#language is cool

[kyoyasbirkenstocks]

I recently got reunited with my Japanese Ouran mangas and flipped to this:

And while my Japanese has gotten rusty, this made me laugh

Tamaki: …Sankyu (Thank you, katakana English)

Kyoya: You’re welcome.

The word for ‘you’re welcome’ in Japanese is what Kyoya used (Douitashimashite) however it is generally discouraged to use in response to ‘thank you’ as it can be perceived as rude. With that, I think Kyoya’s energy around his word choice was probably “you’re welcome you lovable idiot”

And in the English manga this little cultural context piece gets dropped, which is a bummer but maybe it’ll motivate me to get back into my Japanese practice?

[reversestorks]

i think the single most interesting piece of information (aside from the bonkers ending) about this week’s episode is that there’s an established technology that helps residents to translate the language of newcomers so quickly

that, paired with the way the city moves, has such interesting cultural significance for the people living in Zood.

[crystal963]

Now, The Apothecary Diaries has taught me a lot of new things and helped me shift my perspective on things a lot, but one thing it made me realize recently is, funnily enough, not even related to the series. Spoilers ahead about Lakan's back story:

During the time we get to see Lakan's backstory, everyone's face is blanked out so we can see how Lakan sees the world. And in a few scenes, we get a faceless character that FengXian called meimei. Now, as someone who is Chinese and read the manga first, I never made the connection that the person FengXian was referring to was MeiMei, one of the three princesses. This is because a lot of Chinese words have the same pinyin, with only tone marks to differentiate the words, and so to me, I saw meimei, and immediately thought 妹妹, which meant sister.

Now, I don't know if that is the character they chose for MeiMei (for all I know, it could've also been 莓莓 or 梅梅 or 没沒 or any of the other options out there), but for me who was seeing this in English and knowing that Chinese people would call almost any younger girl "younger sister" or meimei, it took me till they shoved it in my face to realize who it was.

But then the anime came out, and I got to see others react to that scene, and it surprised me that they all immediately made the connection that it was MeiMei. To them, the words meimei has no other possible meanings.

Anyways, I just find language so fascinating.

[elasgottoomuchfreetime]

In Germany they say Alle guten Dinge sind Drei which, literally translated, means All good things are three. In English you‘d probably say Third Time‘s the Charm or Three‘s the Charm depending on what you want to express.

Anyways, I was looking for a fanfic and my mind drifted of and it kinda went like All good things are three. Sanji literally is the three out of his brothers so he‘s the good thing. At least for us/the Strawhats. For Judge on the other hand, all good things are three because he has three sons he deems a success. All depends on the way you lay out the saying.

Do with that as you please I thought it was an interesting thought.

[benravioli]

Recently I've started mining sentence flashcards out of song lyrics and omg this is the most efficient way I've ever seen to get more words.

Just copying a lyric and tossing it into Pleco will very easily yield 1-5 new cards per lyric, I don't think anything can match that level of efficiency. Most song lyrics are right in the sweet spot for me because the vocab isn't too rare (like in the books I eventually want to read), but it's also a bit above my current level.

It's such a great way for me to have an easy way to hear the vocabulary a lot. Most of our language input we see once and we're done with it, which means any words that don't show up super often are gone with that piece of media and we never have it reinforced outside of flash cards - that's not an issue with music (for me) since whenever I listen to my Chinese playlist I reinforce my vocabulary. It also gives an opportunity to practice speaking fluently, since songs don't usually wait for one to finish stuttering!

An obvious drawback is that learning with lyrics doesn't preserve tone, but I mitigate that by occasionally speaking the lyrics without the music.

Also doing it this way is a pain because so many artists I like are mainlanders who only ever have lyrics available in simplified (looking at you, 圈9), so I have to go through and manually traditional-ize my notes.

All in all I'm not sure how much this would work for others, but this method is great for me right now (and worked for me in the past - I wonder when I would have learned the Esperanto word "spegulo," "mirror," if I hadn't heard it in a Kajto song over and over lol)

[dyad-of-fate]

Alternative Terminology

In a world where more than half of the animals used for sayings are people, many phrases like “sly as a fox” or “pig-headed” are really not appropriate to use. So, the people of Ithiir have their own terms and words! These are by no means all of the terms used, just a small part of an ever growing list.

Expletives and Insults - Finchshit - Bullshit Jackasp - Jackass Asphole - Asshole Asphat - Asshat Dumbasp - Dumbass Asp* - Ass Bitch - referring to female Gad or Thylacine

*An asp is a type of viper.

General words and phrases - Newtish - Sheepish Holy toro*! - Holy cow Hold your dahlin* - Hold your horses Tuils* outta the bag now - Cats outta the bag now Sleeping in the gad* house tonight - Sleeping in the dog house tonight One trick dalli* - One trick pony Sly as an weasel - Sly as a fox Rott*-headed - Pig headed

All of the starred words are elemental based animals! Toro and rott refer to “Rottoro” which are cow like fire based creatures, usually used as beasts of burden. Dahlin and dalli are horse like water based creatures, tuils are cat like, gads are dogs... these will be covered and illustrated in another post :)

What other phrases would you like to see? Send in an ask and we’ll respond with the alternative version!

[btssavedmylifeblr]

so in mexico we love giving to one word thousands of meanings (i'm not kidding, we really do), and we have this word "verga" which originally meant stick, specifically the stick of a boat, but now it means dick. so we have expression like "que verga" which is "wtf" or "what's up?", "vete a la verga" which means "go to hell" or "leave me alone", "ya valió verga" is "it's over", "me vale verga" is "i don't care", and moore hahaha.

Interesting... so are they considered rude sayings because verga now means dick? Or are they polite sayings that just seem to have a sexual connotation to people who dont understand their origin?

[kagaintheskywithdiamonds]

I love how the words “dude” and “bro” are totally chill words to casually refer to your friends as. and they’re often used as gender-neutral terms, so you can casually call just about anyone a “dude” or a “bro” and it’s clearly a term of endearment

BUT when you combine those two words you get “dudebro” which is not only an insult but also paints a very specific picture of some asinine cishet guy. like anyone can be a dude or a bro but a dudebro is a very specific type of asshole.