#anon if you need a safe space to practice sharing your thoughts -- my dms and my ask box is always open <333< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[airenyah]

(thanks for the tag @gillianthecat)

hey anon!

since i was tagged i'm just gonna share my own experience as someone who's first language is not in fact english (i'm a native german speaker). but before i do, just a quick heads up it's almost 3am over here and so this might not be all that coherent... (and also, this will be long)

anyway, anon, i feel your struggle. i feel your struggle very much

(putting the rest of my stories, explanations, and tips under a read more to avoid clogging people's dashes)

part 1 - my personal, very specific struggle

for me, that struggle is very specific, however. you see, i recently finished drama school. and since i'm austrian, i went to a drama school right here in austria where all my classes were in german which means all my classes were in german. and you know what, there's actually a whoooole lot i could say about bl when it comes to acting! but i don't. why? because i just don't have to words for it, not in english

for example, in bad buddy episode 4 there is this moment where ink fixes pat's hair and i absolutely ADORE that moment for acting reasons but i can't really share it on here because how do i talk about spielrichtungen in english? there's also this thing people are saying about ohm, which is that he's got chemistry with everyone, and i could actually tell you exactly why that is and what he's really good at EXCEPT no i can't, because how do i say "anspielen" in english?

with some terms my teacher mentioned i do know how to get the point across in english, for example the word "vordenken": i can just translate that as "to think ahead" and it will make sense in english, but then there are other things like a sentence such as "er zergeht diesen satz" which seems a little impossible

and there are so many terms and concepts that i want to talk about, but i can't, because i don't know how to say "aktionen setzen" in english. or how to talk about "brüche", "fallhöhen" or "gedanken/bilder setzen" in english. i probably could talk about "senden" in english, but i don't know if the word "to send" makes sense in that context to an english speaker. and there's so much more...

so how do i deal with this problem? unfortunately the answer is: i just don't talk about these things on here

however, i'm lucky! because my mom also went to drama school and my mom also knows how to talk about acting in german and my mom also watches asian drama and actually watches bl with me. so my solution to this is... instead of talking about these things on here in english i just talk about them in german with one specific person!

so i guess one advice i can give you is... if you feel overwhelmed sharing your thoughts in english, try to find at least one bl-loving friend who speaks your native language where you can let all your thoughts out. even if it's frustrating not being able to share your thoughts with the entire fandom, having at least one person as an outlet really does help in my experience

part 2 - general fangirling(gn) in english

ok so i've just talked about my very specific struggle with very specific technical terms. so how about talking about your favorite show in a more general sense?

alright, so if you go onto my blog you'll see that i ramble a LOT. especially in the tags. i've even written one or the other meta post (not many -- you can still count them on one single hand lol)

but you see, i wasn't good at that in the beginning either! what's the big secret? practice makes perfect! you gotta start at some point, only then you can get better

for example, when i was 16 i definitely couldn't talk about my own thoughts and feelings about tv shows very well, especially not in english. but i spent my entire late teen years reading tons and tons of spn/destiel meta on here. and then i slowly started sharing my own thoughts more and more, using the words and phrases i'd been seeing for years

just reading isn't enough. you'll build up a big passive vocabulary that way, which is a fantastic start! but if you really want to be able to share your own thoughts you actually have to turn that passive vocabulary into active vocabulary. and you do that by actively using the words and phrases

and it's difficult, it really is (personally i think turning passive vocabulary into active vocabulary is one of the hardest things about language learning). but the more you actively share your thoughts, the more you practice, the better you'll get!! i'm 25 now and i can spend ages rambling on a topic (case in point, just look at this post oops), but it was a long and difficult road. but i did it, because i kept trying

the main point that i'm trying to make here is: you have to turn sharing your thoughts into a habit, because the more you do it the more it will become second nature and you'll start doing it automatically. (as a teenager i was very bad at pointing out what i liked or disliked about a media. i actively had to train myself to do it. and it's the same thing when it comes to sharing you thoughts in english - practice practice practice, that's the important thing)

part 3 - more tips

however, i get that it's intimidating to just put your thoughts out there from one day to the other...

→ so my tip is: start small!

but how? here are some ideas:

share your thoughts in the tags

if you see a gifset, in the tags just say what you think about it, what you think about that moment/scene/parallel/etc. if it's too overwhelming then just write a single sentence! if you don't know how to share details then just share your thoughts in a more general way! it doesn't really matter, as long as you share something (and you'll see, over the years that something will turn into more and more

2. find a friend - create a save space

another thing you can do is, find a friend (or more) that you trust! talk to them in private, share your thoughts with them in private. it's a save space and you get to practice expressing your thoughts in english without a big audience watching you. i've made the experience that having at least one trusted person takes away some of the anxiety of being judged

→ another tip that i have is: don't give a fuck

if you're worried about not making sense, make a point of just not caring about it! remember, this is tumblr. no one is writing any actual papers or reviews to be published anywhere

many people just type out their thoughts as they're spilling out of their heads. a big chunk of thoughts on here are written as people are half delerious either from an emotional high after an intense episode or because they're writing down their thoughts at an ungodly hour (hi. it's 3:30 am now). do you think these people worry about being coherent? no, they don't. they just want to get their thoughts out somehow. in what way literally doesn't matter, as long as they're out. i can promise you, a whole chunk of posts definitely aren't even proof-read (this one for sure isn't haha)

also, a big number of people are english 2nd language speakers themselves! we get it. we know how difficult it is to share your thoughts in a foreign language. i promise you, most people won't judge you for your mistakes, in fact, most people will be delighted that they get to read what you have to say at all (and if anyone is being and asshole about this, then they're the problem, not you)

also,another very important thought: don't write for other people, write for yourself!! that's how i do it with most of my posts as well... i'm my own main target audience because i can't predict if anyone's even going to read my thoughts or care about them. so who the fuck cares if they're making sense if they're making sense to me? that's really what matters at the end of the day

→ lastly: share as much as you are able to

i've already mentioned this earlier, but actually i think this is important so i want to put it as it's own thing. as i've said, if you don't know how to say something in detail then for the time being just share as much as you can! the details will come with practice and experience

another thing you can do is to try and find other words. try to describe the concept. for example, i don't know how to say "er zergeht den satz" in english, but i can say "he ruins the effect of the line by saying it while walking in that exact moment". i may not know how to effectively translate the word "zergehen" in english but i can describe what i mean by it in many words

the dictionary is also your friend, and you can also look at other people's posts and check what words and phrases other people use to bring certain points across (seing how other people write/talk about a specific topic is actually a real thing professional translators/interpreters do and is referred to as "looking for parallel texts". which is something i should do for acting terms. i should read up on acting in english so i can finally learn the terms, but i've just been lazy so far hahaha)

i promise i'm done now

anon, as you can see this is the perfect example: this post is super long, it's only semi-coherent, there is barely any structure, it's not really thought out... it's just my thoughts spilling out into the post as they come to me

i don't even know if you're even reading this far, but to be honest, i don't care! i want to share my thoughts anyway, because now at least my thoughts are out there, for anyone to interact and to add on to. if you have indeed read up until here and if my thoughts did help you, then i'm very delighted!!!! but at the end of the day this is the internet and i'm just here to scream into a void, really...

i think i was indeed asking for advice so thank you for getting it despite my confusing way of asking! i believe i'm in a situation where i want to share my thoughts but 1. i can't seem to put them in order or make them make sense 2. english is not my first language and even though i can understand it and i usually use it online rather easily i struggle with translating the more analytical thoughts from my head to english, if that makes any sense. sometimes i get very overwhelmed too because of all the shows i'm watching (i'm really gonna have to put some of them on hold), not even commenting, just watching, so i can only imagine how overwhelmed i'll be if i decided to actually post about them

the thing you said about choosing one or two shows to talk about is pretty interesting and i think it is a good idea, i'll probably do that in the future if i can even choose the ones i wanna dissect publicly

tbh i have to think about if i really wanna do it because like i say i'm pretty happy just reading all your thoughts, so well put, and reblogging some pretty gifsets. it's just that sometimes i feel like there's so much in my head -too much- and i need to write it down or it'll explode, the thoughts pile up and it gets busy, am i making any sense?

the notes app is my best friend, not just for this but in life in general

thank you for listening to me and giving me such a thoughtful answer, you were never meant to be a lurker this is your element

you're welcome! thanks for writing back. I'm glad the advice was wanted.

I would say to your first point, tumblr is probably one of the safest places to let go of the need to make sense. people ramble inchoherently on here all the time. and you can always edit things later, or delete them later, and make them unrebloggable so they don't escape your control. so, no pressure to try, but if you did want to, this is pretty good place to experiment with it.

As to the second point, I am mono-lingual so I have no direct experience with it myself, but I know there are many people on here writing about BL in English as a second/third/etc language. Perhaps one of them will see this and chime in with any thoughts?

Mine are mostly an echo of the first point - this is not a place where you need to make perfect sense. And, although English dominates BL tumblr (at least from what I have seen from my English speaking corner), you can always choose to write in your first language, just to get the thoughts out of your head and out there. there may even be other speakers of it who are interested in reading your thoughts on BL. I have google translated posts in other languages before, I'm sure other people have as well.

And of course, reading and reblogging gifsets is always a wonderful use of tumblr.

But yes, there is something about writing it all down that clears up space, like releasing a pressure valve. So I can certainly see the appeal.

thank you 😊

edit: anon - look at the comments for some great advice from other people. (thanks you all!)