Chapter 1 : estrogen and escape, by Meredith Garratt.
Crouched in the ‘femme de ménage’’s storage room, Misti lay breathing heavily. Her vision lost its focus and she found herself wondering what her life had come to. Suddenly, her phone began to ring. She jumped, startled, knocking over a bottle of detergent. The bashing sound caused her to squeal. Shit. She could hear the police stalking the hallways of the hotel. Goddammit.
She thought she’d finally be safe in Paris. But no. She sat in the quiet, waiting for the noise outside to subside. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, it stopped.
She dragged herself up, scarlet Louboutins scraping the wooden floor. Her height caused her to stoop low as she stumbled out onto the plush carpeting. She stopped to check herself in the gold framed mirror. Her mascara was smudged, as was her lipstick, and her necklace had shifted in the midst of her panic, her adams apple revealing itself under the diamonds she’d swiped from her last modelling job. She looked around, and, having noticed a rich woman’s coat on one of the concierge’s hangers, nabbed it and almost flew towards the emergency exit. The icy January night air caused her to shiver uncontrollably, and she answered the call.
“Oui allô? Oh, it’s you. Hi Lucas.
Yeah yeah, I’ll be there at 9 am tomorrow for the YSL shoot.
No, I didn’t steal the Cartier necklace, the photographer said he’d lost it and paid the owner back. Wait! I need to ask you something. Have you seen my estrogen?
I could’ve sworn I left it at the café this morning. Ok, well, let me know. It’s not bloody cheap you know. Had to go through about 5 different fucking doctors to get it approved. Tata.”
The phone beeped and she was once again alone with her thoughts.
She shivered in the stolen fur coat that no doubt belonged to someone who still said transsexual instead of trans, and, clutching her purse, hobbled off towards the flat her modelling agency had gotten for her whilst she was living in Montmartre.
index : 1-'femme de ménage' = janitor (directly translates to woman of cleaning)
note: idk wth Bonhomme is doing or why he's digging a tunnel through the earth...
greetings Nonny 😜 i'm from Québec, a French-speaking province in Canada. born and raised here. but i'm Anglophone (or English-born). my first language is English. i speak Frenglish/Franglais. can read French, can't write it for shit 💀
The "at least our schools aren't shooting ranges" meme pisses me off cuz it just shows how Americans like to laugh at other countries (often in a very outdated, ill-informed way) but the minute you push back they turn into the biggest fucking crybabies. No banter whatsoever. And like, what can you make fun of about America? If you say they're all stupid and fat or something they'll all of a sudden be like "oh akshyually that's very culturally insensitive something something school system something food deserts" like shit other countries have worse issues than you and we can still banter. If you heard the things other Commonwealth countries say about South Africa you'd have a heart attack, and not just from the food you eat. Americans just have no banter, and they wanna make fun of other countries (again, and it never hits properly because they don't even know anything about other countries that isn't outdated by a century or two) without getting the slightest pushback.
Hozier sings in English, lucky for me to understand him, lucky for him to make good money, but remember the violence that made our world Anglophone, the Gaelige of his homeland will always sound foreign, a poet cut off from his mother tongue.
A butchered tongue is a tragedy, more poignant when the message comes from such a blessed tongue, a talented singer and lyricist.
Do you ever feel sorry for monolingual English speakers?
They are missing out.
To speak only one language is to restrict yourself to only one world.
So many of them truly believe that they are speaking the best and most useful language in the world, but they can only read books in English, watch English-language film and television, listen to English-language music, podcasts and radio and only engage with English-language news. Sadly, many of these monolingual speakers who think that other languages are useless are missing out on whole new worlds of fun and discovery.
Do I feel sorry for all of them?
Sadly, many (though certainly not all) monolingual English speakers have an attitude that makes them come across as incredibly rude and obnoxious. They really believe that they are speaking the best language in the world. This is why this post is about monolingual English speakers as opposed to monolingual speakers of other languages; I have not met a non-Anglophone who behaves in the way that many monolingual English speakers do.
Because of the dominance of English, many of them see other languages as pointless and often not even as suited to the modern world as they claim English is. These people admit to this all of the time, casually talking about English should be the only language spoken in the world and “oh, wouldn’t it be nice if we all spoke one language?” (English, of course). This kind of disrespectful discourse is so normalised among them that they feel no compunction in making these sorts of comments to people whom they know speak other languages.
What is even more annoying about some monolingual English speakers is their feelings of entitlement. This never ceases to amaze me. Not only do they think their language is the best, they also cannot deal with not understanding somebody or not being understood by somebody. This again is why I am taking about Anglophobes specifically; people from other places are used to the fact that other people speak different languages as most of the world has some degree of multilingualism (e.g. the average African knows that even within one country, there may be hundreds of native languages; the average Continental European also is aware of the linguistic diversity in their region).
Imagine going to, say, Italy and feeling offended because the people there do not understand English. The level of entitlement needed to be this sort of person is astronomical, but yet many monolingual English speakers do this without shame. The whole world must revolve around them.
Imagine being so disrespectful that you feel angry with Indigenous people for speaking their own language (which is actually the native language of your locality if you live in a country which was colonised by a settler population).
Imagine being so hateful that you feel angry when you see immigrants and ethnic minorities speaking their language.
"My mom and I were on line at a McDonald’s in Newark, NJ," she told me. "We were having a conversation in Spanish and the man in front of us turns back and says, 'It’s because of you people that there are no damn jobs in this country!'"
…
In 2015, for example, a Somali immigrant was hit with a beer mug for speaking Swahili with her family at a Minnesota Applebee's.
Also:
A man became enraged at a New York deli after apparently overhearing employees speaking Spanish — and threatened to call immigration authorities in a lengthy rant captured on video.
If you are a monolingual English speaker and you want to “do better”:
Understand that your language is not the best. From a linguistic point of view, there is no language that is actually superior to another. The ideas of inferiority and superiority we attach to languages and dialects are really a reflection of our ideas about their speakers.
Please refrain from verbally, physically or otherwise attacking or abusing anybody for speaking a different language.
Do not assume that people who speak other languages are somehow less intelligent or poorer than you are.
Know that around the world, multilingualism is actually the norm and people who live in a society where only one language is visible are outliers. Seriously, in Nigeria children are supposed to learn English, a native language and a foreign language e.g. French. In many European countries, secondary school pupils learn their own languages, classical languages and a foreign language. Similar arrangements are in place in other countries around the world. Only children in Anglophone countries are restricted to learning one foreign language and not even learning that very well.
Please do not go to other countries and become upset when the locals do not speak or understand English or do not do these things to a fluent standard.
Understand that if you do not understand other people’s conversations, it could be because you were never actually meant to be part of the conversation and that people generally expect others not to eavesdrop anyway.
Stop assuming that if people are speaking a different language, then they are saying something bad about you. I assure that most people speak their languages because they want to, not because of you.
Nobody switches to a different language as soon as you walk into the room. Nobody has the time for that.
Stop being racist and hating people from different backgrounds. This is a key reason as to why there is so much outrage in relation to other languages because they remind you that people who do not look like you exist in “your” country.
Consider learning another language yourself. Multilingualism has many benefits, including cognitive ones. And as I wrote earlier, learning another language can open up an entire new world for you.
Research from York University in Canada and Edinburgh University, among others, suggests having a second language slows brain ageing. Learning one other language can make it easier to acquire more, but can also improve your maths. If you want to increase your average salary - learn another language. And if you want to improve your ability to hear… well, there's evidence to suggest an additional language doesn't only improve cognitive function, it can enhance our auditory neurology and as a result we can remember more and are better at paying attention. Being better able to speak, helps us listen.
The poll also found 34% of whites, 25% of blacks, 24% of Asians, and 13% of Hispanics would be bothered by hearing a foreign language spoken
So I found out that apparently there's something called "babacore", which is supposed to be the nonbinary version of grandmacore/grandpacore, but…
are you aware what "baba" means? Because it literally means "grandma", "old woman" and all that kind of things, so "babacore" literally just means the same as "grandmacore".
