an interesting linguistics find! so I'm reading this text from 1908 and it keeps referencing "hp" in the context of "not being at full hp" "applying your full hp to a task" etc
and I'm like....... okay that is a perfectly normal way to describe energy and reads totally clear to me, but I KNOW you don't mean hit points/health points which is the first place my brain goes, so what are YOU using hp to mean
and it's not explained in-text, which means it was common enough to not warrant explanation to the 1908 audience, so gotta look elsewhere
horsepower. turns out it's horsepower.
and I'm absolutely FASCINATED that a commonly used initialism from 1908 now stands for something different AND YET the contextual meaning is still the same to a 21st-century reader
I could hand this guy my nintendo switch and he'd be like, ah yes I understand, this ''''pokemon'''' loses horsepower throughout the fight
Hi Fir!!! I’m really excited for chapter 6 to be on public release and I wanted to share something that reminded me of Cantata. I’m currently learning ASL and we’re working on translations of songs, so we have to find variations of the meanings of the words. Like if the song said ‘lover’, we’d put something like ‘my love’ for one line and then use ‘sweetheart’ for another for variation. That’s a little off topic but I thought the context might’ve been interesting. Anyhow, we were finding variations for ‘my love’ in class and someone used the sign for ‘care’, so my teacher said it could also mean ‘dear one’ and that reminded me of Tellus. Basically I love relating Cantata to what I learn in ASL. Have a good day/night for whenever you read this!!! 🫶🫶🫶
Ayy, that’s so cute! Thank you for sharing that happy little fact with me! 🥹 I’m really glad I’m not the only one going around with reminders of Cantata everywhere, lol.
Most languages have a casual word for "mother" that is a combination of "ah" "m" and "o" sounds.
It's incidentally common for babies to say that word as their first word.
Because mmm and aaaa are the easiest sounds for a baby to make. And their mom is usually the person they spend most time with and is therefore easy to identify. So, mama.
And we as a species heard those babies go amaaa mamaaa ommaa and went "yup, that's it"
This is actually really interesting and I honestly wish I had one that was English to Spanish…like Spanish has WAY MORE accents and turns of phrases, idioms, and whatnot than English depending on what part of the continent the person is from.
On the other hand, it points out what I/we sound like to the world. Compared to Britain, American accents slur quite a bit, and we don’t really think about how and why it happens. We’re 50 countries stacked in a trench coat, we can’t understand each other 50% of the time.
I have a question because I want to comment but I feel nervous. It is very foolish but it is seriously something that prevents me from commenting-
So English is not my first language and I suffer from a disease known as 'fuck you all English leaves your brain when you tap on the comment box'. Like I'm fluent enough to write a fic but the comments break me and I can only do basic 'subject verb complement' and forget half my vocabulary because I'm so nervous, so it often ends up being broken English.
I back out of posting comments except 'i love this this is amazing thank you for writing I love it' because I'm too scared the author will take it badly ? Like, what if they find it annoying ? What if they believe I think they write bad English and I'm mocking them and they don't want me to ever read their works ever again ?
Anyways, my question is : Does it actually bother anyone to receive broken English comments? Do people find it annoying ?
I would never be annoyed by such a thing and I'm positive that's true of others as well. On the contrary, it kinda blows my mind whenever I stop to think about how members of fandom for whom English is not their first language are so often working in translation. Like the trickiest barrier I have to contend with when writing anything is sleep deprivation and your average writer's block 😅 so to imagine also rendering those words in a different language?? 🫠
To varying degrees, the tragic disease of "empty comment box = empty brain" can strike anyone, regardless of language. On the plus side, some of the tricks to break through the blankness are also broadly applicable, such as
drawing from a list of sentence starters like the ones offered here or here (the beginner bingo card also has similar tasks!!)
installing this handy script that generates a positive comment on demand, which you can modify or expand on as needed
using the floating comment box to track moments or quotes you want to compliment specifically, even with just a string of emojis 💕💕💕
I can recall a couple comments I've gotten where the person apologized or gave a sort of disclaimer that English wasn't their first language, and honestly it just made me even more appreciative of the comment? Because there are so many reasons that a reader doesn't comment, and a language barrier is the most understandable!! And yet here they are, making me smile with their words. I always want to reassure them in my reply that an apology/disclaimer isn't necessary, but I don't always know how. (And there's nothing wrong with acknowledging something you're self-conscious about, after all.)
The concept of "broken English" has also got me thinking, though... And since it turned into a bit of an essay I'll leave it under the cut. 💛
Because the term "broken English" has a lot to unpack, seeing as it's always unfairly positioned those who speak English as a second language imperfectly as lesser (broken = defective). And that strikes me as a bit ironic, considering the degree to which English is a Frankenstein's monster of a language—this conglomeration of every language it encounters and subsumes. In that sense, English itself is a broken language? Or rather the shards of numerous languages held together with duct tape and gum and a whiff of imperialism. Its usage is always in flux, always evolving as speakers adapt it to new circumstances, and those adaptations become dialects in and of themselves. There is no one English language.
I teach high schoolers, and I'm consistently struck by the growing chasm between the kinds of English I can speak and the kinds of English they can speak. And technically my job is to train them in how to use American Standard English and read literature written in American Standard English, but really I find that pretty limiting.
Take the tone of this response, for instance! The more I've leaned toward trying to articulate these complicated issues of language, the more formal my speech has become. Contrast that with the first paragraph, where I'm trying to get across this awkward earnest admiration for the extra effort required of some fans just to engage in fandom, and so I ended up using more casual phrasing and emojis in a way that (hopefully) conveys a certain warmth and self-deprecating humor and whatnot.
If I were to leave a comment on a fic that blew me away, left me in a state of awe or delight or anguish—just a puddle on the floor—I'd find American Standard English quite lacking. Downright restrictive. The unique jumbled babble of fandom-speak functions on breaking the standard rules in order to evoke an intensity of emotion that meets the demands of the moment.
Another thing about commenters who really commit to throwing the rules out the window in favor of vibes is that I get such a strong sense of personality beaming through. A distinct voice that's generated, an intense impression of there being an individual on the other side with a particular shape. And there's something delightful about that.
...I suppose this is all a very roundabout way of saying that if there's anywhere to just unleash, vocab and mechanics be damned, where it's more than okay to string together whatever words you can in service of how you're feeling, it's the AO3 comment box. 💛
Out of all the things to suddenly make me laugh despite incoming dread is the realization whenever Heatwave says “Roll to the rescue”, it could mean “F*ck off to rescue” if you try hard enough.
Context:
Chinese: 滾 = to roll, but say it by itself to someone (or 「給我滾」) is almost equivalent to ‘F*ck off’.
(He probably says something else in the Chinese/Mandarin version, but the connotation is still quite funny.)
