wiisagi-maiingan:

Do you ever think about languages? Do you ever think about how humans all over the world formed such complex and intricate and unique ways of communicating with each other? The ways that so many languages formed alongside each other or formed from one another but still ended up being so distinct? How languages aren’t just noises but an incredible reflection of the values and priorities and relationships in a community and culture?

Sorry, I’m just getting emotional over humanity rn.

unicorn-and-bluebells:

apolesen:

The Universal Translator is the most boring invention in Star Trek, which is why I tend to ignore it. It’s useful for first contact, but the idea that everything someone says is translated means that we never get any depiction of linguistic diversity in Star Trek, particularly in something like DS9. Imagine the possibilities: 

• Kira being sent on a crash-course on Federation Standard when she is made liaison officer.
• Bashir sitting with several dictionary PADDs and a grammar, trying to figure out if the translation matrix Garak ran the Cardassian novel through has messed up or if Garak is playing a very intricate practical joke on him, because surely it can’t mean that. 
• Molly cheerily code-switching between Japanese, Irish and English. Sometimes she throws in some Bajoran too - Aunt Nerys taught it to her.
• Sisko asking for Kira’s help to get better at Bajoran. They meet over coffee and practice Bajoran.
• Dax sometimes dreaming in languages she no longer knows, but previous hosts were well-versed in.
• Kira and Odo always speaking Bajoran to one another and only switching to Standard when Starfleet folks are there.
• The entire storyline of Garak, Kira and Odo with the Cardassian Resistance being in Cardassian
• Kira learning Cardassian properly only then - before that she spoke only a Bajoran-Cardassian pidgin which developed during the Occupation.
• Nog teaching Jake Ferengi as a way of returning the favour of Jake teaching him how to read.
• Garak eavesdropping on everyone. No one is sure how many languages he understands. 
• The chatter of dozens of languages on the Promenade – the gutturals of Klingon, the uvulars of Cardassian, the retroflex liquids of Bajoran.
• Multilingual swearing!

Y'ALL READ THE NOTES THERE’S SOME GOOD SHIT IN THERE!!! Also please allow me to add one of my favourite headcanons:

• you can turn your quarters into a translator dead zone. Rom did this ages ago bc he wanted Nog to grow up speaking their language, but Nog forgot all about it, so the first time he had Jake over, as they stepped through the door Jake suddenly looked REALLY confused about what Nog was saying (since he didn’t know Nog’s language yet). Also, some more headcanons I’m coming up with right now!
• Worf speaks in an interesting mix of tlhIngan Hol, Yiddish, and Federation Standard. I think he probably tends to speak to friends and family in the former two pretty evenly. I kinda fear what mixing the two would be like, due to the word order of tlhIngan Hol (it’s very unusual), but he makes it work!
• When talking about memories from previous hosts, Dax tends to switch dialects and languages, because they tend to speak with the dialect/language associated with that host
• The Ferengi language we hear Quark and Rom and Nog speaking (also. Side note, I assume that each species has a metric fuckton of languages. Y'know, like how people do. So while I will be referring to this as the Ferengi language just note it’s likely one of many. Same rules apply to other alien languages) has a lot of tones and subtleties that non-Ferengi find VERY difficult to hear. This makes Jake’s language-learning process very difficult (about as difficult as Nog’s was. You ever looked closely at Ferengi writing? If you grew up reading that and then had to read Federation Standard you’d be so confused). Jake probably often messes up and mispronounces stuff, resulting in funny looks
• Speaking of Jake…one time Nog brought him along with Leeta and Rom to visit Ishka on Ferenginar (Rom wanted his moogie to meet this lovely lady he’d married, and Nog wanted to bring his friend of course). Jake tried to say “It’s nice to meet you,” but somehow messed it up really badly (he wasn’t sure how) and said something rude, prompting some shocked expressions from Ishka and Rom, a confused expression from Leeta, and a cringe from Nog (who’s listened to Jake enough to be able to tell what he meant to say, a lot of the time). Nog then has to correct him and translate, and all is forgiven
• Also. The Siskos are from New Orleans. I bet all three of these dudes speak quite a bit of French
• Quark tends to surprise people with how much of other languages he can understand and speak. I think he’s got his native language, then is either fluent or almost fluent in Cardassian and Bajoran, then knows a handful of phrases and/or can understand basic conversations in like 6 other languages, and it always surprises folks. He doesn’t get what’s so surprising (after all, he has a lot of business deals to make with all kinds of people, and all kinds of people walk into his bar, of course he’s gonna know more than just his own language). One of the languages he doesn’t know/only knows like a tiny amount of phrases in is Federation Standard. He is forced to learn it Quickly when the Federation gets the station (a very sink or swim situation for him).
• Garak spoke Federation Standard before the Federation got the station, but he’d only learned it recently (also! This one might be kinda canon! Andy Robinson says that when he first started playing Garak, he played him as if he had learned Standard VERY recently. If you watch Garak’s introduction to Bashir, you can really notice it, especially in where and when he takes pauses. There’s a lot of pausing in the middle of sentences, as if he’s going “shit what’s that word again??” in his head)

abominablesnowdude:

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys:

cosmicdeviant:

tikkunolamorgtfo:

metradell-vyorei:

fecktrecool-deactivated20220314:

Can Americans please not bring Irish Gaelic names into white names discourse?

Irish is the native language of Irish people. It’s an ancient language that is on the brink of extinction as a direct result of colonialism and cultural and physical genocide.

Names like Saoirse (freedom), Áine (radiant), Aoife (beautiful) etc are traditional Irish names. They’re spelt “funny” because Irish is a different language from English, and has some sounds that aren’t found in the English language.

It’s not the same thing as edgy white Americans naming their kid Kathylyn instead of Kathleen to try to be different

Also it’s not even called Irish Gaelic it’s called Gaeilge (gayl-ga) and is its own language, a beautiful one at that, fully encourage everyone interested in language revival to try learning it because we’re losing it rapidly and there’s not many Gaeilgeoirí (“gayl-gor-ee” ie: fluent speakers) left

Yes—this happens with Hebrew names all the time, too, and it’s really frustrating. No, the name Ariel isn’t just a stupid Disney reference, it’s Hebrew. Toby isn’t “weird for a girl,” it’s common for Jewish girls because it’s Toiba in Yiddish. Asher isn’t a “trendy white name”—the influencer yummy mummy fucking stole it from us (which I hate). Believe me, I absolutely loathe those trendy made-up white people names like Bryzzley and Paedon, but keep in mind that there’s a difference between names you haven’t heard of because they belong to a different culture, and names some Mormon housewife made up by adding a bunch of Ys to a random noun. 

This is also relevant with Welsh names. Cymraeg (Welsh) is a language found in Wales that has been severely damaged by English colonialism. Currently the Welsh government have been combating the dying of this language by making Welsh language a compulsory subject in schools up until sixth form, when you can drop it. All the signs have Welsh translations and almost all radio broadcasts, announcements, and phone lines have a Welsh option.

There are villages in Wales that speak only Welsh as well, I grew up in one that was mixed language but pretty much everyone bar a few immigrant parents spoke Welsh.

Here a some example names

Efnision, Branwen, Iown, Rhys, Nerys, Ceridwen, Sian, Taliesin

A few example names are from the Mabinogion which is the Welsh book of fables and includes some of the first stories about King Arthur.

This language is dying, but it’s fighting to stay alive, and a lot of White Americans don’t understand the history and significance of Welsh names.

Tumblr in particular is a very America centric site due to the majority of users being American so it’s understandable that this isn’t common knowledge, but it is still knowledge that exists and is valuable to learn.

Important correction: Welsh is NOT dying. It’s literally a growing language, directly because of the enormous amount of work language activist groups and the Welsh Government have put into reviving it. Current estimates put it at ~30% of the population, up from 17% in the 1980s. 

But it IS still endangered, and England is very unhappy about this reversal of its decline. Currently (the space year 2021) Boris Johnson’s government is starting to crack down on Welsh cultural and linguistic differences and identities in a bid to make us conform more to England’s idea of “Britishness” (i.e. Englishness but they get to claim our achievements as theirs.) 

All of this also applies to the Scots languages. (and yes, there’s more than one)

While there has been a modicum of success in keeping the Gaelic language alive, we are still having to fight tooth and nail for everything else

England has been trying to wipe out the celtic, both languages and cultures, with varying degrees of success for centuries, and goddamn white Americans sure are doing their best to help

lizawithazed:

s-peak-in-tongue-s:

cardboardfacewoman:

rooksandravens:

derinthemadscientist:

thepioden:

animatedamerican:

nentuaby:

animatedamerican:

asexualbrittaperry:

ggiornojo:

asexualbrittaperry:

you can make nearly any object into a good insult if you put ‘you absolute’ in front of it

example: you absolute coat hanger

as well u can just add ‘ed’ to any object and it’s sounds like you were really drunk

example: i was absolutely coat hangered last night

#i was gazeboed mate #i was absolutely baubled

Meanwhile, “utter” works for the first (e.g., “you utter floorboard”) but somehow “utterly” doesn’t seem to work as well for the second (“I was utterly floorboarded”).

Utterly doesn’t work for drunk because it’s the affix for turning random objects into terms for *shocked*, obviously.

… huh.  I thought that might just be the similarity to “floored”, and yet “I was utterly coat hangered” does seem to convey something similar.

I have to tell you, I am utterly sandwiched at this discovery.

Completely makes the phrase mean “super tired”.

“God, it’s been a long week, I am completely coat-hangered.”

Something is

Something is wrong with our language

Is it a glitch or a feature?

Feature

this neat feature is called collocative substitution, and it occurs when certain words are strongly linked to certain context and/or phrases. when you read/hear a pair of words that usually wouldn’t go together, your brain fills in the context with what would normally be inferred, given the originally phrased pairing. thus, finding out that there’s a term for this phenomenon may indeed leave you utterly sandwiched. lesser known or less strongly linked phrases and pairings may not be able to translate substituted words to appropriately fit the inferred context, so you were not utterly floorboarded at the club last night, but rather you were absolutely floorboarded, and as this explanation continues to drag on, you may by the end of it find yourself completely coathangered from read it all.

I, like all linguists I have met or even heard of, have a deep intricate love-hate relationship with the English Language because of complete and total coathangering like this

samayla:

model-theory:

samayla:

ununquadius:

Learning a language that doesn’t use the same writing system as your native one is so fun because they change the font and you’re doomed

I had a penpal from Greece in high school. She had the neatest handwriting ever. She taught me a bunch of basic stuff, and it got to the point that we’d write our letters almost exclusively in Greek (a big deal, as this was before Google Translate was even a thing).

Cut to junior year of college. I took Classical Greek as part of my degree, and I was feeling like I had a leg up over my classmates, whose Greek handwriting looked like kindergarten chicken scratch, while mine was smooth and quick. I turned in my first assignment feeling pretty damn proud of myself.

About three assignments later, my professor pulled me aside with the goofiest look on his face…

“I appreciate the effort, but…”

You remember that phase I think all little girls go through in middle school/junior high? Where we have swirly tails on our G’s or our Y’s get all swoopy, or we dot all our I’s with little hearts?

Yeah…

Turns out, all the perfect little flourishes I’d been putting on my letters were not, in fact, part of the letters at all. My penpal had just still been in that phase when she taught me the alphabet!

plEase show us your greek alphabet

Since several people have asked, I’m going to drop this here as well. It’s not super crazy or anything… just frilly enough to raise some eyebrows in a college Classics course lol…

ailichi:

siriusly-justreblogs:

gaeilge-rules:

Found this far funnier than I should have

someone please tell me if this is actually in accordance with how you spell irish stuff

I appreciate your curiosity!! This is exactly how we’d Gaelicise English names.

The J in Jason becoming an S is based on the model of Seán being the Irish version of John, and of Séamus being the Irish version of James. Séason would be pronounced Shay-son.

T is pronounced very softly in Irish, and when it’s followed by an E, it becomes a CH sound. The EA diphtong in Tead is pronounced as ‘ah’. So Tead would be pronounced as Chad, exactly the same.

As above, the EA is pronounced ‘ah’ and the combination GH is silent in Irish, so Hearraigh would be pronounced as Harry is in English, despite the initially alarming length.

Darach is already an Irish name, meaning ‘like an oak,’ and it’s usually Anglicised as Dara or Darragh (pronounced identically to each other), so suggesting Dairech = Derek is just extra funny.

I don’t think I’ll actually be able to scrub Ailfiagh out of my mind. It sounds too Irish, to the point that it’s replaced Alfie as the default spelling for me.

In short, We Need to Talk about Caoimhín (Kwee-veen) is a genius.

robotslenderman:

krabbydon:

lawrencearabia:

macdicilla:

ceuulusuoluptatemcapit:

tanoraqui:

imaginarycircus:

terpsikeraunos:

caecilius-est-pater:

thoodleoo:

no punctuation we read like romans

NOPUNCTUATIONORLOWERCASEORSPACESWEREADLIKEROMANS

INTER·PVNCTVATION·WE·INSCRIBE·LIKE·ROMANS

words doesn’t classical matter order in greek;

we, in a manner akin to that of a man who once was, in Rome, an orator of significant skill, who was then for his elegance of speech renowned and now for his elaborate structure of sentences cursed by generations of scholars of Latin, the language which he spoke and we now study, Cicero, write, rather than by any efficiency, functionality, or ease of legibility have our words, our honors, the breaths of our hearts, be besmirched.

The fact that this has yet to devolve into boustrophedon is a miracle… or a challenge. I’m looking at you

@terpsikeraunos @macdicilla @labellamordens

I’m up to it

Not many jnſtances of Punctuation - but for many Daſhes – et words Capitaliz’d for emphavſis, but not logicaly - ſpeeling and word Endings varied Gratelie - and the long S - ſ - vſed in at the ſtart and Centre of wordes - & the short “s” vſed only at the end - as with the U and V, and the I and J - but v and j only at the ſtart of wordes (we diſtinguishe not between Vouels and Conſonants, only decoratiue Letteres). Ye letter “y” being in lookes cloſe to an Olde letter “þ” which is vſed as “th” - Y may be vſed in the place of TH - but only ſparingly - and ſtill Pronounc’d the ſame as TH. Long and rambling ſentences - ſeeminglie without end - a paragraph can conſiſt of One whole ſentence, and ſhort ſentences are rare – we ſcribe like hiſtorical Modern English – and other european Languages.

And furthermore, Carthage is to be destroyed.

I hate all of you.

existingcharactersdiehorribly:

imoldbutimstillintothat:

septemberpoems:

imoldbutimstillintothat:

penfairy:

besiderunningwaters:

septemberpoems:

imoldbutimstillintothat:

penfairy:

I JUST LEARNED ABOUT DANISH NUMBERS ALL OTHER LANGUAGE CRIMES ARE FORGIVEN WE MUST UNITE TO DEFEAT THE TRUE EVIL

Originally posted by the-reactiongifs

WE’VE BEEN TRYING

sincerely, the swedes 

please explain

The Swedes and the Danes are like the French and the English - been at war for hundreds of years, but are now enjoying a peace built on a solid foundation of mutual shade. After becoming acquainted with the Danish numerical system I find myself sympathising with the Swedes.

@imoldbutimstillintothat​ tells me “they call 90 “halvfems” aka half fives and by that they mean 4*20 + 0.5*20. And same goes for 70 which they call halvfjerds. (3*20+0.5*20)”

I’ve read that sentence 3 times and I still don’t understand it

Haha sorry. They, like the French count by scores (quatre-vingt being 80) I think. So halvfems (half fives) (aka 90) are four score plus one half score of the fifth one or so I have been told. But 100 is hundrede in Danish so they’re not even making consistently no sense.

and this is all without getting into how utterly ridiculous their language is. this is just basic numbers.