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@douvoordag
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OK Afrikaanssprekendes op tumblr, hoe spreek jy die afkorting "me." (die Afrikaanse weergawe van "Ms" in Engels) uit?
"mevrou x"
"mejuffrou x"
"me x"
"juffrou x"
Iets anders
Ek's bles (I don't speak Afrikaans / see results)
As jy onseker is: "Me." is 'n geskrewe titel vir 'n vrou wat nie haar huwelikstatus aandui nie (soortgelyk aan die Engelse "Ms").
Daar was onlangs 'n gewilde post oor hoe "Ms." in Engels as "Mizz" uitgespreek moet word, nie as "Miss" nie. So ek is nuuskierig oor wat mense in Afrikaans doen as hulle iemand met die titel "Me." moet aanspreek.
So much translation discourse just boils down to monolinguals not understanding that "coolness" doesn't translate across languages, and you need to re-add it manually on the other end.
Spanish and French understand the anglicism so just say "eso es muy cool" or "c'est très cool" if the context is not particularly formal
No no, not literally the word "cool" I mean the [concept of coolness]. Things that sound cool, poetic, funny, dramatic, etc in one language will completely fail to land if you simply go 1-to-1 word equivalents.
In the Japanese version of Fullmetal Alchemist, the antagonists are named after the seven deadly sins, in English. As in, rather than the Japanese word, "Greed" is still Greed in the original.
Because loan words from English are often pretty "cool", as with your Spanish and French example.
But this presents a problem, because, to give them a bit of flair, the antagonists are sometimes given a proper Japanese adjective along with their name, to make a sort of title of sorts.
"Greedy Greed"
The italicized part would be a Japanese adjective, and the bolded part is an English loanword. This is fine in Japanese, but would be totally nonsense in an English translation.
After all, it's common sense to keep the names the same, duh, and obviously the whole point of what you're doing is to translate the Japanese.
Greedy Greed. You cannot call him that.
You can't go 1-to-1. To keep the [concept of coolness], you have to identify what made the original cool, and then recreate it in the new language.
And here, we have a foreign word, and a native word, both meaning the same thing, paired together to give an antagonist a cool sounding title. So how do we do that in English.
Well, the seven deadly sins, being Christian and Catholic and all, have fancy names in Latin. Or well, they just sound fancy in English, because Latin was the language of intellectuals for a long long time.
And in fact, while we also have the word "greed", English has a fancier sounding word that means the same thing, but whose etymology comes from the fancy Latin. That might give a similar cool-loanword feeling, right?
Let's try it.
"Greed the Avaricious"
Oh yeah. That's definitely, undeniably, "cool".
I like to think there is a parallel universe where reading comment sections is known as a soothing pastime because everyone on the parallel Internet is as kind and polite as the commenters on yourdailypoem.com:
Australian vs South African English. this youtuber (Rhea) has an hour-long video on their channel about the accents of Australia, Aotearoa-NZ and South Africa (*specifically Anglo-South Africans), which I am now so keen to watch
also, as a sidenote, I feel like back in the early 00s, "Saffa" was, not fully derogatory, but certainly a disparaging term to refer specifically to white South African émigré.e.s or "expats" in places like Australia and the UK, who left "coincidentally" as apartheid ended. but given that those are the people that Aussies and Brits were interacting with, I can easily see how that became generalised as a cute nickname for all South Africans in general, and I definitely don't think Saffa carries that connotation anymore, even here
Dude... allow me to add to your trove.
I have a folder of these on my phone... I'm not sure what that says about me!
Me: *agonizing over whether a semicolon goes here, what the proper dialogue should be there, other assorted rules and semantics*
Terry Pratchett: "!" said the stranger.
THAT'S ALLOWED?
Writing is for communication. Sir Terry knew very well that anything's allowed if it helps you communicate something effectively.
For fans in Kenya, Nigeria, and Burundi, “uncringing” non-English fanfiction is an endeavor in decolonialism.
Our latest piece is live! The brilliant Soila Kenya writes about the dominance of English in fandom and especially fanfiction spaces, and why for her and the fellow fans she interviewed from Kenya, Nigeria, and Burundi, this is partly about the global dominance of English-language pop culture, but especially about the legacies of colonialism:
The deep psychological imprints of this language disparity remain. And therefore, when I encountered fanfiction, it didn’t even occur to me that there were fanfics written in any language but English, let alone Swahili or any of the 42 indigenous languages in Kenya.
Click through to read the whole piece or listen to a full audio version! And if you enjoy it, please consider becoming a (free) member or especially a paying subscriber—we want to commission more pieces from Soila and other smart writers and we need your help to pay them!
(As a reminder, we have a discount rate for anyone who wants it, no questions asked—if you're a student, educator, un/underemployed, have a lower income, or literally any other reason, just email [email protected] and we're happy to provide!)
So English becomes the default language of escapism; it’s where fiction feels fluid and open to play..... If fanfiction is about play, remixing, and community, then the discomfort we feel reading it in our own languages might say less about the language itself and more about what we’ve been taught those languages are for.
Really enjoyed this piece and the reflections about what type of content currently feels silly (to some fans) to read in some languages and why -- and what's shifting.
We genuinely as a society need to bring back awareness of 'Ms.' as a term of address because just this week I saw Ms. Piggy and an MS Paint tuna (it was a pun) both referred to as 'Miss'. 'Ms.' has kind of fallen off in recent years, I think partly because formality in speech has kind of fallen off in day-to-day life in general, and partly because of a whole bunch of things about the way feminism has developed since the 70s and how its priorities have shifted.
So! For those of you who haven't encountered this term of address before. Ms. is not short for 'Miss'. It's pronounced as Miz, and it was invented with the intention of giving women a respectful formal term (supposedly equivalent to Mr.) that says 'whether or not I'm married is none of your damn business'. And I think that's beautiful.
They don't want you to know this but K and G are actually the same sound. You just vibrate your vocal cords for the second one. Same thing with T and D. And S and Z. This thing goes straight to the top.
You might think R is a consonant. It is. (Quietly) It is. But dark things happen with that little glyph. It has powers beyond the ordinary phoneme.
Everything's the same except for the ways in which they are different.
When they make me god Themperess of philosophy, I'm sorting out all this difference and similtude nonsense. I think we only need maybe ten categories tops.
There is actually only 1 phoneme, the eternal and mighty schwa
/ə/
For the Afrikaans-speaking mutuals: As iemand belangstel?
Spent a ridiculous amount of time last night obsessively editing my hand written zines in Photoshop to take away any tiny blemishes so they were definitely readable.
Whatever. Understand or don't.
really wish there was an easy way I could poll irl hundreds of Capetonians about their pronunciation. so it'd really have to be in person because people don't know IPA and I don't trust other ad hoc phonetic transcriptions to be unambiguous. and also, you've got to trick people into saying the specific words, because you don't want them to get self-conscious or overthink it and alter their pronunciation. anyway
Bree street and Loop street are two of the main parallel roads running through the city centre, which most (???) people pronounce /bɹi:/ and /lu:p/ when speaking English, and I assume that's normal
but I've just heard someone say /brɪə̯/ and /lu:p/ in the same breath. that's Breë as in Afrikaans (literally "wide". it's a wide street) and Loop still as in English
I however have always done the opposite, which is why I'm curious about this. I've always said /bɹi:/ and /lʊə̯p/, that's Bree as in English and Loop as in Afrikaans (lit. "course, walk" ; the road runs down the length if the CBD)
and while we're at it, do people pronounce the -n- in Buitengracht ? (I do). and how do you say the Bo in Bo-Kaap in English ? /bu:/ or /bʊə̯/ ?
i think censoring subtitles is actually ableism
Six year old, bouncing up and down with glee as desserts are unpacked: "I'm so appointed!"
Took me a moment to realize she had logically assumed "appointed" must be the opposite of "disappointed" and used it as a synonym for "excited."
Dutch-speaking people will laugh when they see Afrikaans signs for an "aftrekplek"
but they've installed a swing set on the Dutch/Belgian border in Baarle-Hertog/Nassau and I had to listen to a news reporter asking people including kids whether they like to "schommelen", so it goes both ways
ek probeer nou al sedert ek met hierdie blog begin het, om aan 'n goeie vertaling van "gimmick blog" te dink...
let wel: die kategorie "gimmick blogs" is breër as net vertalingsblogs; dit sluit by voorbeeld ook vir @the-haiku-bot, @identifying-cars-in-posts, @alphabetcompletionist en die verskeie leesbegrip vrae blogs in. so, met dit in gedagte
wat is die beste vertaling van "gimmick blog" in Afrikaans?
'n grapblog
'n een-grap-blog
'n (een-)toertjieblog
'n manewale(s)blog
'n spotblog
'n een-streek-blog
'n een-truuk-blog
'n foefieblog
'n gimmick- of ghimmiek-blog
iets anders?
ander voorstelle is welkom! skryf dit in 'n herblog of in die kommentaar
@limulusamebocytelysate @gaymergirlgwen @thementalistscandidate
ek meen, tegnies gesproke ja, soort van... maar nee, nie rêrig in dié konteks nie. so nee, asseblief, nee, moenie toelaat dat foefie wen nie, ek smeek julle ek's op my knieë asseblief dit klink so verspot,