#languages are fun

[hidden-but]

hmmm, zajímalo by mě, jak se anglicky řeknou kočičky...

... jakože FAKT?

[sofiaflorina2021]

Duolingo Achievements are Stressing Me Out

Huh, Duolingo achievements are stressing me out. Why do I focus on pursuing achievements rather than learning languages themselves? Now I don't care about any achievement. I will only maintain my learning streak, you know, do at least one lesson every day.

[sillyvampireboi]

Armand und sein IPad

Die Zusammenfassung: Armand denkt über sein iPad und darüber, was er damit machen kann. 

Inhalt: very short, pov Armand, armandaniel, fluff, attempt at humour, implied murder 💀

a/n: … Ich weiß es nicht. Ich versuche alleine Deutsch lernen und ich bin ein Beginner still [: Auch, ich liebe Armand. Er ist klein, manipulieren, meow meow. 

Ich hat benutzen Google translate mit Worte also, es tut mir leid wenn die Geschichte nicht verständlich ist :‘)  Ich denke, Deutsch ist ein interessant und schön Sprache also ich will lernen es :D 

Ich bin verwirrt darüber „spiele Spiele“ . Ist es correct?? Auch, ich wollte „sitzen“ im past schreiben, aber ich weiß es nicht wie ^^‘ 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Armand mag sein iPad. 

Es kann viele Dinge machen. Mein Schatz sagte, Menschen benutzen oft das Wort „Ding“. Dieses Jahrhundert ist sehr anders als die vorherigen. 

Ich kann schicken elektronische Briefe (Daniel heißt sie „E-mails“), Video machen, Mixer bestellen oder spiele Spiele. 

Mein Lieblingsspiele sind Minecraft und Sims. Ich machte einen „Server“ im Minecraft, wo ich schöne Bibliotheken und Landschaften erstellt. Ich töte auch langsam die Menschen und— 

„Du musst große Vorstellungskraft haben.“ Daniel sagte. Ich sitze auf einem Sofa und er stand hinter mir. 

„Rashid hat Pinterest auf meinem iPad installiert.“ - Meine Liebe lachte, während ich weitermache die Menschen tötet. 

[needlesandnilbogs]

To Show Patience With: The Character of Overse in Martha Wells's Murderbot

Overse is not a name. As it's spelled, it's a Norwegian or Danish verb that means "overlook," or it can be spelled "överse" and be a Swedish word meaning "overlook" as well. My friend, a fluent Swedish speaker, said she'd understand the meaning if she saw the word "överse" used, but she wouldn't pick that word to translate from English to Swedish.

However, the language authority for Sweden, the Swedish Academy, gives an alternate meaning to the verb "överse"; it can mean to overlook, to critically go through/to review, or to show patience with. Their example of that last meaning is "han över­såg med barnens slarv," which my friend and Google Translate both say means something along the lines of "he overlooked the carelessness of the children."

I feel at this point I should quote this friend: "The funky thing about Swedish is that it's a very word-poor language, so one word can mean a lot of different things depending on context."

Martha Wells is a pantser, she's admitted to it. I'm sure she didn't intend that last meaning. But what if she did?

Our first introduction to Overse is on page 14 of All Systems Red (all page numbers are from hardback editions), where we get "I carried Bharadwaj up the ramp into the cabin, where Overse and Ratthi were frantically unclipping seats [...] their horrified expressions when they took in what was left of my upper body through my torn suit" (All Systems Red 14). Not very patient yet, given the description that the words "frantically" and "horrified" imply. But a few pages later, Overse and Arada have stabilized Bharadwaj by the end of the ride, and in the end of the chapter she's presumably among the group worrying in the mess. Soon after, when MB announces that there's a deleted part of the hazard report, it notes that "The reaction to that in general was pretty pissed off. There were some loud complaints from Pin-Lee and Overse and dramatic throwing-hands-in-the-air from Ratthi" (ASR 29). In a traumatic situation, it's understandable that everyone is a little panicked and nobody's being patient, but Overse seems to be able to work, even when she's upset by the situation.

By the time they're thinking about going to DeltFall, we have a little more info about Overse. Arada asks about recharging at DeltFall and "Overse put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder" before explaining (ASR 47). MB even notes that "As a couple, they were always so nice to each other" (ASR 47). Arada is a little naive about the Corporate Rim, as evidenced by her questions here, the "terminal optimist" line in Network Effect, and just everything else. Overse, however, knows what's going on, and moreover, the combination of action and words, plus MB's statement that they are "nice" to each other, combines to create a patient tone when she's explaining.

During the rest of the book, Overse mostly shows up in the group scenes, in which she's a voice for reason, if just as worried as the rest of them. She appears briefly at the end of Exit Strategy, but not for long. When she really becomes a force of patience is in Network Effect.

In the first chapter, she "would be upset if I let her marital partner get killed" and "had shouted" at MB on the comm before that (Network Effect 11-12). However, she remains calm enough to warn Ratthi to get off the comm with the raiders and prepare the facility for launch, even through her worry. Shortly after, she notes to MB that it's been really supportive of Arada and how helpful that's been, and it notes that "[Arada] and Overse had always been firmly in the 'least likely to abandon a SecUnit to a lonely horrible fate' category, which was always the category I was most interested in" (NE 40). From it, that's an impressive compliment and a sign of Overse's ability to remain calm enough to make kind decisions while under immense stress.

This is born out a few pages later when Overse and Ratthi are in the control deck during the attack on the baseship and facility. "Both looked frantic," MB says, but it also notes that "frantic was the right reaction" and that there's no comm or feed (NE 43). Immediately afterward, Arada arrives, and "Overse's face twisted with relief and she bit her lip hard" (NE 44). After knowing that her wife is safe, Overse is more able to handle the situation. She gets comm partially active another page later, handles evacuation and separation well (though she and Arada both let their protectiveness for each other and the rest of the crew override their self-preservation instincts), and comes up with the idea of getting MB and Amena into EVAC suits as well as helping "cannibalize four of the EVAC suits aboard" to stabilize the safepod (NE 135).

Once removed from the immediate stress of almost dying, Overse demonstrates the ability to control her initial reactions (she "grimaced and rubbed her eyes" at ART's declaration that it won't leave till it gets what it wants, then communicates silently with Arada) and handles ART's demands with patience (NE 140). For instance, ART says it didn't plan to attack the facility, and she responds, "But it was your idea," with narrowed eyes (NE 141). I hate to make a personal anecdote in an analytical essay, but this is exactly the attitude my mother takes when I do something and she's trying to be patient but also communicate that I did a stupid. Same thing with their next group conversation with ART, where MB notes that she has a "'let's get this over with' expression," and when they first discuss the colony, where "Her expression had that grimly frustrated quality that was common when my humans talked about the corporates" (NE 149, 155). (What I'm saying is Overse is the mom friend lol)

There are two scenes later in NE that are especially telling. The first is in chapter 10, when Overse and Arada are on the way to check out engineering.

Arada and Overse had stopped in the corridor that went toward the engineering module. Arada hugged Overse, and Overse kissed her and said into her ear, "You can do this, babe. You're a bulkhead." "I'm a wibbly bulkhead," Arada muttered. (The wibbliness was why I trusted Arada. Overconfident humans who don't listen to anybody else scare the hell out of me.) Arada stepped back and smiled at Overse. "Got to get to work." (NE 164)

In this scene, Arada is worried; she's finally letting down the mask of command and letting Overse see how worried she is in a situation that is close to private. Overse responds in a manner consistent with the mention in ASR that they were always nice to each other, but she's more than just nice. Arada is upset in a way that's likely troubling to Overse, and Overse is able to calm her, be patient with her, and make sure that she's okay despite being worried about her.

The other scene in question is the infamous bunkroom scene, which deserves a whole separate meta about what's been told and what's left missing, but the simple summary is thus: in chapter 11, Arada agrees to go over to the Barish-Estranza ship, without consulting anyone else or making an informed decision. From then on, Overse is upset. Her initial response to the idea is "Fuck no," then "there was a big human argument" and "Overse said through gritted teeth, 'Rescuing you–or trying to recover your body–will not save us time'"(NE 202-03). A few minutes later, "Overse was still mad," and apparently needs "a chance to vent and calm down," which she gets by venting to Ratthi (NE 204). MB paraphrases, so we'll never know her exact words, but she apparently ends up "being angry at herself for getting angry at Arada during a crisis" (NE 205). She's able to calm herself down and be patient long enough to work with Arada, but it takes until the next chapter for MB to notice their relationship improving. The infamous bunkroom scene is really only a few lines:

Arada and Overse were back to getting along after spending time together in an unused bunkroom while we were traveling to the dock. I hadn't bothered to monitor them on ART's cameras or try to slip a drone in; the chances that they were having sex and/or a relationship discussion (either of which I would prefer to stab myself in the face than see) were far higher than the chance that they were saying anything I needed to know about. (I mean they might have been plotting against me, but you know, probably not.) (NE 230)

What's amazing is how much is communicated in the absence of any detail on what actually happened. Overse isn't mad anymore, not necessarily because there's a way to go back or to make it better (though they do seem to have negotiated a compromise about the next stressful situation), but because she's able to look past the situation and recognize that the best way to get back to a normal relationship with her marital partner is to overlook what happened.

To overlook. It can be a very easy thing to do, to overlook and ignore someone with a smaller role, such as Overse. To oversee something, to manage a whole bunch of things and ensure all of it goes correctly. But "överse" is also to be patient with, or to overlook flaws. And that is the core of Overse's character: she is the Patient One.

Not to say that I believe in nominative determinism, the idea that people gravitate towards work that match their name (Wikipedia). Martha Wells is a known pantser, and I doubt that this was a deliberate choice on her part. But she had to have a reason to choose the name Overse, even if that was just that it was on a list of words she liked. I want to imagine that the reason is that she knew she'd made a patient character and picked a name that secretly describes a patient person.

Sources:

"Nominative Determinism." Wikipedia, 25 Apr. 2024. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nominative_determinism&oldid=1220754650. Accessed May 31, 2024.

överse | SAOL | svenska.se. https://svenska.se/saol/?hv=lnr114060. Accessed May 14, 2024.

Wells, Martha, and Martha Wells. All Systems Red. First edition, Tom Doherty Associates, 2017.

---. Network Effect. First edition, Tom Doherty Associates, 2020.

[airenyah]

they say german is ugly but what other language lets you rhyme "katzi" with "tatzi" and most importantly, "schatzi"? it's absolutely beautiful

[alltingfinns]

Every now and then even my inexhaustible English vocabulary hits a stumbling block, and I have to search "[Swedish word] engelska/English" only to find out that English doesn't have an equivalence to that word. And okay, fine. Languages differ by a lot. There are plenty of English words that lack Swedish counterparts. Some concepts make more sense to be expressed with one word in some languages and needing to be talked around with several in others. Languages evolve with the people speaking it, their culture, history and needs making their marks over time.

But fuck it, you don't have "nödrim"? Literally "emergency rhyme" for when you make a bad rhyme during an improvised or hastily written verse? Not even like a multiple word expression for it?

[nabaart]

Some more OC songs I've made. Lyrics under the cut:

綾取り(Ayatori - Cat's Cradle)

A weaver once taught me thus Only a child is free and just Willing to take scissors to The red fate strings strangling us

So fear not the spider's call For her silken lullabies Will teach you the secret vow: How to make hundred strings into a sky

蜘蛛の呼び声を恐れるな (Fear not the spider's call) 彼女の絹の子守唄が (Her silken lullaby) 秘密の誓いを教えてくれるから (Teaches you the secret vow) 空に百本の糸を作る方法 (Weaving hundred strings in the sky)

私の心の琴線を玉に巻いて (Roll my heartstrings into a ball) タペストリーに織り込んで (Weave them into a tapestry) 私たちの栄枯盛衰の物語を (With tales of our rise and fall) あるいは好きなように遊んで (Or play with them as you please)

Roll my heartstrings into a ball Weave them into a tapestry With tales of our rise and fall Or play with them as you please

In your hands, strings of silk Are stars, flowers and birds Make of them as you will, at your will And I'll will, at all remain still

蜘蛛の呼び声を恐れるな 彼女の絹の子守唄が 秘密の誓いを教えてくれるから: 空に百本の糸を作る方法

私の心の琴線を玉に巻いて タペストリーに織り込んで 私たちの栄枯盛衰の物語を あるいは好きなように遊んで

Roll my heartstrings into a ball Weave them into a tapestry With tales of our rise and fall Or play with them as you please

In your hands, strings of silk Are stars, flowers and birds Make of them as you will, at your will And I'll, I'll be here still

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

White Oath:

(Alright) Who's the warmth amid the snow The white voice lulling me to sleep Whose the voice and hands more soft Than slumber's icy grip

Sing to me, maker of vows Hide me behind your sleeves Let me wake safe and sound Like resting butterflies, at ease

雪の中の暖かさは誰 (Who's the warmth amid the snow?) 私を眠りに誘う白い声 (The white voice lulling me to sleep) その声と手は (Whose voice and hands are) 眠りの氷よりも柔らかい (Softer than slumber's icy grip)

蝶の王よ、私に歌って (O ruler of butterflies, sing to me) 袖の後ろに私を隠して (Hide me behind your sleeves) 安心して目覚めさせて (Let me wake safe and sound) 休息し 平和に自由に夕暮れ (Resting, peaceful and free in the twilight)

Someone, remember me here Someone with the face of dusk Reach my heart, help it beat Break my ribs if you must

Don't leave, tell me your name Don't leave, or take me with you A soft winter joy with no shame I swore myself to you thus

雪の中の暖かさは誰 私を眠りに誘う白い声 その声と手は 眠りの氷よりも柔らかい

蝶の王よ、私に歌って 袖の後ろに私を隠して 安心して目覚めさせて 休息し 平和に自由に夕暮れ

Who's the warmth amid the snow The white voice lulling me to sleep Whose the voice and hands more soft Than slumber's icy grip

Sing to me, maker of vows Hide me behind your sleeves Let me wake safe and sound Like resting butterflies, at ease

雪の中の暖かさは誰 私を眠りに誘う白い声 その声と手は 眠りの氷よりも柔らかい

蝶の王よ、私に歌って 袖の後ろに私を隠して 安心して目覚めさせて 休息し 平和に自由に夕暮れ

[hidden-but]

Názvy zvířátek v cizích jazycích, mé drahé:

[sasdavvero]

this language is so unserious what

[left-ctrl-shift]

i just love seeing russian language being used in fics written in english. because the probability finding some hilarious mistakes is always really high. and not that i blame the writers. like, it is a hard language to implement into your work without having a good grasp on it as a whole.

the single most common mistake that I've encountered is adjectives that are used in the wrong gender, especially when it happens with the terms of endearment (which often are just substantivised adjectives in russian). also sometimes you will see a term of endearment that is clearly just translated "too literally" into russian, so that it just doesn't really make sense. (my personal pet peeve is "honey" translated as "мёд", which i can see being cute, however it would have to be extremely specific situation or a couple that is really into bees or honey as a food item for it to make sense lol).

there is something so amusing about reading a deeply emotional love confession for it to just end with an incorrectly used term of endearment. but once again not really the writers' fault, i just find it really funny. it is difficult, especially if your native language doesn't really have things like grammatical category of gender for adjectives.

[dyingroses]

Been thinking about how in The Little Mermaid (2023) Ariel knew the lip motion to pronounce her name. Which is super cool but how. And it made me wonder if mermaids rely on reading lips more from being underwater in social settings where lots of people are talking. Because apparently sound travels faster underwater makinG it harder to understand where it's coming from. Idk it's a flawed theory but yeah as someone who likes mermaids and linguistics I couldn't help but wonder.

[kairyuuyaps]

I am SO DEEP in the Arcane brainrot right now, this show had me feral 3 years ago and it has me feral now and season 2 act 2 absolutely DESTROYED me but.

YouTube put me on this video by Five by Five Takes on the parallels of Cait and Jinx a few days before act 2 dropped, and I've had this technically unrelated thought buzzing around in the back of my head since so please hear me out.

The video uses their hair colors as an easy entry to the thesis of the video (watch it, it's good) and. Well, I never considered hair color to be something that Jinx and Cait share. I grew up speaking German and Italian, and while numbers for example are fundamentally German to me, colors are Italian. And in Italian, Jinx’s and Cait’s hair colors are two different words. Not the same word with different modifiers plastered in front of it. Jinx has capelli azzurri. Cait has capelli blu. Those are categorically different colors. And it’s not like how in English if you have even the slightest interest in art, you’ll quickly learn “specialised” words for specific hues of the basic colors of the rainbow for more precise communication about the topic, words like azure and magenta and cyan and whatnot. No, in Italian (and some other romance languages too, I think) both azzurro and blu are part of the basic set of colors you teach children who are just learning to speak. So yeah. In my head, that’s not different hues of the same color, that’s just fully TWO DIFFERENT COLORS, as similar to or different from each other as yellow and orange or purple and red are.

I do some freelance and volunteer work in translation. I know, in my head, how complicated cross-cultural communication gets sometimes, I know about the things that get lost in the cracks. They’ve frustrated me on plenty an occasion. But every now and then, something will happen. Something like watching a video built on the introductory argument of “Jinx and Cait are so similar yet so different, like their hair being blue but not the same” and it will hit me like a freight train. I will feel, deep in my bones, the marks that the environment I grew up in has left on my understanding of the world and I will wonder: just how many times have I completely missed something that is painfully obvious to so many others? How many times have things glared out at me like a flashlight aimed at my eyes, that for others would be basically invisible? Both in media and irl, how much do the fundamental building blocks of my psychology assist or impede my understanding of things?

[chey-tips22]

As an (UK) English speaker newly using Duolingo to learn Hindi, I'm getting arguably pretty good at continuously recognising the symbols for the different sounds so far

But! BUT, no matter how hard I try 'da', 'ta', 'dha', 'tha' etc. all sound the same (like - if they didn't give me 4 options I'd assume we were only learning one levels of the same) so it's an absolute guess on listening rounds.

I know this is my own brain being poor at picking the sounds, so if anybody has any advice on convincing my brain to see these as distinct I would REALLY appreciate it.

I must appease the owl!

[airenyah]

english speakers love to dunk on german for having long ass words but then they don't even have the word Sesselkreis and you're forced to phrase it as "circle of chairs" like that's so clumsy 🙄🙄🙄

[niseag-arts]

some fun Gaelic found in am faclair beag: Chi thu Hiort tro tholl do thòin mum faic thu a-rithist mi Literally: You will see St. Kilda through your arsehole before you see me again.

[alltingfinns]

Fem Myror Är Fler Än Fyra Elefanter - Elefantbokstäver

Learn the Swedish alphabet with pink elephants!

Notes:

- Primarily I mean Swedish as in how we pronounce the letters, but also Å Ä and Ö show up at the end.

- Uppercase letters are “big” letters while lowercase are “small” letters in Swedish, and of course grown ups are “big” and children “small”. Hence the big and small elephant are respectively adult and child coded, via bowler hat and propeller beanie.

- Don’t know why W is missing.