#other languages fascinate me

[psalmsofpsychosis]

real talk though; if i could surgically remove the Bruce & Alfred scenes out of Gotham TV and make an entire separate Batman project out of them i would, because they're so distinctly different from the rest of the show and from the common Batman comic narratives, it floors me everytime. If we take the whole show as a body, the heart is placed in Bruce Wayne and it bleeds into his relationships with people, but most importantly with Alfred. It's such stark and exciting constrast to how Batman comics generally portray Bruce Wayne or the Batman persona; Gotham!Bruce is so tender and bare and transparent, heart beating and bleeding so close to his skin, you can see when it taints through his shirt, and his moments of absolute irrational sentimentality are not played cheap or like missteps in a planned protocol rational persona, they're utterly sincere and every emotion he expresses is as integral to his character as his moments of analytical calculation.

[yashley]

“Are you sure it wasn’t intentional?” / “Do you think she might be working for the bad guys?”

[natjennie]

I believe the captain speaks like 8 languages. and switches between them whenever convenient. like to express frustration in a language the people he's talking to won't know, or whatever. but also when he gets flustered or excited sometimes he slips into one. he's autistic so, sometimes you've just got to put on an accent or start speaking a different language. along with english and canon german, I think it's gotta be like. french. latin and/or greek. a scandinavian language idk which one, swedish maybe? russian. he knows morse code and the nato phonetic alphabet. his british sign language is out of date but he knows the old signs. anyway he mostly doesn't get a chance to use any of these skills because everyone just speaks english all the time, but one time the rest of the ghosts are all being really annoying, talking over each other stumbling for alison's attention and the captain complains under his breath about their lack of respect and the chaos of the house etc etc in like. welsh or something. and robin looks right at him and shrugs and responds in the same language like "yeah they're annoying but they're family. can't complain too much huh?" and cap just. whuh??!?!!!? because robin has been around for thousands of years and definitely knows allllll sorts of languages.

[puppyeared]

who up seeing their disorder in a fictional character but feel like its not their place to put a name on it

[saints-who-never-existed]

Look, I know this is very random but thinking about Manson and his Shetland origins brought me back to this video concerning Shetlandic/Shetland dialect, and I thought perhaps others might be interested to see it too.

It features Christine De Luca, who not only has an incredibly lovely, mellifluous voice but is also a celebrated poet who was made Edinburgh's Makar in 2014 and has long been an advocate for Shetlandic.

[aeide-thea]

learning a language is so funny bc you’ll pick up these totally calcified terms as part of a beginner course and then realize years later, oh, duh, Übung is just the gerund of üben…

[strixton]

idk how to explain this but emojis have formed their own ever morphing language and its fascinating to me

how the shift from what color heart you use for someone can differentiate between friend, crush, and lover. and how it's unique for each person.

watching how some peoples emoji language changes from group chat to group chat.

how generations use emojis differently.

I know the emoji analysis thing in Southpark was a joke, but honestly, if I had more of a brain for it, I'd study emoji usage for fun, and see how it works

[girlpetrarca]

I love failed patricides

[vonlipvig]

because hbo doesn't let me put subtitles in english, all the stuff i've watched there (all of succession, veep, etc) i've watched in english with subtitles in spanish, just because i like having subtitles in case i miss anything. but the thing with understanding both english and whatever language i have the subtitles in is that i keep thinking about how translating is such a fascinating thing, and how easy it is to miss the meaning, tone, and charm of what is being said (and how difficult it is to match them, of course).

when my parents and i were watching succession, they kept telling me how they didn't really find it funny. and sure, maybe what they find funny isn't what i find funny--that's a given, really--, but i also kinda understand them. if you're only getting what the characters are saying through translated subtitles then you're bound to miss a lot of what makes it so funny. sure, a good translator will find a way, but still, how do you translate all of roman roy's weird ass sayings? sometimes you really can't.

(sometimes i feel like translators give up, cause man, you completely missed the meaning there. i was watching veep the other day and when that bob guy called ben "buttfucker" they translated it to "imbécil" or imbecile/fool/moron, which...like, that's wrong.)

all of this came to me because while watching veep yesterday, one of the characters was reading a tweet president meyer wrote, and he said her twitter handle, which is obviously @POTUS. now, a twitter handle wouldn't need to be translated, cuase it's not a word, but POTUS is an acronym, a concept that someone who isn't familiar with the language wouldn't necessarily understand, so they did translate it to @LAPRESI, which is kinda funny, because it's so informal, which in turn kinda takes away from the fact that she's tweeting jokes from the official president of the united states twitter account. it's as if joe biden's twitter handle was @DAPREZ or something like that.

so yeah, translating is fascinating.

[oatbugs]

i am actually terrified xoxo

[inkyself]

Anyway when one of my posts goes into the tumblr wilderness, outside the realm of my mutuals, I realize that people on here take things soooo literally and I am amazed because language to me is first and foremost a metaphor, for no language can translate the thoughts inside my head

There’s people who don’t experience the uncommunicability of existence

[dkettchen]

not me adding literal buddhist monk shaolin masters to my very short list of ppl I’ve ever strongly related to the philosophy/mentality/approach to life of oh boy

[louderfade]

i don't trust anyone that had a good time in middle school. it's a hellish first encounter of what's on the other side of childhood and designed to be a period of adjustment; it's not supposed to be comfortable. if you enjoyed being in seventh grade something is fundamentally wrong with you, and i'm like an animal sensing another animal has rabies or something. don't come any closer or i'll attack.

[cosmojjong]

i find myself to be incredibly satisfied when i get compliments about my korean

[firebirdsdaughter]

As the daughter of a history major…

… Where the hell are so many americans on tumblr going to school???

I just saw a post about how ‘it’s taught in america that the pilgrims were Good and fleeing religious intolerance but they were actually Bad’ which first off, you cannot make those distinctions bc freaking everyone was up to kill anyone who didn’t agree in those days, but also… People claiming to be american claiming that they were definitely taught exactly that??

Maybe… If you never took a history class past elementary school, I guess. Or maybe you were in Florida (oh, gods, get my mother started on people killing each other in Florida).

Bc, resident American here, albeit one in Massachusetts, and… No. We’re not taught that. You get a romanticised version in early grades maybe, but the higher you go, you get taught that the most Puritans had different religious beliefs than the standard in England, so they took the opportunity to ship off to the colonies. There’s no victimisation, it’s just straight facts. And that usually, that was the category of people shipped off to the colonies—criminals, religious differences, poor people… Like no one in their right mind wanted to go off into the ‘wilderness.’ They did it bc they hated being where they were, and England was all too happy to get rid of them. Hell, they were also completely unprepared and many of them died on the way over. Like that shot went super bad for so many reasons.

I’m not going to claim I remember every detail I was taught, and I had a bit of a deeper knowledge bc my mother is, again, a history major w/ an interest in American history bc it is whacky), and I do remember the ‘founding’ being a little simplified, but I also distinctly remember going into higher grades and having teachers outright explain ‘what you were told as kids was a very simplified version, let’s talk about it in more detail.’ We weren’t taught that there were ‘good’ or ‘bad’ guys, we were taught that these people had a difference in belief and that for that reason, they ended up shipped off to the colonies. We talked about the conflicts, the damage, the ugly bits.

I think people claiming to have been taught a sanitised version either didn’t take many history classes, didn’t pay attention, or don’t remember much of what they were taught (which no judgement here, I barely remember). Or maybe they’re just trying to sound Cool on the internet? I can’t know. But I remain baffled by certain myths about the us that alleged Americans come out of the woodwork to claim are true when… Your experiences are not universal???

Like I’m happy to criticise the education system, bc excuse me while I cry about not being able to hold a conversation in Spanish, but like. Unless you were in a very particular environment (I went to public school, btw)… No, you weren’t taught that shit. There’s parts missing, sure, but they did not, at least not beyond elementary, try to claim the ‘Pilgrims’ were blameless. I remember being taught that life was harsh and short, and people bitter and stubborn. I don’t doubt that the words ‘fleeing religious intolerance’ might’ve been used, bc technically, yes, they were. But I am also intolerant of trolls, and mosquitos. That’s a statement, it has no bearing on what kind of people either group was.