#french speakers give us a summary pls

[lotties-ashwagandha]

DINERO PARA COMER

pairing: lottie matthews x reader

word count: 935

notes: AU where lottie speaks spanish instead of french bc who the fuck speaks french. also i speak spanish but i am NOT a native speaker so i did the best i can,, pls correct me if i made any mistakes bc im sure i absolutely did

summary: lottie teaches you spanish, and you fail terribly at trying to converse with her in it

Spanish was fucking hard. 

You’d been trying to learn from Lottie for weeks — after you’d expressed interest in it she had been giving you daily lessons in Spanish, as adamant as Duolingo personified that you learn everything she could teach you. She was surprisingly good at teaching, but still you struggled, caught up especially on irregular verbs and prone to confusing your nouns. 

Lottie had taught you enough so far, however, with her daily lessons in nouns and verbs and extremely complicated conjugations, that she had begun to try having conversations with you in Spanish every so often. They were short and you usually did terribly, but it was fun, and every time you heard her speak Spanish you almost fainted. 

This time, you wanted to surprise her. She always initiated the conversations in Spanish, and you always fucked up, but this time you were determined to both start a conversation in Spanish and participate it in it perfectly. 

You found Lottie in the kitchen. She’d begun to make dinner, was chopping vegetables to make a vegan pasta she’d spent the whole day excitedly telling you about — she’d found it from some hippie food magazine, you weren’t quite sure, and you didn’t understand. She never cooked, you always did, and you tried your best to prepare yourself for the disaster that surely was to come with Lottie in the kitchen. 

You crept up beside her, looping an arm around her waist and pressing a quick kiss to her jaw, and she relaxed into your embrace. She was heavenly, and you took pride in being able to be a calming force for her. 

“Dinero?” You asked, looking at the dinner recipe she had in front of her. 

Lottie grinned, looking from you to the recipe, pausing and meeting your gaze. “Quieres dinero?” 

“Si, tengo hambre.” 

“Entonces, comerás dinero?” 

“Si…” you trailed off, confused at her reaction. She’d started laughing at you, and you watched with a dead serious expression, a bit hurt. You’d only asked if the paper in front of her was the dinner recipe, and then you’d told her you were wanting dinner since you were hungry, and she was giggling at you. “Que hice?” you asked, sighing. 

She took pity on you, trying her best to suppress her laughter and pulling you into her arms, kissing you. You allowed yourself to melt into her, letting your embarrassment fade away as much as you could. 

“What were you laughing about?” you asked, and she shrugged, smiling mischievously. 

“Just your strange appetite,” she teased. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well, it’s just that it’s not every day I hear someone tell me they want to eat money.”

You paused, embarrassment crashing over you like a wave as you realized — dinero. Not dinner, money. Cena was dinner. 

“Fuck,” you breathed, resisting a smile, for while you were incredibly embarrassed it was also one of the funniest mistakes you’d ever made in learning Spanish, and you’d made many over the past few weeks. “You know, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if your weird hippie magazine recipe had us eating money to stop capitalism.” 

She rolled her eyes. “Tal vez yo ya voy a darte dinero para la cena.” 

“I don’t know what you said, but it didn’t sound very nice.” 

“It means I love you very much and I’m absolutely not going to give you money for dinner.” 

“I don’t believe you,” you said, “but I do like the translation you gave me.” 

She chuckled, shaking her head, and after a moment her eyes lit up and she gave you the same look of inspiration she always gave you when she’d come up with a new way to make you practice your horrible Spanish skills. 

“Come here,” she said, and moved you to the cutting board. She picked up the knife and put it in your hands, standing behind you. “Cuchillo,” she said, gesturing to the knife. 

“Cuchillo,” you repeated, and she nodded, letting her hands fall to your waist and resting her head on your shoulder. 

“Tomates,” she said, gesturing to the tomatoes on the cutting board. “Corta los tomates.” 

You began to cut the tomatoes on the cutting board. You would’ve done anything she said, could have listened to her give you such simple instructions for hours, she was so perfect when she spoke, and in Spanish especially. You were a bit ashamed for getting so flustered by her, addicted to her, but she was so perfect in every way and you couldn’t help yourself. 

“Pon los tomates en el sartén.” 

You put the cut tomatoes in the pan on the stove with the rest of the ingredients Lottie had already cut. You felt a rush of pride when she hummed in approval, and you turned to face her, still wrapped in her embrace. 

“Mi preciosa,” she said softly, and one of her hands came up to trail along your jaw. She kissed you gently, and you relaxed into her arms, letting her initiate and control every moment as your mind left you during every second you spent with her lips connected with yours. 

When you pulled away, Lottie smirked, reaching into her pocket. She presented you with a penny, and you glanced at her with confusion, taking it apprehensively. 

“What is this?” You asked, and she looked incredibly proud of herself when she answered. 

“You said you wanted money,” she said. “Just, please, promise me you won't eat it.” 

Sighing, you gave her back the coin. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?” 

“Never,” she said, and turned back to the pasta. 

****

TRANSLATIONS:

dinero: money

quieres dinero?: do you want money?

si, tengo hambre: yes, i'm hungry

entonces, comeras dinero?: so you're going to eat money?

si: yes

que hice?: what did I do?

tal vez yo ya voy a darte dinero para la cena: maybe I will give you money for dinner

im too lazy to do the rest of them oops figure it out

[empressofkalumina]

LES HÉROS NE MEURENT JAMAIS (Heroes Don’t Die) x

[antiquatus]

✧ ━━ the courts of switzerland present GIULIO DE MEDICI of THE PAPAL STATES, a CARDINAL of THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. the THIRTY-THREE year old had been LEARNED and CHARITABLE before the break of war but have now become RUTHLESS and ZEALOUS. HE is often remembered by their likeness to JAMES NORTON and THE SMELL OF INCENSE IN HIGH-CEILINGED CATHEDRALS AS THE SOUND OF LATIN ENUNCIATIONS SPILL FORTH FROM HIS LIPS ; A RED GALERO TO KEEP THE GLARE OF THE SUN AWAY , WHICH NONETHELESS SPARKLES OFF A BEJEWELED PECTORAL CROSS ; and ANTIQUATED TEXTS SMUGGLED AWAY FOR PERSONAL PLEASURE . the rumor mills of europe claim that his allegiance lies with THE CHURCH and that he is for WAR.

yes, hello, i am henry  (  twenty, gmt+8, they/them  )  and this is my bastard supreme catholic crusader-king wannabe : giulio michele cardinal de medici, archbishop of esztergom and cardinal of the  (  one, holy, catholic, and apostolic and bigoted  ) church. here is his about page , his biography  (  which is basically just the headcanons section of the app  )  , some wanted connections, and  (  if you care to read a whole buncha words  )  here’s the whole application. read down the cut if you want it summarised + the first task! :) if u wanna plot, send me a dm @ i am a mushroom! 🍄#9146 or hmu here on tumblr ims.

content warning for usual mediaeval church brand of bigotry + mentions of: disordered eating, scrupulosity, obsessive-compulsive tendencies

SUMMARY

hhhhhhhhh

crusader-king wannabe, what else do u need 2 know?

hashtag only 1099 kids will remember

CHARACTER SHEET

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME :  giulio michele de medici

MEANING :

giulio — from latin, a cognate of julius, the meaning of which is irrelevant, as it was chosen more to invoke julius caesar

michele — italian form of michael, meaning who is like god?

de medici — medici, plural form of medico, meaning doctor, physician

MONIKERS / NICKNAMES : giulio, papabile

TITLE : 

commander of several abbeys, scattered throughout the italian peninsula (multiple dates to present)

administrator of bozen (1538 to present)

archbishop of esztergom-budapest (1540 to present)

cardinal of the roman catholic church (1544 to present)

prelate of the roman inquisition (1550 to present)

vice-camerlengo of the apostolic camera (1556 to present)

GENDER & PRONOUNS : listen... he’s actually Agender but do u rlly expect the church/himself to like... accept anything beyond the gender binary... that being said, the imago dei is inclusive and also inherently non-binary so... there is that... (one day, giulio...... one day...........) — pronouns are he/him

ETHNICITY : white

DATE OF BIRTH & AGE: 25th december 1526, thirty-three

ZODIAC SIGN : capricorn sun / virgo moon / sagittarius rising

ORIENTATION : do u know that playlist in spotify that’s just like is this sufjan stevens song gay or just about god? ... yeah, like that exactly.

MARITAL STATUS : married to the LORD

OCCUPATION : cardinal, archbishop, crusader LARPer

CURRENT LOCATION : 

switzerland...?

BACKGROUND

PLACE OF BIRTH : florence, tuscany

RESIDENCES : 

basilica cattedrale metropolitana di santa maria nascente, milan, lombardy villa d’este, tivoli, lazio

RELIGIOUS VIEWS : roman catholicism, somewhat of a catholic mystic in the vein of pseudo-dionysius, hildegard von bingen, and meister eckhart (hashtag eckhart did nothing wrong!!!)

EDUCATION : private tutoring, ecclesiastical catechism, autodidact in a great deal many things

LANGUAGES SPOKEN : italian, latin, ancient greek, hungarian, bulgarian, serbian, russian, arabic, hebrew, french, german, spanish, english, old church slavonic

ALLEGIANCES : the church & himself (to him? there is no difference)

the house of de medici: only nominally loyal, he thinks there are far better things to pay attention to than temporal matters such as these

the one holy catholic and apostolic church: his #1 bae

FAMILY :

papa & mama medici: parents

piero de medici, older brother

francesco de medici, younger brother

giovanna de medici, younger sister

OTHER FAMILIAL RELATIONS :

—

APPEARANCE

FACECLAIM : james norton

HAIR COLOUR / STYLE : i’m so mad abt this... but yes... he has a tonsure... press F in the chat pls // though he has stopped shearing his hair in switzerland

EYE COLOUR / SHAPE : blue, and idk... eye-shaped? 

HEIGHT : 1.85m / 6′1″

BUILD : fluctates: for reasons specified in the neurological conditions section below, this isn’t very consistent; however, if this was modern day, redditors would just spam him with “delete facebook, hit the gym, lawyer up!!!!”

SPEECH STYLE : mellifluous to the point of inane verbosity, uses more words than he should; that being said, he possesses the uncanny ability to pick up a language easily and quickly, inserting local colloquialisms to the point that he sounds like a native speaker; nevertheless, he consistently speaks in a formal register (sometimes! even to family members!) and has a very blunted affect, diminishing the effect if only slightly

RECOGNIZABLE MARKINGS : n/a

BEAUTY HABITS : for a mediaeval european, he is actually very hygienic; takes baths obsessively, definitely more than once a week, which does link to his fixation with purity both metaphysical and temporal; hates public bathhouses with a passion; combs his hair and parts it to the side, favouring his left

PERSONALITY

TROPES : the chessmaster, bookworm, our angels are different, knight templar, lack of empathy, lonely rich kid, affably evil, & raised catholic (duh).

INSPIRATIONS : lenny belardo (the young pope), crusader kings ii (the game), pope julius ii (history), adso (the name of the rose), john the beloved (history, the bible), jacopo belbo (foucault’s pendulum), henry winter (the secret history), the prince (the prince, niccolo macchiaveli)

MBTI : intj-t (the architect) 

ENNEAGRAM: 5w4 1w9 4w3 (the researcher) sp/sx

ALIGNMENT : lawful good, insofar as goodness is aligned to catholicism

TEMPERAMENT : choleric but perhaps more arguably a choleric-sanguine hybrid

HOGWARTS HOUSE : slytherin

POSITIVE TRAITS : charitable (to catholics), brilliant, prodigious

NEGATIVE TRAITS : manipulative, narcissistic, self-serving, self-righteous

HABITS : has a tendency to fidget his fingers; gnaws on his lower lip to the point of bleeding when thinking, not that he realises it

HOBBIES : reading, writing, playing this new thing called chess

USUAL DEMEANOR : affable to the point of boring people, charming to catholics but cooler against non-catholics, somewhat easy to talk to but one has the niggling feeling that he’s not as invested in the conversation as he should be, people hear the word cardinal and thinks he’s bigoted to the extreme (which he is) but he always deflects and he can be agreeable (but probably slips by still calling istanbul constantinople though!), very learned and nerdy and will talk about theology all the goddamn day if nobody stops him, presents as a very non-threatening (affably bland) cardinal who albeit has very fixed opinions about All The Things

HEALTH

PHYSICAL AILMENTS : n/a

NEUROLOGICAL CONDITION : thinks of himself and presents as neurotypical but probably has szpd (schizoid personality disorder), a form of scrupulosity in the vein of alissa (in strait is the gate by andré gide); also arguably has some form of disordered eating, cycling between binging and extreme fasting, which gives him a weight leaning toward lanky

PHOBIAS : haphephobia, fear of touch; his scrupulosity can also be arguably defined as a phobia of sinning, but that’s basically a whole other complex

ALLERGIES : allergic to SIN!!!! n/a

SLEEPING HABITS : an insomniac, though he thinks it a common affliction; has a habit of reading until late as a way of staving off boredom; may sleep a grand total of only three to four hours at nighttime, though he makes up for it through a post-lunch siesta (which is a habit he picked up from the pope)

SOCIABILITY : presents as a social butterfly, if albeit sterner than most; can slip into conversations of any kind easily, but always ever in a professional context; has no real friends, but can lay claim to easy acquaintanceships; forever holding people at an arm’s length, which is just the way he likes it

ADDICTIONS : drinks the communion wine more often than he should; other than that, he can be almost puritanically temperate, to the point of self-affliction (?); addicted to the idea of purity

[kinoglowworm]

Possessive Markers in Kazakh (or, why all those cute pet names end in ‘m’)

Been thinking about writing this one up for a while, but a combination of heavy snow and encouragement from @thissupposedcrime (who wanted to be tagged when this got posted) means it’s time. It’s thoroughly warmed my heart to see writers going out of their way to find and use Kazakh terms of endearment in their YOI writing. So few people know much of anything about Kazakhstan and Otabek is such fabulous representation to get people interested. This isn’t about correcting anything, just explaining a construction that you might be seeing if you’re reading or writing Otabek-centered fics. Or if you’re just interested in learning a little more about the language.

A quick disclaimer: My background is in linguistics and I’ve done a fair bit of work on Turkic languages of the former USSR, but I’m not a native speaker of Kazakh or any other Turkic language. I spent almost 9 months in Kazakhstan, mostly in Almaty, studying the language, but I’m not fluent. I’m pretty confident in explaining this topic, but if you know more than I do and you see a mistake, please let me know (thanks to @qisforqazaq and @spaceman2823 noting a few spelling mistakes, which have been corrected, and @starkysnarks for native speaker confirmation).

So, a little background about Kazakh as a language: Kazakh is a Turkic language, closely related to (among other things) Turkish. Unless you start buying into overly-ambitious attempts to trace all human languages to a common linguistic ancestor, Kazakh is unrelated to any Indo-European language (English, Russian, French, Hindi, Farsi, etc.) except by contact. This means that some of the ways words are created and strung together are entirely new to someone only familiar with languages from this family.

Indo-European possessives are typically marked on the noun doing the possessing (one of the common functions of the genitive case), if a word is changed at all:

English: Yuri’s cat ← ‘s indicates ownership of following noun

Russian: коньки Виктора (kon’ki Viktora, - Victor’s skates) ← ‘a’ marks genitive case (the genitive ending depends on gender and number of the inflected noun)

Kazakh does have a genitive case, but it also has another structure that marks possession on the thing that’s possessed. So we get constructions like:

Отабектiң мысығы (Otabekting mysyghy - Otabek’s cat) ← here, both the owner and what is owned have endings reflecting that relationship. Otabek has a genitive -ting ending (which has a couple of forms that depend on the phonetics of the root word), and mysyq has an ending showing that it is possessed by a 3rd person subject (this also varies slightly depending on the phonetics of the root word).

(note: I’m being pretty lax in my transliterations to avoid using nonstandard Latin characters, and largely defaulting to standard transliteration for Russian Cyrillic but I did make sure that each Kazakh Cyrillic letter had a unique transliteration)

This ending agrees with its subject in being 1st, 2nd or 3rd person, with some phonetic variation. Here’s a few more examples:

Менiң шайым (Mening shajim - My tea) (var. m/im/ym)

Сенiң алмаң (Sening almang - Your (inf.) apple) (var. ng/ing/yng)

Сiздiң кiтабыңыз (Sizding kitabyngyz - Your (form.) book) (var. ngiz/ngyz/ingiz/yngyz)

Оның есiгi (Oning esigi - Its door) (var. i/y/si/sy)

I won’t go into a lot of detail about the different variants of each here, but 1st person always includes [m], 2nd person always includes [ng], third person always ends with i or y. If folks ask for a writeup about how Kazakh affixes depend on phonetic features, I’d probably write that up separately.

A side note about the informal/polite versions of ‘you’: If you Google Translate up some Kazakh dialogue, it defaults to using the more formal ciз (siz) which probably isn’t what you want when you’re writing heartfelt dialogue between friends, family or lovers (so, basically all the Kazakh dialogue I’ve seen in fanfiction).

So, what about plurals? This is where we hit the thing about forming words in Kazakh that really lets this happen. So, where in a language like Russian, a single given case ending will contain information about the gender AND number AND case of the noun, Kazakh uses separate endings for all of these things (except gender - Turkic languages don’t have grammatical gender at all. Anywhere the language identifies the gender of something, it does so using distinct root words). So, plurals just entail adding an ending. And aren’t marked as frequently (This doesn’t work out perfectly in pronouns because of language contact and colonialism, but I’m not going to rehash my whole thesis here - but can you tell that ‘siz’ used to be a plural?).

Бiздiң қаламыз (Bizding qalamyz - Our city)

Сендердiң иттерiң (Senderding ïtterring - Your (pl., fam) dogs)

Сiздердiң ��ектебiңiз (Sizderding mektebingiz - You (pl, form.) school)

Олардың бақшасы (Olardyng baqshasy - Their garden)

In an inflectional language like Russian, there wouldn’t be room to include this kind of ending because it couldn’t also encode information about other cases. Because Kazakh is an agglutinating language, you can keep tacking on suffixes all day. In fact, you can encode a whole clause in one word that would take many in an Indo-European language like English:

Жазушыларымыздан (zhazushylarymyzdan) - That which is from our writers

Back to cutesy affectionate language, though. One of the other advantages of this structure is that it allows you to indicate an association or relationship without using a possessive pronoun. So, all of the places where жаным, ботам, күнім, сүйіктім, or алтыным turn up, they have a relationship to the speaker embedded in them. So, for example, zhanym isn’t the word for soul, zhan is.

Жан - zhan - soul (жаным - zhanym - my soul)

Күн - kün - sun (also, day; күнім - künim - my sun)

Сүйікті - süjikti - favorite, chosen (сүйіктім - süyiktim- my chosen one)

Алтын - altyn - gold (алтыным - altynym - my gold/treasure; this word was also transliterated by a certain show as ‘altin’ So, yes, it is Otabek’s family name, which means him using it as a term of endearment seems particularly pointed.)

So, let’s say that you wanted to write Otabek talking to Yuri about his cat. He might teasingly refer to the cat as сүйіктің (süyikting, your most favored one). Even if they were speaking Russian (this kind of thing def. slips into the way that Kazakh speakers speak Russian, especially when comfy with friends, because it’s just not as elegant in Russian) (also, when drunk and not remembering that not everyone speaks all the languages you do and some words are just easier #multilingualproblems).

Final point: you can put these endings on anything. Even names. So, you might get a construction like Отабегiм (Otabegim - my Otabek) or Бекам (Bekam - my Beka, though it might just as likely be Bekem). Since I’m trying to write this in a ship-neutral way, here’s a list of every character I’ve seen Otabek shipped with on Ao3 with this construction for first person.

Юрийым (Yuriyim - my Yuri) This works for Plisetsky or Katsuki

Милам (Milam - my Mila)

Жэй-Жэйым (Je-Jeyim - my JJ); (shit, if you just use Jean with French pronunciation, you get жан, which gives you жаным - 5 points to JJBek)

Лeом (Leom - my Leo (uses Spanish pronunciation of Leo) - I’m not confident on the spelling, but yes this does exist. If you take this one up, it might turn into Левiм, using the Russian translation of Leo (cf. Tolstoy). The Kazakh translation of Leo is Aslan (cf. Farsi for ‘lion,’ tyvm CS Lewis), which is also used as a name - Aslanym with the 1st person possessive ending.)

Викторым (Viktorym - yeah, this one’s out there, too. I don’t think I read it, but the summary seemed to suggest it followed from shared pining over oblivious, unresponsive men named Yuri)

Кристофым/Крисiм (Cristophym/Chrisim - because is there anyone in the YOI universe with whom he *hasn’t* been romantically linked?)

Пичитiм (Phichitim - a puzzling, but adorable thought.)

Сюң-гилiм (Seung-gilim - there’s actually a couple of these out there)

Let me know if there’s another one you’d like to see!