Smol Australian Just Trying To Be Fluent In French

Changez votre vie aujourd'hui. Ne pariez pas sur l'avenir, agissez maintenant, sans délai. - Simone de Beauvoir. Currently learning Indonesian and French.

[hilarioushumorfromouterspace]

[aim-and-ignights]

Same energy

[maxeth]

trifecta

[sighinastorm]

quadrifecta

[truffledmadness]

“Tortilla” would match to “torta”, which….is a real Spanish word that just means cake, y’all.

Tortillas are little flat cakes.

[doomedgirls]

in addition, mosca means fly

mosquito does mean little fly

lmfao

[anoctopus]

‘dump’ is an old adjective that meant “doughy” so “dumpling” is basically “little doughy thing”

[sighinastorm]

Yes but that’s not funny.

[nutwit]

Doro still at large

[disney-universes]

So the big plot twist of Cruella is the reasons she wants to kill dalmatians for a coat is because her mom was killed by dalmatians as a kid.

There, I saved you 30 bucks Premium Access.

[tsvete]

WHAT?

[sayorkunau]

wh

[allthingslinguistic]

There’s a theory that early Europeans started saying “brown one” or “honey-eater” instead of “bear” to avoid summoning them, and similarly my friend has started calling Alexa “the faceless woman” because saying her true name awakens her from her slumber

English has an avoidance register used in the presence of certain respected animals, which sounds fancy until you realize it’s spelling out w-a-l-k and t-r-e-a-t in front of the dog.

Mx. Leah Velleman on twitter

[a-book-of-creatures]

Icelandic folklore requires you avoid saying the names of evil whales, otherwise you’ll draw their attention.

[fidoruh]

Yall have evil whales?

[a-book-of-creatures]

Iceland does! They are the illhveli, literally “evil whales”, and they live to kill you. They love nothing more than killing and eating humans and sinking their ships. Their greatest enemy is the steypireydur (that’s blue whale to you), which is the greatest of the good whales and the protector of sailors.

All evil whales are, well, evil. So evil that if you speak their name at sea, they will hear it and home in on you. So instead you use all sorts of euphemisms for their names. Also if you try to cook their meat it literally disappears from the pot. That’s right, they’re so evil, you can’t even eat them.

They include such types as the hrosshvalur (horsewhale), with big eyes and a red mane and tail. This is probably the best known and most feared of the lot.

The raudkembingur (redcomb) is especially cruel and bloodthirsty even by illhveli standards. If you manage to escape it, it will die of frustration.

Good luck escaping the mushveli (mousewhale) though, it has legs! And will clamber onto the beach in pursuit!

Or what about death from above? The stökkull (jumper) leaps high into the air and pile-drives boats to pieces.

Meanwhile the skeljungur (shellwhale) sits in the path of boats and lets them get wrecked on its shelly hide…

… while the sverdhvalur (swordwhale) slices through boats with its dorsal fin.

The katthveli (catwhale) is relatively harmless though. It meows.

The same can’t be said of the lyngbakur (heatherback), a classic island fish that lets sailors get on its back and then dives, taking them to a watery grave.

The nauthveli (oxwhale) on the other hand specially targets cattle, attracting them into the sea with its bellow before tearing them apart.

How can you avoid all these murderous whales, like the taumafiskur (bridlefish) here? Any of a number of ways, including getting a steypireydur to help. There are substances, ranging from angelica to sheep dung and chopped fox testicles, that they find abhorrent. And you can distract them with loud noises and barrels.

For more, I assure you this link will answer all your questions.

https://abookofcreatures.com/category/illhveli/

Illhveli – A Book of Creatures

Posts about Illhveli written by abookofcreatures

[fixyourwritinghabits]

This is also why fairies were referred to as the ‘Good Neighbors’ and why there are so many nicknames for Satan.

The concept of avoidance speech is endlessly fascinating and rife with plot points for writing, but honestly I’m just thrilled about the EVIL WHALES.

[perfectly-fuckingcivil]

@spiritspodcast

[freedominthedarkmp3]

One time this man approached me in a bar talking in Spanish. So I assumed he was Spanish and we started speaking, we had a whole ass conversation and at some point he was like. So what part of Spain are you from? And I said well I’m Italian actually. What part of Spain are you from? And he was like. I’m Greek.

[pastelpinkcheeks]

One time I was in Argentina and I was so tired of trying to speak Spanish because I’m not very good at it lmao so I broke into exasperated English and the retail seller girl quickly understood me and engaged me in conversation. We talked for a while, she introduced me to a makeup brand, and then I decided to buy it. While she was packaging the purchase, she asked me if I were from the US or perhaps the UK and I just said “oh no I’m Brazilian hahah” and she looked me straight in the eyes and said, in clear Portuguese, “I’m Brazilian too”

[ex-evil-genius-deactivated20220]

When my dad went to China on a work trip, his Mandarin speaking wasn’t great but his listening was fine (his first language is Cantonese) and he encountered a German guy who had moved to China to work. My dad knew how to speak German because he studied it in university (but wasn’t great when it came to listening to new vocab he hadn’t studied before), and the German guy knew Mandarin because he lived and worked in China, so they had a conversation where my dad spoke to the German guy in German and the guy responded in Mandarin. I’m sure it confused a lot of their coworkers who just saw the Asian guy speaking German and the white guy speaking Mandarin.

[theriversdaughter]

Some years ago, I worked for a manufacturing company that had a service depot in China.  One of the engineers from the main office here in the US spent most of his time at the depot.  The problem was that he didn’t speak *any* of the various Chinese languages, and no one at the depot spoke any English. They all, however, spoke Spanish.

[whofilets]

On a trip to Spain with an East Asian-American (me), a South Asian-American, and um a white North Dakotan we wandered into a garden and a man came out from behind a corner and tried and failed to speak to us in Spanish (we didn’t speak enough), English (he didn’t speak enough), what I guessed was Portuguese, settling on the just-enough-French I knew to tell us that we had trespassed into the monastery and needed to leave

[ikkimikki]

A long, long time ago, I had a hot summer fling in Nice. He spoke no English and my French language skills were limited to basic social pleasantries. We both had a passing knowledge of German though that got us through our time together.

[mondfahrt]

A friend of mine spent a few months working in Ireland. She’s from south Germany with a bit of dialect from there. In Ireland, she met a guy at a pub who was also from Germany but from the North with basically no dialect. After a while they decided to communicate in English because they hated each other’s dialect in German.

[medusagirlfriend-blog]

i love the way women talk… every woman has their own fun expressions and mannerisms we have FUN with it men all talk the same

[medusagirlfriend-blog]

in actual honesty there’s tons of research on how women are linguistic innovators (one example: a study conducted about language changes in english from 1417 to 1681 found that 11 out of the 14 changes they studied were led by young girls, and the 3 remaining linguistic changes were linked to men’s greater access to education) and you can still see that all the time because women talk so distinctively and so fun like you can see young women leading linguistic change all around you

[pansoph]

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.  

[fatterdragon]

All of these *chef’s kiss* but the Medea one is hands down the best

[whatshouldwecallhomer]

s/o to my classics professor who managed to get a tire changed on his rental car while doing research in Greece by telling them his chariot had broken down

[runawaymarbles]

I was once in the Italian equivalent of Costco and could not find hide nor hair of some vegetarian meatballs that we had bought there before. I didn’t know the Italian word for vegetarian, but I DID know the words for “lie” and “meat.”

[tchaikovskaya]

french people will really be like “our société? culturally catholique? mais non, this country is laïque there is no public religion to be found here!” and then 5 minutes later say “oh we do not work tomorrow because it is *checks french fonction publique calendrier* the feast of the assumption of the holy virgin mary so every public building in the whole entire country is closed :)”

[tchaikovskaya]

idk which is funnier, the fact that 90% of the french people reblogging this agree and think its funny or the other 10% who are Très Bouleversé™ writing entire essays correcting me. 

like i know you people have argumentative writing skills drilled into your head by the french education system from the age of 10 or whatever but please calmez-vous lol

[sistertaxon]

types of stard

mu

ba

[brunhiddensmusings]

this is oddly close to real ‘ard’ is a real suffix in the english language just like ‘ly’ or ‘ify’, it just isnt common enough for us to notice its usage. ‘ard’ means ‘too much’ or ‘too easily’ so ‘mustard’ is something that is ‘too pungent’, just as ‘wizard’ is someone who is too wise, ‘coward’ is someone too easily cowed, and ‘drunkard’ is someone too often drunk

this implies that ‘bastard’ is someone who is too ‘bast’ and this needs experimentation and research

[sistertaxon]

Are you fucking serious omg

[necromancy-savant]

This is pretty much correct. According to the OED bastard is from Old French and the bast- part means “pack saddle” which was used as a bed by mule drivers, giving the phrase fils de bast, a child conceived on the pack saddle instead of the marriage bed. In English it becomes bastard, the -ard being a pejorative. It is the same one as wizard and coward and drunkard.

[ritavonbees]

types of ard

must

bast

wiz

cow

[ghast505-deactivated20220904]

my brain feels Expanded

[dedalvs]

Awesome Childhood Spelling

Uhh…where it says “looked” read “lopped”. lol This is based on the original tweet you see up there by Twitter user @Sal_Perez4 (see the original tweet here).

[lesbianshepard]

 i recommend learning other alphabets if for no other reason than it’s very fun to see people replace latin alphabet letters with complete nonsense for Aesthetic

[lesbianshepard]

as julius caesar famously said: “vspph vphdph vphcph”

[wizardlyghost]

as brutus said, tase him again

[zukosgay]

diseases in english are like “oh you have conjungitivitistittis. :)”

german meanwhile is like “you have hurty tummy syndrome :////”

[zukosgay]

going to a doctor in english: my esophagus seems to be inflamed and my trachea is itchy

going to a doctor in german: uwu dokteur, my eat-tube and breathe-tube are hurty :[[

dokteur: ahhh, yes, that is the eat-tube-and-breathe-tube-itchy-hurty-syndrome, here have some ibuprofen

[the-illusion-of-sanity]

“i need to go see the otolaryngologist” “oh you mean the throat-noses-ears-doctor?”

[zukosgay]

birth control vs. antibabypillen

[toes-or-not]

getting a ride 2 tge hospital in an ambulance vs. getting a ride 2 the sickhouse in a sickwagon

[earthdeep]

I have some bad news about like 90% of “english” medical words, bc a whole lot is just the science mash of greek and latin. dermatitis, laryngitis and bronchitis are just skin-problem, throat-problem, lung-problem. we just have the compound words be ones we don’t use outside of scientific fields, bc english is five languages in a trenchcoat carrying a sack of stolen vocabulary.

[zukosgay]

i know and understand that, but i’d still rather be getting a sick ride to the sickhouse in my sickwagon

[brunhiddensmusings]

learn enough latin and suddenly all words sound like the german words that sound made up

[hilarioushumorfromouterspace]

[nualie]

because you stole that word from french lol

Queue: consonnant sound

Queue: you can’t follow a q with a e, you need a u in between. in french u gotta

Queue: the eu sound is actually not like how you say q at all, it’s a french e sound but it’s longer (also distinguishes from the word que)

Queue: it’s a feminine word so it gets a e at the end

[gaphic]

u say that like its somehow better and not just a crushing indictment of french

[hustlerose]

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Nisl vel pretium lectus quam id leo in. Magna eget est lorem ipsum dolor. Faucibus et molestie ac feugiat sed lectus vestibulum. Semper viverra nam libero justo laoreet. Nulla facilisi cras fermentum odio eu feugiat pretium. Mi proin sed libero enim sed faucibus turpis in eu. Morbi tincidunt ornare massa eget. 

Habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et. 

Sed turpis tincidunt id aliquet risus feugiat in ante metus. 

Tortor vitae purus faucibus ornare suspendisse sed. 

Massa massa ultricies mi quis hendrerit dolor magna. Sed ullamcorper morbi tincidunt ornare massa eget. 

AT ERAT PELLENTESQUE ADIPISCING COMMODO! Ac tortor vitae purus faucibus. Blandit turpis cursus in hac habitasse platea. Sapien et ligula ullamcorper malesuada. Interdum consectetur libero id faucibus.

Ultricies lacus sed turpis tincidunt id aliquet risus. 

Ut tortor pretium viverra suspendisse potenti nullam ac tortor vitae. Pretium nibh ipsum consequat nisl vel. 

Purus in mollis nunc sed id semper. 

Facilisis leo vel fringilla est ullamcorper eget. Leo vel fringilla est ullamcorper eget nulla facilisi.

Gravida cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient. Integer enim neque volutpat ac tincidunt vitae. At lectus urna duis convallis convallis tellus id interdum velit. Donec et odio pellentesque diam volutpat commodo. Massa enim nec dui nunc mattis enim ut. Vulputate dignissim suspendisse in est ante in nibh mauris cursus. Egestas erat imperdiet sed euismod nisi porta lorem mollis aliquam. Varius morbi enim nunc faucibus. 

Ullamcorper malesuada proin libero nunc. Consectetur purus ut faucibus pulvinar elementum integer enim. A diam sollicitudin tempor id. Arcu cursus euismod quis viverra nibh cras pulvinar mattis. Faucibus ornare suspendisse sed nisi lacus sed. Netus et steven universe malesuada fames ac turpis. In nisl nisi scelerisque eu ultrices vitae auctor. Nibh tortor id aliquet lectus. Scelerisque varius morbi enim nunc faucibus a pellentesque sit amet. Nisl suscipit adipiscing bibendum est ultricies integer. Diam donec adipiscing tristique risus nec feugiat.

Mauris nunc congue nisi vitae suscipit tellus mauris a. Laoreet sit amet cursus sit amet dictum sit amet. Dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit pellentesque. Orci dapibus ultrices in iaculis nunc sed. Mattis ullamcorper velit sed ullamcorper morbi tincidunt ornare massa eget. Ultrices aphobe tincidunt arcu non sodales neque sodales. Posuere morbi leo urna molestie. Posuere urna nec tincidunt praesent semper feugiat nibh sed. Purus semper eget duis at tellus at. Ut tellus elementum sagittis vitae et. Elit eget gravida cum sociis natoque penatibus. 

[grawly]

Etiam et bibendum turpis. Pellentesque congue purus id ex aliquet, eget viverra lacus viverra. Proin ut justo eu risus dignissim pharetra vel vel mi. Ut ac posuere purus. Nulla porta ut ipsum ut luctus. Phasellus euismod purus turpis, quis posuere enim imperdiet eu. Proin at leo ultrices, commodo mauris eget, dapibus quam. 

Nullam at felis in orci tempor ultrices tincidunt sed augue. 

[hustlerose]

Nullam at felis in orci tempor ultrices tincidunt sed augue.

Nullam at felis in orci tempor ultrices tincidunt sed augue.

Nullam at felis in orci tempor ultrices tincidunt sed augue.

[alexseanchai]

I love how everyone knows this is an epic argument just by the formatting of the lorem ipsum

[1esknineteen]

[decoy-ocelot]

Oh, oh, this reminds me of the only known bilingual palindrome:

Anger? ‘Tis safe never. Bar it! Use love.

Spell that backward and you get:

Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which is Latin for:

Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!

[verylostpenguin]

Me: hey, I’ve started learning Latin!

Friend: cool! So how would you say hello, my name is X?

Me: …

Me: wanna know 6 words for slaughter

[teaandplantdad]

dark academia guide to study latin

As somone who studyed latin at school for five years, here are my tips for all of you who want to teach themselfes how to speak latin:

Forget everything you know about learning a new language. Latin and Greek are different in structure from any laguage you might know. It doesn´t work like English or French or German. The translating is much more mathematical.

Grab a vocabulary book.

Study every vocab in there (it should be about 2.5k).

Realize that there is no word for yes or no but about ten related to killing and dying

Take a look at the grammar. All of it.

Study it until it´s stuck in your brain. You´ll have to remember every little piece of it. Except for maybe the NcI. I never needed that.

At this point you will probably notice that it is almost impossible to learn how to actually speak Latin. Give up that dream. Not even my Latin teacher was able to do that.

Grab any Text from Ovid or Ceasar.

Never just translate from the start to the end of a sentence. Always look for the predicate first and build your sentence up on that. Expect very, very long sentences.

Now you will realize that even translating is a ton lot more difficult than yout thought and you will probbably fail, even if you know all the vocabs and grammar. Again, learning Latin doesn´t work like lerning French. You have to analyse every letter because one small “e” instead of an “a” could change the whole translation.

Hopefully you have now noticed that teaching Latin to yourself within a few months won´t work and believing so was naive.

You could probably learn it with a proper teacher and lots of time, but then it won´t be fun anymore and you will suffer just like all of us students did learning it at school.

Forget about the idea.

Cry.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

which country was it whose population was so intermarried they had to make an app to help people prevent from accidentally hooking up with their cousins 

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Iceland

[kavesinisukka]

To be fair, they have like 360,000 people and don’t use surnames

[maybelia]

What do you mean they don’t use surnames???! How the fuck does that even work??

[kavesinisukka]

Their names are patronyms and matronym, meaning formed from their parents names. Like so: Luke Anakinsson and Leia Padmesdottir (Padme’s daughter). Phone books and other directories are organised by first name. I think it was only recently they allowed foreign immigrants to keep their last names once they got the nationality

[anarkissa]

You left out the best bit: while the convention is that males use patronyms and females matronyms, you can choose which parent you want to honour with the -nym; you could also be Luke Padmesson or Leia Anakinsdottir if you want.

Also just to point out that for many places, surnames are a relatively recent thing for most social strata. Patro/matronymics predate them in almost every part of Europe, and in many places surnames started out as patronymics. This is why you have all the surnames ending in -son/-sen in the UK and Scandinavia, -ex in Spanish, -vich (or a variation thereof) in Slavic languages, Mac- in Gaelic, O’- in Irish etc. All these are patronymics that predate the use of surnames.

Plus, the arrival of the surname is a very recent thing in many parts of Europe. In the Nordics, only people belonging to the estates (so nobility, clergy, bourgeoisie and land-owning peasantry, a small minority of the total population) had surnames before the 19th century. The vast majority of people would only have a first name, using either patro/matronymic (or in Finland the name of the house or village where they worked and lived) to distinguish themselves from those with the same name if needed. In Finland, people have been required by law to have a surname for only a century (exactly: the first law on surnames came into effect in 1920). Iceland never did that.

And ultimately, why should they? A surname is just a convention that people have at some point decided on – and one that emphasises your patrilinear family over you as an individual and the rest of your relatives.

[anarkissa]

Also, since I only now noticed one of the previous rebloggers observing in tags that the Icelandic system must be hard on non-binary people, I give you this further gem:

In 2019, changes were announced to the laws governing names. Given names will no longer be restricted by gender. Moreover, Icelanders who are officially registered with non-binary gender will be permitted to use the patro/matronymic suffix -bur (“child of”) instead of -son or -dóttir.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name

[strangewomanwithanefariousagenda]

love the addition!