#language dictionaries too

[bongo-spindash]

I was thinking about what different Sonic characters' names could be in sign a couple of months ago, since so many people headcanon Sonic knowing sign language, and I ended up making animations for a few!! Here's what I came up with for Sonic!! :D

mp4 version & description for it under the cut!!

[ID:

A video of Sonic The Hedgehog viewed from the waist-up against a green background. Sonic is drawn in a simplistic style, though with tanner patches of skin on his muzzle, ears, stomach, and arms compared to his typical design, and he has curved scars on his chest. 

In the video, Sonic is signing his name, comprised of the words ‘fast’ and ‘hedgehog’ in BSL. He signs ‘fast’ by bouncing his index fingers off of each other—his right finger coming down as his left goes up—with the other fingers and thumb curled in. “fast” is written in dark green on the left side of the background as he signs this. 

The word in the background changes to “Hedgehog” as he signs the second part. His raised right hand opens up so that his fingers and thumb are all splayed, while the lowered left hand curls into a fist. The left arm moves horizontal in front of his chest, and the splayed right hand lowers to run the heel of the palm across the top of the forearm, to symbolise the spines of a hedgehog. Lifting his right elbow up to move the palm across the other arm obscures the “Hedgehog” lettering slightly.

Sonic's head moves as he signs, spines bouncing up and down and head tilting to the left. While he’s signing, he mouths his name, the first syllable ‘So’ being mouthed during the ‘fast’ sign, and the second syllable ‘nic’ being mouthed during the ‘hedgehog’ sign.  

On the right side of the video, next to Sonic’s head, is the artist’s signature—the silhouette of a bongo with the letters BD written inside.

End ID]

[sherdnerd]

My number one classics ick is when a scholar will just insert untranslated passages of Greek and Latin into their paper. good job on the artificial inaccessibility you guys, glad you were able to gatekeep the field so none of those dirty peasants may learn stuff. its just for us cool guys who speak Greek or Latin

[cerise-on-top]

heyhey!! just wanted to say your works are amazing and i love them so so so SO much aagghhh!!

now onto the request— what if,, what if reader knew a ton of languages like nikolai does, and they call their s/o pet names in those languages. an example would be,, maybe if they knew french they would say 'mon chéri' or perhaps they picked up romanian at some point and would call them 'dragă'

the characters i have in mind are price, nik, alejandro, & rudy, if that's okay !! (´▽`)

sorry for the super long ask, lol :')

Hey there! Thank you, that makes me really happy to hear :D And don't worry about sending longer asks, I really don't mind ^^ Also, that request is really cute! I love reader speaking several languages and being a sweetheart in all of them :D

Price, Alejandro, Rodolfo and Nikolai with an S/O who Knows Many Languages

Price: I think he knows quite a few languages himself, being a captain in the SAS and all. Not nearly as many as Nikolai, but he probably knows a good three to four languages, so he likely wouldn’t be entirely clueless when you call him something along the lines of mon petit chou fleur. While he won’t understand every term of endearment you call him, it does warm his heart to hear you speak a language he doesn’t know. It flows off your tongue very nicely and he just loves listening to you. Depending on what kind of language it may be, even the profanities sound nice. Although whenever you want to get his attention, just to call him something in a language he doesn’t understand, he sort of expects it to be some cute pet name. Will always smile at you, even if you were to call him your albernes kleines Kaninchen. Retorts with a pet name in one of the languages he speaks. Sometimes he does feel the urge to learn a new language, just for you. Or maybe you could learn a new language together? Practice with each other and just have a good time overall? He might bring up the idea at some point.

Alejandro: Like Price, he probably knows a few languages himself. More than the average person, but not nearly as many as Nikolai. So probably three to four as well. However, because he knows Spanish there’s a good chance he can derive most words in a Romance language. Call him something along the lines of giliw and he’ll always retort with some embarrassing pet name in Spanish. Yes, he knows several languages himself, but that doesn’t mean he won’t almost always revert to Spanish anyway. Pretends that you’re using your languages against him and calls you a traitor. And, as is the rule in your household when you’ve betrayed him, you will be held accountable. Lots of chasing through the house. Will “interrogate” you to get you to tell him what you said. Call him a term of endearment in Spanish and you won’t ever hear the end of it. No matter how many times he hears you call him guapo, he always gets that goofy grin on his face. Might research embarrassing terms of endearment to use on you in any other language. And yes, his goal is to find a language you don’t speak. Once he’s found one? He’s not gonna let you live it down. He’s bested you, and that’s all he wanted.

Rodolfo: You’d actually have to call him by his name if you want his reaction since he usually just tends to block out people speaking a language he doesn’t know. Why bother trying to understand someone like that? It’s not like he’ll learn the language overnight anyway. Rodolfo knows about three languages, so not as many as Alejandro. But he knows English and Spanish, which means he can communicate in most places anyway. He thinks he knows enough languages since learning one takes roughly an eternity and he doesn’t have the time for that anyway. Call him Cục vàng and he’ll just look at you as though you’ve grown a second head. You’d have to tell him what it means and then he’ll smile. While he will always appreciate a good Hartlam, he might look at you confused until you tell him you love him. Might not always retort with a pet name of his own, but will mix it up among the languages he does know since he doesn’t wanna seem too stupid next to you. Will also sometimes look up new terms of endearment in languages he doesn’t know so he can surprise you, but might get a bit shy since he might botch the pronunciation a bit. But he tries, and that’s all that matters.

Nikolai: He canonically knows eight languages, so there’s a good chance he knows what you’re saying. Even when you’re saying something in a language he might not entirely know, he might be able to derive the word from a language he does know. Although he may love any pet name you give him, he especially loves any Russian ones since he’s very attached to his country and his native tongue. Goes absolutely wild whenever you call him radnoy. There’s just something so sweet about you calling him something nice in Russian, doesn’t even matter if you botch the pronunciation. Will always give you a hug and a kiss to your forehead since he will always be reminded of how much he loves you. But even a simple min søde skat will get him to smile, even if he has no idea what it means this time. Because of you he might be inspired to pick up some new languages along the way, maybe even ones you don’t know so you can get the same treatment he does with you. Whenever you speak a language he doesn’t know he gets heart eyes for you. You’re just so gorgeous, you’re just so very smart. However, at some point he will just start speaking Russian to you, even if you don’t know the language. He won’t say anything mean, he’ll just tell you how precious you are and how much he loves you.

[solradguy]

Do you think one could attain decent-ish ability to read Japanese just by studying kanji? Specifically asking because the kanji learnin' service "wanikani" is the single Japanese resource that works best with my brain, but then there are separate resources for grammar and vocab and and and.....

You will get REAAAALLLLLYYY far knowing only the kanji but you're going to have to know hiragana and katakana at some point too. Tofugu, the company that did Wanikani, has two mnemonics-based guides for the kana that are basically Wanikani Lite. They're how I learned the kana and I swear by them.

Here's hiragana: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/

And katakana: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/

Hiragana are especially vital to learning kanji; you won't be able to use 99% of Japanese-English dictionaries without them. BUT they're pretty easy and the rules for using them are consistent. You won't have to remember any irregular exceptions for any of them.

I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard really good things about the Crystal Hunters manga series as a fun/low stress way to learning Japanese vocab and grammar. It eases the reader into new concepts and then repeats them throughout the chapter so you remember them. There are free vocab and study guides/lists for each chapter too. Might be worth checking out once you get some kanji and the kana under your belt? The first book is also free.

Official site: https://crystalhuntersmanga.com/

Good luck!!

[kukekakuningaskris]

i bring you my medieval recreation of the crash fic (thanks to the bayeux tapestry website thingy)

[justarandombrit]

Remembering that time I almost had to explain to my Spanish teacher that the reason why I already knew the word for head (cabeza) is because I wanted to translate "I'm gonna kick your... HEAD!" ("Voy a patear su... ¡CABEZA!")

[invinciblerodent]

... so does anyone have any clue on how undeath is supposed to affect elven souls?

Because I have been building my own elf character, and thinking about this a lot, and it's a thought that just will not leave me (hard not to think about this with an Astarion romance), so it's time for another one of my navel-gazey thinkpieces i guess lol.

Like, my main source is Mordekainen's Tome of Foes, and that book states clearly that elven souls are immortal. Their numbers are more or less fixed, or rather "capped" (that's why they haven't "outbred" every other race even with their long lifespans), and each elf currently living is the reincarnation of an elven soul that's already been to Arvandor (their afterlife) at some point, and then returned in a new body. That's why they have such few children: because a birth is as much a joy as it is a sorrow. It's both the arrival of a new life, and the death of another- either decades, centuries, millenia past, or as soon as barely a few months ago.

As a quick and dirty run-down for those who don't really want to wade into the lore (I don't blame you, it's murky in there), early in their lives and when they are nearing death are the times when elves are most intimately connected to their previous lives, and in their sleep-trance (their "Reverie"), these individuals can call upon memories of those past lives. The young elves relive exclusively the experiences and adventures of their immortal soul until their second or third decade- then, slowly, those memories become interspersed with those from their current life (the First Reflection, the first time that happens, marks the start of their "adolescence" of the mind essentially- they are physically fully mature by then), until roughly the end of their first century, which is when their access to these primal memories is cut off. From that point forward, the elf loses access to their previous lives. This is called the Drawing of the Veil, and from that point forward, the elf may only relive events from their current life in their trance, right until they start nearing the end of their natural lifespans some 600 years later.

This is all fairly clear in the case of a living elf.

But what happens if that immortal elven soul, that's so intimately interconnected with the afterlife and the very passage of time, finds itself suddenly housed in an undead, unaging, immortal body? How does that change things?

It's got to change things, no?

Like this is such a specific thing, I don't believe specifically elven intelligent undead (that is also a protagonist about whose soul we are supposed to care) has been written about super extensively in the sourcebooks, but my guess personally is that the moment of undeath, it... severs the bond of the soul to Arvandor. This is not unrealistic, as that bond can break for many reasons: Drow for one are never invited back and die true deaths with no way to be reincarnated, and so do elves who have turned to gods outside of the Seldarine. (.... that also means that, with the drow's propensity for casual murder, the number of elven souls available for rebirth is in a constant and steep decline, but that's a whole other thing.) (I've no clue what this means for the Seldarine drow. I wanna say that they can gain admission back, but that's just me being an optimist, I've no recollection of a source literally confirming or denying that.)

This loss of the primal memories, it's said to be a traumatic experience in itself, even if it comes naturally, as just part of the elven life cycle, and it coming on the heels of such a profound upheaval of one's life (such as being turned into a vampire), it may just be the least of the person's worries... but it would explain some things in a way that goes beyond the traumatic experiences of Astarion's current life.

If that moment of being cut off were to happen before the elf would naturally lose their ability to access primal memories, I assume that they would... be forced to more or less "grow up" (at the lack of a better term) in an instant. And to be denied roughly half the time you would have otherwise had for regaining experiences and memories from your past lives, it's got to leave one a bit... emotionally stunted, when compared to a living elf of a similar age, who had time to go through their natural life cycle as one should.

(Which, it's not a huge reveal that I believe our guy to be emotionally immature, and a bit stunted in his emotional growth. That's, like, clear, and I don't mean to say anything to the effect of "ooooh, he was so youuuung, still an uwu baaaaby---" no, we're unequivocally talking about a fully grown, adult man lol, but specifically in the case of how this all relates to this weird trait of elves, it's still interesting to think about this odd dissonance that... may very well exist between a living- and an undead elf.)

Hell, my personal little theory is that elven intelligent undead (like vampires, who do retain a soul within their bodies) specifically, while they do go into a trance and have dreams/nightmares/memories of their current lives, may just even lose the ability to recall events from their pre-undeath life (beyond conventional memory, meaning that they can't strengthen those memories and are bound to eventually forget them) as well, as evidenced by Astarion not remembering his own face, or what color his eyes were once. (You can't tell me that while he was alive, he didn't spend a shitton of time looking at his own face. If he could relive pre-undeath memories, he'd know these things, or would be able to recall them if he wished.)

There would be something... strangely tragic, in this kind of isolation, for an elf. By becoming a vampire, you'd become undead first, and an elf.... somewhere way, way, way down the line.

As a fairly young undead elf, you're somehow simultaneously ancient, adolescent, and middle-aged, and also pretty much confined to a singular existence of nothing but pain and abuse, with memories of a distant childhood slowly fading just out of reach, knowing that... this, this is just your soul's lot now. That a significant part of your fey heritage, your very ancestry as well as part of your immutable essence, has been torn from you in just one moment, in exchange for preserving this current life, as a simulacrum of itself. And now there is no next life, because this one is one without a natural end, and Sehanine Moonbow will now never invite your immortal soul back to Arvandor to be reborn, because it's been cut off from you, and your very body is holding you hostage. Six, sixteen, or sixty centuries can come to pass, and still nothing is going to change... unless you die, in which case you're just dead, like any non-elven creature.

Anyway, there's no real point to this, or a conclusion to be drawn, beyond just... fuck, man, they couldn't have made this fucker more of a tragic figure if they tried.

(...... Fun fact, Silvanus is not part of the Seldarine. So unless he maybe turns to worship Rillifane Rallathil instead, Halsin's soul would not be reincarnated either. But he seems to have made that decision himself and he seems content, so I'm guessing he's just cool with it.)

(I'm not fucking touching half-elves now, you can't make me, that's such a fucking can of worms oh my god)

[i-am-gun-robot]

Trollish Dictionary

This is a project I’ve been working on when my writing brain isn’t working, and it’s only just begun, but I thought I’d share my progress! I don’t have the grammatical structure figured out yet, but I’ve got roughly 80 words so far with many more to come. Feel free to use any of this so long as you give me credit!

[too-fond-to-be-fearful]

ba mhaith liom Gaeilge a labhairt inniu freisin ach níl mé rómhaith fós 😢

an bhliain seo chugainn, b'fhéidir

[ryllen]

my daughter has no personality other than being timid & poor from the start i kinda want her to pair her with someone manipulative that she trusted only because they are an octoling

[meddwlyngymraeg]

Mae diferi dwr yn cwympo A gorffwys ar fy trwyn, Galla i flasu ar fy nhafod— Amrywiaeth o fywn mwyn. Sa'i ddim yn gwybod Maen nhw'n tarddu o ble; So rwy'n derbyn Mae hi'n dod o'r sêr.

[hedwig221b]

Victor Frankenstein is a piece of shit I hate that man so much

[wovenstarlight]

weaning myself off mtl and into direct translating... slow going but it is SO satisfying

[shivunin]

WIP Wednesday Thursday

Thank you for the tag, @layalu! 💗Tagging back @greypetrel @ndostairlyrium @daggerbean @jtownnn and anyone else who feels up to sharing this week!! Technically, the scarf I was working on is done...I just think it needs some finishing touches haha. Also, most of what I'm working on right now is presents and I want to wait to share those c: So here is a bit of my Act 2 fic with Leandra and Maria (600ish words):

Varric told her it was a bad idea before cards. Hawke laughed off his concern, then Aveline’s when they said goodnight later (“Be careful, Hawke,” she’d said in her stern voice, and it’d been plain what she was talking about). Maria knew what she was doing—or she knew what she wanted to do, at least. Well—what she wanted if Fenris wanted the same thing, and she thought he might.

That night, they reached her front door together as they so often had. For once, he was the one to prolong their goodbye, hands lingering on her hips when she might have otherwise let go. 

It was enough to set her friends’ worries aside entirely. This was worth it. She knew that. Whatever concerns they might have were well-meant, but unnecessary. Even so, how could she begrudge their worries? In fact, Hawke decided, she loved her friends all the more for caring. 

The next week was a chain of job after job, several days spent scouring the coast for a crate that might’ve washed ashore from a shipwreck, then a day helping Mother prepare for one of her teas. Hawke thought of Fenris constantly, but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. “Some other night,” he’d said the last time she’d been inside his manor; would it be presumptuous to show up at his door now? She’d done it hundreds of times before, but—had this new thing between them changed that, too? 

“I happened to glance out the window last Saturday,” her mother told her as they arranged empty teacups and and tiny plates on a tray. Her voice was casual, but there was an unfamiliar undercurrent to it.

“Oh?” Maria asked, trying very hard to keep her absurdly lacy sleeves from trailing through the jam or honey. 

“I hadn’t realized that you had a suitor, darling,” Mother went on, plucking a blossom from the vase beside them and placing it carefully on the top tier of the pastry tower. 

“I…don’t know that I do,” Hawke said hesitantly, looking at her mother between the flowers. “I mean to say—I don’t know that he wants to be a…suitor.”

“Of course he does, dear,” Leandra said firmly, setting the teapot on the trap with a decisive click. “Your father looked at me just like that in the early days. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

“Really?” Maria asked, a strange fluttering in her chest. “I didn’t think…well. I want to take things at his pace. I wouldn’t want to move too fast—but it’s hard when we’ve known each other so long. Does that make sense? What will happen if it all goes wrong?”

“Then you shall still have your generous spirit,” her mother said, stepping around the table with one last adjustment to the flowers. Her eyes were on the arrangements even as she spoke. “You value your mind, my dear, but your heart has always been your greatest treasure. Surely your young man will see that.”

Her eyes prickled. Hawke stepped closer and leaned against her mother, who unexpectedly wrapped an arm around her waist. Leandra had never been especially given to physical affection—that had always been Malcolm’s domain. It was kind of her to offer it now. No—not just kind. Reassuring.

“There, there,” she said, and kissed Maria’s cheek. “None of that. Everything will go wonderfully, you’ll see. How could anyone help but adore you? Now, come: it is time to take these trays into the other room. Our guests will be arriving any moment. It wouldn’t do to be late.” 

“Of course,” Hawke said, blinking the tears from her eyes before they could fall, and followed her mother from the room.

[ryuvnosuke]

i don't know what any word means never i just know in what context to use it. is this anything

[takenene]

i can't believe duolingo took down community discussion pages.

you know, the ONLY FUCKING THING providing context/insight on the stupidly mangled english they put in their courses.