#O AND Ö? NOT INTERCHANGEABLE

[tlaquetzqui]

Hmm.

What if a conlang’s orthography uses A, E, I, O, U, for /æ, ε, ɪ, ɔ, ʊ/ respectively. And then Á, É, Í, Ó, and Ú for /a, e, i, o, u/? (Maybe treating /a/ and /α/ as allophones, because a lot of languages treat them interchangeably?)

And then Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü for /ɘ, ɯ, ø, y/?

[bisonaari]

Rambling about the finnish language because I have thoughts. They probably won't make a lot of sense, but it's mostly for me hahaha

First of all if you haven't downloaded the app Drops, you should!! It's super fun to learn vocabulary so far, and the interface is soooo cute!! Idk how effective it is on the long term, but it can't hurt to practice more hahaha.

Then this should have actually been first but whatever lol. I'm having so much fun learning the language. I hadn't felt that since I started learning japanese in 2006, and I've tried maaaaany more languages since then lol. I'm genuinely looking forward to my duolingo everyday! Every time I understand a new word in a song or an interview or something it's like my brain has solved a new puzzle and the SEROTONIN I SWEAR

Finnish has started to sound familiar for me now? Like earlier today I was watching an estonian/finnish comparison video and when the guy started speaking estonian I was like "oh yeah I def recognise the intonation and a few words, but that's it". Then the other guy started speaking finnish and my brain had a moment of "OH!! I know this!!! This is our stuff!!" Like I don't even feel that with spanish, and my spanish is better than my finnish by a LONG shot lmao. (It's still shit though I'm like three years old toddler level lol)

Idk I wanted to say something else but I'm just so so so happy a a a a a

OH YEAH also I'm a dumb fuck and since my third language is japanese I've hard-wired myself into pronouncing stuff the japanese way every time a language is nor english nor french, and it PISSES ME OFF. Because I KNOW how to pronounce the sounds but my brain is like oh did you mean [japanese sound] lemme fix that for you NO I KNOW WHAT I MEANT LET ME SAY WORDS GDI

So here is a list of stuff that I need to deprogram

from japanese

U pronounciation. In japanese, u is like a y/u mix and it's so hard to undo once you start doing it URGH

Soft-rolled r. Rolling r hard is kinda bad manneers in Japan so I never really forced myself to do it

L/R confusion. Since it's the exact same sound for both in japanese sometimes I just L my R or roll my L it's so silly hahaha

From french

T/D stridulation. It's pronouncing t as ts and d as dz instead of a hard t or d. It's only found in quebec french and it took me A BILLION YEARS to learn when I moved here, and now I have to undo it???

Ä/A distinction. Already said it, but it's more of a matter of accent in french so I need to stop using them interchangeably

Learn to fucking read y/u and ö/o GDI BISON IT'S NOT HARD

Stress of the first syllable. Almost impossible for a french speaker BUT I SHALL PERSEVERE

From both:

THERE IS NO GENDERED PRONOUN IN FINNISH STOP THINKING ABOUT IT THEY DO NOT EXIST STOPPPPPP

Thank you for reading my scrambled mind lol. I'm training for another department at work and it's a lot of info so my brain is about to leak from my ears, and it shows in my writing lmao

[dasmidna]

How to write German in your König fanfics by a native speaker

It’s basically exactly what it says in the title. These last days, I’ve made a hobby out of reading König fanfiction and looking at the German in them and if I see one more bad google translation, I think I might actually cry

Listen, I have used google translate too. I admit that and I know that resources are limited unless you have a native speaker around. That’s what this guide is for!

Also, if you have any further questions or want a translation on something, absolutely feel free to message me. I have no problem giving you guys specific translations if it means I don’t have to read any more google translate stuff XD

If you’re just looking for a list of curses and pet names, because I feel like that’s the most used stuff, they’re at the very end. If you wanna learn more about German though, stick around! 

The contents of this includes:

German dialects

the German alphabet

gendered language

capitalization

the formal “you”

conjugation/declension

direct translations and when not to translate

writing bilingual characters

a note for smut writers

pet names

curses

German dialects So, first things first, unlike König, I am not Austrian. I’m German, meaning I speak, well, German-German if you so will.

The thing is though, König’s VA doesn’t speak Austrian-German either. Both in the English and the German dub of the game, he speaks the most accent-free standardized High German I have ever seen in my life. It’s a common thing in the dubbing industry to do, but I still feel like it’s worth pointing out that it’s not exactly accurate.

Germany is an official language in 6 different countries, in which the language will be different and that is not counting each different state in those, where equally vast differences can occur.

I have a Berlin accent, for example. If someone spoke to me in a Saxon accent, I wouldn’t understand shit and that’s just two states over.

So keep in mind that this guide caters to High German, which is the standard for the written language and also what König speaks in the game. It is not, however, an accurate representation of what an Austrian guy actually sounds like.

The German alphabet Ah yes. The enemy of every non-native speaker, right after the ultra-long Frankenstein words.

Generally speaking, German does use the Latin alphabet like English. Only that we have 30 letters instead of 26. The four special characters would be: ä, ö, ü and ß

I find it important to point out that those are their own characters. They are not interchangeable with any other character in the alphabet. ä is not the same as a, ö is not o and so on. So if I see one more person spelling König as Konig, I will commit arson.

And that is also the only thing I will actively blame people for. Google giving you bad translations is not your fault. But this? This irks me in ways you can’t even imagine. It would be like spelling king as kang, for example. You wouldn’t do this in English so please don’t do it in German either.

What do you do then if you have a limited keyboard? Well, either you use copy and paste (the easy way), or you use the official workaround. And yes, there are official replacements for these

Ä = Ae / ä = ae

Ö = Oe / ö = oe

Ü = ue / ü = ue

ẞ = SS / ß = ss

As you can see, the capital ß is replaced by two capital S instead of one capital and one lowercase. This is because this letter can never stand at the beginning of a word and thus, it would only be capitalized if you write in all caps.

It should also be said that not every ss can be replaced with an ß. You can write “Straße” as “Strasse” but you can’t spell “dass” as “daß”. It is not wrong per se as far as I know, but you just wouldn’t do it.  

Gendered language German is, to put it mildly, a very gendered language.

Linguistically, German has 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neutral. You need to watch out for this because it means there is often a male and female version for certain words.

Arzt = male doctor

Ärztin = female doctor

Also, even inanimate objects have gender. Cars are neutral, trees are masculine, the sun is feminine and so on.

A lot of times, people will use the “generic masculine”, meaning they will use the male version and “mean the women too”. Nowadays this is counted as outdated and insulting towards women/other female presenting identities.

Is this a very binary system? Yes. Which actually brings us to another issue: there is no they/them in German. There are workarounds, like neopronouns or other ways to describe people, but this is generally really tricky.

Long story short: watch out what gender the person you’re referring to is.

Capitalization This is by far the most common mistake I see made in fanfiction.

While in English, things are generally written in lowercase unless they’re names or things like “I” for example, German has a few extra rules

Nouns – these are always written with a capital letter. And yes, this includes pet names. Anything from Liebling to Maus or whatever else you chose, it needs to be capitalized. I beg you.

verbs that act as nouns – Now this rarely comes up in fanfiction and as far as I can see, platforms like google translate actually get this right, so I won’t get too far into this, but if you give an article to a verb, something like “the walking” it has to be capitalized in German

Formal pronouns – Which brings us to the next point!

The formal “you” Long story short: German has two variants of the pronoun “you”

One is the formal and polite way to address someone, the other is the informal and more casual version. Depending on the social context, people can be very picky about which version to use and addressing someone by the wrong version can be counted as an insult.

Formal you – Sie/Ihnen/Sie

Informal you – du/dir/dich

When do you use formal pronouns? Well, it depends. Here are the two main scenarios in which you would address someone formally

They’re above you in the social hierarchy. Your boss, teacher, superior, someone a lot older than you. All these people would be addressed with formal pronouns. Of course you wouldn’t address your family formally. Same if you count older people as close friends/found family.

You’re addressing an adult you don’t know personally. This can also depend a lot on context. A teacher will address an 18-year-old student formally, but the students will talk to each other informally among each other, even if they don’t know each other. Generally, you start addressing people formally around their 18th birthday or if you assume they’re around that age. If you’re the same age as someone, it depends a lot on the social context and how old you are, exactly.

Both of these examples can be ignored if the other person offers the informal you. Say you’re starting to befriend a coworker, the two of you would at some point agree to use “du” with each other. 

Conjugation/declension I know this sounds really grammar specific, but I noticed that platforms like google can’t conjugate or decline properly if they have too little information. Mostly because German grammar is a lot more dependent on context than English grammar is and also slightly more complicated.

An example!

Let’s work with the English word “promise”, which we can use in two contexts. Either as a verb or a noun. In both cases, it looks fairly similar and aside form promise/promises/promised, you won’t have much variation in both the verb’s conjugation and the noun’s declension.

German, however…oh boy. 

As a noun, it would be “Versprechen” and as a verb, it would be “versprechen”. Looks similar enough you say? Until you realize that the noun can be:

das Versprechen

des Versprechens

dem Versprechen

die Versprechen

These tiny differences can change a lot in the meaning of the sentence and also, how it has to look. Verbs aren’t any better either.

Let’s say you want your character to say “Promise?” as a short form of “Do you promise me that?”. In both sentences, the verb looks the same.

Put “Promise?” into Google translate however, you get “Versprechen?”. Which, as you can see, is the noun. It can be the infinitive verb form, but either would be wrong to use here.

Instead, “Promise?” should be “Versprochen?” (which is actually past tense) and “Do you promise me that?” would be “Versprichst du mir das?”

You see the problem?

What Google translate gave you is not wrong necessarily. It is a correct translation in a certain context. Only that it’s not the context you want to portray. So if you do use google translate or similar, give as much context as you possibly can.

Direct translations and when not to translate Sometimes, it’s honestly just better to don’t translate something at all. This might sound weird at first, but hear me out

I’ve seen it a couple of times that people will put military ranks into google translate and then have König refer to people by those titles.  

A couple of issues with that.

Again. Context. Say for example you give google the word “Captain”. It will give you the word used in the navy, which would be “Kapitän”. However, the actual equivalent rank in the army would be “Hauptmann”

Titles and ranks are rarely actually translated. Sometimes because they don’t have an equivalent or it’s too much of a hassle to mentally search for it or even just because they’re counted as part of the name. So, even if the entire sentence is in German, König would for example still say “Sergeant MacTavish” to Soap instead of “Feldwebel MacTavish”

When it comes to other direct translations, it just doesn’t work sometimes. Different languages don’t just have different words for things, they have different contexts and cultures associated with it. Languages work differently.

Another example for the last one in terms of pet names. Do not translate English pet names directly. It doesn’t work.

Let’s take “love”. Google Translate gives you “Liebe” as the translation. Which is not wrong, that’s the translation for the noun. The pet name however does not work like that, which is something I’ll touch on in the pet names part.

A problem is also that sometimes, your target language has more words, sometimes it has less. The best thing would be to look up a word in an actual bilingual dictionary. PONS is a great example.

Writing bilingual characters For the love of god, please don’t write bilingual characters switching their language in the middle of their sentence. I know that Activision didn’t do that much better, considering that König’s voice lines often do this mistake, but that’s not how bilingual people talk.

If we don’t know a word, we try to find a way around it. We don’t just say our native word, unless there’s someone around who speaks our native language or the two languages are related. Spanish and Italian would be a prime example for that but also German and Dutch, the Slavic languages or Nordic languages amongst each other.

Curses are an exception to this. At least personally, I do use German curses when talking to English-speakers. But even that is rare and really only happens as a knee-jerk reaction. Somebody scaring me, for example.

But other than that? Bilingual characters are completely able to separate their native language from any others they have learned.

Besides, König would have started learning English fairly young, I assume. I can only speak for the German education system but here, English became mandatory in 4th grade and was only droppable by grade 11. 

For smut writers I’m just gonna go ahead and say it: no German-speaker I know, me included, finds German dirty talk sexy. And to us, other German accents are also not considered hot. They’re just…weird.

Really, just once I want to see König absolutely cringing at using German in bed, especially if it’s heavily accented because that would be an accurate representation XD

Pet names Keep in mind that with German being a gendered language, a lot of these have a male and female version. Also take a look at the disclaimers. Just because these are actual pet names doesn’t mean people actually use them.  

Liebling – darling

meine Liebe (fem.)/mein Lieber (masc.) – my love; rare as an actual pet name and rather used in a teasing sense

Maus/Mausi/Mäuschen – mouse/little mouse/cute mouse

Spatz/Spatzi/Spätzchen – sparrow/little sparrow/cute sparrow

Hase/Hasi/Häschen – bunny/little bunny/cute bunny

Schatz/Schazi/Schätzchen – treasure/little treasure/cute treasure; Schätzchen can be very condescending if used towards woman and in general, this one is a 50/50 thing. Either you love it or you hate it. Personally, I know more people that hate it, but there are also some psychos that use this unironically  

Engel/Engelchen – angel/cute angel

Süße (fem.)/Süßer (masc.) – sweet one; same as Schatz. Not really liked and can be very creepy, especially if used on women

Herzblatt –This is rather used when talking about your partner instead of talking to them. As far as I know, it comes from the heart cards in a card deck and basically means your partner is good luck

Another thing to watch out for: the word for a platonic friend is the same as a boyfriend/girlfriend.

Freund (masc.)/Freundin (fem.) = platonic friend

Freund (masc.)/Freundin (fem.) = boyfriend/girlfriend

Oftentimes, the latter is often made clear through saying “fester Freund/feste Freundin”, which would mean something like permanent or attached friend (don’t question it).

Sometimes it also depends on context again: “eine Freundin”, meaning “a female friend” is often seen as platonic vs. “meine Freundin” with “meine” meaning “mine”, it is often interpreted as romantic.

Some more terms for spouses would be

Ehemann (masc.) – husband

Ehefrau (fem.) – wife

mein Mann (masc.)/meine Frau (fem.) – shortened version of husband and wife

Lebensgefährte (masc. or neutral)/Lebensgefährtin (fem.) – literally means “life partner” and refers to either a husband/wife or an otherwise long-term romantic partner

Partner (masc. or neutral)/Partnerin (fem.) – just means partner

Curses Ah, yes. Let is just be said there are a lot of curses in German and we can get quite creative too. Sometimes, insults and curses can just be everyday words used in a certain sense. I shall compile some general ones here, however, as well as some of my personal favorites

I have to assume that some of these are a special quirk of my native dialect, so use with caution.

Scheiße – shit

verdammt – damn

verdammte Scheiße – fucking hell (literally “damned shit”)

Schnauze/Klappe/Fresse! – shut up!

Halt die Schnauze/Klappe/Fresse! – shut your mouth!

Fick dich – fuck you

Leck mich am Arsch – kiss my ass

Leck mich – kiss my ass, but shortened

Hackfresse – refers to someone who is ugly (literally “a face like ground beef”)

Arschloch – asshole

Du kannst mich mal – similar to fuck you/fuck me

Hast du Lack gesoffen? – are you crazy? (literally “did you drink paint?”)

alternatively: Er/Sie hat zu viel Lack gesoffen – He/she is crazy (literally “He/She drank too much paint”)

Du bist dumm wie ein Meter Feldweg – literally “You’re as stupid as a meter of dirt road”, means someone is being very stupid

Du denkst auch nur von der Wand bis zur Tapete – literally “Your train of thought reaches from the wall to the tapestry”, also meaning someone is very stupid

Intelligenzallergiker – someone allergic to intelligence, so very stupid

Warmduscher – refers to a very whiny/sensitive person (literally “someone who takes a warm shower”), mainly used for men

Nervensäge – refers to someone who is very annoying (“someone who saws your nerves”)

Arschkriecher – refers to someone who tries to earn the favor of another, in a very annoying way (“someone who crawls in someone else’s ass”)

Pissnelke – a nerd or know-it-all (literally made up of the words “piss” and “carnation”)

Arschgeige – annoying idiot (comes from the words “ass” and “violin”)

[ilikecarsandlike4people]

Finnish name facts part 3!

In Finnish, it is important to know how to properly conjugate names and surnames. We also sometimes say the surname before the first name. For example: Kimi Räikkönen = Räikkösen Kimi, Mika Häkkinen, Häkkisen Mika

(Of course with shorter names, such as Salo, the genetive is just "N", (Salon Mika))

And there the "N" turns into "S," because it is a genetive.

There are exeptions, for example, since Valtteri's surname ends in a "S", there is a "K" added, making it "-KSEN"

-> Valtteri Bottas, Bottaksen Valtteri

In Finnish, we conjugate the words themselves so depending on the action, the word (or surname) gets a different end.

It sounds very weird to a Finn to hear someone say "Räikkönen's" when the Finnish way is "Räikkösen". 2. Another fun fact! Last time I said that Ä and Ö are important, and I had a few people say they had "skipped the accents", which to me sounded a bit weird, since they are not just accented "A" and "O" but whole different letters altogether. It's like the difference between a "P" and a "B". They are not interchangeable.

3. Mika is a shortening of the name Miikael or Mikael.

4. Many surnames in Finland are in Swedish, or have been translated from Swedish. "Rosberg" [Ruus-baeri] is a Swedish name, and means "rose mountain".

5. The name "Heikki" comes from Henrik, and came to Finland with the legend of Bishop Saint Henrik (Finland's patron saint), and it means "powerful home"

[amandabe11man]

marvel:

scandinavians having their folklore appropriated for this ridiculousness:

[lords-of-the-empire]

I am just... shrieking in despair over this.

Galbatorix was the hero all along, for trying to get rid of those who speak this hell-tongue

[4giorno]

true miracle is hearing an american person actually pronouncing the ö sound right

[thoughts-of-a-heathen]

A very basic guide to Swedish phonology and pronunciation:

Vowels

Swedish vowels (a, e, i, o, i, y, å, ä, ö) have a 'short' and a 'long' version

Using the wrong version of a vowel might change the meaning of a word (muta = bribe, mutta = pussy)

Short vowel sounds usually get marked out with "double consonants" (after the vowels), as seen in the example above.

Link to a Wikipedia article where you can actually listen to the different vowel sounds

A, Å and Ä make different sounds and are not interchangeable. (hal = slippery, hål = hole, häl = heel) Same goes for O and Ö. (höra = hear, hora = whore)

Consonants

Most consonants make the same sound as in English

R is pronounced in a similar way as in Spanish or French (in some dialects, the R is silent)

If G, K or SK preceeds any of the "soft" vowels (E, I, Y, Å, Ä, Ö), they're pronounced differently

G -> Y (as in yeast)

K and Sk are more complicated because they turn into a sj-sound

Letter combinations used for the sj-sound (no matter which vowel they precede) include: Kj, Sch, Skj, Stj, Tj

There are several different sj-sounds, but you will (usually) get away with using "sh" for all of them. (Unless you're a native speaker, but then you don't need this guide.)

Letters/letter combinations J, Dj, Hj and Lj are pronounced like Y in 'yes'

This is not a complete guide or anything, but since I often use Swedish words in my posts, it makes sense to give you some advice on how to pronounce them.

Alternatively, use forvo to learn how words are pronounced.

[archonfurina]

hey! i had a question about finnish. what do the two little dots mean above the vowels? i’ve noticed that a lot of the words have them and i was wondering what it does? in russian for example, е is “ye” while ё is “yo”

Hi! Ä and Ö are the last letters of the Finnish alphabet. Ä is pronounced like the a in “apple” or “plan”, and ö is pronounced like the o in “word” or the i in “shirt”. 

In Finnish they’re not interchangeable with a and o because that can completely change the meaning of the word. Like for example “saa” (to get) and “sää” (the weather). Often English speakers replace ä with ae in text but that doesn’t work either: “hän” (she/he) and “haen” (i seek) 😊

[lingenthusiast]

Even though for you it’s probably just two tiny dots, could we please acknowledge that o and ö are two different letters (and sounds). that means that they are not interchangeable: in German, they bascially make the difference between the name of a biblical hero who released the Israelites from slavery and a very offensive word for v agina

[rpmaniac]

Might be that you wrote gorev instead of görev. O and Ö are usually not interchangeable (at least not in the Nordic languages). Might also depend on whether the first letter is I or L.

[gwendolynlerman]

German grammar

Basics

The German alphabet

German uses the same 26 letters as English, with four extra characters: ä, ö, ü, and ß.

The first three are alternate pronunciations or "shifts" of the vowels a, o and u. The mark over them is called an umlaut (rhymes with zoom out). They can appear capitalized too — Ä, Ö, Ü — but you won't see that too often, because they don't occur at the beginning of many common words.

The ß ("sharp S") started being just a ligature for (or stylized way of writing) a double lowercase s, but nowadays it is considered a letter on its own and also has a capital form, ẞ. In Switzerland and Liechtenstein, the ß is not used at all.

If you're using a keyboard without these symbols, you can type ae, oe and ue instead of ä, ö and ü, and ss instead of ß, although they are not interchangeable.

[amandabe11man]

attention all English-speakers!

just gon’ remind everyone that the letters Å, Ä, Ö, Ø and Æ are  N O T interchangeable with the letters A and O!! they are NOT the same

consider this before writing shit like this for the aesthetic:

[lords-of-the-empire]

Someone tell CP that O and Ö are emphatically NOT interchangeable.

Reading the pages uploaded by @weirdponytail I saw that the 1st Eragon was spelled Eragön, it’s instantly cursed and I have mad respect for Galbatorix for trying to delete that name from history and fucking up his sword

[normal-with-adhd-is-a-joke]

I've studied quite a bit of German and the eszett (ß) one gets me every time. I want so badly to correct people but also it's SO funny to just watch them be blissfully ignorant. Also, if you ever forget what it means, remembers it's call an "eszett", which sounds like "S set" which is was it is, a set of S's (many German words allow you to use eszetts interchangable with two S's, especially because of rising computer use and the lack of an eszett key on computers). "ä", "ö" and "ü" aren't just fancy letters either. "ö" is the only one I remember because it's in my (long, very German) last name, it's pronounced like two "O"s with a little bit of an L sound at the end. It's written as "oe" in Americanized versions (like mine).

To people who use "þ" as an aesthetic "p"

þink again.

[badhockeymom]

We are used to it and I don't think it bothers most of people. But I need to say one thing about Scandinavian and Finnish alphabet: the umlaut dots above ä and ö and - in swedish alphabet- the little circle over å are not just accent marks. Ä, Ö AND Å are completely separate letters on their own, they pronounce differently than A and O and are used in different words. They aren't even close to a and o in the alphabet but in the very end of it, the last letters.

I have never heard of "Teravainen" being a surname in Finland, whereas "Hannikainen" and "Hännikäinen" are both pretty common but totally separate surnames.

And for Swedish letters, Å is closer to O than A in pronunciation and is not interchangeable with A in any words.

(And, in Swedish, Ä is mostly pronounced like E. The correct way to say Bäckström is more like Beckström than Backstrom. Bäck and Back are different words: bäck is a brook, back is a crate - or defender, a loan word from english.)

But yeah, we're so used to having our names butchered that we usually just don't mind as long as it works. I'm just as guilty here myself - I'm a mess with accent marks and leave them out too often, and just as often I won't bother to switch keyboards in the middle of writing in english and just replace my ä's with a's.

And my teuvo tag is teuvo.

Hey, i just saw your teuvo tag post: as a european person with accents in my name, its actually not as big a deal to leave them off as americans seem to think so! Its sorta different from names where misspelling has a racial element to it, white european names can genuinely just be written however and most of us are fine with it. (Obv not all, but a huge majority, especially people who move and work in an american environment)

this is good to know, thank you!!

i really like the accents but it’s harder to type them out when i’m trying to type fast so i never really did 😅 i’m relieved it’s not a big deal