goldendecember - Tumblr blog

[goldendecember]

[goldendecember]

I remember I heard them say “hell,” not “shell.” The house is a hell, I heard.

— Mariana Enríquez, excerpt of ‘Adela’s House’ Things We Lost in the Fire (trans. Megan McDowell) 

[goldendecember]

all the memes about translation on this site are so depressing they're all about the inevitable loss of meaning or impossibility to communicate the original text. but like. surely on this, the transgender website, we should know how to appreciate the beauty and meaning to be gained in an act of transformation more

[goldendecember]

I hate you myers-briggs test I hate you astrological signs I hate you "five love languages" I hate you enneagram I hate you compulsive desire to categorize and pathologize all human behavior

[goldendecember]

I feel like a lot of Duolingo discourse should acknowledge that the reason that they have basically every national European language on there is not because of a “European bias” but because of refugees. A huge number of refugees in Europe use it to learn the language of whatever country they’re moving to or living in; the site even talks about it in the “fun facts” on their waiting screen. Languages like Swedish and Norwegian aren’t there primarily for Minnesotans getting in touch with their heritage, but for African and Asian refugees in Sweden and Norway, and indeed they make up the majority of people using Duolingo to learn those languages. The site does need to add more non-European languages; it’s gradually doing this, it recently added Zulu, Xhosa and Kreyòl, and its focus on indigenous languages like Navajo and Hawaiian is especially commendable, but there are still some glaring omissions of major world languages from Asia and Africa that need to be addressed — and even “they’re edited by users” doesn’t cut it with how many people worldwide speak those whom they could seek out! But the fact that a free language app is doing its best to provide the language learning services that those actual countries routinely deny desperately-poor refugees is a good thing actually. Reserve your rage for the inclusion of Esperanto, Klingon and High Valyrian over Tagalog and Farsi.

[goldendecember]

why do all the words sound heavier in my native language?

—  @metamorphesque, Yoojin Grace Wuertz (Mother Tongue), Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky (by Garth Greenwell), Jhumpa Lahiri (Translating Myself and Others), @lifeinpoetry

˗ˏˋ☕ˎˊ˗        

[goldendecember]

[goldendecember]

Thank you to Gretchen McCulloch for fielding this question, and sorry that as a result the world’s foremost internet linguist has been devoured by the brown one. She will be missed.

[goldendecember]

lydia davis

[goldendecember]

just stop supporting harry potter. just stop. “but i like magic school-” tales of earthsea. wayward children. “but i like sorting characters-” watch atla. become a warrior cats stan. “but-” percy jackson

[goldendecember]

Our Japanese class found it funny that in common terminology "food" isn't very distinguished from specifically "rice" until it was pointed out to us that in English "meal" is "loose roughly ground grain"

[goldendecember]

Goodbye From Nowhere by Sara Zarr!

books actually saying the words aromantic and/or plainly describing the experience!!! for asaw 2022!!! books in order of appearance:

Royal Rescue

the (un)popular vote

summer of salt

Tarnished Are the Stars

loveless

summer bird blue

common bonds (this is a whole anotholgy that centers around aro ppl)

last 8

the grimrose girls

clear, purposeful representation is so meaningful and it always makes me so happy to see, i hope that this asaw this representation makes another aro smile too

plus!! if anyone has any else that’d like to add on or recommend that would be amazing :)

[goldendecember]

[goldendecember]

One price speakers pay for standard dialects is that they change more slowly, since the fact that a standard dialect is used in writing and public media puts something of a brake on change. However, since non-standard dialects are freer to change on the basis of the human child’s linguistic and cognitive systems, non-standard dialects are, in a sense, often ‘more logical’ or ‘more elegant’ from a linguistic point of view.

Social Linguistics and Literacies by J. P. Gee  (via immersedinarabic)

[goldendecember]

“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.”

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.

[goldendecember]

#want to add that if you found a label when you were younger and you're a little hazy on the edges of it now #but its still useful to how you see the world and etc #you can still... keep it #idk why ppl got the idea that to identify as ace you have to be like entirely beholden to the definition of asexual #something something 'gold star ___' is not and has never been useful terminology #anyway i think about this a lot and i think if you're comfortable in something you can keep it and you dont have to prove anything to anyone #also aspec is a spectrum and an identity... its right in the name

@tamaraniac yes !!

i apologize for being nosy, and please don't answer this if you don't want to, but i remember a few years ago you had identified as asexual and i was wondering if you still do? i did for a long time but i'm with a new partner now and i'm starting to wonder if maybe the connection just wasn't right with anyone before and that's why i wasn't into having sex? is that normal? i mean, i identified that way for YEARS so i'm just. very confused at myself.

I mean listen, I’m in my 30s. These labels don’t mean a lot to me anymore. Like, literally everything is normal. Everything is fine so long as nobody’s feelings are being hurt. Don’t worry about some label that used to be useful maybe not being useful anymore. Thank it for its service and let it retire. Maybe one day it will be useful again. That doesn’t change anything about you, because you are, and always have been, a complex, multifaceted, constantly changing kaleidoscope of emotional and sexual needs, and “asexual” is just a word that helped you make sense of it for a while.

Like, y’all, give yourselves a break. Sex is complicated. Some people are straight their whole lives, and then they meet one person who changes everything. Some people are one thing for a while, then they’re another thing, then they go back to being the first thing. Some people stay one thing forever. Some people are really into something in their 20s that grosses them out to even think about for the rest of their lives. All if it’s normal.

The words you put on your orientation are not elementally a part of you. They are tools, and as tools they should serve a function. That function can be to help you understand and categorize your own experiences and desires. It can be to help you find a community. It can be to help you get laid. It can just be to set social expectations. These words can be a revelation when you first apply them to yourself: they can be life-saving. But you are not beholden to them. 

“Idk, I thought of myself as ace for a long time, but I’m into my current partner, so like, enh? I’m having a good time and my partner and I are both happy, so I guess labels aren’t really useful to me right now” can be all you have to say on the subject.