#finnish because I know a few finnish speakers

[homunculus-argument]

Intelligence is a nebulous concept that can't be perfectly and exactly measured in numbers or other metrics, but there are things people generally agree as signs of at least some intellect. An ability to learn and employ new knowledge, adapting to new information, being able to notice patterns and correlations between seemingly unrelated things. Being able to adjust one's methods as needed, ability to make deductions and educated guesses based on incomplete data, being able to improvise if necessary.

And look. Don't get me wrong here. But I learned to read on my own when I was five, I literally have no memories of ever not knowing how to read. English is not my first language, I cannot officially call myself bilingual because neither of my parents was a native english speaker. I first picked it up by hearing it on TV. I could already read and speak english when I went into school, and for the rest of it I managed to get decent enough grades purely by improvising that nobody noticed that I literally never did my homework ever before I was 11. Nobody noticed that I have an attention deficit disorder before I was 27.

I learned to play the clarinet, the piano at some point, and though I lost my voice, I used to sing. If you gave me an instrument and played me a tune, I could repeat it playing by the ear. I could even write it down, note by note, if I heard it a few times and remembered it. If you gave me notes of a song I've never heard, I could whistle it from the notes.

I learned enough swedish in school to read the back of a shampoo bottle, but still enough to compare and contrast the nuance differences in the finnish, swedish and english translations of the same notifications at bus stops. I can summarise what is the unifying element between a long list of words with the same prefix or suffix, and name their mutual definition. I remember enough of the french I learned in school and spanish I learned on my own to roughly parse together portugese.

My parents met in university, but while I never made it to college, I've still made myself a career in something I never went to school for. I have no higher education in arts past high school art classes. I am a full-time professional in something I taught myself, working with a script I also wrote myself without any guidance past brief googling.

That being said, I can't read an analog clock. I've learned how to do a lot of things in my life, but that's the one thing I can't fucking do. You can show me a clock face and I won't know what it means. If I can't look at my phone and there's nothing with a digital clock available, I've learned tricks on how to get people to tell me the time without admitting that I can't read it. Like asking someone if they think the clock on the wall is on time, prompting them to look at their own clock and tell me what their clock says. Pointedly looking at the clock and remarking to people that We Have Plenty Of Time, and assessing from their reactions whether that is true or if I was sarcastic. I never learned to read a clock face, but I've learned plenty of ways to get people to read it to me.

And every single time I tell people I can't read a clock face, they start trying to explain it to me. Like look. I'm 29. You do not know any method to explain it that I would never have encountered in the past 20 years. None of them sunk. I've tried until I cried and I still can't do it. I could learn to translate poetry from french, how to put together a car engine, or how to skin a llama, but that is the one thing I cannot do. I do not know what the positions of the arrows pointing at numbers mean, and you can't make me.

[yellow-lemon-lime]

Shout out to the hairdresser today, who not only was very friendly and welcoming and gave me a sick new hair colour

But she also did all the right things when speaking to a foreigner trying to learn her language (Finnish)

She was more than happy to speak Finnish with me. Often times when Finns hear my accent or I'm struggling to find the right word, they will just switch to English, and I understand why like in places like the Dr's office or the DVV, where it's important that all parts understand what's being said. Or sometimes at stores to make service go faster, and usually a visit to the store doesn't take more than 30 minutes at max (and that's only if my boyfriend and I have decided to go browsing the entire store, and he speaks Finnish so I rarely have to open my mouth when we're at a store together) The hairdresser appointment I had took about 2-ish hours or so, so it wasn't a short visit, which meant there was a chance for actual dialogue, maybe not heavy language topics, but we talked about things like, how I like living in Finland, differences between Denmark and Finland, what Denmark is known for (LEGO, HC Andersen) what I like about Finland, my job goals etc. 2. She spoke in a slower manner, without going real slow and being condescending. This made it relatively easy for me to understand her, despite not knowing every single word, sure I misunderstood a few times, but then she just rephrased the question or repeated it in English, and then I would reply in Finnish. 3. She corrected my mistakes in a positive manner. I read often how some foreigners apparently hate it when native speakers correct their mistakes, and part of me understands why, because sorry to say, some cultures in the world are rather rude when it comes to not speaking their language perfectly (not mentioning any names), but then again, making a mistake can change the whole meaning of a sentence. Like "minä tapaan minun ystävä" vs "minä tapan minun ystävä". When I said something that wasn't perfectly conjugated or the right plural or whatever, she would still nod and indicate that she understood what I meant, and when she would repeat the word the way it's supposed to be.

Oh, and did I mention, the hair colour's awesome?

[dangmelearner]

Hi! I’m a Finn living in Ghana and married to a Dangme. I live in an area where there are a lot of Fante speakers but at home we speak Dangme and Finnish. I lied. My family speaks mostly English. But we are trying to speak more Dangme and Finnish. Anyway…

Dangme:

Dangme is my main target 🎯 language. I really really want to be able to speak with my in-laws.

Fante:

I rather reluctantly and passively learn Fante. Everybody speaks it at my workplace so I should learn it. But I don’t wanna. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know the answer. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Anyway a Fante teacher comes to our house every Sunday mainly to give my kids private lessons so they can catch up with their Fante peers. Fante is compulsory subject in their school. I’m so far behind my kids already.

Twi:

Everybody keeps telling me to learn Twi instead because it’s somewhat of a lingua Franca here. I did at some point but it distracted my Dangme learning and also confused me because it’s so similar to Fante. I may return to learning Twi at some point. But I want to master Dangme first. This might be a dumb thing to do but…

GSL/ASL

I am very interested in Ghanaian Sign Language and American Sign Language too. So sometimes I play around with those two. But like I don’t have any pressure to learn them. I just want to be able to communicate with a lady who sells me fruits and honestly she is so sweet I wish to be her friend so hopefully 🤞 I can learn a few phrases at least to get started.

French

Ok so I was really burnt out and frustrated in Dangme for some time and kinda gave up a bit. So as there was a language vacuum in my life obviously I had to learn SOMETHING. I watched SKAM France and fell in love. It was Covid lock down and I had lots of time so I was learning that a bit. It was so easy compared to Dangme. Anyway I only did like very basics and then sifted my focus back to Dangme. But I do still follow some French media and books when I get a chance. Also my kids have to take French in school so I sometimes learn with them.

Swedish

Yeah. I was supposed to learn Swedish in school. I mean, I think I can still read some simple texts but … I watched Young Royals and understood NOTHING. Ok maybe simple stuff like Jag älskar dig and stuff like that. If I had time I would revise Swedish. But alas, time is that one thing I lack these days.

English

Learnt it in school. I use it every day. Still not fluent though. I guess all I can do at this point is to read more challenging texts. I don’t really have a plan. I’m quite comfortable with my current level. I’m not a perfectionist.

Finnish

Having lived 10 years abroad I sometimes feel my own language is a bit rusty. Still someone contacted me that I should start offering Finnish courses here in Ghana. I mean… I don’t think I’m qualified but if there are people who need a tutor I guess I can help. But Finnish grammar is a real bitch.

I think that’s all for now. I try not to get involved with any more languages. Though my husband was suggesting we move to UAE for a while. Arabic? 😅

Anyway, that’s me. I would really like friends. Especially if you also struggle with learning rare languages. Or want help with Finnish.

Edit: I forgot Latin. I took 3 courses back in upper secondary school. But I can only remember: Ecce Laura puella Fennica i vinea. 😆

[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

[unnervinglyferal]

i have no fucking clue why the americas are so weird

to make it worse, i live in an objectively weird part of the americas right now and think it’s normal. the state i live in used to be part of mexico, so it was first colonized by the spanish, who set up catholic missions to colonize the native americans using religion and forced labor. this is making it sound less horrible than it was; i don’t have the energy right now to look up all the horrors that came from the mission system. and then the united states got the land from mexico and sort of colonized it a second time during a gold rush

the missions are still standing, for the record. there’s 21 of them up and down the coast, and i think a few of them still have mass on sundays. i’ve visited probably five or six of the missions, since they’re all historical sites. the historical path between the missions is marked by bells hanging from these things that look like shepherd’s crooks

also, spanish is commonly spoken in addition to english here. it’s because we’re so close to mexico and were once a part of it, and also because there’s been a lot of mexican immigration to this area. there’s probably been a lot of immigration from other central and south american countries to this area too, it's just that the mexican american community here is large and prominent. everything is bilingual

y'know what. that's why the americas are so weird. it's the layers upon layers of colonization

-flore

Oh huh.

Most places in Finland have signs in both finnish and swedish, since despite of native swedish-speakers only making up a small minority of the people, the language is still one of the two official languages. It's illegal to have a public service (like libraries and stuff) that don't have both languages. You should technically be able to live a whole life in Finland without speaking a word of it, and only knowing swedish.

[to-yngewai]

Finnish

I’ve decided to turn this into a “learning Finnish” journal. Just like my practicing chess, I guess. Hopefully this doesn’t burn out.

I read that if you study 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, it should take one year to learn Finnish.

I’ve been at it for a month already, though not at that speed. I’ve gotten through very simple phrases, some vocab, some verbs, and then a tiny introduction to noun cases, which English doesn’t have.

At first when I heard about noun cases I was like “huh, nouns change for the sentence? Well that’s interesting. I’ll try to adapt to including that.”

Now after a month, I had an epiphany.

You *need* those noun cases.

If you don’t have them, the language makes no sense. You can’t tell what is going on. You can’t make yourself understood.

Finnish has “noun verb noun” structure, but unless you’re using simple sentences and just saying “this is that,” it’s not going to get you far at all. You can’t tell what the sentence is actually saying without how the noun is written. Like you write “I want to go to France.” Okay, and do what? Go to France to visit? Go to France to live there? Go to France and stay there overnight in transport to somewhere else? Go to France and...what?”

You can’t tell from just the verb. The verbs are too vague. You can’t tell from word order. The word orders just seem to be what sounds “natural” with rules I’m still struggling to grasp. You can’t use articles, because there are no articles!!

Everything is figuring out from the context.

Everything relies on the casing of the nouns.

The plural doesn’t just change the noun, it also changes the adjective! Like if you say “that bunny is cute.” If you change it to plural, you don’t change the adjective. “Those bunnies are cute.” If it’s Finnish, you’d say “Those bunnies are cutes.” “Pupu on söpö.” “Puput on söpöt.”

No wonder this is a difficult language for an english speaker. I’m going into this with a (somewhat) good knowledge of Japanese, which is full of vague articles and having to know things based on context, but this is next level.

Oh, and there’s 15 of them.

Anyway, primarily using duolingo for this. At least at first. The local library has very little resources for learning finnish. An incomprehensible audio book which doesn’t even have subtitles, and a few phrase books which are for travelers which only teach specific phrases phonetically. But I’ll make do. I really want to learn it.

I love Finland.

Right now each post is going to be “Did I meet my 5 hour goal today?” And what did I learn. Since it’s duolingo, it’ll probably just be vocab and some sentence structure. The actual ‘rules’ seem to come from generous people who made comments on each sentence before duolingo locked them all. But that’s fine.

I can do this. It’s going to be hard. And I may actually never get to travel to Finland in my life... but I want to.

[beautiful-basque-country]

Hi! I was wondering if you know whether Google Translate is any good for Basque?

I’m a native speaker of Swiss German and Finnish, and am currently also studying French and Russian, and I’ve found that Google Translate can sometimes be really helpful for helping you get the general gist of a sentence that you’re struggling to understand in a language you’re learning. Google Translate for French, Russian and German is pretty decent at this point, as far as I can tell, because there’s a lot of training data for those languages, but Finnish is already quite a bit worse than them. So I was wondering, because there are comparatively few Basque texts that Google Translate could’ve trained on - Is Google Translate any good for Basque (especially Basque-English translation)?

I just realised I forgot to add the context info for my Google Translate ask, but I’m taking a Basque course at university and I wanna keep practising over summer break without having to bother the instructor with questions during her holidays :)

Kaixo!!

Mmm, I can't give you a definitive yes or no because I've had mixed experiences.

Sometimes I use it to translate Basque articles to English so I can share them here more quickly, but I always have to review and correct. Sometimes they're little details, but often there are full sentences that make no sense, especially if they include people or places names.

I'd say that it should work fine for basic sentences, but I've observed the AI's weakness are usually Basque verb tenses.

[samiwife]

Birthday Surprise🎂 ੈ✩‧₊˚ (Sami Yaffa x Reader)

A/N: TODAY IS SAMI'S BIRTHDAY AHHHHHH! So I'm going to make a fluff story about Sami because it's his birthday. Happy birthday to the most amazing and talented man I have ever seen, SAMI FUCKING YAFFA!!! 🎂🎂🎂

𓆩♡𓆪= Smut

ੈ✩‧₊˚= Fluff

⋆ ★= Angst

Today was Sami's birthday and you were planning a birthday party for him. Sami didn't really ask for much, he just asked to be with you. But you wanted to do something bigger. You knew Sami was going to be busy practicing with the guys so you went to work. The guys were also in on your plan. They were going to keep Sami busy while you set up things. You quickly drove to a nearby party shop and bought balloons and decorations. Sami's favorite colors were black and silver so you bought all things black and silver for him. You were also going to make his favorite Finnish dessert "Mansikkakakku". It was a strawberry meringue cake. He loved it a lot when he was a kid.

So, you quickly drove to the grocery store to grab the ingredients. You drove home and began to work. You first set up the decorations and set the table. You gently placed Sami's birthday present on the counter. This present was super special since it took lots of time and effort to make it. Then you set up the speaker and played music as you baked and cooked. All the meals you're making were traditional Finnish dishes that Sami loved. Today was all about Sami and you wanted everything to be perfect for him when the guys brought him over. Sami didn't even know you were doing this.

After a few hours of making food, you got a text from Razzle telling you they were coming in 30 minutes. Which was perfect timing since you just got done decorating the cake. You quickly ran to your bedroom to get dressed. You wore a black dress with black heels. After getting ready, you quickly set the table and waited. After 30 minutes, you heard a knock at the door. You checked the peephole and saw all the guys standing there with Sami with his eyes covered. You chuckled and unlocked the door. "Hey guys! Come in!" you said excitedly while gesturing for them to come in. "Kultaseni? What's all this about?" Sami said out loud. "Okay Sami, you can look now." You said while removing his hands from his eyes. Sami opened his eyes and looked around at the work you've done.

"Suprise! I decided to throw you a surprise party since you didn't ask for much, I wanted you to at least have a party with me and the guys. I hope you love it!" You said happily. "Oh my god, this is amazing. You did a great job. I'm so happy. Thank you kultaseni!." Sami said running up to you and hugging you. You laughed and handed him his birthday present. "I got this for you, it took me some time to make it." You said while smiling. Sami smiled and opened the box. It was a pearl necklace with the date of when you and Sami first started dating. Sami gasped and started to smile. "My god, baby this looks so pretty. Thank you!" Sami said while putting it on.

"You're welcome sweetheart, let's get started with this party. The night is still young." You said while grabbing beers and handing them to everyone. The rest of the party was loud music and alcohol. But, there were some funny moments when you played truth or dare with the guys. Andy was dared to lick a toilet seat, Micheal had to run down the street naked, Nasty revealed he never had a blow job before, and Razzle had to kiss Micheal for a dare.

Sami and you were still sober since you two weren't heavy drinkers unlike everyone else who was tired out and drunk. You mostly ate cake and food. After a few hours, everyone except you and Sami were knocked out. You sat next to Sami on the couch and laid your head on his shoulder. "Y/N, this is the best birthday ever. You did a damn good job at everything. The food, decoration, present, and everything Is just perfect," Sami said while holding your hand tightly. You smiled and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you, Sami, I'm so happy you loved it. I hope you had a great birthday." You said looking at his blue eyes. Sami kissed your head and the two of you slowly drifted off to sleep in each other's presence.

[softsky-daily]

9/19/2023

Is the sky gray or blue? I guess somewhere in between.

Positive thing: I got Tijuana Tuesdays with a friend which was good, and I watched the new trailers for the Yakuza games coming up.

They look really fun. I enjoyed 7 a lot and 8 looks like it basically takes on all the cool mechanics from 7 and adds even more to it, like the positioning in combat and the new minigames. 7外伝 is coming out in November which is the next game in the series, so I'm interested in seeing how it connects the two. There were a lot of story beats in the trailers I thought were crazy, in varying levels of crazy (this looks so fun) and crazy (what are they cooking). Also they're in Hawaii??

Anyways, in my continuing quest to spread the seeds of my influence in Japanese Club, I was asked by one of the officers to help brainstorm ideas for a Language Table. Basically, it'd be a weekly meeting where people come by and someone facilitates group conversation and it's all in Japanese. We did them in my undergrad university, but we had the benefit of being able to connect with native speakers and had our own Language Building to use. My current university doesn't even have a Japanese minor and from what I know there's few advanced speakers who can help facilitate. So it'll be a bit different than what I'm used to.

This may brand me as a bit of a hater, but learning Japanese can be especially tricky because it's very heavily connected to subcultures who are Not Normal about Japan (i.e. see it as just Anime or some kind of monolith usually skewing on the side of "wow this place is perfect and a utopia"). And then learning the language means needing to tread carefully because I've seen many Japanese learning communities who have this... meme-y veneer to the way they interact with the language. I think learning a language for any reason is always worth pursuing of course, but I do get annoyed personally when people just make memes all the time in places meant specifically for learning.

Buuut I'm not trying to rain on their parade. They can stay silly. As long as they stop romanticizing Japan.

I really do wonder if other languages have this issue. Do people learning Finnish or Hebrew have to deal with an onslaught of memes about the pop culture from that language's country all the time?? I imagine some must. Actually I would guess Korean might have a similar issue with how widespread Kpop has become.

But anyway, all this to say, the Japanese Club here is both a bit silly and lacks resources, which will be a bit hard to work with for the Language Table. But maybe I'm just being overly rigid thinking about it that way. People definitely have the enthusiasm and like talking to each other. That'll be helpful.

I can feel myself getting on my soapbox again about how so many Japanese learning places end up becoming just Anime Club 2. Like, I get it!! Anime is a huge gateway into Japanese culture!! Sharing interests is good!! It's fine!! <- trying very hard not to be a hater

[hanavesinauttija]

I'm learning Finnish because my linguist friend annoyed me into it and I wanted to start learning at least A language before my brain fully developed to an extent. I'm nowhere close to fluent knowing much at all because for me the important metric of fluency is how conversational you can be, but since you're a native speaker (I assume), I figured I'd ask a question that I have that came up as I was going through vocabulary: Since it seems like a fair few words are 'localized' loan words, from what I can tell, when in niche academic fields, would you happen to know if in Finnish they tend to either form like that or be 'true' Finnish words. Like, is there terminology for something like "weak isospin conservation" that preserves any amount of contextual meaning and isn't just the words for weak and conservation slapped along with whatever is used for isospin? (I'm not talking about stuff like sauna, I'm fully aware that's not an English word) Much appreciated if there is anything you can say on it, because I fully get if it's not something you'd actually be aware of.

That's a very interesting question! I am a native Finnish speaker, a master's-level engineering student, and a semi-professional violinist, so I can answer from these two contexts. Localization in other fields may vary.

"Weak isospin" seems to be translated as "heikko isospin". I could not find any source on the internet mentioning "weak isospin conservation" in Finnish, regardless of wording. I might translate it as "heikon isospinin säilyminen," but I'm not well-versed enough in the subject to say for sure.

This is indicative of the overall pattern in Finnish localization; the more niche you get, the less localization there is. Finnish academia shifts to English the higher you get, because scientific publication in Finnish is less practical as it is in English. Yes, you technically can localize it, but there's little need to. No-one's reading niche science publications in Finnish, so why bother?

In engineering we usually translate the easy words and use English for the ones that are even a little bit inconvenient. For example, the A* search algorithm was called the "A-star (pronounced englishly) algoritmi" during one of my algorithm courses.

In classical music we usually use the Italian technique terminology. While you could say "soita hidastaen," you'd usually say "soita ritardandolla" ("play slowing down" vs "play with ritardando"). The easier ones, again, might be in Finnish, such as "Kovempaa!" ("Play louder!") instead of "Forte!". These terms are, of course, in the notes themselves so using them comes naturally. There's no incentive to translate the Italian terminology, which is in world-wide use, into Finnish, so we don't.

If you're using terminology niche enough that translation software is struggling with it, chances are that whomever you're talking to knows English well enough to use that instead. Sometimes the translations that are in use are a bit roundabout, so I'd recommend translating with Wikipedia. Open the page for whichever thing you want translated and switch the page to the Finnish equivalent. If there isn't one, you're likely better off using the English term.

[winryofresembool]

Get to Know Me meme

Thank you @athenasparrow for the tag!!! :)

Last song: Taylor Swift Eras tour spoilers (if I have someone who wants to avoid those following me!)

...

Um, possibly Karma by Taylor Swift since that was the last song she sang in her concert and I spent a /lot/ (too much) of yesterday finding clips from the said concert. Also currently have this is me trying open in a tab but haven’t listened to it yet. 

Last Show: (referring to my previous answer) Watching a concert online doesn’t count, right? In that case, I think it was Diandra’s (a Finnish singer) concert in November. Yeah, I don’t really get to go to these often bc I live in the middle of nowhere :d

Currently watching: I watch very few TV shows these days (aside from certain anime but I’m not gonna list them here) but I currently have a tinykittens (a Canadian cat rescue organisation) livestream open and I take a peek at it every once in a while. Those Bramble kittens are super cute ♥ (I would absolutely love it if I happened to have a fellow TinyVillager following me! So if you do, pls come talk to me!)

Currently reading: While my TBR list is ever growing, I have to be honest, I haven’t really been reading published books for several months now. Blame the Jily fics. They are way better :P But if I have to mention one, I’ve been reading this book by the Finnish translator of Harry Potter (Jaana Kapari) where she tells about her translating process and it’s honestly pretty interesting, makes me wish I was a translator too.

(As for the Jily fics, do not ask me how many fic tabs I have currently open. I literally just visited the Jily tag here and was like :--------O ‘Oh wow, a lot of authors seem to have decided to post stuff last night’)

Current obsession: my poor friend @criis55 who has to listen to my ramblings every day would be able to testify for this: currently it’s Taylor Swift. I wanna talk about what my relationship with her music is because I’m not a long time Swiftie unlike so many of the people I’ve seen here are. I first started paying attention to some of her songs maaaaybe around the time I started writing Caleo fics so ~ 2020 (obviously I knew some of her hit songs before that but I couldn’t call myself a fan) but a year later she released Red (TV), incl. All Too Well 10 minute version and that was probably when I started thinking, hey, this song is wonderful, I should give a chance to her other songs too. Since then I’ve been slowly getting more familiar with her other albums (it’s been a longish process bc she has a /lot/ of songs and as a non native English speaker I need to be able to see the lyrics to know what’s really going on in the song) and found more songs that I enjoy. This very week is an important milestone to me when it comes to me being her fan because she just released 4 new songs/new versions of her old songs and started her tour and I get to follow it from the beginning and as a relatively new fan I find all that really exciting. Hence you may also see me talking about this more here on tumblr as well. 

Well, other than TS, Jily ofc remains high on my current obsessions list ♥

Tagging: @criis55 if you happen to want to do this, no pressure ♥

[bisluthq]

I did find the bump comment a bit strange ngl, but the second Blake replied “congratulations on your bump” I was like “wtf are you doing?”

I think the other thing to bear in mind is Kjersti Flaa is Norwegian and in my experience Scandinavians in general tend to be EXTREMELY fluent in English but ALL OF THEM even those with C2 proficiency phrase things oddly for those of us from English speaking countries. I’ve seen/heard this a loooot and I can’t think of all the examples because there’ve been a loooot. I know quite a lot of Scandinavian. The funniest/cutest of these was last year in France we made friends with this Norwegian gay couple and I actually am not 10000% sure what they do although I have them both on Instagram but u don’t talk about real life in Agde and they seem to have really serious jobs lmao so they also don’t really post about those, they post about food and travel and their dog, but both speak super eloquent English - probably far more eloquent than me in conversational speech - but I remember the weird thing they both did which is they would use the phrase “it’s super cool” (or just “super cool”) in lieu of standard discourse markers such as “like” or “you know” or "ok". So they’d say something like: “We went to the beach today because [it’s super cool] and we had super cool cocktails and quite a few beers, super cool, ya? so we’re not sure we’re up for drinks until a bit later is that super cool with you two? Maybe at 21:30 or so?” “Yeah we can do that.” “Super cool.” Obviously not THAT much but… almost that much. It was very cute and funny to me. A real thing I actually do remember the one saying is “we’ve been dating twelve years, super cool, ya?” and I said something along the lines of “wow that’s amazing and you seem so happy” and he proceeded to say it’s not always sunshine and roses and STILL peppered that with “super cool”. Sidebar aside, all the Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelander friends I’ve had or people I know or have known and even the celebs from those places - don’t know many Finnish people - all speak INCREDIBLE English but have very odd little quirks with how they do so.

so a Norwegian interviewer saying “bump” isn’t something I’d read into the way I would if it were a Brit/American/Ozzie/Kiwi/Canadian/Saffa talking.

and even if it had been a mother tongue speaker who’d congratulated her on her very obvious bump (she was like 7 months preggo?) it’s weird to essentially fat shame the woman as a response. Even weirder to cry a few years later about being subtly fat shamed because a dude is scared of hurting his back while lifting you.

[mattel-is-nobody]

Time to brainrot about something I guess since I'm being kept up with a migraine.

Now you probably wouldn't think it from looking at me, but I am actually very, very much deeply obsessed with linguistics. To an unhealthy degree, some might say. And one of my favorite linguistic concepts is "This is a stupidly hilarious pun in Language A, but it makes no sense in Language B" The prime example of this is an old Sumerian/Babylonian joke that at this point has had several thousand video essays written about it. You know the one: "A dog walks into a tavern. 'I can't see anything!' he says. 'I'll open this one.'"

And who could forget the Greek Philosopher Chrysippus? In one of the accounts of his death, it is said that he got a bit too drunk at a party and, upon witnessing a donkey eating figs, he said "someone should get that donkey some pure wine to wash down the figs!". He then fucking died of laughter at his own joke. Beause apparently that was the funniest shit he'd ever seen.

Now neither of those make sense in any living language or modern culture, but the fact that it was written down at all means it made enough people laugh for it to be worth recording. And it's fun to look at living languages and see what makes the native speakers laugh but still utterly baffles everyone else. Even better, digital archeaologists in a thousand years are going to have a field day with this post if they ever stumble upon it, so here are a few of my favorite untranslatable puns: Hungarian: A man is pulled over by the police. The officer asks, "Are you drunk?". The man replies, "No, sir, Ivett is my wife"

Japanese: Why dont Hawaiians go to the dentist? Good teeth.

Finnish: "A bar and a screwdriver". That's the entire joke, by the way. Set up and punchline, apparently both right there, and in the original Finnish it's only two words. Apparently it's a reference to something? I'm just going to assume this is a thing you say and people laugh, much like "omae wa, mou shinderu"

Spanish: What fruit is the most patient? It's a pear. So fun fact, my Aunt is from Mexico, and I decided to tell her this joke in the original Spanish (which as a consequence of having a Mexican aunt, I speak pretty well). And I shit you not that as soon as the words "es pera" left my mouth, she let out the longest, heaviest, most world-weary sigh I have ever heard in my 20 years of life, before returning to the tamales she was making. I guess she now knows that my pun game has transcended to include her native language, and in that moment she was preparing herself for the ensuing decades of Spanish wordplay

Another from Japanese because they are gods of wordplay: "7-Up, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, they're all types of what?" "Soda?" "That's right!"

Chinese: "Who is Mi's mother?" "Hua, because peanuts". I took Chinese in high-school and I can verify that this is the shittiest pun I've ever seen, but the reddit user who posted it says "I am yet to find a single Chinese/Taiwanese person who does not find it hilarious"

Aussie English (which I'm including both for English rep and because Aussie slang is so markedly different that Brits and Americans are still unlikely to get it): "What's the difference between fat and cholesterol? You can't crack a cholesterol".

Danish: One sign says to another, "Are you married?" The other replies, "No, I'm divorced"

AND MY PERSONAL FAVORITE: French: "He wished to be Caesar, but he died as Pompey" -- George Clémenceau, commenting on the death of President Felix Faure (I refuse to explain this one or give any further context, go look it up)

Oh and side note. Obviously, no world leader can speak every language, so interpreters are a necessity for negotiation. And of course, world leaders and diplomats are going to try the lighten the mood occaisionally with humor. But for negotiations between most countries, that's hard to do, because there are very few puns with much cross-linguistic utility. Sure, you have that one joke about where cats go when they die that works in English and most Romance languages, but for some more serious negotiations, the number of puns that would make sense in both languages is pretty close to zero, and may very well BE zero. So the question arises, how do interpreters deal with that? Of course there are a lot of possible methods, not all of which are good or even remotely efficient. You could just translate the pun word for word, but as evidenced by the fact that that's literally what I did above, it's not gonna work that well. Explaining the joke also isn't gonna fly, because as we all know, the second you explain a joke is the seond it becomes Not Funny Anymore. The method I've found that I think works best is just to say "They have said a pun that doesn't translate well to English. Laugh now." Which is funny not just because it works, but because it works amazingly. That person on the other end of the table (who we are assuming doesn't speak a lick of English) has no clue what the interpreter is saying, and so must assume their joke was translated faithfully. Sure, their interpreter might know depending on how the whole thing is set up, but considering the vetting process you have to go through to be an interpreter for the POTUS , I highly doubt anyone is going to risk national security over a joke being left untranslated. Both leaders have a laugh, everything ends on good terms, and we avoid nuclear annihilation for another few weeks.

[wordborne]

Hey, you were looking for fics written by non-native English speakers? I have a few as iokheaira on ao3 (same username as Tumblr, permission granted to use for non-commercial research purposes). My native language is Finnish, and this is an interesting study topic because I translate stuff into English for a living (not bilingual, just the relevant MA degree), so it's interesting to see what native linguistic features carry over!

I am! Thank you so much for sharing <3

Don't worry, this is just for my corpus linguistics class, but if something interesting comes out of it I might present it at a conference or at my faculty because I don't think people research fanfics as literature (my teacher doesn't even know what a fanfic is! He's a bit on the fence about it so I'm juggling between two corpus topics to see which one he likes the best).

In my case, I notice that my usage of 'that' (que, in Spanish) tends to carry over to my fics, so it'd be interesting to see what carries over from other languages.

Once again, thank you so much for sharing! Hope you have an awesome day!

[adventuretaryn]

Alright I have my five languages

and dammit Imma stick to them until I get somewhat fluent! Im saying five because that’s how many I can keep in a solid list on mangolanguages. 

1. French

2. Dutch

3. Finnish

4. Chinese

5. icelandic

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

In the absolute nicest way possible: how many languages do you speak? I know English, of course, and I have passable Spanish, and I’m simultaneously working on my Italian and French but I don’t even know enough to get by in either of those. And you’ve mentioned quite a few languages that you speak, or at least, that you’ve studied, and as someone who knows the struggles of trying to be multilingual, the amount you know is amazing and very, VERY impressive!

I also happen to love linguistics and language theory in general and I’d love to hear anything you might have to ramble about and discuss when it comes to linguistics in any languages, because it really is such a fascinating area of study.

Speaking of Tolkien linguistics specifically: I’m not someone who has actually really STUDIED a language. I grew up around Spanish speakers and did it for all four years of high school, but I never studied any of it from a scholarly perspective. It was always just learning about how to speak it, how to write it. What sort of linguistic quirks does Tolkien have when it comes to creating his languages? Do you see specific or obvious influences from real life in any of his languages? What are some of your favorite things about his languages, and the EVOLUTION of his languages?

Basically, please talk Tolkien linguistics at me!!

Hi, thank you so much for this ask! :)

Oh no, I don't really speak that many languages fluently! To start with, Latin I certainly don't speak, even though I took it the longest, but it's not a spoken language of course. (Plus when I was studying it in the later years and we were reading the Aeneid and stuff, you have like a page of vocabulary notes next to each page of Latin text to help you with the translations.)

I became reasonably conversational in Japanese after taking it for three years, but I'm definitely not fluent, and my skills are a bit rusty now. And I only took one year each of Russian and German, so that's not much. But I love learning languages and I would really like to polish up my Japanese, and revisit the other languages I've studied, plus study other ones :) I took at least one language each year of college, sometimes two at once, and I really miss it.

Yes yes yesssssssss let's talk about Tolkien languages. So, the obvious inspirations are clearly Finnish > Quenya and Welsh > Sindarin. But it's not a case of simple borrowing. Tolkien was too creative for that. Most people would struggle to create even one invented language. Tolkien, as you know, created multiple languages AND histories of how they all related to each other! I LOVE HIM! THIS MAN WAS INSANE! Exhibit A:

WHO DOES THIS? Also, he had beautiful handwriting.

Anyway. I don't even know where to START I have so many thoughts about Tolkien's languages. This will be very haphazard.

Okay, here's one that I think about a lot. Aegnor's name in Quenya was Aikanáro, which means "fell fire". The aika part means "fell, dire, terrible." Which is descended from an Eldarin root word gaya, "awe, dread". That same root word is the origin of part of the Sindarin word Belegaer. Beleg means great, and aer means sea. But aer is derived from that same word gaya, "awe, dread".

I just find this really cool because this is how etymology works in the real world! It's not a simple case of an ancient word for the sea turning into a modern word for the sea. It's a case of a word that means one thing being applied to another thing until it comes to mean something completely different than before. And I love that! And I especially love that you can trace root words from Eldarin into both Sindarin and Quenya!!!!!!!!!!!!! HE CREATED AN ACTUAL, FUNCTIONAL LANGUAGE TREE. I'M SCREAMING

Like, if you know enough words in Quenya, it's not hard to translate them into Sindarin, and vice versa, because they're actually, functionally related. IT'S GENIUS. IT'S AMAZING.

Not ONLY can you trace Eldarin root words into both Sindarin and Quenya, I also think it's so cool that Tolkien came up with multiple etymologies for things sometimes (party because he kept changing his mind!). For instance, he came up with both an Elvish etymology and a Valarin etymology for Taniquetil. In Quenya, it means "high snow peak". But another theory (yes... Tolkien came up with a theory for a word he created) is that it is simply the Elvish pronunciation of the Valarin word Dâhan-igwiš-telgûn. He came up with multiple (and conflicting) etymologies for the name Felagund too, among other things.

It will NEVER cease to amaze me that Tolkien not only made up etymologies for his invented words, he also sometimes went back and forth on which etymology was "right"! I remember reading a note in one of the volumes of the History of Middle-earth that said something along the lines of, "One of these etymologies for Balrog is correct, but I don't know which one." YOU MADE UP THE LANGUAGES, TOLKIEN! But I honestly love that he thought of himself more as a recorder of what was already there than the person making the decisions.

For example, there's that video of Tolkien writing in tengwar where he says, "My writing is very inferior to the Elves..." !!!!!!!!!! TOLKIEN, SIR. YOU INVENTED THIS ALPHABET. I love it so much. You have to watch it if you haven't seen it already! It's wonderful:

The way he talks about languages here is so quintessentially Tolkien... the delight connected with discovering a new language like a "new wine or some new sweetmeat or something". It reminds me of what he had to say about "cellar door"—and I'm sure this is not new to you, but for those who don't know, it was a phrase that he considered to have a beautiful sound independent from its meaning. He said in one of his lectures,

"Most English-speaking people...will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant."

Hence, the influence of Welsh on Sindarin. In creating his Elvish languages, Tolkien wanted to create beautiful languages, but not in the sense that they would be frivolous or flowery, he wanted them to be beautiful in the sense that they would be very pleasing to the ear, like "cellar door". Well, I'm extremely biased, but I think he succeeded. He DEFINITELY succeeded.

Oh, and back to the inspiration for Tolkien's languages for a second, there's been more discussion of the phonetic/grammatical influence on his languages but less discussion on what influenced his alphabets. I want to know how he came up with tengwar! And sarati! I would think that Japanese and Chinese would have had some influence, not on the sound or grammar of the languages themselves, but on the script. Tolkien sometimes wrote the sarati (the alphabet that preceded tengwar) vertically, like Chinese and Japanese, and his visual art drew some inspiration from Chinese and Japanese paintings, so I wonder if there is a connection there. Some people have also noticed similarities between Chinese characters and Tolkien's symbol that represents his initials:

One thing that I find really amazing about Tolkien's languages is that they were so fully formed and so interconnected that there are some cases where there are probably connections that he just didn't spell out, leaving Tolkien scholars and linguists to come up with their own theories. For example the potential relation between Valarin and the language of Mordor! Basically, the Ring of Doom in Valinor was called the Máhanaxar, the first part of which is derived from Máhan, "chief Vala", a loan word from Valarin māchanāz. Máhanaxar is the Quenya pronunciation of the Valarin word Māchananaškad. Here's what's so cool... David Salo, a Tolkien linguist who worked on the LOTR movies, theorized that the second part of this word may mean "ring"—it is the name for the Ring of Doom, after all—meaning that the Valarin word naškad could be the root of nazg, as in Ash nazg durbatuluk and Nazgûl. It would make so much sense for the language of Mordor, which was created by Sauron, to have similarities to Valarin.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's very late so this post has no rhyme or reason, but when asked to talk about Tolkien's languages I will HAPPILY do so! :) Thank you for the ask!!!!!