#ALSO DID YOU KNOW THAT 'MAY' IS A REALLY FUCKED UP VERB IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE?

[tallbluelady]

I... I don't think that's quite my style...

[salty-professor]

You should know this already

So, I have several degrees. This isn't a humble brag. It is what is required to teach in Higher Ed. I did the work. I earned the degrees. I was a student over and over and I learned and I learned so that I could, one day, like say, today, impart my knowledge to a student who wishes to learn from me. Maybe not me per se but someone like me. Someone who is an expert in a particular field who can help people become better at something.

This is the job I do. This is the job I just did ten minutes before I sat down to write this. I have a student who is riding the struggle bus at the moment with this unit's concepts. To help out, I've spoken to her, met with her virtually, chatted with her on the phone, and today, replied with a detailed email.

I have the privilege to do my job, but I worked my ass off and made huge mistakes along the way and now, here I am, in the Ivory Tower, trying to take it apart bit by bit so that it can be built again, stronger than before.

I teach. That is what I do. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I am a professor who doesn't profess. I teach. I like to actually find out what my students need and I work with them to crack the code. Does it take more time? Yeah. It does. Is it the right thing to do? I mean, I guess it depends on each person who sits on my side of the desk, but I think this is the job.

A few things drive me crazy about my colleagues. OK. Way more than a few. I wrote a whole book about it because my list is so long. I should say ONE of the things that drives me crazy is when one of them says to a student "You should know this already."

For those who have never been insulted with this bullshit line, here is what it sounds like.

Student: Um...Professor Fuckhead, I am really struggling with subject/verb agreement. You keep telling me that I am doing it wrong, but I just don't really get what you are saying. Professor Fuckhead: That was something you should have learned in elementary school at best or middle school at worst. I don't have time for that. I'm not teaching you English, I'm teaching you how to write effectively.

Yeah, so, Professor Fuckhead isn't wrong about a lot of that, BUT, he should take a few minutes to help out. He totally has the time. The class only meets 2.5 hours per week. All kinds of fucking time. Beside, the fact remains the student doesn't know it and s/he/y is asking for help. So, it is Fuckhead's fucking job to help. I'm not suggesting that Fuckhead needs to set up private tutoring sessions for this struggling student, but the internet is vast and the resources are free.

If it were me, I would say something like:

Page 22 in the free handbook I send you all on day one of the class should give you a lot of insight. Also, Grammar Girl has some excellent videos and resources that can help you refresh your skills. Let's look at a few instances in your writing where you are doing it wrong and then you can look at the resources and you can try to find the others in your paper. I'm not going to fix them for you, but I will show you how you can fix them.

I didn't shame the student. I didn't put up a wall. I didn't do the work for h/er/m either. I gave some help. I showed the student how to fix the problem and shared some resources because, yes, the student should know this already. This is college BUT s/he/y is struggling.

I know I can pass the course I am teaching. That is sort of the point of getting all the degrees. At some point, someone with more degrees than me took a moment to explain things to me that I didn't know even if I "should" have known it.

The world is big and our brains are stuffed with a lot of shit. I know that Brian May is both a rock god AND an astrophysicist. Is that helpful? No. Could I have used that mental space to remember something someone taught me when I was 9? Maybe.

Instead, I listened to Queen and then I asked a question of someone who knew more than me and while I was told on many occasions by Professor Fuckhead that I should know that already, thankfully, I had plenty of teachers who decided to take five minutes to help me out. Seems only right that I pay that forward.

#educationisaright

[the-bees-patella]

Hello there, for the writer ask 🤗 and/or 🧐 please.

From this writer ask meme.

(Research ask answered here. Also this got long as hell, RIP).

What advice would you give to new fanfic writers that are just getting started?

I have never been "good" at fandom in terms of engagement, follower counts, and other metrics, and personally, that's not why I'm here. So this will be about becoming a better writer, so if that's something you're interested in, this is for you.

To start, I think the myth of talent is particularly pervasive in artistic fields, which both makes beginners feel discouraged and can make consumers, for lack of a better word, feel thoughtlessly entitled to our work. It's talent! It's not work, why are you complaining?

Don't fall for that shit. You can become a decent writer with some hard work and effort. That can be a double-edged sword, and on some days, that won't feel true or possible. I won't say I have the answers to how to make it happen. This isn't WikiHow. There's no YouTube video for this.

The only things I'd stipulate are:

Figure out what works for you. If you're following writing blogs or reading books about writing, you can get new ideas, but you'll soon realize some of them are useless. As you write more, you'll come to understand your preferences and tendencies better, and sometimes you'll be tempted to change them to better fit your idea of a "good" or "serious" writer. 97% of the time, you can't. Everybody has a Hemingway phase but nobody but Hemingway was or is Hemingway. You are the artist you are. Take what you need and travel light.

Read widely and write a lot. Reading is necessary to expand your knowledge of what's possible, and writing requires diligence, like any other skill. Even talent needs to be honed on the whetstone of practice. It's the only way anybody got good at anything. There are no shortcuts. Writers are not born, they are made.

I could stop there, really. But I already typed up this whole thing, so a couple more specific tips:

Develop your taste.

If you've started writing, you've already started on the journey of developing a sense of taste, probably because you've spent a lot of time reading. (If you haven't: start there. And read all sorts of things: short stories, long-form journalism, poetry, novels. The only way to develop taste is to see what's out there).

It may seem counterintuitive, but to develop your own voice, I think it's necessary to look to others. When you're reading something that punches you in the gut, maybe makes you feel a little despair that you'll never be this good, read it again and pay attention to your own reactions. When did you feel the punch? Why did you feel it? Isolate those elements and keep them in mind while writing your own stuff. Expanding the vocabulary of your creative voice can mean sitting down with a book or a story and taking literal notes. Leaving comments can be a good exercise, because it makes you look at a story more closely. Also, I think it's important to let people know when they've touched you. After all, isn't that what we're all after? Plus, people love detailed comments. Go out, be the change, etc.

If that all sounds a little bit too much like English class to you…yeah, kind of. I should have opened with the caveat that while of course fic is a hobby and it's just for fun, it's not that important, that's no reason not to take it seriously. I don't mean you should have to get an MFA to write fanfiction, God fucking forbid. And sometimes you just want to read (or write) fic and relax and not think too hard, and that's fine too, have at it. (You're still writing and reading, as verbs). I'm just saying there's also nothing wrong with dedicating time and attention to it, and sometimes, that's going to be hard.

Good. That means it's working.

2. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Fail. Fail hard, fail often, learn to fail better. They can't all be winners. If you're stuck in a doom spiral, thinking, "this is bad, this is the worst, I don't know how to write—" Okay, fine. Lean in. Make it worse. Make it the worst thing you've ever written. Maybe you just have a little writing indigestion. Just barf some rancid words onto the page. Nobody has to see it. Give yourself the freedom to be as indulgent and terrible as you want; a cringe secret between you and your word processor.

So much of what writers describe as "process" is just getting your inner critic to shut up for long enough to let the writer do the work. Some people write at specific times of day, or they have a specific place they do it. Some people have to pretend nobody will ever see it and don't edit at all. Some people do 87 drafts and wring their brain-hands over single apostrophes. (Freak behavior. Can't relate).*

You'll develop your own way of doing things, and it'll change over time to suit your needs, both external and creative. You'll find your own ways to beat back the shithead little voice that tells you oh, that's too much. Are you sure about that? Wow, bold move. And you'll learn to distinguish it from the genuine subconscious creative voice as it steers you along. But in order to do that, you have to miss a stair once in a while. Crash into the walls. Absolutely eat shit. How else do you learn to avoid that particular step? Go forth and brain yourself on the banister. Have fun out there.

*It is, in fact, freak behavior, and I did this last night.

3. Make what you like. Have fun.

If you haven't called it by now, I am 1000% a pedantic bastard, so it follows that I have a semantic issue with the phrase "write for yourself." It's bandied about so frequently as a kind of indicator of artistic virtue or purity, as though doing something as natural as caring what other people think about work you've posted publicly is some kind of moral failure.

I'm not saying it's wrong. I just refuse to be scolded by a Live, Laugh, Love sign.

Because while there are some things you might banish to the wastes of your hard drive, in the end, fandom is about community. Making art is a public exercise. I'm sure there are people who write and paint and never show anyone, but let's be real. We're here because we love something, we have something to say, and we want to share it with other people. Reaching across the pulses of cyberspace to say, "I, too, would like to see this man get railed this way in particular." The real art is the friends you made along the way, etc.

So I'm in favor of reworking "write for yourself" into something more cognizant of the dynamics at work. For myself, I use the Marie Kondo test (notwithstanding the mistranslation and overuse of this phrase, too): does this spark joy?

Do you get excited when thinking about the project? When you think about upcoming scenes or beats, do they still inspire delight? Even when you're stuck, do you still feel like it's worth working through those things to get to the parts of the story you like?

And this is where the "for yourself" comes in, because I think it's easy to get wrapped up in mandates here. But I have to finish! (Why.) People will be upset if I don't! (Sounds like a them problem). (People love to talk about how fandom is just for fun <3 and then talk shit about abandoned works. Bullshit. Of course, as a reader, you can feel disappointed. But part of being a person is learning to handle your disappointment with grace, so try that before yelling at authors, who are already porcupines of anxiety).

I think the most difficult one to let go of is when people like your story a lot. You're getting a lot of good comments, and in what can be jaggedly lonely world, you feel liked, seen, and appreciated. It's tempting to keep at it, to try keep hitting the dopamine button, even when the writing itself starts to feel shitty and no longer sparks joy.

But returning to taste for a moment: as a reader, can't you tell when the writer is having fun/losing their mind? When they want to be there, doesn't their clear enthusiasm and love for the story shine through, bright enough to reach you, warm you?

Have faith. There will be other stories. You'll have other good ideas. Give it time, work on other stuff and/or replenish your creative well. Maybe you'll rediscover your love for the story, or look back at the draft in a couple months and realize it isn't so bad after all. Part of why I have such a backlog of unpublished work is because sometimes the story, like bread, needs time to prove. And maybe you won't, and that's fine, too. If your readers are reasonable people, they will understand, encourage you to take care of yourself, and patiently await the next one.

If they're not, feel free to send them to me.

[greyennui]

Hi! It's me from the comments on your fic. As a fellow language person (though with limited knowledge of Japanese): Shaak'han. Spill.

Since I know Latin and Latin is another subject-object-verb language, does Shaak'han have punctuation marks, or do verbs serve as punctuation? And then, unrelated: does it have grammatical gender and/or gendered first person pronouns?

Also I get the impression so far from your fic that the Sheikah had more gender diversity and that part of their identity was suppressed through assimilation. What would that have been like in their pre-banishment society?

I'M SO READY TO SPILL OKAY

does Shaak'han have punctuation marks, or do verbs serve as punctuation?

To be for fucking real, I haven't come up with the script for Shaak'han yet, but it is definitely on my to-do list. You may have already noticed a healthy use of apostrophes (') in the romanized text, which is another attribute I picked up from the English localization of the Sheikah monks' names. How this will end up being transliterated in my to-be-decided script, I can't say yet.

As far as, like, end-of-sentence punctuation, there will be some. While Shaak'han has tonal indicators for questions, that can't exist in written form without punctuation. For example, the past conjugation for the verb eat would be ishemev, and if you wanted to ask someone if they've eaten, you would just say ishemev with the pitch rising at the end to indicate a question. Orally, this context is easy to glean, but textually, there would need to be some sort of question indicator. TBD!

does it have grammatical gender and/or gendered first person pronouns?

Shaak'han is not a gendered language. I'm assuming you're thinking in terms of Latin for comparison (and therefore the modern Romance languages), but Shaak'han doesn't have such rules. There are, of course, gendered terms rooted more in biological sex than anything (man, woman, mother, father), but nouns unrelated to gender do not have their own gender (like "book" being masculine in the Romance languages).

First person pronouns are also gender-neutral, and in fact there's really just the one: ya. It's the same word for both subject and object, and is used in the possessive form (meya).

Also I get the impression so far from your fic that the Sheikah had more gender diversity and that part of their identity was suppressed through assimilation. What would that have been like in their pre-banishment society?

I love this question. In my particular AU of the First Calamity-era Hyrule, I see the Sheikah as being a very "it takes a village to raise a child" sort of society. Factoring in their "divine duty" to safeguard the royal bloodline, I imagine that any able-bodied Sheikah would have "enlisted", so to speak, regardless of gender or sex. Whoever remained in the city would have been the caretakers of the community—farmers, textile workers, hunters, child-rearers, etc. Because of this, the Sheikah didn't really have gender roles the way the Hylians did, because they instead had like... community roles.

Gender expression is a whole other thing, and likely would have confused many a Hylian with their rigid views of gender, but generally speaking the Sheikah just didn't have a concept of gender. This will sort of come up in Gan Doesn't Die at the End (whenever I can get my ass in gear and update it lol) because I do include a few enbies (or kivumtu) in that fic but I don't address it directly because it was so commonplace at that time for the Sheikah.

The term for enby itself, kivum, would have existed in the First Calamity era to refer to intersex individuals for medical purposes, as well as anyone whose gender expression didn't fit neatly into Hylian gender. Although, the gender-neutral use of kivum would have come more into use closer to modern-day Yiga society because Hylian gender roles are so prevalent. To blend in more easily during assignments, the Yiga military would have had to adhere to Hylian gender ideals, and some of that would undoubtedly bleed over into their home lives a little. Not to mention the Hylians that would have joined the Yiga for The Cause™ over the last several millennia adding to those ideas of gender. While the Yiga still don't really have gender roles, they've definitely come to appreciate gender expression in a looser sense than Hylians traditionally have, and they more often use gendered terms like kivum, kiva, and kiven as descriptors more than categorical identifiers. I hope that makes sense lol.

I've already hinted at this in Don't Commit as well, but part of the Sheikah healing from the post-schism assimilation after Sheik's return is Yuzo becoming more comfortable with being different in their gender. While it certainly won't be a focus, it's something they're working through off-screen, which we see hints of in their interactions with Sheik and Link. Knowing there's an actual word in their tribe's language for who they are is a big part of that journey for Yuzo.

anyway THANK YOU for asking these questions, and keep them coming if you have them lol. I could talk about Shaak'han and the pre-schism Sheikah (and post-schism Yiga) for days.

[rigelmejo]

I’m going to vent for a minute. It always irks me a little when japanese lessons take so long to cover stuff like

The verb form te-iru, te-imasu, which seems to be similar to english -ing on verbs. Its how to actually say “I’m doing X verb.” However I remember when learning from Genki (and honestly a lot of japanese lesson resources), they teach verb forms like “I X verb” masu form. “I eat” taberu/tabemasu as in I eat fish (generally), not as in “I am eating fish (now/whatever time was described)” tabeteimasu (tabe+te-imasu). This creates a confusion a number of people end up having for a while... the confusion of thinking masu form (like tabemasu) means ‘verb-ing’ as in I’m doing a verb in a specific place/time, rather than I generally do verb (and may be doing it right now). Saying “I eat fish” can mean I eat fish right now, I generally eat fish, I’d prefer to eat fish (over some other option) etc. It does not specifically convey the “I’m doing X” even though that form of the verb is probably what we’ll use a lot. When watching shows, playing games, talking, I run into te-imasu form a LOT and it still surprises me it takes so long to learn. It also still surprises me that the beginner japanese class I took covered ‘te’ form in theory (since its in Genki 1) but we learned it to stack verbs (say I X then Y verb) and my teacher did not really emphasize the te-imasu form even though it’s everywhere in real life.

The form of -nde? in questions. I don’t have japanese keyboard on this computer so bear with me. I am rusty on japanese as I read it again recently but haven’t thought about the WHY of any grammar in a while. When I’m in clozemaster I see this verb situation all the time, and it seems sort of like asking a negative in english but when you mean do they want to do it positively. しませんでしたか？Shimasen-deshita. “Didn’t?” or しませんか？ Shimasenka “don’t” This is not the example I meant but in google translate this is all I can think of. Its like when you ask “Didn’t you?” and someone replies “I did.” So you expect a positive answer. (Feel free to blank all this out, this second paragraph’s topic i am SO rusty on I honestly cannot remember clearly or correctly what the n’de form means in a question, all I can remember is I see it ALL the time when I read or watch stuff in japanese and yet... again... I remember my class never even covered it, especially given how common it gets run into).

Back to things I can adequately describe ToT (thanks for bearing with me lol). I remember last year I went through Clozemaster Japanese and just did like 600 sentence cards of the top 100 most common words. That period of study was probably the most helpful thing I did japanese grammar wise, because so many of the sentences were random grammar rather than perfectly crafted textbook sentences. The Clozemaster sentences prepared me much better for reading manga, watching shows, watching lets plays, and just generally figuring out how the fuck to parse the grammar meaning of new sentences I see. I ran into SO many ‘helper’ words (words that give some kind of grammar/meaning change to a sentence) and so much grammar I’d either never seen or never seen in informal forms, it helped tremendously. I had not seen te-imasu or gotten to practice it until then. And there’s still helper words I don’t know fully, but I recognize enough from that study period that now when I see them in sentences I get the gist of how they influence the sentence’s meaning. So I guess my point is just, I am a bit frustrated with how many japanese lessons (especially in the beginning) tend to avoid teaching some very common grammar things that appear super frequently whenever you engage with native materials. I’ve been going through glossika japanese lately for listening practice and lol... wouldn’t you know, just like Genki its covering some stuff but then other stuff like te-imasu I haven’t heard once yet, even though I run into it so frequently with japanese media. 

Anyway... I’m currently looking for a new japanese grammar guide to read through. And I am seriously doubting I’m going to find any that cover some of the grammar points I’m most curious about for a while (or at all if they’re free guides and potentially stop after beginner grammar). :/ I wonder if imabi.net or Tae Kim’s Guide go over the kind of grammar I’m looking for eventually... (Because truly, I learned like 50% of the grammar I recognize now by brute force studying those 600 sentences in clozemaster and figuring out the gist of grammar meaning from the translation, but I’d love a more clear overt explanation ToT)

[coquelicoq]

imagined conversation between two anglophone members of the french dictionary fandom:

1: ooh so which adaptation are you reading

2: le robert de poche (1995), but i read a lot of fic first so i have the general idea

1: wait how far into the A's are you? i wanna talk about something but i don't know if you're there yet...

2: just finished with achalandé(e) ^^

1: okay so you read accourir already?

2: omg YES i can't believe it takes être! what the fuck!!

1: i know right! plot twist of the century!!!

2: really didn't see that coming! can't wait to finish so i can read some meta. like at this point i can't see any connection with the other être verbs but i'm sure others in the fandom have some great thoughts about it...

1: what did you think of accès? i remember being really thrown by the medical meaning

2: oh actually that word showed up a ton in this one fic i read (le comte de monte-cristo) so i was spoiled for that one haha. but yeah i was really confused when i first saw it for sure !

1: that's so funny that you read fic before you read the dictionary. like you must have been so confused by like...everything.

2: oh definitely. i was like okay i'm not totally sure what's happening here, i'm just vibing 😎 i'm now finding out which of my internal characterizations are just totally OOC. like all this time i really latched on to the "hang up" meaning of accrocher and had so much trouble making sense of the others, but i saw the word "crochet" in the definition and now they're all starting to hang together (get it? hang together? haha)

1: haha. yeah it's such a great feeling to see the related words and suddenly things start clicking. the narrative parallels! and omg don't even get me started on when they list antonyms. just straight up telling you about the character foils...

2: totally. it's so satisfying. the one thing that takes some getting used to is the non-linear storytelling...like when the definition includes words from later in the alphabet. i'll admit to sometimes skipping ahead to look those up. don't cancel me!!

1: omg no i think we all do that lol. like it's impossible otherwise.

2: oh okay whew that makes me feel better

1: even on the reread i have to do that. the book is so long and there are so many characters and plot points i literally cannot remember all of them. it'll get easier as you go but definitely don't expect to have all of them down, that's ridiculous!

2: wow i'm so glad i said something because i've lowkey been ashamed of it haha. or on the other hand when i already know a word because it's the same in english i feel like i'm cheating lol. like i'm not experiencing it the way it was meant to be experienced?

1: bro idk how to tell you this but i think the dictionary was meant to be experienced by people just looking up random words one at a time lol. like we are so far past worrying about the intended experience, it's totally irrelevant to us. death of the author babey!

2: no no, you're right, you're right. i just needed to hear it from someone else haha

1: lol i'm here for you! anyway lemme know when you finish and i'll send you a link to the discord...it's full of spoilers so you'll want to avoid it for now but someday you really gotta experience the shipping in this fandom. it is. bananas

2: bananes if you will

1: ...okay i don't want to spoil you but this may be one of those OOC situations you were talking about

2: bananes doesn't mean bananas???

1: no, it does! just like, for the fruit. it doesn't really have the same colloquial meaning. i mean, it does have colloquial meanings, but they're not quite the same? there's nuance

2: oh gotcha

1: i can tell you more but it would be a spoiler

2: no that's okay, i mean the B's aren't too far off

1: i'm actually not sure if robert de poche 95 gets into it...you might have to look at some other adaptations?

2: no worries, i've also got some french-english dictionaries that i can turn to

1: ooh crossovers!

2: it's funny, usually i'm not into crossovers but idk, there's something about dictionaries that makes crossovers so interesting??

1: yeah i feel you! the dictionary fandoms have SUCH a high incidence of crossovers relative to other fandoms...you're definitely not alone in that.

2: oh sweet. well i am dying to get back to my reading because i'm almost to s'acharner and i've been soooo curious about that one, like it has always been so mysterious to me when i've seen it in fics. can't really get a bead on it. but tysm for talking to me about this!!! no one in my real life cares about this book and i think they're getting tired of my ramblings haha

1: of course!! happy to talk anytime. and i'm so excited for you to get to s'acharner, it's my poor little meow meow <3 godspeed!

2: à tout à l'heure!

1: wow look at you! a T and an H!

2: yeah i just picked those up from osmosis haha. did i use them in character?

1: yeah that was really good! how long have you been reading fic in this fandom??

2: about twenty years

1: ...

1: jesus christ

the great thing about reading the french dictionary cover to cover is that now whenever someone says a word i don't know i can be like "no spoilers please! i'm still in the A's!!"

[team-council-two]

Question for alpha ! (ignore my name it's fine just don't read it no reason to)

It's not really about tf2 or anything,, but it's still a question !

So, I've been meaning to learn French, as I'd find it way easier to write fics with my favorite characters in them, and also super good bragging material /j

i just want to know where to start? DeepL translate has been a lifesaver, yes, but it is still a small bit weird, sometimes not. using the right words, like turning "surprised" into "scared and then "scared" into "frightened."

i think i may find it way easier to just. learn the language.

Advice?

what do you m

Yeah imma pretend i didnt see that

Anyways. How to learn French, huh ? okay so this will be long

DISCLAIMER

I *am* French so I never had to "learn" French to speak it or read it. So i in fact will be relaying advice based on how I managed to learn English.

You really have three options here. The decade long, bullshit, no money free way which gives you shitty grammar, the painful serious method where you bit the bullet and open grammar books n shit, or the somewhat sensical, fastest and most efficient and foolproof ableit possibly costly way.

the bullshit method is what i did. I was vaguely taught basic English shit like some verbs (do, can, be, have, etc) and a couple words here and pronouns and blah blah by school, then i went on the internet at the ripe age of 13 or some shit. I read in English a lot, tried to talk and slowly built myself a vocabulary half through plugging what words i didn't understand in a translation engine (NOT the full sentences, only that. It forces you to place the word back in a sentence and think about said word in its language), half through trying to vaguely deduce stuff by myself through context clues, and while I write in a somewhat understandable way I do not know how to pronounce any of what I write (i lacked actual spoken english having medias in my diet, due to being a subs-reading weeb and neither into american movies nor youtubers). Took a good decade to get where i am right now and the way i handle my sentences is. Errr. Uniquely fucked up. i am not aware of it at alls, so i cannot explain but. Yeah. Still. It can get you here, but that's a lot of time and not for the best result.

What you CAN pick up from this method and port over to the serious one is reading in French and watching French movies. Avoid internet users tho these bitches spell ça va "sava" yikes lol anyways. This is mostly because a language won't stick without some kind of interaction with it. This is a widely known fact so i'm probably pulling a sky's blue, bears shit in the woods here. Still, shit matters. Binge the fucking taxi movies and sit down in front of some goddamn Astérix. anyways the serious method is just this but you actually read up on how the language is constructed, with its technical shit. im not sure how to do this unfortunately so i cant provide much more

If you want to be serious you get a goddamn real person to teach you, to explain you, hey here's how you build a sentence, forcing you to talk in French and to remember words and their meaning and shit, and also sitting here for your questions, to point out to you cultural stuff, slangs and so on. Self taught can be a trap. Courses like Duolingo really are good solely for reminding you to practice and teaching you to identify some verbs/words so you can somewhat start reading and vaguely get your head wrapped around the pronunciation (tho it can be faulty i heard), but its teachings grammar wise are lackluster at best, and this fucking method seems to be consistent because these things just emulate the "if you read a lot of a language with the translation you learn it" stuff i mentioned earlier except even more isolating, and you wind up with people like my gothfriend that have a year long streak on French and that still feel like they cannot wrap their head around the language at all. So yeah. This is a supplement at best. I'm trusting Ray to follow up on this post to rant about this because they are a language teacher and they'll likely have more on the topic. I personally tried to learn italian, german and polish on this. Result ? I was using french as a crutch for italian, english for german, and couldn't get through a single exercise for polish. Total learned despite 100 day streak and doing the courses both in french and english : 0

As for translation engines, I personally use WordReference. It is hand curated, accounts for a lot of slangs, includes context clues, is wonderful navigation wise for tapping back and forth between words to see what they say, it has a forum for more specific questions... It never failed me tbh.

[nevermindrussia]

Speaking English = swearing Russian or What's wrong with Blue Water?

Today's post is totally fun and totally obscene! «Уберите ваших детей от наших голубых экранов» ("take your children away from our blue screens" - a quote from a Soviet cartoon).

We'll review some words and phrases in English that sound like Russian rude or swear words. Just because almost everybody in Russia who is under 50 years know English language, these phrases are well-known jokes among us. I guess English speakers may be interested in revealing it as well.

1. So, let's start with the only phrase that sounds not like a real swear. The Blue Water shipping company is working around the world, so in Russia we also see sometimes it's trucks, such as this:

And they really make us ROFL! Why? *caution: don't read further if you're having your meal right now!*

Because Blue Water sounds like блевота ("vomit" in a rude way)! Just imagine the whole truck filled with emetic mass... Gross!

2. The next phrase doesn't make much sense in English, but may be combined anyway:

Chop is dish

If you say it aloud, you will say «Чё пиздишь?» ("Why are you blathering?"). «Пиздеть» is a verb descending from a swear word «пизда» ("a cunt", don't ask why X-)), it may mean "to tell lies" or "to talk too much in annoying way", or both together.

3. Peace, door, ball

If you read this post intently, speaking words aloud, you might have guessed that it has something to do with «пизда» too. You're absolutely right! «Пиздобол» is a person who used to «пиздеть», in other words "a liar" or "a blabbermouth" or both. This is a swear version of «балабол», a scornful but not swear word that means the same. Btw, did you know that «врать» (a normal common version for "to tell lies") in old Russian language originally meant "to speak" as well? Bet you didn't, because even Russian people who know it are very few. But it did. Moreover, «врач» ("a doctor") is from «врать» too. In old Russia people called that a person, who came to help a patient and started saying a lot of unknown confusing words about the disease and it's treatment — instead of using some customary practices passed down from generation to generation. So technically every doctor in Russia is a пиздобол — but don't you ever try to call them that X-D

4. Peace duke

5. Near bird

Another one from «пизда», certainly you've got it already. But not about lies this time! «Пиздюк» has two meanings. Originally it was for "an unpleasant man; an asshole", as well as «мудак» (another swear word, from «муде» — "testicles"). But the last few years you may see it in the meaning "a son, an offspring". Some Russian man one day said proudly «That's my пиздюк» speaking of his son, and that instantly became a meme. But the first option of meaning is alive as well. And sometimes we make a joke calling someone a direct translation of peace duke — «мирный герцог». So everybody understands we consider him an asshole, without saying it literally.

My favourite one sounds like «не ебёт» (lit. "it doesn't fuck me" - "I don't give a fuck"). We also use the literal translation of it - «возле птицы» or «рядом с птичкой» to say euphemistically that we don't care at all and determined not to. «Да мне возле птички, почему он не сделал документы — они мне сейчас нужны!» - "It's near bird for me why he hasn't draw up the papers, I need it right now!"

That's all for now. As to me, I consider Russian swear and slang words a very broat and nice topic, so I'm gonna bring it up from time to time. Hope you'll have some fun reading it!

[gatecoeur]

jels’ comprehensive list of french swears and insults

As requested by @therxdeemxr​. Please note that I’ve catered this list SPECIFICALLY to Metropolitan French, aka the French you’d usually hear in Paris, aka the French that most people who learn French in school tend to learn. 

Most of the French-speaking world will understand these, don’t get me wrong, but some of these may be weird to hear in other French-speaking locations, such as Quebec and Louisiana, or even other parts of France for that matter, so keep that in mind if you’re using this list for a character that might’ve learned French from elsewhere. 

Also also, keep in mind that a lot of the words here may need to be conjugated to make sense, depending on what you wanna say. Unfortunately, I can’t go through all of that because French conjugation alone is a whole lesson.

Sources I used to help me compile this list (and that I frankly did a lot of copy-pasting from to help speed this up tbh) come from here, here, and here. They have more stuff than what I put in my list, but tbh some of them I’ve never heard in all my years of learning French, so take that with a grain of salt.

baiser - literally means “to fuck”. This word is one that causes A LOT of confusion for new French speakers, because depending on context, baiser also means ‘to kiss’. A great way to confuse two words, I know. Baiser can be used in the literal sense ( i.e. to refer to sex ), the figurative sense ( e.g. you could say “il m’a bien baisé” to say “he really fucked me (over)” ), and the reflexive sense of the word ( e.g. you can say  “Je me suis fait baiser”, which means “I got fucked over”. )

niquer - another word for fuck. Unlike baiser tho, it can’t be used reflexively, and is used exclusively as a verb. “Nique ta mère” (literally means ”Fuck your mother”, but is usually used in the same context as “fuck off”) is a pretty common expletive phrase to hear.

bite - dick. This word’s exclusively used to refer to the body part tho, not to describe someone as a dick.

chatte - pussy. again, only used to describe the body part. if you wanted to use pussy how we do in english, you can either use lopette, or a slightly less vulgar version, mauviette.

bête comme ses pieds - literally means "to be as stupid as one’s feet", but actually means that someone is REALLY stupid.

branler - to jerk off. 

branleur - wanker.

rien à branler - to not give a fuck

casse-toi - literally means “break yourself”, but is used to say “fuck off”

enculé/enculée - an asshole. Even tho there’s a feminine version of this word, it’s usually used for men only. It’s a very common insult.

chier - to shit. THIS IS THE MOST VERSATILE AND WIDELY-USED SWEAR WORD IN METORPOLITAN FRENCH. Common phrases include the following:

ça/tu me fait chier - literally means “that/you makes me shit”, but is usually used to say something along the lines of “that/you piss(es) me off”

je me fais chier - literally means “i make myself shit”. can be used to either express annoyance of boredom.

je t’envoyer chier - literally means “i send you to shit”, usually is a way to tell someone to shove it

c’est chiant(e) - literally means “that’s shitty”, but it usually used to say “that’s bloody annoying.”

con / conne - idiot. another very versatile word in French, because the severity of the word depends on the context in which you use it. in other words, you could easily use con / conne to mean “asshole,” “cunt,” or “twat”. Interestingly enough though, you can say “c’est con” to mean something along the lines of “what a shame”

roi des cons - this one just deserves it’s own place cuz it means “king of the idiots”

con comme une valise sans poignée - means "as stupid as a suitcase without a handle." pretty self-explanatory lol.

con comme un balais - means "as dumb as a broom." also self-explanatory lol.

connard / connasse - same meaning as con / conne, but is considered to be much harsher.

connerie(s) - mistake(s). “Faire des conneries” is a pretty common phrase, which is versatile in exact meaning but is usually used to say that someone is fucking something up. 

couille(s) - ball(s). This one you might wanna be careful with, as it can be used as a h*moph*bic slur. “Casser les couilles” is a very common phrase tho, and is equivalent to saying that you’re busting someone’s balls. You can also call somone “sans-couilles” to call them a coward.

cul - ass

trou de cul - asshole

bordel de merde - literally means “a brothel made of shit”, but is usually used as a stand-alone expletive

dégueulasse - means disgusting, but is a VERY strong use of the word. If you wanna say something is just a little bit gross, use  dégoûtant(e) instead.

debile - means “idiot”

dégage / dégage-toi - basically used in the same context as “kindly fuck off”

emmerder - literally means “to immerse in shit”, but is usually used in annoyance ( e.g. you can say “tu m’emmerdes” to say “screw you”, or you can as “je m’emmerde” to mean “i’m fucking bored” ). This word is yet another commonly used one.

emmerdeur / emmerdeuse – means “a pain in the ass”

faux cul - literally means “false bottom”, but is usually used to call someone a hypocrite or a liar

aller se faire foutre – used to either say “fuck off” or “go fuck yourself”

foutre la merde – means “to fuck up”. (e.g. “Il a foutu la merde dans sa vie” means “he fucked up his life.”)

ne rien foutre – means “to do fuckall”. Ton conjugate it, it would look like “tu ne fous rien de tes journées”, which means  “you do fuck all with your days”

je m’en fous - means “i don’t give a fuck”

merde - means “shit”. This is easily the most recognizable French swear word tbh. Can be used in a variety of ways, but is also used as a single expletive, like in English.

péter plus haut de son cul -  literally means "to fart higher than one’s ass", but is actually used to call someone arrogant

poule mouillée - literally means "wet chicken", and is used to call someone a coward

putain - literally means “whore”, but is usually used in the same context as “fuck” in English, especially as an expletive. This is the second more recognizable swear word commonly used in French across the board. Common phrases of this word include “putain de merde” and “putain de bordel de merde”. Both are used to express extreme anger, with the latter being even angrier than the former.

fils de pute - literally means “son of a whore”. Is usually used to mean “son of a bitch”, but only as an insult directed to someone and not necessarily as an expletive like it’s used in English

salope - usually means “bitch or “slut”

ta guele - VERY commonly used, and means “shut the fuck up”

tête de noed - literally means "knot face", but is another way to call someone stupid... more accurately, it’s to call someone a dickhead.

BONUS: “il a perdu les pédales” - literally means “he lost his pedals”, but is used to say that someone’s lost their mind, or is crazy. 

[jockrightsnow]

omg I would love to hear you talk more about your tags on that last post—how you research syntax/speech patterns for non-native English speakers’ dialogue. this is something I struggle with a lot in writing fic (esp writing Russian players!) and I’d love some advice on how to get better at it.

god this got long! i just care about this! i will put under a cut for the 99% who will be like u little pedantic bitch.

so my answer is probably not AS helpful for Russian players because i have not written at any length with Russian characters and their language is SO different, so i find it is trickier! but the process is likely the same. i am not an expert at this by any means (only know/have taught spanish <--> english), but i do think it gives you more believable voices and also tends to help you understand the perspective. some people are better at english than others! some are less good! some have been in english classes for a while, some haven’t! there’s variation! you don’t have to do this to write well, but i think about it.

some things i think about:

1. sentence structure/syntax--more than vocabulary, sentence structure is the thing that gives most english language learners trouble and tends to give them away. in order to figure out common mistakes along these lines, it is helpful to look up how sentences are typically structured in someone’s native language. very often, people learning english will rely on those structures. this is actually why swedish is very easy to learn for english speakers--the sentence structure is most often subj, verb, object. but there are tricks: in complex declarative sentences, the verb will always be second, even if there is an adverb or object in the first position instead of the subject, in sentences with subordinate clauses, the independent clause inverts verb and subject. stuff like that does tend to give a sentence a different feel, and it absolutely very commonly almost-always sticks with someone. it’s foundational to how people construct their thoughts, it can be hard to change.

2. pronunciation--i don’t love to see heavy dialect written phonetically and i think many people don’t, but there are ways to consider it and certain ways to write it well. certain languages have different stresses or tone ranges or pitches, which can give off a certain Vibe if you’re used to english, which is on the more expressive end of the scale in tone and pitch (obviously i don’t think that’s better, but it is different and it does affect how people hear a speaker’s voice). certain sounds straight-up do not exist in other languages, certain letters are always pronounced a different way. it leads to predictable mispronunciation. for this, resources like this are very interesting.

3. actual cultural language differences! this is in part about what turns of phrase are common, what’s the cultural (or often, can be regional) “cat who got the cream”-type idioms, what is colloquial that you don’t realize is colloquial, etc, but it can also be about how you talk about concepts on a larger scale. 

the recent sidney crosby engaged fiasco is a good example of this--in russian, “girlfriend/boyfriend” has a very casual connotation, so for longer-term relationships, a russian person might say “fiancee” instead. there are certain languages where you talk about love using different words if a relationship is more casual. these are fun, i think, because i do think that kind of thing can be meaningful. 

there was some book or study i read about how maybe the way we learn language impacts how we think. i think parts of it were debunked (eg not having a word for something like ‘crush’ doesn’t mean you don’t feel it, that’s silly), but parts of it are certainly true, right? like, if you have a different way of talking about spatial awareness or time, your ability to translate those concepts will be affected because your thoughts are often structured along those lines. 

4. vocabulary--less important than you’d think, but still interesting to think about what words someone would have learned. i expect hockey players to know virtually every hockey-related word in english, and even in the KHL, there is some coaching done in english because plenty of non-russian players play there and never learn the language (it is very hard). pretty much everywhere, you’re going to know the english words for many hockey-related terms. but you might not know other complex words, because you might not ever have a reason to or a context where you would’ve learned it or been corrected on it.

i often have to examine or cross-examine spanish speakers, and you actually don’t want to correct every single thing they say--you only want to correct things which might lead to a misunderstanding, because you don’t want to seem pedantic to a judge or condescending to a witness. 

this is also true in a lot of social settings. so i do see some things which tend to go uncorrected because they don’t lead to any wrongness. for example, videoS plural in Swedish is video klipp. it’s the same, it’s really the same. but i notice sometimes that plural S is dropped by Swedish speakers or a word like “klipp” that’s so similar in meaning and context to the english word will come it. there’s one video where petey says ‘eller’ instead of ‘or’--it’s close, it’s a word that doesn’t matter, you wouldn’t correct it, it’s normal, you get the point. there are plenty of words that are so similar they might just have a different inflection, or which are entirely the same in different languages. these will not get corrected in daily conversation for the most part.

but there are also false cognates which you DO need to correct (eg in spanish embarazada = pregnant, i do need to correct it every single time because it has a huge impact on proceedings if someone’s pregnant) and being aware of those is also helpful! 

there are also some crutch words which differ from person to person (this is also true for native english speakers). when people use those and in what way can be important. there are certain things a specific person gets wrong only when nervous or not thinking or whatever (i personally find the “person realizes they’ve been speaking in a different language while having sex because it was so good” trope. exhausting, to say the least. but it is true that in higher-stress moments, someone might not have the capacity or desire to do internal translation, or might feel frustrated by it.)

i really do think all of this is Very interesting, and mostly my advice on doing it for languages you don’t know is:

1) be thoughtful about stuff, be believable. contrary to what it seems like from this whole dissertation, not every sentence needs to have errors in it, especially for people who are Growing/Learning/Actually Very Good at english. don’t be condescending about it. being at an intermediate stage in english learning might make someone choose a simpler sentence that’s still correct. it might lead to an actual relevant misunderstanding or tonal shift. it might not. it might enhance someone’s understanding of a situation! it’s not all about just fucking shit up--it’s a hard thing to learn another language. you gotta respect people who are doing it!

2) hear people talk, preferably the people in question if available but doesn’t have to be (for characters i care about less, i will often wholesale map a sentence and then copy the structure exactly. i did this for pasta because i didn’t care about actually figuring out so much about him emotionally--i just listened to his ep of sp*ttin ch*clets as i wrote and copied several sentence structures exactly with my own Content and then, as you may be able to tell, gave up on that venture to movie-montage the rest because i am Lazy.) 

it’s interesting to hear someone talk both in their native language and in english--you get a feel for the tone and pitch differences, and also i love to see native language interviews because i tend to think they’re more reflective of someone’s actual thought processes when they’re not trying to come up with words or modifying their sentences to be simpler. petey’s swedish interviews, for ex, are far more reflective and eloquent and funny. but again, he is getting better very quickly, in part because swedish and english are more similar than they appear. progress is often slower for russians, because there’s a lot more ground between the two languages and a whole diff alphabet and also strong cultural affinity to where a good number of russians living in america almost exclusively hang out with other russians living in america. (see ex alex ovechkin, nikita zadorov--both have very russian-heavy social circles if Instant Gram is to be believed)

3) actually look up stuff like “common english mistakes for [x group]”--there are plenty of good language learning resources which will show you the mistakes people tend to make, the pronunciation errors, things like that. these are invaluable.

4) google translate stuff if you’re going to have a touching language-teaching moment. once read something where someone was contemplating how to say something, which they wouldn’t have done in reality, because how you say it was Exactly the same in the person’s native language. i also think it’s fun to read google-translated articles and see which things jump out at me as Weirdly translated, because those are often things which are going to be different! but that’s not gospel, it’s something you can look into. sometimes google translate is just bad.

[clouds-of-wings]

Drinking spiced cherry wine from the discounter and actually reading the lyrics of Beloved Antichrist for once - Part 2 (Act 1)

Narrator: At this point, Seth is still with his parish and has no idea he’s the Antichrist Seth, speaking for the first time: WOE TO YOU, EARTH AND SEA!

PArish not pErish! Learn English! The mistake comes twice in a row, so I know it’s not just a typo.

“Lift from me infant smiles”, wut? Does that mean that he’s being reborn into maturity? Huh... alright.

Actually if I’m going to comment every time they use an expression that’s like a square peg in a round hole I’ll be typing until 4am, so let’s just say WUT really loudly ONCE and let it cover the whole opera.

I’m gonna stop commenting on the bad English too. I say this with all the affection available to me (like 9 affections) but bad English is a job requirement if you’re gonna write lyrics for Therion. This is how it has always been. If you can reliably create a present tense verb form and remember the s behind the third person singular - don’t apply. And the singers always go along with it. I’ll drink some more wine and say it adds to the charm.

The opera passes the Bechdel test in the second song.

Cmon, “United States of Europe”? Is that the best name you guys could come up with? How bout Eurotopia? Eurotzania? Jesus Christ Superstate? Greater Berlin Area? European Union Rules Oll People Everywhere?

There’s actually a lot going on here story-wise. I wouldn’t have thought it since all the songs kiiinda sound very similar to me. I mean I like the opera very much, musically, but the songs kinda merge into one another. They could have been one 3 hour long song. Land of Canaan has more different styles in it to my ear, and that’s “only” 10 minutes. Actually it has more styles to my eyes. My synaesthesia sees all of BA very similarly. Same colours, same textures, same sense of space. How much so? Enough that I kept abbreviating the name of the opera to “BC” instead of “BA” because the colours of the letters fit better and I didn’t even realize my mistake for a while.

I REALLY have questions about the logistics. In a steampunk post-apocalyptic world they have a continent-wide election..? Just, how long does that take? How do they communicate the results? Did they lay new phone lines? Are the old ones still functional? Do they send letters or send a messenger to inform of the regional results? What are the ballots made of? Did they build new paper processing plants? How did they get mass production back on its feet anyway? Whom did they force into the mines?

More problems that the anime adaptation will sort out, I guess.

Johanna does her duty as big sister in warning Helena not to believe every random man who acts like he’s the second coming of Christ & God’s gift to the world, a touch of realism

Seth needs only the barest of friendly pokes to fall from faith, This is Most Concerning. And understandable if you read the notes to the piece in question, but in the actual text of the opera it isn’t even mentioned before that he can’t hear God anymore. A bit rushed. Maybe they cut out a song? IIRC the original version of the opera was half an hour longer.

Also I love how meta “The Solid Black Beyond” is. “Hey WHY do you worship Jesus, I made you, you’re my son, do what I want you to do instead and, uhhh trust me it will TOTALLY work out fine!” - spoken by Satan, who is voiced by - the composer.

The president of Europe reads a brilliant insightful book and immediately realizes how misguided he has been. Hahaha. Ohh bless your hearts, guys. If only.

Garden of Peace needs to be much MUCH longer. None of the stuff mentioned in the summary actually happens in the text. Helena tells Seth her life story? BITCH WHERE!

It really bothers me that the text - not just here - focuses almost exclusively on the emotional content of the scenes and doesn’t tell us much about the story, which is explained only in the summaries. This might work for an album, but watching an opera like this would be very confusing. If you don’t read along with the notes (which afaik the non-limited edition of the CD release doesn’t even have), you’ll be ??? the whole time. I tried to read the lyrics once on some lyrics site, without these summaries, and they made no sense to me without context. A lot goes on in the story summaries. Very little goes on in what the characters actually say. And with many of these things I can’t think of a nonverbal way to communicate them.

I remember Christofer saying in an interview that he can’t write recitatives. Maybe that’s the problem. It’s like reading a text with many nouns but too few verbs. I don’t know though. I’m not too much of an opera buff. I did try to get into them but I find them boring. The only ones I watched the whole way through were Mefistofele (largely a waste of time but with one VERY good scene), and Orlando, thanks to Marijana Mijanovic playing the main character. It made me question my sexuality when she had murder in her eyes and an axe in her hands, but I do remember the story making sense.

I feel like I need to listen to the entire opera WHILE reading the text WHILE high enough that I can hallucinate the stage production in order to really judge the quality of the writing tbh.

I like the amount of characterization the characters get (mostly in the summaries). Helena has a special star she always sees, that’s sweet. Also foreshadowing. She has always loved the morning star, and then she marries the Antichrist.

Also, do Johanna and Helena symbolize the duality of humankind? QUESTIONS! The Two Daughters of Wisdom.

“Lots of stylish guests are strolling around” 8)

The mortal enemies DANCE AT A PALACE BALL. Oh this is SO anime material!

Okay this one line in “The Palace Ball” pisses me off every time I listen to BA. It’s such a small detail but it irritates me to no end. “May I have the pleasure to offer you a dance.” An Old-fashioned Gentleman(TM) would never say this to an Old-fashioned Lady(TM). It implies that he’s doing her a favour. He should ASK her for a dance, not OFFER her one, because (the polite fiction is that) she’s doing him a favour by accepting. This is just basic etiquette! You penguins!

Narrator: Seth finds himself politely rebuffed by Johanna. Johanna: Your powers ain’t shit, plus you’re evil, now fuck off.

I do want to know Seth’s brilliant philosophy that makes the world a perfect place, but it was definitely smart of the people behind this work not to try to come up with one.

Wow this takes a lot longer than I thought. I have acid reflux from the alcohol, which I’m not used to, and it’s late. I’ll do the rest some other time.

[midnightmarginalia]

Ho fuck this is long

Ok so like. I made a fucking mistake. I wrote an essay for my creative non-fiction class. We had to write a Lyric Essay. simple enough. it's whatever. I transcribed parts of my journal. it was fun. HOWEVER, I made the mistake of telling the class that I did some heavy editing to get rid of some unconventional grammar I use cuz internet, ya know? this was 3 days ago. jump to today. I wrote a 7-page essay trying to briefly explain SOME of the grammar conventions that have evolved alongside the internet. I had to explain this to a group of 40+ year-olds. so NOw I present this to you, o Tumblr. for the love of god let people read this and add to it, I spent eternally too much time on it 

So "Internet English" or "New English" is a linguistic phenomenon that centers on conveying tone and different connotative meanings through informal writing. Linguist Gretchen McCulloch actually released a book on this called Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.  Her book actually is really interesting (I highly recommend it) and covers some of what I'm going to be talking about today. In the first section, she compares the process of learning literacy to be similar to learning how to talk solely through exposure to formal writing like speeches, screenplays, audiobooks, etc. You miss all the nuances of informal speaking. Well, the same is true for written language. Before the Internet, informal writing was extremely hard to come by and even harder to study; even letters, postcards, secretive notes and the like were still written fairly formally because there were no mass text-based communication practices. Now, we have this vast intangible library of infinite knowledge and human interactions, making the necessity of informal writing more prominent. As such, internet users, especially people from my generation, have evolved a subset of written English to better express connotative meaning through the use, abuse, and misuse of capitalization, spacing, spelling, punctuation, incomplete sentences, and more. Let me show you a little of what I mean.

Capitalization

Capitalization is a common convention used to convey emphasis, although which type of emphasis that is changes based on how the capitalization is used.

Random Capitalization is meant to grab Attention and express that Something is Very Important or should be Stressed by Your Inner Voice when reading.

ALL CAPS IS MEANT TO SIGNIFY A VAST INCREASE IN VOLUME, THOUGH IT IS OFTEN INTERPRETED AS SHOUTING. THIS IS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE.

a crescENDO IS MEANT TO SPECIFY VOLUME AND/OR IMPORTance for one segment. It is often used to EXPRESS GROWING EXCITEMENT!

CaPiTaLiZiNG a RanDoM AsSoRTmEnT oF LetTerS ConVEyS SaRcAsM oR a MOcKinG TonE.

I cannot really articulate why but this, thIS, tHIS, and THIS are all different. This is called Varied Capitalization and can apply to any word, though I most often see and use it with articles.

not capitalizing anything in a sentence is an excellent way to express a monotone voice that seems very apathetic towards everything and everyone. "oh look. john and i went to the store. how exciting."

Spacing

Spacing Conventions are less common, and ultimately there is only one that I find noteworthy. Spacing out letters in a word like r e a l l y conveys that the word is significant. It takes up more space than really and thus needs to be stressed. It is also important to note that this convention is often coupled with full capitalization. There is a significant difference between "I am really hungry" and "I and r e a l l y hungry" and "I am R E A L L Y Hungry"

Spelling

Spelling, like Spacing, is less varied than some of these other conventions. The most common spelling convention you are likely to encounter is the Intentional Misspell. This is used to express one of two things; you can discern which by the context of the rest of the message. It can be used to display excitement. The misspell conveys a kind of excitement that interferes with dexterity, like how your hands shake after a jump scare: "gyus I just swa A Quiet Place  an d it s one f thr svsriest movis I've ever seen." The other emotion the Intentional Misspell can convey is much more subtle and complicated. It is the sense of false apathy. it is nit uncommun to putf a typo in everyr other werd or so to shwo yu don't realy give a fukc but yiu actually do. This is much harder to discern and your best bet on understanding this half of the convention is context clues.

Punctuation and Lack Thereof

Punctuation is, in my opinion, the best, most diverse option for conveying a specific kind of tone. There's a lot to cover here, so I will do my best to keep it brief.

A full stop is a short sentence with a period. It is meant to be read in a scolding tone. The usage of this is especially important in text message and chatroom settings because you can signify the end of a sentence by sending the message. A good rule of thumb for the tone is that the shorter the message, the more scolding the tone.

Putting. A. Period. Between. Words. Conveys. That. The. Matter. At. Hand. Must. Be. Taken. Seriously. This is simply the act of emphasizing each word with a full stop.

not having any punctuation or capitalization at all makes for a very fluid reading experience yes the sentences can get mixed up but those who read and write this way regularly can discern separate trains of thought if you've noticed the lack of capitalization you may recognize one of the earlier discussed conventions it is important to note however that the monotone voice of that convention disappears with the punctuation

Question marks now signify an upturn in the voicing of a statement rather than forcing something to be a question. now you may be asking yourself "why would they do this." The only answer I have for you is "it just seems right?" the upturn signifies a tentative statement while the flat delivery of the question signifies frustration or bafflement.

Punctuation Frequency is meant to signify the amount of severity accompanying the statement. This is exclusively used with question marks and exclamation marks. A common example is extending the simple “what?” to “what???????” Notice the difference? The same thing can be done with exclamation points. Note the increased excitement between “The baby was born today!” and “The babe was born today!!!!!!!!!!!” These, of course, can be amplified even further by incorporating some of the other conventions we’ve discussed previously.

Exclusive Punctuation is a convention most commonly found in messaging systems, but it is still important. “???” is an expression of pure confusion. If you were to receive this message, that whatever you sent the person prior has left them amazed, confused, flabbergasted, awe-struck, bewildered, and more. On the other hand “!!!” is an expression of pure excitement and glee. The best description I’ve seen for this is that it is a noise of happiness.

While there are dozens more grammatical conventions, these are the primary ones that a vast majority of people will use. It is time to move on.

Ellipses

Yes. This is punctuation. But it elicits its own category. Ellipses are great tools for signifying that there is more to this statement than meets the eye. However, there are now multiple types of ellipses that have different meanings.

Periodic Ellipses or Hard Ellipses are just that. Hard. Say I were to text someone “Hey can we talk after class...” The ellipsis generates a cold tone that has some worrying connotations. Something important to note here is that the length of the ellipsis can signify severity, though after a certain point it becomes superfluous and silly. The only friendly usage of a Hard Ellipsis is the Two-Dot Ellipsis. “Hey can we talk after class..” is far far less sinister than “Hey can we talk after class…”

Commatic Ellipses or Soft Ellipses are just that. Soft. Instead of being composed of periods, these ellipses are composed of commas and have a vastly different meaning. These are meant to convey either worrying or flirtatious tones. To go back to our previous example, “Hey can we talk after class,,,,,” is going to be read in a flirtatious manner. However, “Hey can we talk after class,” is going to be read worryingly.  The trick to discerning the different tones is the length of the ellipsis. Three commas or less conveys a worrisome tone, whereas five or more conveys a flirtatious tone.

Sentence Structure

Look! We’re almost done! There are many people who will play with sentence structure to convey meaning but the most widespread practice is the Incomplete Sentence. This one is actually fairly straightforward. Leaving a sentence incomplete expresses exhaustion (either emotional or physical) and adds a sense of trailing off in the speakers voice. I mean, have you ever started a sentence and then just

Noun/Verb Dichotomy

Ok last one. This one is also pretty straight forward, though still quite complex. The Noun/Verb Dichotomy is simple the act of using a noun in place of a verb to get your point across. For example, a more expressive (and in my opinion more accurate) way to say “I like to get a midnight snack at 2 in the morning” would be “I like to velociraptor around my house at 2 in the morning.” The second conjures such a specific image that it can more concisely convey the actions and emotions being done. The possibilities are endless. This opens up the door for someone to sentence how they want. Although many people will get a headache and want to clothesline into a wall. These all make sense to a native speaker of this kind of english because, while our brains do brain logically, english doesnt logic englishly so the brain brains by itself to logic the english!

So that is my mini-lesson on Internet English. please remember I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what’s changed.

[rigelmejo]

march - just some thoughts

i have read more this month than any other month? and its not slowing down its only 3/12 so i have 2/3 of a month to go and i’ve read 26 chapters. even if these chapters are ‘short’ at 10 pages, if i wanna count by ‘20 page’ chunks i’ve still read 13 chunks so far. and i’ve still got more time in the month left. most other months i’ve managed to read ‘a lot’ i read 10-20 chapters. so i’m doing really good.

grammar is a weird thing? in reading i feel like its quite easy now to understand. when listening or watching - same. and yet if asked ‘why do i say/type X’ or ‘why is it written/spoken like X’ i have absolutely no explanation in my head. i could not explain the grammar if prompted. this puts me in a weird place and i feel like i SHOULD go over a grammar guide again just so i can WORD what i’m intuitively understanding.

this is a bit bizarre to me because within the first 6 months of study i DID read through an entire grammar guide just to get an idea of what i was about to look at, and it hardly made sense once actually reading/watching/listening. i understood the guide fine, but actually Seeing chinese i was still confused. i would reference AllSetLearning’s Chinese Wiki on some basic points, then after 6 months i just stopped. now its been what 1.5 years and - reading is so easy, listening is so easy, grammar wise. none of the grammar confuses me. but i no longer ‘explicitly’ have any idea what the fuck the grammar is. i used to. i studied it explicitly before trying to read/listen. and yet now that i can read/listen, i have no idea how to explain the grammar. i can listen to a podcast and i don’t think about what the grammar is i just get it. i read and just know what i’m looking at. its like english - i cannot fucking explain it. Which makes speaking/writing a bit hard. Because when i try to check if i’m right i have no fucking clue HOW anymore - i just say/write what comes to mind and HOPE it makes sense. i have no way to conciously check for errors except ‘does this feel right’? And that’s not good enough for me lol. So I definitely do need to eventually read a grammar guide for explicit explanations again.

Technically I think “English and Chinese Grammar Side By Side” grammar book would be an excellent one to use. Because i read the first 50 pages of it and it compared it to english (so it explained english too), and it was very easy to understand and started basic then got more involved. 

I’m probably gonna use my very old Chinese Grammar Self Taught by Thimm book instead. Just because I really like that book. Then I guess use another after (probably Basic Chinese Sentence Patterns since its modern and perfect for ‘catch your own mistakes’ study and much shorter than Eng+Chinese Grammar side by side). 

Anyway I’m in a very weird place right now lol. I know i’m understanding grammar that is stuff I never even studied initially in the grammar guide, but unable to explain what it is, and a lot of stuff i did explicitly study in a grammar guide i completely forgot the explanation for. My reading and listening is GREAT, because all my effort only has to go into learning new words lately! its relaxing! Its the only part i need to do! But my writing/speaking i am very concerned about because being able to check myself for mistakes is something i’d like the ability to do.

how grammar is presented really makes a difference in how well i get it. there is some serious benefit to ‘show simple first then build up what you know’ that text books tend to prefer. versus like grammar reference books that may start with some in depth stuff.

i tried to read a japanese grammar guide the other day and 1 it was great but 2 it covered some ADVANCED stuff i never learned in genki 1+2, and so it was Explicit grammar description of stuff i had literally years ago been immersing in japanese and Still not conciously known about. So i felt. Overwhelmed lol. I felt so confused. I feel like I might switch to Tae Kim’s grammar guide primarily just because its structured with basics covered first. and i feel like until the basics are again glued into my brain, seeing even more advanced stuff just confused me so much i had no idea how to remember it. which is funny because? my usual strategy with grammar guides is to just read it and let what sticks stick and what is confusing be moved on from, in the hope i will later see it again and understand it better. so like based on what i usually do i should’ve just been able to read through it (and i’m gonna try anyway lol). but truly japanese grammar just... my mind does not like wrapping around it and remembering it. (chinese grammar is so much easier for me... so much easier....;-; )

i have been tempted to just Restart Nukemarine’s LLJ (Lets Learn Japanese) memrise decks, because I KNOW they worked for me last time really really well. And they include Tae Kim grammar lessons. And I know if i did it then maybe i’d get back to where i was years ago pretty fast.

I tried Earthlingo app. Its a cool idea, I don’t think its worth it though unless you planned to get Rosetta Stone (since Earthlingo is FREE). Earthlingo features 1000 words per language, taught to you by exploring video game worlds as an alien. Its a cool concept, but since all words seem to be nouns then you aren’t even learning the most common verbs/adjectives. And 1000 words is not a lot. And you could learn 1000 quite fast if using srs flashcards like Memrise or Anki (think weeks if you push yourself, and a month or two months if going at a regular pace). Earthlingo you have to slowly explore the worlds so that eats time, you have to choose to test yourself (so you don’t review nearly as often as flashcard apps), and one test includes walking around the world clicking the object which you’re given the word for (takes time to find the right object). All this means a word that might take maybe 15 minutes to study over a few weeks, might instead take much longer to study and learn. I don’t use duolingo because it generally covers so few words (usually 2000-4000 i think which is good for a beginner resource but you have to do the WHOLE course to get to all those words and i take so long on duolingo that could take YEARS for me versus a month on a flashcard app or clozemaster). Duolingo I also don’t use because it very slowly paces learning material (it takes me months/years to get through 1000 words on duolingo - just personally i go so slow on it, i think faster people would find a use for it). Likewise Lingodeer takes me AGES to get through (and i think covers 2000 words nowadays? I’m shocked Duolingo has more words for the japanese course tbh). However, Lingodeer is by far the best ‘app’ for Japanese grammar lessons in app practice form. Even if basically all the apps feel pretty slow to me in how fast they give you new info. Earthlingo is cool that its free, and for learners 12 and under i think it would be super useful as a way to engage them and keep them studying (since what child likes flashcards? whereas as a child i would’ve loved this). But as an adult Earthlingo is sooooo slow on how fast you can learn words, and it does not even offer very many words (1000 is a nice bare minimum but without verbs/adjectives it can only be a supplementary learning tool for beginners at best).

Link about Lingodeer having 2000 words in a course. (Since its SO hard to lookup how much vocabulary lingodeer includes :c )

Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks (which I’m considering going through again but ToT agh flashcardssssss.... they sure do work though agh)

http://www.chinese-grammar.com/beginner/ - this is the site I read a chinese grammar guide on at like Month 3. I am rereading it now maybe it will help me remember wtf grammar explicitly is. ToT (A tip, read Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced sections). Last time I visited the site you just clicked a section, then saw each fully explained grammar point and clicked ‘next’ it was nice. Now its laid out a little less ideal for me, but its still got all the same nice info! (Also honestly if you are a beginner I really DO like this grammar guide... it introduces basic info first, gradually gets more complex, and i could follow its logic knowing like 200 hanzi and 100 words ToT. its very easy to understand even if it takes a while to apply that info).

im probably gonna read hanshe more today. i’m at the point where either i know enough vocab, or the writers style has just ‘clicked’ idk. but now i just am not getting bogged down by unknown words and am just. speeding through enjoying the plot. Also rip me this novel has 155 chapters and im only on chapter 30.

watching japanese lets plays is really fun! i feel like im 3 years old cause i just see nouns i can learn pretty easy in context cause i know the game well, and hear some vaguely familiar verbs, but its fun! also it helps i know kingdom hearts 2 like by heart so. a lot of it makes me instantly cheerful and nostalgic. roxas’s voice is so cute in the japanese version.

oh i almost forgot: I found a book recently for chinese that for it’s like 10 page grammar guide summary at the beginning ALONE i think is more than worth the 4 dollars it costs to get. It has a ton of compound words and its a reference book in mandarin and cantonese (it has pronunciation for both, all characters are in traditional). I got it initally because it as a bunch of compound words and I’d like to get better at knowing a lot of common ones. But the intro to the book has a page explaining sentence structures in chinese, then examples. Its so straightforward and to the point. I love it. The book is “Understanding Chinese: A Guide to the Usage of Chinese Characters” by Rita Mei-Wah Choy. (There is also a companion book for individual hanzi, which is nice but this book specifically I’m finding more useful).

what i really like about Listening-Reading method, and reading, as study activities: no matter how I do them it is only improvement. I have a tendency to ‘redo’ material i don’t feel i fully mastered, or refuse to move on. So when i have duolingo, flashcards (sometimes i can move on if i ignore reviews/make myself do new stuff), books, grammar guides, self guided classes - i have a tendency to redo the material. over and over. and not progress and challenge myself. whereas with reading - every time i look up a word its useful because its new or something i clearly Need to review (not something i’ve actually learned and can move past reviewing). so whether i reread material or read new stuff, as long as i run into things i find somewhat challenging (feel the desire to word look up), i know i am running into new material i can learn. Same with listening-reading method: whether i finish a book or just skip to random books, any new chapter i do will give me new words to learn/remember (until i’ve reached a point of perfect listening comprehension which is a WAYS away). There’s no way for me to mess it up. I can give up a book im bored with, i don’t have to stick to one resource to the end. 

someone tell me why professionally made chinese audio books almost NEVER line up to the chapters???? whyyyyy ;-;

Even More Notes lol:

So I read so much in Pleco, which auto pronounces, I have COMPLETELY forgot. 得 地 - for these two, when they’re attached after a description like 淡淡 慢慢 高兴 etc, when are they pronounced di versus de???? i’m pretty sure  得 is pronounced de when its an adjective like ‘-ly’. but for  地, i don’t remember if when part of a describer if its pronounced di or de????

[sturlsons]

french in 1.5 years anon

Kinda random but I just found out that I’ll be required to be intermediate/advanced in French by the next 1.5 years; ALL I KNOW IS THAT MEIRDE IS A BAD BAD WORD! Idk if you’re a native speaker but I was wondering if you could provide me of any good French language resources (or language in general since I’ll be needing to learn Arabic soon as well), and like tips for language learning and how to go about it? Sorry to bother you haha this is MY stress but I appreciate any help! Have a great day!

HEY. so i really fucking dropped the ball on this one, i’m sorry. 2019 has been one health fiasco after another (or more like the same fiasco again and again) and i kept telling myself i want to sit down and make a proper post for this, until i realised that that’s just never going to happen given the way things are rn. and i’d rather give you a quickly-written post which is actually helpful than never write that perfect bullet-pointed one. 

first of all, i’ve been in your EXACT position (so no, i’m not a native speaker) except i had about...six months to go from je m’appelle teesta to voyez-vous, le problème qui se cache derrière tout ça n’est pas le manque de respect mais la personne dont il s’agit or whatever. i was like, i can so do this. (spoiler: i didn’t, because i was 18 and overconfident and stupid and didn’t actually know how to learn a language.) GOOD NEWS: having learned 3 more foreign languages since then, i am now REALLY GOOD at learning languages REALLY FAST. 1.5 years is a good amount of time, so don’t stress.

i’m going to go generic on this, with some extra tips about french since i speak it, unlike arabic. 

first thing, that typical thing everyone hates to hear but knows is coming from the mouth of an accomplished person (pat on my back) in any field whatsoever: you’re going to have to work really hard and practice like fuck. 

there’s just nothing else that can replace it. i’ve filled up notebooks and notebooks with japanese verb conjugations, once i did like 1800 of them in one sitting. but you better believe that a bitch will never forget those now. resign yourself to putting in at least three hours of your day to this until you get to the level you need. (and three hours is...kind. at my peak i was literally reading through french dictionaries at the library, 10 AM - 8 PM. i treated it like a workday.)

now, what you need to establish is: are you a hands-on learner or a digital one. 

i don’t really care for all the auditory learner and visual learner stuff, i don’t know about anyone else but i personally used those as excuses to avoid certain exercises. unless you have actual disabilities preventing you from accessing certain methods of learning, you can train yourself into anything. it’s a matter of practice. i could barely understand a new song without reading its lyrics first, now i eat up podcasts. 

SO. the question here is different. a hands-on learner, like i used to be more or less throughout my bachelor’s, is someone who absolutely cannot retain information unless they’ve written it down BY HAND at least once. pen and paper. (i’m still like this but i’ve learned to combine it with digital methods to go faster.) if this isn’t a hurdle for you, congratulations. your process is going to go that much faster, at least for french. (you’ll have to spend hours practicing your written arabic however, if you’re not familiar with the script.) 

now, if you’re a hands-on learner, you need to add an extra hour to your daily time. no matter how fast you write, you will take that time. and you cannot shorthand your way into languages. you need to understand how french is spelt, what accents it uses, that they put a space before exclamation points, question marks, and semicolons. (side tip: learn the IPA. it will be useful to you forever in language learning, at least for the romance languages.) i’m not gonna teach you how to make notes since i’ve never benefitted from copying someone else’s style, so if you don’t have a set method start establishing that. you need regularity and rhythm when you learn a language. my grammar notes look the same regardless of the language. i don’t have my french ones since it’s been years and i didn’t take good ones then anyway, but here’s my japanese and russian stuff. 

JAPANESE NOTES // RUSSIAN NOTES

now, it bears mentioning that these notes are NOT the notes i take when i don’t know shit. these are final level notes. they’re brief, idiosyncratic, and only reminders. something to refer to when i’m revising and suddenly forget a rule. the first notes i make are much more elaborate, whether they’re pretty or not. i’ve gradually lost the fucks i had about really going ham on academics so my russian notes are very messy, but my japanese ones from back in the day are magnificent. here’s a look. during lesson one i realised that japanese and my mother tongue, gujarati, are syntaxically similar as shit, and i started taking notes with references in gujarati. it sped up my learning process 2x while my french classmates were still going “BUT WHY IS IT LIKE THAT”. 

PRACTICAL GRAMMAR // THEORETICAL GRAMMAR

if you plan to learn more languages in the future, this will be so valuable. sometimes a phrase i learn in russian doesn’t make sense in its french explanation, but a phrase in english might use the same logic. bam, put down the translation in english then. you get what i’m saying? the more languages you learn, the easier it gets to learn languages. 

now if you’re a digital learner, i’ve got great news for you. duolingo and anki are your best friends. duolingo’s memed to hell and has a system that might not work for everyone, but they’ll do the brunt work of compiling grammar notes for you in the beginnings/ends of their lessons. note those down and transform them into anki flashcards, and you can learn grammar concepts without doing 20 exercises. (do those exercises if you can, though, nothing beats mindless practice.) now anki is an intimidating-looking but actually super intuitive app that basically builds digital flashcards for you and shows them to you in a rhythm based on your own learning speed. it’ll show you the front of a card, let’s say merde. you say the english translation out loud, shit, and hit enter. correct! was that easy? anki’ll show it to you in 10 minutes. hard? it’ll show you in 1 minute. super easy? merde won’t come up again until tomorrow. eventually you get so good at it that you can bury a card for 2 months. anki will also show you the same cards reversed, which is harder but trains you better. you’ll see shit and have to remember what it’s called in french, which is more difficult than you’d think it is. 

you can use anki for more than just vocab, like i mentioned. it’s a little tricky learning to convert grammar concepts into front/back flashcards, but you can do it. for example, here’s a sample of one of my russian grammar cards: 

front ^^

back once i hit enter^^

see? not that difficult. now don’t be an idiot like me who manually entered every single flashcard into anki. you can find pre-made packages online (but you can’t guarantee they’ll be correct) or you can make your own without killing your fingers. what you wanna do is open up a spreadsheet and make two columns, A for front of the card and B for back. it’ll look like this:

then you’re gonna save that spreadsheet as a .CVS (comma separated values) and import that into anki. bam, your flashcards are made for you with half the effort. there’s also a script floating around somewhere to make excel translate words automatically for you, but i don’t recommend that unless they’re really easy words. google translate can fuck up. reverso is your friend. 

you need to review your anki cards every day. it’ll take less and less time as you go along. i can review 300 russian cards in 15 minutes now. but you need to keep the rhythm going. download ankiapp and sync your cards, review them on commutes or in the hallway or whatever. trust me, it’s magic. 

apart from this, if a traditional textbook helps, go for that. i’ve always used textbooks and workbooks, more as supports than as principal methods, but it does help. it’s structured and organised and these people know how to train you. bescherelle is a good go-to for french. 

media is always a great way of immersion too, until you get to the country itself. it’ll show you how french people speak french. when i first came to france i didn’t have that experience and even though i spoke an arguably decent amount of french when i got here, it was like, if this is french then what the fuck was i learning in high school. if you like watching movies this is your chance. watch the classics first so that you can get an idea of french pop culture. amélie (though the pop culture aspect here is about shitting on it) and les intouchables, for starters. watch your favourite films, first subbed, then subbed and dubbed, then just dubbed. i watched all ten seasons of friends with french subs, it was wild. with music you want to start off with some indie-ish singers since they will universally sing softer and slower, making things easier to understand than idk, la tribu de dana. (if you’re into bts there’s a hilarious video of their baepsae choreo set to la tribu de dana.) anyway - angèle, cœur de pirate, céline dion, fréro delavega, uhhh that fucking french sufjan stevens. what’s his name. VIANNEY. don’t fucking listen to biglo and oli or like, fatal bazooka right away. you will not understand shit. i barely understand it. white people are wild. ooh listen to stromae. orelsan too, he’s a rapper but he has a relatively clean diction imo. he also sang the french opening for OPM. they call him orelsan-san in japan.

last but not the least: if you have the opportunity to interact in french with people, DO IT. native speakers will do their best to help you and be kind about it. people who learned french might sometimes be assholes from experience. it’s a whole superiority complex thing, and very hypocritical. anyway - online or IRL, wherever you can practice your french, do it. it’ll be immensely helpful. there’s nothing like the frustration of not being able to express simple things to get you motivated to get better. do your best to immerse yourself - changing the language on your devices can make a difference too. 

i think that’s all i have and again, i’m sorry for taking this long to finally deliver, thanks for your patience! if you have any specific questions don’t hesitate to hit me up, on anon or not. 

good luck - it’s not going to be the easiest but nothing is as gratifying as beginning to understand the workings of a language. you’re gonna love it!

[aggresivelyfriendly]

Tryst Part 6

Hi Babies! It flags it with the picture- but I’m sure we all have it memorized! Talk to ME! Umbria II (or Before it you fancy) 

The lighting is so gorgeous and soft, she knows they have to get up off the couch. She can't miss this golden hour, she needs a few more amazing shots, it’s gilding his lily, but choice it preferred by editors. Helene is a little boneless though, still. And she doesn't really want to leave the hotel room, but he looks, better than the light really.  And it's her job to capture it. Even here, lazing in a hotel room, he is a sight to behold. He's all tan and recumbent, body stretched out. He looks easy, at ease, except his eyes. Harry's eyes are always a dare. Green lights set her to go.

"Hey, we need to get ready - I don't want to miss the light." The light was good, if the way his skin looked, bronze and shimmery, like a halo on all that was exposed, was any indication. He cocked the book down, side eyed her, like a glare's hot cousin, "I don't want to go anywhere. I wanna read. I think this is my vacation!" And he ticked his eyebrow at her. That, that deserved a picture. "Don't be a baby, and it's definitely a working holiday at best." His fits of pique were almost cute, because he always did what he was supposed to. She knew she just needed to arch her own brow, or remind him someone may be waiting on them, or mention Jeffrey, and Harry would haul himself up, and put on a shirt. It was a shame. She supposed his reliability was a good quality, except when it drew him away from her. She wondered if he'd ever blown something off, to stay in, stay in bed, get back under the covers and out of their clothes. She wondered if he would with her. Helene wanted to ask, but that wasn't their relationship, she knew it. She'd started as a friend. Then became a friend with benefits, and that's where she felt likely to stay. Was that a zone?  The ‘a friend you fuck but don't love’ zone. She thought that was where Harry put her, intentionally or not, but he had broken out of that box in her head.  Ripped off the handcuffs, and she was terrified, because he was more to her. But she couldn't say it. Because he was also her boss, the best she’d ever had, and her friend, a really good one. And her lover, it seemed, but not a love. It was a shame she had fallen. But he was such a beautiful man.  She couldn't help it. "Why don't you just take pictures here?" That broke her train of thought. "Like this?" Her brow erased her forehead on that. "Yeah! Why not?" "Cuz you'll never let me post them!" She's laughing - they both know it, he's half naked, she only gets one of those a tour. "I will, for my birthday I will!" "Your birthday or mine?" "Either, it's a gift anyway!" "You're an ass!" She's laughing. She loves when he shows his cocky, it's usually during sex, but it's always sexy. She likes when it’s buried under humility, but not always, not when she wants him to be buried in her. God! Everything about him draws her in. She is fully aware she is a moth, bashing herself onto his fire, she's going to do it anyway. Can't resist the flavor of those cherry nips and raspberry lips. It's worth it. Helene reaches behind her for the camera. "Game on!" "It's not a game!" He's laughing. God she hopes not. He looks better in the view finder. She's is not sure how that is possible. He keeps reading, or pretending to, dropping the book down occasionally to his chest with a lazy fucked out smile. She knows that look. She's determined to see it again this afternoon as she did this a.m., and last night. Other times he places the book on his lips, resting on the over plumped line at the top edge, contemplative, studious. She thinks he is her favorite subject. To study and shoot.   One time he flips her off while holding the book. His other fingers on his side, middle finger on the spine facing her. Well, that's just a dare. When he cocks the book at an angle, keeping his face mostly covered, and gives her the look he gets when she goes to her knees, she snaps the shot and knows it’s the last one. It is the shot, happy fucking birthday to her, or him, or everybody. Helene sat the camera on the table, thought she heard it fall off the edge, but she barely had time to wince before she was crawling into his lap, under his arms, her head between his shoulders, just below the book. "I'm reading." He murmured - eyes intentionally glued to the book. "So read." It was not meant to be a whisper, but it slipped passed her lips sotto voce and was followed by her tongue, catching his crucifix in her mouth. Licking it out of the way to find the hollow of his chest like a swallow finds home. The notch fit the wide flat of her pink muscle perfectly and he tasted strong of him, even a hint of her, she had slid down his body from his face at one point this morning. His nipples looked like cherries, always did, but she was hungry and the sweet tart taste was all that could satisfy her. Her tongue curled around one and then the other as he kept reading. He wasn't even breathing heavy. She would have been miffed if she didn't know that this was, in fact, a game. Whoever gave up first. So she bit. That drew a sound from him, and when she licked to the other side and bit the tip of his other tit, he moaned. "I'm reading." He was whispering across the centimeters between them now. "So read."  Helene smiled like the cat about to get the cream. The distance between her first position and the high waist of his brand new favorite pants was minuscule, but gave her time to give him butterflies, using his representation of a favorite feeling. Tongue tracing detailed lines on his gleaming skin. She slipped her hands in to unhook the bar closure of his rich trousers and found him hard beneath. When she licked the leak at his tip, where it peeked out to say hello from the  waistband of his calvin's, she felt the book brush her hair and could smell the pages as the air wafted out of them when they hit his stomach. His hand went into her hair. She guessed love, the verb, was more important than a mixtape. "You're reading." She reminded. "No, I'm not." And he gripped her hair and gave her a little direction. That kitty cat grin crossed her face again. She peeled his boxers down. Licked his dick up, from the crease of his testicles to the glans. The circuit she made of his tip, well that had him breathing heavy and talking now. "Your mouth, c'mon kitten, open your mouth." And he flexed his hips up. But he had been a tease. So she snapped the waist band, a little jolt to his thighs and an "ahh!" "When I'm ready!" She said. And nibbled at his sartorius. "God, please be ready soon. I really need to feel your mouth, Helene." "Why don't you tell me about that. What you need, hmmm?" She lay her head on his hip, where her breath could caress his pulsing cock. "Um, ok, god! Fuck!" He flinched when she cocked him towards her mouth and sucked in just the tip. "I love how much you can fit, everywhere, I'm always surprised. Cuz you’re so small, love to throw you around. And the sounds you make, ugh..." She licked around the head audibily. "I love how responsive you are. So I really need youto show me all that and put it in your mouth.” He’d run out of breath by then, was panting. "I love how big you are," she righted herself between his legs and got comfy, opened wide and sucked him deep. The pop when she pulled off the tip was just for his praise. "Oh fuck, Helene, again!" And so she did, the pops off the top weren't so frequent, but the deep strokes had Harry speaking in an English form of tongues, full of praise and love. Just like him. His taste was irresistible, but his giant heart kept her hanging on more than his dick. She knew this would have to be the last time. He didn't want more, didn't see her as more, and she'd never demanded or suggested more. That was her failing. But she deserved it. More. She'd treasure this though. All the times with him. She'd take all of this to the next relationship, learn from it, and find something requited. Harry liked her fine, and she wanted to work for him again. He was a stellar boss, would be a really amazing boyfriend, but he needed some time. Not everything was forever, sometimes that hurt, but it was ok. She was ok, and this was incredible, and hers for the time being. His taste, the sound of his voice, tuneful even when he was groaning, the shape of him, and the shape of him inside her, she'd get to keep the memories, and it didn't even have to the be photographic, because she has those too. And she'd know what to ask for next time. The lessons would come with her too. How she wanted to be fucked, loved, and treated. But mostly that she wanted reciprocity. Which she'd demand next, and now. He was at the back of her throat, just an inch left out, and she swallowed to his babbling, his hands buried in her hair as he begged.  "Stop, Helene, I’ll come, I'll fucking come." Did she want that? Kind of, honestly, but also, if she was swearing off Harry Styles, she had other positions to try, explore, learn by heart. So, when she needed to recall, it would be like the home phone number that didn't exist anymore, but would always be hers. She pulled off and stroked twice. Smiled at him, swollen lipped and wet mouthed. "God, fuckin amazing. C’mere!" And he pulled her up and over him. To where they were eye to eye, lip to lip, hip to hip. She came to rest, aligned like they always were, in her heart, him filling the negative space between her thighs with his powerful ones. He was holding himself at just the right angle, so they could find all those geometric configurations, acute and obtuse. She slid easily over him twice, and then onto him. The exhales were just shy of rapture.  "Cherie?" She smoothed his growing curls back. "What will you remember of Italy? Of me?" He looked thoughtful for a minute. Distilling some words down. "The way your hair is honey in this light, and the ease of your bones on me." He was a murmur on the air between them. That was a good memory, sweet and solid. That's what she would take too. "I'll remember that you were caressed by sunset and it loved you the way we all wish to. And how you looked reading your book. And your songs, those unwritten." "I'll write some for you." He promised. "Don't, I'm not just a memory." "No, a dream." His hands found her hips, and the cadence he set, the rock and sweet roll gathered everything but moss, all of her senses, feelings, and attitudes. He stayed deep, buried to the hilt and moved her hips in a susurra. Helene aided him, made it orbital. They could have stayed like that for a long time, suspended like the moon. But his neck veins were straining, begging for attention and release. Her mouth climbed the especially pronounced one on the left side above his clavicle. She was sure she was on the right track by his grip, it had migrated to her ass, was tight. A few inches from where she loved it. Where he had taught her she liked it. It made her clench. "Do you want it?" He circled his thumb over her asshole. "Yes." She whispered in his ear, bit down on his lobe. But she meant more than he thought. Harry pulled his hand away, to her mouth. Had her wet one, then two, three fingers. "I want it." Brought it back round. Sighed over the first instrusion, jaw dropped over the second, squirmed over the third. "Helene?" "I'm good, I'll be able to take more." She assured. Kept up the little dip and roll of her hips. Worked back on his fingers until it was all pleasant stretch. Her own fingers found a place between her legs and the crazy amount of sensation, the presence of Harry's teeth on her right nipple, brought her off faster than she thought possible. Crazy to think that just a few months ago, she'd never come during sex. Now she came every time, with him. But she knew how to get there now. "Fuck, fuck, Harry, it feels so good!" Her clench was tight, he looked pained, and she felt her clit pulse against her fingers, drum skin vibrating. She slipped off his lap. "Do you have anything?" "What?" He was staring at her like he'd never seen a naked woman before, much less her. He hadn't followed her round the bend she'd mentally decided on. "Lube. For my ass." She brushed her fingers between her ass cheeks, felt the sensitive space there, a little frisson of pleasure. "Um, Yeah, bottom of my kit." He started to move. "I'll get it." "Non, I'm up amour." She started then stopped. "If you don't mind" He narrowed his eyes and shook his head an inch, chuckled. "I don't mind." "Keep that warm for me." She nodded at his slick cock. "Just like that!" Yum, his hand moved up and down slow. Just enough to keep it tense, hard. His eyes were closed and he was squeezing a little when she got back. "You ok?" "Yeah, I'm just, fuck Helene, I'm really turned on, and I'm afraid I'm gonna come on the first stroke." She giggled a little, she loved when he was weak. It was rare, for him to be so hot he was out of control. "Don't laugh at me!" He laughed a little at himself though. "I've only done it like once, and it was shit, I was like 19." Ah, a one off. This would be better, they had sexual rapport. Spilled over from professional, no doubt. She made a thoughtful face, tapped her chin with the bottom of the lube tube. "I have an idea. You could eat my pussy until you can handle fucking my ass." She'd take that with her too, asking for what she wanted. His eyes closed and when he opened them again  they were florescent, buzzing like neon. "C’mere." A beautiful order. And he grabbed her hand and slid down on the sofa. "Sit on my face." "With pleasure." God, that first stroke of his tongue was always something. He usually started with the wide flat, this time from all the way back to the tip top of her.

The normal tease of him, to switch to kissing, nibbling her inner thighs was, "fuck, dammit, Harry!" He gave her that look, the one he slid the book down to grace her with that started this, all heavy lids and sex on a stick. The suction at her clit and slight head shake were gonna get her there. But he must have needed more time, before he opened her up. She was excited, a little nervy. He'd done it, not well apparently, once, but she'd never done it. Would it hurt, in a bad way, or good, in that bone deep ache, next day soreness memory way.  Her hands found his hair and her eyes rolled back in her head when he brought his hand up, sucked in new fingers and wrapped them around her hip. Started with the count again. 1, 2, 3 fingers. Helene was afraid she might have strands of his hair between her fingers, she'd pulled so hard. "Harry!" He was sucking again, light, wide over her clit, and licking too. "I'm gonna come." He nodded, hummed and slipped a finger into her vaginal opening and rubbed the top of her canal. "Basai-moi!" He pushed her back when she lost her legs. She came to rest on his lower stomach. He sat up and pushed her hair back. Kissed her back to her senses with his fragrant mouth. "You good? Want to do this?" "Do you?" "God, yeah, please." "Yeah, let’s do it." She smiled, "how?" "Slowly." He kissed her eyes, "bend over." He stood up, sat on the dark wood coffee table, arranged her over the couch. And slow he went. From the tops of her shoulders to the backs of her thighs, then in between. Mouth, fingers, tongue, huge hands spreading her cheeks. When his cool slick fingers came up, and he spun them inside her, scissored them slightly, worked up to four, she was ready. More likely, impatient. "Harry, tu me rends folle." Her back was curved sharp, like a lens. "Take me." "Turn over, its easier on your back I think." "I thought you haven't done this in a long time?" He laughed. "Well, I haven't been the verb so much, usually the object. But I know how to make it good for you." "Oh!" She smiled. Yeah, she kinda knew that, him and boys. Liked it, to think about it, though that seemed politically incorrect. She’d got an inkling when Xander came round backstage, he and Harry were, familiar. She lay back for him, he arranged her thighs and she relished watching him slick his cock up. Thumb the tip the way she knew he liked. Hot though it was, worked up as he'd got her, she still tensed when he put the head at her puckered opening, though all of her felt empty and open. "You gotta relax, or it'll be uncomfortable." "Just do it." Helene figured it was best to get the hard part over. "It's not like a plaster, you have to start well to make it good. Easy." He kissed her the way the next world felt. "Slow." When she'd forgotten that his dick was an inch too low, consumed by his fruited lips, he pressed the tip through. That was usually her favorite inch. But now, it didn’t hurt, uncomfortable though. She squirmed a bit, wasn't sure if she meant to get it deeper or push it out. "Shhhh, shhhh, we can do this." He pulled back, brought her hand to her red and ripe cunt. "Play." So she did, and those deadly eyes, so bright green they may have been nuclear, made her forget the discomfort until he was pressed all the way in. "Oh!" Her busy hand stilled while the other gripped her breast. "Oh!" Harry groaned. "Fuck!" And he pulled out and pressed in, slow and heavy. Fucked into her for long minutes until she was taut as bow, her back off the couch and her heels digging into his ass. "Touch yourself, put your fingers in." And she did, her hair a mess all over the embroidered couch from tossing her head back and forth. It was a lot of sensation, penetrated back and front. "Feel me?" He whispered. "Yes!" God could she feel him, everywhere, through the membranes thin as can be, could make out the tip when it passed in and out over her knuckles. "Helene, I need to come." He must. He'd been holding it since she'd got her mouth on him. "Un moment." And she got her thumb to work, pressed down on her nub, and kept her fingers against the companion spot inside until the bow snapped and arrows of feeling darted across her synapses. "Fuck!" Harry let out and she watched, with half her attention because she didn't want to miss it, while his teeth gritted and his muscles froze and his mouth fell open. He pulled out of her, her rubber legs akimbo, and her will and way to move lost.   Helene stared at him, red trails on his skin, flush of his chest, splotches on his neck. "Can I take a picture of you, like this?" "You look at me like that, I'll say yes to anything." That was the pot calling the kettle. His looks were persuasive. So, she didn't ask him anything hard, or lengthy. Because he would have agreed, and not meant it. Now months later, she's really happy, has had a few great dates with a good man. It might be love. But she still takes that advantage she had pressed after their fucked out afternoon. "Can I really post that picture on your birthday?" She’d looked at it in the little square, that was a lot of skin. Not so much as the one she snapped then. He really might have said yes to anything, because he'd only shrugged, carefully put her camera on the couch before he picked up her sleepy body, carried her over his shoulder to the shower. She posted the before shot, on his birthday. The after one was just for her.

[squadron-leader-farrier]

Let's spice things up a bit; ANSWER ALL OF THE QUESTIONS

oh baby, you answered m prayers lol this is gonna be long so buckle up ?

1. favourite place in your country? my hill station, because of the weather, and because i haven’t been to many places, and the ones that i have been to were extremely hot and i never want to go there again,

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad? depends on the holidays tbh. what the festivals the holidays fall near and that. i’d stay here for some, but for the ones that we don’t celebrate in my country like Halloween, i’d like to go abroad.

3. does your country have access to sea? peninsula, babey!

4. favourite dish specific for your country? chicken biryani. boy, oh boy, just thinking about it makes my mouth water. it’s that good. gosh, the flavour, the spice. the way they cook it,,,, the colours ahhhh

5. favourite song in your native language? ones made before the 60s. and the patriotic songs. there are too many to name, but two (non patriotic) ones are this and this (because they’re sad love songs and give me flyboys feels ya kno?)

6. most hated song in your native language? like, as a nation? idk. but personally, i hate, absolutely loathe any songs made after the 60s. they lack originality and creativity. all they did was rip off popular english songs, and changed the lyrics. that’s literally all they did. and they are super proud of it. i hate it. the music industry had gone to complete shit. even today they don’t know what good music is and ow to make it. they’re remixing all the old ones because they lack creativity. i hate it. 

7. three words from your native language that you like the most? i don’t like any three words, because they’re not that appealing on their own (not the ones i can think of right at this moment) but rather, phrases. when you string those words and make poetry or prose. it’s really beautiful, and really poetic. perhaps the best ones are in those two songs, and others like them.

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom? i haven’t been in a situation like that so i can’t say.

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best? probably Russia because the ones right next to me are exactly the same in topographical, cultural and architectural respects. there’s literally nothing new to see there, so i’d like to go to Russia.

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language? so it’s basically three: bhenchod/madarchod/chutiya. all of them mean motherfucker in their basic essence, but are used to describe people, cuss out people, call your pal, so basically, the hindi equivalent of fuck. can be used as adjectives, prepositions, verbs, nouns, whatnot. can be used individually or all together. perhaps splash one of them in a conversation to make the group giggle a bit more while telling a funny story. 

11. favourite native writer/poet? the ones who wrote nationalistic literature during the freedom struggle. so, to say, i like Sarojni Naidu, and Tagore. they’re perhaps the most famous ones of the time, and i like their work. 

12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem? i don’t have any, because they’re already written in english by the authors. i read a poem or two lying around somewhere, but the thing about hindi is that the translations don’t bear the same feelings as the originals. 

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?  oh there are too many. too many by far. most of them are the usual black cat and others, oh, one i heard when i was in like 4th grade was that you shouldn’t go out with open wet hair at night because a spirit can get caught in em and come home with you. so that was strange. my family doesn’t have any, we’re rather realistic.

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV? no not in the least. you know why? because of this. i swear to fuck, the person who uploaded this compilation didn’t edit a single thing in. how do i know? because i’ve watched these on actual television. when i was young. in my neighbour’s tv. 

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get? remember when some of you motherfuckers got offended by bitch lasagna because you lack basic understanding what a fucking joke is? you don’t know what satire is? you are the reason why people think indians have no sense of humour because you DON’T it was a fucking JOKE holy shit i’m so triggered by this

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with? haven’t heard of many stereotypes about us, but the laziest one i can think of is that we can do math and are good at science. we’re not. i’m shit at all of that. so are my 34 other classmates. 

17. are you interested in your country’s history?  not really, tbh. maybe the period just before independence, and some post-independence stuff, because i got dirt on those politicians and i want more of that so that i have a reasonable justification for hating politicians.

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language? i don’t know, maybe i’m so used to it i don’t even realise lol. but i guess so.

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem? YES. YES. YES. i love them. i absolutely adore them. the flag is so symbolic and so beautiful i love her (orange on top for sacrifice, white in the middle for purity, green at the bottom for prosperity, the blue circle in the middle for resolution and justice, just ahhhh). the national anthem always gives me the chills. everytime i hear it playing somewhere, or when we sing it sometimes after assembly, or during days like today (independence day) or republic day, when we finish singing the last line it just always makes me a bit emotional and proud? yeah. today i almost started crying because i love it so much.

20. which sport is The Sport in your country? Cricket. even though the national sport is hockey. no one cares about hockey :(

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?  the memers who think they’re very funny, (which they are not in the least), and the anti nationalists and separatists. i do not want them here. get lost. fuck off. shooo.

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed? what makes me proud, is the freedom struggle of the revolutionaries, and the progress we’re making in every field, the hospitality of the people, and the unity in diversity. what makes me ashamed is that there’s still so much corruption in the government, can’t help it, the law’s delay, gosh the people who think they’’re better than everybody else, the entertainment industry, the music industry, some of the people, most of the politicians, etc.

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country? bold of you to assume we have a single favourite beverage for the entire country. i think it varies from state to state. for mine i think it may be something apple related, because we have lots of apples here. the season is also coming lol and also, it’s very confusing because some states have completely banned alcohol and in some the legal drinking age is 18. 

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country? canada and ‘murica mostly because so many people immigrate there 

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country? i’d like to be British, because  i like the aesthetic and weather. 

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal? i don’t watch many movies, but i think it’s not much/a small amount and neither do i mind nor do i care. 

27. favourite national celebrity? no one. i hate all of them.

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites? yep!! she’s not called a subcontinent for nothing, babey! i live near the Himalayas, so i like that.

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country? oooooh yes. ooooooooooh  boy. with Pakistan lol. mainly because of the union territory of jammu and kashmir. because pakistan wants it, we want it, and it legally also belongs to us. there’s separatists there, anti nationalists, and there’s poverty there, so it’s easy to instigate the people against the government. there were wars fought for it, most of them ended in our favour, but the other side is still making so many ceasefire violations, it is insane. it has been years, and every other day there’s a new violation. there’s lots of unrest in the valley, which is a shame, because it is a truly beautiful place. 

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family? my uncle is British, my cousin’s husband is also a Brit. a great-grand relative of mine was also British. there are none on my mother’s side.