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… Continue reading
Tag: linguistics
Using the appropriate vocabulary in your novel
storiesintheashes: gaiabamman: It is very important that the language in your novel reflects the time and place in which the story is set. For example, my story is set in Italy. My characters would never “ride shotgun”, a term coined in US in the early 1900s referring to riding alongside the driver with a shotgun… Continue reading Using the appropriate vocabulary in your novel
The international chain of smack talk!
ICYMI can’t we all just get along 😦
Internet Abbreviations as Discourse Particles
iridescentoracle: allthingslinguistic: unnecessaryligatures: I find it really interesting that abbreviations online have abandoned sound-based abbreviations (is there an actual term for it? Things like “c u l8r”) in favor of actual abbreviations for things that have nothing to do with the content itself and are more like qualifiers (lbr, tbh, imho). This reminds me of… Continue reading Internet Abbreviations as Discourse Particles
How to pronounce french
frenchy-french: This is obviously not to be as satisfying and complete as I wish but we need a start to everything. Let’s start with the obvious! What to pronounce as a set : – en / an / ean / em : like in Jean-Paul, temps (je vois la vie en rose) – in /… Continue reading How to pronounce french
bounddreamer: glimmerclouddragon: toushindai: lizalaforet: inakamouse: pampliemousse: brumalbreeze: amielleon: yosukeseta: tectuu: yosukeseta: im still pissed off about シ and ツ I don’t シ whaツ bad about this? im going to stab you in the face ソン of a— There’s really ノ need to get ソ worked up over something as miンor as this! ワt the フck is… Continue reading
The English “please” is short for “if you please,” “if it pleases you to do this” — it is the same in most European languages (French si il vous plait, Spanish por favor). Its literal meaning is “you are under no obligation to do this.” “Hand me the salt. Not that I am saying that you have to!” This is not true; there is a social obligation, and it would be almost impossible not to comply. But etiquette largely consists of the exchange of polite fictions (to use less polite language, lies). When you ask someone to pass the salt, you are also giving them an order; by attaching the word “please,” you are saying that it is not an order. But, in fact, it is.
In English, “thank you” derives from “think,” it originally meant, “I will remember what you did for me” — which is usually not true either — but in other languages (the Portuguese obrigado is a good example) the standard term follows the form of the English “much obliged” — it actually does means “I am in your debt.” The French merci is even more graphic: it derives from “mercy,” as in begging for mercy; by saying it you are symbolically placing yourself in your benefactor”s power — since a debtor is, after all, a criminal. Saying “you’re welcome,” or “it’s nothing” (French de rien, Spanish de nada) — the latter has at least the advantage of often being literally true — is a way of reassuring the one to whom one has passed the salt that you are not actually inscribing a debit in your imaginary moral account book. So is saying “my pleasure” — you are saying, “No, actually, it’s a credit, not a debit — you did me a favor because in asking me to pass the salt, you gave me the opportunity to do something I found rewarding in itself!” …
David Graeber in Debt: The First 5,000 Years (via mongoosenamedt)
madmaudlingoes: hotcrosbuns: audre-w: nianeyna: psock: When English isn’t your first language, reading fanfics in your first language (if there are even any) becomes so much more embarrassing???? And sometimes I wonder why native English speakers don’t get that feeling when they are reading in their native language??? scrolling through the comments on this people with… Continue reading
Native English speakers are the world’s worst communicators – BBC
When such misunderstandings happen, it’s usually the native speakers who are to blame. Ironically, they are worse at delivering their message than people who speak English as a second or third language, according to Chong.
“A lot of native speakers are happy that English has become the world’s global language. They feel they don’t have to spend time learning another language,” says Chong. “But… often you have a boardroom full of people from different countries communicating in English and all understanding each other and then suddenly the American or Brit walks into the room and nobody can understand them.”
“Native speakers of English generally are monolingual and are not very good at tuning into language variation,” professor Jennifer Jenkins says. The non-native speakers, it turns out, speak more purposefully and carefully, typical of someone speaking a second or third language. Anglophones, on the other hand, often talk too fast for others to follow, and use jokes, slang and references specific to their own culture, says Chong. In emails, they use baffling abbreviations such as ‘OOO’, instead of simply saying that they will be out of the office.
“The native English speaker… is the only one who might not feel the need to accommodate or adapt to the others,” she adds.
The article Taming the Steamroller has useful suggestions about ways to do better as a native English speaker communicating with non-native speakers.
#when you see all these esl ppl understanding each other even though they all have their own peculiar ways of saying things #and then a brit can’t figure out the simplest things in context bc they can’t imagine any other kind of grammar or ways of saying things #or a single mispronunciation throws them off bc they don’t know certain sounds of letters that are very common in other languages (tags by @minumaja)
That facebook link wasn’t working for me, so Here’s The BBC story linked direct.
Native English speakers are the world’s worst communicators – BBC
Lost in Translation on Ice – Translation Mistakes in Episodes 1-6
lookiamnotcreative: Hi! I’m that person who wrote that post with the lost-in-translation innuendo from episode 6. After that, some people said they want to know about the rest of the ‘lost in translation stuff’ from the rest of the episodes……so, hey, I’m crazy, so I went and did it. This post aims to collect and explain… Continue reading Lost in Translation on Ice – Translation Mistakes in Episodes 1-6
Monsters' Queen 