samtaims ai vonder if inglis spiiking piipöl aar eiböl tu riölais thät ai äm äksöli vraiting in inglish rait nau bat tsast vith veri finnish spelling

sou if juu spiik inglish bat not finnish kän juu pliis reblog änd liiv ö komment on tis post tänk juu veri mats

Sammteims ei wonda iff inglisch schbieking pipel ahr ebel tu rieleis set ei ehm ecktschuli reiting in inglisch reit nauh batt schast wiss währi tschörmen schbelling

So iff ju schbiek inglisch batt nott tschörmen kenn ju plies riplock end lief eh kommänt on dies pust senk ju wäri matsch

tänk juu for joor tsörman kontribjuusson, ai äpprishieit it veri mats. änd it oolsou helps mii tu gräsp tö essens of tsörman äksent

Samtajms aj vonder if ingliš spíking pípl ár ejbl tu rielajz det aj em ekšuely rajting in ingliš rajt náv bat džast vit veri slovak speling. Sou if jú spík ingliš bat not slovak ken jú plís riblog end lív en koment on tiz poust tenk jú veri mač

Самтаймз ай вондр иф иньглиш спикинь пийпль ар эйбль ту риэлайз дзят ай эм экшуалий райтинь ин иньглиш райт нау бат джаст виць вейрий рашин спеллинь. Со иф ю спик иньглиш бат нот рашин кэн ю плиз риблог энд лив э комент ан дзис пост цянк ю вейрий мач

Samtæms æ wonda if ínglis spíking pípl ar eybel tú ríalæs ðet æ em ektsuali ræting in ínglis ræt ná bat dsast við veri æslendik speling

so if jú spík ínglis bat nott æslendik ken jú plís ríblog end líf a komment on ðis post þenk jú veri mats

somtaims ai uondur ïf ïngureʃ spikïng pipur are ebre tu rïlaiz ðæt ai æm ækʃuri raitïng ïn ïngureʃ rait nao vøt ġøst uïð veri everunis superïng

so ïf ju supik ïngureʃ vøt not everunis kæn ju puris rivuag ænd lif e kament an ðïs post ðank ju veri møċ    

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

English: dragon

Finnish: :)

English: n o

Finnish: salmon snake

me, a reasonably depressed edo period pilgrim: just do it. fuck me up

the thing you need to realize about localization is that japanese and english are such vastly different languages that a straight translation is always going to be worse than the original script. nuance is going to be lost and, if you give a shit about your job, you should fill the gaps left with equivalent nuance in english. take ff6, my personal favorite localization of all time: in the original japanese cefca was memorable primarily for his manic, childish speaking style - but since english speaking styles arent nearly as expressive, woolsey adapted that by making the localized english kefka much more prone to making outright jokes. cefca/kefka is beloved in both regions as a result - hell, hes even more popular here

yes this

a literal translation is an inaccurate translation.

localization’s job is to create a meaningful experience for a different audience which has a different language and different culture. they translate ideas and concepts, not words and sentences. often this means choosing new ideas that will be more meaningful and contribute to the experience more for a different audience.

There was an example during late Tokugawa period in Japan where the translator translated, "Я люблю Вас” (I love you), to “I could die for you,” while translating  Ася, ( Asya) a novel by Ivan Turgenev. This was because a woman saying, “I love you,” to a man was considered a very hard thing to do in Japanese society.

In a more well-known example,  Natsume Soseki, a great writer who wrote, I am a Cat, had his students translate “I love you,” to “the moon is beautiful [because of] having you beside tonight,” because Japanese men would not say such strong emotions right away. He said that it would be weird and Japanese men would have more elegance.

Both of these are great examples of localization that wasn’t a straight up translation and both of these are valid. I feel like a lot of people forget the nuances in language and culture and how damn hard a translator’s job is and how knowledgeable the person has to be about both cultures. [x]

Important stuff about translation!

Note that you can apply this to your own translations even if they aren’t big pieces of literature or something. Don’t feel bad about not translating word for word. An everyday sentence may sound odd translated literally - it’s okay to edit a little bit so it feels right!

Oh my god, I’m about to go on a ramble, I’m sorry, I can’t help it, the inner translation nerd is coming out. I’m so sorry. The thing is–there is actually no such thing as an accurate translation.  It’s literally an impossible endeavor. Word for word doesn’t cut it. Sense for sense doesn’t cut it, because then you’re potentially missing cool stuff like context and nuance and rhyme and humor. Even localization doesn’t really cut it, because that means you’re prioritizing the audience over the author, and you’re missing out on the original context, and the possibility of bringing something new and exciting to your host language. Foreignization, which aims to replicate the rhythms of the original language, or to use terminology that will be unfamiliar to the target culture–(for example: the first few American-published Harry Potter books domesticated the English, and traded “trousers” for “pants”, and “Mom” for “Mum”. Later on they stopped, and let the American children view such foreignizing words as “snog” and “porridge.”)–also doesn’t cut it, because you risk alienating the target readers, or obscuring meaning.  Another cool example is Dante, and the words written above the gates of hell: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.  In the original Italian, that’s Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. Speranza, like most nouns in latinate languages, has a gender: la. Hope, in Italian, is gendered female. Abandon hope, who is female. Abandon hope, who is a woman. When the original Dante enters hell, searching for Beatrice, he is doomed, subtly, from the start. That’s beautiful, subtle, the kind of delicate poetic move literature nerds gorge themselves on, and you can’t keep it in English. Literally, how do you preserve it? We don’t have a gendered hope. It doesn’t work, can’t work. So how do you compensate? Can you sneak in a reference to Beatrice in a different line? Or do you chalk her up as a loss and move onto the next problem? You’re always going to miss something–the cool part is that, knowing you’re going to fail, you get to decide how to fail. Ortega y Gasset called this The Misery and Splendor of Translation. Basically, translation is impossible–so why not make it a beautiful failure?  My point is that literary translation is creative writing, full of as many creative decisions as any original poem or short story. It has more limitations, rules, and structures to consider, for sure–but sometimes the best artistic decision is going to be the one that breaks the rules.  My favorite breakdown of this is Le Ton Beau De Marot, a beautiful brick of a translator’s joke, in which the author tries over and over again to create a “perfect” translation of “A une Damoyselle Malade”, an itsy bitsy poem Clement Marot dashed off to his patron’s daughter, who was sick, in 1537.  This is the poem:  Ma mignonne, Je vous donne Le bon jour; Le séjour C’est prison. Guérison Recouvrez, Puis ouvrez Votre porte Et qu’on sorte Vitement, Car Clément Le vous mande. Va, friande De ta bouche, Qui se couche En danger Pour manger Confitures; Si tu dures Trop malade, Couleur fade Tu prendras, Et perdras L’embonpoint. Dieu te doint Santé bonne, Ma mignonne. Seems simple enough, right? But it’s got a huge host of challenges: the rhyme, the tone, the archaic language (if you’re translating something old, do you want it to sound old in the target language, too? or are you translating not just across language, but across time?)  Le Ton Beau De Marot is a monster of a book that compiles all of Hofstader’s “failed” translations of Ma Mignonne, as well as the “failed” translations of his friends, and his students, and hundreds of strangers who were given the translation challenge (which you can play here, should you like!)  The end result is a hilarious archive of Sweet Damosels, Malingering Ladies, Chickadees, Fairest Friends, and Cutie Pies. It’s the clearest, funniest, best example of what I think is true of all literary translations: that they’re a thing you make up, not a thing you discover. There is no magic bridge between languages, or magic window, or magic vessel to pour the poem from one language to another–translation is always subjective, it’s always individual, it’s always inaccurate, it’s always a failure.  It’s always, in other words, art.  Which, as a translator, I find incredibly reassuring! You’re definitely, one hundred percent absolutely, gonna fuck up. Which means you can’t fuck up. You can take risks! You can experiment! You can do cool stuff like bilingual translations, or footnote translations! You write your own code of honor, your own rules that your translations will hold inviolable, and fuck it if that code doesn’t match everyone else’s*. The translations they hold inviolable are also flawed, are failures at the core, from the King James Bible right on down to No Fear Shakespeare. So have fun! It’s all in your hands, miseries and splendors both. 

measure words make sense in the abstract but they’re so ????

How do you preserve a language while still letting it grow?

I wrote about watching the Norwegian language develop from a distance for Hazlitt, one of my favourite publications. I’ve been thinking about this issue for over a decade, so this is a big deal for me. 

The Chinese Periodic Table: 元素週期表 (Part 1)

In a language like Chinese that doesn’t use an alphabet-based language, naming the elements was not a trivial matter. When chemistry began to flourish in China in the early 1900’s, chemists got together to give each element a systematic name to prevent any ambiguities in communication. 

Their first step in naming was to group the elements into four groups based on their physical properties at STP, with each to be represented by a common motif (what we call a 部首/“radical”):

After grouping the elements into these four groups, the characters were constructed based on three different methods: native characters, property-based, and pronunciation-based, .

Native characters are used for those elements already known to the ancients, either in pure or mineral form. These characters include gold (金, jīn, gold), carbon (碳, tàn, charcoal), mercury (汞, gǒng), and boron (硼, péng, from 硼砂/borax) among others.

Property-based characters include those for bromine, nitrogen, chlorine, and oxygen. These characters are constructed by adding on a different character to the radicals as mentioned above. For example:

Pronunciation-based characters are constructed by adding on a character to the radical that is suggestive of its pronunciation in European languages. The vast majority of the elements, and any new elements that are discovered, are named using this method. For example:

But, as always, nomenclature will always have strange exceptions and variations, and this is no different. The characters in the image shown above are the standard for Taiwan; in a later post, we’ll talk about the standard for Mainland China and Hong Kong/Macau, and the different ways they differ.

Bringing this back since the names for the newest elements were just announced! I’m guessing moscovium will be named 金莫 since Moscow is transliterated as 莫斯科, and tennessine as 金田 for the phonetics. Oganesson would probably be phonetic as well, maybe something like 金區 or 金奧? Nihonium is more of a wild card–either a phonetic translation to 金尔 or a more semantic translation like 鈤 for 日本/nihon seems reasonable. It’ll be interesting to see how these get named, and whether there’ll be a difference between the mainland and Taiwan!

There Is No Universal Sign Language

(By Frances Stead Sellers)

Carolyn McCaskill remembers exactly when she discovered that she couldn’t understand white people. It was 1968, she was 15 years old, and she and nine other deaf black students had just enrolled in an integrated school for the deaf in Talledega, Ala.

When the teacher got up to address the class, McCaskill was lost.

“I was dumbfounded,” McCaskill recalls through an interpreter. “I was like, ‘What in the world is going on?’ ”

The teacher’s quicksilver hand movements looked little like the sign language McCaskill had grown up using at home with her two deaf siblings and had practiced at the Alabama School for the Negro Deaf and Blind, just a few miles away. It wasn’t a simple matter of people at the new school using unfamiliar vocabularly; they made hand movements for everyday words that looked foreign to McCaskill and her fellow black students.

So, McCaskill says, “I put my signs aside.” She learned entirely new signs for such common nouns as “shoe” and “school.” She began to communicate words such as “why” and “don’t know” with one hand instead of two as she and her black friends had always done. She copied the white students who lowered their hands to make the signs for “what for” and “know” closer to their chins than to their foreheads. And she imitated the way white students mouthed words at the same time as they made manual signs for them.

Whenever she went home, McCaskill carefully switched back to her old way of communicating.

What intrigues McCaskill and other experts in deaf culture today is the degree to which distinct signing systems — one for whites and another for blacks — evolved and continue to coexist, even at Gallaudet University, where black and white students study and socialize together and where McCaskill is now a professor of deaf studies.

Several years ago, with grants from the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, McCaskill and three fellow researchers began to investigate the distinctive structure and grammar of Black American Sign Language, or Black ASL, in much the way that linguists have studied spoken African American English (known by linguists as AAE or, more popularly, as Ebonics). Their study, which assembled and analyzed data from filmed conversations and interviews with 96 subjects in six states, is the first formal attempt to describe Black ASL and resulted in the publication last year of “The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL.” What the researchers have found is a rich signing system that reflects both a history of segregation and the ongoing influence of spoken black English.

The book and its accompanying DVD emphasize that Black ASL is not just a slang form of signing. Instead, think of the two signing systems as comparable to American and British English: similar but with differences that follow regular patterns and a lot of variation in individual usage. In fact, says Ceil Lucas, one of McCaskill’s co-authors and a professor of linguistics at Gallaudet, Black ASL could be considered the purer of the two forms, closer in some ways to the system that Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet promulgated when he founded the first U.S. school for the deaf — known at the time as the American Asylum for Deaf Mutes — in Hartford, Conn., in 1817.

Mercedes Hunter, a hearing African American student in the department of interpretation at Gallaudet, describes the signing she and her fellow students use as a form of self-expression. “We include our culture in our signing,” says Hunter, who was a reseach assistant for the project, “our own unique flavor.”

“We make our signs bigger, with more body language” she adds, alluding to what the researchers refer to as Black ASL’s larger “signing space.”

When she tries to explain how Black ASL fits into the world of deaf communication, Lucas sets out by dispelling a common misconception about signing.

Many people think sign language is a single, universal language, which would mean that deaf people anywhere in the world could communicate freely with one another.

Another widely held but erroneous belief is that sign languages are direct visual translations of spoken languages, which would mean that American signers could communicate fairly freely with British or Australian ones but would have a hard time understanding an Argentinian or Armenian’s signs.

Neither is true, explains J. Archer Miller, a Baltimore-based lawyer who specializes in disability rights and has many deaf clients. There are numerous signing systems, and American Sign Language is based on the French system that Gallaudet and his teacher, Laurent Clerc, imported to America in the early 19th century.

“I find it easier to understand a French signer” than a British or Australian one, Miller says, “because of the shared history of the American and French systems.”

In fact, experts say, ASL is about 60 percent the same as French, and unintelligible to users of British sign language.

Within signing systems, just as within spoken languages, there are cultural and regional variants, and Miller explains that he can sometimes be stumped by a user’s idiosyncracies. He remembers in Philadelphia coming across an unfamiliar sign for “hospital” (usually depicted by making a cross on the shoulder, but in this case with a sign in front of the signer’s forehead).

What’s more, Miller says, signing changes over time: The sign for “telephone,” for example, is commonly made by spreading your thumb and pinkie and holding them up to your ear and mouth. An older sign was to put one fist to your ear and the other in front of your mouth to look like an old-fashioned candlestick phone.

So it’s hardly surprising, Miller says, that Americans’ segregated pasts led to the development of different signing traditions — and that contemporary cultural differences continue to influence the signing that black and white Americans use.

(read the full WashingtonPost article »here)

τρίζω (TRI-dzoh) verb:

to make a sharp, bat-like squeal, used especially of the ghosts in Homer. It is unclear if the squeaking is animalistic gibberish or a language of the dead, understood by the deceased, but incomprehensible to the living.

τρίζω can also refer to:

1. Shrieks made by sparrows, the sound of swarming locusts, the squeak of mice 2. The twang of a string 3. The hiss and pop of a body burning on a pyre

thoptergate will consume this fandom

Why tf do people keep adding gate after a word gate doesn’t mean controversy it’s a reference to Nixon and the Watergate hotel like what

Latest controversy emerges as GateGate takes over the fandom

Okay sunshineduk I’m going to annoy you again.  Is there a linguistic reason for the <thing>-gate phenomenon?  It feels like there must be.

THERE SURE IS, and it’s pretty fascinating! Its name is Bill Safire. Bill Safire was a linguist, speechwriter, and die-hard conservative. These days he’s best known as the writer for many decades of the NYT’s On Language column, which has done more to popularize linguistics and linguistic awareness than just about any other singular source, so I gotta give Safire props on that point. He was also a damn fine etymologist, among other things.

But his most lasting legacy is the generalization of the -gate suffix. As a New York Times columnist, he was well-positioned to write things that would reach a staggeringly wide audience, and he understood the power that afforded him. So as early as 1974, he began applying the -gate suffix to any political scandal he could find, starting with Vietgate in reference to potentially pardoning Vietnam draft dodgers. Other Safire coinages include Contragate, Debategate, Whitewatergate, Housegate, Nannygate, and Doublebillingsgate (his personal favorite).

But why do all this? Why focus so hard on a single suffix? Because, as I said, he was very conscious of his power. Watergate had been the scandal that destroyed Nixon, not just as a President, but as a person. Safire had been Nixon’s speechwriter for years, and was a fierce supporter. By turning the -gate suffix from a targeted memory of Nixon’s failure into an almost comedically overused common word, Safire hoped to diminish the record of Watergate itself by extension. Many theorized he was in some way trying to do the opposite–get revenge on Nixon’s enemies by painting them with the brush of guilt by association by linguistically connecting them to Watergate–but Safire himself claims that he was more focused on minimizing the direct cultural memory of Nixon’s crimes.

If that was his intent, it certainly backfired. While he successfully pushed -gate into the common lexicon as a now-firmly-established suffix meaning “controversy,” in doing so he also even more firmly ensconced Watergate into America’s cultural memory. Every time a new -gate scandal emerges, comparisons to Watergate are inevitable, and Nixon’s failures are brought back into focus. By generalizing -gate into common language, so too did Safire trap its etymological origins into common memory–an ironic legacy for one of the world’s greatest and most popular etymologists.

e/R characterization

You’re not being a bother! However, it’s hard to come up with a list of characterization tips/tricks that can apply universally, so I’m going to do my best at a close-reading of ‘Enjolras and his lieutenants’ in a way that I think hasn’t yet been widely circulating in fandom. Also, I must post a disclaimer that I am a huge newbie in fandom myself – I’ve only been participating since March! Sorry I seem to respond to every question with a wall of Brick quotes and dodging setting out any sort of list of rules for writing e/R, but I really think that general dialogue about the Brick can be a lot more productive than saying “If you write character A doing B, then it is OOC” or “Character C must always D to be IC.” 

Hugo doesn’t really give us much in the way of how Enjolras and Grantaire get along in normal situations. We get one scene, and fandom tends to look at the conclusion (Grantaire failing) much more than the full scene itself. The Barrière du Maine is actually a really good clue as to how Enjolras and Grantaire normally interact – so important, in fact, that Hugo illustrated it himself!

Read More

THE BARRIÈRE DU MAINE SCENE

HERE GO MY PANTS

I tried to make this less stream-of-consciousness and more coherent, and I failed. Have it anyway.

Read More

Can I nitpick? I nitpick out of love, I swear! And because French is a bastard tongue that cannot be close-read in translation. Overall, yes, you’re right–Enjolras is being a brick wall of seriousness but genuinely wants to know if Grantaire can do something for him; Grantaire is playing verbal tennis off the brick wall that is Enjolras, but his thick layer of sass and irony is doing an increasingly bad job of hiding the fact that he means every word.

“Are you good for anything?”/“I have a vague ambition in that direction”: this is just something to be careful with, because “in that direction” is an artifact of translation and the French has no directionality to it. A better translation of “Est-ce que tu peux être bon à quelque chose?”/“Mais j'en ai la vague ambition” might be something like “Are you good for anything?”/“Well, I vaguely aspire to be.” Your analysis holds for the most part–it’s a line that’s pretty revealing of R’s worldview–but I’m not sure about the imagery of stumbling half-blindly towards the rare sources of light. It’s not inaccurate, but I don’t think this line in particular suggests it.

“Grantaire, will you do me a service?”/“Anything. Black your boots.” Yup, R’s being playful and hyperbolic rather than abject here (though of course I am a fan of willfully misreading it for glorious kink purposes). The thing is, if this were a line of theatrical dialogue (which is what a lot of Hugo dialogue sounds like), there would be a zillion ways to read it. Self-deprecating and taking the piss out of the number of things he’d be willing to do for E. Making fun of E’s “do me a service” wording, and its implication that R can only win E’s approval by being useful to him, by cheerfully offering menial “services” he could perform. Leeringly offering menial “services” he could perform. Playfully letting E know that, duh, of course I’ll do anything for you, do you even have eyes? Etc.

“Sauvage”/“farouche”: actually I think you might  have the connotations reversed here? “Sauvage,” except when it’s being used to mean “unthinkingly brutal” in the context of violence, is the common, neutral word for “wild” as in “undomesticated, untouched by civilization, natural, primitive.” When applied to a person, it’s more likely to mean he’s a reclusive hermit than that he’s a mad, vicious brute. “Farouche,” on the other hand, can be translated as “feral” (“sauvage” can refer to animals, plants, landscapes, etc., but “farouche” AFAIK only applies to animals–it is animate), or as “fierce” as in “savage, passionate."  So R is responding to "be serious” with “I’m more than just serious, I’m fierce.”

The reason this is important is that “farouche” is a point of consonance, rather than dissonance, between E and R. The very second sentence of E’s intro is “C'était Antinoüs, farouche.” So yes, R is declaring a passion so fierce it renders him almost uncivilized, but in that way, it is *similar* to E’s passion for his ideals. The force and absolutism of Enjolras’ ideals put him outside the niceties of civilization; he will not compromise them for the sake of love, even when civilized decency demands it, and he will destabilize society as it’s currently configured without pausing to get bogged down in all the messy complexities of eros. Tumblr user Plinytheyounger managed to dig up context for the Evadne reference, and it seems to be from Euripides’ ‘The Supplicant Women’: the ruler of Athens sets aside a strict interpretation of republican civic virtue, on the question of whether he can unilaterally order a strike to recover the bodies of Athenian warriors killed outside the gates of Thebes and give them a proper burial, because he is swayed by the lamentations of their wives and mothers. Evadne is one of the wives, who later throws herself on her husband’s funeral pyre, declaring that she would rather be married to him in death than survive him. (Ahaha foreshadowing?) Anyway, the point seems to be that Enjolras would put principle above compassion in that case, and wouldn’t even be moved by the supplications of his warriors’ loved ones.

I asked our French intern about the “Be serious.” - “I am wild” dialogue today, meaning I dug out the original French dialogue, which goes “Sois sérieux.” - “Je suis farouche” and then proceeded to ask her about the word farouche.

Turns out it means wild as in shy, like an untamed animal won’t approach you because it is wild. And that is not a word that I can see Grantaire using for himself, except perhaps in a sort of warning? As in “you wound me, careful with your accusations, I could shy away from your touch”

Or ironically, which would work just as well.

But still I don’t feel like I’ve figured this out.

I don’t speak French, but there was some meta awhile back talking about this (I’m trying to find it, but no luck yet. If anyone else can help out?)

It was really interesting, talking about the connotations of the word farouche versus the word sauvage, the other French word that’s translated as wild. From what I remember, sauvage was more often applied to wild animals, whereas farouche, although it also applies to wild animals, has a meaning more along the lines of fierce, with implications of being passionate when applied to people. So while in the English version of this interaction, you get that Grantaire is, mm, kind of playing with/teasing Enjolras, you don’t really get the extra layer of seriousness. Grantaire is also saying, I’m more than serious, I’m fiercely passionate.

Which brings up all kinds of comparisons between “Je suis farouche” and “C'etait Antinous, farouche” but we won’t get into that.

The original post said all this much better than I am, I wish I could find it.

Edit: I found it! There’s a lot more great stuff here I’d forgotten about.

Do you ever think about how different your view of everything would be if you thought in a numerical system that wasn’t base 10

“Wow, 823543. What a nice, round number!”

This is an interesting knob to twist in speculative fiction, because like, we think it’s perfectly obvious that “10 digits (fingers) = 10 digits (numerals)” but that doesn’t need to be true. Like it could be as trivial as if we had just picked up the habit of counting a finger by touching it to our thumb instead of sticking it out. That’d mean we’d work in base 8. (Which would have been an unexpected blessing when we invented computers.) Or if we came up with the notion of place values *and then assigned them to our fingers* we’d be counting to 255 on our hands, in base 2. (This is a neat trick to learn, by the way.)

Plus there are actual historical peoples who count in bases that have nothing to do with their total inventory of fingers, like the Mayan (5)20 system. (Their system is based on grouping things into fives, and it transitions from counting into multiplication at 20.) Or 60, which the Babylonians used because it has lots of whole divisors, and they hadn’t really worked out fractions very nicely. (This survives as our weird base 60 time system, which is BTW another thing specficcers often forget civilizations do: Inconsistency and legacy systems!)

Yes, yes, yes to all of this, but especially inconsistency and legacy systems. Give me more worlds that make as little sense when viewed in snapshot as ours does.

Other fun numeral systems:

Speaking of linguistics, there’s one particular linguistic tick that I think clearly separates Baby Boomers from Millennials: how we reply when someone says “thank you.”

You almost never hear a Millennial say “you’re welcome.” At least not when someone thanks them. It just isn’t done. Not because Millenials are ingrates lacking all manners, but because the polite response is “No problem.” Millennials only use “you’re welcome” sarcastically when they haven’t been thanked or when something has been taken from/done to them without their consent. It’s a phrase that’s used to point out someone else’s rudeness. A Millenial would typically be fairly uncomfortable saying “you’re welcome” as an acknowledgement of genuine thanks because the phrase is only ever used disengenuously.

Baby Boomers, however, get really miffed if someone says “no problem” in response to being thanked. From their perspective, saying “no problem” means that whatever they’re thanking someone for was in fact a problem, but the other person did it anyway as a personal favor. To them “You’re welcome” is the standard polite response.

“You’re welcome” means to Millennials what “no problem” means to Baby Boomers, and vice versa.The two phrases have converse meanings to the different age sets. I’m not sure exactly where this line gets drawn, but it’s somewhere in the middle of Gen X. This is a real pain in the ass if you work in customer service because everyone thinks that everyone else is being rude when they’re really being polite in their own language.

??? oh my god??

this man went from singing fifties hits in gold lame pants to solving murders with grammar I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN WITH THIS

HE DISCOVERED HIS TRUE CALLING WHILE DECIPHERING RECORD CONTRACTS

THIS IS REALLY INSPIRING HONESTLY

achieve your dreams and then achieve new more niche dreams, nothing can stop you, you too can trade in your pompadour to fight crime

Thanks 

I don’t know which I find funnier “fuck shit up” or “faire smashy smashy”

TO DO SMASHY SMASH

French: faire smashy smash 

English: to fuck shit up

Dont poor in the area of oolala omg

This one boy in my math class insisted that there are 27 letters in the alphabet. He ended up with 27 because he was counting ‘and’ as a letter. I am a senior in high school.

I think ’&’ used to be considered a letter

The Andsign has NEVER been part of the fucking alphabet.   Jesus, the brats on tumblr…

First of all, don’t call me a brat. That is rude, especially coming from a fellow Fannibal.

Second of all, it used to be considered a letter. I was on mobile earlier and couldn’t link to sources properly, hence i said “I think”. Now that I’m on my laptop, here we go:

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http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/feb/15/from-a-to-ampersand

ampersand

Until as recently as the early 1900s, “&” was considered a letter of the alphabet and listed after Z in 27th position. To avoid confusion with the word “and”, anyone reciting the alphabet would add “per se” (“by itself”) to its name, so that the alphabet ended “X, Y, Z and per se &”. This final “and per se and” eventually ran together, and the “ampersand” was born.

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https://99designs.com/designer-blog/2015/04/03/history-of-ampersands-typography/

“ In a twist on the traditional story, the logogram ‘&’ came way before the word it now represents, ‘ampersand’. It was once the 27th letter of the alphabet, derived from the Roman word for and: ‘et’. When ancient Roman scribes were scribbling away in Roman Cursive around the 1st century AD, they had a tendency to connect to two letters into a ligature.

…

The word ampersand evolved by a process called mondegreen — when a new word comes from the common mistaken pronunciation of something else. British schoolchildren in the 1800s would recite the alphabet, concluding with “X, Y, Z, and per say &.” They inserted the “per say” so to indicate ‘&’ was by itself rather than ending the string of letters with a hanging conjunction.

Clearly it wasn’t a perfect solution, as over time the children slurred the words together to create the word ampersand. Over time, it was dropped from the alphabet, like many fascinating characters before it. But it was added to dictionaries starting in 1837.”

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http://blog.dictionary.com/ampersand/

“The word “ampersand” came many years later when “&” was actually part of the English alphabet. In the early 1800s, school children reciting their ABCs concluded the alphabet with the &. It would have been confusing to say “X, Y, Z, and.” Rather, the students said, “and per se and.” “Per se” means “by itself,” so the students were essentially saying, “X, Y, Z, and by itself and.” Over time, “and per se and” was slurred together into the word we use today:ampersand. When a word comes about from a mistaken pronunciation, it’s called a mondegreen.“

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http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/06/where-the-ampersand-symbol-and-name-came-from/

“The name for the symbol, “ampersand”, didn’t commonly come into use until the 19th century, from “and per se and”, meaning more or less: “and [the symbol] by itself is and”.  Classically, when the English alphabet was spoken, “per se” commonly preceded any letter of the alphabet that could be used as a word by itself, such as “A” and “I”, as well “O”, which at one point could be used as a standalone word.  Further, the ampersand symbol used to appear at the end of the English alphabet: … X, Y, Z, &. Hence, when spoken: “… X, Y, Z, and per se and”. “

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Conclusion:

1. Sometimes people know things you don’t.

2. Try to learn something new everyday.

3. Don’t be rude.

I