you guys know how sometimes a fan will casually present an idea for a fic or a headcanon or something, and they use the present participle (but only sentence fragments) to write it? for example:
“blorbo learning that their mentor was evil and killing them. reveling in the goodness of the act even as they regret the betrayal. having nightmares every night after the fact.”
has anyone noticed this or found any research on the subject? i’d love to study or research this, because it’s not something i see in other forms of storytelling!
I think the suffix -nid for enid is great but the best i can come upp with for wednesday would be the prefix wednes- which is way to long or we- or mayby wen-
You know what il make a pole thats fun
Whats the best prefix for something relating to Wednesday Addams
a few informal thoughts on accent in written media and accent in translation
in light of a recent rb about dialect in haikyuu (which i recommend reading since i'm sorta responding to it but it's not required), i wanted to write down my quite complex thoughts about how "accent" is conveyed in written media, and how "accent" or "dialect" is translated cross-linguistically. it's really not a simple issue...
the biggest issue is that the very notion of an accent or a dialect as most non-linguists conceive of them is rooted in some form of bigotry, because there is almost always an underlying supposition that an "accent"/"dialect" exists in opposition to or as a deviation from the "standard." in written media, what that means is that some characters - often the main characters or the pov characters - have the privileged of their thoughts and words transcribed with standardised spellings and english teacher approved grammar (for the most part), and some characters - often but not always a character from a marginalised background or a character that is some way othered - are transcribed with intentional "errors."
(lmao readmore is deffo warranted this is a long one xx)
i want to give a very clear example of what i'm talking about, and i'm sorry to cite harry potter but it is a treasure trove for this kinda thing. also like... is it any surprise that jkr is particularly egregiously guilty of this... but anyways, look at that following passage from the philosopher's stone and watch the corresponding scene (hopefully the vid starts at the the part i want sorry youtube sucks)
“I'm a what?" gasped Harry.
"A wizard, o' course," said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, "an' a thumpin' good'un I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be?”
now to my american ears, both harry and hagrid in this scene have noticable differences in pronunciation compared to how i might say the same lines - there are so many ways their speech might be written differently (from my pov; from a british pov i'm sure they'd have some changes to make in writing down my speech i'll never be free from the wodder boddle jokes).
what i think is particularly interesting tho is that harry says the word "what" twice in the clip, with two different pronunciations. the first time he says it, he actually doesn't pronounce the /t/ at the end of the word (in technical terms, it's an unreleased unvoiced alveolar plosive), and the second time the pronunciation of the /t/ is exaggerated for emphasis (a particularly aspirated unvoiced alveolar plosive). but this difference in the way harry says these two words is not conveyed in the text of hp. harry simply says "what."
i wish i had a more direct example, but a very similar sort of thing is going on when hagrid says the word "and," which he pronounces with an unreleased voiced alveolar plosive - almost exactly the same as harry's first "what" - but instead of "and" being written with standard spelling, jkr opts to replace the "d" with an apostrophe.
it's essentially the same linguistic phenomenon, but because harry is supposed to be middle class and from surrey, his linguistic quirks are not conveyed in the writing because he speaks "proper" english - whereas hagrid's linguistic quirks (in this case it is the same quirk present in harry's speech) are meticulously documented because he is working class and uneducated, and his language is deemed a deviation from the standard. harry's english is unmarked and deemed unaccented because his variety is very close to the enforced standard. and the "standard" is just the speech of the privileged classes. sorry that reasoning reads a bit circular, but it isn't supposed to be logical, it is in fact a very illogical line of reasoning.
a lot of times, authors will justify their choice to transcribe accents because accents are often integral to a character's identity. and i do not disagree that many people take pride in their accents or that accents aren't used as a way to index for group/regional identity. but the issue is, when are accents faithfully being transcribed and when are they assumed?
as an example of this, look at these two passages from another problematic author, cassie clare in the clockwork prince:
"You think I’m a fool,” Molly went on. “This is a trap, innit? You Nephilim catch me selling that sort of stuff, an’ it’s the stick for Old Mol, it is.”
“You’re already dead.” Will did his best not to sound irritable. “I don’t know what you think the Clave could do to you now.”
“Pah.” Her hollow eyes flamed. “The prisons of the Silent Brothers, beneath the earth, can ’old either the living or the dead; you know that, Shadowhunter."
(tid.ii, prolouge)
and
"We’re in the Pyx Chamber,” he said. “Used to be a treasury. Boxes of gold and silver all along the walls.”
“A Shadowhunter treasury?” Tessa was thoroughly puzzled.
“No, the British royal treasury—thus the thick walls and doors,” said Jem. “But we Shadowhunters have always had access.” He smiled at her expression. “Monarchies down through the ages have tithed to the Nephilim, in secret, to keep their kingdoms safe from demons.”
“Not in America,” said Tessa with spirit. “We haven’t got a monarchy—"
(tid.ii, chapter 1)
i pulled these passages basically at random so maybe there are lines of dialogue that prove the point better (or disprove my point tho i doubt that, just based on my memory of these books), but in passage one, there are two speakers: an cockney woman from east london and a welsh man from an upper class background. i won't go line by line, but it's essentially like with the difference between harry and hagrid, where old molly has her shibboleths all written down whereas will is written with unquestionably grammatical speech.
in passage two, there are three speakers: the same upper class welshman, a lower middle class american woman, and a british-chinese (likely well off) man. we're told at certain points that will has a welsh accent; we can assume that tessa has an american/new york accent; i don't even know where i'd begin to describe jem's accent but it's probably not welsh or american. however, if you look at their dialogue, there is no way to discern any of these differences. their regional identities are all ostensibly important to them, as they are mentioned many many times in the narrative, but for some reason, it wasn't important enough to even make nods to their different accents? meanwhile, a random side character has their accent carefully laid out, dropped 'h's iconic slang and all? why? why is old mol's accent important enough to faithfully write down, but tessa and will's aren't? it couldn't have anything to do with classism could it...? surely not... (they say, with extreme sarcasm)
now, after all that. you might think my stance is that "accent" should never be written down because it necessarily involves classist/racist/otherwise bigoted judgement on what is marked and what is unmarked speech.
if only it were so easy.
honestly the biggest issue with jkr and clare's choices here is that it's so clearly coming from a place of ignorance and/or prejudice. there's nothing wrong with the way hagrid or old molly speak, and writing systems are inherently messy and inaccurate; there shouldn't be anything wrong with trying to more accurately convey utterances. before writing standardisation, people would just write what they thought a word sounded like, resulting in many if not dozens of accepted spellings for each word (sidenote: i've lost the email but i once spoke with someone that was attempting to reconstruct an older variety of english spoken in MA based on "spelling errors" in books from a small new england printing house it was a very cool project).
also, i am not african american so i can't fully speak to the accuracy of the AAVE, but i've seen discussion of how the AAVE and codeswitching in the hate u give by angie thomas was used to convey nuances in identity, and political realities in the US. the way people speak, the variety of language, and the attitudes they and others have towards that variety, are often extremely important narrative tools. as a black girl that also exists in white-dominated spaces, starr carter is aware of her speech and the changes she makes to fit in with white peers, but that doesn't mean that AAVE isn't a part of her, that it isn't important and valid. wouldn't it also be a bit disrespectful to write the AAVE in the hate u give as if it were standard english, when it is such an important part of starr's identity that it's not? AAVE is just as legitimate as a dialect as the dialect that starr's white peers speak, so on what grounds can anyone insist that it not be faithfully written down for its speakers? and lastly and most importantly, who am i, and who is anyone exterior to a linguistic community, to say how community members ought to write down their own speech/dialogue??
this is just one specific case, but i think when someone is writing from an in-group perspective, that changes things. it changes things immensely. there are so many reasons why a writer might choose to feature distinctive accents in their writing, and i don't think it's possible on their presence alone to make a judgement call on if the accent is being featured respectfully and/or with good reason, or if it is bigoted and unnecessary.
and this brings us to the somehow even more difficult question of what to do with "accents" when translating dialogue. not only do translators have to convey semantic meaning, they have to try to convey pragmatic meaning, cultural meaning, implications, and so on and so on. there is also the very important question of what is the role of a translator? i think that answer will depend on the individual, and unfortunately how one answers will have an impact on how they think translators ought to convey accent.
if the author of a text writes a character's dialogue from a prejudiced point of view, like jkr has done with hagrid, is it the role of the translator to dutifully convey the same (or as close to the same as possible) prejudiced implications in their translation? or does the translator have more of an editorial role, allowing them to convey the meaning in a way that won't carry the same connotations in the new language? does it matter what connotations were intended by the author? is the translator at fault for assumptions made by the audience of their translation due to the choice to convey an accent in one way or another? it is impossible to perfectly convey cultural nuances in accents so do we settle for the closest thing or do we forego it entirely and leave it up to something lost in translation? what about the translators own biases and prejudices, what do we do then?
honestly there are so many questions, and i don't have many answers. i err on the side that says the role of the translator is to be as faithful to the meaning of the text as possible, regardless of the translator's personal feelings about what is being conveyed. if an accent is being used purely for comedic effect, i do not think that the translator has the jurisdiction to say "well i think that's rude and ignorant so i won't include it," but at the same time, i think there should be multiple checks and balances, like sensitivity readers, that ensure that the translation is not introducing more prejudiced elements or pushing things even further than the source text.
what initially got me thinking about this was the post linked above about kansai dialect in haikyuu. the only characters that are written to not speak in tokyo dialect (otherwise considered the standard in japan) are the characters from inarizaki, a school in the kansai region. since they are the only characters to be explicitly written to be speaking a regional dialect, i would say it is probably an important - or considered an important by the mangaka - part of their characterisation. regardless of whether or not there should be cultural connotations to a particular variety is unfortunately not relavent in this instance.
i do think translators should not exaggerate the presence of an accent. from what i can tell from forums online, inarizaki's accents are pronounced but more than understandable, so i am liable to suspect some prejudice or mis-informed opinions when i see panels of the miya twins that are barely intelligible. but in general, i am of the opinion that translators should try and match as closely as they can the connotations of the source text, even if the source text is itself problematic. obviously there is not perfect choice. obviously a translation is never going to perfectly capture the original meaning.
in the end i guess these are two different discussions but i do think there is connection between the two. i understand the upset over egregiously translated accented dialogue, but at the same time, i do not think it is the translator's call entirely whether to translate it or not, however they do have a duty to at least try to match contexts as closely as possible. and as for the presence of accent in written media at all, it is really a case-by-case basis if i think it's being done well and with good cause or if it is just an example of ignorance, and i do think there should be room for nuance in this discussion.
come back next time when i ramble about how people write on the internet is a case study for how accent could be written in fiction lol xx
A conversation with Gretchen McCulloch, the author of ‘Because Internet,’ about the language of fandom by Elizabeth Minkel
We just posted a delightful longread about fandom (and internet) language, featuring @elizabethminkel chatting with @allthingslinguistic. Go check it out!
A friend was talking about language in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I had some thoughts on it that I figured I might as well post.
The show depicts a single language spoken worldwide, with a single written form based on Han characters. This makes Doylist sense for a children's TV show, but it doesn't make much Watsonian sense.
Instead, I hypothesize that the world is actually fairly polyglot. I've come up with linguistic headcanons for the four nations based on some real-world patterns. (In real life, the difference between a family of languages and a single language with multiple dialects basically comes down to who has an army.)
The Air Nomads (before their genocide) spoke several mostly (80% or so) mutually intelligible dialects of a single formalized “religious” language in use at the Air Temples; travel around the world and between the Temples keeps the common tongues in communication with each other and with the formalized language. The writing system is an abugida based on phonetic value, which means Air Nomads could phonetically sound out each other's written words, but without actually knowing the language, they wouldn't get the meaning. (This is based on Sanskrit and the various descendant languages, such as Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, etc, with Devanagari as a writing system.)
The Earth Kingdoms have many regional dialects with a common, logographical writing system. The dialects are often not mutually intelligible, but are for political reasons insisted to be dialects of a common spoken language. Bureaucrats and nobles from across the Kingdoms will of course speak the prestige dialect of the inner ring of Ba Sing Se. (This mimics the "Chinese language" situation in our world, where Mandarin and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible, but are officially considered to be variants of the "Chinese language".)
The Water Tribes have a common abugida writing system, but the north and south poles necessarily have somewhat different dialects. A century ago, before the Fire Nation assaults, there was plenty of travel between the tribes, keeping them mutually intelligible, but differences are growing, exacerbated by the loss of formal teaching material in the Southern Water Tribes. (The Swampdwellers speak a heavily divergent dialect; effort is required to understand them.)
The Fire Nation language has a written form using a syllabary (which necessitates misspelling Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe words that don’t fit into the syllable format, but the Fire Nation’s bureaucrats don’t see that as a problem). The spoken version used to have a lot more dialect variance, but Sozin’s policies led to the forceful suppression of “backwards” and “corrupted” regional dialects. (Also apparently the capital is literally called "Fire Nation Capital"? I hope it's less wordy in their language.)
As of the time period of AtLA, someone who knows either the Fire Nation Capital dialect or the Ba Sing Se dialect can go anywhere in the world and expect to be mostly understood.
Zuko and Sokka and Katara, when interacting in the first few eps, will be speaking mainly Fire Nation Capital dialect; of course the Water Tribe kids know the FNC dialect, what with all the raids. And when Sokka and Katara get to the Northern Water Tribe they sound basically like country bumpkins, given the divergence between their dialects.
Aang is fluent in all four languages (that is, all three, plus the Ba Sing Se and Omashu "dialects") but his usage is a little bit archaic. (No, Aang, "Hotman" is not a current honorific.)
1/2 your fandom linguistics post! i_love_this_song. gif! the whole -ie phenomenon is so interesting to me. because like, as you are very aware, it was an anti trying to shame 'louis and harry supporters' by calling us 'larries.' and then with that ~reclamation of sorts, it furthered with larries distinguishing themselves as a louie larrie or harrie larrie (notice how there are no niallies or liamies, even in 2018, it is a purely louis/harry thing.)
2/2 and how people who are now ex-larries identify as JUST ’harries’ or ‘louies’ instead of harry stans or solo harry stans like they once did. which is ironic because like, it comes from ‘larrie’, which is something they are trying to distance themselves from. idk fandom lingo and it’s evolution through time is always something that will fascinate me. sorry for clogging your ask box!
ahahah don’t worry about clogging my ask box! i feel like you did a really good sum up of that history there, anon! One Direction Fandom Etymology 101. Ahahah okay i’m sorry that was a very dorky thing to say.
I really feel like the creation of the concept of “larries” as opposed to, i don’t know what we were called? “larry shippers”? was such a funny and joyful thing. It does feel like a reclamation even though that doesn’t maybe seem like an appropriate term to be using. But like, I used to get kind of sad sometimes back then because of all the weird shit that people would say about larry, people were like LARRY IS A BAD TERM WE NEED TO LEAVE IT BEHIND. And lexy and i would be like you will pry larry from our cold, dead hands!!! larry stylinson is the best and most hilarious ship name of all time!!!!
Anyway, I was thinking about it mostly because of how the term harrie has evolved, lately. I saw that article earlier where they used “harries” and “stylers” to refer to harry fans and I was like lolololol, boy is everyone lucky to have the larries, even if they don’t like them, because… Stylers is rough. Okay i’m just kidding i know the solo harry fandom would have kept using “Harry stan” or something (and maybe they still do to a certain extent??) or they would have come up with their own term, but it would probably be something bad like Holos lmao.
