#language stuff

[reasonsforhope]

Interior Department Announces New Guidance to Honor and Elevate Hawaiian Language

"In commemoration of Mahina ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, or Hawaiian Language Month, and in recognition of its unique relationship with the Native Hawaiian Community, the Department of the Interior today announced new guidance on the use of the Hawaiian language.  

A comprehensive new Departmental Manual chapter underscores the Department’s commitment to further integrating Indigenous Knowledge and cultural practices into conservation stewardship.  

“Prioritizing the preservation of the Hawaiian language and culture and elevating Indigenous Knowledge is central to the Biden-Harris administration's work to meet the unique needs of the Native Hawaiian Community,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “As we deploy historic resources to Hawaiʻi from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the Interior Department is committed to ensuring our internal policies and communications use accurate language and data."  

Department bureaus and offices that engage in communication with the Native Hawaiian Community or produce documentation addressing places, resources, actions or interests in Hawaiʻi will use the new guidance on ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) for various identifications and references, including flora and fauna, cultural sites, geographic place names, and government units within the state.  The guidance recognizes the evolving nature of ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi and acknowledges the absence of a single authoritative source. While the Hawaiian Dictionary (Pukui & Elbert 2003) is designated as the baseline standard for non-geographic words and place names, Department bureaus and offices are encouraged to consult other standard works, as well as the Board on Geographic Names database.  

Developed collaboratively and informed by ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi practitioners, instructors and advocates, the new guidance emerged from virtual consultation sessions and public comment in 2023 with the Native Hawaiian Community. 

The new guidance aligns with the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to strengthening relationships with the Native Hawaiian Community through efforts such as the Kapapahuliau Climate Resilience Program and Hawaiian Forest Bird Keystone Initiative. During her trip to Hawaiʻi in June, Secretary Haaland emphasized recognizing and including Indigenous Knowledge, promoting co-stewardship, protecting sacred sites, and recommitting to meaningful and robust consultation with the Native Hawaiian Community."

-via US Department of the Interior press release, February 1, 2024

--

Note: I'm an editor so I have no idea whether this comes off like as big a deal as it potentially is. But it is potentially going to establish and massively accelerate the adoption of correctly written Native Hawaiian language, as determined by Native Hawaiians.

Basically US government communications, documentations, and "style guides" (sets of rules to follow about how to write/format/publish something, etc.) can be incredibly influential, especially for topics where there isn't much other official guidance. This rule means that all government documents that mention Hawai'i, places in Hawai'i, Hawaiian plants and animals, etc. will have to be written the way Native Hawaiians say it should be written, and the correct way of writing Hawaiian conveys a lot more information about how the words are pronounced, too, which could spread correct pronunciations more widely.

It also means that, as far as the US government is concerned, this is The Correct Way to Write the Hawaiian Language. Which, as an editor who just read the guidance document, is super important. That's because you need the 'okina (' in words) and kahakō in order to tell apart sizeable sets of different words, because Hawaiian uses so many fewer consonants, they need more of other types of different sounds.

And the US government official policy on how to write Hawaiian is exactly what editors, publishers, newspapers, and magazines are going to look at, sooner or later, because it's what style guides are looking at. Style guides are the official various sets of rules that books/publications follow; they're also incredibly detailed - the one used for almost all book publishing, for example, the Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS), is over a thousand pages long.

One of the things that CMoS does is tell you the basic rules of and what specialist further sources they think you should use for writing different languages. They have a whole chapter dedicated to this. It's not that impressive on non-European languages yet, but we're due for a new edition (the 18th) of CMoS in the next oh two to four years, probably? Actually numbering wise they'd be due for one this year, except presumably they would've announced it by now if that was the case.

I'm expecting one of the biggest revisions to the 18th edition to add much more comprehensive guidance on non-Western languages. Considering how far we've come since 2017, when the last one was released, I'll be judging the shit out of them if they do otherwise. (And CMoS actually keep with the times decently enough.)

Which means, as long as there's at least a year or two for these new rules/spellings/orthographies to establish themselves before the next edition comes out, it's likely that just about every (legit) publisher will start using the new rules/spellings/orthographies.

And of course, it would expand much further from there.

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[youghvaudough]

I will forever appreciate a theme in my fictional stories, & that’s exactly what Wind Breaker (by Nii Satoru) has, so, I present:

Wind Breaker characters have a theme to their names.. a thread:

Bōfūrin / 防風鈴

so, even though our protag group’s name is written and visually represented as “wind chime”, Bōfūrin’s name is where this group’s theme of trees/plants start:

防風鈴 (“prevent/protect” “wind chime”) has the same reading as 防風林, a type of forest planted strategically to prevent wind erosion of soil — much like Fūrin’s mission of protecting and serving their town

all of Bōfūrin’s named members (and close associations) so far have some element of tree/plant/wood in their last name (if you look at the kanji of their last names, you’d see a lot of wood radicals/木字旁):

桜 遥 • Sakura Haruka: 桜 / cherry tree

(fun fact: his name 遥 / haruka means "far"; also it's commonly a feminine given name)

蘇枋 隼飛 • Suō Hayato: 枋 / sandalwood (?) or tree used as timber, general term for wooden beams in houses

(fun fact: his last name 苏枋 is the Chinese name of a traditional reddish brown color, named after a pigment made from 苏木!)

楡井 秋彦 • Nirei Akihiko: 楡 / Siberian elm

杉下 京太郎 • Sugishita Kyōtarō: 杉 / Japanese cedar (cryptomeria japonica)

柊 登馬 • Hiiragi Tōma: 柊 / holly osmanthus (osmanthus heterophyllus)

(fun fact: his name 登馬 means "to mount a horse"; no, not that kind of mount, the regular horseback riding kind)

梅宮 一 • Umemiya Hajime: 梅 / plum tree

(fun fact: his name 一 is just "one")

This association also extends to Kotoha, who is very closely associated with Bōfūrin:

橘 琴叶 • Tachibana Kotoha: 橘 / orange tree

now, Bōfūrin members yet to be featured in the show: (spoilers below the break)

(if you want to go to later parts: part 2 - shishitoren & part 3 - noroshi!)

梶 蓮 • Kaji Ren: 梶 / paper mulberry (broussonetia papyrifera)

(fun fact: his name 蓮 / Ren means "lotus")

椿野 佑 • Tsubakino Tasuku: 椿 / Japanese camellia

(fun fact: their name 佑 means "to help/protect" or "to bless"!)

桐生 三輝 • Kiryū Mitsuki: 桐 / empress tree (paulownia tomentosa)

柘浦 大河 • Tsugeura Taiga: 柘 / mandarin melon berry (maclura tricuspidata)

There's also 桃瀬 匠 (Momose Takumi, "peach tree") & 水木 聡久 (Mizuki Saku, "wood"), the two other Heavenly Kings

I hope I have rly driven the point home here,, /lh

[kiwi-cult]

PARSELSCRIPT!!

Hi. This is mostly for the people from Discord but tadah! I'm finally making that Tumblr post I've been talking about for months.

(Warning this will probably be very chaotic)

To anyone new who sees this: me and some friends made an alphabet for Parseltongue from Harry Potter, aka Parselscript. I'll take you on a little journey to explain my process and give you some tips, should you want to start writing it.

Disclaimer: I wanted to make this script usable for the writer I made it for so it's less of an actual language and more just some characters to represent the Latin (or ‘English’) letters. Like a cipher. It is not realistic. If I made this realistic I'd have to add all sorts of things to indicate body language and smell etc and also have to figure out what sounds Parseltongue actually has etcetera etcetera. No.

Alright.

It all started when we started talking about Parselscript in a Discord server and I asked my friend Ava to visualise the script because she seemed to have a clear vision of it, so I could use it to go from there.

That's how we got this.

I think we all wanted to go with something flowery for some reason, so we did.

After this I just messed around with brushes and shapes in Procreate for a while, tweaking things and trying to make it more writeable. I ended up with something like this (still a rough draft).

It may look a bit like random squiggles at first, and it kinda was at this point. As you can see there's also a lot of added dots and lines, which can be a bit hard to remember and I see you wondering what it looks like without them.

Well here it is.

I showed this to the people I brainstormed with in Discord and we decided to go with the more complicated version because it looks better lol.

This is one of the final versions.

It says: "Hello, my name is Kiwi Cult. I made this script after reading a fanfic called Terrible, But Great written by Isalise the loml on Archive Of Our Own."

Now, to talk about some of the (boring) logistics.

It is read from left to right, top to bottom.

Every separate combination of squiggles you see above is a separate word. Every word is made up of a starting character, one or more letter characters and an ending character.

The very first character you see in the top left corner, with the three petal looking thingies, is a silent starting character that indicates the start of a sentence. Not word: sentence. The end of the character, that little circle thingy, is a comma. So, the first combination says: "Hello,".

Then, the second combination starts with a kind of hook going down and right. This is also a silent character and more meant as an interpunction, that's why you don't pronounce it. It's kind of just a way to start the word when there isn't anything special about it (aka it's not the start of a sentence, a name, an exclamation or a question. But every character is special in its own right🥲). The same kind of hook can be found at the bottom of the combination, except going up. It has the same use, basically just a way to end the word when there isn't anything special about it. Now, you might ask: why does it go right and not left?

We talked about this a while, because I wanted the direction to have some kind of meaning. We wondered about gender, tone, blah blah all kinds of complicated things but in the end I just wanted this script to be writable so I chose to have proficient writers in Parseltongue make their hooks go left and beginners have their hooks go right.

Now, you might notice that I end my words with a hook going right. That is because I don't see myself as a pro in writing in Parselscript okay? It's hard!😭💀

Now, other than the character indicating the start of a sentence, the circle, and the simple hook, there are a few other characters to start or end a combination (don't worry I'll show them all to you at the end, you won't have to use your imagination for long).

We have a character to indicate a name. Now, the rule is: name indicator over start of sentence indicator. So, if you start a sentence with a name, you'll use the symbol to indicate a name, NOT BOTH. (That's not even possible but I don't even want to see you try and butcher my child).

There is a character to indicate a sentence that would usually be followed by an exclamation mark (!), but at the start of the sentence. Then you’d end the exclamated sentence with a period.

The same goes for a question mark (?): put it at the start of a question, not the end. Again, it wouldn't even be possible to use it at the end of a combination but I DON'T EVEN WANNA SEE YOU TRY.

Finally we have a period (.), which looks a bit like a flower with four petals. You do use this one at the end of a word, and it is always followed by a start of sentence indicator or a name indicator. I know people are rejecting capitals these days in their typing but I don't wanna see it. If you start a word after a period with a hook I will find you.

So, to put it all next to each other, the symbols we have are: -start of sentence indicator -name indicator -exclamation mark (!) -question mark (?) -period (.) -hook (direction depends on efficiency) -comma (,) (direction depends on efficiency)

I didn't make adjusted characters to indicate a capital letter like we do in the Latin alphabet, meaning that the only things you can kind of 'capitalise' are the start of a sentence and the start of a name.

It is also slightly phonetic. Emphasis on slightly. I made separate characters for almost all letters in the Latin alphabet, so you can just write your word normally with Parselscript characters. The only difference is that I made only one character for the 'f/v' sounds and that there is no 'c' character. If a word has a 'c' in it, you'll have to use the character for a 'k' or an 's'. Also a ‘q’ can be made with ‘k’ and ‘w’ etc.

A few examples: -character=karakter -parselscript=parselskript -crazy=krazy -science=siense

-quiz=kwuiz

I know it looks a bit confusing, but I trust you guys' ability to read context clues and figure out what someone means when you try to decipher Parselscript.

Now, for a word like 'phonetic' or 'decipher' I don't really care whether you use the separate characters for 'p' and 'h' or just the one for the 'f/v' sound. You do you.

I also don’t use any double letters because they basically sound the same and it looks ugly but if you want to use double symbols feel free.

I also made some numbers that do not look like they fit with the rest of the script but I promise you that's just because you're not used to it yet. Our own numbers don't belong with our alphabet either because we nicked them from the Arabs (I think, don't quote me on this) but we don’t notice that either.

Tadah. (Yes I know it’s out of order I told you this was gonna be chaotic af)

Other than that, feel free to ask me questions if I've forgotten anything or if you're wondering about anything. I can't guarantee that I have a good answer because I might not even have thought about it myself, but I can always try to come up with something. I am one person, I'm afraid I haven't been able to take everything about a script into consideration.

Now, without further ado; here is the key.

No, your eyes didn't deceive you: there are two versions. The first has a bit more loose squiggles than the second one. I realised that when I was writing physically, the second version was much nicer to write, so it is kind of like Simplified Parselscript. I haven't decided yet if I'm gonna put some lore behind it or not yet. But I included the og one if you're a tryhard and wanna take it on.

Now, if you're gonna start writing it yourself, here is the stroke order.

I tried to make it as clear as possible but please ask me if you're confused on anything.

Red is the starting point of the whole symbol, the arrows indicate the direction to go in, x marks the start of the small extra's.

Now, I'd also recommend writing on some type of paper with vertical lines like this if you're gonna do it physically.

You can just turn a paper with normal, horizontal lines a quarter to get vertical lines. Also, do NOT write in between the lines. They are meant to help you keep the start and ending on the same line so you don't start going into crazy directions while writing. So, start your sentence symbol or hook or whatever in the middle of the line and try to keep coming back to that vertical line after every letter. As you gain more proficiency you'll probably go straight into the next letter without going back to the line all the time but I think this is a good starting point.

I also recommend writing with a fountain pen or something else that flows well because it’s easier to write that way.

Here is another rough draft I made on physical paper to get a feel for it. As you can see this draft had a lot more different starting characters and ending characters so just ignore that. Hope this motivates you a bit or smth.

Lmk if you want me to post a video of me writing in this Parselscript.

Also please let me know if you know of someone else who's also made a Parselscript because I tried to look for it on Tumblr and Twitter etc but I couldn't find anything.

I also feel like there’s a big mistake I made that I realised the last time I worked on this script but I’ve forgotten it now so if you find out please comment or dm or anything💀

Also feel free to use in your own fic, tho a little tiny shoutout in the a/n would be nice :) I’m @/kiwi_cult on Ao3, @/slvtr_ on Wattpad, @/kiwi cult on ff.net, @/slvtr.1 on TikTok and @/.slvtr on Discord.

Credits:

@natis-balamnimaja @asterialvia and @/zee (who unfortunately left the server and I don't know the Tumblr @ of) for brainstorming with me and @isalisewrites for inspiring us and making the server we discussed this in.

Okay bye :) tell me if I forgot anything.

🥝

[justmorebtsffs]

I was thinking about how RM said he learnt English from FRIENDS (the show) and that in his childhood that it was a popular way for mothers to teach children, by making them watch shows in English, so I thought of this poll I could do.

This goes for all language learners, but I wanted to do english to make it less broad. I'm prob not the first person to make this poll. but pls reblog. As someone trying to learn other languages, I'm curious how other people learn them.

[walmart-the-official]

*even if your family isn’t fluent in the language. An example of this is that my family uses “no bueno” and “danke/bitte”

[heavenlyraindrops]

japanese is such a kind language. like you forget a character it will hold ur hand and tell u that everything will be ok and you can just write it in hirigana and everyone will understand :)

and then chinese is like oh im sorry you forgot a character? youre illiterate. you mispronounce a word? your mother is now a horse

[gemsofgreece]

Green horses

More Greek etymological madness!

There is a saying in modern Greek, πράσινα άλογα (prásina álogha), which literally means “green horses”. It is usually added to the end of a sentence to show that something is crazy, unbelievable, foolish and to express disbelief for a statement.

i.e «Είπε ότι θα είναι πάντα στην ώρα του από δω και στο εξής και πράσινα άλογα»

(“He said he will always be on time from now on and green horses”)

The sentence indicates that the person has not stopped being late or that there is disbelief expressed that this person has the ability to even start trying being on time.

Why green horses though? How did this come to be?

Interestingly, no, it was not formed as a concept due to the inherent improbability of a horse being green. It originally had nothing to do with horses, let alone green ones.

The phrase originates from the ancient «πράσσειν άλογα» (prásin álogha) which means “acting thoughtlessly”.

The sound similarity between πράσσειν (prásin, acting) and πράσινα (prásina, green) is entirely incidental. The άλογα (álogha, thoughtlessly / horses) is on the contrary the same word! You see, the “official” Greek word for horse is ίππος (hippos or ippos). However, all animals were often called in ancient and especially medieval times as άλογα, from the negative α- and the noun λόγος which means logic, reason. Therefore animals were called álogha, beings without logic. The more the language evolved the word started describing horses more specific until in modern Greek it became the standard word for horse, overcoming ίππος by a long shot.

The phrase was surviving throughout in some way or another, however now the meaning of άλογα was getting enriched (it still also means “thoughtlessly”). Simultaneously, the infinitive «πράσσειν» was slowly fading, especially because its other lexical variant «πράττειν» (prátin, also means acting) was more popular and its verb is still used in its -t- variant nowadays.

So as πράσσειν was gradually becoming rarer and άλογα was getting a double meaning, people either out of humour or out of poor vocabulary morphed the phrase into πράσινα άλογα, green horses!

Interestingly it still expresses judgement against someone’s perceived stupidity, unreliability or madness (acting thoughtlessly)!

[nattousan]

i just think it's really funny that our word for running face first into something is called getting clotheslined, a noun referring to something completely unrelated to anything having to do with like, accidents or injuries, but by the frequency at which people would run smack into it.

That's like if people called getting up only to to get snagged on something getting "headphoned"

i'm very charmed by this idea, do we have any other examples of this in english or other languages?

[lingthusiasm]

Not sure which episode to listen to first? Want to get a friend started on Lingthusiasm? Or do you just want to know yourself on a deeper level? Let our perfectly calibrated, Very Serious 'Which Lingthusiasm episode are you?' quiz guide you!

[ofmdtereomaori]

I'm begging you, please stop italicising te reo Māori words in your fics.

There's a really excellent article by Khairani Barokka on why italicising non-English words in general is not a great idea. (tl;dr: it's very othering)

For te reo there's an additional reason, which is that most of us in Aotearoa stopped italicising te reo decades ago and now when we see it it looks fucking weird. It feels like you're holding the word with tongs; like you're saying "hey I found this weird foreign word and I don't really know what to do with it!"

Which is a pity, because there's some really good fics out there exploring Ed's Māori identity, and the italicising makes them look less good than they are. (I'm planning a specific recs post, but want it to be 100% positive, also there's stuff I haven't read yet.)

I don't want this to be a call out post, because I hate that shit, and I know that everyone's coming from a good place. If you've been italicising te reo words, you're probably doing what you were taught was the right thing, and I genuinely don't want you to feel bad about it. This is just a learning experience; go forth and use italics as they should be used in fan fiction:

"Oh. Oh."

PS I can't write about italicisation and te reo without mentioning the brilliant Alice Te Punga Somerville and the especially her poem Kupu rere kē.

[skirting-board-iix]

10 Wonderful (and Unorganised) DIY Irish Words/Phrases!!!

Irish - Literal Meaning - English

Feoilséantóir - Meat Denier - Vegetarian

Conriocht - Dog Form - Werewolf

Smugairle Róin - Seal Spit - Jellyfish

Muireann i mBríste - Muireann (girl's name) in Trousers - Tomboy

Snag Breac - Speckled Hiccuper - Magpie

Tírghrá - Country Love - Patriotism

Uisce Faoi Thalamh - Water Under Ground - Conspiracy

Snáthaid an Diabhail - The Devil's Needle - Daddy-Long-Legs

Bréigéide - False Clothing - Fancy Dress

Eiteán - Little Wing - Shuttlecock

[youghvaudough]

Wind Breaker characters have a theme to their names, a thread, part 3:

we will discuss Noroshi, a group that appears later in the manga, so, spoilers under the divide, click with discretion!

(part 1: Bōfūrin and part 2: Shishitoren)

Noroshi / 烽

the group antithesis to Bōfūrin is aptly named signal fire. with a fire radical / 火字旁, their name easily invokes the fire imagery that Endō frequently quotes

as we have established, Bōfūrin is associated with trees/plants, so it is unsurprising that a group that broke from them and wants to destroy their ideals would want to set fire to them

interestingly enough, the leader of noroshi and his second-in-command (and biggest fan) have both wood and fire in their last names:

焚石 矢 • Takiishi Chika: 焚 / to burn (with fire)

the kanji 焚 is literally made up of 林 (two wood/木 side by side, "forest/trees") on top and 火 ("fire") below it,, very straightforward

棪堂 哉真斗 • Endō Yamato: 棪 / (archaically) a red fruit of a tree that looks like crabapples

the kanji 棪 is made up of 木 (wood radical) and 炎 (two fire/火 stacked on top of each other, "flames"),, again, very straight(?)forward

other named members of noroshi:

they have elements of wood in their last names, likely a leftover from their previous association with Fūrin, but they are specifically wooden tools instead of living trees:

杓子 千宙 · Banjo Kanon: 杓 / wooden ladle

(he looks like scaramouche from genshin i say this and run tf away so fast)

盤杖 奏音 · Shakushi Chihiro: 杖 / (wooden) walking stick

樽味 清太郎 · Tarumi Seitaro: 樽 / wooden barrel (for alcohol/soy sauce, etc.)

柱尾 修士 · Hashirao Shuji: 柱 / (wooden) column, pillar

(yup the same kanji 柱/Hashira that's used in Demon Slayer; also this is why i kept calling the hashiras "pillars" and had to explain myself when talking about KNY with my very confused English-speaking friends)

梳地 弦治 · Sugichi Genji: 梳 / (wooden) comb

(he's weirdly Grease coded makes sense he has "comb" in his last name lmao)

that's what i got so far! hope you found this interesting. ty for reading if you got this far!!

[em-nikolaev]

A Few Fun Little Language Learning Tips

Hello, these are a few little tips I've found on my language learning odyssey that you may find fun or helpful

Accents! This can be a great way to 'warm up' before speaking more in depth, or a training exercise, but a fun way I've found to get myself to make French sounds (it works for any language really) is to speak English (or insert native language here) with an exaggerated accent that comes from someone speaking your target language, I find this a fun way to get the sounds of a language you're trying to speak into your head in order to make speaking easier (great for speaking exam practice)

Use addictive social media for profit! So this would be best for intermediate to advanced learners, but a way to learn more slang, grow your vocabulary, and just generally get more language input in an easy way is to create a dedicated social media account in your TL and simply lurk, do you spend hours doom scrolling short form video content? Do it guilt free by doing it in your TL, do you like cat memes? read them in your TL, it's addictive, and low energy, so you can do it even when your brain feels like a fried egg

Need a pen pal? Try Ai! So, speaking to real people in your TL can be a daunting task, for reasons ranging from the fear of saying something wrong to just plain stranger danger, so a safer (and totally free) alternative can be through ai chat bots, you can do this with dedicated language learning bots or with just plain old ChatGPT

Nostalgia Bait! One of the most beautiful things about visual art is the fact that it is a universal language in itself, certain symbols can hold significance wherever you go, so re-watching animated TV shows from your childhood or watching new TV content made for kids in your TL can be a great way to add to your vocabulary, and in call & response shows, generate responses and make them more complex if you like, to add more intrigue

When in doubt, write it out! I personally struggle a lot with conjugation, so if you do to, here's a solution I found, use Quizlet learn to help drill conjugation, and when your free rounds run out, you can manually use the flash cards to use the same effective learning strategy (or pay for Quizlet plus, but I, personally would rather eat a dusty lamp then pay for something that, in my opinion, should be free to all learners)

[hexagr]

Your ability to describe the world affects how you think about it. If the language and idioms you know are constrained to a particular window, that window will act as a constraint in shaping not only how you see the world, but also how you experience the world.

[domoron]

This is for a school project so please feel free to reblog and share♥️