#goes for native german speakers as well | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ninyard · 8 months ago

Text

The monsters and their ability to pick up languages is so interesting to me so here’s some random HCs about monsters + languages that are definitely not original at all:

- Neil learned French in Europe before him and Mary found their way to French-speaking Canada. He essentially had to semi-adopt the language discrepancies while he was there, and even though his fluency is in French from France, sometimes he messes up and pronounces things weirdly or differently (and Kevin frequently makes fun of him for it)

- Kevin has some rusty Japanese that he was forced to learn growing up. He can understand it pretty well, and can somewhat speak it to a lower level, but he can’t read or write it. He’s not fluent, and probably couldn’t hold a conversation with a native speaker, but he could understand his Japanese counterparts in the Nest when he needed to.

- In turn Kevin isn’t able to order in Japanese at a restaurant, but he could explain the rules of Exy to someone fairly coherently if he had to.

- This isn’t an original thought by any means but Neil and Kevin definitely speak in French when they’re by themselves just to make sure they don’t lose it.

- They sometimes make calls to each other on the court in French, and because of this, most of the team picks up very basic calls in French. None of them can actually speak it, but Andrew picks up a little more than the rest, having spent so much time with Kevin. Again, couldn’t hold a conversation, but every now and again he recognises certain words in their conversations.

- Neil is like a walking version of those White Guy Speaks Chinese And Stuns Waitress (he can understand her?!?) polyglot youTube videos. It becomes more of a hobby for him once he’s settled and the FBI are off his back, but the foxes are constantly shocked by how many languages he can speak. He is fluent in English, French, and German of course, with some conversational Spanish, but he can pretty much have a basic interaction in most of the languages of countries he’d been in. His Dutch is the worst, because he could never quite grasp the proper pronunciation of things, but one time he speaks to a waiter in Italian and Andrew can’t believe it.

- (RIP Neil Josten, you would’ve loved duolingo)

- When he goes to the Olympics he’s like a kid in a candy store. It’s like a subconscious bingo game for him to speak to someone from every country at least once.

- Aaron loves listening to music in German. He would definitely drag Nicky to a rave if they ever found themselves in Berlin.

- Katelyn asks him whenever they have their kid if he wants to raise them bilingual, but he decides not to because he only really learned German for Nicky and his brother, and doesn’t really speak it at all after he graduates.

- Neil and Nicky study Spanish together sometimes. It helps Nicky stay close to his roots now that his immediate family is pretty much out of the picture. It means way more to him than Neil even knows.

- Another unoriginal one but Andrew and Neil definitely do learn sign language in the future. I could talk about this one forever.

- When Kevin gets frustrated, he finds it hard to speak ANY language. He messes up words in English, forgets how to say things, and occasionally is the butt of the joke when he combines a French and English word accidentally.

- Kevin watches anime when nobody is around. He thinks dubbed anime is a crime.

- Andrew thinks he’s pretty good at German until he tries to have a conversation with Erik and realises wow native speakers talk a lot faster than we do. You wouldn’t know, because even if he just understands half of a sentence, he can usually piece together what is being said 90% of the time, and he would never admit out loud that he needs Erik to slow down when he’s talking so he can understand him.

- He is, however, REALLY good at accents. He has a talent for speaking gibberish but sounding as if he’s speaking fluent French. It drives Kevin up the wall when he does it, but he also hates when he can’t understand what Kevin and Neil are saying to each other.

And Bonus:

- Jeremy is really bad at accents. He is initially frustrated by Jean and his French, but once he understands that it is Jean’s first language (that the Moriyama’s took from him), he makes an effort to try and learn. He’s just really, really bad at it. Jean cringes every time he tries, because he speaks with a heavy American accent. Jean is not pretentious about his language, but he is, at the end of the day, French. So when Jeremy says bonjour in that hideous so-Cal accent, it’s in part endearing that he’s trying, but mostly like nails on a chalkboard.

#this is so. pointless #and not original #but I just want to share :)#Kevin day #Neil josten #aftg #tfc #Andrew minyard #Nicky hemmick #jean moreau #jeremy knox #thank u for ur time

193 notes · View notes

meichenxi · 5 months ago

Text

UK accent bias, discrimination, minority languages and the question of the 'default, normal' english speaker

today I came across something overtly that is usually a covert problem, and I wanted to take a chance to talk about the questions it raises about what it means to be 'normal' and speak 'normal english' in an anglocentric, global world.

let's start at the beginning. I was aimlessly googling around and came across this article, discussing ergodic literature:

I hope that you will see what angered me right away, but if not:

brogue? inaccessible, insufferable brogue? that is so difficult to read you might want to relieve your frustrations by harming a housepet, or striking a loved one?

what????? the fuck??????

my dearly beloathed. this is not a made up sci-fi language. this was not written for your convenience.

this is the glaswegian dialect.

this is how it is written. scots, which is very similar to this, is a language whose speakers have been systematically taught to change and hide and modify their speech, to not speak it in the classroom, to conform. this is NOT comparable to any of the made-up dialects or ways of writing in cloud atlas or any other specularative fiction. the suggestion of ir is deeply insulting.

(the line between various 'dialects' and 'languages' I speak about here is by definition sometimes political, sometimes arbitrary, and often very thin. what goes for the glaswegian dialect here in terms of discrimination goes for scots in general - which is, in fact, even more 'inaccessible' than glaswegian because it has a greater quantity of non-english and therefore non-'familiar' words. speakers of different englishes will face more or less discrimination in different circumstances. caveat over.)

you can find it on twitter, in books, in poetry; and more than that, on the streets and in living rooms, in places that this kind of england-first discrimination hasn't totally eradicated.

an imporant note - this book in question is called Naw Much of a Talker, and it was written originally in Swiss-German and then translated into Glaswegian to preserve similar themes and questions of language and identity. rather than detracting from anything I'm saying, I think the fact this is a translated piece of fiction adds to it - it has literally been translated so it is more accessible, and the article writer did not even realise. it also highlights the fact as well that these are questions which exist across the globe, across multiple languages, of the constant tension everywhere between the 'correct' high language and the 'incorrect, backward' 'low' language or dialect. these are all interesting questions, and someone else can tackle them about german and swiss german -

but I am going to talk today about scots and english, because that is how the writer of this article engaged with this piece and that is the basis upon which they called it 'insufferable brogue', the prejudice they have revealed about scots is what I want to address.

so here, today, in this post: let's talk about it. what is 'normal' english, why is that a political question, and why should we care?

as we begin, so we're all on the same page, I would like to remind everyone that england is not the only country in the united kingdom, and that the native languages of the united kingdom do not only include english, but also:

scots

ulster scots (thank you @la-galaxie-langblr for the correction here!!)

scottish gaelic

welsh

british sign language

irish

anglo-romani

cornish

shelta

irish sign language

manx

northern ireland sign language

and others I have likely forgotten

there are also countless rich, beautiful dialects (the distinction between dialect and language is entirely political, so take this description with a pinch of salt if you're outside of these speaker communities), all with their own words and histories and all of them, yes all of them, are deserving of respect.

and there are hundreds and thousands of common immigrant languages, of languages from the empire, and of englishes across the globe that might sound 'funny' to you, but I want you to fucking think before you mock the man from the call centre: why does india speak english in the first place? before mocking him, think about that.

because it's political. it's ALL political. it's historical, and it's rooted in empire and colonialism and all you need to do is take one look at how we talk about Black language or languages of a colonised country to see that, AAVE or in the UK, multi-cultural london english, or further afield - the englishes of jamaica, kenya, india. all vestiges of empire, and all marked and prejudiced against as 'unintelligent' or lesser in some way.

and closer to home - the systematic eradication and 'englishification' of the celtic languages. how many people scottish gaelic now? cornish? manx? how many people speak welsh? and even within 'english' itself - how many people from a country or rural or very urban or immigrant or working class or queer background are discriminated against, because of their english? why do you think that is?

if you think that language isn't political, then you have likely never encountered discrimination based on how you, your friends, or your family speak.

you are speaking from a position of privilege.

'but it's not formal' 'but it's not fit for the classroom' 'but it sounds silly'. you sound silly, amy. I have a stereotypically 'posh' english accent, and I can tell you for a fact: when I go to scotland to visit my family, they think I sound silly too. but in the same way as 'reverse racism' isn't a fucking thing - the difference is that it's not systemic. when I wanted to learn gaelic, my grandmother - who speaks gaelic as her own native language - told me, no, you shouldn't do that. you're an english girl. why would you want to learn a backward language like gaelic?

discrimination against non-'english' englishes is pervasive, systematic and insidious.

it is not the same as being laughed at for being 'posh'. (there's more about class and in-group sociolinguistics here, but that's for another post)

and who told you this? where is this information from? why do you think an 'essex girl' accent sounds uneducated? why do you think a northern accent sound 'honest' and 'salt of the earth'? what relationship does that have with class? why does a standard southern british english sound educated and 'intelligent'? who is in charge? who speaks on your television? whose words and accents do you hear again and again, making your policies, shaping your future? who speaks over you?

think about that, please.

and before anyone says: this is so true except for X lol - I am talking about exactly that dialect. I am talking about that accent you are mocking. I am talking about brummie english, which you think sounds funny. I'm talking about old men in the west country who you think sound like pirates, arrrrr.

(actually, pirates sound like the west country. where do you the 'pirate accent' came from? devon was the heart of smuggling country in the uk.)

so. to this person who equated a book written in scots, a minority and marginalised language, to being 'insufferable, inaccessible brogue':

and also to anyone who is from the UK, anyone who is a native english speaker, and anyone abroad, but especially those of you who think your english is 'natural', who have never had to think about it, who have never had to code-switch, who have never had to change how they sound to fit in:

it might be difficult to read - for you. it might be strange and othering - to you.

but what is 'inaccessible' to you is the way that my family speaks - your english might be 'inaccessible' to them. so why does your 'inaccessible' seem to weigh more than theirs?

and why does it bother you, that you can't understand it easily in the first go? because you have to try? or because perhaps, just perhaps, dearly beloathed author of this article, after being catered to your entire life and shown your language on screen, constantly - you are finally confronted by something that isn't written for you.

and for the non-uk people reading this. I would like you to think very carefully about what a 'british accent' means to you.

there is no such thing. let me say it louder:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A BRITISH ACCENT

there are a collection of accents and languages and dialects, each with different associations and stereotypes. the clever aristocrat, the honest farmer, the deceitful *racial slur*. there are accents, languages and dialects that you hear more than others because of political reasons, and there are accents, languages and dialects which are more common than others because of discrimination, violence and the path of history.

if you say 'british accent', we - in the UK - don't know exactly what you mean. much more than the US, because the english-speaking people have been here longer, we have incredibly different accents just fifty miles away from one another.

but we can guess. you probably don't mean my grandmother's second-language english - even though, by american conversations about race, she is the whitest person you could possibly find. you don't mean my brother, who sounds like a farmer.

you mean my accent. tom hiddleston's accent. benedict cumberbatch. dame judy dench. sir ian mckellen. and they are all wonderful people - but what sort of people are they, exactly? what sort of things do they have in common? why is it that you associate their way of speaking with all of the charming eloquence of 'dark academia' or high levels of education, and my family's english with being 'backward' or 'country bumpkins' or 'uneducated' or, more insidiously, 'salt-of-the-earth good honest folk'?

we are an old country with old prejudices and old classes and old oppression and old discrimination and old hate. my brother speaks with a 'farmer' west country accent; my aunt with a strong doric accent that most english people cannot understand; my father with a mockable birmingham accent; my grandmother with a gaelic accent, because despite the fact that she is from the UK, as scottish as you can get, english is not her first language.

these people exist. my grandmother is a real person, and she is not a dying relic of a forgotten time. her gaelic is not something to drool over in your outlander or braveheart or brave-fuelled scottish romanticism, the purity and goodness of the 'celt' - but there are fewer people like her now. and I would like to invite everyone to think about why that is the case.

if you don't know, you can educate yourself - look up the highland clearances, for a start, or look at the lives of anglo-romani speakers in the UK and the discrimination they face, or irish speakers in northern ireland. like many places, we are a country that has turned inward upon itself. there will always be an 'other'.

and then there's me. raised in southern england and well-educated and, however you want to call it, 'posh'. so why is it that it is my voice, and not theirs, which is considered typically british all over the world?

I think you can probably figure out that one by yourself.

when you talk about the 'british accent', this is doing one of two things. it's serving to perpetuate the myth that the only part of the UK is england, rather than four countries, and the harmful idea that it is only england in the UK that matters. (and only a certain type of people in england, at that.)

secondly, it serves to amalgamate all of the languages and accents and dialects - native or poor or immigrant or colonial - into one, erasing not only their history and importance, but even their very existence.

dearly beloathed person on the internet. I have no idea who you are. but the language scots exists. I'm sorry it's not convenient for you.

but before I go, I would like to take a moment to marvel. 'insufferable, inaccessible brogue'? what assumptions there are, behind your words!

is it 'insufferable' to want to write a story in the language you were raised in? is it 'inaccessible' to want to write a story in the shared language of your own community?

I don't think it is.

I think it takes a special sort of privilege and entitlement to assume that - the same one that assumes whiteness and Americanness and Englishness and able-bodiedness and cisness and maleness and straightness as being the 'standard' human experience, and every single other trait as being a deviance from that, an othering. that's the same entitlement that will describe Turning Red as a story about the chinese experience - but not talk about how Toy Story is a story about the white american middle class experience.

people do not exist for your ease of reading. they do not exist to be 'accessible'. and - what a strange thing, english reader, to assume all books are written for you, at all.

and despite the fact that the text that prompted this was written by one group of white people, translated into the language of another group, and critiqued by a third - this is a conversation about racism too, because it is the same sort of thinking and pervasive stereotyping which goes into how white people and spaces view Black language and language of people of colour around the world. it's about colonialism and it's about slavery and it's aboutsegregation and othering and the immigrant experience and it's about the history of britain - and my god, isn't that a violent one. it's inseparable from it. language is a tool to signify belonging, to shut people out and lock people in. it's a tool used to enforce that othering and discrimination and hate on a systemic level, because it says - I'm different from you. you're different from me. this post is focusing more on the native languages of the UK, but any question of 'correct language' must inevitably talk about racism too, because language is and has always been a signifier of group belonging, and a way to enforce power.

it is used to gatekeep, to enforce conformity, to control, to signify belonging to a particular group, to other. talking about language 'correctness' is NOT and never CAN be a neutral thing.

it reminds me of a quote, and I heard this second hand on twitter and for the life of me cannot remember who said it or exactly how it goes, but the gist of it was a queer writer addressing comments saying how 'universal' their book was, and saying - no, this is a queer book. if you want to find themes and moments in it that are applicable to your 'default' life, 'universals' of emotion and experience, go ahead. but I have had to translate things from the norm my entire life, to make them relatable for me. this time, you do the translation.

I do not speak or write scots or glaswegian, but I grew up reading it and listening to it (as well as doric and gaelic in smaller measures, which are still familiar to me but which I can understand less). for me, that passage is almost as easy to read as english - and the only reason it is slightly more difficult is because, predictably, I don't have a chance to practice reading scots very often at all. it isn't inaccessible to me.

(I was about to write: can you imagine looking at a book written in french, and scowling, saying, 'this is so insufferably foreign!' and then point out how ridiculous that would be. but then I realise - foreign film, cinema, lyrics increasingly in english, reluctance to read the subtitles, the footnotes, to look things up, to engage in any active way in any piece of media. this is an attitude which even in its most mockable, most caricature-like form, is extremely prevalent online. *deep sigh*)

because. what is 'inaccessible'? it means it is difficult for people who are 'normal'. and what is 'normal', exactly? why is a certain class of people the 'default'? could that be, perhaps, a question with very loaded and very extensive political, social and historical answers? who is making the judgement about what language is 'normal'? who gets to decide?

I'd also like to note that this applies to everyone. it doesn't matter if you are a member of an oppressed group, or five, or none, you can still engage in this kind of discrimination and stereotyping. my scottish family, who have themselves had to change the way they speak and many of them lost their gaelic because of it, routinely mock anglo-romani speakers in their local area. I have an indian friend, herself speaking english because of a history of violence and colonialism, who laughed for five minutes at the beginning of derry girls because the girls sounded so 'funny', and asked me: why did they choose to speak like that? my brother, who sounds very stereotypically rural and 'uneducated', laughs at the essex accent and says that he would never date a girl from essex. I had a classmate from wales who was passionate about welsh language rights and indigenous and minority language education but also made fun of the accent of her native-english speaking classmate from singapore. it goes on and on and on.

take the dialect/language question out of the topic, and I think this reveals a much broader problem with a lot of conversations about media, and the implicit assumptions of what being 'normal' [read: white, anglo-centric, american, male, straight, young, able-bodied, cis, etc] actually means:

if something is written about an experience I do not share, is it inaccessible? or is it just written for someone else?

so, please. next time you want to write a review about a dialect or language you don't speak, think a little before you open your mouth.

the rest of the world has to, every time.

#lingblr #langblr #scots #scots language #glaswegian #urghhhh #this was a bit of a rant and angry and entirely unresearched #if anybody wants to bring up any examples or correct me in any way #especially about names of other language groups that I'm not in (I just looked them up on wikipedia)#I will gladly edit and accept correct and conversation!#rarrrrghghghghghg #I am biting and killing

101 notes · View notes

stylo-90 · 2 months ago

Text

Tamil Linguistics thread (bc nobody cares but me)

but really, if you are interested in linguistics at all, give this post a read, because this shit really blew my mind ...

have been reading the following paper: https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/public/h_sch_9a.pdf

"The Tamil Case System" (2003) written by Harold F. Schiffman, Professor Emeritus of Dravidian Linguistics and Culture, University of Pennsylvania

Tamil is one of the oldest continuously-spoken languages in the world, dating back to at least 500 BCE, with nearly 80 million native speakers in South India and elsewhere, and possessed of several interesting characteristics:

a non-Indo-European language family (the Dravidian languages, which include other languages in South India - Malayalam being the most closely related major language - and one in Pakistan)

through the above, speculative ties to the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the first major human civilizations (you can read more about that here)

an agglutinative language, similar to German and others (so while German has Unabhängigkeitserklärungen, and Finnish has istahtaisinkohankaan, in Tamil you can say pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka - "for the sake of those who cannot go")

an exclusively head-final language, like Japanese - the main element of a sentence always coming at the end.

a high degree of diglossia between its spoken variant (ST) and formal/literary variant (LT)

cool retroflex consonants (including the retroflex plosives ʈ and ɖ) and a variety of liquid consonants (three L's, two R's)

and a complex case system, similar to Latin, Finnish, or Russian. German has 4 cases, Russian has at least 6, Latin has 6-7, Finnish has 15, and Tamil has... well, that's the focus of Dr. Schiffman's paper.

per most scholars, Tamil has 7-8 cases - coincidentally the same number as Sanskrit. The French wikipedia page for "Tamoul" has 7:

Dr. Schiffman quotes another scholar (Arden 1942) giving 8 cases for modern LT, as in common in "native and missionary grammars", i.e. those written by native Tamil speakers or Christian missionaries. It's the list from above, plus the Vocative case (which is used to address people, think of the KJV Bible's O ye of little faith! for an English vocative)

... but hold on, the English wiki for "Tamil grammar" has 10 cases:

OK, so each page adds a few more. But hold on, why are there multiple suffix entries for each case? Why would you use -otu vs. -utan, or -il vs -ininru vs -ilirintu? How many cases are there actually?

Dr. Schiffman explains why it isn't that easy:

The problem with such a rigid classification is that it fails in a number of important ways ... it is neither an accurate description of the number and shape of the morphemes involved in the system, nor of the syntactic behavior of those morphemes ... It is based on an assumption that there is a clear and unerring way to distinguish between case and postpositional morphemes in the language, when in fact there is no clear distinction.

In other words, Tamil being an agglutinative language, you can stick a bunch of different sounds onto the end of a word, each shifting the meaning, and there is no clear way to call some of those sounds "cases" and other sounds "postpositions".

Schiffman asserts that this system of 7-8 cases was originally developed for Sanskrit (the literary language of North Indian civilizations, of similar antiquity to Tamil, and the liturgical language of Vedic Hinduism) but then tacked onto Tamil post-facto, despite the languages being from completely different families with different grammars.

Schiffman goes through a variety of examples of the incoherence of this model, one of my favorites quoted from Arden 1942 again:

There is no rule as to which ending should be used ... Westerners are apt to use the wrong one. There are no rules but you can still break the rules. Make it make sense!!

Instead of sticking to this system of 7-8 cases which fails the slightest scrutiny, Dr. Schiffman instead proposes that we throw out the whole system and consider every single postposition in the language as a potential case ending:

Having made the claim that there is no clear cut distinction between case and postpositions in Tamil except for the criterion of bound vs. unbound morphology, we are forced to examine all the postpositions as possible candidates for membership in the system. Actually this is probably going too far in the other direction ... since then almost any verb in the language can be advanced to candidacy as a postposition. [!!]

What Schiffman does next is really cool, from a language nerd point of view. He sorts through the various postpositions of the language, and for each area of divergence, uses his understanding of LT and ST to attempt to describe what shades of meaning are being connoted by each suffix. I wouldn't blame you for skipping through this but it is pretty interesting to see him try to figure out the rules behind something that (eg. per Arden 1942) has "no rule".

On the "extended dative", which connotates something like "on the behalf of" or "for the sake of":

I especially find his analysis of the suffix -kitte fascinating, because Schiffman uncovers a potential case ending in Spoken Tamil that connotes something about the directness or indirectness of an action, separate from the politeness with which the person is speaking to their interlocutor.

Not to blather on but here's a direct comparison with Finnish, which as stated earlier has 15 cases and not the 7-8 commonly stated of Tamil:

What Schiffman seems to have discovered is that ST, and LT too for that matter, has used existing case endings and in some cases seemingly invented new ones to connote shades of meaning that are lost by the conventional scholar's understanding of Tamil cases. And rather than land on a specific number of cases, he instead says the following, which I find a fascinating concept:

The Tamil Case System is a kind of continuum or polarity, with the “true” case-like morphemes found at one end of the continuum, with less case-like but still bound morphemes next, followed by the commonly recognized postpositions, then finally nominal and verbal expressions that are synonymous with postpositions but not usually recognized as such at the other extreme. This results in a kind of “dendritic” system, with most, but not all, 8 of the basic case nodes capable of being extended in various directions, sometimes overlapping with others, to produce a thicket of branches. The overlap, of course, results from the fact that some postpositions can occur after more than one case, usually with a slight difference in meaning, so that an either-or taxonomy simply does not capture the whole picture.

How many cases does Tamil have? As many as its speakers want, I guess.

#langblr #linguistics #tamil #learning tamil #rabbit holes that are too boring to post on twitter

62 notes · View notes

homunculus-argument · 2 years ago

Text

I don’t think native english-speakers in non-european countries really grasp how everyday needing to speak a second or a third language is in Europe. Languages are a school subject as much as biology and math, nobody really just goes out of their way to independently decide “hmm, I must learn a second language” and just goes on to download duolingo and be self-taught in spanish (okay, some people do, but that’s not the usual and standard way that people learn). The town I live in is historically bilingual - used to be majority swedish-speakers but now it’s about 50-50 as far as I know, and a generation ago you couldn’t really get by without speaking both. The books at the local library are mixed into the shelves, finnish and swedish ones on the same shelves, and sometimes there’s no copy of some book in both languages because it’s assumed that everyone speaks both on a passable level, at least enough to understand a book they really want to read.

I’ve had natively swedish-speaking schoolmates in nursing school who have struggled to write essays in finnish because despite of being fluently bilingual in speech, their whole education until this point has been in swedish, and they’ve never really needed to write proper written finnish - which is a distinct different type of finnish than spoken finnish.

The only native finns under 30 that I know that personally say they don’t speak any other language than finnish usually mean that they understand swedish and english badly, and aren’t confident in speaking it. Usually someone only speaking finnish is a clue that they’ve got some language-related learning disability. “I don’t speak english” is a similar statement as “I can’t do math”. There’s a problem of young chronically online finns losing vocabulary in finnish because they use english so much online that they’re not as practised in their native language.

I didn’t go out of my way to become a polyglot who Speaks Six Languages, I picked french, russian and spanish in school because languages were easier for me than STEM subjects, and I’ve already forgotten most of what I learned. If I were to go out of my way to decide to start learning a non-germanic, non-latin language now, without school, I’d have no idea where to start nor would I ever become fluent in them. As a matter of fact, all I know how to say in any other ones than finnish, swedish or english are “I don’t speak [language] very well, I only understand it poorly.” It’s a school subject I learned and have forgotten most about.

733 notes · View notes

a-memory-a-distant-echo · 5 months ago

Text

it's time for the long-threatened post about how to get subtitles (including translated ones) for videos that don't have subtitles.

in my experience, the methods in this post can probably get you solidly 75% or more of the content of many videos (caveats inside). i've tested this on videos that are originally in chinese, english, french, german, hindi, japanese, korean, spanish, and honestly probably some languages that i'm forgetting. my experience is that it works adequately in all of them. not great, necessarily, but well enough that you can probably follow along.

this is a very long post because this is the overexplaining things website, and because i talk about several different ways to get the captions. this isn't actually difficult, though, or even especially time consuming—the worst of it is pushing a button and ignoring things for a while. actual hands-on work is probably five minutes tops, no matter how long the video is.

i've attempted to format this post understandably, and i hope it's useful to someone.

first up, some disclaimers.

this is just my experience with things, and your experience might be different. the tools used for (and available for) this kind of thing change all the time, and if you're reading this six months after i wrote it, your options might be different. this post is probably still a decent starting place.

background about my biases in this: i work in the creative industries. mostly i'm a fiction editor. i've also been a writer, a technical editor and writer, a transcriptionist, a copyeditor, and something i've seen called a 'translation facilitator' or 'rewrite editor', where something is translated fairly literally (by a person or a machine) and then a native speaker of the target language goes through and rewrites/restructures as needed to make the piece read more naturally in the target language. i've needed to get information out of business meetings that were conducted in a language i didn't speak, and have done a lot of work on things that were written in (or translated into) the writer's second or sixth language, but needed to be presented in natural english.

so to start, most importantly: machine translation is never going to be as good as a translation done by an actual human. human translators can reflect cultural context and nuanced meanings and the artistry of the work in a way that machines will never be able to emulate. that said, if machine translation is your only option, it's better than nothing. i also find it really useful for videos in languages where i have enough knowledge that i'm like, 75% sure that i'm mostly following, and just want something that i can glance at to confirm that.

creating subs like this relies heavily on voice-to-text, which—unfortunately—works a lot better in some situations than it does in others. you'll get the best, cleanest results from videos that have slow, clear speech in a 'neutral' accent, and only one person speaking at a time. (most scripted programs fall into this category, as do many vlogs and single-person interviews.) the results will get worse as voices speed up, overlap more, and vary in volume. that said, i've used this to get captions for cast concerts, reality shows, and variety shows, and the results are imperfect but solidly readable, especially if you have an idea of what's happening in the plot and/or can follow along even a little in the broadcast language.

this also works best when most of the video is in a single language, and you select that language first. the auto detect option sometimes works totally fine, but in my experience there's a nonzero chance that it'll at least occasionally start 'detecting' random other languages in correctly, or someone will say a few words in spanish or whatever, but the automatic detection engine will keep trying to translate from spanish for another three minutes, even tho everything's actually in korean. if there's any way to do so, select the primary language, even if it means that you miss a couple sentences that are in a different language.

two places where these techniques don't work, or don't work without a lot of manual effort on your part: translating words that appear on the screen (introductions, captions, little textual asides, etc), and music. if you're incredibly dedicated, you can do this and add it manually yourself, but honestly, i'm not usually this dedicated. getting captions for the words on the screen will involve either actually editing the video or adding manually translated content to the subs, which is annoying, and lyrics are...complicated. it's possible, and i'm happy to talk about it in another post if anyone is interested, but for the sake of this post, let's call it out of scope, ok? ok. bring up the lyrics on your phone and call it good enough.

places where these techniques are not great: names. it's bad with names. names are going to be mangled. resign yourself to it now. also, in languages that don't have strongly gendered speech, you're going to learn some real fun stuff about the way that the algorithms gender things. (spoiler: not actually fun.) bengali, chinese, and turkish are at least moderately well supported for voice-to-text, but you will get weird pronouns about it.

obligatory caveat about ai and voice-to-text functionality. as far as i'm aware, basically every voice-to-text function is ~ai powered~. i, a person who has spent twenty years working in the creative industries, have a lot of hate for generative ai, and i'm sure that many of you do, too. however, if voice-to-text (or machine translation software) that doesn't rely on it exists anymore, i'm not aware of it.

what we're doing here is the same as what douyin/tiktok/your phone's voice-to-text does, using the same sorts of technology. i mention this because if you look at the tools mentioned in this post, at least some of them will be like 'our great ai stuff lets you transcribe things accurately', and i want you to know why. chat gpt (etc) are basically glorified predictive text, right? so for questions, they're fucking useless, but for things like machine transcription and machine translation, those predictions make it more likely that you get the correct words for things that could have multiple translations, or for words that the software can only partially make out. it's what enables 'he has muscles' vs 'he has mussels', even though muscles and mussels are generally pronounced the same way. i am old enough to have used voice to text back when it was called dictation software, and must grudgingly admit that this is, in fact, much better.

ok! disclaimers over.

let's talk about getting videos

for the most part, this post will assume that you have a video file and nothing else. cobalt.tools is the easiest way i'm aware of to download videos from most sources, though there are other (more robust) options if you're happy to do it from the command line. i assume most people are not, and if you are, you probably don't need this guide anyhow.

i'm going to use 'youtube' as the default 'get a video from' place, but generally speaking, most of this works with basically any source that you can figure out how to download from—your bilibili downloads and torrents and whatever else will work the same way. i'm shorthanding things because this post is already so so long.

if the video you're using has any official (not autogenerated) subtitles that aren't burned in, grab that file, too, regardless of the language. starting from something that a human eye has looked over at some point is always going to give you better results. cobalt.tools doesn't pull subtitles, but plugging the video url into downsub or getsubs and then downloading the srt option is an easy way to get them for most places. (if you use downsub, it'll suggest that you download the full video with subtitles. that's a link to some other software, and i've never used it, so i'm not recommending it one way or the other. the srts are legit, tho.)

the subtitle downloaders also have auto translation options, and they're often (not always) no worse than anything else that we're going to do here—try them and see if they're good enough for your purposes. unfortunately, this only works for things that already have subtitles, which is…not that many things, honestly. so let's move on.

force-translating, lowest stress mode.

this first option is kind of a cheat, but who cares. youtube will auto-caption things in some languages (not you, chinese) assuming that the uploader has enabled it. as ever, the quality is kinda variable, and the likelihood that it's enabled at all seems to vary widely, but if it is, you're in for a much easier time of things, because you turn it on, select whatever language you want it translated to, and youtube…does its best, anyhow.

if you're a weird media hoarder like me and you want to download the autogenerated captions, the best tool that i've found for this is hyprscribr. plug in the video url, select 'download captions via caption grabber', then go to the .srt data tab, copy it out, and paste it into a text file. save this as [name of downloaded video].[language code].srt, and now you have captions! …that you need to translate, which is actually easy. if it's a short video, just grab the text, throw it in google translate (timestamps and all), and then paste the output into a new text file. so if you downloaded cooking.mp4, which is in french, you'll have three files: cooking.mp4, cooking.fr.srt, and cooking.en.srt. this one's done! it's easy! you're free!

but yeah, ok, most stuff isn't quite that easy, and auto-captioning has to be enabled, and it has some very obvious gaps in the langauges it supports. which is sort of weird, because my phone actually has pretty great multilingual support, even for things that youtube does not. which brings us to low-stress force translation option two.

use your phone

this seems a little obvious, but i've surprised several people with this information recently, so just in case. for this option, you don't even need to have downloaded the video—if it's a video you can play on your phone, the phone will almost definitely attempt real-time translation for you. i'm sure iphones have this ability, but i'm an android person, so can only provide directions for that: go into settings and search for (and enable) live translation. the phone will do its best to pick up what's being said and translate it on the fly for you, and if 'what's being said' is a random video on the internet, your phone isn't gonna ask questions. somewhat inexplicably, this works even if the video is muted. i do this a lot at like four a.m. when i'm too lazy to grab earbuds but don't want to wake up my wife.

this is the single least efficient way to force sub/translate things, in my opinion, but it's fast and easy, and really useful for those videos that are like a minute long and probably not that interesting, but like…what if it is, you know? sometimes i'll do this to decide if i'm going to bother more complicated ways of translating things.

similarly—and i feel silly even mentioning this, but that i didn't think of it for an embarrassingly long time—if you're watching something on a device with speakers, you can try just…opening the 'translate' app on your phone. they all accept voice input. like before, it'll translate whatever it picks up.

neither of these methods are especially useful for longer videos, and in my experience, the phone-translation option generally gives the least accurate translation, because in attempting to do things in real time, you lose some of the predicative ability that i was talking about earlier. (filling in the blank for 'he has [muscles/mussels]' is a lot harder if you don't know if the next sentence is about the gym or about dinner.)

one more lazy way

this is more work than the last few options, but often gives better results. with not much effort, you can feed a video playing on your computer directly into google translate. there's a youtube video by yosef k that explains it very quickly and clearly. this will probably give you better translation output than any of the on-the-fly phone things described above, but it won't give you something that you can use as actual subs—it just produces text output that you can read while you watch the video. again, though, really useful for things that you're not totally convinced you care about, or for things where there aren't a lot of visuals, or for stuff where you don't care about keeping your eyes glued to the screen.

but probably you want to watch stuff on the screen at the same time.

let's talk about capcut!

this is probably not a new one for most people, but using it like this is a little weird, so here we go. ahead of time: i'm doing this on an actual computer. i think you probably can do it on your phone, but i have no idea how, and honestly this is already a really long guide so i'm not going to figure it out right now. download capcut and put it on an actual computer. i'm sorry.

anyhow. open up capcut, click new project. import the file that you downloaded, and then drag it down to the editing area. go over to captions, auto captions, and select the spoken language. if you want bilingual captions, pick the language for that, as well, and the captions will be auto-translated into whatever the second language you choose is. (more notes on this later.)

if i remember right, this is the point at which you get told that you can't caption a video that's more than an hour long. however. you have video editing software, and it is open. split the video in two pieces and caption them separately. problem solved.

now the complicated part: saving these subs. (don't panic; it's not actually that complicated.) as everyone is probably aware, exporting captions is a premium feature, and i dunno about the rest of you, but i'm unemployed, so let's assume that's not gonna happen.

the good news is that since you've generated the captions, they're already saved to your computer, they're just kinda secret right now. there are a couple ways to dig them out, but the easiest i'm aware of is the biyaoyun srt generator. you'll have to select the draft file of your project, which is auto-saved once a minute or something. the website tells you where the file is saved by default on your computer. (i realised after writing this entire post that they also have a step-by-step tutorial on how to generate the subtitles, with pictures, so if you're feeling lost, you can check that out here.)

select the project file titled 'draft_content', then click generate. you want the file name to be the same as the video name, and again, i'd suggest srt format, because it seems to be more broadly compatible with media players. click 'save to local' and you now have a subtitle file!

translating your subtitles

you probably still need to translate the subtitles. there are plenty of auto-translation options out there. many of them are fee- or subscription-based, or allow a very limited number of characters, or are like 'we provide amazing free translations' and then in the fine print it says that they provide these translations through the magic of uhhhh google translate. so we're just going to skip to google translate, which has the bonus of being widely available and free.

for shorter video, or one that doesn't have a ton of spoken stuff, you can just copy/paste the contents of the .srt file into the translation software of your choice. the web version of google translate will do 5000 characters in one go, as will systran. that's the most generous allocation that i'm aware of, and will usually get you a couple minutes of video.

the timestamps eat up a ton of characters, though, so for anything longer than a couple minutes, it's easier to upload the whole thing, and google translate is the best for that, because it is, to my knowledge, the only service that allows you to do it. to upload the whole file, you need a .doc or .rtf file.

an .srt file is basically just a text file, so you can just open it in word (or gdocs or whatever), save it as a .doc, and then feed it through google translate. download the output, open it, and save it as an .srt.

you're done! you now have your video and a subtitle file in the language of your choice.

time for vibe, the last option in this post.

vibe is a transcription app (not a sex thing, even tho it sounds like one), and it will also auto-translate the transcribed words to english, if you want.

open vibe and select your file, then select the language. if you want it translated to english, hit advanced and toggle 'translate to english'. click translate and wait a while. after a few minutes (or longer, depending on how long the file is), you'll get the text. the save icon is a folder with a down arrow on it, and i understand why people are moving away from tiny floppy disks, but also: i hate it. anyhow, save the output, and now you have your subs file, which you can translate or edit or whatever, as desired.

vibe and capcom sometimes get very different results. vibe seems to be a little bit better at picking up overlapping speech, or speech when there are other noises happening; capcom seems to be better at getting all the worlds in a sentence. i feel like capcom maybe has a slightly better translation engine, of the two of them, but i usually end up just doing the translation separately. again, it can be worth trying both ways and seeing which gives better results.

special notes about dual/bilingual subs

first: i know that bilingual subs are controversial. if you think they're bad, you don't have to use them! just skip this section.

as with everything else, automatically generating gives mixed results. sometimes the translations are great, and sometimes they're not. i like having dual subs, but for stuff that Matters To Me, for whatever reason, i'll usually generate both just the original and a bilingual version, and then try some other translation methods on the original or parts thereof to see what works best.

not everything displays bilingual subs very well. plex and windows media player both work great, vlc and the default video handler on ubuntu only display whatever the first language is, etc. i'm guessing that if you want dual subbed stuff you already have a system for it.

i'll also point out that if you want dual subs and have gone a route other than capcom, you can create dual subs by pasting the translated version and the untranslated version into a single file. leave the timestamps as they are, delete the line numbers if there are any (sometimes they seem to cause problems when you have dual subs, and i haven't figured out why) and then literally just paste the whole sub file for the first language into a new file. then paste in the whole sub file for the second language. yes, as a single chunk, the whole thing, right under the first language's subs. save the file as [video name].[zh-en].srt (or whatever), and use it like any other sub file.

notes on translation, especially since we're talking about lengthy machine-translations of things.

i default to translation options that allow for translating in large chunks, mostly because i'm lazy. but since an .srt is, again, literally just a text file, they're easy to edit, and if you feel like some of the lines are weird or questionable or whatever, it's easy to change them if you can find a better translation.

so: some fast notes on machine translation options, because i don't know how much time most people spend thinking about this kind of stuff.

one sort of interesting thing to check out is the bing translator. it'll only do 1000 characters at once, but offers the rather interesting option of picking a level of formality. i can't always get it to work, mind, but it's useful especially for times when you're like 'this one line sounds weird'—sometimes the difference between what the translator feels is standard vs formal vs casual english will make a big difference.

very fast illustration of the difference in translations. the random video that i used to make sure i didn't miss any steps explaining things starts with '所以你第二季来'. here's how it got translated:

google: So you come to season 2

google's top alternative: So you come in the second season

bing's standard tone: So here you come for the second season

bing set to casual: So you're coming for the second season, huh?

reverso default guess: So you come in season two

reverso alternate guess: You'll be participating in season two

capcom: So you come in season two

yandex: So you come in the second season

systran: That's why you come in season two

deepl: That's why you're here in season two

vibe: So your second season is here

technically all conveying the same information, but the vibes are very different. sometimes one translator or another will give you a clearly superior translation, so if you feel like the results you're getting are kinda crap, try running a handful of lines through another option and see if it's better.

ok! this was an incredibly long post, and i've almost definitely explained something poorly. again, there are almost certainly better ways to do this, but these ways are free and mostly effective, and they work most of the time, and are better than nothing.

feel free to ask questions and i'll answer as best i can. (the answer to any questions about macs or iphones is 'i'm so sorry, i have no idea tho.' please do not ask those questions.)

#i'm so excited to find out what i totally failed to explain because i'm sure there's something #subtitles #i really do want to reiterate that this is VERY FAR from a perfect system #but it's better than nothing #i assume that we all dream of having at least fluent comprehension of basically every language #but here in the real world...#y'know.#echoes linger

95 notes · View notes

androgynealienfemme · 1 year ago

Text

"The main justification for invalidating butch-femme is that its an imitation of heterosexual roles and, therefore, not a genuine lesbian model. One is tempted to react by saying "So what?" but the charge encompasses more than betrayal of an assumed fixed and "true" lesbian culture. Implicit in the accusation is the denial of cultural agency to lesbians, of the ability to shape and reshape symbols into new meanings of identification. Plagiarism, as the adage goes, is basic to all culture.

In the real of cultural identity, that some of the markers of a minority culture's boundaries originate in an oppressing culture is neither unusual nor particularly significant. For instance, in the United States certain kind of bead- and ribbon work are immediately recogniziable as specific to Native American cultures, wherein they serve artistic and ceremonial functions. Yet beads, trinkets, ribbons, and even certain "indian" blanket patterns were brought by Europeans, who traded them as cheap goods for land. No one argues that Indians out to give up beadwork or blanket weaving, thus ridding themselves of the oppressors symbols, because those things took on a radically different cultural meaning in the hands of Native Americans. Or consider Yiddish, one of the jewish languages. Although Yiddish is written in Hebrew characters and has its own idioms and nuances, its vocabulary is predominantly German. Those who speak German can understand Yiddish. Genocidal Germanic anti-Semitism dates back to at least the eleventh century. Yet East European Jews spoke "the oppressors language," developing in it a distinctive literary and theatrical tradition. Why is it so inconceivable that lesbians could take elements of heterosexual sex roles and remake them?

It is June 1987, and I am sitting in a workshop on "Lesbians and Gender Roles" at the annual National Women's Studies Conference. It is one of surprisingly few workshops on lesbian issues, particularly since, at a plenary session two mornings later, two thirds of the conference attendees will stand up as lesbians. Meanwhile, in this workshop the first speaker is spending half an hour on what she calls "Feminism 101," a description of heterosexual sex roles. Her point in doing this, she says, is to remind us of the origin of roles, "which are called butch and femme when lesbians engage in them." She tells us the purpose of her talk will be to prove, from her own experience, that "these roles are not fulfilling" for lesbians. She tells us that the second speaker will use lesbian novels from the 1950s to demonstrate the same thesis. And, indeed, the second speaker has a small stack of 1950s "pulp paperbacks" with her, many of them the titles that, when I discovered them in the mind-1970s, resonated for me in a way that the feminist books published by Daughters and Diana Press did not.

I consider for several minutes. I'm well versed in lesbian literature, particularly in the fifties novels, and don't doubt my ability to adequately argue an opposing view with the second presenter. I am curious to see if she will use the publisher-imposed "unhappy ending" to prove that roles make for misery. I also decide I'm willing to offer my own experience to challenge the first presenters conclusions- though I'd much rather sit with her over coffee and talk. She is in her midforties and, although she claims to have renounced it, still looks butch. Even if she speaks of roles negatively, she has been there and I want to hear her story. Then I look around me. Everyone is under thirty. There are a few vaguely butch-looking women present who'd very likely consider themselves to be as androgynous as everyone else, and not a single, even remotely femme-looking women besides myself. I recall Alice Walker's advice to "never be the only one in the room." Quietly, I get up and walk out. I go to no other lesbian presentations at the conference."

“Recollecting History, Renaming Lives: Femme Stigma and the feminist seventies and eighties" by Lyndall MacCowan, The Persistent Desire, (edited by Joan Nestle) (1992)

#the persistent desire #Lyndall MacCowan #Joan nestle #lesbian #lesbianism #butch and femme #butchfemme #butch and femme history #butch lesbian #femme lesbian #butch history #femme history #lesbian history #lesbian culture #lesbian feminism #lesbian feminist history #lgbt history #queer history

109 notes · View notes

procrastinatingsoicanreadfanfics · 1 year ago

Note

hi! i was wondering if you had any ideas on what königs real name would be and why? i know it's not a specific enough question, but i love when native german speakers share their speculations on this topic lol

okay, so i did a bit of research on this. König is said to be in his 30s in the MW2 campaign so, based on that, he’d be born somewhere around 1984 and 1993 ish. I’d say the years between 1987-1990 are most realistic for this. Looking at the most popular names in austria at the time we get:

Michael

Stefan

Patrick

Thomas

However, none of these really vibe with me. Out of all of them, I still like Stefan the most for König, but I don’t think any of them are quite right.

Personally, I think the name Emil fits him really well. It can mean to strive or to excel, and that goes along with König’s persona. I can also see Karl as a name for him, but again, i think Emil is way better imo. It gives me kind of soft vibes, while the meaning adds to Königs persona :))

#Just my opinion!#könig x reader #Konig x reader #könig x you #konig x you #konig #konig mw2 #konig cod #konig call of duty #ask #ask reply #procrastinatingsoicanreadfanficsreplies

42 notes · View notes

german-enthusiast · 5 months ago

Note

Hey Felix so I’ve been trying to self study German but it’s been very hard. My brain can’t let go of Spanish of when I took it in Highschool and college. I was taking Spanish because I wanted to use it in order to translate but I never had any interest in it. So I decided to try and learn German since I’ve had somethings I like about it. It also has connection to English. I know it’s not easy but I’m really struggling to retain anything I’ve gone over. I remember more of Spanish than I do of anything in German. It’s sad and frustrating. I guess what I’m trying to ask is, is there a way I can rid my knowledge of Spanish? Because trying to learn the genders in German as well as the cases is hard,and all my mind thinks on is Spanish 🙄 I know studying is the way but my focus is so off.

Hiii!

Oof, I hear ya! Previous languages getting in the way is not uncommon, i especially always thinking of the Dutch "dus" when actually meaning "donc" when trying to produce French sentences!

It sounds like English is your native language and besides that you've only learned Spanish?

I think there are probably two main things I can say:

1) Every language you learn, no matter how far, is strengthening your knowledge of linguistics and languages and WILL help you with the next language!

2) Having studied Spanish in high school and college, it's not surprising that it wins over your brain in language learning contexts! My brain often goes via French when working on Spanish.

A little more of an "issue" in your brain going English -> Spanish ?->? German (compared to mine: German -> French -> Spanish) is that English and German are Germanic languages, whereas France and Spanish are Romance languages. But that's rather an inconvenience than truly detrimental!

Idk how far along you are with German and how much Spanish you still practice simultaneously, but the main thing, as you said, will probably be more German input and practice — that doesn't have to be much, a German comic panel every day or listening to German songs will already make it more prominent in your brain :)

You ask about ridding yourself of Spanish but I think that is not necessary at all! Maybe you can embrace it? When you notice yourself slipping into Spanish, take the time to write down the Spanish you know and then (maybe later when you have the energy) figure out the German version for it. Or write vocab mind maps including both the Spanish and the German words for things!

I'm currently reading a book about Translanguaging in classroom settings (making use of ALL of one's language skills and knowledge instead of separating them by language) and it's making me see multilingual students in a new light, making their mulitlinguality a tool instead of a possible distraction!

I'm also wanting to look more into chunks (expressions and sets of commonly together-occurring words like "I don't know" or "I think that") and how to make good use of them in language learning!

Maybe lots of your Spanish is chunks you use as scaffolding for language production (for example, it feels like 90% of my French sentences start with "Je pense que...") — then perhaps it might help to internalize the German equivalent to make it easier to jump-start a German sentence instead!

Since you talk about Genders as well — learning multiple gendered languages is hard, don't underestimate the difficulty that everyone (not just you!) experiences there! If you haven't yet, check out the Gender-probability rules of German (i posted about them not too long ago)!

For cases, I suggest lots of input and practicing with verbs that take specific objects (I'll post about this soon i think but feel free to text me if you're interested!) — cases are HARD, especially for native speakers of languages that don't use them at all!

I hope I could give a little perspective and help at least a little bit!

Feel free to send more questions (via ask or via DM)!! I love talking about German and language learning 🥰

#ask #german #language learning #deutsch #langblr #learning german #deutsch lernen #german language #german learning #language

8 notes · View notes

olderthannetfic · 2 years ago

Note

I get what other anon wants to say about non-english authors preferring English for their fic by calling them "ignorant",but truth being told, German porn (written as well!!!) is so bad its a running joke across boarders, so no thank you. For many years this was my default reading material, because I was not a well practiced English speaker. Finding this new, more casual overall language was eyeopening.(I am sure there are some niche okay things here as well, but its so little you cant imagine.)

When a given language seems "good for porn" (or for anything, really), there are three reasons:

First, we're used to reading it, so we've gotten over the initial "Ack!" reaction.

Second, that language has a whole group of people using it for porn or to write about science or whatever, so not only has new vocabulary been coined, but common metaphors and ways of writing have been developed.

Third, and I'm fucking sorry, but this is the reality: we're not as good at a foreign language as we think we are, and that sands off the top level of awful from everything we read.

The third one goes for every weeb who is horrified to find that translations sound like they're for 12-year-olds. (Surprise! That's what canon sounds like!) It also goes for every non-native speaker of English shitting on their own language in favor of doing fandom in mine.

All native speakers of English have to get used to porn in English. It sounds embarrassing and weird at first to most people. A new genre or writing community requires a new adjustment period. Being used to AO3 won't make you used to Nifty.org.

I completely sympathize with wanting to do fandom in English because there are exponentially more people than in some languages.

I have zero sympathy for this canard that your language is bad for X.

In Chaucer's day, English was "bad for writing", full stop.

In the 19thC, written English was typically more formal and more florid than the Hemingway-fellating styles in fashion today.

How people use a language and what kind of written standard exists depends on culture, not inherent principles of the language. Not wanting to be a trailblazer is fine, but that's what is going on here and every other fucking time someone trots out this idiotic notion.

91 notes · View notes

shit-talk-turner · 6 months ago

Note

I'm not a Louise lover but this is a reach. She must speak English well enough to be in a relationship with an English man and travelled on tour with the band where most people involved will be speaking English. She also spends time in London. Alex has shown numerous times he can speak French and his mother taught French as well as German at school so she's probably bilingual. I imagine Alex put some effort into learning more French so they can speak both languages together. // No one said she can't speak English. Obviously she can, but to some extent. What can she possibly talk about with the wags? Shopping and other shallow stuff? It's not that difficult. Doubt they have deep and meaningful conversations. Maybe the wags speak and Louise just listens and that's why they love her so much, because she can ✨listen✨. Amanda is definitely a person who talks a lot. But I genuinely don't know how she can converse with Alex. His accent is quite difficult to understand for a foreigner, hell, even native English speakers don't understand him sometimes, so what do we expect from Louise? Her English pronunciation is bad also. I mean, from what we've heard. There's a whole discussion whether she said "hard" or "hot".

Oh and Alex can't speak French for shit sorry. He barely pronounced "nouvelle chanson". For a person who has a hard on for French culture and has a French gf, he's outrageously bad at speaking the language. Some French fans also said that his French is shit. So seems like no effort was put from both sides.

But hey, maybe they don't need to speak? She visits, they fuck, she goes back to Paris till his next call. Everyone's happy. Although their faces scream the opposite 😂

7 notes · View notes

blood-darkened-moon · 1 year ago

Note

Some Alfred and Alexia Ashford headcanons, but not related to twincest.

Sure! And you know what? I wanted to do some general headcanons for a while anyway.

Alfred

His full name is Alfred Edward Arthur Hamish Ashford.

Alfred’s IQ as an adult is high enough to be considered a genius.

Alfred likes his coffee black with a bit of sugar. He prefers tea to coffee, though.

He’s an early bird, he likes to get up early and go to bed early. However, in reality, Alfred usually gets up early, goes to bed late, and is often somewhat sleep deprived. Sometimes, he takes a nap in his office when he is too tired.

He tried to grow a beard once, which ended after a couple of weeks with some stubbles here and there. Nothing you could consider a beard. He has very little body hair in general.

He studied business administration and graduated as the best student of the year.

He’s a walking war and military history book.

Alfred owns a massive WWI and WWII-themed collection, which includes various models and original pieces from all parties. He has collectibles from other eras too. The models are from tanks, planes, armored vehicles, ships, larger weapons, and so on. Good amounts of them are self-made scale models. Alfred is very skilled in this regard. One of his maids kind of gained a friendship status by asking him frequently about the history of his collectibles.

Alfred is a decent pianist. He never had any lessons, everything is self-taught. There is still a lot of room for improvement, though.

Alfred speaks 12 languages besides English (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, Indian, Polish, Swedish) more or less well, some even on the level of a native speaker and almost accent-free. He can’t write and read all of them, but at least he understands them and has a rather broad vocabulary and some basic grammar skills. His favorite language is Italian. Learning them resulted partially from his own interest, partially it was work-related, and partially he picked them up from the mercenaries. Learning new languages was always easy for him.

Harman cared for Alfred like his own son after Alexia went to her cryogenic sleep. Alfred appreciated his kindness even though he never saw him as a father figure. Still, he treated Harman a lot better than he treated his other employees. Harman was even allowed to criticize Alfred openly without fearing for his life.

Harman hated what kind of monster Alfred had become over the years, even though he never saw the worst of Alfred. He partially blamed himself for it.

Alfred did not immediately develop his split personality after Alexia was gone. It started when he was around 20. At first, it was less frequent and less intense, but later it happened more often. The intensity increased too. Most of the time, he was still there, more or less, even when he wasn’t in control. Later he sometimes had total blackouts for minutes to hours when he switched completely to “Alexia”. After Alexia returned and he started visiting a therapist, his condition improved significantly. He still has it occasionally, especially when he is stressed, and it will probably stay forever to some extent, but at least the blackouts are gone.

He has problems distinguishing between the real Alexia and his alter ego.

Alfred is quite popular among the UBCS soldiers. Despite the intense training, they have a rather good life on Rockfort Island because he invests a lot of money to fulfill their basic desires. (Actually, it’s not his money, it’s Umbrella’s money, Alfred is just good at bargaining.) The only requirement is that the soldiers follow his rules. And since Alfred loves collective punishments, that’s not too hard to enforce. The soldiers keep each other in check.

Alfred rarely interacts with the lower-ranking soldier unless he has to. It is below him. Some have never even seen him the entire time they were on Rockfort Island. However, he is less aloof with the higher-ranking soldiers. When he’s in a good mood, he even has a few drinks with them.

The giant worm is his pet. Umbrella had little interest in this BOW, too impractical for broader use. They said Alfred could have it if he wanted it. No one knows how Alfred tamed it, but it is friendly toward him and even follows simple orders.

And because Alfred is a sick fuck, have some darker headcanons too.

Most prisoners on Rockfort Island are there for interrogation. Once this is over, Umbrella doesn’t need them anymore. Obviously, they can’t let them go, so they often become test subjects, or the UBCS can use them for training. As long as they die, Umbrella doesn’t care too much about how it happens. This means Alfred can do whatever he wants with most of the prisoners.

Watching Alexander suffer after Alexia infected him filled Alfred with joy. He could have watched this for hours while smiling from ear to ear. At first, he thought it was because he finally got his revenge, but the warm feeling returned when a worker had a fatal accident in front of him.

He tortured and killed a couple of prisoners himself. It was messy, and he realized that he preferred watching rather than doing it. Then he started using other prisoners for it. He promised to let them go if they would do what he said. A lie, obviously, but they often fell for it. Or he paid the mercenaries. Most have little to no morals anyway, and it is easy work for good money. This went on until he found Enoch Stoker (the anatomist). The guy clearly wasn’t right in his head, but he was intelligent, well-educated, and most importantly, he did everything Alfred wanted. Not only that he enjoyed it. The two even became something like friends.

Alfred sometimes recorded everything, but these snuff movies never gave him the same satisfaction as live performances.

War isn’t the only topic he has a lot of knowledge about. He’s also an expert in historic torture methods and outdated medical procedures from all around the world. Alfred is aware that he probably can’t replicate all of them, but he can try.

He tried to get into big-game and trophy hunting. The animals in his mansion are his kills. Soon Alfred realized that animals don’t do it for him. He preferred prey that was more intelligent. Alfred has a private hunting ground on Rockfort Island. Stronger prisoners have a good chance of visiting it instead of his torture chamber. (His aim is a lot better when he has slept well.) He owns a mare, which he often rides while hunting.

Alexia

Her full name is Alexia Veronica Elisabeth Nora Ashford.

The cryogenic sleep made her age slower. Physically she’s about 20 years old, not 27. Mentally she obviously didn’t age during that time.

Due to the mutations from the virus, Alexia can lift 40 times her body weight like an ant.

The twins have a cook, but when Alexia has time for it, she likes doing it herself. It reminds her a bit of working in a lab. She always wears safety glasses while cooking, possible helpers must wear them too. Her cooking is pretty good.

She doesn’t like sweets particularly. Sometimes it’s ok, but most of the time, she requests fruits as dessert.

Caffeine junkie. She likes her coffee with milk and without sugar.

Alexia loves opera, musicals, ballet, and concerts. She’s a good singer herself.

She is a night owl. Her sleeping schedule is slightly better than her brother’s, but not by much. She often stays up way too long and regrets it in the morning.

Alexia loves invertebrates. Ants are her favorites, but she loves other ones too. She has a large room where she keeps various species of invertebrates as pets in hundreds of enclosures. Alexia also has some beehives and started making her own honey.

She has collected porcelain dolls since childhood but has never played with them. Some are very old and rare. Her first doll was a gift from her surrogate mother. Alexia only knows this because Alexander told her so.

Alexia thought about getting into wine growing. Alfred loves wine, she loves wine, and she is generally interested in the process. So why not buy a suitable piece of land and hire some people to grow her own wine?

Alexia completed her studies mainly by distance learning. She attended the university only for exams and other events where she had to be present in person. The practical work was done in a lab in Antarctica that Alexander had built specifically for this purpose. She was still too small to work in a regular lab. After some inspections, the university allowed it. Alexia finished her Ph.D. with an A+. Her examiner didn’t go easy on her, but the defense was a breeze for Alexia regardless.

She secretly admired William Birkin. His achievements impressed her and gave her more motivation to work harder and outdo him. Alexia only met him once in person at an Umbrella intern conference shortly after she started working for them. He wasn’t very friendly, but they still debated until 4 a.m. (Alexander wasn’t with her). Both enjoyed it. Birkin would never admit it, though.

Alexia hoped Birkin would get along better with her, but she would never ingratiate herself. If he hates her, then so be it. Apparently, it doesn’t stop him from having elaborate conversations with her.

The last time she cried was when she was a baby.

She lacks a bit sense of shame. She is also uncomfortably direct in conversations, no sugarcoating, no lies to not hurt someone’s feelings.

She likes to try out new things. Even if she doesn’t like them in the end, the experience is still worth it.

Alexia has started to act more and more childish at times around people she is familiar with. As a child, she was dead serious. That’s how she was brought up, that’s what people expected of her. But now, she’s an adult, rich, and can do whatever she wants. And if necessary, Alexia can switch back to serious in a matter of seconds.

Alexia is fascinated by mundane things, like supermarkets. She never had these in Antarctica, and during the rare occasions Alexander took her somewhere else, they stayed far away from such places.

Both

Alfred was born first, Alexia 7 min later. Their birthday is the 27th of January, 1971.

Alexander took the DNA from Edward and Veronica to create the twins. That’s also where their second names are coming from.

They have platinum blonde hair and pale blue eyes. The twins resemble Edward more than Veronica.

They can read the other one so well that they can’t lie to each other. Sometimes it works for minor things, usually, it doesn’t.

Harman started his own investigations after Alexander’s disappearance. He found out what the twins did to him but never said anything. Harman thought it was unnecessarily cruel, and still, he could somewhat understand them. Despite his good intentions and all that he provided for them, Alexander was a terrible father. Harman felt sorry for the twins most of the time.

They tend to talk about other people who are right in front of them as if they are not there. They don’t mind if these people find it unpleased.

In any kind of competition, the twins never let the other win. They consider it disrespectful not to give 100%.

The twins often play chess together. When they were children, Alexia used to win all the time. Alfred improved a lot over the years, but he could never defeat her. As adults, it’s the opposite. Alexia tried many strategies, but she wasn’t able to beat Alfred once.

Alfred and Alexia started fencing as a hobby. Both are equally good. Often, they use the floret. Sometimes, they also try rapiers or sabers.

They like to travel and do sightseeing. Alexander rarely took them anywhere, and there wasn’t much to see in Antarctica.

Both work a lot. Alexia thought they could need more time to relax, so she introduced a spa day for them once a month. She also hoped that it would have a positive effect on Alfred’s mental health.

Alexia drags Alfred into everything that sparks her interest, like museums or theaters, and, to his dismay, into amusement parks, shopping malls, or supermarkets as well. Sometimes he can convince her not to go there, but not very often. If she really wants it, he gives in and accompanies her. Alfred’s worst experience so far was when Alexia dragged him into a strip club.

#resident evil #alfred ashford #alexia ashford #ashford twins #hcs #ask #🩸🌙#i always write too much i hope you don’t mind #re hcs

24 notes · View notes

germanlang · 9 months ago

Note

How is the Dutch learning going? Anything you need help with?

I'm glad to be confronted with this question because... eh

Last semester was really full for me and I barely did any language learning (at least that's what it felt like) so for 2024 one of my goals is simply to "get back into language learning"

I'm doing amazingly with that since I started Spanish just a couple weeks ago and am motivated as FUCK since I have a venezuelan best friend who's helping me

but I've let Dutch slip... a lot. I bought two Dutch books in Maastricht last year and I'm planning to read them both this year. I'm confident that will go well but I also know that, especially with Dutch, passive vocabulary and language skills are not the issues, active vocab is. I feel like I could barely produce a straight sentence right now, nevermind speak confidently with a native.

But being confronted with that through your ask, I've decided (while writing this), that I'll be taking notes in Dutch about the books while reading them (they're both non-fiction, one about OCD, the other about multilingualism – both central topics for me I'm super interested in). I know the issue with reading Dutch isn't understanding, it's that it just takes me longer than German or English and is more of a mental effort.

I should really try to get more immersion though and produce more on a regular basis, even if it's small stuff.

If you have YouTube or Spotify recs (music, videos, podcasts, audiobooks) do let me know!

I'd also generally be interested in language exchanges (this goes out to Dutch-, French-, Spanish-speakers and Latin-enthusiasts) (obv. I can mainly offer English and German) but be warned that I tend to have a turbulent life 😅

So overall: I've been slacking, I want to do more but it'll be hard to work that into my life right now...

Thank you so much for asking btw. Simply in replying I've thought so much about it and what the issues are and what I could do that I feel much more confident in getting back at it!!

#ask #language learning #dutch #language exchange

5 notes · View notes

amourdeslangues · 1 year ago

Text

hello there!

not exactly sure how to start this blog lmao - but since this is a langblr, i'll just kick it off with an introduction of my progress with each language i'm currently learning. (mostly leaving english and german out of it for now, because those are my native languages, but i speak those as well ofc)

français /// french

on commence avec le français! une de mes langues préferées et définitivement la langue étrangère que je parle le mieux. je l'apprends depuis environ 7 ans maintenant. à cause d'un voyage en france avec ma famille et d'un guide de la langue que j'avais trouvé dans un magasin, j'ai commencé à apprendre indépendamment quand je n'avais que neuf ou dix ans, mais le début de mes études du français dans un context scolaire - ça veut dire, d'une manière plus structurée mdr - suivait bientôt après cela. maintenant, je pense qu'on peut dire que je parle le français couramment. pas dans le sens qu'on pourrait me confondre avec une locuteuse native, mais je peux me débrouiller dans toutes sortes de situations presque aussi bien que dans mes langues maternelles. comme but, je veux maintenir un niveau assez bien pour (1) passer mon examen oral de l'Abitur (bac) en français avec la meilleure note possible et (2) étudier les sciences de la littérature en france après l'école.

svenska /// swedish

Hej allihoppa, trevligt att träffas! Jag kan inte säga precis när jag började lära mig svenska - jag började att intresserar mig för språket för 3-4 år sedan, men jag pluggade (?) inte verkligen aktivt förrän våren detta år. Tidigare kunde jag bara säga några små fraser, men jag kunde inte uttrycka mig på svenska. Jag tror att jag [made a lot of progress?] sedan dess. Jag älskar särskilt ljudet av svenska språket, det är väldigt melodiskt och unikt. Mitt [long-term?] mål är att tala flytande svenska. Just nu vill jag:

Läsa en hel roman på svenska för första gången ("I ljuset från gryningen", en deckare som jag köpte för två dagar sedan)

Lära mig nya ord

Bli mer självsäker när jag pratar svenska ([unfortunately?] känner jag inga människor från Sverige, men jag har en vän som läser språket också. Han är nästa flytande och vi pratar ibland på svenska med varandra, men trots att jag förstår nästan allt vad han säger är jag osäker att min uttal är för dålig att förstå när jag säger någonting själv 😅 så jag behöver mer övning med att tala)

farsi (persian) and gaeilge (irish gaelic)

i'm lumping these two into one part (written in english) because i'm not sufficiently fluent in either language to be able to write a full text, lmao

i technically started learning persian about a year ago, but since i keep getting interrupted because of things like having to do too much schoolwork, i'm still at a very low level. i also feel like it's more difficult than learning swedish, for example, because it's from a different language family than any of the languages i speak rn - less loanwords, words related to each other, structural similarities etc. that would help me understand! at least i mostly know the alphabet now, but practically i'm only able to say a few simple things: hello, good morning, how are you etc. however, it's a really interesting language and i'd love to get into actively studying it again! my next goal is to reach A1 level in reading, writing, listening and speaking... let's see how that goes ^^

also, if anyone knows any good resources for learning farsi, please let me know! i'm currently using a combination of a textbook directed at german speakers (called با هم), the Persian course on Memrise and the youtube channels Chai & Conversation and Persian Learning, but it's a bit difficult to find learning materials... (i'm salty that duolingo doesn't have it lmfao)

as for irish gaelic, i (hyper)focused on it for a couple of months in 2021, in particular because part of my family is irish - nobody taught me the language and i'm not really close with my paternal relatives, but i'm still interested in it because... heritage reasons, y'know. also, there are so many fascinating aspects of the language - unique little grammar quirks, pronunciation, all that! i kind of stopped practicing though because i had too little time, so now i just remember random little phrases i learnt off duolingo: dia duit, comhghairdeas (i'm proud of remembering how to spell it lol), ithim cáis (an extremely useful sentence in daily life, i know)...

right now, i don't anticipate irish being a major focus of this blog, but i'm going to dublin in two days (aaaa!!!) and maybe that'll reactivate my slight obsession with the language, so who knows...

about me

i love everything related to languages - obviously foreign languages, but also things like linguistics and literature... i also write a lot in my free time!

on the rare occasions where i'm not doing anything language-related, i'm also very interested in chemistry. i like listening to music (i mean, who doesn't) & my favourite genres are rock, indie and melodic death metal - but i'll listen to almost anything, especially if it's in one of my target languages (really into swedish and persian pop rn). i enjoy hiking and cycling, and i've been learning how to dance for about a year.

i'm really looking forward to getting to know other people in the langblr community and exchanging ideas, progress, tips for learning... on y va :D

#introduction #langblr #language learning #polyglot #francais #french #svenska #swedish #first post #hello tumblr #long post

17 notes · View notes