#english parts of speech

[that-was-a-bit-stupid-of-you]

*adverbs cannot make the insult come true, but the person will believe it like it is. You can say, "you're a bitch" and they'll think they are one. You can say "You are a terrible person with no human values" to a bad person, and they'll start thinking that. Saying "you'll die alone" will make the person have an irrational fear of dying alone and isolation, etc.

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of july

knar gavin strindberg grey

dahlia ravikovitch the love of an orange (tr. chana bloch)

danez smith summer, somewhere

hannah gamble your invitation to a modest breakfast: “your invitation to a modest breakfast”

claire schwartz lecture on the history of the house

joseph brodsky collected poems in english, 1972-1999: “a part of speech”

ralph angel twice removed: “alpine wedding”

bob hicok insomnia diary: “spirit ditty of no fax-line dial tone”

caleb klaces language is her caravan

philip good & bernadette mayer alternating lunes

hester knibbe light-years (tr. jacquelyn pope)

tracy k. smith life on mars: “the universe as primal scream”

rigoberto gonzález other fugitives and other strangers: “the strangers who find me in the woods”

stephen edgar murray dreaming

james schuyler other flowers: uncollected poems: “light night”

amy beeder because our waiters are hopeless romantics

diane seuss backyard song

tomás q. morín love train

safiya sinclair the art of unselfing

carol muske-dukes skylight: “the invention of cuisine”

peter gizzi the outernationale: “vincent, homesick for the land of pictures”

william matthews selected poems and translations, 1969-1991: “onions”

c.k. williams butcher

mark mccloskey the smell of the woods

jennifer chang the age of unreason

richard blanco city of a hundred fires: “contemplations at the virgin de la caridad cafeteria, inc.”

bob hicock the pregnancy of words

j. allyn rosser impromptu 

carl phillips then the war

stephanie young ursula or university: “essay”

gloria e. anzaldúa the new speakers

kofi

[cottagehowell]

“what’s an adverb” so true mr degree in English language and linguistics. this is the question we are all asking as, structurally speaking, the definition of adverb as a word class is basically nonexistent

[satsuha]

i've been thinking about nahyuta's title as the "last rites prosecutor" because i think it's an interesting part of his character that's immediately apparent from his first appearance... in japanese it's written as トムライの検事 (tomurai no kenji) with tomurai meaning funeral/burial. this is pretty self-explanatory considering his tendency to pray for the victim but i actually think it's really interesting that the localization opted for the term "last rites" instead

last rites are a specifically christian practice of praying for the dying to absolve them of their sins before they die - in other words, prayers given to the deceased wouldn't be considered last rites (x)

this is a pretty blatant contradiction of the original's meaning and what nahyuta actually does in the game but i think it's interesting to consider that the person he might be praying for is the defendant (and under khura'in's DC act, the defense as well), not the victim... even outside of khura'in we see that those who are proven guilty in murder trials are executed, and we know that nahyuta has been acting as a prosecutor under ga'ran, almost definitely sending several rebels and defense attorneys to their deaths in the process.

it would just be really tragic if his habit of praying came out of desperation at being forced to send innocents or even former comrades/friends to their deaths... whether it being interpreted as a funeral rite for the victim arose from the people around him or as another act of desperation from nahyuta to cover his actual intentions doesn't matter as much since i think one would have led to the other anyway...

[neroushalvaus]

Koko the gorilla didn't know ASL but, like, you could say that without invalidating the existence of speech-supporting signs

[hesperidia]

can we talk about this line. can we please talk about this line.

i've a half-assed theory here: Bram bringing Aku back to life via special vampire powers (and him keeping vampiric traits, apparently) meant that he gets to start over as a near blank slate, with only the primal instincts (more or less) of protecting Aya and the rest (or how Bram and now Aku called them: Princess and commoners) because that was Bram's last order. However he does not have memories of anything prior, hence "who the hell are you?"

2- He is messing with Atsushi in order to fool Fyodor. (unlikely scenario) But the way he used to speak all old timey and polite-ish until he faced Atsushi and was instantly rude caught my attention. Maybe his "not hatred" for Atsu trascends everything after all

[komarux]

started reading sbr take this

[estiniensays]

Our confrontation was cut short when the imperial guard arrived. It was then that Zenos took his leave. Citing boredom. [Hmph.]

[yo9urt]

Pokémon Fushigi no Motherfucking Dungeon !!!!

(i would put a screenshot here but my deck couldn't upload them for some reason.)

thoughts & comments on pmd in japanese below (VERY LONG)

28 new flashcards!!

uncountable new words that i did not add for various reasons!!

observations:

blessedly, the game is so far not using a lot of formal language. the personality quiz did use formal language but the actual characters themselves are speaking very casually (i’m actually really excited to see how the npcs speak in the future, i want to see how they’re characterized via their speaking styles)

one thing that really interests me in japanese is the 2nd person pronoun system and how people (or characters) choose to refer to each other and this was super fun to watch for in the game. in the first chapter, i counted 1 use of あなた (only in the “what’s your name?” menu input), several uses of きみ (most of which occurred during the personality quiz, but some of which were used by the partner pokemon prior to learning MC’s name; every time, it was written in katakana), 1 or 2 uses of おまえ (used by zubat towards the partner), and i noticed that after learning MC’s name partner exclusively refers to them by their name and does not use any kind of suffix. my guess is that this is either 1. because they are not human / this is standard practice in the pokemon world or 2. hinting at the fact that they end up having a very close relationship and that partner trusts leader immediately. i’m half expecting wigglytuff and/or chatot to be referred to as 先生 or something like that so we’ll see in chapter 2!!

speaking of expectations, i had a couple going in: 1. that there would be a lot of onomatopoeias, because they seem to have a huge amount of use in creative writing, & 2. that i would see a lot of the little stylistic bits & bobs i’m already familiar with in japanese that tell you more about a character. both of these came true! i’ve already added some new onomatos to my flashcards AND i noticed some fun things about the characters:

male partner uses ぼく (sensible - it’s either that or おれ, and he is NOT an おれ character at all) (funnily enough and perhaps somewhat embarrassingly i did name the partner in this game majima and in hindsight i’m thinking wow they are literally not like each other at all but it’s ok i’m just choosing to ignore it i cba to redo the entire save anyway. plus i customized it so he's gastly and i'm clefairy which is already the cutest duo ever and i don't want to change that especially because i also had to give them custom stats and movesets so WHATEVER majima is just going to be different in this universe and he can handle that. also the partner is written very cutely and giving him that name made him even cuter to me so its no big deal really)

speaking of cutely i literally can’t explain this because i don’t remember it being the case in the english version but genuinely there is something REALLY endearing about how the partner talks in the japanese version. i guess thats another reminder that things really do get lost in translation like im sure the TL team did the best they could but english partner and japanese partner already feel different from each other and the latter is so cute, in a way it does feel like he has a fuller range of expression here

i think male MC also uses ぼく? i swear i remember a “ぼくじしん” in there but who knows

ぼく and ほんとう (spelled ほんと by the partner but ほんとう in MC’s thoughts) were almost entirely in katakana (i think ほんとう might have been hiragana), also for some reason なぞ (“riddle” or “enigma”) was in katakana too???? just for artistic flair, maybe? おまえ was as well but that makes sense

zubat and koffing (zubat in particular) both had a rougher, more masculine speaking style, which is exactly what i expected from them. lots of sentence-ending ぜ and ぞ (male partner uses さ from time to time, but not ぜ/ぞ), and they called partner 弱虫くん which made me so mad on his behalf! so rude!!!!!!!

other thoughts:

i was worried about the lack of kanji but honestly it’s not impeding my reading at all. a lot of the words are words that don’t need kanji, and if they are kanji-based words then they’re either ones i’ve never seen before (and i can just look them up online) OR they’re ones i can recognize by their reading/the context/just generally being familiar with them after seeing them a bunch in other places. i definitely feel like my intuition for like…word boundaries and that kind of thing has already gotten stronger and will probably improve from playing this game lol

HOLY FUCK, READING PRACTICE. you would not believe the amount of reading i did. when i got to beach cave (literal very first dungeon in the game) i sat in the menu for maybe at least half an hour just straight up muddling through the 700000 words the game was putting in front of me. some of them i looked up, some i grasped from context, some i gave up on (but the last category was pretty small)

i was reading the entire menu and i got to the “hints” section and it was so long that i just gave up. a treat for future me

speaking of context, playing a game i know by heart was ABSOLUTELY the right decision. i could largely figure out what moves my boys have without knowing what the names of the moves meant by reading the descriptions and going “hmm…ghost…physical…low power…this is astonish!!!!!” or “normal…no damage…always lands…YAWN!!!” etc.

i also think i’m playing this at the right stage of my learning. just beginner enough to heavily benefit from the mass exposure/immersion aspect of it, but learnéd enough to recognize a great deal of what’s put in front of me, and already knowing the game really well makes it SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (X1000000000) much easier to bridge the gap between what i do and don’t know. i got a tiny bit mentally exhausted from all the reading lol but it was soooooo worth it, most of my studying right now comes in the form of kanji/vocab + grammar/structure + listening to music so i’ve been sorely lacking in the “just straight up reading things normally” department and this game really fixes that up for me :)

keeping it real my speaking is definitely shit because i never practice (unless you count singing…) but i found myself reading out loud as i played to help figure things out and i do feel like i improved a tiny bit by the end. the partner pokemon in particular was really fun to read for because they gave him a fairly emotional/heart-on-his-sleeve speaking style (not dissimilar to the english version, but it feels much stronger here as previously noted) so i got to have fun reading his lines :P i definitely felt like i was hitting the consonants much better and keeping everything flowing well

im trying to upload screenshots but it wont work, so for personal recordkeeping: SENTENCES THAT I READ AND UNDERSTOOD ALL BY MYSELF AND AM REALLY PROUD OF

いちどきめたことはさいごまでやりとおす？ roughly = “once you’ve decided to do something, do you see it through to the end/do you stick with it?” (lit. “one time decided thing TOPIC end until carry through?”)

「はどう」とは　きみのからだがはっするみえないエネルギーのことだ roughly = “[aura] is the energy your body gives off” (lit. “[wave motion] QUOTE TOPIC you POSS body SUBJ emit energy NOM thing is”)

オレンのもをたベると　HPがかいふくするぞ！Xボタンでメニューをひらき　「どうぐ」コマンドからたべてみよう！ roughly = “if you eat an oran berry, your HP will restore! try eating it using the ‘item’ command after opening the menu with the X button!” (lit. “oren NOM/CLASS fruit OBJ eat.NP IF ‘HP’ SBJ restore do EMPHATIC! ‘X’ button MEANS menu OBJ open(NOUN) [tool] command from eat-and-see-VOL!”)

why is the tutorial using ぞ???

is it because i picked boy during the quiz? is it trying to be manly with me??? am i reading too deeply into this? (probably)

i was surprised to see 道具 here because i just recently learned it and i was like “tool? there’s no tools in this game…” but i could tell from its menu position that it was item/inventory so i was like, huh, interesting use of the word…

この　かけらが　はまる　ばしょを　いつか　はっけんしたい！ roughly = “someday, i want to discover the place that this fragment fits into!” (lit. “this fragment SBJ fit place OBJ someday discovery do-want!”)

i did have to look up はまる but i knew all the other words on my own!!!!

it was so fun seeing words i recognized especially higher level (higher relative to where i am, at least, i.e. more recently learned) kanji words like 場所 ＆ 発見。noticing them in kana felt kind of like seeing your friend at a costume party and knowing it’s them without them telling you or something lol and i always get so excited seeing vocab words i know in the wild!! it feels great to recognize them naturally like that :)

[roomba-mangga]

thinking of using this quote from The Little Prince as an opener to a yaad&thistle au one-shot

it's quiet fantasy and inspired by children's lit - mostly the little prince and howl's moving castle. sort of a warmup and cool-down exercise in between my darker fics, a character study for yaad and exploration of what their interactions might look like under slightly more positive circumstances (outside the context of a forced familial relationship). first draft snippet below:

[ronanlynchbf]

and then an overwhelming sense of dread apear.

[applesauce42069]

We talk sometimes about different cultural crosses with Judaism but let me just tell you. I have an Israeli mom and a white Canadian dad. What a whirlwind

[dumbhero]

somehow adding "啊" to the end of my sentences to soften them has wormed its way into my regular speech and i didn't even notice i did that until just now watching this 说说中文 video... languages love to mix with each other in ways unbeknownst to their user

[tovaicas]

anyways my friends activated my conlang brain and I've made smth insane as usual

red is influences, blue is Elezen-family languages, green is like a mix bc I see the Alliance cities as having a trade language (that critically is limited to them).

I see Duskwight as a separate language from Black Shroud Elezen (but sharing a lot - easy enough to learn for those speakers). Coerthan and all its derivatives are a whole different language under the Elezen umbrella and isn't mutually intelligible with BSE. Because they split so early, they probably don't share much more than root words and etymologies; within the same family so not difficult to learn for other speakers of Elezen languages, but very distinctly different.

(also I'm not listing them but the branches extend to include other diaspora Elezen languages)

[chaotictoast]

This is possibly the best schoolwork I’ve ever done

[theotherpacman]

my most self-indulgent personal fantasy is that I am somehow taken to an alien planet. the aliens are peaceful and just want to learn more about my kind. they assign a team of linguists to decipher my language. I write as much as I can about Earth and use color coded alien highlighters to categorize every word by part of speech. over the next many weeks, using a series of drawings (by me) photographs (from them) and charades (by all of us) they get a grasp of written english and we are able to communicate. I tell them all the stories I can think of, and they are fascinated. during all of this I am treated as an honored guest. (they've also assigned a team of scientists to learn about my biological makeup and what foods are safe for me to eat)