#polyglot problems

[inthewaytoamultilinguallife]

Had a nightmare in Portuguese and woke up agitated at 3am thinking in full French. Turned on the bed and saw I had a message. I spent the next 5 minutes staring at my cellphone trying to make sense of what seemed like nonsensical keymashing -until I realised I was trying to understand Spanish with an English focused brain. I just, what

truly, what

(native language is Spanish btw lmao)

[troublejournal]

does anyone knows some way to practice spanish online? i do have classes but i mainly read academic stuff so i need more practise!!!

[soufre-de-paris]

the perpetual difficulty of the word i want existing only in the other language without a cognate or sister word!!!

the specific word i want is something that means "hang" with a sense of dangling, lightly swinging, etc but i want that sense of something smaller hanging by a thin thread, sword of damocles style, imagery like a pendulum.

we have the exact word i want: pendurar, from latin pendurus, whereby english gets pendulum! great! pendurar just means hang but it has the visual/sound connection to pendulum which i like for aforementioned word-association reasons!

pendurus has no child in english but for pendulum!

english has "pendulate" but that means actually swinging side to side like a pendulum, which, not what i want

[polysprachig]

Ah yes, that most quintessential of polyglot problems for multilingual bookworms: Which language should I read in? Answers may vary by genre.

Originally posted to my insta 🧿🤍

[melikes-reads]

I'm hearing things - Good Omens edition

Good Omens, Episode 2x05, min. 9.45

Nina asks Crowley about Aziraphale being his bit on the side.

Crowley protests:

- He's not my bit on the side.

At this point, when he continues, what I hear is:

- He's far too pure of heart to be anybody's bit on the side.

Except… Both the subtitles and the transcriptions I found online report this:

- I'm far too pure of heart to be anybody's bit on the side.

So, subtitles and transcriptions would have me think that Crowley is talking about himself as too pure of heart, but my ears disagree, making a strong case for Crowley talking of Aziraphale as too pure of heart. Which, you know. Makes perfect sense. Especially taking into account Crowley's tone of voice (righteous indignation instead of practiced sarcasm). Also the whole Aziraphale-being-an-angel thing. So.

Native English speakers of the Tumblr, please confirm?

Thank you,

a very tired ESL fellow person of the Tumblr

[hewsos-from-lesbos]

I just saw a sign that said ‘BEECHGROVE’ (the name of the road ig) and it was cut off so all I could see was ‘BEECH’, and y’all, my ass really went ‘vjejesn?’. I thought that sign was in Cyrillic, a road sign, in the rural UK, and I thought. it was. CYRILLIC! actual dumbass here.

[michelle-languages]

someone stole a post on insta from me and translated 1-1 to Portuguese, I sent this girl 3 audio in my broken Portuguese to ask her to delete it

michelle and her will to practice her languages even if it shouldn’t be the case #polyglotproblems

[magnificent-buckless-butt]

...Wait. Why did I never think of that before??

I'm a polyglot, sometimes I'd try to speak Romanian for fun then my mistake, that's all Swedish actually but no, this verb is Deutsche, forgot the Swedish root was the English one not the Norse one, you know what let me switch to Latin because Romanian is 50% Latin (other 50% is Slavic and idk this man) except of course now my Spanish is thriving and where were you last time I actually tried to speak Spanish? Nvm I'll stick to English and have a fun accent and a few French words tossed into it because I really can't bother rn.

You also don't need to be tired. Sometimes, I'd spend a bit more time than usual studying Swedish and it's over for Romanian. It also depends on the level of similarity: I know I'm full-on grammar analysis so if one Latin language is up in my mind, the others are down but meanwhile Japanese feels untouched.

Bucky knowing at least 31 languages according to CACW, super serum brain enhancements and the fact he learned Xhosa in Wakanda, leads me to believe he must have the fucking gnarliest of language blurring. You know when you can't seem to figure out how to word something in one language so you skip over to a different one but wait no one knows that...

I also don't think English would be Bucky's default language anymore. It's his birth language, sure, but Russian is probably the language he defaults to now after 80 years right?

So if Bucky's ever delirious for whatever reason, extreme tiredness, magic, super drugs or whatever who knows, do we think he talks in the most insane blend of languages, does he say a sentence in Japanese then switch to Korean and then to Polish, do we think he'd point blank say "I'm sorry I don't speak English" in English to his English speaking friends or teammates because he thinks in Russian and about fifteen other languages before he gets to English, and then goes "oh wait I do" or...?

[thebucketpail]

Sister and i forgot the english word for "eight" today and ended cycling through 5 different languages trying to find it with increasing frantic and desperate energy only to end up asking our brother. He didnt get it until we got to french

[gayeilgeoir]

Stop making your multilingual characters “forget to switch back”, that’s unrealistic, here’s some actual situations multilingual people regularly do, as someone who is fluent in English, and conversationally fluent in Irish and Spanish:

If they have to say something in another language, like a name, it will be heavily accented, they won’t say it like it’s English

Multilingual people might have a hard time distinguishing languages that arent their first, and may mix them together in sentences

Translating expression directly that only make sense in one language

Adding sounds to English words because they don’t exist in their language (Eg: ‘Eschool’ in Spanish speakers instead of ‘school’)

[kankuroplease]

Aori’s go-to disguises; Estella and Yoko~

[polyglot-sock]

it's ironic that, for someone who is able to speak several languages, my ability to verbally communicate disappears really often

[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?

[sayitaliano]

Tumblr non è in grado di usare una lingua alla volta, un po' come il mio cervello