is an actual Proto-Germanic name that actual people used to have and it means the same thing.
“Banazîr” is Westron for “half-wise, or simple.” In Proto Germanic, the prefix “Sam” means half, and wise is obviously a word we still use.
“Razanur” means “Traveler” or “Stranger” which is also the meaning of the word “Peregrin(e)” This one is a twofer because “Razar” means “a small red apple” and in English so does “Pippin.”
“Kalimac” apparently is a meaningless name in Westron, but the shortened form “Kali” means “happy,” so Jirt decided his nickname would be “Merry” and chose the really obscure ancient Celtic name “Meriodoc” to match.
Jirt chose to leave “Bilba” almost exactly the same in English, but he changed the ending to an “O” because in Westron names ending in “a” are masculine.
I’m not going to go on and talk about the last names but those all have special meanings too (except Tûk, which is too iconic to change more than the spelling of, apparently).
The Rohirrim were also Westron speakers first and foremost, so their names are also “translations” into Old English and Proto-Germanic words, i.e. “Eowyn” is a combination of “Eoh” (horse) and “Wynn” (joy/bliss).
“Rohirrim/Rohan” are Sindarin words, but in the books, they call themselves the “Éothéod” which is an Old English/Norse combo that means “horse people.” Tolkien tells us in the “Peoples of Middle Earth” that the actual Westron for “Éothéod” is Lohtûr, which means that Eowyn and Eomer’s names, which come from the same root word, must also start with the letter L.
The names of all the elves, dwarves, Dunedain, and men from Gondor are not English translations, since they come from root words other than Westron.
The takeaway from this is that when a guy whose first real job was researching the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter “W” writes a book, you can expect this kind of tomfoolery.
Notes: Sorry I said “Razal” instead of “Razar” in my original post I’m a fraud.
Further Reading:
we owe literally no one more on this planet than the woman behind fantasy name generator
her name is emily and and she runs it all by herself
everyone say thanks emily!!!
I would die for you, emily
Bwahahaha
I know German likes to take English words but when will yall realise shit like “gegoogelt” and “gechillt” sounds genuinely awful
Ich wurde outgecalled:(
Jawohl, du bist sicher upgefucked
On a wintry beach lined with conifers, the body of a teenage boy washes up on the grey sand. A mother runs to her dead son and clutches him to her chest, wailing.
Meanwhile, a young man named Adiits'ii flees from the scene, running into the forest, gasping and grunting. Having taken the boy out in a boat which hit choppy waters, he feels responsible for his death.
It is this family tragedy that serves as the focus of the Canadian film Edge of the Knife, or Sgaawaau K'uuna. The story, steeped in the supernatural, centres on the universal themes of family, love, loss and betrayal.
What is less universal is the language of the film, Haida. According to the First People’s Culture Council, there are only 20 remaining fluent speakers of this language, making it critically endangered.
Helen Haig-Brown and Gwaai Edenshaw, who is Haida himself, directed the film.
Writing the film in Haida “did not even feel like a choice”, said Gwaai. “We were telling a Haida story.”
Although they were “fully committed to the storytelling”, he said, another consideration was that Edge of the Knife would act as a learning resource.
Diane Brown, Gwaai’s grandmother, is one of the last remaining speakers of Haida and acted in the film.
“Our dream right at the start was it would help our children learn the language. That we help teach them,” she said.
english: coconut oil
french: :)
english: oh boy
french: oil of the nut of the coco
IM CRYINGNFN
english: ninety-nine
french: :)
english: oh no
french: four-twenty-ten-nine
english: potato
french: :)
english: oh geez
french: apple of the earth
french: papillon
english: :)
french: don’t
english: beurremouche
French: pamplemousse English: :) French: pls no English: raisinfruit
english: squirrel
german: :)
english: oh dear
german: oak croissant
english: helicopter german: :) english: uh oh german: lifting screwdriver
english: toes
spanish: :)
english: no don’t
spanish : fingers of the feet
english: bowl
spanish: :)
english: oh lordy
spanish: deep plate
english: car
polish: :)
english: i changed my mind
polish: that which walks by itself
french: coccinelle
UK english: ladybird!
american english: ladybug
french: weird
dutch: :)
french: …what
dutch: the good lord’s little animal
french: …ok
irish, polish and russian: *giggling*
french: …just tell me
irish, polish and russian: GOD’S SMALL COW
English: jellyfish Japanese: :) English: what yo got Japan Japanese: ~*~*o c e a n m o o n*~*~
English: gloves Dutch: :) English: omg what now Dutch: hand shoes
English: porcupine Dutch: :) English: … please, no Dutch: sting pig
JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER
English: Poppy
Dutch: :)
English: … tell me
Dutch: Clap rose
English: dragon
Finnish: :)
English: for fuck’s sake
Finnish: salmon snake
english: dragon
asl: :D!
english: tell me?
asl: SPICY DINOSAUR
English: Sunflower
Turkish: what
English: what
Turkish: …Moonflower
“Both noun (eusebia) and verb (sebizo) derive from the Greek root of seb-, which refers to the awe that radiates from gods to humans and is given back as worship. But eusebia is a fear that moves as devotion - a striving out of this world into another and a striving out of another world into this. A kind of permanent elsewhere located “in” human being. (…) Our pieties are more a matter of protocol than dread. And when eusebia always implies ritual action, “piety” represents a mood rather than a pressure to act. Nonetheless, there we are. (…) The actor who speaks line 943 on stage will evoke the permanent elsewhere of our longing for the love of gods by drawing it up from her own voice and being.”
Anne Carson, A Note From the Translator, on the problem of untranslatability in Sophokles’ Antigone, line 943: “I was caught in an act of perfect piety.”
This is an absolute religious experience that I was not prepared for
Edit: added source from YouTube.
Thanks lads! :3
Linguistically speaking, Australia is special. With around 250 languages spoken when Australia was first colonised, Australia was one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world.
But few people speak our Indigenous languages. As of 2016, only 10% of Australia’s Indigenous population spoke an Indigenous language at home. Most Indigenous languages are now “asleep”, waiting to be woken up by language revivalists.
Australian languages did not simply fade away; they were actively silenced by governments, schools and missions.
“our teeth and ambitions are bared” is a zeugma
and it’s a zeugma where one of the words is literal and one is metaphorical which is the BEST KIND
I didn’t know about zeugmas until just now! That is so awesome, everybody:
zeug·ma ˈzo͞oɡmə/
noun
ISN’T THAT AWESOME??
She dropped her dress and inhibitions at the door.
What’s this? My favorite rhetorical device showing up on my dashboard?
IT HAS A NAMEEEE!! OH MY GOD!!!
My high school English teacher always explained it with: “He took his hat and his leave.”
“She lowered her standards by raising her glass, her courage, her eyes, and his hopes”
The official government institution for preserving the French language is the Académie française and one of my hobbies is actually reading the updates on their website, it’s always so funny. Just lambasting new English loanwords and trying to shame people into using French terms instead. Some examples of their grumpily anglophobic entries:
My favourite entry:
“ASAP: This abbreviation, which is far from transparent, seems to accrue most of the vices of a language that conceals its contemptuous and comminatory character under the rags of a spurious modernity”
“je ne suis pas owned!” i continue to insist, as
