kurt's language place

he/him // native english speaker learning german + other odds and ends // neurodivergent // main: spacefroggity // writing: bookfroggity

[studyfroggity]

I will die on this hill

[studyfroggity]

Girl help the trads found me

[charaznablescanontoyota]

on one hand i understand the frustration with the fact that duolingo is only Now putting up yiddish as a language when they have fictional languages like klingon on there but on the other hand part of the reason why is that they literally for years could not pick a specific dialect of yiddish and ended up actively employing yiddish scholars to work in bits from academic+historical yiddish as well as contemporary vernacular yiddish and basically had to build the entire thing ground-up rather than being handed some showrunner’s language bible

anyway it’s actually really interesting to read about how they built the yiddish program for duolingo yall should check it out

[crittizen]

JUMPING UP AND DOWN ON THE FURNITURE

[studyfroggity]

OH PARTY

[lgbt-tiktoks]

[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.”

[suspected-spinozist]

My favorite ever pronoun story has to be one of my German professor’s. He fondly remembers being mugged by a gang of teenagers in Dresden, who used Sie (formal you) the entire time.  

[ask-sparkling-awesomeness]

HAND OVER THE WALLET MY GOOD SIR

[lesbiancinnabun-deactivated2023]

Sie (abfällig)

[thechekhov]

Ur a native Russian speaker, ye?

I’ve heard it said that when resting (Like, not talking or eating), native English speakers keep their tongue on the bottom of their mouth, while native Russian speakers keep their tongue at the top of their mouth. Confirm/deny?

Okay, so this is fascinating, and doubly so, because you actually took this commonly spread tidbit and flipped it around. Usually, when this gets passed around the internet it takes the opposite format:

[TEXT: A reddit post that reads “TIL that native German and Russian speaker’s tongues naturally rest on the bottom of their mouths while English speakers tongues rest on the top.”]

Which makes me wonder if YOUR personal experience is that of being an English speaker who rests their tongue on the bottom.

So, as we may already guess, everything is a little bit more complex than this calorie-free tidbit is making it out to be. Let’s delve deeper into why this sort of thing is so popular in pop linguistics and spreads so quickly.

There are two parts to this:

1) Like most pop-linguistics things, there IS some truth to this fun fact, but it’s not that simple.

2) By and large, this statement kind of assumes a lot about tongue position and secondly, it makes the speakers conscious enough of their own position to immediately try to jump to conclusions. 

First thing I want to say is - many people reading this may assume that ‘tongue position’ can vary wildly, and there’s a TON of variation between ‘resting flat’ and ‘touching the roof of your mouth.’ You may feel like there’s TONS of room in there!

Actually, your tongue is HUGE. It takes up tons of space inside your mouth as a general rule. This is actually closer to the truth:

[Image Description: A realistic cross-section of a person’s jaw to nose area. The tongue muscle is shown on the diagram, taking up 90% of the empty space inside the mouth.]

What I mean is, it’s entirely possible that at any given point in time, your tongue position may depend on OTHER factors - like whether you’re breathing through your mouth or your nose, whether you keep your teeth partially opened even when your mouth is closed or whether you naturally clench your jaw. (Unclench that jaw, friend. Breathe.)

Also, you may not know this but regardless of what language they speak, most humans will touch a part of their tongue to the inside of their mouth to create an airtight seal - to prevent air from going into the mouth area when they’re breathing through their nose. This is because human evolution has not yet given us the patch update that separates our food holes and air holes completely. 

(By the way, many other animals don’t suffer from this, which makes funny memes like this pointless.)

(Dolphins don’t breathe through their mouth!)

THAT BEING SAID - there IS some truth to this.

Tongue position is important in languages, and not every language has the same type of sound inventory! Which means that if ___ sound is more common in one language, and it requires one specific tongue position, it may be advantageous to have your tongue ‘at the ready’ so to speak.

Here’s a fun try-it-for-yourself science you can do:

Get ready to say the word ‘soup’. Now say it - but stop at ‘s’, don’t do the vowels. What shape are your lips in?

Now get ready to say the word ‘seed’. Again - say the ‘s’ sound and go no further. What shape are your lips in now? 

Chances are, when you planned to say soup, your S came out through rounded lips, because you planned to say the ‘oo’ sound in soup next. But when you planned to say seed, your mouth is already making preparations for the ‘ee’ and stretching out sideways. 

In the same way, when you are thinking about saying something and are getting ready to say it, your tongue and lips naturally move into position to prepare for that. 

Now... CAN there be a default resting position for speakers of the same language? 

I suppose there could be a GENERAL trend, yes. But I’m skeptical of any research that claims to know exactly what it is, because you’d need a HUGE sample size, controlled studies and etc. Plus this may depend on age, genetics, and a whole bunch of other stuff that will effect outcome. 

I cannot give you any reliable answer to this question because as soon as I read your ask, my tongue moves and I can no longer say where it is NORMALLY. I think it’s probably at the top of my mouth. 

I speak a lot of English in everyday life. Would it change if I went to Russia and was expected to speak Russian on the daily? Who knows.

Anyway, point of it all is - we need bigger sample sizes and more precise data!

[sopstvena]

“A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules, a language is a flash of the human spirit. It’s a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities”

— Wade Davis (via linguisten)

[lagom-languages-deactivated2022]

B1/B2 is the worst level of language learning to be at bc when ur C1 and people ask you if you speak a language, ur like hell ya bitch i do, and when ur A1/A2 ur like umm not really, but when you’re B1/B2 it’s like??? do i speak that language???

[turfberry]

cool i feel like i know what you’re talking about but at the same time, maybe not

[lagom-languages-deactivated2022]

the B1/B2 experience

[lexiconofhope]

Congrats to Irish learners in Ireland for getting Irish to be the top studied language in Ireland on Duolingo this year! I’m happy to see a Celtic language on top somewhere and to see more study of Irish in general! Comhghairdeas!

[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

[studyfroggity]

Not to flex but umm 💪💪

[lovecrumbss]

in Italy when we want to describe a caring, loving boy with a very good heart we use to say “è buono come il pane” which literally means “he’s as good as bread” and I think it’s beautiful.

[secifosseluce]

we also say “bello come il sole”, “as handsome as the sun” to compliment their physical appearance. i usually hear it used for bright, warm-looking men! 

[clouds-of-wings]

I’m feeling kinda evil and want to create a pan-Germanic anti-Esperanto. Just take the most annoying and difficult features from each Germanic language and create a super complicated and frustrating language, taking in each case the vocab that is the most false-friend-y or else has a totally different etymology than the word each neighbour language uses.

It will have the 2 different conditional moods, the complicated comma and capitalization rules of German; the random pronunciation and the 10 different meanings for each word of English; the 98453 vowel sounds of Danish, the grave accent and weird use of definite adjective/noun forms of Swedish; the general grammatical complexity of Icelandic; the random Hebrew imports of Yiddish (also to piss of the Nazis who might want to use it); it will definitely have ð, þ, ö, ä, ü, å, ø and ß. Having ø and ö is especially fun since they’re basically the same letter, it will be completely random where you have to use ø and where ö, but if you mix it up you’ll call someone’s mom a rabid chipmunk.

I love the way Swedish massacres French words (enquête -> enkät, wonderful! sauce -> sås, great!) and makes everyone wince, I delight in the way Swiss German makes you use certain verbs twice if they accompany other verbs. My language will have all of those features. Capital letters will be written in Old German Kurrentschrift, lower case letters in Anglosaxon runes.

[disorganisedautodidact]

Would it also have the unpredictable pronunciation of English and/or Danish?

[clouds-of-wings]

Yes, English pronunciation, but with Danish vowels. It will be pure torture, the worst of both worlds, a lose-lose situation :)))

[disorganisedautodidact]

That’s pure evil. I love it.

[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

[poodletrain]

Is this really what german is like?

[southbreak]

yes.

[hownottolearnalanguage]

[absolxguardian]

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]"

[invisible-goats]

Fuck we even say "bread bread" and "tea tea" and shit in English. It's a quick way to specify "the most familiar variety of this thing" (eg tea tea is black tea from a teabad eg Yorkshire Tea, bread bread is sliced bread from the supermarket) Language is awesome

[beautiful-basque-country]

Tumblr, how do you call this part of the bread??

We say koxkorra in Basque and currusco in Spanish…

[mutantenfisch]

In Germany it depends on the region you’re from. I know the terms Remftchen, Rändchen and Kanten

[wonderwomemes]

This is a Mürgu

[ukulelegodparent]

Usually it’s “Knust”, but with croissant type breads like this one I usually just call it “Ende”

[azaharperezoso]

I’m Spanish but I call it tetita ‘little tit’ 😂 or codo/codito ‘elbow, little elbow’

[beautiful-basque-country]

Tetita?? 🤣🤣 Nunca lo habíamos oído!

[neurotypical-karen]

The comment section is throwing me for a loop. Like I never really thought about there being a word in so many languages for the butt of the bread? It’s so cool! And also hilarious that so many of them translate to tit or ass

[beautiful-basque-country]

The German-speaking side of Tumblr has been particularly active in this post and shared all the different words they have, which is awesome.

We’d like to know more from more places! We may have found what unites us all: the little tit or booty of the bread! lol

[sprachgefuehle]

This post was predestined to be taken over by German Tumblr because it unites the two only things we care about:

Petty fights over the correct name for things

Bread