花樣年華

langblr. native slovenian and english. focusing on german and italian. icon by @softlqz

[birchshutter]

One Swedish expression that I enjoy is "käpprätt åt helvete", meaning straight as a kane to hell. Not only did the thing go bad, it went as bad as it could in the least amount of time, there was not even a grain of success made. It went to jail without passing "go".

[depsidase]

[xanaxfarts]

The stone floor of a church in Brittany, France comes alive with color as morning sun filters through stained glass. photo: Jim Richardson

[creepymutelilbugger]

"i have to water the shitbird wait a minute"

"prosper stupid poultry"

[captain-plutonium]

oh, but it gets better

"Vedervieh" is a very unusual way to say "poultry: in german. The word in the screengrab translates better as "feather beast"

[acekoral]

Exactly what I wanted to answer. Poultry doesn't convey the emotion behind Federvieh at all

[supreme-leader-stoat]

[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

[what-even-is-thiss]

The way you understand big German words is that you realize that German speakers create terms in the same way that English speakers do except that German speakers are afraid of the space bar.

So take an English phrase for example. Let’s say, Bureau of Land Management.

Using German conventions that phrase now becomes Landmanagementbureau all one word.

Now let’s say you want to make a word that expresses the act of when someone tries to make things better but actually makes them worse. You might say someone tried to make things better but actually made them worse.

You could shorten that to the phrase made better made worse which becomes the one word madebettermadeworse.

That’s how you get the word verschlimmbessern. Vershlimmern(to make worse) + verbessern (to make better. Verschlimmbessern.

[beemovieerotica]

english slang is awful i would hate to be learning this shit. like the word shit. something can be horseshit or bullshit which means it's a lie. but cow shit is just poop. and something can be dogshit which means it's really bad quality. but cat shit is just poop.

[beemovieerotica]

more notes: batshit means CRAAAZY. but rat shit is poop. if something is shit, it's bad, but if it's THE shit, it's good. eating shit is ew. but if someone just ate shit, they fell on the ground. no shit? = for real? yeah no shit = duh!!!

[summerofspock]

[furiouslysleeping]

Nein, das sind keine Genusfehler. Mein Deutsch ist perfekt, diese Tisch ist einfach transgender.

[llllllaces]

i need to speak every language. ever. right now

[elleldoe]

grammar this. grammar that. sometimes 'grammatically correct' just doesn't hit the spot. the vibes are telling me to laugh in the face of the english language and that's exactly what I'm going to do, one incorrectly structured sentence at a time.

[shinynewboots]

Me every time I start a sentence with But or And

[hi-raethia]

underrated form of humor: just making shit up in past tense

[xenomorphique]

My personal favourite:

[caramelchaitea]

[official-linguistics-post]

official linguistics post

[what-even-is-thiss]

What they don’t tell you about speaking multiple languages is that your brain does not in fact have a box labeled Spanish and another one labeled German. Instead it has a box labeled “Not English” and sometimes when you’re talking or writing in one of the languages you speak it will just start pulling random words from that box.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I just wrote down “Tengo eine Katze” and then put my head in my hands

[academic-vampire]

I love taking off my glasses while I’m studying and rubbing my eyes and then looking into the distance like a tortured academic

[astraiforests]

handing out weird PDFs i saved years ago and never read to the trick or treaters

[woolandflax]

Listening to native speakers of the language you’re trying to learn

[pankenlewd]

english is a minefield… if someone is fucking you that's sex, that's good… but if they fucked you that's usually a bad thing… if they're fucking with you, also bad… if they fuck with you then that's good again

[hana-loves-bumblebees]

The fact that in Czech we legit say “the knife in my pocket is opening” when encoutering behavior we hate or find super annoying is something so memey

Like yeah I’m really feeling like stabbing something… but I’m not gonna…. But I’m feeling like it