IDK if I’ve mentioned this before, but since there’s talk of how to approach an accurate/nuanced translation of the word “baka” in anime on my dash, I thought I’d share one of my other favorite bits of oft-overlooked translating-Japanese nuance and how it applies to Sailor Moon. 

Basically every Sailor Moon fan knows Sailor Moon’s catchphrase, “tuski ni kawatte oshiokyo!” which translates more or less into “In the name of the moon, I’ll punish you!”

The fun part, that I learned a few years back from my half-Japanese friend who has, since high school, lived full time in Japan, is the “oshiokyo” bit. 

Oshiokyo does, in a literal sense, mean “I’ll punish you”. It’s a perfectly fine translation. But what it doesn’t get across is that the main people who use the phrase are parents, especially mothers, and it’s primarily used against children. 

There’s not a perfect English equivalent, but it carries a similar tone to “someone’s getting a spanking!” or “you’re going into time out!” or “you’re in big trouble, missy!” 

Basically, it’s not particularly threatening, and anyone who would think it was would be pretty childish. The fact that Usagi uses it as a legitimate threat is adorable in how much is reveals her age. It’s also badass and kind of condescending in that she’s basically treating the villains as unruly children instead of legitimate threats. 

So there you go. Take this information and put new joy into one of the most well-trod parts of the Sailor Moon universe. 

i am reminded that english is a flawed language every time I am forced to use “that that” in a sentence

All the good faith that I had had had had no effect on the outcome of that sentence

People think we can make contact with aliens, but we fail to realise that we can’t even communicate with any other species here on earth

1) fuck you

2) humans are fucking spectacular at communicating with other species on earth when we try to meet them on their level

3) seriously don’t dismiss the passionate, loving work that hundreds of thousands of biologists, zoologists, ecologists, and nature enthusiasts have put into talking with this planet because you want to make some snide little quip about how complacently stupid people are. 

4) you’re not listening. you don’t care. you can’t communicate. meanwhile other people dance with free whales and study slime molds and raise orphan elephants and chart the regional accents of wolves and rearrange the dna of fruit flies. 

5) you can listen to any part of this world and learn to speak to it in its own language if you spend enough time trying. one day, hopefully, maybe, we’ll have spent enough time listening to space, and we will hear someone out there saying ‘hello’.   

Actually, can you imagine that? Like, aliens being absolutely amazed with just how hard we try to understand? And how well we manage?

“…Why is that human making sounds at that bird? Don’t they get that they’re different species?”

“Well, looks like the bird isn’t getting it either, it’s responding…”

Or, stretch that out a little further:

“So, we’ve got about 50 years worth of recorded human dialogues, and… well, either human language is complicated to the absurd, or we’re looking at multiple languages here.”

“…Have you been hanging out in the bar again? They’re obviously all one species, they should all be speaking the same language like any reasonable species would!”

Then imagine Humans introducing the aliens to the delightful world of linguistics, and all the aliens have their collective minds blown. Not only do we have more languages than you can shake a stick at, we work and improve on them every day. And some of us learn new languages for fun.

im going to have a stroke

Instead try… Person A: You know… the thing Person B: The “thing”? Person A: Yeah, the thing with the little-! *mutters under their breath* Como es que se llama esa mierda… THE FISHING ROD

As someone with multiple bilingual friends where English is not the first language, may I present to you a list of actual incidents I have witnessed:

Bilingual characters are great but if you’re going to use a linguistic blunder, you have to really understand what they actually blunder over. And it’s usually 10x funnier than “Ooops it’s hard to switch back.”

So cuttlefish have some kind of rudimentary(?) language that has a gestural component. Or, if you don’t want to call it language, they communicate with each other, in part, through gesturing with their arms. (Not sure how a consistent system of signs isn’t a language but I’m not a linguist). Anyway, there is a tank of cuttlefish at the New England aquarium. Usually, the animals totally ignore the visitors. Once when I was there with a friend, the cuttlefish were signing to each other. My friend held his hand up to the glass and began to imitate their gestures with his fingers, and then made a sequence of random signs.  The cuttlefish became extremely agitated and signed furiously at him and rapidly flashed different colors, and we will never know what he accidentally said to them.  The moral of this story is actually that it’s fucked up how we keep sentient and sensitive beings in a weird little fish jail. 

After knowing a few different swan families for two years, we learned some of the sign language they use for “Hello friend! (You know me)” and “Sorry.” Their vocalizations are a little difficult to mimic, but “Hello friend!” and “sorry” are gestures done with the head. There’s also “Hey! Hey! (come start a fight)” which, in a human, involves hands and arms. You can actually get into a feedback loop saying “Hello friend” to friendly swans that actually know you, where you say it and then they get excited and say it back, and then you say it again and they feel like they have to respond. And if you meet a strange swan and they behave aggressively towards you, you can get them to calm down and even say “sorry” by telling them that you know them. This is often easy to lie to them about, since swans think all humans look very similar. 

Anyway! It is extremely funny because when humans walking outside encounter a swan, the humans often say “Hey! Hey!” in Swan, and when the swan puffs up and says “Excuse me?” the human says “Come start a fight!” and the swan, particularly if it’s defending a nest, is like “Fine. Okay. I’ll end this.”

And then the human complains that swans are awfully Hostile and Aggressive.

/linguist mode on/ sticking my nose in briefly to say that a consistent system of signs used for communication is definitely a language /linguist mode off/

@yuri-puppies

this seems like useful info for anyone writing sci-fi/fantasy and trying to think about how non-human languages might look!

Okay but WHAT are the signs for “hey friend!” and “sorry”? This is vital information.

“i don’t judge people based on race, creed, color, or gender. i judge people based on spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.”

i hate to burst your pretentious little bubble, but linguistic prejudice is inextricably tied to racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and ableism.

ETA: don’t send me angry messages about this…at all, preferably, but at least check the tag for this post before firing off an irate screed.

no one seems to be following the directive above, so here’s the version of this post i would like all you indignant folk to read.

no, i am not saying that people of color, women, poor people, disabled people, etc, “can’t learn proper english.” what i’m saying is that how we define “proper english” is itself rooted in bigotry. aave is not bad english, it’s a marginalized dialect which is just as useful, complex, and efficient as the english you’re taught in school. “like” as a filler word, valley girl speech, and uptalk don’t indicate vapidity, they’re common verbal patterns that serve a purpose. etc.

because the point of language is to communicate, and there are many ways to go about that. different communities have different needs; different people have different habits. so if you think of certain usages as fundamentally “wrong” or “bad,” if you think there’s a “pure” form of english to which everyone should aspire, then i challenge you to justify that view. i challenge you to explain why “like” makes people sound “stupid,” while “um” doesn’t raise the same alarms. explain the problem with the habitual be. don’t appeal to popular opinion, don’t insist that it just sounds wrong. give a detailed explanation.

point being that the concept of “proper english” is culturally constructed, and carries cultural biases with it. those usages you consider wrong? they aren’t. they’re just different, and common to certain marginalized groups.

not to mention that many people who speak marginalized dialects are adept at code-switching, i.e. flipping between non-standard dialects and “standard english,” which makes them more literate than most of the people complaining about this post.

not to mention that most of the people complaining about this post do not speak/write english nearly as “perfectly” as they’d like to believe and would therefore benefit by taking my side.

not to mention that the claim i’m making in the OP is flat-out not that interesting. this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook. the only reason it sounds so outlandish is that we’ve been inundated with the idea that how people speak and write is a reflection of their worth. and that’s a joyless, elitist idea you need to abandon if you care about social justice or, frankly, the beauty of language.

and yes, this issue matters. if we perceive people as lesser on the basis of language, we treat them as lesser. and yes, it can have real ramifications–in employment (tossing resumes with “black-sounding names”), in the legal system (prejudice against rachel jeantel’s language in the trayvon martin trial), in education (marginalizing students due to prejudice against dialectical differences, language-related disabilities, etc), and…well, a lot.

no, this doesn’t mean that there’s never a reason to follow the conventions of “standard english.” different genres, situations, etc, have different conventions and that’s fine. what it does mean, however, is that this standard english you claim to love so much has limited usefulness, and that, while it may be better in certain situations, it is not inherently better overall. it also means that non-standard dialects can communicate complex ideas just as effectively as the english you were taught in school. and it means that, while it’s fine to have personal preferences regarding language (i have plenty myself), 1) it’s worth interrogating the source of your preferences, and 2) it’s never okay to judge people on the basis of their language use.

so spare me your self-righteous tirades, thanks.

Oh my gosh YES, this post got so much better.

and

(Also, most of what people loudly defend as “proper English” is nothing more than an adherence to one particular style guide over another–it was what they were taught, therefore it is the only way.  Heh, nope. Learn some more.  Linguistic descriptivism for all.)

most of what is taught isn’t even based on English but the rules for teaching latin

yes, you can split the infinitive because in English it’s two words, but in latin it’s one

so it is based on a structure designed by a very small educated elite to remind others of their place, and that place was as subhuman, the educated gentlemen who made these rules generally considered anyone who lacked in some way - no matter what it was - as subhuman and that they should be kept down by any means necessary and so created a labyrinth of traps to reveal them- including language

Lingustic prescriptivism is outdated and can be used far too easily as a tool for perpetuating classism, racism, and misogyny.

This post cleared my fucking skin up and completely hydrated me.

IT’S NOT ‘PEEKED’ MY INTEREST

OR ‘PEAKED’

BUT PIQUED

‘PIQUED MY INTEREST’

THIS HAS BEEN A CAPSLOCK PSA

THIS IS ACTUALLY REALLY USEFUL THANK YOU

ADDITIONALLY:

YOU ARE NOT ‘PHASED’. YOU ARE ‘FAZED.’

IF IT HAS BEEN A VERY LONG DAY, YOU ARE ‘WEARY’. IF SOMEONE IS ACTING IN A WAY THAT MAKES YOU SUSPICIOUS, YOU ARE ‘WARY’.

ALL IN ‘DUE’ TIME, NOT ‘DO’ TIME

‘PER SE’ NOT ‘PER SAY’

THANK YOU

BREATHE - THE VERB FORM IN PRESENT TENSE

BREATH - THE NOUN FORM

THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE

WANDER - TO WALK ABOUT AIMLESSLY

WONDER - TO THINK OF IN A DREAMLIKE AND/OR WISTFUL MANNER

THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE (but one’s mind can wander)

DEFIANT - RESISTANT DEFINITE - CERTAIN

WANTON - DELIBERATE AND UNPROVOKED ACTION (ALSO AN ARCHAIC TERM FOR A PROMISCUOUS WOMAN)

WONTON - IT’S A DUMPLING THAT’S ALL IT IS IT’S A FUCKING DUMPLING

BAWL- TO SOB/CRY

BALL- A FUCKING BALL

YOU CANNOT “BALL” YOUR EYES OUT

AND FOR FUCK’S SAKE, IT’S NOT “SIKE”; IT’S “PSYCH”. AS IN “I PSYCHED YOU OUT”; BECAUSE YOU MOMENTARILY MADE SOMEONE BELIEVE SOMETHING THAT WASN’T TRUE.

THANK YOU.

*slams reblog*

IT’S ‘MIGHT AS WELL’. ‘MIND AS WELL’ DOES NOT MAKE GRAMMATICAL SENSE.

SLEIGHT - DEXTERITY, ARTIFICE, CRAFT (FROM ‘SLY’) SLIGHT - VERY LITTLE, FRAIL, DELICATE

IT’S ‘SLEIGHT OF HAND’.

DISCRETE - SEPARATE, DISTINCT, PARTED

DISCREET - SUBTLE, STEALTHY, DIPLOMATIC

AND TO CONTINUE THE OP’S THEME

IT’S SNEAK PEEK

NOT SNEAK PEAK

A SNEAK PEAK WOULD BE A MOUNTAIN ENGAGED IN ESPIONAGE

THEY ARE VERY LARGE AND WOULD FIND THIS GENERALLY DIFFICULT 

THANK

(OH AND ONE OTHER THING

BULLION = PRECIOUS METAL

BOUILLON = STOCK, FROM THE FRENCH “BOUILLER,” TO BOIL)

SHUDDER:

SHUTTER:

NOT SAME NOT SAME

sleight of hand: magic tricks slight of hand: President-Elect

free rein: permission to do whatever they want free reign: kingdom available to new ruler, no charge

for chinese new year they get all these famous actors and comedians together and they do a lil show and one of the comedians was like “i was in a hotel in america once and there was a mouse in my room so i called reception except i forgot the english word for mouse so instead i said ‘you know tom and jerry? jerry is here’

jerry is here

my chinese teacher once shared this story in class about someone who went to the grocery to buy chicken, but they forgot the english word for it, so they grabbed an egg, went to the nearest sales lady and said “where’s the mother”

When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”

I was done for the day.

This makes me feel better about every conversation I had in both Rome and Ghent.

I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”

I did not find my husband in this way.

In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”

“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.

The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)

Of course. A fucking sack. And so I did get a sack.

I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English. 

When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.

“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”

“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”

Which is LITERALLY Sleeping sac … The German word is a basically a one on one translation of the English word and I just… I failed it. At my mother tongue. BIG

My former boss is Italian and she ended up working in a lab where the common language was English. She once saw an insect running through the lab and she went to tell her colleagues. She remembered it was the name of a famous English band so she barged in the office yelling there was a rolling stone in the lab…

I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.

That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.

Best thing is, everyone understood what I meant.

I love those stories so much…

Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.

She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.

American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)

Bus Driver: שתי זוזים. (”Two zuzim” – a currency that’s been out of circulation for millenia)

that’s hilarious

I am officially screamlaughing at my desk from that last one OH MY 

Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?

So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.

The minister was making a speech while a candidate, bemoning the state of the world. “The Soviet Union is fucking Egypt. Germany is fucking Syria. The Americans are fucking everyone. But who is fucking us? When I am prime minister, I will ensure we are fucked!”

What the hell Biblical Hebrew.

Just guessing: The path from something like “give someone a blade” to “give someone a blade, if you know what I mean ;)” is probably not that difficult or unlikely.

^Given that the Latin word for sheath (like, for a sword) is literally “vagina”, I can verify that this metaphor is a time-honored one. 

Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.

Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English.  Or French.  Or German.  Or Italian.  (He tried all of them.)

Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years).  He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.

She laughed her head off, but she gave him the extra night.  

i once asked my greek professor what the biggest difference between modern and ancient greek was and she said “screeching”

Way to ruin the surprise, Spanish exclamation points

Everybody expects the Spanish exclamation.

OH MY GOD

tips for writing bilingual characters

The only other possible scenarios where I would randomly blurted out different language are:

- When I’m skype-ing/in a call with my friends/family overseas that talk to me with language A and my roommate/someone else who speaks language B decided to engage me in some conversation/ask me a question.

- I’m texting in language A and someone speaks to me in language B.

There’s just no enough time for me to switch mindset and sometimes I’ll speak in the wrong language and confuse the other party trying to talk to me in language B lol

Also, I have this weird thing where my accent would change depending on whom I’m talking to. If they’re also bilingual and we’re speaking one language, I’ll switch to a more heavily accented version of that language.

Rhona NicDhùghaill, “Don’t Neglect the UK’s Indigenous Languages”

The whole article is great, but this quote is especially stellar. 

(via allthingslinguistic)

18 Examples of the Human Language Being Weird

The human language,

The Human L an gauge,,,,,,

it will forever confuse me that the german tumblr app now says “… hat deinen Eintrag gelikt” and not “… hat deinen Eintrag als Favorit markiert” which is just shortened and very nice but I don’t read gelikt as [gelaikd] but as [gelikt] and that sounds as if someone licked my post and i really wish i could unread/unhear that

Man nennt mich Kuh In tiefster Nacht Liegt all zur Ruh Ich trapse sacht Auf deinen Blog Den Hals gestreckt Und habe schon Den post geleckt

@amandavonpanda

my name’s tumblr and when you peek upon your blog where stuff you keep I’ll tell you what you like the most - a friend came by

and licked your post

Oh my gods…