#english spelling is weird anyway because of I guess the french influence?

[wesavegotham]

Unless the post is completely incomprehensible I feel like other people should be forbidden from correcting grammar and spelling on the internet.

A lot of people are not native speakers, typing is different than writing by hand and of course there is also auto-correct messing things up.

My own posts would probably be better if I used my native language. But I doubt there are many dc comic fans here on tumblr who would understand me so I'm kind of forced to talk about comics in a language that is not my own.

I probably sound arrogant quite often too, but man, how pretentious can people be.

And I'm the daughter of a teacher for german in Germany! I have corrected spelling and grammar in exams for my mother for years! I was raised to care about this stuff!

I'm still not going under anyone's post going "actually it's you're not your, huh huh". Like fuck off. How much of a pretentious prick can someone be. Get a hobby or something.

[helloarchivist]

So. This semester has been unpleasant from start to midterm and looks as though it’s going to be unpleasant all the way to the bitter end. I’ll make a separate post about it later but tl;dr the only real bright spot in a sea of needless unpleasantness and tedium is my German class. The teacher is a lot of fun, attentive, and knows how to balance group work and guided work so that we’re engaged but not left adrift in a language none of us speaks.

I really like my German teacher. 

However, there was a bit of an incident yesterday that’s left me stewing ever since. Partially because of the abrupt and incorrect nature of it and partially because this is the not the first time I’ve been around this circle. 

We were discussing silent letters in words in English. Specifically, we were discussing why words like “knight” and “knife” have the letter K in them if they’re not spoken and do nothing for the word. 

Now, I’m not saying my explanation was the gospel truth, but it went a little something like this. I raised my hand, she called on me, and I started to suggest that perhaps it was due to legacy impressions on our language made by French, as French has a HIGH prevalence of words with letters included that serve no purpose in pronunciation. (See here: Connaisaient, pronounced Connay. That’s six whole ass letters on the end you better fucking put in the right order but never ever say.)

Before I could get through the end of the word “French,” she jumped all over me. “English is a Germanic language.” She said. 

Which is factually accurate. English and German are definitely sister languages and definitely share a lot of linguistic and grammatical behaviours. 

“French has had no influence on English, neither has any other language. English is Germanic, and the only language that has ever influenced it or that it bears any resemblance to is German.” 

...Not factually accurate, even vaguely. 

“Nice try, good guess, but you’re still annoying anyone trying to learn your language with the  K in knife.” she jokes. Everyone has a good laugh, the class moves on, and honestly, she didn’t mean anything by it so I wasn’t gonna flex linguistic anthropology on her. (it was a little embarrassing to be laughed at about something I wasn’t actually wrong about, but that was my button that got pressed, not her problem, not the time or place, ya know?)

My big issue was mostly that this is the third professor I’ve had with a Ph.D. in both their own first language and English that did not seem to have any objective history on my birth language. This German teacher, with a Ph.D. in both German and English, and TWO French teachers, with Ph.D.s in French and English, have all said with absolute certainty that the only language to have any linguistic influence on English is German (said by the German teacher) and French (stated separately by both French teachers.) 

Wrong...and wrong. English is the weird Frankenstein’s monster of languages, stealing bits of older languages like the flu steals pieces of a host immune system and stitching them together into an amorphous blob of viral, living tissue that is constantly shifting and changing over time. Anything that got close to English in its infancy and adolescence was sifted through, stolen from and left without one of its kidneys in the ice bath of history. There is no single source for its evolution, regardless of whether the person asserting so sources that singular influence as German OR French. While I’m deeply considering writing the only-partially abridged anthropological perspective, I will stick to listing a few examples of vocabulary that help to illustrate the--at the VERY least shared-- parentage of English. 

Pork. In German, Pork is called Schweinefleisch. You can see some familiar cognates here, schweine = swine, fleisch = flesh. Both fairly easily recognizable. In French, Pork is called...Porc. Funny how that’s one single letter off the English word. Couldn’t possibly be a legacy word from when French-English was considered the high English in the 1600s, a period where germanic-English was the low English. Just a coincidence, I’m sure. 

Letter (as in to write a letter to a friend.) The word for letter in German is “brief.” Again, an easily recognizable cognate as we use the term brief in English for professional write-ups, we call certain types of meetings “briefings,” etc. The word for letter in French is...lettre. Again, impossible they’re related, must be a cosmic coincidence. 

Hospital. In German, this is krankenhaus, which translates to “sick house” as krank is sick and haus, another easy cognate, is house. In French, the word for hospital is--wait for it--hôpital. Technically one letter off again, although the accent mark here is used to denote where a word in old-French used to have an s in it, which was later omitted as the language shifted towards modern pronunciations. 

Forest. In German, this is Wald. Not really an easily recognizable cognate this time. In French, the word for forest is forêt. Again with the accent mark to show the placement of a since-omitted s. 

I realize these are only four words. Am I suggesting that these four words make up a decisive thesis on the linguistic heritage of my birth language? Absolutely not. And hell, I could be wrong about why English has so many words that contain letters that must be present in the spelling but are never said, or a least never pronounced consistently. (Looking at you rough, through, thought.) All I’m saying--and really all I’m trying to illustrate here--is that the presence of a linguistic behaviour inconsistent with the Germanic roots of the language pretty thoroughly disqualifies the theory that English had a singular origin, and all other grammatical quirks must have developed spontaneously. We live on a tiny little planet all on top of each other. 

Languages definitely have stronger similarities with other languages that share their roots (which is why it’s arguably easier to learn French if your first language is Spanish or Italian, for example, and likely why I find German much more intuitive than French.) but that doesn’t mean languages not related by root have had no influence on each other. That would be like saying the only people that influence your personality in your life are your direct blood relatives. Do you get a lot of your basic physical and psychological traits from your blood relatives? Of course! But that doesn’t mean we don’t take on board the traits and lessons of the people around us, and language is no different. How could it be, when language is the vehicle with which we communicate with those other people around us?

Anyway, it’s 1:53 AM and I think I’ve gotten this mostly out of my system. Sorry for the long ass post on your dash in the middle of the night and for the unsolicited mini linguistics lecture, I just had to get this out of my head or I was gonna keep stewing on it. 

[kidsviral-blog]

The Terrifying True Origins Of Favorite Childhood Stories. YIKES.

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/the-terrifying-true-origins-of-favorite-childhood-stories-yikes/

The Terrifying True Origins Of Favorite Childhood Stories. YIKES.

As it turns out, children’s stories aren’t all puppies and sunshine (no matter what you thought growing up). As it turns out, most of the famous nursery rhymes and fairy tales have a really dark origin. 

1. Cinderella: Mutilation and Murder

Wikimedia Commons/Alexander Zick

“So, if I agree to feed you, you’ll totally blind my step-sisters, right?”

There are many different versions of the Cinderella story from all over the world, the earliest known variant being the Greco-Egyptian tale of Rhodopis. Most people today, though, know the story of Cinderella through Disney’s 1950 animated version. This version is based almost exactly on the 1697 version of Cendrillon by French author Charles Perrault, with some singing mice added in for fun. But this is the nice version. There are two others that were deemed unfit, and rightly so, for children. The Grimm brothers’ Aschenputtel features the wicked stepsisters getting their comeuppance by first slicing off bits of their feet to get into the famed slipper, which has been, over the years, glass, gold and fur. When that doesn’t work, they still attend the wedding, only to have their eyes pecked out by birds. The Italian version, Zezolla, or “Cat Cinderella,” by Giambattista Basile, finds the Cinderella figure killing her step mother by breaking her neck. 

2. Sleeping Beauty: Corpses and Sexual Assault

Wikimedia Commons/Gustave Dore

“Ugh, we really have to clean this castle out when you wake up.”

The Grimms’ Sleeping Beauty, also called Briar Rose, plays out similarly to Disney’s 1959 animated feature. Except for the hundreds of rotting bodies. See, everyone in the castle falls asleep for a hundred years and exists in a magical suspended animation. Outside, a thick forest of thorn bushes grow, preventing anyone from coming in and breaking the spell. That doesn’t stop people from trying, though, and as a result, they all die in the thorns. A century after the spell is cast, it expires and the briars simply turn into flowers by the time the lucky prince happens by. The flowers probably didn’t really help with all those corpses lying around, though. Going back farther, we find that, like with Cinderella, the Grimms borrowed heavily from a Basile story called “Sun, Moon and Talia,” in which Talia, the Sleeping Beauty figure, is raped by a king while she sleeps and gives birth to twins. The babies are born while she’s still sleeping, and wake her by sucking an enchanted splinter from under her fingernail. She marries the rapist king, but his jealous mother attempts to have the babies killed and served at dinner and to burn Talia, but everything works out and the queen is burned instead. Happily ever after!

3. Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary: Torture, Religious Persecution and Political Upheaval

“Ha ha, where did you think I got those heads?”

Though there’s some dispute, this little rhyme is commonly associated with Queen Mary I of England, otherwise known as “Bloody Mary,” and who is possibly the origin of the mirror chanting tradition as well. She reigned for only five years, from 1553 to 1558, and was a fierce upholder of the Roman Catholic faith. During her short reign, she executed hundreds of Protestants. The “silver bells” and “cockle shells” are said to be torture devices, while “how does your garden grow” may refer to her lack of heirs. Conversely, the rhyme is also said to be about Mary, Queen of Scots or about Catholicism itself. 

4. Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe: Racism

Flickr/John Liu

“Eeny meeny…oh, isn’t there a rhyme that can help me choose that comes with less baggage?”

A favorite of indecisive schoolchildren everywhere, there’s nothing immediately about this rhyme. However, a tiger was not originally what they were catching by his toe. No, “tiger” is a relatively recent replacement for the original, which was the n-word. How charming. Even though most people don’t know this, it’s still an uncomfortable truth about the rhyme’s past and will probably leave a bad taste in your mouth. However, there have also been many similar “choosing” rhymes with origins in Ireland, England and Germany, usually using nonsense words and lacking blatant racism. That part came in with the American versions. 

5. Snow White: More Torture

Wikimedia Commons/Franz Jüttner

“Oh, you’re alive? Well…okay.”

If you thought the 1937 Disney version where the prince kisses what’s essentially a dead person in the middle of the woods was weird, you haven’t even begun to dig into this story, which, by the way, also has variants from all over the world. For one thing, the Grimm’s version, which the Disney one is based on, has the wicked queen trying to kill Snow White three times, and in the end, the wicked queen is forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance in them until she falls down dead. The Grimms were really into cruel and unusual punishment. But wait. It gets better. Another Basile story, “The Young Slave,” has a young girl being poisoned and placed in seven nesting crystal coffins. However, she grows while in her magical coma. She’s wakened by a jealous aunt who beats her and makes her a slave until she is saved by her uncle, who helps her restore her health and marries her off to a baron. This story might have influenced both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. 

6. The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Even More Torture and Execution 

Flickr/universalstonecutter

“We’re in a Victor Hugo novel? Oh, this isn’t going to end well.”

In Victor Hugo’s original, Quasimodo is still in love with the beautiful gypsy girl Esmeralda, and acts as a liaison between her and her lover, the already-engaged Phoebus. Also, in the book, she’s not actually of Roma heritage, because racism, and was actually kidnapped as a child. Anyway, the lustful Archdeacon also desires Esmeralda, and when he finds out about her tryst with Phoebus, he stabs Phoebus and frames her for the attempted murder. Both she and Quasimodo are tortured, and Esmeralda is hanged for murder and her body tossed into a mass grave. Quasimodo crawls in after her and curls up around her corpse and dies. Many years later, the crypt is opened, and their skeletons are found wrapped around each other. Yeah, the Disney version is a lot happier. 

7. Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush: Prison Workouts

Wikimedia Commons

“This is pretty nice for a prison yard.”

Legend has it that this rhyme originated in Wakefield Prison, and English prison for women, where the inmates were brought outside to exercise around a shrub or tree in the yard in the mornings. Mulberries, actually, grow on trees, not bushes, but it’s still an interesting theory.

8. Ring Around the Rosie: Maybe Not the Plague, but Subversion at least

Wikimedia Commons/Jessie Wilcox Smith

“Do we have the plague yet?”

The rhyme is famed for “actually” being about the Bubonic Plague, and I thought this, too, for a long time. “Ring around the rosie” was supposed to reference a skin rash that signified the onset of the plague, and “pocketful of posies” referred to the flowers people carried to mask the stench of death, which was believed to cause the illness. “Ashes” was thought to be a corruption of “achoo” as sneezing or coughing fits were the last symptom before “we all fall down.” You know, as in dead. However, historians highly doubt this. the rhyme first appears in writing in 1881, well after any major plague outbreaks. Early versions of the rhyme don’t even include lyrics about ashes or falling down and mainly seem to be about literal flowers. More than likely, the rhyme was simply rhythmic and charming, and was used by teenagers to subvert religious bans on dancing in the nineteenth century. Like with the Mulberry Bush rhyme, it’s possible that these have no “hidden meanings,” but rather that people just like to dance in circles.

9. The Little Mermaid: Suicide

Wikimedia Commons/Edmund Dulac

“Okay, maybe I didn’t think this through.”

Hans Christian Andersen was not a cheerful guy, and his best known fables, this and The Little Match Girl, are evidence of this. In the original mermaid story, the mermaid, in love with a human prince, has her tongue cut out to become a human and, hopefully, win him over. Being a human is painful, though, and it feels like she’s walking on knives. But her love is so great, she dances for the prince anyway. The prince, though, ends up marrying another girl, who he really loves, and the mermaid is heartbroken. The only way for her to return to the sea, though, is to kill the prince. She can’t bring herself to do it, though, and hurls herself into the ocean, where she turns into sea foam. Later, Andersen amended the ending and had her become a “spirit of the air,” because I guess that’s more cheerful?

So, can you still look at your favorite childhood stories and rhymes the same way? Don’t worry, there are plenty more messed-up fairy tales from all over the world, some that stem from actual historical issues, and some just speak to the weirder parts of the human psyche.

Read more: http://viralnova.com/mary-mary-no/

[kidsviral-blog]

The Terrifying True Origins Of Favorite Childhood Stories. YIKES.

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/the-terrifying-true-origins-of-favorite-childhood-stories-yikes/

The Terrifying True Origins Of Favorite Childhood Stories. YIKES.

As it turns out, children’s stories aren’t all puppies and sunshine (no matter what you thought growing up). As it turns out, most of the famous nursery rhymes and fairy tales have a really dark origin. 

1. Cinderella: Mutilation and Murder

Wikimedia Commons/Alexander Zick

“So, if I agree to feed you, you’ll totally blind my step-sisters, right?”

There are many different versions of the Cinderella story from all over the world, the earliest known variant being the Greco-Egyptian tale of Rhodopis. Most people today, though, know the story of Cinderella through Disney’s 1950 animated version. This version is based almost exactly on the 1697 version of Cendrillon by French author Charles Perrault, with some singing mice added in for fun. But this is the nice version. There are two others that were deemed unfit, and rightly so, for children. The Grimm brothers’ Aschenputtel features the wicked stepsisters getting their comeuppance by first slicing off bits of their feet to get into the famed slipper, which has been, over the years, glass, gold and fur. When that doesn’t work, they still attend the wedding, only to have their eyes pecked out by birds. The Italian version, Zezolla, or “Cat Cinderella,” by Giambattista Basile, finds the Cinderella figure killing her step mother by breaking her neck. 

2. Sleeping Beauty: Corpses and Sexual Assault

Wikimedia Commons/Gustave Dore

“Ugh, we really have to clean this castle out when you wake up.”

The Grimms’ Sleeping Beauty, also called Briar Rose, plays out similarly to Disney’s 1959 animated feature. Except for the hundreds of rotting bodies. See, everyone in the castle falls asleep for a hundred years and exists in a magical suspended animation. Outside, a thick forest of thorn bushes grow, preventing anyone from coming in and breaking the spell. That doesn’t stop people from trying, though, and as a result, they all die in the thorns. A century after the spell is cast, it expires and the briars simply turn into flowers by the time the lucky prince happens by. The flowers probably didn’t really help with all those corpses lying around, though. Going back farther, we find that, like with Cinderella, the Grimms borrowed heavily from a Basile story called “Sun, Moon and Talia,” in which Talia, the Sleeping Beauty figure, is raped by a king while she sleeps and gives birth to twins. The babies are born while she’s still sleeping, and wake her by sucking an enchanted splinter from under her fingernail. She marries the rapist king, but his jealous mother attempts to have the babies killed and served at dinner and to burn Talia, but everything works out and the queen is burned instead. Happily ever after!

3. Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary: Torture, Religious Persecution and Political Upheaval

“Ha ha, where did you think I got those heads?”

Though there’s some dispute, this little rhyme is commonly associated with Queen Mary I of England, otherwise known as “Bloody Mary,” and who is possibly the origin of the mirror chanting tradition as well. She reigned for only five years, from 1553 to 1558, and was a fierce upholder of the Roman Catholic faith. During her short reign, she executed hundreds of Protestants. The “silver bells” and “cockle shells” are said to be torture devices, while “how does your garden grow” may refer to her lack of heirs. Conversely, the rhyme is also said to be about Mary, Queen of Scots or about Catholicism itself. 

4. Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe: Racism

Flickr/John Liu

“Eeny meeny…oh, isn’t there a rhyme that can help me choose that comes with less baggage?”

A favorite of indecisive schoolchildren everywhere, there’s nothing immediately about this rhyme. However, a tiger was not originally what they were catching by his toe. No, “tiger” is a relatively recent replacement for the original, which was the n-word. How charming. Even though most people don’t know this, it’s still an uncomfortable truth about the rhyme’s past and will probably leave a bad taste in your mouth. However, there have also been many similar “choosing” rhymes with origins in Ireland, England and Germany, usually using nonsense words and lacking blatant racism. That part came in with the American versions. 

5. Snow White: More Torture

Wikimedia Commons/Franz Jüttner

“Oh, you’re alive? Well…okay.”

If you thought the 1937 Disney version where the prince kisses what’s essentially a dead person in the middle of the woods was weird, you haven’t even begun to dig into this story, which, by the way, also has variants from all over the world. For one thing, the Grimm’s version, which the Disney one is based on, has the wicked queen trying to kill Snow White three times, and in the end, the wicked queen is forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance in them until she falls down dead. The Grimms were really into cruel and unusual punishment. But wait. It gets better. Another Basile story, “The Young Slave,” has a young girl being poisoned and placed in seven nesting crystal coffins. However, she grows while in her magical coma. She’s wakened by a jealous aunt who beats her and makes her a slave until she is saved by her uncle, who helps her restore her health and marries her off to a baron. This story might have influenced both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. 

6. The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Even More Torture and Execution 

Flickr/universalstonecutter

“We’re in a Victor Hugo novel? Oh, this isn’t going to end well.”

In Victor Hugo’s original, Quasimodo is still in love with the beautiful gypsy girl Esmeralda, and acts as a liaison between her and her lover, the already-engaged Phoebus. Also, in the book, she’s not actually of Roma heritage, because racism, and was actually kidnapped as a child. Anyway, the lustful Archdeacon also desires Esmeralda, and when he finds out about her tryst with Phoebus, he stabs Phoebus and frames her for the attempted murder. Both she and Quasimodo are tortured, and Esmeralda is hanged for murder and her body tossed into a mass grave. Quasimodo crawls in after her and curls up around her corpse and dies. Many years later, the crypt is opened, and their skeletons are found wrapped around each other. Yeah, the Disney version is a lot happier. 

7. Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush: Prison Workouts

Wikimedia Commons

“This is pretty nice for a prison yard.”

Legend has it that this rhyme originated in Wakefield Prison, and English prison for women, where the inmates were brought outside to exercise around a shrub or tree in the yard in the mornings. Mulberries, actually, grow on trees, not bushes, but it’s still an interesting theory.

8. Ring Around the Rosie: Maybe Not the Plague, but Subversion at least

Wikimedia Commons/Jessie Wilcox Smith

“Do we have the plague yet?”

The rhyme is famed for “actually” being about the Bubonic Plague, and I thought this, too, for a long time. “Ring around the rosie” was supposed to reference a skin rash that signified the onset of the plague, and “pocketful of posies” referred to the flowers people carried to mask the stench of death, which was believed to cause the illness. “Ashes” was thought to be a corruption of “achoo” as sneezing or coughing fits were the last symptom before “we all fall down.” You know, as in dead. However, historians highly doubt this. the rhyme first appears in writing in 1881, well after any major plague outbreaks. Early versions of the rhyme don’t even include lyrics about ashes or falling down and mainly seem to be about literal flowers. More than likely, the rhyme was simply rhythmic and charming, and was used by teenagers to subvert religious bans on dancing in the nineteenth century. Like with the Mulberry Bush rhyme, it’s possible that these have no “hidden meanings,” but rather that people just like to dance in circles.

9. The Little Mermaid: Suicide

Wikimedia Commons/Edmund Dulac

“Okay, maybe I didn’t think this through.”

Hans Christian Andersen was not a cheerful guy, and his best known fables, this and The Little Match Girl, are evidence of this. In the original mermaid story, the mermaid, in love with a human prince, has her tongue cut out to become a human and, hopefully, win him over. Being a human is painful, though, and it feels like she’s walking on knives. But her love is so great, she dances for the prince anyway. The prince, though, ends up marrying another girl, who he really loves, and the mermaid is heartbroken. The only way for her to return to the sea, though, is to kill the prince. She can’t bring herself to do it, though, and hurls herself into the ocean, where she turns into sea foam. Later, Andersen amended the ending and had her become a “spirit of the air,” because I guess that’s more cheerful?

So, can you still look at your favorite childhood stories and rhymes the same way? Don’t worry, there are plenty more messed-up fairy tales from all over the world, some that stem from actual historical issues, and some just speak to the weirder parts of the human psyche.

Read more: http://viralnova.com/mary-mary-no/