#language change

[toastflower]

you know what fuck it, I love you historical spelling. I love you weird fossilised preservations of obsolete alphabets, grasping for something that exists now like mist, like liquid, its true pronunciation lost to time but not quite forgotten, not yet. a ghost remains, a friendly one, comfortable in this old house. I love you repurposed letters for phonemes that neither the old language nor the variety they were borrowed into has any need for anymore. I love you sensible vowel pairings that have grown - improbably - centuries later, into unwieldy diphthongs, quietly thriving in an ever-shifting environment like weeds nestled cosily beneath the shade of grander plants that have long since turned to mulch. I love the word 'diphthong' (the little thicket of consonants in the middle of it, sprouting up from nowhere to trouble tongue and penmanship alike). I love how Phoenician fingerprints remain in a Norman revision of an Anglo-Saxon reworking of a Roman borrowing of a Greek repurposing, all these shapes and signs moulded again and again like clay, like mud, spun like flax to carry all those lovely glides and nasals and obstruents which come and go and come and go over time as the sounds mutate and grow apart, and the people grow and age and die, leaving behind nothing except (sometimes) a page. a poem. a piece of themselves, their voice, rendered in imperfect beautiful scratchings whose contours match the ceaseless flow of time, heavy with all that history and somehow also light with the sheer urgency of being written. look at it, isn't it wonderful? this moment in time that holds within it yet other moments? other echoes calling down through the centuries? this is how we spoke, this is what we sounded like, once. this is how we thought our ancestors would have said it. I love the inconvenience. English is so hard to learn. the spelling is so illogical. so cumbersome. it's frustrating. it makes no sense. it's inconvenient. yes and yes and yes, and yet you too are inconvenient, you too are inchoate and too much and you fail to resolve into a neat and comprehensible order. but look at you. how lovely you are. I treasure you. why should the words you speak be any less lovely.

[mulletpermsicantlookaway]

Riding to Work

One afternoon in early summer, Brandon rode his bicycle home from work. He rode his bike to work and back nearly every day, if he could – it was his favorite part of the day. He had a good but unexciting job with a software company in an up-to-date large city in the western U.S. He fit the stereotype of a hipster tech worker perfectly. He had done well in school, had a solid job in his early twenties, and lived in a decent loft apartment just far enough away from his job to have some serious time on his bicycle. He wore nerdy-looking glasses that he actually needed in order to see. He dressed casually but fussily at the same time, and his long-on-top-faded-on-the-sides haircut, complete with a shaved-in part, required regular maintenance.

He rode to and from work in the same clothes he wore in the office, using a bicycle clip if he thought his skinny jeans or slim-fit pants might have enough material at the ankle to catch his chain. Anything he needed for work he carried in a messenger bag, even though there were hardly any actual bike messengers left in the city. He hadn’t lived there long, and he really knew no one except a few of his co-workers. He supposed that he was okay with that, but something still felt missing in some way, missing from his life, that is. The only time he felt fully alive was when he was riding his bike.

On a whim, he stopped by a cool-looking bar on the way home. “Might as well stop and have a drink – do something different for once,” he thought. The place had a moderate crowd, mostly other young urban types like himself, but no one he knew. Like most bars, the TVs were tuned to a few different sports channels.

Soon he was sitting by himself at a table, idly sipping on a mojito or a mule or something – he hadn’t really paid attention to what the bartender had recommended, but he was sure it began with an “m”, at least. His eyes wandered to one of the TV monitors. The channel was promoting its upcoming coverage of the Tour de France and showing clips from previous years. Even someone as low-key about sports as Brandon had heard of the Tour. That was the one bicycle race that nearly every American who wasn’t into bicycle racing had heard of.

He found himself drawn in, fascinated by the fast racing machines so unlike his single-speed commuter. The racers fascinated him, too, clad all in matching team kits of skin-tight spandex with tanned arms and tanned hairless legs. Without really understanding the tactics, he could see that the team members were working together to get certain racers into certain positions. And they moved so fast! He wondered what it would be like to be a racer on one of those teams, riding his bicycle all day. Those tanned, skinny guys in spandex, that was their job: riding a bicycle for a living. What would that be like?

The channel moved on to some other sport, and Brandon found his attention wandering. He finished his drink and headed home to another night alone in his hipster loft. He had hardly felt the alcohol, but he was intoxicated in a different way: he couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to be a professional bicycle racer, flying over those European roads so fast. It was all he could think about the whole night.

Waking up dully the next morning after restless dreams (which he couldn’t remember), he got ready to head to work. He felt better as soon as he got his bicycle moving into traffic. He was enjoying himself, as usual, but his mind kept wandering back to the racers in the Tour. The race was supposed to start today. He might actually decide to watch the coverage this year, he thought. Why not? He rarely watched sports, but it wasn’t as if he had other plans.

He suddenly came out of his reverie as a big delivery truck pulled out from a side street right in front of him. He hit the brakes as hard as he could, locked up the wheels, flew over the handlebars onto the pavement and blacked out.

« Bruno, mon pote! Lève-toi, lève-toi. Il faut qu’on aille! »

Hearing those words, he tried to rouse himself. He couldn’t remember where he was or what had just happened, but the voice was urgent – and familiar. Feeling very dizzy and disoriented, he stood up, examining his fallen machine. Instinctively he checked the handlebars and chain as he’d done countless times, looking for damage that would mean he’d have to get a spare off the team car. It was hardly the first time he’d fallen in a race, and it probably wouldn’t be his last. But putain – there was no way he was going to crash out of the Tour de France on his first day, though it seemed to happen to some unlucky rider or two every year. The bike looked good; other than a scrape or two in the finish, it was undamaged. It should be ridable, and he knew the team mechanics would check it out thoroughly later. He looked himself over next. He didn’t have a scratch. The only visible sign of damage was a small, ragged hole in his shorts, revealing a patch of undamaged skin much paler than his tanned legs and forearms. Why had he blacked out, then? He was sure he hadn’t hit his head, and his helmet didn’t have a dent or a scratch anywhere.

« Bruno » his fellow domestique and roommate Thierry said, more urgently this time: « Dépêche-toi! Allons! T’as quelque chose? »

« Bruno? » he thought. « C’est moi, Bruno? Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé? » Something about the name Bruno seemed wrong to him, but why would his own name seem wrong? In any case, he didn’t have time for daydreaming. Thierry was right; they needed to get back in the race. He got back on his machine and clipped in.

« Rien de trop grave, » Bruno replied to his teammate, who was already pedaling away from him. « Attend, attend un moment; j’ arrive. »

A number of racers were still trying to get back on their bicycles. Some were still on the ground. Maybe a few would have to abandon. The chatter of the racers around him, speaking in half a dozen different languages while his race radio was jabbering in his ear, did not help his feeling of disorientation. His thoughts felt foreign in a way that he couldn’t define, as if he were a different person or thinking in a different language. A couple of riders near him were speaking German, which he understood barely a word of, and a couple of others were speaking English, which he understood better. Foreign languages had always come hard for him. Thankfully, he and Thierry were on a French team.

It wasn’t just his head that felt strange, though; even his body seemed different. But as he finally got his bicycle moving at race speed and locked onto Thierry’s wheel, his feelings of otherness lessened. He fell into the comforting rhythm of turning his pedals. He never felt more alive than when he was on his bicycle. That had been one constant in his life as long as he could remember, and now that he was actually in his first Tour, he couldn’t imagine his life getting any better. He wasn’t going to blow this chance. Their team had one of the best GC contenders the French had had in years. This year they had a real shot at winning.

Even though the rhythm of racing was as familiar to him as breathing, Bruno still felt a vague sensation of unease. He was safely back in the middle of the peloton, but the pace felt insanely fast. Why did it seem as if he’d never ridden this fast before? His body felt so light and small. His arms were thin, and he didn’t have a speck of fat, or a lot of muscle, anywhere on his upper body. But his legs looked strong; he could see the striations of his powerful thighs through the spandex of his bib shorts, and his diamond-shaped calves bulged above the tops of his socks. The warm breeze felt amazing on his smooth legs today. They were always particularly sensitive after a fresh shave, and he and Thierry (and probably every other rider in the Tour) had made a point of shaving last night in preparation for opening day. Bruno had almost forgotten what it was like to have leg hair anyway. When he was still a teenager, he used to let his hair grow back in the off season, partly because some of the guys at school made fun of him for having no leg hair. But that first shave of the season was such a hassle! Soon he had decided it was easier to just keep it up all year. He was a professional bike racer, after all. Leg hair just looked wrong on him now.

The feeling of disorientation had mostly passed, until it came back again strongly at his first pause naturelle. Now his penis somehow seemed alien to him. What was with all that skin over the head? Oh right, that was just his foreskin. Perfectly normal. Why should he be circumcised, after all?

He put that thought aside and got back in the race. He and Thierry had a lot of work to do. They spent the day doing the kinds of things that domestiques normally did. They carried water bottles and other necessities to their teammates. They took turns pulling their sprinters and GC contenders to keep them fresh. The stars had to be kept from becoming exhausted, after all. Bruno and Thierry weren’t stars, not yet; no one cared if they got exhausted. That was their job. Bruno was happy enough just to be on a team that was riding in the Tour.

Unfortunately, their star sprinter didn’t win the stage, but Bruno and Thierry got a little bit of attention from the press. They were interviewed – sort of – by a British reporter looking for riders who were in their first tour. The problem was that there was no interpreter. The reporter barely spoke any French, and Thierry had laughed out loud at Bruno’s English. Bruno couldn’t blame him. His prof d’anglais had always said Bruno was hopeless. He just didn’t have the knack for foreign languages. He’d studied Italian, because it was supposed to be one of the easiest for a French speaker to pick up, but he found even Italian challenging. English was far worse. It had so many bizarre sounds that were impossible to reproduce. The reporter’s strong London accent hadn’t helped; Bruno was sure he would have done much better understanding an American. Thierry had translated the reporter’s questions, but Bruno hadn’t managed to say much more than a laborious “I yam veree ‘appee to be in ze tour”. In truth, Thierry’s English wasn’t great, either, but it was way better than Bruno’s.

Mercifully, the interview was soon over. They rode the team bus back to the hotel, giving everyone a chance to recap the day’s action. Dinner gave them both more time to socialize with the rest of the team, but their directeur sportif insisted on everyone getting to bed early, naturally. Back in his room, another wave of disorientation hit him as he got ready for bed. He stopped dead in front of the mirror, staring at a face that was familiar and strange at the same time. He couldn’t think of what was bothering him. His thick, dark brown hair was cut in a no-nonsense buzz cut; the last thing he had wanted was hair getting in his way while he was racing. His soft brown eyes stared back at him. What was different about them? Wait. Where were his glasses? But no, he didn’t wear glasses or contacts. Why did he think he did? Shaking his head at his expression of bafflement in the mirror, he got ready for bed.

Bruno was surprised by how quickly he fell asleep. He was tired enough, but he was so keyed up after a day of racing that he thought he would be awake for hours. He was out as soon as his head hit the pillow.

In the middle of the night, Bruno had a dream. It was a confusing dream; he dreamt of someone else’s life, some tall, skinny, American guy living in a large apartment and working for some kind of software company. He felt a vague distaste for the man, yet he seemed familiar, as if he should know him. Then he heard a voice. “Brandon, Brandon!” it called. He woke from his dream – or thought he had.

“Branne-donne?” Bruno questioned out loud. « C’est qui ce Brandon? »

“You don’t need to talk out loud,” said the voice, slowly and in English. “Only you can hear me. You have a choice to make. You can still go back, but you need to choose now.”

Thierry stirred in his sleep. Bruno was afraid for a moment that he’d wakened, but Thierry started snoring again steadily – as usual.

“He won’t wake,” the voice said. “I have to explain. The man you dreamed of – his name is Brandon. You used to be Brandon. But Brandon wanted to experience the life of someone who rode his bicycle for a living, a racer in the Tour de France. Through an extraordinary gift, you have been given that opportunity. But now you have to choose which life you want to live. You can go back to being Brandon again. Or you can remain Bruno. The choice is up to you.”

“Quoi? De quoi tu parles? Oh yes! I remembair now,” said Bruno, speaking out loud despite what the voice had said. Remembering Brandon had made it easier to understand English, and he had switched languages without realizing it, until he heard the bizarre sounds coming out of his mouth. He fell silent for a moment, hesitating. Bruno’s lips and tongue were simply not capable of making the sounds he heard Brandon making in his head. No wonder Thierry had laughed at him. He tried again: “But what ‘appen to Brandon if I stay ‘ere?” He grimaced at the odd-sounding, halting words, but the voice seemed unconcerned.

“Reality will adjust to your choice, Bruno. Neither you nor anyone else will remember that Brandon ever existed.”

“And eef I become zees Brandon again, what ‘appen to me, you know? What will ‘appen to Bruno?” Bruno was losing his self-consciousness as his labored English started to sound normal to him.

“You will wake up as Brandon, after a very vivid dream.”

Bruno considered. He could remember more of Brandon, now – dimly. Brandon was a good guy, sure. He made plenty of money, and he had a good life – for a young, lonely American in a big city. But his life was empty. He had nothing in his life but his job, and Brandon didn’t even love his job. He remembered that now vividly. The only thing he really loved was riding his bicycle. That was the link between Brandon and himself.

Thierry snorted in his sleep, louder than usual. His snoring was so annoying! But he was used to it. He and Thierry weren’t just roommates for the Tour; they’d shared an apartment ever since Bruno had joined the team. Thierry was a bon gars and a good friend, he remembered. They’d had a lot of amazing times together. As for the other guys on the team, well, he wasn’t as close to them as he was to Thierry, but they were great guys, too. And they had a real shot at winning this year. It was the fucking Tour de France, after all. He wasn’t going to miss that. His team needed him. No way was he going to let them down.

Of course, whichever choice he made involved sacrifices. Wistfully, Bruno realized that Brandon would probably have made more money than Bruno ever would. Brandon was probably smarter, too. Bruno knew he’d never been the best student, but he had managed to pass his bac, at least – barely. On a sudden whim, wanting proof that Bruno was real and not just a dream, he got out of bed and grabbed his wallet, looking for his carte d’identité.

It was there in his wallet, right where he always kept it. Reassured, he smiled as he read the official French document. He was born in Beauvais? He supposed that was right. He realized that he was thinking completely in French, and his memories of Brandon were already fading. The choice was easier than he’d thought. He’d already made his decision, hadn’t he? It was time to let Brandon go.

« T’es sûr? » the voice asked.

« Oui. Absolument. »

« Eh bien, Bruno, t’as choisi. Adieu, et bonne nuit! »

Bruno put his wallet back on the nightstand, wondering why he had thought he would need it in the middle of the night. He must have had some weird dream. He was pretty sure he had been dreaming, but any memory of it had already faded. He’d better try to get some sleep. Thierry was snoring soundly, and they had a long day of racing in the morning.

[petermorwood]

I first read this book when I was about ten years old - a senior cousin's copy - and finding a scan on the Comic Book Plus website let me refresh memories long ago consigned to the furthest recesses of the Mind Palace (or in my case, Untidy Mind Attic).

Its stories are fairly typical Ripping Yarns, but I'd forgotten just how Keen On Sport "The Champion" was. The title alone should have warned me, because there are six annuals on the website, all full of Hearty, Keen and Sporty goings-on.

I've posted more than once that Organised Sport was at the bottom of any list of Things I Liked To Do. In particular I detested the compulsory variety inflicted at Big School, which started happening when I was about eleven and made recollections of Jim's jolly-good-stuff annual increasingly sour.

A lot of the stories are pure sport, but several others have their sporting angle jammed into action-adventure yarns of completely non-sport-related genres, often with all the subtlety of a square peg put into a round hole with a sledgehammer.

For instance, "Rockfist Rogan of the RAF", hero of World War Two air-combat stories, was better known in his story universe as a boxer than as a fighter pilot.

Despite this, illustrations of aircraft were spot-on - as here, a Mosquito FB Mk VI with Dornier Do.217s overhead and a nosed-over Typhoon Ib in the background, or Spitfire Mk IXs defending B-24 Liberators against Messerschmitt Me.163 rocket fighters (though from the text description they should have been Me.262 jets. Oh well.)

If readers of "The Champion" were anything like readers of the war comics I used to read, the editor would have got a lot of disapproving letters if those illustrations weren't accurate. I might have sent one myself about the Messerschmitt error.

At least I might have done if I'd been of letter-writing age, rather than not yet born...

The Rogan stories aren't the only example of Sport In Unexpected Places. There's "Cap' Dan, the Sporting Pirate" (snrk), "The Racing Rajah", "The Sporting Mountie", "Johnny Fleetfoot the Redskin Winger" (rolleyes) and "Kog's Amazon Marathon", which reads like "Apocalypto" remade with a cast of Keen and Sporty English schoolboys.

And, thanks to how language and attitudes have changed, one story nearly sent a spray of tea across my monitor.

I don't think either the title or the plot would work very well today...

:->

[iohannesrhetor]

I have made a 30 minute video-- it is 20 minutes of lecture and 10 minutes of essay on the semantic evolution of the word "wholesome" in the last ten years.

I had a lot of fun making it. I hope you enjoy.

Please pardon the excessively link-baity thumbnail.

[zeydaan-isabella]

Pajaro to Kitsune

Commission for Goldenerlugia - The human them wearing a mysterious kimono, laced with the will of a great fox spirit. And with an incredibly fast course in Japanese, she's more than willing to take this new body for a spin.

[littlemizzlinguistics]

I really do think that part of the reason that people resent language change (especially by young people/the next generation) is the same reason that they resent other sorts of societal change- it’s a sign that the world moves quickly and changes more quickly than we can keep up with, and it’s scary because it reminds us of our own mortality and how we’re getting older and our time is so relatively brief.

[kolic]

i'm not sure how your grammar works / worked historically, but would your Þ/L distinction come from some sorta demonstrative, adjective, classifier? something like, distal /la/ and proximal /þa/ affix onto stuff (so like, "haja" "place" -> "lahaja" "that place", "þahaja" "this place"), followed by whatever grammaticalisation into the modern "laja" and "þaja"

with this pathway it would be something applied productively to any stuff that's useful to mark for this (and would be applied retroactively also once you've got it existed), so that amount of consistency would be p realistic

i'm not sure how it would explain forms where it doesn't occur word initially (ýþ, ýl), something something analogy? flexible historic word order?

idk, i'm not tryna suggest things here, just curious about your clong's history :3 <3

Thank you so much for asking!

The real answer is that I unfortunately have no idea how it came to be and just made it up based on vibes and put a big "rework later when i have the history figured out" sticker on it. Sorry

That being said, flexible word order might very well be the culprit here if I try to reconstruct how it may have came to be (based on the limited resources I actually have made up about the language).

I know that historically, adjectives (and other modifiers filling a similar function) went before the noun they modified (word order was still flexible but that was the default). This can be seen at present in compound words which I haven't yet talked about on this blog - which put a historical -u suffix on the modifying noun, and prefix it before the modified noun (so for example, a doghouse would be "orðukyfð" from "örði" meaning dog and "kyfð" meaning house). But at some point, this word order swapped somehow (I don't know the mechanism but I've been told that it's certainly possible), and now adjectives (and words functioning similarly) go after nouns (so while a doghouse is still "orðukyfð," "a dog's house" would be "kyfð örðin").

Why did I bring this up? Honestly I don't really know, it's midnight so my mind isn't the clearest, but it might somehow tie to the demonstratives "this" and "that" having the characteristic phoneme at the end, while the others have it at the beginning. Maybe something along the lines of "ýþ + ha" being "this place," "ýl + ha" beaing "that place," etc etc, and the ý eventually dropping? That at least sounds plausible on the surface level to my midnight brain lol

(obv. it wouldn't be the exact modern form, if i were to spitball without any further historical evidence i'd say it might've been like. yþ and yl, because i know that <y> represents a sound that used to be much more central and in my uninformed view maybe more likely to be dropped? With the standalone versions later undergoing lengthening to compensate for this very fact)

But unfortunately I can't say anything for sure right now because I don't yet have a coherent system of phonological changes outside of some vowel shifts that i made for the i-umlaut. This is unfortunately an area that I haven't really developed much in Kolic yet, and that I also don't have much experience in or knowledge about yet, but I am definitely going to look more into it in the future and try to make things a bit more realistic :D

And thank you so much for asking! I am always hoping for questions on this blog so that I have some extra motivation to develop something that I otherwise might not have even thought about! And thanks for the tips as well, they are very helpful!

[webbydoo]

You know what I can’t stand? The “bi only means two” people!! Who apparently I’m just finding out my fiancé is!! I mean, it’s not a deal breaker cause he has so many good qualities, but cmon!! Bisexuality for such a long time has meant loving two or more genders, and he has the gall to come in here like “I’m bisexual but I also love nonbinary people.” I mean, being a stickler for language is one thing, but you also should keep track of how language changes!! That’s what language does, and that’s what it was always meant to do!! It just felt sorta weird when he was trying to explain how he felt about his identity to me, and then he dropped that in there. It felt like “ I see bisexual as meaning only 2, but you get your own special category over here.”

[ailurinae]

Anyone know articles or videos or just have some ability to infodump in the reblogs about hyphens and the (seeming?) decline of hyphenated words in English?

Like there are some really obvious ones like "e-mail" becoming "email". Indeed most e-anything dropped the hyphen. That seems like it could just be society becoming more familiar with it, and using the word more often and dropping it to save a keystroke. But it seems to me that I am always having to tell my spellchecker to accept non-hyphenated versions of compound words, because the hyphenated version just does not look right. This post was spurred by the FF spellchecker claiming it should be "re-implemented" not "reimplemented". As a computer person, the hyphenated version looks absurd.

Of course spellchecker dictionaries aren't always the best, but on occasion if you look it up Merriam-Webster.com or whatever you will find the same sort of thing. Not for "reimplemented" of course you just get the base word "implement" but I have seen other cases where they give a hyphenated version not the unhyphenated.

And, if you look at like newspapers from like, the 30s or something, it seems like you see hyphens all over the place. Like sometimes they hyphenate "to-day" and I don't mean just for a line break. What's up with that?

This is good and all, and talks about familiarity, but is it just that that is driving it? And familiarity wouldn't seem to be the case for weird stuff like sometimes hyphenating "to-day". Especially since it seems like they didn't always do it.

[occamstfs]

Ni Hao!NYC

Morally conflicted journalist puts off questions of ethics until it's just too late. Finally assigned to put his name next inflammatory content Sam finds himself more than appreciating Chinese culture.

Various white to Asian Muscle growth and racial change ahead!

Like many, I saw the final pictures on twitter and had to do something with them haha! Ended up with a piece just a tad different than usual! Hope you all enjoy! -Occam

Samuel Johnston knew he worked for a rag but as long as the checks cashed he could afford to mute his conscience. They made money not from sales so much as some rightwing think tank who wants their views affirmed in any way they can get it. So he lays low and pens little puff pieces, avoiding anything too controversial and introduces himself as an accountant to anyone he cares enough to lie to.

He’s quite adept at staying out of sight and mind when it comes to the doling out of any especially charged or problematic issues. Making sure to bury his own work any chance he gets, even using a pen name in case someone accidentally stumbles on his writing. It’s gone well enough so far he thinks! Sam tells himself that really working for NY:Red isn’t that bad, surely it’s even good that he’s got the job rather than anyone who believes the shit they write. Right?

No job is without its problems, he tells himself. So far he’s done a commendable job keeping his nose down with an almost supernatural ability to duck away from bigwigs or management. That is until now as he’s summoned by name to his boss’ side. His proficiency at staying off the radar of management has kept him from a one on one with the man in charge for some time, but now he is sitting on the top floor outside of Mr. Howard’s office, surely waiting to be assigned some horrible project.

“Come in!” Sam hears the surly man shout before promptly stepping into the gaudy office. He’s immediately taken aback as somehow the editor looks almost younger than he does in the many pictures Sam has seen. Sam hides his shock at the man’s jet black hair as well as he hides the general fear and disdain that begins to send adrenaline pumping towards his mind. Mr. Howard doesn't notice at least, getting straight to business, “I can tell from yer writing that ya like the city Sam, can I call ya Sam?”

Samuel opens his mouth to reply but the chief just continues on, “Anyway I love all yer little toilet paper stories but how do ya wanna write with the big leagues?” This time Samuel stays strong and gets a word in before being steamrolled again, “Actually I-” “I’m puttin’ you on the most important case we have Sam. Surely ya’ve noticed all this, what's da word, influx? Invasion? Bah. All the Asian shit that’s startin’ ta creep in on our city’s culture!” Samuel makes an awkward face as despite knowingly working for the racist, it’s different to hear the words out loud.

He holds his tongue out of shock or fear and his boss continues on his diatribe, “The last couple a schmucks I had on the beat just up’n left me high and dry can ya believe it! Old friends I thought!” He grumbles as he scratches his chin, moving away his hand it seems his beard thinned? He shakes his head in irritation and Sam would swear he saw his jowls tighten and wrinkles smooth over. “Anyway kid. Go out and do some prelim research. Have something on my desk by Friday or yer out just like those galoots!” Samuel stands for a second unsure if he’s allowed to leave before his boss looks up to glare with eyes Sam would’ve sworn were blue when he walked in.

Sam rushes out the door and to the elevator, riding it back to his floor, debating between writing a preemptive resignation or keeping mum and keeping on payroll for one last week. Profiteering from a culture war he may be but he’s not about to regurgitate genuinely racist talking points. He taps his foot impatiently as he thinks about just how cushy this gig is though. “Fuck!” He decides to call the only other confirmed decent human being he knows here, his friend Nick who works in the fashion dept.

The two go to grab coffee at a chain next door, Sam tries not to notice how they’ve started selling Vietnamese iced coffee. “Fuck man I can’t do it! Literally just one conversation alone with Howard was a wake up call.” Nick smiles like he has no problems with working for the dirtiest rag in the city, “Chill out Sam. Huward had my manager on the same beat and he, uh, Hidaka said that is said to just look busy for a bit and we won’t need to worry about all this racist shit anymore.” Sam squints his eyes at his friend, he’s not usually so easy breezy about work. He also racks his brain trying to figure out who Hidaka could possibly be. That can’t be his boss. No way Howard would let someone not white lead a department.

Seeing Sam lost in thought Nick reaches out and grabs his hand in a way Sam couldn’t imagine him doing before this second. In fact as the second drags on he stares down in the hand in shock, feeling the warm hand squeeze his forearm. He looks up to his friend’s face searching for any clue to the cause of this odd behavior. Sam smiles awkwardly and half-jokes “Hah hah, uh- Who are you and what’d you do with Nick… Hah.” Nick bursts out laughing, patting him on the arm jovially and leaving a hand larger than Sam remembers resting on his own. “Hidaka-san just showed me how to worry less about this job un?”

Sam inspects him closely for anything amiss, it looks like he’s picked up a bit of a tan? His hair is messier than usual and definitely a little darker, his skin is alluringly smooth and Sam can feel the heat his body is generating despite sitting across from him. Looking at his clothes Sam finds another surprise, his shirt almost looks strained! As if Nick has been hitting the gym for sometime, maybe it’s just been a while since he’s seen his friend in person? 

Assuaged in the slightest, Sam ignores the glowering red flags and follows this lede, “Woah Nick have you been working out?” Nick blushes and Sam at the very least sees his friend is as shy as ever. He goes to scratch the back of his head straining his shirt almost to its ripping point as he responds, “Ah a little haha! どうぞ(please) don’t you worry about me. Since you have no desire to write the article, why don’t you go ahead and check out the little Asian market down the street for fun? It was quite a good time when Hidaka-san brought me earlier this week!”

Sam awkwardly smiles as he wonders why on Earth Sam is suddenly referring to his boss like this, it’s almost like he’s performatively speaking Japanese. Taking a second to pause Sam looks at the haircut as hands unseen style it into something fashionable he puts two and two together. Thinking to himself, ah! Nick must just be a weeb! Tension disappears from his body with a sigh of relief as he wonders how he didn’t notice before now. He gets up to follow his friend’s advice, what better way to stick it to the man than support the people he aims to malign right?

He bucks up and grabs a Vietnamese iced coffee for the road, tossing a “Sayonara,” at Nick with a wink to which he perks up and slightly bows. Man, how did he not notice before Sam thinks yet again. Blissfully unaware, leaving just as kanji symbols appear on Nick’s keyboard and his friend responds to an email in a language he didn’t know this morning. Blue eyes growing coal dark as his tanned, increasingly muscular arms tap away at the keyboard.

Sam spends the bulk of his day at the little Asian street fair and has an absolute blast. Any residual stains on his mind from his unpleasant morning absolutely fade away as he goes from booth to booth sampling cuisine and chatting with diasporic cultures the world over. Time flies as he goes into journalist mode and basically interviews first gen Chinese immigrants about their time in the city. He finds himself beyond immersed in the conversation, continuing to learn from the couple as the tables around them begin to pack up for the day. 

He offers to help the older couple pack up and they happily take the aid, striking him bashful as they talk of what a sweet young man he is. “Wa! 哇强 (strong) Too!” The wife chuckles as she jokingly feels his less than impressive arms. He was having a better time at this little fair than he ever could’ve imagined, enough so that he thinks about going to stick it to Huaward then and there. Huaward? Whatever. His mind slightly off put by whatever that was, in an uncharacteristic act of transparency, Sam lets it slip that he works for NY:Red. The expressions on the kind couple’s faces immediately sour and Sam is quite shocked that they even know what the paper is.

There is a glint in the husband’s eyes as he starts to motion Sam away from any further aid, “谢谢 (Thank you) for your help, Sam. There have been a few, hm, bad men wandering around from that paper and I uh-” He looks around his table and grabs some miijiu they hadn’t put away yet. His wife nods, her face somewhere between rueful and hopeful as she watches her husband offer Sam the glass. “Again, 谢谢, er thank you for your help young man, enjoy this for the road 好的? (Yeah?)” The two turn to each other and begin talking to each other in mandarin alone and Sam takes the hint.

Kicking himself that he fumbled the capstone on such a pleasant afternoon, though finding solace in the rice wine he’s walking away with. He is blissfully unaware as the couple watch him drink and head down the street debating if everyone from that paper really is an asshole. Grimacing as they think about the vitriol spewed at them by NY:Red readers they decide they had no other recourse. Pleasant as he seemed Sam was consciously working on the side of hate and that could not be simply overlooked.

Sam quite enjoyed the rice wine the couple left him with, it immediately smooths over any lasting regret or concern about his interaction with the couple. They don’t know anything about him! He’s nothing like his other coworkers. It feels as if he’s had far more to drink than the small container they left him with should allow, but every time he looks down there always seems to be more mijiu to entice him. It would be impolite not to finish their gift he thinks; his confident stride quickly shifting to a stumble as he wanders home. 

His phone goes off as he gets an email from his boss, Mr. Huang?  Can’t be right. He squints at the email, deciding he must really have overdone it on the mijiu and stuffing his phone back in his pocket. Beyond the obvious difficulties in ambulation being drunk, Sam is unable to notice as his proportions slowly begin to shift. His ever-so lanky body begins to feel dull and heavy as the warmth of the wine fills his chest to capacity and then some as he leans against his apartment door, wiping his feet on an unfamiliar doormat. 

He kicks his shoes off by the door on some new instinct and immediately goes to collapse on the couch. His small sofa creaking as he puts more than his usual dead weight on it. His legs that usually hang off the end lengthen even further as his thighs grow meatier. Pecs press into the cushions as he snores. He is swiftly ushered into an unfamiliar dreamscape, the jubilee of the fair and the bewildering amount of wine he drank produce a vivid carnival of culture in his subconscious.

He sees the old couple at their stand and begins to speak with them in their mother tongue, seeing the delight as a load is taken off their shoulders. His dreamself seamlessly conversing with a fluency unearned. Sam stirs in the waking world as his mind existentially changes to match his morphing body. His blond hair grows thin and longer as its tint stains darker. Twitching in REM the green eyes that he prides himself on speckle with brown before they are entirely overtaken, becoming a rich cacao like the thick eyebrows framing them.

The discomfort of a new language forcing itself into this memory begins to wane as he prides himself on how fluent he is in both Chinese and English. His hand goes to scratch his pecs and he smirks in his sleep as they pulse larger, knowing pride is not the only thing surging within him. At the edges of his mind he feels the memory of learning a language, words written on a blackboard in chalk, English and Chinese both. For the life of him he cannot recall which of the two he’s learning second. An alarm set on his phone blares and he jolts awake to get ready for work.

Throwing on a shirt, Sam freezes as he sees his reflection. Hundreds of little questions seize his mind, those aren’t his eyes are they? Did he dye his hair last night? Are those abs? God his arms look good don’t they!? As they race through his mind and grow rampant they fixate on how attractive he suddenly feels. Rubbing his pecs and feeling them bounce he cries out to himself, “该死！Uhhh, Damn I look good!” He poses in the mirror and takes in every new angle of his powerful body. Taking note as his body hair seems thinner, and decidedly darker wherever it remains. He looks close at his pit seeing his once dense bush of curly hair thin out and straighten, before the memory of even having dense body hair is washed from his mind.

His phone goes off again and his work is immediately brought to the forefront of his mind. “Fuck I didn’t read Huang’s message!” He finds email after email from his boss, only the first few mention the wretched assignment they last talked about. Sam’s eyes widen as he continues to skim through the emails as the topic lines quickly show some drastic re-prioritization from his boss. Only then does he realize that he’s been reading his boss’ name as Huang. His boss is white. Rather his boss’ whole identity is based around being white! Huang isn’t, right? Incredibly he clicks the last email, subject line Vacation, and is immediately greeted with a mouth watering picture of a powerful man. Everything comes to a stop as he can’t help but gawk at this man’s body.

Ni Hao Sanuel- take the day off shi de? Still only half dressed Sam balks at just how bizarre this is, rereading the name Sanuel he is thrown for a loop as his mind reconfigures this. Tearing his eyes from the man’s torso he finally looks at the cocky face and sees a thread he recognizes,  “天啊! (Holy Shit!) That’s Mr. Huang!” He shuts his mouth before he drools like a dog at his boss’ arms. God, this is unlike him though right? He tries to dig through his memories of the editor in chief as the caustic racist he was yesterday, but with each uncovered the image of Huang changes as this dreamboat playboy overrides more of what was.

Sanuel readies to just stay in for this day of assigned vacation before he gets another notification, this time from his friend, Nobu? An image of Nick flashes through his mind, a handprint burns on his arm, and the taste of Vietnamese coffee dances on his lips. “Meet me on the boardwalk うん？” Sanuel rolls his eyes at his friend tacking on Japanese like that, willing his mind not to think about how his friend’s contact ID now says Nobu. Must be one of those, uh, his own thoughts trail off as he successfully abandons concern to head to meet his friend.

Nearing the meeting spot he looks for his usually cleancut friend, the only body present however is a massive Japanese man awkwardly flexing at himself in a reflective surface. Sanuel shyly speaks up, “Ni Ha-, uh Hey? Have you seen a guy named Nick around here?” The apparent bodybuilder beams and goes to engulf Sanuel in a hug shouting, “Oi! Shan! took ya long enough!” His eye twitches hearing the name, as this man effortlessly lifts him off his feet in a hug far too intimate for colleagues, and certainly from whoever this stranger is!

Shan pushes against the massive man, his body heat broiling him on this already warm day. He strains his eyes looking at the man grabbing him and suddenly it hits him, “Nobu?” The man promptly lets him go and pats him on the back with a laugh he would’ve never expected to come from his sheepish friend in the fashion department. “Wanna go have some ice cream or something Shan?” He feels the need to push back against his friend calling him Shan but as he hears it a second time he can’t recognize the names as anything but his own.

Shan pauses as he sees Nobu stop to chat with some Japanese tourists and something about the picture doesn’t sit right. God it’s that talk with Huang getting him all worked up again that,uh, racist? He clutches his head as contradictions between his past and present collide in his head and he slams his eyes shut as he cannot determine what is true about his current reality. Shan falls to the ground with a deep thud, slightly hyperventilating, his body grows larger as he takes deep breaths from the stress.

Hearing him collapse Nobu runs over to help him up, this time with more effort as his friend’s comatose body continues to put on muscle and grow heavier. Still, having the impressive figure he does, Nobu rather easily gets him on a bench and sits next to him, “クソ野郎？(Fuck dude?) You alright?” Shan slowly nods as his friend throws an arm around him. Looking down at his own arms as they pulse with muscle, he feels his eyes strain as the structure of his face begins to change.

Shan's jawline sharpens and his skin smooths. Stubble that has been a cornerstone of hiding his facial blemishes vacates as his hair stains black and flops longer. He feels clarity grace his mind as he stares at large hands on the ends of pale, hairless, muscular arms and he wonders if he is even himself.

He voices these concerns to Nobu who just laughs them off. “Hah! Of course dude, same Shan I’ve always known!” “那- that’s not my name Nobu.” His friend grins shyly in concern for his friend's mind. “It can't be my name. I’m-” grimacing before he continues as it takes everything in his power to speak against the realities in front of him. Memories of a world quite far away, moving to New York long ago, the youngest in a family of Chinese immigrants, “I’m white aren’t I Nobu?” 

Nobu can’t help but laugh again at the beyond bizarre statement. He jokes about Shan hitting his head when he fell. “You’re the most 2nd Gen Chinese わるがき(brat) I know bro! Imma go get us some ice cream while you chill out.” Shan stares at his friend as he abandons him, feeling his eyes tighten as they shift into the monolid eyes that his memories swear he’s always had.

Shan retreats into his mind racing against his changing memories to find a pillar of truth to grasp on. He sees himself at the gym with Nobu, his black mop of hair flicking sweat into the air as he poses with his bro. He sees just yesterday at the Asian fair, helping an elderly couple pack up their table, twitching as he would’ve sworn that went differently. He remembers sitting at the office getting no work done as he plays on his phone, 是的！that’s it! His job. There’s something there, if only he can remember what the problem was there.

He sees Nobu begin walking back with sweet treats, Nobu works at the paper too. Oh 呃/Duh! He smirks as he goes for his wallet to grab a business card. His eyes see the obnoxious red logo he knows before they read text that will send him irrevocably forward, Shun Jiang - Ni Hao!NYC. His body fills with warmth like a machine overworking as his mind races with information about his new reality. Sweat drips from his hair as he can no longer even struggle to recall his claimed existence as a bystander at the vile paper they produced. His brown eyes steep to a dark black as they glaze over.

“Shan-baka! Here’s a popsicle!” Nobu shouts as he returns to his overheated friend who immediately bursts from his stupor. “混蛋!(Asshole!) It’s Shun- thought we were close!” Nobe smirks as he starts to eat his own ice cream. Unable to recall anything too in depth he feels a pause as he wonders what his Japanese friend is doing working for a Chinese newspaper, before he answers it himself. Clearly his subconscious is more at place in whatever new reality he faces. Their paper is for all NYC’s Asian immigrants. Nobu works writing, or more often modeling, for Konnichiwa!NYC! Huang really was a genius for the idea.

Shun smiles, thinking fondly of his boss as he enjoys the short break from the summer heat that Nobu brought him. Back at the headquarters of their paper everything shifts from the rag it was and into a paper connecting the disparate Asian immigrants of the city, printed in any language they can find translators for, Ni Hao, Konnichiwa, Annyeonghaseyo, Namaste!NYC. Each day striving for a better, more inclusive New York City. Shun beams with his new face, no longer burdened with the just concern of his peddling vitriol, instead possessed with a desire to spread his culture far and wide.

———————————————————————————

As I was writing I remembered a similar series by the now gone Dumb-and-Jocked!

If interested do check out Horizon Zero: One, Two, and Three for quite a different take on a journalism themed Racial Change!

[paradoxcase]

Because I have no idea what Gen Z kids mean when they say "download":

Please reblog, I want actual Gen Z people to answer this, which means it has to leave my corner of tumblr

If you picked the last option, please leave a comment or a tag with what you think "download" means, because I honestly have no idea what it could be

For bonus points, please specify if you think "upload" and "install" mean different things than "download" or if they are all just different words for the same thing in your idiolect

[tboy-perpetua]

FUCK I meant to make the poll 1 week

please rb I want data!

[eccedeus]

There is nothing inevitable or predestined about language change and the words we end up using, of course. Sometimes I like to imagine alternative histories. Caulk in its early English sense referred to stopping up seams to make ships watertight. In Middle English we can find fide-cok to mean "penis" with cok from male domestic fowl and fid meaning "peg or plug". Tonight I will dream of a timeline where fifteenth century sailors said "stick your caulk in the hole!" and we ended up saying caulk instead of cock

[linguisticdiscovery]

The many senses of run

How do you define the word run? You probably think of something like ‘fast pedestrian motion’, but what about the use of run in these examples? There are three boats that run from the mainland to the Island On my way to the elevator, I ran into Pete the bench, which numerous times rebuked the Attorney General for letting his witnesses run on The tears ran down my face Colors on the towels…