do you have any recommendations for the most important things a layperson (with limited time and energy) should learn in order to not be completely stupid about linguistics?
hey fun little leit motif i caught. the theme from "our hextech dream" when jayce and viktor first meet and come up with hextech is used in their final scene together, building up to "we finish this together." in case you wanted to scream and pound your fists a little harder.
It took me some time to understand what struck me so deep about Viktor and Jayce and their terribly beautiful ending. Now I get it. They don't love eachother like cait and vi love each other, like a "classic" ship you can fully understand. They have a unique, indescribable, not entirely graspable relationship. And the buildup to that is really, really good. There are a lot of thing arcane s2 failed for me, but surely not them. They were made into something so beautiful, and that makes me so happy. It's not about if they're lovers or brothers. They love eachother and that's all there is to be understood
Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay.
Fluid Speech [Explained]
Transcript
[Above the panel:]
Fun fact: Experienced speakers constantly merge, drop, and alter sounds when talking at normal conversational speed to optimize for efficient mouth movement.
[The panel shows four labeled side profiles of a mouth with paths of sounds made in different parts of the mouth. There is a label "More fluid" with an arrow pointing to the right.
From left to right:]
[Label:] Going to /ɡoʊɪŋ tu/
[Path:] (G O >> I >> NG >> >> ) ( >> T >> >> O)
[Label:] Goin' to /ɡoʊɪn tə/
[Path:] (G O >> I >> N)(T >> >> O)
[Label:] Gonna /ɡʌn.ə/
[Path:] (G O >> NN >> A)
[Label:] How fluent speakers actually say it when speaking rapidly /ɡə̃/
[Path:] (G >> >> ə̃)
[Below the panel:] If you think you don't do this, try to use "hot potato" in a sentence and fully pronounce the first "t" without sounding like an alien impersonating a human.
Okay, so I doubt that there can be any new takes on Arcane anymore, but here is my personal analysis because I'm still not over this show.
Arcane is about many things, and I could deconstruct and analyze its themes of family, legacy, class, power, and progress for days on end. In fact, quite a few people already have.
But one of the most intriguing topics Arcane covers is that of violence, and you can see that reflected quite a bit in the show's visual parallels and dialogue choices.
But let's start with the first act. In the very first scene, we see a young Vi and Powder, surrounded by death and violence at a young age. The scene is very intentionally shot through Powder's eyes, and the faces of the enforcers are distorted with white scribbles that resemble monsters. It's a simple trick, but a brilliant early introduction to this theme. Violence and death are portrayed as something too dark and horrific for Powder to comprehend or look in the face. A monster. (Do you see where I'm going with this?)
The rest of the first two episodes are notoriously not the most theme-heavy of the series, but they do lay some crucial early groundwork for later heartbreak. Primarily, we have this lovely dichotomy between mature ideas (poverty and class disputes, trauma, and suicide) and the relative innocence of our four main children. Once again, it's a very intentional choice to follow the perspectives of children, and in this case it's to understand how hard Vander works to preserve what remains of these kids' innocence. They don't understand why he would make a deal with enforcers, because they still see the world in merely black and white. They don't have the same knowledge and trauma that Vander carries.
There's another great moment in the first episode, where the rest of the gang are fighting street thugs, and Powder stands off to the side, utterly petrified, while the battle plays out in slow motion. And we can see how, even at her young age, she can't truly be protected from the brutal world she was raised in.
Then, the infamous third episode. This takes the delicate illusion maintained by Vander and utterly shatters it. And Vi has to watch, helpless, while a good friend of hers is murdered and her dad is dragged away to meet a presumably worse fate. And in this moment, the art direction really says more than words. Vi is sitting alone in a dark room, bathed in a bright red light, sobbing. That's something that's going to stick with you.
And Powder? Well, she's going through some stuff. This episode gives us the juiciest visual parallels of all, with Powder and Silco's falls, as well as Vi attacking Powder being an obvious mirror for Silco and Vander. This is the cycle of violence. It was started by Piltover and encouraged by enforcers, but every character in the show had their part in promoting it, even Vander. The only true innocent here is Powder, which makes the ensuing events all the more tragic. And to be clear, I don't think that the decisions made by the characters in this show are necessarily bad, what's bad is that they're trapped in a system where no matter what choice they make, someone gets hurt.
From here, each character steps into a drastically different role in the story. Vi has seen what violence does, and the people that it hurts, and she's trying to grapple with that truth in a world where that's also the only way to get results. Add onto this the fact that Vi herself has lived a life defined by cruelty, and in many ways her utility as a human is viewed through the lens of "how dangerous can she be?" This is one of the reasons why her romance with Caitlyn is such a critical part of her arc. Caitlyn sees her as someone whose value is not dependent on how strong she is, but how kind she is.
Meanwhile Powder, now Jinx, goes from the abused to the abuser. She's been hurt so badly that she believes the only way to heal is to tear it all down, even if others get hurt in the process. She spends the whole show chasing validation through increasingly horrific acts, constantly trying to fill a void that she will never be able to.
And this bring us to The Scene. Before the cinematic masterpiece that is the Ekko and Jinx fight scene, we see Jinx walking on the bridge, the air hazy, amongst a myriad of dead bodies. Humming the same song she was humming as a little kid. And the screen is distorted and scribbled on just the same. She is the monster now.
In the iconically gay bed scene, Vi mentions that she spent her whole life chasing away imaginary monsters for Powder, "and then a real monster showed up." While she's likely referring to Silco here, the real monster is of course Jinx herself, as reference in the title of the finale and the first line in What Could Have Been. "I am the monster you created." The only way for Jinx to cope with the violence inflicted on her as a child was for her to put herself in a situation where she could never be hurt like that again, this time by being the one that hurts others.
Anyways hyped for season two. I hope the gay people are gay for each other and I hope they invent therapy so they can give all of it to Jinx.
Level 1: I didn't assume that these two words with similar spellings and related meanings share a common origin because I don't think about things like that.
Level 2: I'm completely certain these two words with similar spellings and related meanings share a common origin because it's fucking obvious just from looking at them, you absolute simpleton.
Level 3: I didn't assume that these two words with similar spellings and related meanings share a common origin because I know what a false cognate is.
Level 4: I know all the common patterns of historical sound shifts, which means I can spot non-obvious cognates, and I'm completely certain that these two words share an origin. It's hard being a genius.
Level 5: I've learned the actual sound shifts that historically occurred in this specific language family, and it turns out those two words weren't related after all. Whoops.
Level 6: I mean... if you think about it... all words share a common origi*deafening gunshot originating from the anthropology department*
And I'm glad we get to see new writers (and new actors!) get there, that what they did gets to be something and gets to be liked. And that they get to make mistake. And if we get a s2, it might be better than s1 and it would be beautiful.
So please stop praising Neil Gaiman for he has not written this show, and you can literally see that. Neil Gaiman would not have written Dead boy detective. Partly because there are a lot or narrative/pacing mistakes that a writer with his experience would not have made, and mostly because Steve Yockey wrote it, alongside other very promising writers, and that's great that's this way.
So go watch it, and take your indulgence with you !
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