#language geekery

[melikes-reads]

Good Omens - French version

Can we just talk about Crowley's name in French? Rampa.

Honestly, it's a stroke of genius.

To crawl = ramper

Crawley (his original name) becomes Rampant (= he who crawls)

Crowley (his new name) becomes Rampa (= he crawled)

Bonus points for maintaining: 1) the original meaning of the word and 2) the subtle sound change in pronunciation, from a nasal A to a simple A, like the difference between Crawley and Crowley in English.

Brilliant.

More ramblings under the cut / Plus de divagations sous la coupe

La version française de GO2 est la plus drôle jusqu’ici.

Un mot en particulier : Rampa !

Certes, je n’avais jamais lu la traduction du libre, donc trouver le nom de mon démon préféré remplacé par « Rampa » a été d'abord étonnant. Mais après, j’ai réfléchi, il n’y a pas d’adaptation française sans traduire chaque mot : ordinateur, souris, numérique… Rampa !

Choix brillant, à vrai dire. To crawl = ramper. Et rampa est la troisième personne du singulier du passé simple, mais il ressemble aussi à un prénom qui évoque l’idée d’un serpent … rampant. En fait, le public français peut mieux apprécier l’association entre le nom du démon et sa signification originale. Ce n’est pas une coïncidence que « Rampant » est le premier nom avec lequel le démon se présente à Aziraphale, et après il le change en « Rampa ». La différence entre le A nasal et le A simple est aussi subtile que le contraste entre Crawley et Crowley en anglais. Bravo, les traducteurs !

Autre traduction hardie : créatures au lieu de personnes/gens.

Dans le premier épisode, Aziraphale explique à Rampa le plan du Tout-Puissant pour la Terre, c’est-à-dire la peupler de « people » dans la version originale anglaise. Alors, on peut traduire « people » par « personnes » ou par « gens », mais les dialoguistes ont choisi… créatures ?

Or, j’arrive à comprendre pourquoi ils ont écarté « personnes » : trop de possibilités de se tromper avec le singulier, « personne », qui veut dire exactement le contraire de tout le monde et, dans ce sens-là, pouvait prêter à confusion.

Mais alors, je me suis dit, pourquoi pas « gens » ? Un mot sans aucune ambiguïté, avec l’avantage d’être suffisamment spécifique pour se référer au genre humain, tandis que « créatures » est si générique qu’il peut désigner n’importe quel être vivant, animal ou végétal. 

Au moins, la version québécoise est plus cohérente: elle utilise « les humains », pas de malentendus !

Les Francophones de Tumblr, qu'en pensez-vous ?

P.S. To the Québécois, why does the French-Canadian dubbing sound so … French? Or is it just me? Did they get the accent right?

[russenoire]

romanized lyrics are often available for japanese songs i want to sing, but 'accurate' word boundaries trip me up in practice. so i transcribe lyrics in modified roumaji myself to reflect how a singer actually sings them.

in a sense, singing in japanese is an awful lot like rapping. japanese is a rhythmic language; extending the length of vowels or doubling consonants can entirely change the meanings of words.* and singers devoice vowels (or sing out vowels that are normally not voiced) in places i can't always anticipate, too. each line has a rhythm and not getting these things right throws off the beat...

by the time he reaches the bridge in the song i'm currently working through, the singer here is practically beatboxing his lyrics. the percussive effect of his voice set against his drum and bass track is impossible to capture in roumaji, but i've arranged the word boundaries to make enough sense for me to match his tempo:

[Bridge] そう君の苦悩は 君が自分で選んだ痛みだ そして掴んだあの煌めきも 全て君のものだ 僕は弓になって 君の白んだ掌をとって強く引いた 今君は決して風に流れない 矢になって sou kimi no kunouwa kimigaj_bunde eranda itami da sosh’tets’kanda anok_ra mekimo s_betekimi no mono da bok’wa yumini natte kiminosh_randa tenoh_rao totte ts’yoku hiita ima kimi wakessh’te kadzeni nagarenai yani natte

*which likely explains why japanese vocalists tend not to employ vocal runs; melisma would change rhythmic timing. i want to ensure i'm not doing that when i cover songs.

[shieldmaiden19]

(From this article on the history of the word OK/okay.)

I will now be signing off on all text messages to my queer peers with “OKKBWP” because DAMN.

[private-bryan]

(I am of the firm belief that Orla taught herself to be able to read Ogham)

[soysaucevictim]

Oh hi, random Logan Sanders Logo found in The Wild.

(Context: watched another take from the OB/GYN side of medtube giving The Pitt poor marks in portraying the specialty. I still wanna watch it eventually, but will def mind that that was a weak spot in the show's otherwise stellar critical reception...)

[mehilaiselokuva]

"Arka"

Going to post this here since this could also be interesting to the Finnish learners on here (for more Ainu content, I post on @kkulbeolyeonghwa a lot!)

For people who have no idea what Ainu is, it's the one Japanese minority language the Japanese government recognizes. It's spoken in northern Japan, Hokkaido island.

The Finnish word arka and the Ainu word arka have almost exactly the same meaning.

In Finnish, it can mean shy or sensitive, but it also has a meaning of "sore" or "painful to the point you don't dare to touch". It comes from the Proto-Germanic *argaz. (The same root developed to be "eerie" in English)

Jalkani on vähän arka. - My foot is a bit sore. Haavani on vieläkin arka. - My wound is still sore.

In Ainu, the word arka means "painful" in general, ranging from "sore" to "tired" (of limbs) to actual high pain levels. Nobody knows where this word came from though. I tried looking at other local languages and finding a potential source but couldn't find anything.

Ku=cikirihi ponno arka. - My foot is a bit sore. Ku=pirihi naa arka. -My wound is still sore.

These words cannot be related to each other, but it's fun to see a similar thing in both languages!

Language geekery over thanks for listening.

[alpaca-clouds]

Some more mythology geekery

Or: Let me talk Pan. (Or the other god I know a lot about.)

Folks found the stuff about old mythology and Persephone interesting... so let me do Pan. So, as I said: Persephone is a very old goddess who might well be one of the first in the Greek pantheon. But... She is not as old as Pan. Because within Europe Pan might in fact be the oldest god that we know about. In fact he very probably predates the ancient Greek religion and was just so popular, that the Greeks just decided to keep him in the pantheon.

How do we know that?

This is the moment, where this geeky twink squeals with excitement, because he gets to talk about proto-indo-european stuff. So, allow me for a moment: SQUEEEEEEEEE! 🥳

Okay. That needed out.

So, what you need to understand is that most mythologies from Europe, Asia and Northern Africa you know about are actually decendents of the same mythology. Talked about this in regards of the Roman Gods not being the Greek Gods. But... yeah. So, there was once this culture, who we call the Proto-Indo-Europeans and they had the great idea of putting wheels on things and the things behind horses and then got around a lot. And wherever they went, they brought their language and mythology with them, which is why the Indo-European language family is so fucking giant.

We can see some of their stuff shimmer through in common themes in mythology. Like, almost all the mythologies in Europe and Asia have a "sky daddy", aka a godly father figure who is associated with the sky. He is not always the big guy of the pantheon, but he is important in all the cases.

And while when we talk Greek, Egyptian, Roman or even Chinese and Hindu mythology we have a surprising amount of writing going on that dates back at times more than 3000 years... the earlier we go, the less writing there is.

Now, with Pan we have some stuff in Mycenean art and what not, that hints that he was around at least as early as 1700 BC, though - obviously - we do not really have written sources going back to this time.

But there is also the fact that... One of the earliest mythologies to split from the Proto-Indo-European one is the Hindu mythology. An the Hindu mythology has Pushan, who is not only associated with the same stuff (pasture, roads, travel, the wild and so on), but also has some goat imagery in older versions. Just like Pan. And if you look at the names P(ush)an you can see there is a parallel. Which makes those geeks who study stuff like that for a living fairly certain that those two once were the same god. A god they call *Péh₂usōn. And no, I will not go into Proto-Indo-European language right now.

The word "pasture" in English comes from the same Proto-Indo-European word, by the way.

Current theory goes, that Pan was actually worshiped by the pastoral people living in Greece before the advanced Greek civilization spread. And given that Pan was associated with so many aspects the folks were not giving him up. So, as it goes with pantheons... He just got integrated into the pantheon as was........ though he got split into two pieces. But... Gotta talk about his other piece tomorrow.

Maybe due to the age of Pan, but maybe due to him turning into mostly a god of wilderness, he tends to be a much more openly manecing deity compared to other gods. While most polytheistic cultures absolutely feature an aspect of: "Our thing is that we bribe gods into being nice with us, because those gods are so freaking dangerous," most of the pantheon gods are actually mostly cultured. Even if they are horndogs like Zeus.

Pan meanwhile is a god of the wild. He has this animal imagery (that probably all early gods had) still very present, he gets associated with all sort of wild behavior in humans, and of course the word "panic" comes from Pan. Because it is said that his scream could create panic in the humans.

Enough geekery, lets get back to Stray Gods. Because other than with Persephone's situation I am fairly certain that at least some of this was known to the creators, given the role Pan plays as someone who is not quite inside of the Chorus and acts more as an outsider to it.

[melikes-reads]

Official German Halloween Post

Noch 10 Tage ...

[charmwasjess]

This unstable spring weather is reminding me of when I was a teenager, I had a massive, irrational phobia of tornadoes, despite growing up in an area with little to no chance of them. It was so bad that my mom took me to a psychologist because I'd do irrational things like hide in the bathtub instead of going to school if there was any chance of severe weather. It didn't help. Every time the sky got dark, I'd get that weird, frantic, achy-itchy feeling.

And then, one day, I'm sixteen, working my first job at a coffee shop and I get a panicked call from my boss. I look out the window and almost comically, like it showed up just for me, to make some point, there's this beautiful white tornado dancing right towards us. I remember thinking it looked like the skinny part of an hour glass. It's true what they say about them appearing to hold still when they're heading for you, so I got a very good look at it. The trees were bending flat to the ground and the double doors of the shop were getting sucked open. Me and the other teenaged employee crowded the kids (we were also an ice cream shop, there was a birthday going on) into the center room, and we sang "happy birthday" over and over again to drown out the sound of it hitting the building. We were okay, but it took off several adjacent roofs and smashed up cars in the parking lot.

This was a weird way to start loving tornadoes. (cut for weather geekery)

They are like dreams - for all the data, we know relatively little about why they happen. We can see their ingredients: moisture, atmospheric instability, wind sheer, but sometimes all those pieces are in place and a tornado won't form. In fact, most often, it doesn't. They're still rare. The language we use to talk about them endlessly fascinates me: they are born out of thunderstorms called super cells, which have a 'lifecycle.' One thunderstorm can birth a single tornado, or many that live and die along the greater lifespan of the thunderstorm. The way they multiply is fascinating, one tornado can be circled by wispy, smaller, satellite tornadoes, or more rarely, two full-sized tornadoes side by side, a pair of twins. A group of tornados is a "family."

They come in all shapes and sizes. Mine was a skinny rope funnel, and a relatively weak example - F1 on the scale. The 1925 Tri-State tornado, F5, the strongest on the scale, was the longest recorded tornado in history with a 219-mile track. Part of the danger of that storm was that nobody even realized it was a tornado until it was right on top of them because it was so huge: it was said to look like a red, boiling fog from horizon to horizon because it was rain-wrapped, and had sucked up a lot of red river mud. Water tornadoes and fire tornadoes are both a thing.

They behave inconsistently too. The El Reno tornado that killed the storm chaser and scientist Tim Samaras in 2013 is often personified as evil, a storm set out to kill storm chasers, because it seemed to behave with particular, intentional nastiness. In 30 seconds, it went from a small tornado to a 2.6 mile wedge. It's hard to even imagine the scale of something like that: someone observing from a safe distance miles away is suddenly inside the literal tornado within less than a minute. Most tornadoes move in a more or less straight trajectory - this one repeatedly changed directions. But this is just another example of how even when scientists know how tornadoes generally behave, we're still figuring them out.

Of course, all of this is not about overly romanticizing a phenomenon that kills a ton of people each year, a fact that is only going to get worse with climate change. And certainly research funding and money for early warning systems or national weather services being less prioritized in the politicization of climate change.

I still have tornado nightmares a lot. I had one last night, which is I guess why I'm still thinking about the shapes. It's always the same: I'm standing in a house, usually my childhood home, and there are families of tornadoes that go right past it, but never hit. I still think they're so interesting. And it's funny the way anxiety can turn into fascination under the right circumstances.

[gravelgirty]

In case anyone ever doubted there was still a lot of *serious* drugs running around in the early 1990's... Try Captain Simian.

Absolutely batshit insane cartoon of about 24+/- episodes that is like...fanfiction's fanfiction. There are classic plots from TOS that was twisted almost out of shape and drenched in sarcasm and re-scripted for this show. There are sly, lightning-swift homages to Douglas Adams. The Incredible Hulk. King Kong. Japanese monster films. NASA's less well-thought-out (and real) attempts to beat the space race with live animal experiments. ALIEN. Some suspiciously BATTLESTAR GALACTICA like space dogfights. Doctor Who's attitude to physics and space travel...Star Wars, A SPACE ODYSSEY...what I'm almost positive is a little geekery at Disney's THE BLACK HOLE. Captain Simian is such a classic parody of William Shatner's Kirk it transcends poetry, dammit. When actual real science fiction language and science pops in, it almost scares the hell out of you.

And Yes, so much attitude about all those PLANET OF THE APES films.

Michael Dorn is the voice of the sentient black hole that seeks to suck up the universe and reboot it...He isn't the only recognizable voice actor but honestly, my brain just sort of collapsed when I realized the writers had actually scripted a scene where a chimp THROWS HIS POO AT ALIENS AND THE CENSORS MISSED IT.

[djarins-cyare]

I LOVE BE WLL AND BESKAR IM RWADING IT RN ON AO3 I LOVE IT I LOVE YOU

Also can I say you being a linguist is so incredibly cool???

THANK YOU 🙏🏻 I’m glad you’re enjoying it! I love you for reading it!

I’m constantly surprised by how many people think my linguistics geekery is cool! Mando’a is such a beautiful language, and the way its constructed makes it easy to create new words once you understand it the grammar 😌

[datasoong47]

Several names in the LOTR are derived from Old English words, either directly taken from Old English, or applying regular sound changes to Old English words, or taking Old Norse words

I wonder if any translators have taken the same route by using older forms of the language being translated into (or related languages as with the use of Old Norse) in the same way

I would guess probably not. Because for one, that would be a lot of extra work, and for another, most readers would probably be confused about why names were changed

Still, it would be a Tolkien-worthy level of linguistic geekery

[malkaleh]

Actually when I think about Thomas Cromwell in OT3 verses relationships with all of his children I just it makes me so happy (Frain!Cromwell and Gregory seem very loving and close so I went with) like BEST DAD/LOVING GENTLE CONSORT PARENT.

(Not that Anne isn’t and not that Henry isn’t I just focusing on Thomas)

Gregory was…I mean also he had Liz but it was partly a thing that can happen with abuse survivors who become parents that he went ‘I refuse to hurt this tiny human EVER’ and also the influence of Gregory’s namesake in this case (an elderly priest who taught the youngest children to read and write and was so good to Thomas).

His two oldest daughters my heart.

Elizabeth is so lovely to me because yeah technically the first 2.5(ish) months of her life he wasn’t her dad but actually he was and she will fight you on that. They play chess together! They have language geekery with her mother! They almost certainly have a book club.

His namesake son Tommy! Thomas Cromwell is so proud of him and so supportive - like I think one thing I want to get across later is that he always wants Tommy to have a safe place for a hug and the assurance of just being able to be, because he knows Tommy puts huge pressure on himself.

GEORGE. They scheme! They snark! George jokingly cursing his dad for the curly hair gene. Judging courtiers!

Liam is hilarious to me because they are in so many ways the least alike and also Liam is So Attached (like as a baby he would not sleep unless Dad Thomas was holding him for a bit there). Liam I think feels like he falls short intellectually in his family and Thomas and his mother really help him with that.

MEG. Listen Meg is also not very like Thomas in some ways but he just, he is so soft with Meg. Turns a studied pretend I do not see to Meg’s brother(s) teaching her to fight.

Owen. “Owen we don’t murder people in obvious ways” :owen: ‘taking notes’

Ned. Ned is a giant teddy bear golden retriever of a human being and Thomas is like ‘okay giant second youngest child please remember people can be awful’

Pippa. Does worry about Pippa. She’s so quiet and so gentle and kind and he worries about her heart :(.

[geminiartemis]

Hey, I'm back on my language geekery, and between Fizz using ASL in the latest Helluva Boss episode and me binge-reading Ranking of Kings, my old dream of learning Libras (Brazilian sign language) has been revived!

I started learning several years ago, but a lack of material that matched my learning style made me put that on hold. I'd recently been meaning to try again, so those two series gave me the push I needed, and this time I did find online classes that match my style, along with a much improved app that I used way back when.

Something interesting I learned is that both ASL and Libras have a common origin (French sign language), so several signs are actually the same or very similar! I realized this when I was brushing up on some basic vocabulary and I saw that the signs for "thank you", "can/to be able to" and "to want" are pretty much the same, because I immediately recognized them from the HB episode! That makes me happy, because I also wanted to understand at least a little ASL too but was worried that learning two sign languages would be too much, and now I feel like that's not so unlikely. 😊

If you're a nerd like me and would like to compare ASL and Libras, I recommend the Hand Talk app. It has an automatic translation feature for both languages. (It's not perfect, of course, but it's accurate enough to get the point across.)

While you're at it, you should also read and/or watch Ranking of Kings, it's such a strange but delightful series!

[alpaca-clouds]

Mythologic Geekery: Ba'al

Given that I now have the theory that he might play into Nocturne - and the fact I wanted to speak about Abrahamitic and Semitic mythology this and next week either way... LET ME TALK BA'AL!

So, first things first: Ba'al originally was a title within several of the semitic languages, being best translated with "Lord". So several male gods used the honorific over the time. But within both Babylon and also the Canaanite culture the name became mostly associated with the god Hadad. (While the Phoenicians associated the name with El(ohim) - but I am gonna talk about Elohim next week and he is a bit different, because he never became a demon.)

Hadad was a good mainly of weather (especially storms) and of fertility, being associated with the harvest and agriculture in general. Statues of Hadad were also used in fertility rituals.

From Ba'al Hadad came Ba'al as a god on his own. And while he was usually not the head god of a pantheon, he very much fulfilled the same role as Zeus in the pantheon. Being association with weather and these things. Interesting enough he had also a reverse version of the same kinda myth like Persephone associated with him: According to this myth the hot and dry summer months were the time of the year he was forced to live in the underworld.

What happened, though, with the Hebrew culture was that YHW subsumed the same role within the pantheon that Ba'al originally fulfilled. So he basically took that role and on the longterm subplanted Ba'al. And when the Abrahamitic culture turned towards Monotheism around YHW, Ba'al first became one of the false idols. Those idols that the folks prayed to in the desert while Moses was on the mountain. (Also Ba'al was among the idols people in Mekka prayed too that Mohammed then worked against.)

So, when Judaism took of they used Ba'al to build out their demonology. Now, again, Ba'al is technically a title, but a lot of people do agree that the fact that the demon got called Ba'al Zebub (Lord of Flies) was for the reason that Ba'al was the god they were trying to subplant.

Now technically Ba'al Zebub also references another god (Ekron). Now, the role of Ba'al Zebub (or how you might more easily recognize the name: Beelzebub). Within early Judaist sources Ba'al Zebub is mostly associated with death and sickness. Hence also the name: Lord of Flies.

As mythology shifts over time, by the time of the Testament of Solomon Ba'al Zebub was called "the Prince of Demons", who also was said to once have been an angel who rebelled against God for which he was cast into hell. And yes, if you think about Luzifer here: This was probably the source for that. I will talk more about Luzifer next week.

And then came Christianity. While within the gospels Ba'al Zebub was still in the same role of "prince of demon", later Christian theology started to decide that he and Satan were the same character. Something that happened around the same time that Satan became seen as more and more "evil" (something he is not within the original Hebrew mythology). And the Christian theology turned Ba'al Zebub into Beelzebub, as which we still have him around to this day.

[avauntus]

Vincenzo: “:Italian:”

Reporters: “What? Wait he said ‘Diablo’?!”

Reporters: “...is a game involved in this chemical case? How is a game involved?!”

...Between NYC!intern and Mafia!lawyer, this show has the best code-switching jokes I’ve ever seen. 🤓😂