#formal language

[sayitaliano]

Ciao!!

One of my language learning sources taught that the formal Lei is capitalized (along with Suo/a). However, a novel I am reading does not capitalize it. Are there only certain cases where formal Lei is capitalized, like in official documents?

Ciao!

Yes I had written this as well in my old posts. Until not long ago formal language's attributes/pronouns were written capitalized everytime in formal emails/letters/docs as a sign of respect (eg. if you were sending your CV to a person/company, you would have written Lei/Voi/Sua/Suo/Vs/Vostri/Vostro in your presentation letter; or you would have received letters/emails eg. from your telephone company saying sth like "alla Vs cortese attenzione"). With this I mean that yes mostly it was in official papers or any other form of written direct dialogue/formal exchanges with people of higher status/level/older: whether in your office or eg. in contracts, complaints, more often in the justice/legal field... (much longer ago it was common even in families with elders, js).

I've been told that recently this very respectful usage is a bit more rare as people pays way less attention to this detail. So I am not sure about pre-printed papers/documents you sign, eg. telephone line contracts, but as for most emails (eg. the CV example I mentioned above) I've been told it has become redundant to use the capital letters. I think it keeps being common in very formal official/legal documents anyway. I'm not sure about books nowadays as I'm not reading much anymore... maybe some have typos or it depends on the year they were printed too (I remember many books I read in the past had the capital letter when there was some sort of direct dialogue).

[bongboyblog]

Diglossia in the Bengali (বাংলা) language

There are two major styles of writing Bengali/Bangla:

Sādhubhāṣā

Colitobhāṣā

Other than these two widely accepted and used forms, there exists many regional dialects.

Let's see a simple sentence in both the forms:

I was going home.

Sadhubhāṣā- আমি গৃহে যাইতেছিলাম। (āmi gr̥hē zhāitechilām.)

Colitobhāṣā- আমি ঘরে যাচ্ছিলাম। (āmi ghôre zhācchilām.)

As you can see, the words for home/house are different and the verbs too look different. As I see it, colitobhāṣā looks like a shortened and less sanskritic version of the sādhubhāṣā.

The current colitobhāṣā (or colloquial language) is derived from the regional dialect of the Nadia (নদিয়া) region in central Bengal. It is the most widely accepted version of Bangla for literary and official uses today, in both India and Bangladesh. It's Bengali you will see almost everywhere. So if you are planning to learn Bangla/Bengali, you'd want to learn the colitobhāṣā.

Sādhubhāṣā is almost outdated today. All that remains are some old literature and official papers maybe. People may sometimes used Sādhubhāṣā to talk in a more formal or rhetorical manner or in poetry.

If you ask my opinion I'd say Sādhubhāṣā sounds quite cool and posh. It's a shame people have given up on it. ^_^

[high-pot-in-noose]

???

This was a post about legitimate formal titles and forms address? Half of it set in the United Kingdom, specifically England? I made the post because I've seen people writing English characters in near-to-real-world England while greatly erring on this topic. Yes, it's Western oriented -- that's the entire point.

It isn't specifically White though, just English-speaking. I grew up using the gentry titles and terms of address casually amongst mostly people of color -- y'know Black people, Muslims, Fillipinos, Latinos, Native Americans. I lived in a really nice and also diverse neighborhood.

So.

Don't you come around telling me using formal terms and good manners is a White-people-only thing.

That's racist.

[chouhatsumimi]

Words 11/20/17

Today’s words are from Black Butler volumes 21+22, with a splash of No.6 novel volume 1. I’ve finished four volumes of manga in the past four days, that’s pretty exciting!  (Also you can tell I have no social life right now)

from No.6 (the novels), volume 1

仰向け　あおむけ　face up Kinda interesting that the ‘ao’ kanji just means ‘face up’, when it sounds like 青, like looking up at the blue sky.

目がける　めがける　to aim at     (Shion threw a pillow(?) at Nezumi)

仇　あだ  foe, enemy, rival, resentment, grudge, harm, injury In context it was used as ‘this characteristic had turned into a weakness/con’ Looks a little like 尼 (あま）... or maybe not, just kidding.

敬遠　けいえん pretending to respect someone while in fact staying distant, keeping at arms length, giving a wide berth   What a useful word.

必需品　ひつじゅひん　necessities, necessary article  (Having a) bicycle was a necessity for Shion.

from Black Butler volumes 21+22

倅　せがれ　son (humble language); punk, brat Ciel’s dad’s kouhai was using this term for Ciel to his face, and the interesting combination of humble but disparaging language was readily apparent.

淑やか　しとやか　graceful; ladylike; modest; gentle; polite; quiet; well-mannered; refined (behavior) (Who doesn’t like Ciel in a dress)  Sebastian was telling Ciel to be more しとやか.

小バエ　こばえ　small household fly (e.g. fruit fly) Just in case you need to distinguish between your household flies.

旋回　せんかい　turning (an aircraft or ship) This blog now has a search function in the menu because I know I’ve seen this word before in Karneval, but I guess it didn’t make it on the blog.

堪能　たんのう　enjoying; satisfaction; satiation; having one's fill (of) (Apparently this is also an ateji reading of the kanji.) Found in the sentence “ご堪能くださいませ”  Black Butler has so much fun formal language :D

えげつない　dirty, vulgar, nasty

棺桶　かんおけ　coffin, casket   The kanji mean “coffin” and “tub”

ちょっかい  meddling; interference; making a pass at someone I suspect this was the word that described young Satou in Ajin but I can’t quite remember.

奇抜　きばつ　novel; original; striking; strange; eccentric; fantastic​ Describing Ciel’s servants.

不精ヒゲ　ぶしょうひげ  (not ‘mushou’)  stubble; unshaven face; beard one has because one is too lazy to shave; 5-o'clock shadow​ Nickname for the cook XD

牽制　けんせい　check, constraint

未練　みれん　lingering affection, attachment, regret  I’m going to say it’s a good thing that I remember specifically that Ogura says “miren nado nai” in Ajin. I think the entire script is burned into my brain

渇望　かつぼう　craving, longing, thirsting A similar word to 未練

天職　てんしょく　vocation, life work, calling  (not to be confused with 転職） It’s sort of ironic because one character says that being a shinigami can’t be your calling; but the kanji sort of mean ‘heaven’s work’, so... that’s kind of what shinigami do ^^

寛ぎ　くつろぎ　ease, relaxation, comfort, unwinding Used in the sentence どうぞおくつろぎください.

忝い・辱い　かたじけない　grateful, indebted Aha, the kanji either mean ‘grateful’ or ‘embarass’  I swear I’ve heard this word before.

持ちこたえる（持ち堪える）　もちこたえる　to hold out (e.g. against an attack)   I assumed it was ‘kotaeru’ like answer, but the kanji is 堪える (usually just ‘taeru’).

目まぐるしい　めまぐるしい　hectic, bewildering, bustling, dizzy

いっそ　rather, sooner, preferably   I swear I’ve seen this recently too

晩餐　ばんさん　(fancy word for) dinner

腕が鳴る　うでがなる　to be itching to put one’s skills to use Literally ‘my arm is ringing’

採寸　さいすん　taking measurements (for clothes)

心機一転　しんきいってん　turning over a new leaf

素手　すで　bare hand Now that I think about it, this might be in Ajin too when Sokabe is saying that Tosaki always wears gloves. Nope never mind, I checked. 

言語道断　ごんごどうだん　outrageous; preposterous; scandalous; inexcusable; absurd; execrable

雁字搦め　がんじがらめ　bound hand and foot; hedged in (e.g. by restrictions); immobile It’s kinda funny because it’s talking about the character whose feet were bound, but it’s not speaking literally in context. Literally “wild goose letter bind” ??

生産性　せいさんせい　productivity WHERE HAS THIS WORD BEEN ALL THIS TIME  I want to use this always

幼気　いたいけ　innocent, helpless, tender  (sounds a little like ‘itai kei’)

冷血漢　れいけつかん　cold-blooded person, heartless (Literally ‘cold blood China’ >_>) should develop some 親身　しんみ　relation, relative, kind, cordial

貶す　けなす　to speak ill of (haha, it was also in Monster)

拝謁　はいえつ　having an audience with someone of very high social standing (e.g. the emperor)   (They were talking about the Queen of England).  (Actually that’s funny, today one of my teachers told me about how she served tea to the emperor when he visited my current town three years ago!)

非凡　ひぼん　prodigy, rare, unique, extraordinary

待遇　たいぐう　treatment; reception; service​

片田舎　かたいなか　back country; remote countryside​ (aka where I live, hahaha)  I wonder why it’s ‘kata’?

[sowmya-uma]

Tip of the day #17

Speak Without Saying a Word – Body Language Tips for Formal Meetings🤝 In formal meetings, what you say is important — but how you say it without …Tip of the day #17

[geopolicraticus]

Accounting for Linguistic Capitulation through Relative Ineffability

Relative Ineffability.—In reserving the ineffable as a descriptor for mystical or religious experience we have a missed opportunity to recognize a linguistic phenomenon of much greater generality than mysticism. The ineffable extends to all languages, including artificial languages and formal languages, and even to non-linguistic forms of expression, though the distinction between the linguistic and the non-linguistic may be the ground of a distinction that must be observed in certain contexts. The early Wittgenstein had said, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.” Frank Ramsey said, much more breezily, “…what we can’t say we can’t say, and we can’t whistle it either.” Both represent linguistic capitulation. Ramsey was wrong. A melody can’t be spoken, but it can be whistled. If we observe the distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic expression, we must affirm that a melody cannot be given linguistic expression but it can be given non-linguistic expression. If we restrict our scope to linguistic expression, we can still note that there are disjoint expressions that can occur in either natural or artificial language but not both. Tarski argued that no natural language can be logically rigorous, hence the concept of truth only obtains in particular formal languages, and, in this specifically logical sense, truth is ineffable in ordinary language. By the same token, formal languages cannot express the greater part of ordinary human expression in natural languages, so that the ordinary business of life is ineffable in formal languages. It could be argued that the previous examples are weak senses of relatively ineffability, and that the strongest sense of relative ineffability, such that x is expressible in language L but ineffable in language L´, obtains in natural language pairs with disjoint concepts. That which remains ineffable in every known (or every possible) language is a special case that can be called absolute ineffability.  

[lifetime-fan-of-languages]

If you don't put a 씨 after a name in class, I'll privately think that you don't quite grasp the importance of adapting another culture's way of doing the politeness thing

[iamemeraldfox]

In every office I worked in, there was one older woman everyone inexplicably used formal language with

It's weird