the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
something i have always found really weird is when english texts italicize words from other languages.
i remember reading a book as a kid and the author continually italicizing the word tamales
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
I'm grateful to have gone to a college that requires honorifics in class bc otherwise I'd probably assume like most that "Mx. [surname]" is the only nonbinary option. I personally hate the tendency to put x in every gendered term and call it nonbinary so here are some other honorifics (but certainly not the only ones) I've seen nonbinary people use. For the sake of simplicity let's say the surname is Jackson.
Ind. Jackson- honestly this one kind of fucks. Ind stands for individual, and it gets bonus points for being the nearest equivalent to literally just referring to yourself as comrade.
Misc. Jackson- this one is ok, runs the risk of being pronounced like Miss. Honestly a little too on the nose for my taste. Also not really sure what it's saying? Miscellaneous? It seems odd with my name so I personally stay away but go for it if it sounds neat.
M. Jackson- *chef's kiss* mwa. This is the one I use. It's classy, it's elegant, and I personally like how you have to form your mouth in an entirely different way than Ms. or Mr. It forces people to make more of an effort to learn it, in my experience. They can't really play it off easily when they misgender you. However M. is also used shorthand in some languages for gendered honorifics (ie. Monsieur is M. in French) so if you're not comfy with that association this might not be your best choice
Anyways! tldr: honorifics are important for nonbinary people to have for formal environments, but Mx. isn't your only option. If anyone has more they use hmu in the notes bc I'm really curious what yall use.
Also consider:
Ser. (from spanish) - I use this one and Mx.
Mé. (pronounced "May")
Le (the fancy kind, pronounced "lay", very 2009 sheek)
Msr. (pronounced "Misser" and is a direct combo of Miss and Mister)
Mt. (pronounced "Mount". Be a force of nature! 🗻⛈)
^^^Along those lines... Folks use pronouns inspired by nouns they like all the time, so why not use nouns as a basis for honorifics? If its important to you what's not to like about it being a more personal form of address?
I've heard people use the full title Mystery in place of Mister/Miss, but I don't know how they shorten it. Could do My. , Mst. , Myst. ...
My AP history teacher in HS used to call us Scholar Jackson and preferred we use Professor or Dr. for him.
He also frequently used the phrase "Thank you, you are a gentleman and a scholar" as a response when someone made a keen observation, but seamlessly transitioned to "gentle person" when I asked him after a class if he could de-gender that phrase as well.
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:
- Forgot a word in Spanish, while speaking Spanish to me, but remembered it in English. Became weirdly quiet as they seemed to lose their entire sense of identity.
- Used a literal translation of a Russian idiomatic expression while speaking English. He actually does this quite regularly, because he somehow genuinely forgets which idioms belong to which language. It usually takes a minute of everyone staring at him in confused silence before he says “….Ah….. that must be a Russian one then….”
- Had to count backwards for something. Could not count backwards in English. Counted backwards in French under her breath until she got to the number she needed, and then translated it into English.
- Meant to inform her (French) parents that bread in America is baked with a lot of preservatives. Her brain was still halfway in English Mode so she used the word “préservatifes.” Ended up shocking her parents with the knowledge that apparently, bread in America is full of condoms.
- Defined a slang term for me……. with another slang term. In the same language. Which I do not speak.
- Was talking to both me and his mother in English when his mother had to revert to Russian to ask him a question about a word. He said “I don’t know” and turned to me and asked “Is there an English equivalent for Нумизматический?” and it took him a solid minute to realize there was no way I would be able to answer that. Meanwhile his mom quietly chuckled behind his back.
- Said an expression in English but with Spanish grammar, which turned “How stressful!” into “What stressing!”
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.”
Some experiences from me as someone who speaks 2 languages and a bit 3rd one.
- I keep using same words of things in English even when they have two different words, because in Finnish there’s only one word for it. Example: a heater and battery are both in Finnish patteri, so sometimes I speak about batteries when I mean heaters. On the other hand, in English, you call people casually female and male but you can’t do that in Finnish as those words are reserved for animals only and if used of a person, are extremely sexual in nature and thus offensive (unless it’s a joke or a flirt).
- It’s been 30+ years and I still mess up with gender pronouns because Finnish has got only 1 gender pronoun covering all genders. Where gendered language speaking people naturally have different (emotional) connotations to he, she and they, for me they still (emotionally) sound like random words with no connection to any genders or people.
- In English you say that a year 1560 happened in the 16th century. In Finnish, a year 1560 happened in the 15th century. Took me long to remember this.
- I don’t fucking remember particles a, an and the in right order because those don’t exist in Finnish.
- Using their native language’s grammar rules for the foreign language. Lovely example is from a person I follow here, who is native in English and speaks Finnish. In English you say “It rains”. In Finnish you just say “Sataa = Rains”. So, she says in Finnish “Se sataa” (it rains) and her partner laughs “What it? What’s outside raining?”
- Using their native language quirks. A Japanese man who is pretty much fluent in Finnish uses Japanese filler word mannerism when speaking in Finnish (as Japanese uses “ano”, “etto” ect. between sentences). However, he uses a filler word which isn’t grammatically wrong but which isn’t normally used as a filler word, and in places where Japanese speaker naturally uses a filler word but not a Finnish speaker.
- Forgetting the word you know in all 3 languages.
- The worst; the other language not having an equivalent for the word/idiom of the other language, or not even having a word for the whole thing. You just have to pick the least worst option out of all options or find a way to explain what needs to be conveyed with words through some other wording/sentence. Example; Finnish has got 18 words for a English word “grunt”.
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
This one needs to go right next to the Baltimore accent with the Aaron earns an iron urn.
In case anyone hasn't seen it
love how english started as a rhotic language and half the native speakers said, "oh, Fuck That Noise"
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
So I used to have a Russian friend who had a pretty thick accent and like a lot of Russians tended to eschew articles. She would say things like “Get in car.” And stuff.
Well one day this asshole who had been kind of tagging along with us asks her why she talks like that because it makes her sound dumb and I still remember her response word for word.
“Me? Dumb? Maybe in America you have to say get in THE car because you are so stupid that people might just get in random car, but in Russia we don’t need to say that. We just fucking know because we are not stupid.”
getinmyglitterpants
One time I was proof reading a paper for a Russian student. As I was correcting her paper with her, the many mistakes in her grammar started weighing on her. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, almost sobbing,
“In Russian I am so intelligent and clear. In English I am like [an] idiot”
Respect to anyone trying to master a foreign language. I get so sad thinking about that student.
lady–of–greenwood
Full offense but people who make fun of someone else’s accent or belittle their limited vocabulary when they’re speaking a language not native to them are fucking disgusting and are just begging to be punched.
They’re speaking your language because you don’t know theirs. That’s not something they should be made fun of, it’s something that should be commended because learning a language is hard fucking work.
I hate people who do this so much.
thinking about explaining to English language learners that “do I have to?” and “do I have two?” are pronounced differently, but it’s not the pronunciation of t(w)o that changes
For my non-native speaker pals:
- the stress and prosody changes; the stress (and in some cases a pitch rise as well) falls on “have” in “have to?”, while the stress falls on “two” in "have two?”.
- the /v/ in “have to” sometimes devoices to an /f/ sound, but not usually in “have two”; this is accent- and dialect-dependent.
#the problem is that most native English speakers aren’t taught that this central ingrained feature is english’s feature system #except iambs and whatnot #and that it’s not a universal language thing to pin so much grammatical meaning on weak forms and stress (via @squirrelwrangler)
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
Sometimes i think about the idea of Common as a language in fantasy settings.
On the one hand, it’s a nice convenient narrative device that doesn’t necessarily need to be explored, but if you do take a moment to think about where it came from or what it might look like, you find that there’s really only 2 possible origins.
In settings where humans speak common and only Common, while every other race has its own language and also speaks Common, the implication is rather clear: at some point in the setting’s history, humans did the imperialism thing, and while their empire has crumbled, the only reason everyone speaks Human is that way back when, they had to, and since everyone speaks it, the humans rebranded their language as Common and painted themselves as the default race in a not-so-subtle parallel of real-world whiteness.
In settings where Human and Common are separate languages, though (and I haven’t seen nearly as many of these as I’d like), Common would have developed communally between at least three or four races who needed to communicate all together. With only two races trying to communicate, no one would need to learn more than one new language, but if, say, a marketplace became a trading hub for humans, dwarves, orcs, and elves, then either any given trader would need to learn three new languages to be sure that they could talk to every potential customer, OR a pidgin could spring up around that marketplace that eventually spreads as the traders travel the world.
Drop your concept of Common meaning “english, but in middle earth” for a moment and imagine a language where everyone uses human words for produce, farming, and carpentry; dwarven words for gemstones, masonry, and construction; elven words for textiles, magic, and music; and orcish words for smithing weaponry/armor, and livestock. Imagine that it’s all tied together with a mishmash of grammatical structures where some words conjugate and others don’t, some adjectives go before the noun and some go after, and plurals and tenses vary wildly based on what you’re talking about.
Now try to tell me that’s not infinitely more interesting.
YOUR IDEAS INTRIGUE ME AND I WOULD LIKE TO SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR NEWSLETTER
What you have described IS English, from a linguistic point of view. Consider, for example, that many of our animal words are different from their meat words: pig/pork, cow/beef, sheep/mutton. Likewise, look at many of our words for fancier foods: filet, merengue, au jus, au gratin. Noticing a pattern?
It’s because the native Angles and Saxons raised the animals, but the Norman invasion of 1066 brought in French-speaking royals and nobles. The words to describe the dishes made for them became the names for the dishes in English, while native English words were retained for the parts that didn’t involve the ruling class. Likewise consider the words used in royal settings: regent, court, crown, scepter, count/countess, duke/duchess. They’re all adapted from Old French (and so is the language of the justice system). In America, words like chipmunk and raccoon come directly from Native tribes near the places these animals were discovered, while words like alligator and mesa were added to our language via Spanish colonizers in the new world.
So if the idea of “Common, but as a mishmash language rather than modern-English-but-Middle-Earth” is intriguing to you, absolutely pick up a book called History of the English Language and read it. It’s interesting and dives into a lot of this stuff and will help you construct your version of Common in a way that makes sense for your map and confluence of races.
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
qlxsisdj27-deactivated20190315
How to learn a language
Tips from a language major:
•When learning new vocabulary write the meaning in your language once and the new word at least three times
•If you are learning a new writing style (I.e. Hanzi, kanji, Sanskrit, etc.) write the character at least three times, the meaning and the pronunciation once. -do not write the pronunciation above the character, write it to the side, otherwise you won’t even try to read it. -Learn! Stroke! Order!
•when reviewing vocab try to use the word in a sentence.
•do not pay attention to the technicalities of the grammar. Do not attempt to compare it to your own language. This will seriously mess you up for 80 years. Just pay attention to the sentence structure and make similar sentences.
•if you are learning a tonal language (I.e Chinese) or language that has sounds that don’t exist in your language watch videos of people pronouncing things and try to match their mouth movements.
•if all else fails on your tones just speak quickly.
•watch TV shows in that language and yes watch them with subtitles. But please be aware that may not be how people speak in real life (I’m looking at you, Japanese/Chinese/Korean learners)
•DO NOT BE AFRIAD TO MAKE MISTAKES of you mess up during a sentence just correct yourself and keep going.
•flash cards, flash cards, flash cards. Real and digital.
•spend at least an hour a day on it (OUTSIDE of class), if you’re trying to learn on your own you’re gonna need more time.
•talk to yourself in that language, take notes in it, set your phone to it. You probably look crazy but that is a-ok.
•listen to music in that language, while it probably won’t do much for your ability in the beginning it will help you distinguish sounds once you get pretty good.
•and lastly, don’t give up. It took you like ten years to grasp your own language it’s gonna take awhile to grasp another.
-How I learned 2 ½ languages at once.
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
fantasy characters: “Geez”
me: who the fuck spread Christianity there
this two-years-old shitpost just gained a hundred notes who the snickerdoodles dug it up
W H A T
In moments like this I always fall back on the fact that they also aren’t speaking English because they don’t have England or the many languages and conquering peoples that contributed to the creation of the English language and therefore the work musr be a translation into recognizable terms in our world’s terms. Call that Tolkien Brainrot.
It’s called “Translation Convention” but “Tolkien Brainrot” is funnier.
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
my future Pokemon team
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
I propose we bring back pig latin and other secret languages until that wack tag ban gets sorted out
irl-gay
eed-way
ipe-pay
itch-bay
And so on
THIS! WE SHOULD DO THIS
Also like, slightly misspelling words, like “gurl” “shid” “bish” “fuq” and stuff
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
If attempting to get around the new content filters, keep in mind the experience of screenreader users! Trying to avoid the filters (through removing letters, adding in non-letters with similar shapes) means that that content is not accessible, as special characters are often not usable with screenreaders, or the user may not be able to envision what the word would look like when written down, allowing them to deduce the meaning.
If you need to censor a word, use a related word instead or if necessary, use dashes preferably in the middle of a word. Rather than “g1rl” “gi-l” or even using emojis (the word represented is ‘girl’) - screenreaders read each emoji out individually. This page has more information on preserving accessibility in censoring words, the example provided for the word “Accessibility” is “Access-ibility”
I propose we bring back pig latin and other secret languages until that wack tag ban gets sorted out
irl-gay
eed-way
ipe-pay
itch-bay
And so on
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
In my linguistics class we had a Chinese girl who had adopted a European name. We all didn't speak Cantonese and understood her wish to not have her name butchered all the time, except for one of us, a guy who thought he knew to differentiate between tones perfectly because he was learning Vietnamese. He saw himself as super woke and he thought it was wrong for her to adopt a European name when we should just try harder to pronounce her Chinese name (which honestly is just really difficult if you don't speak the language at all, even for linguists). So he would constantly call her by her Chinese name which she initially didn't even want to share, but he kept asking her for it, and from the look on her face I could tell that he did not get it right, and that she didn't like it at all. The first time he did it she even told him it wasn't correct, but he kept going, so sure he knew how to pronounce it. So like I 100% agree that we should put in effort to pronounce names from foreign languages and not give up on the first try if we get it wrong, but we should also respect people's wishes when they know we can't do it/they know it takes too much effort for them to teach us how to pronounce it. In that case, we should just use the name we're being told to use. It's that simple.
Fellow linguists, don't be that guy™
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
cultural-antifascism-deactivate
In Yiddish we don’t say “I love you” we say “דאַלוי פּאָליציי” which roughly translates to “you’re my moon” and I think that’s beautiful.
saintlaikaa
cute!!!
asweetnewqueer
sorry so this is an old joke I reblogged recently based off a meme format from like 5 years ago that I thought my mutuals would still find funny and didn’t realize people would think I’m serious. the phrase above, daloy politsey, actually translates to “fuck the police”
enecoo
cute!!!
the-beacons-of-minas-tirith reblogged
Hey did you know I keep a google drive folder with linguistics and language books that I try to update regularly
**UPDATE**
I have restructured the folders to make them easier to use and managed to add almost all languages requested and then some
Please let me know any further suggestions
….holy shit. You found the holy grail.
….. is this a DIFFERENT person keeping gigabytes worth of language books on google drive? Holy crap.
This. This here. Is why I love Tumblr.❤️❤️❤️