half vanilla @damoclles - Tumblr Blog

STEPHEN KING “The Desk”

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’

beefmilkthings

jerry is here

eruriholic

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”

cuddlyaxe-deactivated20190218

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.

ravenpuffheadcanons

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

elodieunderglass

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.

kat2107

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

eridaniepsilon

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…

backonrepeat

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.

eridaniepsilon

I love those stories so much…

acleverforgery

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)

learningftw

that’s hilarious

shiraglassman

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

speakertoyesterday

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!”

andhishorse

What the hell Biblical Hebrew.

moral-autism

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.

liminalreader

^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.

liminalreader

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.

queerpyracy

baffling how much of this site is just conservative protestantism with a gay hat

queerpyracy

you know what i’m in just enough of a bad mood that i’m ready to nail my grievances to the church door so let’s fucking go

black and white morality wherein anyone who doesn’t believe/think/live exactly as I do is a dirty sinner Problematic and probably a predatory monster

everyone is a sinner Problematic but true believers people who activist the right way according to my worldview are still better than everyone else, and I will act in accordance to this belief in my own superiority to let everyone else know I’m better than them because I found Jesus am the most woke

casual and fucking omnipresent equations of womanhood with softness/goodness/purity/nurturing to remind every woman who isn’t/doesn’t want to be any of those things that they’re doing it wrong

aggressive desexualization (particularly of women’s sexuality, to the point where it may as well not exist at all) accompanied by pastels [not a criticism directed ace ppl having a right to sex-free content and spaces but specifically targeted at a wider problem resulting from the previous point]

YOU’RE VALID AND JESUS LOVES YOU and neither of these platitudes achieves a goddamn thing

historical context is for people who care about nuance and we don’t have time for either (see: black and white morality)

lots of slogans and quotes and nice little soundbites to memorize but does anybody actually study the source material with a critical eye to make their own informed analysis

the answer is no

I’ve been to bible study groups don’t @ me I know what the fuck I’m talking about

Good Christians™ Nice Gays™ don’t fraternize with/let themselves be influenced by non-Christians those terrible queers

all the media one consumes must be ideologically pure or it will surely harm the children

it is Our Sacred Duty to protect the children from Everything, thus ensuring their innocence/purity/etc until such time as they are idk probably 25 years old

literally just “think of the children” moral panic y’all can fuckin miss me with that

people who don’t conform to the dominant thinking WILL be excommunicated/driven from the social group, and any wrong treatment they suffer will be seen as a justified consequence of their wrong thinking

I Saw Goody Proctor With The Devil And She Had A Bad Steven Universe Headcanon

kmclaude

Thank you for breaking it down like that because so many of us have been saying it but to see a play by play breakdown comparison is just…Thank you.

tobermoriansass

my personal favourite: you have to be vulnerable all the time and with everyone because we are all part of this same counterculture, trying to heal in a broken world but also if you do anything wrong anything and everything you say will be held against you as proof of your moral inferiority.

also: i’m so worried about this person and i feel compelled to spread the word about what this person has done so that we can all be careful and pray hope they see the error of their ways.

gallusrostromegalus

Some Quotes From my Art History Professor:

“Caravaggio was the BEST renaissance painter, because he knew his shit. Literally. Look at this painting, he’s painted shit on everything, even Saint Peter!”

“For those of you fortunate enough to Not grow up catholic, a baptism is where you mist a baby like an orchid to keep it from going to hell.”

“You get Extra Credit for you eerily comprehensive knowledge of Muppets. Now stop talking.”

“GOD I love flying buttresses. They’re so melodramatic!”

“I don’t call him “Da Vinci” because that means “From Vinci”. That’s like calling Steve “Of Greeley” instead of his real name and that’s just rude. And not just because Greeley is Awful.”

“Michelangelo was really depressed because his job sucked. Also because he was a bit of a douche, but mostly the job. He should have been doing literally anything else.”

“Everything can be improved with a Simpson’s reference!”

“Send me Memes, I like having recent content in my lectures.” *Next day* “Stop sending me memes. Please.”

*whilst angrily pointing at a picture of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles* “The Turtles have all their names mixed up for their personalities and frankly that’s embarrassing. The techie should be Leo, the Flirt should be Raphael, The Boring Leader Dude should be Donatello and the angry one should be Carvaggio because that asshole literally spent his life drunk, fighting people and blackmailing cardinals. Carvaggio was the BEST.”

“I could have studied in Rome. I could be trying to match boxes of broken dicks to statuary. Instead of dicks I have you assholes.”

“Warhol was, as you young people say, A Troll. The art is not the Art, the Outrage is the Art. Which is kind of a Dick Move, which we old people say too.”

“Remember Kids- mental illness and heavy metal poisoning are not actually substitutes for Talent and Hard Work! Get therapy and don’t drink your paint water!”

hana-yori-deactivated20180325

papapu-u

該離線了 Offline

hellshee

fun fact: companies sell products with inferior quality to eastern europeans as opposed to western europeans. it is known, but apparently legal.

so, for example, the way nutella tastes in germany will be different to the way nutella tastes in bulgaria because the one in bulgaria is of a lower quality.

it’s so much fun being eastern european.

and then some cocky western european shows up and says “well, it’s nothing personal, they’re just adapting the product to your tastes.” which is not only rude af, but wrong

damoclles

also, even local manufacturers do this lma o,