#australian languages

[salsa-and-light]

My theory is that you have to grow up somewhere flat or in some sort of grid system.

I grew up on country backroads in rural Arkansas with lots of hills.

My Grandmother grew up in a grid town in the flat plains of South Dakota, she once told me to put a bowl on the west side of a coffee table and I practically short circuited.

It’s also relatively common in the indigenous languages of Australia that there is no term for left or right, only terms for cardinal directions, and people who speak these languages supposedly always know which way they're oriented.

I'm not sure of the ethics of putting people in a tilt-a-whirl to try and test the limits of that but the Australian outback is mostly flat so my theory seems to work in that case.

I'd love to see a follow-up to this to see if there's any obvious geographic correlation for the answers.

My friend just. Didn't know where north was???

[acrowseye]

i'm conducting an experiment. everyone who's from an english speaking country state your country, regional area and what you call the following images. i need to see something

[pencildragons]

bro i LOVE indigenous fusion music i love it when indigenous people take traditional practices and language and apply them in new cool ways i love the slow decay and decolonisation of the modern music industry

[emotionallyconstipatedturtle]

am i projecting?, yes.

yes i am.

[minyicho]

[all-eyes-no-dragon]

I wanted to rec this for a while. This is the most amazing humans are space orcs story I've ever read. It's called, "In Search of Home".

It's an original work so there's no fandom you need to know to read it, it's over 362,000 words, which is more than decently long, and has an ongoing sequel that's surpassed the word count of the first story (we love getting closure 💞). It has a happy ending (not a spoiler, it says in the tags) so don't worry about your heart breaking too much.

I'm rereading the first story and I feel kind of cool knowing the alien words.

I cried reading it, I laughed, I felt victorious. I love it so much and want more people to know it exists because original works aren't as popular on ao3.

Mind the tags!

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43547319

Summary:

[ljblueteak]

"Paul Asks About White Australia: Beatle Paul McCartney yesterday showed an unexpected interest in the White Australia policy." From The Sydney Morning Herald, June 19, 1964.

Text of the article reads:

At a Press conference yesterday Paul was approached by a Nigerian journalist.

Paul said "Are you an aborginal?"

The journalist said he was from Nigeria.

Paul said: "I didn't think that Australia allowed coloured people to come in. I remember reading about this in geography in school which I failed, and I thought it was a bit off. I thought they were the only country in the world to do this. I saw you today and I thought: 'Hullo, we'll get onto the Government right away.'

The journalist said he was allowed to stay in Australia under certain conditions which included having a job.

He said Australia was host to more than 3,000 Asian students and he had found no discrimination whatsoever.

Paul said: "That is good because there is in Britain and in America."

He said that apart from kangaroos and koalas his biggest early impression of Australia had been "this white-only business."

"John and I were talking about it only this afternoon."

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

so i made the best discovery today

[drelldreams]

Thinking about humans learning alien languages and vice versa. On one hand, you’d have humans butchering alien languages. Can’t produce the chirping and bellowing sounds of alien languages. Humans trying to speak the turian or krogan language would come out as an incomprehensible mess. Turians speaking human languages wouldn’t be able to pronounce b, m and p due to not having any lips.

On ther hand, you probably have languages with eerily similar phonology by sheer coincidence, so you wpuld have asari who can speak Finnish with a perfect Finnish accent, which leads Finnish speakers to believe the asari’s speech is being translated, but nope! The blue lady is speaking your language!

Maybe some turians would sound just like native German speakers when speaking German, except they leave out every p, m and p and you wonder what the hell your translator is doing.. turns out the turian guy is speaking German.

[everyoneisgayandtrans]

[unclepolyglot]

Writing Signed Languages in Fanfics

so i recently got into learning ASL (which is amazing!! i love it so much!!) and am planning to reference it when writing a Legend of Zelda fanfic, like certain facial expressions or how quickly/forcefully a sign is made, etc.

the thing is, since i'm hearing, i'm wondering if those of you who are d/Deaf or HoH can give me some tips on how to write a signing character, like things you wish you'd see in fanfics, or things you wish writers would stop doing.

also, to show that the MC is communicating in another language other than English, i'm thinking of using these Japanese 「quotation brackets」. thoughts?

[charlieisacastle]

so like fun fact about me, when i was 9 months old i saw my dad hit my mom and went mute. i had traumatic mutism (and autism jdkdmdj) but no one knew what it was called so everyone just assumed im never going to talk again and let me be mute for a good year. and tbh i kinda wish i could go back to that sometimes. like i wish i could have a get out of jail free card to not speak for like a year. not because im traumatized but bc i just dont want to. i wanna be the creature and find someone who can understand me even when im not talking aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[acrowseye]

part 2 of my experiment: what english-speaking country are you from, what region and what do you call the following images? if you don't know what the first image is please try to guess i'd love to see it

[gameo-archive]

"Cameo 3, to my pookie bearcubs! 🫶 I taught George to say "hello pookie bearcubs" in Auslan! 🇦🇺 (still need some refining but he has got the basics down pat!)"

[riordanness]

emercy coded

fuck off i love you so much for this

[naychezza]

Language

Hello

I am of (stolen gen) Wiradjuri decent.

I feel that my people's culture, connection, and community has been ripped from my grasp before I even got to inherit it.

I want to learn the Wiradjuri language, help keep it alive but I need some help. Tips, advice, resource recommendations, ect for learning the language, especially one with as many cases as Wiradjuri.

I already know about Stan&Flo Grant's Wiradjuri Dictionary (based on Dr. Stan Grant and Dr. John Rudder's work)

I have mostly enjoyed learning languages on my own before, but have never had good results.

It also might be important to know that I am autistic