Tag: language

selenityshiroi:

jonphaedrus:

queenofperv:

it-begins-with-rain:

The greatest video since “The History of Japan”

#this goes through so many stages of sounding like#the speaker has#anything from#an italian accent to a spanish accent to a german accent to a swedish accent to an icelandic accent xD#to my ears at least#aka how english would sound if it made sense like the rest of us#english can’t even blame it on ‘having a lot of vowel sounds’ cause swedish has a similar amount (or arguably more)#the difference is that swedish has a proper system and Rules#for when the letter becomes a different sound#in swedish how it’s written is what you get it’s straight forward#english is just put together with duct tape and a prayer (via @erasedcitizen2)

@patrexes

This sounds like a Welsh person taking the piss out of English for being stupid.

They would be justified.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

oneiroteuthis:

theeleanorvance:

toddycattoebeans:

ladyowlett:

garden-ghoul:

tilthat:

TIL there is a Cyrillic letter so rare it is only used in the phrase “many-eyed Seraphim”

via http://ift.tt/2qZa2nY

and it looks like THIS

aka the only possible appropriate character for talking about angels

If somebody is curious, this is how multiocular O

looks in the Book of Psalms of 15th century

OwO

this letter is the only pronoun i will accept in reference to me

I was just talking about this the other day! There are a bunch of these. Start here and explore the See Also links. My favorite is the dual monocular O, which looks like the eyes emoji, and is used only to make weak puns with the word “eyes”.

d20-darling:

thearrogantemu:

bookhobbit:

so Shire-talk is canonically a very different dialect of Westron than what Gondorians or Elves or whatever speak and some of the hobbits can code switch between the two and it’s extremely interesting to see how Tolkien portrays it

I’ve just gotten to the part where Frodo meets Faramir, and the difference between how he talks to Faramir and how he talks to Sam, for instance, is v noticable

with Sam he’s a lot more casual and even slightly more modern (for the value of 1954, not 2017) vs with Faramir where he switches to this very formal, quite archaic to our ears (“seven companions we had”)

and then Sam himself doesn’t seem comfortable speaking this prestige dialect (his style includes rather more general “vernacular” features common across regional nonliterary English dialects) – probably bc unlike Frodo he was not given the type of education that would lend itself to learning how to speak it comfortably – so there’s this clash between how Faramir talks to them and how Sam talks back

there’s also the bit where Theoden meets Merry and Pippin, and Merry greets him in very high formality, Pippin addresses Gimli casually bc they’re friends, then turns to Theoden and switches to the formal style, they both talk some more to him, and then after he’s gone Pippin turns to Merry and says Theoden was a “fine old fellow, very polite” (in the more casual style)

In that one scene you have a lot of style switching depending on the person they’re addressing and their status and relationship to the hobbits, but, for instance, Gimli’s sentence structure sounds more like the formal dialect even when he’s happily berating them and calling them villains, probably because he doesn’t use Shire-talk

basically: you can tell this dude was a linguist

@yavieriel: 

#this is one of those things that authors doing non-fiction or historical fiction are frequently pretty good at imitating#in that they’re just replicating real-world usages of variance in tone and formality across different social groups#but more constructed-world fiction tends to muck up because that requires consciously thinking about it and making choices#instead of unconsciously absorbing it or studying actual usage #whiiiiich#one of the things that spoils a lot of genre fantasy for me is that the authors have no idea how to handle this#either it’s all super casual modern day usage with possibly a few characters doing bad imitations of formal archaism as a character cue#or it’s trying for high style and failing because the author is clearly uncomfortable and/or unfamiliar with the actual historical styles

@pinkpurlknitsnerdout, this is fascinating. I’ve never really thought to actively look for code-switching in literature, and while I’ve definitely noticed it in historical novels, I think all my experiences with high fantasy were before I even understood what code-switching was.

How to pronounce Celtic words and names

asparrowsfall:

prettyarbitrary:

madmaudlingoes:

prettyarbitrary:

breelandwalker:

rubyvroom:

literary-potato:

todosthelangues:

Step 1: Read the word.
Step 2: Wrong.

A REAL LIST OF ACTUAL NAMES AND THEIR (approximate) PRONUNCIATIONS:
Siobhan — “sheh-VAWN”
Aoife – “EE-fa”
Aislin – “ASH-linn”

Bláithín – “BLAW-heen”

Caoimhe – “KEE-va”

Eoghan – Owen (sometimes with a slight “y” at the beginning)

Gráinne – “GRAW-nya”

Iarfhlaith – “EER-lah”
Méabh – “MAYV”
Naomh or Niamh – “NEEV”
Oisín – OSH-een or USH-een
Órfhlaith – OR-la
Odhrán – O-rawn
Sinéad – shi-NAYD
Tadhg – TIEG (like you’re saying “tie” or “Thai” with a G and the end)

I work with an Aoife and I have been pronouncing it SO WRONG

As someone who is trying and failing to learn Gaelic, I feel like is an accurate portrayal of my pain.

This is the Anglicized spelling of a people who really fucking hate the English.

No, no, this is the orthographic equivalent of installing Windows on Mac.

The Latin alphabet was barely adequate for Latin by the time it got to the British Isles, but it’s what people were writing with, so somebody tried to hack it to make it work for Irish. Except, major problem: Irish has two sets of consonants, “broad” and “slender” (labialized and palatalized) and there’s a non-trivial difference between the two of them. But there weren’t enough letters in the Latin alphabet to assign separate characters to the broad and slender version of similar sounds.

Instead, someone though, let’s just use the surrounding vowels to disambiguate–but there weren’t enough vowel characters to indicate all the vowel sounds they needed to write, so that required some doubling up, and then adding in some silent vowels just to serve as markers of broad vs. slender made eveything worse. 

They also had to double up some consonants, because, for example, <v> wasn’t actually a letter at the time–just a variation on <u>–so for the /v/ sound they <bh>. AND THEN ALSO Irish has this weird-ass system where the initial consonant sound in a word changes as a grammatical marker, called “mutation,” so they had to account somehow for mutated sounds vs. non-mutated sounds, which sometimes meant leaving a lot of other silent letters in a word to remind you what word you were looking at.

And then a thousand years of sound change rubbed its dirty little hands all over a system that was kind of pasted together in the first place.

My point is, there is a METHOD to the orthography of Irish besides “fuck the English.” The “fuck the English” part is just a delightful side-effect.

I love it when snarky quips lead to real info.

Language mutation!!! Love it.

tips for writing bilingual characters

ironinkpen:

ironinkpen:

  • there are different types of bilinguals
    • the All Around: speaks, reads, and writes both languages pretty well
    • the Conversational: one language is stronger than the other; can speak the other language a lot better than they read/write it (a lot of kids of immigrants are this type)
    • the High Schooler: understands what’s being said to them in the other language, can’t really speak it
  • don’t have your characters randomly drop words from their other language mid-sentence around people who don’t speak it lol
    • languages are a mindset thing. like personally if i’m around english-speakers, i’m speaking english and i don’t really switch to my other language (which is portuguese)
    • so like if you’re writing a bilingual character who speaks spanish and have them say something like “hey chad let’s go to the biblioteca” to an english speaker i’ll probably spend 5 minutes laughing and then close your story lmao
  • exception: the character is speaking in their weaker language and forgot a word (”where are the…? uh… llaves…. keys! keys, where are they?”)
  • otherwise really the only time your character should be randomly switching languages mid-sentence is if they’re talking to another bilingual
  • like i don’t speak spanish but i’ve legit never heard a spanish speaker say “ay dios mio” to gringos lmao
  • conversations between two bilingual people can take a few different forms:
    • Pick One: they pick one language and kinda stick with it for the whole conversation (a conversation i might have with my portuguese-speaking mom: ”you okay?” “yeah, i’m good. how’re you?” “i’m fine, but your dad-”)
    • Back-and-Forth: someone says something in one language, the other person replies in the other (”tudo bem?” “yeah, i’m good. how’re you?” “tou bem, mas o seu pai-”)
    • Combo: they speak a combo of the two languages, a popular example being spanglish, though basically every bilingual has their own combo language (”tudo bem?” “sim, tou bem. how’re you?” “i’m fine, mas o seu pai-”)
  • when in doubt: just ask a bilingual to look at your stuff and tell you if anything sounds weird
  • combo languages can look different depending on the bilingual
    • me and my cousin (native english speakers) speaking our portuguese/english combo sounds a lot different than my mom and my godmother (native portguese speakers) doing the same thing
    • the kids of immigrants usually come up with their own unique way of saying things that are different than native speakers
  • if you’re writing a bilingual family the older kids’ll probably be more bilingual than the younger ones
  • also, to clarify: bilingual characters might say words in another language on purpose in front of non-speakers
    • either to fuck with them or just ‘cause the word captures what they’re feeling more (i use “caralho” a lot)– basically the point is that accidental switching is relatively uncommon
  • i know earlier i said that people will forget words if they’re speaking their weaker language but tbh i do it with my stronger language too so really it works both ways
  • filler words are weirdly universal
    • so like while bilingual people don’t usually switch languages around people who aren’t bilingual we’ll throw filler words in
    • “ele me olhou e, like, eu juro que eu quase deu um soco nele-”
  • a lot of languages borrow words from english so it’s not too weird to have a random english word in an otherwise non-english conversation (my aunt @ my mom: “lilian você viu meu post no Facebook?”)
  • also sounds in general are just kind of a language transcending thing
    • you wanna find out what someone’s first language was?? break one of their bones lol
    • legit me when i cracked my rib: “AIIIIIII JESUS CHRIST TAKE ME TO THE HOSPITAL”
    • so if your character gets hurt they might make a sound of pain associated with their native language but will probably still speak in the language of the people they’re surrounded by. probably. it depends on just how much pain they’re in
  • if two people start speaking another language in public there’s a 40% chance they’re talking shit and a 60% chance they’re having a conversation like: “where’s the bathroom” “i don’t know, ask the waitress she’s right here” “i can’t just ask-”

amarielah:

machigaeru:

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

  • Japanese: you walk into class already apologizing for being alive
    Hebrew: you walk into class, the teacher insults you and you are expected to insult her back
  • Japanese: conjugates every single verb based on degree of intended politeness, nevermind keigo and honorifics
    Hebrew: Someone asked my teacher how to say “excuse me” and she laughed for several seconds before saying we shouldn’t worry about remembering that since we’ll never need to say it
  • Japanese: if you get one stroke wrong the entire kanji is incomprehensible
    Hebrew: cursive? script? fuck it do whatever you want, you don’t even have to write the vowels out unless you feel like it
  • Japanese: the closest thing there is to ‘bastard’ is an excessively direct ‘you’ pronoun
    Hebrew: ‘bitch’ translates directly

Fun fact: Israel has possibly the lowest power-distance metric of any culture in the world, while Japan has one of the highest. I didn’t realize that the CTO of my company was the CTO until somebody else told me, because everybody called him by his first name and engaged in mutual shit-talking/playful insults with him.

In Japan, even calling your boss by the wrong honorific is liable to get you in trouble.

And apparently there’s some sciencey cooperative venture going on between Israel and Japan in an official diplomatic capacity. I want to be a fly on the wall when Japanese and Israeli scientists work together.

prismatic-bell:

katjohnadams:

inali:

fenrir-kin:

calystarose:

domhnall-na-feannaig:

domhnall-na-feannaig:

kyliaquilor:

If your language lost, it should die with dignity, not be put on artificial life-support because ‘reasons’

#Sorry but I have no sympathy for that fight#let the dead languages be dead#grumping#controversial opinions#because people always get annoyed with me when I say this#but Gaelic (for example) shouldn’t still exist

———–

Gaelic hasnt been lost.  It’s never died or been brought back.  There’s an unbroken line of native speakers going back to the beginning of the language.  That doesn’t seem like a ‘lost’ language to me.  Furthermore I’m not sure what ‘artificial life-support’ means in this context.  Gaelic is given funding for schools because there’s still native speakers of the language.  It’s no more artificial than money being given to schools for English language lessons.

If anything is ‘artificial’ its the imposition of a foreign language
(English) into a Gaelic majority zone and native speakers having to
fight for decades to be able to be taught in their own language.  Native speakers being forced to learn English to exist within their own regions because a central government would not allow services to be given in a people’s own language.

But then the clock only goes back so far with people who wish that minority languages would just die.  There’s nothing artificial about shooting someone but suddenly it becomes an ‘artificial’ act to maybe phone an ambulance?

“There’s nothing artificial about shooting someone but suddenly it becomes an ‘artificial’ act to maybe phone an ambulance?” — THIS RIGHT HERE

Also just gonna point out here:

In the UK, the languages Gaelige, Gaelic, Cymraeg and Kernewek (that’s Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish respectively) didn’t just “die out.” There was a concerted effort by the English to kill them off. 

For example, in Wales, if a child was heard speaking Welsh in a classroom, they’d be given a “Welsh Not”, a wooden plaque engraved with “WN” to hang around their neck. They’d pass it onto the next child heard speaking Welsh, and whoever had the Welsh Not at the end of the day was punished – usually with a beating. 

Kernewek was revived after a long hard struggle by the Cornish folk, and is now being taught again, but a lot about it has been lost because everyone who grew up speaking it has died.

And languages are never revived “just because.” The language of a place can offer so much insight into its history, so if you’re content to let a language die then you’re content to let history die.

People talk about “dead” languages as if they dwindle away gradually, naturally coming to an end and evolving into something else, but that’s rarely the case. Languages like Cymraeg and Gaelige and especially Kernewek didn’t have the chance to die with dignity, they were literally beaten out of my parents and grandparents. 

Is it any wonder every other country hate the English? We invade their country, steal their history, claim pieces of their history as ours or flat out re-write it, and kill every part of their culture that we can. 

It’s a miracle that any of the Celtic languages survived, so even if you don’t see the point in keeping them alive, the actual natives of each country we’ve fucked over are clinging onto what heritage they have left through the only thing they can: their language. 

Hey OP, póg mo thóin!

*snerk* xD

I would like to point all of these “just let it die” assholes directly at Hebrew.

The language was effectively dead. It had been murdered and forced-assimilated away.

But there was this dude named Ben Yehuda.

And he said “no.”

“The language of my people for four thousand years or more,” he said, “should not stop existing because of a bunch of assholes.” (Okay, this is a dramatic retelling. He probably didn’t actually say assholes.)

So he started an official movement to recreate Hebrew as closely as possible to how it had been spoken about a thousand years prior.

Today, ancient Hebrew is spoken by millions of Jews around the world weekly in our prayers and Torah readings, and modern Hebrew is the official language of eight and a half million people–many of them having been born speaking it as a first language. Many people in the first group also speak at least some modern Hebrew–and it’s possible you do, too! A lot of loan words from Hebrew and Yiddish have made their way into English (like klutz, mensch, and kibitz).

That’s hardly “on life support.” Hebrew is growing, living, and thriving because of the Enlightenment efforts of the 1800s. The same COULD be done for languages like Welsh, Navajo, and Basque if the larger powers that be said “this is important” rather than forcing a giant bastion of culture–the language in which a people lived, loved, thought, told stories, and explained their world–to die.