Yesterday I witnessed a beautiful example of how the finnish language is not an efficient way to communicate.

We were discussing carbohydrate-based - or "sugar glues", basically ones made of starches, and one of the students from the back row asked the teacher a question. When the teacher clearly couldn't understand why someone would ask such a stupid-ass question, and asked him to elaborate, the student just repeated the same question, word-for-word. Our teacher politely made it clear that he has not had enough sleep last night to process what the fuck was being asked of him.

After a while it clicked - the question "maistuuko sokeriliimat eläimille?" can be interpreted both as "would animals be tempted to eat sugar glues?" and "do sugar glues taste like animals?" This guy was asking whether ants, pets or children would be tempted to eat starch glue, and the way the teacher (and myself) had understood the question, we thought he was asking "does starch glue taste like venison".

The class did a show-of-hands vote on which way they had understood the question, and it was fucking 50-50. Half of the class didn't understand why our teacher who speaks finnish as like the 4th language wouldn't just answer such a simple question, and half the class wouldn't understand why this student would want to eat glue in the first place.

I love that school buses are a standard unit of measurement for dinosaurs and dinosaurs only.

Y‘all in USA truely have the strangest units of measurment.

who needs the metric system when you have schoobuses, monster trucks, football fields, and the Empire State Building

Don’t forget Washing Machines

(X)

@holdwine @evergrove is this accurate?? 🤣🤣

@niuniente

#fjsdfs #when i studied in denmark #they spent an entire class showing us simple words and how similar they were across danish #norwegian #etc. for the express purpose of ragging on how different the finnish word was #the teacher literally said ‘we can more or less understand across these languages. if you see one that sticks out like a sore thumb it’s finnish #also the delivery on this video is just delightful (via @destinyandcoins)

I find it hilarious that denmark has to stoop to ragging on the finns (instead of doing it for I guess shits and giggles like the others), because all the other nordic languages rag on them for sounding like they’re mumbling with a mouth full of marbles. XD

Oh! Oh! That’s because Finnish is from a different language family! The Uralic languages!

:D

Yup! The roots of the majority of European and many nearby languages is Indo-Eropean, which is the root of everything from English to Russian to Hindi to Persian and more!

Finnish however, as you said, has its roots in a different branch than Indo-European, the Uralic languages. There aren’t many of them - Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian are the most widely spoken, but there’s a handful of others as well, mostly spoken by local ethnic groups in northern Scandinavia and Siberia.

Poles and Lithuanians eying one another across the table xD

Every time I come across posts like these I’m just reminded of the beautiful infographics made by Minna Sundberg

I think American accents are cute I love hearing American cuties talking yes bitch show me how rhotic your rs are

Especially because I hear absolutely nothing but Australian accents and I'm so tired of it. I want an American girlboy gf. "Waahtermelon" yes bitch.

carr keys. starr worrs. superr duperr. etc

Music to my ears

Excellent work ladies

Actually, that would be a "Wherewolf". To become a werewolf, you must first become a regular wolf, then become something else so that you were a wolf.

That's a wərwolf. If we go phonetically it's:

Facts I Just Made Up does not endorse violence toward animals, animal based clothing, lycanthropy, or phonetic spelling.

Ponies at the annual Chincoteague Pony Swim.

IT’S THEM

THE ATLANTIC MINIATURE SELKIE

no really these little hoofed bastards are starting to get weirdly saltwater-marsh adapted.  They’re excellent swimmers that paddle around in the coastal atlantic for fun, can cope with drinking salt and brackish water a large portion of the year, and are straddling that fun line between domestic and wild that means some of them aren’t scared of humans but sure aren’t fond of them either.

Source: Had to rescue my Niece and Nephew from an angry chincoteauge pony that charged out of the Atlantic Ocean.

Leave them be theyre making whale 2

Whale 2! Now With Brand-New Features, Including:

*Side Effects may vary

Wouldn’t they be kelpies, not selkies?

Yes, that commenter definitely meant Kelpies, but the point stands.

I WISH for the life of me that I could remember the start of the conversation.... but while I was living out in Iowa, these ponies came up in conversation with my Bostonian roommate (yeah, we were both unlikely transplants XP)

And I just casually went, “Oh, yeah. The horses of Ching-Ko-Teeg” and the fucking DOUBLETAKE this man made XD

RM: What did you just say?? Me: Chincoteague Island. There’s a book about it. RM: ..... Sorry, Say that one more time? Me: Chincoteague?... oh. Huh... I guess it does sound like... I swear that’s just what it’s called... XD

CLADISTICS ruined my life

yall joke but this is actually a serious conundrun with cladistic-based classification

The choice is this: 

Birds are reptiles 

Or crocodilians (and probably turtles) ARENT 

That’s it, that’s the choice 

What if Bird and reptiles are two different things that came from the same thing

Nope 

Because you can’t group (lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians) without also including (birds) 

So if you don’t want to include birds in reptiles then you have to leave out some things we’ve called reptiles 

birds are dinosaurs though, full stop. we’ve already defined what a dinosaur is and it includes birds. but reptiles isn’t really defined so much as thrown against a wall angrily. 

But don’t turtles and alligators have more in common with modern reptiles than modern birds have in common with modern reptiles? I’m not trying to contradict, I’m trying to understand. Mammals and reptiles have a common ancestor as well, but we do not make them the same group.

It’s not about having things in common. It’s about common ancestry, which is how we classify animals in light of extinct species, which defy trait-based classification. 

And, the common ancestor of [lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians] by definition is also the common ancestor of birds. It is NOT the common ancestor of mammals. 

So, either we decide that Tuatara Lizards and Snakes are the only reptiles, or we include birds as reptiles. Or we just decide reptiles are no longer a thing. 

don’t throw reptiles against the wall? please? some of them are small and delicate. you could hurt them.

Basically, unless we’re maybe talking massive horizontal gene transfer, everything is still part of the group that came before it. 

You are technically a fish.

IIRC the fish thing is so frustrating that scientists have decided fish is just not real cladistic grouping at all

hey could we go back please to the bit where the closest relative of Birds is Crocodiles? bc I am alarmed

Well, technically they’re equally-closely related to crocodiles, alligators, gharials and tomistomas. As archosaurs, they’re all descended from small reptiles that looked something like this 

The two main groups of archosaurs are the Pseudosuchia, or crocodile-line archosaurs, and the Ornithodira, or bird-line archosaurs. Both groups were massively diverse in prehistory, with the Pseudosuchia dominating most land-based niches in the Triassic, and the Ornithodira, especially the dinosaurs, doing the same during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. However, most of them have been wiped out due to the Triassic and Cretaceous mass extinctions, leaving them each with only one surviving clade: Aves, the true birds, and Crocodylia, the semiaquatic, ambush predators like crocs and gators. 

This entire post sums up everything we’re not allowed to mention in our Vertebrata classes because the last time someone started that argument they had to break up a fistfight.

I’m just hung up on the humans evolving from fish comment.

Like, we evolved from tiny tree-climbing squirrels. To the best of our knowledge.

…which evolved from tiny tree-climbing reptiles

…which evolved from amphibians

…which evolved from fish.

*runs in ten minutes late with a plucked chicken* BEHOLD A LIZARD

Non-native English speakers shouldn’t worry too much about finding words that sound the same confusing (brake-break, through-threw) when learning English bc every single person with English as their first language has had the universal experience of using L’Oréal shampoo in the colorful fish bottles at some point when they were kids and believed that “tear-free” meant if it gets in your eyes you won’t cry (and learned the meaning of betrayal that day) only to discover later that “tear-free” meant your hair won’t get tangled and it will be easier to brush out and not your eyes won’t burn with the fires of hell if it gets in them soooo....

LISTEN I’M STILL REELING FROM THIS BETRAYAL. How on EARTH are you supposed to know the difference? Tear vs tear???? And there’s a smiling kid??? And you don’t think of ‘tangles’ as being ‘torn’ out you think of them being PULLED so it should’ve said TANGLE FREE or HELPS PREVENT TANGLES’ but “NO MORE TEARS” sounds like “no more CRYING” and I THINK THEY KNEW THAT. I THINK THIS WAS A DELIBERATE MARKETING PLOY MEANT TO BE CONFUSING WITH BUILT-IN PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY OH NO WE MEANT TEARS LIKE YOU TEAR A PIECE OF PAPER NOT TEARS LIKE CRYING TEARS SURE YOU DID YOU SIT ON A THRONE OF LIES

This has to be an intentional marketing scam right

... This is LITERALLY a today I learned moment for me...

I’m a teacher assistant for spanish grammar and the professor was explaining epícenos (single gendered words that encompass masculine and feminine beings) and he was using iguana as an example and he said: “there is only one gender… iguana” and i had to mute my microphone

I like how Spain Spanish is just completely different from everybody else

When I was in undergrad, during my methodology class, my professor (and advisor) was asked, "How do you keep your journal articles jargon-free?" and his answer was, "After a certain level, you simply cannot, and to do so would actually make your writing bad historical writing." He then went on to compare two different articles by the same author written in a journal where undergraduates can submit, and a journal where only phd. can submit.

The difference in language was subtle but noticeable, because there is an implicit understanding that the article is written for someone who has the necessary background on the subject. The writer was able to not have to explain every concept in a journal for phd., since the readers were supposed to bring a baseline of knowledge, or know how and where to go to be educated (or who to ask). This is despite the fact that both were available via jstor.

There will always be people having conversations about things that are beyond your understandig on the topic. I do not instantly understand nuclear physics or computer science or organic chemistry, but I give credentialed people that I know aren't cranks the benefit of doubt that they know what's going on. This respect is often not extended to humanities people talking about their work because "blue curtain is just blue" people think the high school education they mostly rejected puts them on the same field of discussion as people educated on the subject. Yet, these are the people who get mad when they find that rudely interjecting into a conversation where everyone else is on the same page and saying understanding the conversation is too hard in an extremely hostile manner gets a answered with hostility.

The bottom line is, you aren't entitled to understanding everything you come across instantly. If you do not understand the conversation, it is your job to either get educated on the subject if it seems interesting enough, or move on if it seems incomprehensible and is not something you'd care about. If you enter a conversation you are not ready for, that is on you, not people bewildered at your antics.

Specifically, I'm talking about people like this that leave dumb comments on any posts on complex issues that have words with more than 3 syllables.

It is absolutely a form of anti-intellectualism to say that all things should be understood to all people inherently or that conversations should be simplified until this is true. Sometimes, you are the one that needs to read a book until you understand. There is nothing wrong with being uneducated on complex subjects, but to then reject complexity since you did not instantly understand it is dangerous and only help people who seeks to undermine nuances in complex issues.

I get what your saying but no it actually isn’t anti intellectual if poor and disabled people can’t read the same thing you hand in for a grade in post grad I fucking hate this place

Someone’s postgrad research essay is not meant to be scicomm. Scicomm is a field in and of itself, meant to make complicated subjects accessible to laymen, but often postgrad research cannot be interchangeable with popular science writing and still be useful. If you want to learn about, say, the biochemistry of allelopathy in walnut trees but don’t have any background in chemistry or ecology, a PhD’s essay in a scientific journal just isn’t the place to start.

The key is making the foundational education accessible and affordable and in expanding scicomm as a field. Scientific terminology isn’t something we can just do away with, and not all scientists have any skill at scicomm.

Cursed example ahead, but I guarantee it’s one 98% of fandom will be able to relate to:

Imagine you and a friend are discussing the consent issues inherent in ABO dynamics and heat sex and how different meta can address those and what your (least) favorite interpretations are when someone blunders in and says “Can you type this in a way that is actually accessible to normal people thanks”

It’s rude, disingenuous, and mocking the people currently having a conversation. Yes, I absolutely could dumb my conversation down so it’s “accessible” to everyone... but I wasn’t TALKING TO YOU. I was talking to another fandom person about particular in-depth nuances of fandom culture. If you would like a crash course in ABO, ask for that, POLITELY. Don’t come up and tell me to “speak English” like a racist Karen at the DMV.

same with sista, brotha, motha, etc etc

I love this!

I started Hebrew, which is why I’ve been dead on this blog, but I don’t think I can ever properly convey to you guys the sheer cultural whiplash of spending years learning Japanese from Japanese teachers and then trying to learn Hebrew from an Israeli

The span of human experience is so insane.

Reactions from people whose language I was trying to learn:

Germans: Oh you’re learning German? Hey, you’re not so bad at it. Don’t fuck it up though. 

French: About time you learned French. 

Russians, Koreans, Spanish-speakers: WOW YOU’RE LEARNING MY LANGUAGE? LET ME HELP YOU I CAN GET SOME MATERIALS FOR YOU AND RECOMMEND SOME SITES AND VIDEOS, DID YOU JUST SAY “HELLO” IN MY LANGUAGE? YOU ARE SO GREAT WOW I AM SO IMPRESSED

Dutch: but why would you do this

why would you do this

Had all this.

Said (with variants, and amusement fortunately!) in Munich, Freiburg, Speyer, Basel… I’ve never been to Prussia, but I’ve also never been able to shake off the click-heels-nod-head thing when meeting people - nor have I ever been able to remember where I picked up the habit.

(I did it after helping a little old lady and her groceries off the tram in Zurich and @dduane overheard two other LOLs going on about “lovely old-fashioned manners / you don’t see that any more / etc. etc.” She says they sounded like German-speaking Monty Python pepperpots…)

The click is usually inaudible, though I once managed to bang my ankle-bones together. It hurt. The only thing to say after that, apart from silent swearing, was “Shkal!” ;->

Said in Paris. I learned my basic French in Northern Ireland, but @dduane’s accent is New York, so after +30 years I’ve got some sort of non-specific but transatlantic overlay.

(Apparently Canadian more than US, though never from “here” - in Vancouver they thought I was from Halifax, in Halifax I was from Ottawa, in Ottawa I was from Toronto, in Toronto I was from Vancouver and in Montreal I was “from Brittany, maybe…?”)

Said in English after I ordered a beer in a Brugge bar (”Ik wil graag nog een biertje, alstublieft”). The thing is, I’d never and still haven’t been to Antwerp.

Said in English by our Dutch cabbie when I pronounced Scheveningen correctly. Turns out it was a way the Resistance caught out Nazi infiltrators in WW2, because they would say “Sheyf-enningen” instead of the correct “Sskghey-ven-ingen”. Being brought up in Northern Ireland lets me pronounce that back-of-the-throat noise without needing to spit afterwards.

Languages are fun.  :-D

I once listened in amazement to my (German) mum talk to a very old Scottish gentleman - she didn’t have much English, he didn’t speak German.

But my mum talks Lower German (Plattdeutsch - a pretty rare, slightly archaic language spoken around the shore of the North Sea), and he spoke Scottish Gaelic (… a pretty rare, slightly archaic language spoken around the shore of the North Sea) and, talking slowly and with clear pronounciation, they understood each other just fine.

Languages are an amazing thing.

I think what really makes this is that his American accent is perfect, he clearly has no issues with English, it's just that the way we spell words is complete bullshit.

Not a dream

I used toner, primer, color corrector, concealer, foundation, pressed powder and even a nude eyeshadow on my under eye bags and I still look like I am dying

“Then Perish”

My friend said that this photo of my eyes looks like a meme and when I asked him which one, he replied this:

😭😭😭😭

I don’t think you have eye bags as your under eye isn’t puffy. If it were it would be a fat deposit that would need surgery to change.

Vitamin k under eye product can help with dark circles. Drinking water also can help.

I was confused why all of you were telling me that I don’t have eye bags, when I clearly have and I just realized the word for dark circles and eyebags is the same in Croatian (we use podočnjaci for both) and I meant to say I have dark circles, sorry! I was like??????

Warts and nipples are another example of words with different meaning but the same name in Croatian - we call both bradavice.

Okay, I understand using the same words for eye bags and dark circles, but how in the world does having the same word for warts and nipples not get gross and/or confusing?

Another one I just thought of - a naked man and a goal post. Both words are the same = gol. 

I like how Spain Spanish is just completely different from everybody else