#fun with language

[hometoursandotherstuff]

I'll never use thingamajig again, I like these other ones better.

[marlynnofmany]

Is this a regional thing? What region/s?

~

Which do you say?

"This needs to be fixed."

"This needs fixed."

Both/neither/bald/results

Voting ended onJul 7, 2024

[king-of-men]

It's fascinating how our name for a material we use a lot is just an adjective meaning 'shapeable', 'formable'. "What's this made of?" Oh, you know, stuff that can be shaped. Make-things-stuff. It's made of makeable-with, y'know, the thing we can form into arbitrary shapes? Like, the raw formless chaos of creation? What else would you make things out of?

[shallowseeker]

Do you think Cas hears Dean call Jack "Kid," and mentally categorizes it like "Baby / child / little one?" 👶

Then again, idk. Maybe he just hears it as "young goat." 😐 🐐

[joyburble]

A very short list of words I seem to have randomly learned without trying from double-language subtitles:

是 shì

It means "yes", and "to be", and "so be it" although most of the time in historicals it actually means "aye, aye, Sir".

好 hao

It means "fine", "okay", "alright", and "good", or quite often it actually seems to mean "if you say so". I kind of like the character for this one because the pictographic definition of "good, fine, okay" is a woman with a baby.

多谢 duōxiè,

it means "thank you very much". This goes in the box called "I don't know if this is something people normally say, or if it's only for historicals". In award shows people say 谢谢 xièxie.

and

王妃 wángfēi

it means Princess.

Recognising some forms of address is really useful for getting hints of what's going on that the subtitles don't give you. These include didi, or a vocative a-die, which mean "younger brother", jiejie and a-jie which mean "older sister", and furen and fu(jun? not sure of the second syllable) for "wife" and "husband", specifically when they are contrasted with some other option that could be used.

For instance I am pretty sure that in this line, below, 妹妹 mèimei "younger sister" is being used to be pretentious, presumptuous, and ingratiating in a really specific and rather funny way which the subtitle doesn't attempt to translate:

I recognised it by ear and then wound back to check the subtitle.

I also discovered that addressing your husband by his actual full name (not Surname + Courtesy Name but Surname + Name) apparently has precisely the same meaning as the equivalent in English, namely "you're ANNOYING me!"

This show is pretty entertaining

[istezada]

[dinosaurcharcuterie]

I have taught an entire discord server the German word for pussy. This has awoken the desire to learn German in at least one person, who has been speaking in full sentences and with passable pronunciation after only half an hour.

Santa is skipping my house this year, but damn if I'm not impressed.