s a va a l @savaal - Tumblr Blog

I’m kind of glad to hear that everyone does this. Because it means it isn’t colonizer bullshit, it’s what everyone does. It’s just people discovering new things. Everyone goes:

“Oh hey these people have their own style of [language A’s word for thing. Say, what do you call it?”

“Oh it’s [language B’s word for thing].”

“Got it, it’s [language B’s word for thing] variety [language A’s word for thing]”

mrcloudyfun

The human race just naturally moon moons itself

headspace-hotel

Bread Bread

championoftheravenqueen

brunhiddensmusings

“the-tea-from-where-tea-is-called-by-this-name” “the-bread-from-where-bread-is-called-by-this-name” how is that not a useful term?

elalmadelmar

This is seriously not colonizer bullshit, it’s just one of the common ways that loan words work.

lemonsharks

linguistics side of tumblr please talk about how this is a type of reduplication

zwoelffarben

Andso, a finger on the monkey’s paw curled.

This isn’t a type of reduplication. Reduplication is a very specific linguistic phenomenon which refers to the duplication of phonemes, morphemes, words, or whole ass clauses, as a way to changing meaning, add or remove emphasis, or a whole bunch of other things. But it’s specifically about the repeatition of sound: ‘bread’ is reduplicated to ‘bread bread’ or ‘brebread’ or ‘breadad’ or what have you depending on your reduplication scheme; and not ‘naan bread.’

Naan Bread and such are an example of an entirely different linguistic phenomenon centering reduncency, except it isn’t the sound that’s redundent but the meaning assigned to the sound. It’s the broadest terms, naan bread is a tautology(linguistics); narrowing in on specifics, it’s Semantic Pleonasm, in which two words which convey similar information are paired together to give the best combination of information; Think “tuna fish” for a monolingual example of variety-category semantic Pleonasm. Then getting to specifics, we have Bilingual Tautological/‘Pleonastic’ Expressions, in which the combination of words are sourced from two differet languages. This is where we find ‘Naan Bread’ and everything else this post is talking about.

Lastly, related to this post but having nothing to do with bread are an incomplete lists of places whose name are Bilingual Pleonastic Expressions, and RAS Syndrome which is another type of Pleonasm that people tend to tie their boxers into knots over.

allthingslinguistic

Obligatory addition of the Wikipedia List of tautological place names article for the Everyone Does This point.

anerea-lantiria

Middle Kingdom LoTR by Leia Ham

todisfake

2020 is saying sorry

babyanimalgifs

This has got to be the most wholesome video ever

via @themilestwins

babyanimalgifs

This is what dreams are made of

hilariousgrindr

You were closer the first time

highestnut

It warms my heart that Robert Irwin is the same goofball his father was

kyoru-shirbert

chaotic dumbass

thatdisasterauthor

I nearly spit out my fucking drink.

grimeclown

Yall ever heard white church music? Christian rock is one of the most gratingly generic and repetitive genres of music out there by a mile. It sucks so fucking bad. I am talking about this now because someone is sitting in front of the hospital and blaring “how great? Is our god?” As loud as the speakers in his truck can handle

grimeclown

I dont. Want recommendations. I cannot stress how much i do not care about what “good” christian rock is. I am not looking for a more palatable form of white people singing about the christian faith. I have not and will not ever listen to Skillet.

grimeclown

Okay listening exclusively to gospel is insane but i want to be exceedingly clear. Im talking about white church music. Im talking “your pastor has a ‘very special guest’ whos a pretty blond boy with long hair that wears a denim jacket and unfortunately someone is handing him a guitar” kinda music. The kind of music those white soccer moms stand up and close their eyes and sway to with rapturous enjoyment. Im talking about the bands that play for congregations that look like this.

solarcowboykid

and then they play the same five songs that all sound the same but are annoying in different ways for a year straight but make them all twelve minutes each when they're only supposed to be four minutes and they're also sung out of everyone's range

autisticexpression

The problem with generic white boy praise music is it's not a genuine expression of culture or even of faith. It's soulless pandering that is designed to be as generic and broadly appealing as possible to make christianity seem cool to the youth. But it doesn't fucking work because it's so boring and substanceless that it means absolutely nothing to anyone who doesn't already believe in the message. I went to a Christian school and I know. There was always at least four atheist or atheist adjecant kids sitting in the back of chapel looking absolutely miserable. It just fails on every level and shouldn't exist. It's basically the same level of mindless disingenuous crap as post-911 country music.

On the other hand, gospel music, traditional hymns and carols? That shit slaps! You can enjoy it even if you aren't religious because it's just objectively good music that wasn't manufactured to pander to as broad a demographic as possible.

grimeclown

Oh wow somebody actually left a good response on this post

mjalti

Putting myself gently down in a tub of boiling hot water feels so good… god should’ve made me a bag of tea honestly

babyanimalgifs

so we just gonna act like they didn’t just commit a hit and run?

chromeoncream

jads-abum-rat

vespertineflora

[audio transcript]

Woman: He’s fine. He misses you.

Man: Give him my love.

Woman: Will do.

[woman looks at ridiculous oversized bird]

Woman: SQUAWK

Bird: SQUAWK

THE END

stability

Good to know shitposting has been around since the inception of cinema

bixbiboom

The Backstreet Boys performing I Want It That Way together from each of their homes is exactly what I needed today.

starsandskies-archive

OMGGGGGGG

helila

wherefore-do-i-wont-trespass

how is this different than the Imagine song every one threw a fit about???? That one dude has a whole ass elaborate chandelier hanging behind him????

randomslasher

It’s different because their singing is a product they already know people want.

The problem with the Imagine video wasn’t that “celebrities are rich people!” --we already knew that.

The problem was a group of random celebrities--many of whom are decidedly NOT singers--put out a presumptuous collab that absolutely dripped with the patronizing assumption that it was what we all wanted.

No one asked for it. It wasn’t their song, they didn’t do an especially good job performing it, and it didn’t impart a particularly relevant message (in fact, one could argue it’s almost inappropriate to sing a song about imagining no heaven when people are dying, and many of the survivors are trying to take comfort in their faith).

It’s false sentiment delivered by a group of people who are presuming that a syrupy rendition of a well-known and important (or at least important sounding) song performed by well-known and (in their minds) important people would make all of the unimportant little people feel better during a global pandemic.

It was tone deaf (sometimes literally), it was condescending as fuck, and it painted an unintentionally embarrassing picture of inflated self-importance that was really just a bunch of celebrities trying to stay relevant in this time when they’re not getting the amount of attention they’re all used to.

Backstreet Boys, on the other hand, are a music brand. This is their product. This is what they DO. And the tone of their video is one of “haha, hey, I know we’re not those kids anymore, but here’s some nostalgia we can all laugh at.” They hammed it up, some of them brought their kids into the video, and it was clear throughout all of it they weren’t taking themselves too seriously. They let themselves be the butt of the playful joke, rather than trying to impart a quasi-profound message that wasn’t even theirs to deliver (and didn’t even apply to our current circumstances in any meaningful way).

Musicians offering us their products in videos like this one already have proof that it’s something we want, and they’re doing it to help boost morale and give disappointed fans who are missing out on concerts something for free.

The Imagine video, by contrast, gave us a steaming heap of nothing so a group of celebs could feel self-important and significant during a time when everyone is suddenly realizing that they aren’t.

That’s the difference.

prismatic-bell

Hozier’s done two from-home concerts during this, and it’s the same. His close friend (and normally his bassist) came over to play piano, they sat on opposite sides of the camera frame, and they basically acted like a pair of good mates playing a bar set, joking with each other and asking for requests while also explaining what current WHO guidelines are and raising money in €4 increments (that’s about $4.35 USD) for a child abuse prevention charity in Ireland that’s struggling under the weight of the needs of quarantined children.

We needed fun and normalcy, they gave it to us and did something good in the meantime. (And also agreed to cover Toxic by Britney Spears.) There was literally no message there beyond “please stay safe and also, if you can, these kids need help.”

We don’t need to be preached at. We need to know we’re in this together. And yes, we need the arts. They feed the soul. But there are ways to do it, and ways not to.