Whatever It Is

anthropology major, dark/light academia, tsh, a bit of fry and laurie, granada holmes, langblr

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

1906

via pinterest

[denervallobster]

I love how imperfect folk art is. When I look at quilts or knitted pieces in museums, I love seeing their uneven edges or imperfect tension. It's just so cool how people make things, and have always made things, and then those things take on cultural significance and others make new things based off of them, and each iteration of makers continues down through history, a history of people sitting and making something that is important to them.

[classicalcanvas]

A Pair of Leather Clogs (1888) by Vincent van Gogh

[thirrith]

i'm making the egyptian mediaeval socks (not in their original colours lol)

[thirrith]

one sock done... one more to go

[thirrith]

they're done!! pattern is egyptian medieval socks by jodi dyck

[jeremybrettholmes]

“After all, it is the season for forgiveness.”

Merry Christmas!

[calligraphy-creature]

"Though my soul may set in darkness

it will rise in perfect light;

I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night."

From the poem "The Old Astronomer" (1868) by Sarah Williams.

[denervallobster]

If you've never put an orange slice and a cinnamon stick in your tea while it steeps, especially if it's black tea (really good with earl grey), please try it it's so good, tastes festive

[jstor]

The World wasn’t a Christmas magazine. Edited by Anne Waldman for the first decade of its life and published by The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church In-the-Bowery in New York from 1967 to 2002, it included work by hundreds of writers within, adjacent to, and succeeding the New York School.

Some of the best-known writers of these generations published in The World, and some of them, it turns out, wrote on the topic of Christmas.

Make yourself a mug of hot chocolate, sit yourself within range of a Christmas tree, and enjoy the latest JSTOR Daily article on The World's Christmas poems. Happy holidays, and happy reading!

Image: From the cover of Issue 9 of The World, December 1967, via JSTOR.

[homunculus-argument]

I actually really like the thing when you're starting to get the hang of a new language, enough to understand and say simple sentences but you gotta get creative to get more complex thoughts across, like a puzzle. I remember a time in the restortation school when a classmate who wasn't natively finnish and did her best anyway dropped something and sighed, telling me "every day is monday this week. I have had four mondays this week." And I understood.

I don't think I speak much of spanish anymore, but in the nursing school training period I did there, I did manage to get by with making weird Tarzan sentences. I got a nosebleed at some point and startled another nurse. Not knowing the words "humidity" or "stress", I managed to string together: "This is ok. It is hot, it is cold, I have a bad day, I am sad, I have blood. This is normal for me." And she understood.

And sometimes you just say things weird, but it's better than not saying it. One time, I was stuck in a narrow hallway behind someone walking really slowly with a walker, and he apologised for being in the way. I was not in any hurry, but didn't know the spanish word for "hurry", but I did know enough words to try to circumvent it by borrowing the english "I have all the time in the world."

The man burst into one of those cackling old man laughters that they do when something in this world still manages to surprise them. He had to be somewhere between 70 and a 100 years old, and I guess if there was one thing he wasn't expecting to hear today, it would be a random blond vaguely baltic-looking fuck casually announce that he is the sole owner and keeper of the very concept of time.

[squid-thoughts]

I’ve mostly learned Chinese in school, so I know a lot of academic vocabulary while having the language skills of a toddler in some basic areas. Once, I forgot the word for sad, which is a really dumb thing to forget. A bunch of the ways to say sad in Chinese are literally just “not happy”, but I also momentarily forgot how to say happy. So instead I said “there is an economic downturn inside my brain”.

[scarlettohairdye]

When my wife and I were in Japan we went to an izakaya on our first full night in the country, and when it was time to pay we weren't sure where to do it, at the table or at the counter up front? Our waitress didn't speak much English, so I threw myself on that conversational grenade with, "Okane ga koko desu ka? Okane ga asoko desu ka?" Literally translated that's, "Money is/goes/should be here? Money is/goes/should be over there?"

She very gratefully confirmed that "Money goes over there," and we paid and left.

[captain-kit-adventuress]

This is exactly what I was taught to do when I took Spanish (and I took a decades' worth, and my main teacher was amazing). He always tried to get us to tell him what we wanted or needed or was trying to say in the best way we knew how, because that is how people actually use language. Rather than have it be a barrier, he taught us above all to keep communicating. He never really told us why, or how valuable a skill it would be, he would just pretend he couldn't understand us anyway when we asked for a word we didn't know, and basically forced us to do exactly that. So it became completely normal to just...do that when we didn't know something.

Later, when I was in college and/or in the real world and I didn't know a word or couldn't remember or didn't have the words for a concept, I would I automatically do what I always did, what had become normalised: I would talk around it, which is what my teacher always called it. I even had one of my professors compliment me on getting what I needed that way, and she said that she'd never had another student do that and how helpful it was for her to be able to help me. I know that when I encountered others in my job with whom I had to speak in Spanish, and I couldn't communicate with them in the "proper" way, I could still get what I needed, or they needed, and there was always a sense of delight that even though my grammar was far from perfect, and I didn't always use the right words, that we all accomplished what we were there for. Most people don't care if you get it "right." They just want to be able to communicate effectively. (Can't speak for the French, though. 😉)

I also highly recommend doing this in your native language if you forget a word or blank on something. When I have conversations with people and they tell me they're blanking or can't think of something, I always, always ask them to describe it. Most people don't because they think it's weird and so either they don't get their point across or the conversation simply stops. But if they were more willing to keep communicating, we might get there. So I'm subtly trying to train everyone around me to do the same thing.

[roach-works]

it's so much less frustrating and more funny when you can forget the word for windows and just say 'the doors for light to come in the wall' and if you forget the word for noodles you say 'you know the bread worms? from soup?' and if you forget the word for tiger you say 'those big assholes in the jungle, with stripes, they're orange.'

genuinely people love it when you do this. it makes the rest of the conversation so much more fun.

[official-linguistics-post]

official linguistics post

[bastionofbibliophiles]

The linguistic term for this is circumlocution, which literally means "to talk/speak around"! In this case, talking around a gap in your memory or linguistic knowledge. It allows the conversation to continue instead of getting stuck in the gap.

Another common use of circumlocution is talking around a touchy/forbidden/'unlucky' word/term/subject, like saying "the Scottish Play" instead of "Macbeth" or "it's that time of the month" instead of "I'm menstruating".

[denervallobster]

'Tis the season for Blue Carbuncle!!!!!!

[periodinteriors]

Mary Annie Sloane, May Morris in the Tapestry Room at Kelmscott Manor, c. 1912, watercolor.

[theinternetarchive]

'interior, after dinner,' oil on canvas; claude monet, french c. 1868-9.

[positerat]

𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥☕️

[dailyholmes]

"He broke the seal and glanced over the contents." The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor. Published in The Strand Magazine. Sidney Paget, 1892

Sources 1 2

[theinternetarchive]

silk vests, c. mid 1800s.

[the-almost-fashion-historian]

afternoon dress, 1895 by Appel

this dress is made of shot silk with chemical lace appliques

this dress can be found in: the V&A

[periodinteriors]

David Roberts, Interior of Amiens Cathedral, c. 1827, watercolor.