Once the friend of a friend of my mom's was visiting Rio and she saw Sugarloaf Mountain and she wanted to impress her taxi driver with her knowledge of Portuguese, so she said in Portuguese "Look, Sugarloaf [Mountain]! It's very big!".
Unfortunately, English native speakers have a hard time making the "ão" sound correctly since the sound doesn't exist in English, so instead of saying "pão de açúcar" (literally, bread of sugar), she said "pau de açúcar." Now, "pau" technically just means "wood," but it's also, unfortunately for her, slang for "penis."
So to the driver what he heard was "Look at the sugar dick! it's so big!" and he almost crashed the car from laughing so hard.
"Languages are set in stone!" the word "inception" not only acquired a whole new definition that has nothing to do with its older definition 13 years ago but also led to "-ception" becoming a suffix that previously did not exist in English solely because of a loud movie
Also, the word for "something from the city of Hamburg" led to the creation of "-burger" as a suffix that denotes a type of sandwich
This is very amusing on so many levels, moreso if you are a native Greek or a very fluent Greek speaker, but I will try to explain it for everyone:
Let's be honest, it is a bit comedy gold that Turkish archaeologists unearthed a 1,500 year old Greek mosaic near Alanya, Turkey, and the inscription roughly reads something like "get wrecked, envious scum". And reading it in Modern Greek doesn't help because it means: "be gone, envious scum".
Okay, okay! Just so this blog does not lose its integrity... well, I did not lie about what it means, it more or less means exactly that, but it is just... a little less personal!
The inscription reads: Ο ΦΘΟΝΟΣ ΛΑΚΗΣΙ (o phthónos lakísi), with incorrect spelling in the end of the verb (the shifts in the pronunciation of vowels and especially the diphthongs caused such frequent misspellings), which is an apotropaic quote warding off envy. In ancient Greek λακήσει is a grammatical form of the verb λακάω - λακώ (lakáo / lakó) which means "break, burst, explode, blow up". So the inscription means exactly "May envy burst" but in a judgemental tone, the equivalent of which in English would be something like "May the envious eat their hearts out".
Modern Greeks also use the word "σκάω" (skáo), being the standard word for "blow up", to tell someone "May you blow up due to your jealousy" and "May you blow up due to your evilness", with the meaning the "eat your heart out" has for the English speakers. This is in the exact same spirit as in the ancient inscription wishing for the envious to "burst", with the use of the word λακάω instead.
However, I also said that it can be read as "be gone" in Modern Greek. This verb has an interesting story. As we saw, it apparently was used colourfully even in late antiquity. At some point around the middle ages, the word started shifting meaning from "burst" and "explode" into "run away", "flee", while maintaining the judgemental tone. As a result, in modern Greek it has the form λακάω (lakáo) or now more commonly λακίζω (lakízo), which means "run away with guilt / fear / cowardice".
Another amusing thing for me personally is that I use this word maybe on a weekly basis when the context allows it but I had no idea it was an ancient word, because I thought it was completely street talk, total slang. Turns out it is street talk, except it has not gone out of fashion for a couple millenia.
Another interesting fact is that this transformation from "break" to "run away" is a concept not unique to this particular word. Somehow, there is another slang involving the quintessential Greek word for break, "σπάω" (spáo) or "σπάζω" (spázo). In ancient Greek, this word meant "pull and detach" but in modern Greek it means exactly "break" (vtr / vi). In slang terminology, strictly street talk, telling someone "spase" (imperative for spao) means "get lost / be gone / go away"! So there is a recurring connection of the meanings of break and run away throughout Greek history.
Consequently, we can see that the belief that envy from surrounding people is a great threat to the wellbeing of a person, a family and a household is very consistent throughout the existence of the Greek culture. The evil eye, which the Greeks believe in, symbolizes the envious stare full of jealousy and malice. It is similar to the green-eyed-monster concept, coined by William Shakespeare. This is why they have all these small rituals and prayers for warding off the evil eye. Envy is believed to bring negative energy and even cause woe to the victim, working like a curse. Those beliefs have been so persistent and potent amongst the Greeks historically that the Orthodox Church had to work its way around them and so it had no choice but to accept those anti-evil eye rituals, even producing Christian prayers for them, unlike all other sort of magic-like rituals which are viewed as works of the devil.
Anyway. Now you know that when I said it means "get wrecked, envious scum", that's truly what it means pretty much!
being able to understand german memes brings me unreasonable amounts of joy. i did not anticipate that this would be the highlight of my language learning journey.
I wish people would stop saying "women and people with uteruses/vaginas" when talking about an issue that impacts uteruses or vaginas. Simply "people with uteruses/vaginas" works. When you say women AND another group, you imply that all women have the trait. Women without uteruses/vaginas exist, like some trans women and some intersex women and some cis perisex women who've had medical procedures and more.
As someone casually learning both Japanese and French, I've gotta say that Japanese feels like speaking a language and French feels like drowning. You can prime yourself for Japanese by practicing the basic sounds—ka ke ko ku ki ba be bo bu bi (hehe), but you have to prime yourself for French by tilting your head back and gargling hot coffee. Why are there so many sounds waaay at the base of the throat. Why is the R like that. Why france
It's not hard to figure out that, upon encounter with humans, cybertronians had to adapt their speech for us to be able to understand them. They also had to translate their names and give them vocalization patterns that otherwise could be not understandable or replicable by humans.
Now, let's take a step back and try to figure out how cybertronians would communicate vocally between one another:
Their speech patterns would consist mainly of mechanical noises, such as engine whirring, screeches, clanking, chirping, popping, hissing, and many more. You can refer to this article for a more detailed list of noises.
These sounds don't come just from their mouths (or intakes if you want to use the correct cybertronian term), but their whole bodies, as their many different mechanical components are an integral part of this array of noises. Humans do communicate through body language, but we don't look at someone cracking their knuckles or popping their elbow and go "understandable, have a great day". To us, these noises mean nothing. To cybertronians, they constitute an integral part of communication. However, no cybertronian would be able to assign a meaning to the noise of a human joint popping, simply because that very peculiar noise does not exist in cybertronian language.
This said, cybertronians hence communicate with vast vocalizations coming from their whole bodies. And they can mix them, too. A whir and a clicking sound separately mean two different things, together they have a whole new meaning that might be an entire phrase. This process is similar to some human languages too. For example, linguists out there come help me, in Japanese the word for teacher "先生" is composed of two kanjis that, alone, have two different meanings: "先" meaning "previous" and "生" meaning "life". HOWEVER, in this case the two noises are replicated one after another.
In Cybertronian language, 3 different things can happen:
2 sounds are made separately, they mean two separate things;
2 sounds are made one after another, they constitute a phrase;
2 sounds are made at the same time and overlap, they now compose one new unique sound that means something else entirely.
Of course, humans are only able to make one sound at a time, so replicating the overlapping sounds is impossible. For this reason, cybertronians must find a way to convey complex meanings in their language in a way that is possible for humans to comprehend. Most importantly, they need to translate their names in human language, closely enough that the original meaning isn't lost.
This magnificent post here explained how this process might occur, and offered a unique way to convey meaning into cybertronian names.
I might make another post on how cybertronian names are born, but that's a talk for another time.
For now, let's focus on the NAME STRUCTURE.
Starscream, for example. Again, refer to the aforementioned post. His name roughly translates to "he who screams in defiance of death". Another possibile translation could be "he who screams (at the stars) in defiance of death". Now we might be overcomplicating things, but imagine if there's a particular verb in cybertronian language that precisely refers to screaming as in "screaming to the sky/stars". Imagine Starscream's name contains that verb.
Do you follow? Good, let's overcomplicate it further. "Death" in cybertronian language might be one of those words whose sound can be used in overlap with other words, is often used alone due to its importance. The noun for death is, however, used in overlap with adjectives / verbs. If we keep following that logic, we can conclude that Starscream's name is composed of two consecutive sounds, one meaning "screaming to the stars" (one sound) and another being "in defiance of death / death being defied" (two overlapping sounds, coming out as one). Okay, the hard part is out. If you've kept up until now, you'll have no issues understanding the rest.
How would cybertronians be able to translate this complex name? They have no choice but to butcher it a bit, and since "death screamer" or "death defier" don't sound appealing, they chose to cut off the death part completely and keep the verb with its extended meaning "screaming to the stars". Ladies and gents and everyone in between, that's how "Starscream" is born.
The name phonetics are kept as closely accurate to the original sound as possible.
There are, thank Primus, names that don't contain overlapping noises and can be somewhat pronounced by humans. However, keep in mind that Cybertronian is a very sound-oriented language much like Chinese or Arab. Your vocalization must be precise or else it might take on a whole new meaning.
For example, let's imagine "Tarn" is pronounced with a single noise, or two or more consequential noises, that sound simple enough to the human ear. Phonetically speaking, it'd come out as:
the sound of engines turning on;
a very loud and grating revving noise;
and finally the natural noise of engines stopping.
It'd come out as "T-rrrrrrrrrrr-nh". It is pronounceable by humans precisely? Hell no, but you might be able to come close with a throaty sound and a rolling R. If the noise you just made is close enough to get a phonetical pass, congrats! You can now speak 0.0000000000001% Cybertronian. Don't do that in front of the decepticon fanatic though, he might not appreciate anyway.
Cybertronian language rarely contains vowels. Cybertronians on earth have adapted their names to contain vowels and make the sound more comprehensible (See the noise for "Tarn" not containing the "a").
A bunch on examples on how Cybertronian names might sound:
Megatron: Two revving noises (Me + Ga), only distinguishable by cybertronians, followed by a strong rrrrrrrrrrrr sound.
Arcee: A softer rrr sound, followed by chirping and shirieking overlapping noises, making up a "cee".
Bumblebee: The "bumble" part might be two consequential popping sounds.
