#language thoughts

[miyamiwu]

Spontaneity is truly the best mark of fluency in a language. You could be learning the language for years, know how to read and write it, and have no trouble speaking it occasionally and understanding what others are saying, but if you can’t speak it naturally and comfortably on the spot, then you still have a lot to learn

I’ve been learning Tagalog/Filipino since I was a child, watched Filipino dramas on TV, and spoke the language in Filipino class, but it wasn’t when I first went to Manila at 18, surrounded by native speakers, that I realized how lacking my knowledge still was

I knew how to express certain stuff, but sometimes not in a way that was considered “natural” or common for native speakers. I was also slow in forming sentences verbally as I had to mentally translate first from either English or my mother tongue just to get my ideas across. Because of this, I struggled at first in communicating with my classmates.

Certain everyday concepts not usually used in class or dramas also turned out to be a blank spot for me. I had to ask someone how to say that I wanted my eggs with a runny yolk, that the light bulb was getting dim, that I was on my period/having period cramps, etc. I also didn’t know what filler words to use for when I just didn’t know what to say… I had to observe and take notes not just on what words/expressions native speakers used but also the tone in how they said it.

I think I speak better Filipino now, but it’s still not as smooth as when I speak in my mother tongue.

[driftwooddave]

What is it about american culture spesifically that gives such power to individual words? FRX the r-word, gosh, etc. No other culture I know of censores itself like that, or gives that much weight to singular words. In other countries I know, the horrible things you can't say but people do are more like "your father is a dog and your mother a whore", and individual words or even phrases are rarely censored. But the US censores everything. God damn becomes gosh darn, fucking hell becomes frigging heck etc. Why? Gosh Darn and God Damn are identical. There is no differance, gramatically, etymologically, semantically, context, nothing. Its the same phrase. But one is acceptable, the other not. In other cultures you have swears like "You're Satan's Horsecock", and the way they censor it is by… Not saying it, they don't go "You're Daten's Morseblock". Whats going on here?

[daitoshi]

I know logically that “yapping” is new slang for chatting, or talking a lot, in a casual context. It’s positive to neutral. People claim to be yapping with friends, it just means chatting. Just talking sociably, perhaps about nothing deeply important. Maybe talking a little excessively, in the same way you might laugh at getting carried away a with a fun thing.

But I have 30 years of “yapping” being the VERY NEGATIVE, DEROGATORY word for a dog barking endlessly at nothing, to the point of disturbing everyone around it. The kind of endless, pointless noise that makes you sincerely wish a coyote or car would just kill it already, so it would fucking shut up. A living air horn that refuses to stop blasting.

“Yapping dog” basically meant “useless screaming creature that everyone loathed” - having something that yaps is an embarrassing thing, that you shoo into another room and keep it away from guests, and hope it stops before it ruins the whole gathering. People abandon or buy electric collars or remove voice boxes or euthanize yapping dogs, who don’t learn to stop perpetually full-volume barking at nothing.

-

I know it’s used neutrally now.

I know it just means chatting with people.

But when someone says they want to yap, or they’re someone who is always yapping, my gut instinct is to wonder if they’re a bit suicidal, or perhaps are about to start literally begin howling and gibbering into the sky and I need to plan an escape.

My gut instinct is WARINESS and ALARM, because I’ve got 30-ish years of memory that says claiming to be a yapping thing is an insane and self-destructive thing to say, like openly claiming to be someone who prefers to piss and shit on open public floors instead of in toilets. Being compared to a yapping dog was a huge insult. It’s not something that humans do, that’s an animal thing. That’s a deeply disliked animal thing, what the fuck.

And I have to keep my expression frozen as I mentally remind my gut that no, that word means something different to kids now. It’s neutral now.

Yap just means “to talk” to them. The deeply negative connotations I grew up with aren’t there.

Of all the new slang I’ve seen, I’m WAY more comfortable with stuff like “ohio rizz” than I am with the new use of “yap” becoming common.

I’m sure I’ll eventually get used to it, but damn. It jolts me every time.

[ndando-musings]

language thoughts

Since this blog is apparently where I have decided to dump all meta-related thoughts... Here are some thoughts regarding “Silvanizing” Sindarin words that came up on the SWG discord this morning. Sometimes when we write together, we share sentences at the end of the writing session, and that can create conversation.

Me:  [My shared sentence] is just meta because thats what i'm working on, but here is my sentence: “While there is conflicting information on Silvan language in the Third Age, Tolkien’s final writing on Silvan language in Mirkwood explains that Oropher and the few Sindarin refugees with him assimilated into Silvan culture, “adopting their language and taking names of Silvan form and style,” which we see explicitly in the name of Oropher’s grandson, Legolas, a “dialectical” or “silvanized” form of the more traditional Sindarin laegolas.” Other member: do they always do the ae->e in their accent? would Lego say "Medhros"??

Me:  As for what Legolas would say... IDK, it depends on which version of woodelf languages in the third age you latch onto, but...  There are only about 30 purely nandorin words "recorded" by tolkien, and only in one of those set of words does "ae" appear instead of a simple "a" or "e."  "dh" is also a Sindarin spelling whereas Nandorin uses simply "d", so in Silvan/Nandorin, it is safe to assume that words traditionally with "dh" in Sindarin would probably be Silvanized by dropping the H. 

 So I would conclude by saying it is entirely possible that a strictly Silvan-speaking wood-elf might pronounce/spell/whatever Maedhros as "Madros" or "Medros" instead. 

 But this is all just inference based on the few, like, clues we get from the nandorin words and silvan-dialectical sindarin words peppered about, really

Love the SWG discord, because I literally would never have been inspired to think about this on my own. Hm... Looking forward to exploring these ideas more another time. 

*throws vague thoughts into the tumblr void and wanders away*

[languageek]

Do any of you who speak a heritage language & another language besides your other native language feel guilty for knowing that language but not your heritage language?? 

Japanese & English were my first languages, never fully developed my Japanese, learned Portuguese to an advanced/fluent level and now my 2 strongest are English and Portuguese, followed my an intermediate-ish level of Spanish, then my Japanese. 

I know I used to feel guilty for knowing Portuguese better than Japanese, but at this point sometimes I feel like “why can’t I LEARNNN this language as well as I learned Portuguese?” 

[donotfeedthefish-moweiyu]

Ch 226

“我余生所求皆在于此，你别想再靠近半步。”

姜曦暴怒：“你余生所求，就是鱼死网破吗？”

(xu shuanglin says) "This is all that I seek in what remains of my life, don't think you can get even a step closer."

Jiang Xi exploded, "Is a life and death struggle what you seek in what remains of your life?"

So it's an intense conversation but I laughed because the words for "remains" and "fish" sound the same. In this case remains is used in place of "what is left of". ( This pun is potentially intentional because the phrase for life and death struggle meatbun used is literally "the fish dies, the net breaks".) Anyway, if we want, we can "hear"/pun this conversation into:

(xu shuanglin says) "This is all that I seek in my life as a fish, don't think you can get even a step closer."

Jiang Xi exploded, "Is a life and death struggle what you seek in your life as a fish?"

And now I'm just imagining Xi Shuanglin as a fish in the middle of a magical array, surrounded by 5 elemental divine weapons, flopping.

Also, cultural note: for the Lunar New Year the reason we serve fish is for this pun. There the idea to have excess every year -- which means you have enough (money, food, etc). And the word for excess in this case is remains -- like to have something left over.

Replacing remaining with fish, the phrase becomes have fish every year.

So for auspiciousness, we eat fish every year! :)

[godlessace]

Aromantic vs asexual definitions

Traditionally, the definition of “asexual” is “a person who does not experience sexual attraction”, often with that exact phrasing, because that is what’s given on the AVEN front page.  “Aromantic”, however, does not have such a strong tradition.  For example, an early version of the AVENwiki article said:

There is no concrete definition for aromantic.  Some people think of it as the lack of romantic attraction, whereas others define it as the lack of desire to be in a romantic relationship.

My recollection is that in 2009, people were not consistent about the definition, because, what even is romantic attraction, besides a desire to be in a romantic relationship?  Nowadays, the concept of romantic attraction is taken more for granted, and “aromantic” is almost always defined in terms of romantic attraction, seemingly in imitation of “asexual”.

And... I think it’s taken too much for granted that whatever the ace community did with its language is worthy of emulation, and it’s not clear to me that this is the case.

The attraction-based definition of asexual has the advantage that it accommodates people who strongly relate to the asexual experience, and yet are sex-favorable.  The disadvantage, is that it does not accommodate people who strongly relate to the asexual experience, and yet experience sexual attraction.  For example, imagine someone who doesn’t experience sexual desire, but who either experiences sexual attraction or just isn’t sure what that means.  To my mind, that person belongs in the ace community, and there’s no sense in creating a separate community just for people who lack sexual desire rather than sexual attraction.

The focus on romantic attraction similarly has the advantage of acknowledging that some people (like myself) might lack romantic attraction, but still end up in romantic relationships, but runs into the same problem.  What if someone doesn’t really understand this whole romantic attraction thing, but they’re much more certain that they don’t want romantic relationships?  This may be a common experience, because romantic attraction tends to be a more slippery concept than sexual attraction--it’s not for nothing that “quoiromantic” is far more common than “quoisexual”.

[polyglottraveler]

Some thoughts on how to learn foreign languages

When we start learning a new language, whether we do it on our own or in a classroom, we often start by learning basic sentences such as “How are you?”, “My name is...”, “Where is the train station?”. This is obviously useful for a beginner and you need to learn how to say this at some point if you want to get around in that new language. However, I think that this method does not help understanding how the language works in itself, and we could come up with better ways of learning. 

I read some articles about a thing called “the logical tree” (or l’arborescence logique in French), which basically means that each thing that you learn will help you understand the next thing that you’re going to learn. You capitalize on what you already know in order to learn more. 

The thing is, we always want everything right now, so we tend not to settle down and not to take the time to actually learn things well. Instead of starting a new language by the most useful sentences, I think that we should take some time to understand how the language is constructed, how the language actually works. Then you can start to learn the language in itself, in a logical and progressive way, so that each new piece of knowledge is related to the previous one. 

Basically what I’m trying to say is that we should link what we learn thanks to syntax instead of context. Most of the time, when you start learning a new language, you will learn during the same lesson some sentences like “my name is”, “I come from”, “how are you”, “i live in” etc. In the logical tree perspective, in a single lesson you would instead learn thing like “i am”, “you are”, “i am happy”, “are you happy?”. I hope you get what I mean ^^ Thanks to this logical link between the different things you’re learning, the logical tree allows us to learn faster and better. It helps us understanding how the language works so we are able to speak it better and a lot faster than with the traditional method. 

When I was teaching English to Peruvian kids a few weeks ago, we actually used this method to teach them the basics of the language and it was very useful. We would teach them the verb “to be”, then the next day the verb “to have” etc. And we would associate these verbs with basic nouns and adjectives so that they would understand how to form a sentence by themselves. It worked very well and was a lot more efficient than teaching them random sentences. They remembered things a lot better with the logical tree method, as they would understand the logical link between the different sentences we were teaching them and asking them to make by themselves. They were building mental connections, which means that there is less chance they will forget what they learnt. Also it allowed us to do a lot of games involving sentence making so the kids felt more involved it the class and were having fun while learning :) 

All of this to say that learning about the logical tree has been really eye opening for me, and has made me rethink my way of learning (and teaching) languages. I wish more teachers and classbooks would use that method.  If you read these thoughts until the end, feel free to tell me what you think about it, I would love to kow other opinions on this topic :)