Sideblog dedicated to languages! Also: linguistics, glottology, etymology, phonology, philology, literary analysis of foreign languages, and some more topics. Main blog is @erlann. I speak Italian (native), English (C2), German (B2), French (A1). So I'm currently working on strengthening German and learning French. I like getting exposed to Icelandic, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, as I plan on learning some of these in the future. I also speak my hometown's dialect and understand neighboring ones, and Latin. "Itôŝer" means "languages" in a conlang I created some time ago for a novel.
i looooove learning a new language and slowly realizing that i'm starting to understand it more and more. like i'll be watching a movie, an anime or a series in that language and realizing that i recognize way more words than two months ago, that i now understand the order in which these words are placed, that i now know enough about this culture to know where this saying is from ; some days later i understand a sentence without reading the subtitles, i randomly find a post in this language on the internet and i understand what it means... i don't know how to explain this, it just feels like a new world is slowly opening up to you and it's so exciting, you know ?
You know the meme where you go "the name of [noun with a diminutive] implies the existence of [a hypothetical HUGE form of same thing, but without the diminutive]" like "existence of dorito implies the existence of THE DORO" and it's a huge-ass corn chip the size of a wheel of cheese?
Well, in finnish, the word for moth is "yökkönen", from "yö" (night), the suffix "-kko/kkö" which has many purposes but one of them is to change any word into "person involved with doing something with the root word", and the dininutive "-nen". So the name of moth is "little night creature".
But coming back to the diminutive meme, the existence of yökkönen would imply the existence of yökkö, the big (or at least medium-sized, or non-small) night creature. Through a happenstance completely unrelated to moths or other insects, "yökkö" is the finnish vernacular word for a night shift nurse.
Timeline of the evolution of the French language from its birth to the modern era
→ Before 58 BC, Gaul had around 10 million inhabitants who mainly spoke the Gaulish language, made up of Celtic dialects.
→ From 58 to 50 BC, Gaul was invaded by Roman armies under Julius Caesar.
→ From the invasion to the 5th century, Gaulish dialects and Classical Latin, but above all Vulgar Latin, coexisted in Gaul, and the reality for most Gauls was bilingualism.
→ From the 5th to the 9th century, Gallo-Romance gradually emerged from the Vulgar Latin spoken in northern Gaul through successive linguistic changes. This very early form of French gave rise to the oldest known text attesting to the use of French: The Strasbourg Oaths, a military oath between Charles the Bald and Louis the German.
→ From the 9th to the 13th century, Old French (also called roman, romanz, or romance) spread across Europe and beyond, influencing—and being influenced by—many other languages and cultures such as English, Latin, Arabic, Scandinavian languages, Italian, etc.
→ From the 14th to the 15th century, there was a transitional language between Old and Modern French: Middle French. These centuries were marked by major upheavals. The 14th century was characterized by the Black Death (plague) and the Hundred Years’ War, which led to the disorganization of institutions.
→ From the 16th to the 18th century, the Renaissance gave rise to Classical French, which borrowed words from Greek, Italian, and Spanish. The authors of La Pléiade also created new word forms (for example through suffixation and prefixation).
→ In 1539, Francis I signed the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, whose Articles 110 and 111 imposed French as the language of law and administration.
Article 110: In order to prevent any doubt regarding the understanding of the rulings of our sovereign courts, we wish and order that they be made and written so clearly that there may be no ambiguity or uncertainty, nor any need for interpretation.
Article 111: We therefore wish that all rulings and all other legal proceedings be pronounced, recorded, and delivered to the parties in the French mother tongue and not otherwise.
This measure thus made French the language of the State, but it was not directed against local spoken varieties—only against Church Latin. At that time, French was spoken mainly in Paris and among the aristocratic classes of northern France.
→ That same year, the first French–Latin Dictionary, by Robert Estienne, was published. Thanks to the invention of the printing press, there arose a need to codify the language, and grammarians, lexicographers, language theorists, and linguists gained importance.
→ In 1631, Cardinal Richelieu commissioned Théophraste Renaudot (a French physician, philanthropist, and journalist) to create the first French-language written press in Paris: La Gazette.
→ In 1635, Richelieu noticed that nine writers regularly met in Paris to discuss matters of language. In order to support them—but also to supervise and control them—the cardinal founded the Académie française (the French Academy), a cultural institution whose mission is to “contribute, on a non-profit basis, to the improvement and influence of literature.”
→ In 1694, the first Dictionary of the French Language by the Académie française was published, having been commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu.
→ May 1st, 1789, marks the beginning of the French Revolution with the first Estates-General, which led the Third Estate (the common people) to revolt against the nobility.
→ The Revolution went beyond the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, as the Jacobins imposed French as the “universal language of the Enlightenment”, and therefore as the mandatory mother tongue for all. The use of patois and dialects then became synonymous with “social regression”, seen as remnants of the Ancien Régime, just like the use of Latin.
→ In 1794, Abbé Grégoire presided over a major investigation whose report, titled Report on the Necessity and the Means to Annihilate Patois and Universalize the Use of the French Language (or Grégoire Report), concluded in favor of eradicating patois in favor of French. Through this action, the abbé sought to unify the people and facilitate the spread of knowledge. From that point on, French was taught in schools, but patois did not disappear so easily.
→ November 9, 1799, marks the end of the French Revolution with Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état, which established the Consulate, an authoritarian regime under his control.
→ In the 19th century, the Romantics opposed Classical French. In order to enrich their works, they used both “noble” words and “low” or colloquial ones.
→ At the end of the 19th century, Realist writers adopted new vocabulary resulting from the Industrial Revolution(transportation terms such as tunnel, rail, wagon, tender, tramway, steamer; medical terms such as analgesic, hydrotherapy, homeopathy, etc.). 80% of people still spoke their local patois in everyday situations.
→ In the 20th century, the advent of new technologies (such as radio, airplanes, automobiles, and trams) led to a movement toward the standardization of French. People now wanted to understand one another from region to region. Patois came to be used mainly by older generations.
→ During the First World War, soldiers from France and its colonies were sent all over the world and brought together in military units. This mixing of populations completed the disappearance of patois in favor of the French language.
→ On January 7, 1972, the French government enacted Decree No. 72-9 on the enrichment of the French language, providing for the creation of ministerial terminology commissions to expand French vocabulary. This was a reaction to the growing use of English vocabulary due to globalization and the Internet (e.g., star, scooter, live, interviewer, click, etc.).
→ On August 4, 1994, following the 1972 law, the so-called Toubon Law was enacted, aiming to impose the use of French in many areas (signage, work, education, etc.), particularly in public services.
→ In 1990, the Académie française and Francophone institutions published the 1990 report on spelling reforms (e.g., removal of hyphens in certain words, removal of the circumflex accent on i and u except in certain cases, etc.). Although officially recommended, it was not until 2008 that these changes were clearly encouraged in education in France.
notes ─────── ❖ ───────
This timeline was originally written in French and even though I tried my very best on the translation, there might still be some small errors or some things that are not comprehensible when translated into English. If you come across these difficulties when reading, please tell me so I can edit the post !!
I also want to clarify that this timeline is a very condensed version of the history and that obviously some details are missing, I only included what I thought was important and what I wanted to remember. Also keep in mind that what I, a 15 year old French student, and you think is important or interesting might differ, so you might want to look into it yourself if you want more detail and see more of the parallels between language and the political history of France.
My sources are Wikipedia, Alloprof, my own history and French textbooks and texts of law especially for the last section.
If, like me, you're interested in this topic feel free to talk to me about it, my comments and dms are always open for interesting conversations !
Not to be rhe ten millionth person to say “USAmerican President Donald Trump Is An Incoherent Public Speaker Whose Train Of Thought Can Be Best Described As Scat Jazz” but I just remembered that when he talks at international events it is several dozen people’s job to translate what he’s saying and what he intends to say to world leaders in real time
If anyone reading this isn’t fluent enough in English to understand the sentences that man says, please know that he has essentially mixed a number of adjectives and topics together in a hat and is pulling them out at random like a horrible children’s game
Like that waxy jaundiced bitch will straight up be like “J'étais sur internet l'autre jour – internet, la plus grande invention américaine. Et la Chine a “internet aussi. Pas un bon internet, pas comme le mien, j'ai un internet formidable. Les gens me disent : « Donald, ton internet est génial ! » On adore l'internet de Donald. Mais la Chine… Chine, Chine, Chine… Vous savez qu'ils mangent des oiseaux ? C'est terrible. J'adore les oiseaux. La Chine mange des oiseaux. Pas comme nous. Pas comme mes oiseaux. Mais vous savez, c'est comme ça, et c'est terrible. Mais voilà ce que je vais faire : je vais sauver les oiseaux. Je vais sauver internet et sauver les oiseaux. Tous ces magnifiques oiseaux. Pour l'Amérique. Et la Chine va nous détester pour ça. Ils vont nous détester parce qu'on est les meilleurs sur oiseaux”. And people will lose their minds
International translators have had this problem for A While - if they *don't* clean up what he says to sound coherent, they look like they're doing a bad job.
Explore Trump translation challenges, tips for interpreters, and 2025 strategies for accurate political translation and Trumpslation success
There was a scandal in Poland because one translator decided to translate him accurately, tone, vocabulary level and word salad tangents and all. Polish conservatives who don't speak English and previously only heard smoothed out translations that sounded coherent and used big words were up in arms about how the translator was "inserting her political agenda", "mocking him", "exaggerating", "purposefully trying to make him look bad" and "incredibly unprofessional". I listened to the translation in question. It was literally just accurate.
The German live interpreter for Trump's inauguration speech went viral after going "HOW LONG DO YOU WANT THIS SHIT TO GO ON???" in the middle of translating his speech.
All the steps of learning a language are easy but the problem is you have to do it over and over and over again and over again and over again and your brain needs time to process and you never quite stop feeling like you’re a bit stupid and you can do it you know you can because everyone can do it eventually but merciful god above, does it take a long time and there’s no true endpoint really because the kicker is that you’re never done learning your native language either so there’s no end point there’s just living until you die.
I once chatted with a guy from Hawaii, we started talking about languages. I mentioned that while I've heard very little of it and hardly seen more of it written down, the Hawaiian language seems to have extremely similar balance of vocals and consonants as Finnish does, so it's actually pretty likely that there are some words that exist in both languages, but mean one thing in Hawaiian and a completely differen thing in Finnish - much like in Japanese.
He didn't find it plausible, so we agreed to disagree. Later on he mentioned that his name is [firstname] Kalani Kanaele, and when I told him what that translates to in Finnish, I had to spend like 20 more minutes trying to convince him that I'm actually not fucking with him.
Okay so in finnish, "kala" means "fish" - just any fish, fish in general, and "kana" means "chicken". "Ele" is "gesture", as in a physical movement that an animal or human does to nonverbally communicate something. The -ni suffix is a possessive referring to oneself, essentially "my". In finnish, compound words are of the "if it doesn't exist yet, I can make one up on the spot" variety, so almost all nouns can be slapped together to refer to something specific.
So, broken down like this and put back together, this dude's name translates to "the chicken-like gesture that my fish makes."
