#i have chinese in me but don't speak any of the languages there so does that mean i'm invalid too? lol

[ruhua-langblr]

Language Apps Suck, Now What?: A Guide to Actually Becoming "Fluent"

The much requested sequel to my DL post that was promised almost a year ago.

I'm going to address all of the techniques that have helped me in my language learning journeys. Since 95% of these came from the fact that in a past language learning mistake, they are titled as my mistakes (and how I would/did things differently going forward). For those that read to the bottom there is a "best universal resources" list.

Disclaimers:

"Fluency" is hard to define and everyone has their own goals. So for the purpose of this post, "fluency" will be defined as "your personal mastery target of the language".

If you just want to pick up a bit of a language to not sound like a total foreigner on vacation or just exchange a few words in a friend's native language, feel free to ignore what doesn't apply, but maybe something here could help make it a little easier.

This is based on my own personal experience and (some) research.

Mistake 1: Asymmetrical Studying

Assuming you don't just want to do a single activity in a language, or are learning a language like ASL, a language requires 4 parts to be studied: Speaking, Listening, Writing, Reading. While these have overlap, you can't learn speaking from reading, or even learn speaking from just listening. One of my first Chinese teachers told me how he would listen to the textbook dialogues while he was biking to classes and it helped him. I took this information, thought "Yeah that's an idea, but sounds boring" and now regret not taking his advice nearly every day.

I think a lot of us find methods we enjoy to study (mine was reading) and assume that if we just do that method more ™ it will eventually help us in other areas (sometimes it does, but that's only sometimes). Find a method that works for you for each area of study, even better find more than one method since we use these skills in a variety of manners! I can understand a TV program pretty well since I have a lot of context clues and body language to fill in any gaps of understanding, but taking a phone call is much harder—the audio is rougher, there's no body language to read, and since most Chinese programs have hard coded subtitles, no subtitles to fall back on either. If I were to compare the number of hours I spent reading in Chinese to (actively) training my listening? Probably a ratio of 100 to 1. When I started to learn Korean, the first thing I did was find a variety of listening resources for my level.

Fix: Find a variety of study methods that challenge all aspects of the language in different ways.

A variety of methods will help you develop a more well-rounded level of mastery, and probably help you keep from getting bored. Which is important because...

Mistake 2: Inconsistent Studying

If there is one positive to a language app, it is the pressure it puts on keeping a streak. Making studying a part of your everyday routine is the best thing you can do. I benefited a lot from taking a college language course since I had a dedicated time to study and practice Chinese 5 days out of the week (and homework usually filled the other two). Memorization is a huge part of language learning, and stopping and starting is terrible for memorization. When I was in elementary school, we had Spanish maybe a couple times a month. Looking back, it seems like it was the first class to be cut if we needed to catch up on a more important course. Needless to say, I can't even speak Spanish at an elementary level.

However, I'm sure many people reading this don't have the time to do ultra-immersion 4-hour study sessions every day either. Find what days during the week you have time to focus on learning new vocab and grammar, and use the rest of the week to review. This can be done on your commute to school/work, while you do the dishes, or as a part of your morning/evening routine. Making this as realistic as possible will help you actually succeed in making this a habit. (Check this out for how to set realistic study goals)

Fix: Study regularly (ideally daily) by setting realistic goals. Avoid "binge" studying since remembering requires consistent repetition to be most effective.

Mistake 3: Resource Choice

This is really composed of two mistakes, but I have a good example that will cover them both.

First, finding resources that are at or slightly above your level is the most important thing. Easy resources will not challenge you enough and difficult resources will overwhelm you. The ideal is n+1, with n as what you know plus 1 new thing.

Second, getting distracted by fancy, new technology. Newer isn't always better, and there are often advantages that are lost when we've made technological developments. I often found myself wanting to try out new browser extensions or organizational methods and honestly I would've benefitted from just using that time to study. (Also, you're probably reading this because of my DL post so I don't think it has to be said that AI resources suck.)

A good example of this was my time using Clozemaster. I had actually recommended it when I first started using it since I thought the foundation was really solid. However, after long term use, I found that it just wasn't a good fit. The sentences were often too simple or too long and strange for memorization at higher levels or were too difficult at lower levels. I think that taking my textbook's example sentences from dialogues into something like Anki would've been a far better use of my time (and money) as they were already designed to be at that n+1 level.

Fix: "Vet" your resources—make sure they will actually help you. If something is working for you, then keep using it! You don't always have to upgrade to the newest tool/method.

Mistake 3.5: Classrooms and Textbooks

A .5 since it's not my mistake, but an addendum of caution. I think there is a significant part of the language learning community that views textbooks and classroom learning as the worst possible resource. They are "boring", "outdated", and "ineffective" (ironically one of the most interesting modern language learning methods, ALG, is only done in a classroom setting). Classrooms and textbooks bring back memories of being surrounded by mostly uninterested classmates, minimal priority, and a focus on grades rather than personal achievement (imagine the difference between a class of middle schoolers who were forced to choose a foreign language vs. adult learners who self-selected!) People have used these exact methods, or even "cruder" methods, to successfully learn a language. It all comes down to what works best for you. I specifically recommend textbooks for learning grammar and the plentiful number of dialogues and written passages that can function great as graded readers and listening resources. (Also the distinction made between "a youtube lesson on a grammatical principle" which is totally cool, and "a passage in a grammar textbook" is more one of tone and audio/written than efficacy).

Classrooms can be really great for speaking practice since they can be a lot less intimidating speaking to someone who is also learning while receiving corrections. Speech can be awkward to train on your own (not impossible if you're good at just talking aloud to yourself!), and classrooms can work nicely for this. Homework and class schedules also have built in accountability!

Fix: Explore resources available to you and try to think holistically about your approach. CI+Traditional Methods is my go to "Learning Cocktail"

Mistake 4: Yes, Immersion, But...

I realized this relatively quickly while learning Chinese, but immersion at a level much higher than your current level will do very little for you. What is sometimes left out of those "Just watch anime to learn Japanese" discussions is that you first need to have a chance at understanding what is being said. Choosing materials that are much higher than your level will not teach you the language. It doesn't matter how many times someone at HSK 1 hears “他是甘露之惠，我并无此水可还”, they will not get very far. Actual deduction and learning comes from having enough familiar components to be able to make deductions—something different than guessing. An HSK 1 learner, never having heard the word 老虎 will be able to understand "tiger" if someone says “这是我的老虎” while standing next to a tiger. This is not to say you can never try something more difficult—things should be challenging—but if you can't make heads or tails of what's being said, then it's time to find something a bit easier. If mistake 2 is about the type of method, this is about the level. If you wouldn't give a kindergartener The Great Gatsby to learn how to read, why would you watch Full Metal Alchemist to start learning a language?

Side note: Interesting video here on the Comprehensible Input hypothesis and how it relates to neurodivergence.

Fix: Immerse yourself in appropriate content for your level. It's called comprehensible input for a reason.

Mistake 5: On Translation

I work as a translator, so do you really think I'm going to say translation is all bad? Of course not. It's a separate skill that can be added on to the basic skills, but is really only required if you are A. someone who is an intermediary between two languages (say you have to translate for a spouse or family member) or B. It is your job/hobby. In the context of sitting down and learning, it can be harmful. I think my brain often goes to translation too often because that's how I used to learn. Trying to unlearn that is difficult because, well, what do people even mean when they say "don't translate"? They mean when someone says "thank you", you should not go to your primary language and translate "you're welcome" from that. You should train yourself to go to your target language first when you hear the word for "thank you". A very literally translated "thank you" in Chinese "谢谢你" can come off as cold and sarcastic. I don't tell my friends that, I say "谢啦～". Direct translation can take away the difference in culture, grammar, and politeness in a language. If there is a reason you sound awkward while writing and speaking, it's probably because you're imposing your primary language on your target language.

Fix: Try as hard as you can to not work from your primary language into the target language, but to work from the structures, set phrases, and grammar within the target language that you know first.

Mistake 6: The Secret Language Learners Don't Want You To Know...

...is that there is no one easy method. You are not going to learn French while you sleep, or master Korean by doing this one easy trick. Learning a language requires work and dedication, the people that succeed are those that push through the boredom of repetition and failure. The "I learned X in 1 year/month/week/day!" crowd is hiding large asterisks, be it their actual level, the assistance and free time available to them, "well actually I had already studied this for 4 years", or just straight-up lying. Our own journeys in our native tongue were not easy, they required years and years of constant immersion and instruction. While we are now older and wiser people that can make quick connections, we are also burdened with things like "jobs", "house work", "school work", and the digital black hole that is "social media" that take up our time and energy. Everything above is to help make this journey a little bit easier, quicker, and painless, but it will never be magic.

I find that language learning has a lot in common with the fitness community. People will talk about the workout that changed their life and how no other one will do the same—and it really can be the truth that it changed their life and that they feel it is the ultimate way. The real workout that will change your life is the one you're most consistent with, that you enjoy the most. Language learning is just trying to find the brain exercise that you can be the most consistent with.

Fix: Save your energy looking for shortcuts, and do the work, fail, and come back for more. If someone tells you that you can become fluent in a ridiculously short amount of time, they are selling you a fantasy (and likely a product). You get out what you put in.

For those that made it to the end, here are some of my "universal resources":

Refold Method: I don't agree with their actual method 100%, but they've collected a lot of great resources for learning languages. I've found their Chinese and Korean discords to also be really helpful and provided even more resources than what's given in their starter guides.

Language Reactor: Very useful, and have recently added podcasts as a material! The free version is honestly all you need.

Anki: If I do not mention it, the people with 4+ year streaks with a 5K word deck will not let me forget it. It can be used on desktop or on your phone as an app. If you need a replacement for a language learning app, this is one of them. Justin Sung has a lot of great info on how to best utilize Anki (as does Refold). It's not my favorite, but it could be yours!

LingQ: "But I thought you said language apps are bad!" In isolation, yes. Sorry for the clickbait. This one is pretty good, and more interested in immersing you in the language than selling a subscription to allow you to freeze your streak so the number goes up.

Grammar Textbooks: For self-taught learning, these are going to be the best resource since it's focused on the hardest part of the language, and only that. If you're tired of seeing group work activities, look for a textbook that is just on grammar (Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar is my rec for Chinese, and A Guide to Japanese Grammar by Tae Kim is the most common/enthusiastic rec I've heard for Japanese).

Shadowing: Simply repeat what you hear. Matt vs Japan talks about his setup here for optimized shadowing (which you can probably build for a lot cheaper now), but it can also just be you watching a video and pausing to repeat after each sentence or near simultaneously if you're able.

Youtube: Be it "Short Story for Beginners", "How to use X", "250 Essential Phrases", or a GRWM in your target language, Youtube is the best. Sometimes you have to dig to find what works for you, but I imagine there is something for everyone at every level. (Pro tip: People upload textbook audio dialogues often, you don't even have to buy the textbook to be able to learn from it!)

A Friend: Be it a fellow learner, or someone who has already mastered the language, it is easier when you have someone, not only to speak to, but to remind you why you're doing this. I write far more in Chinese because I have friends I can text in Chinese.

Pen and Paper: Study after study, writing on paper continues to be the best method for memorization. Typing or using a pen and tablet still can't compare to traditional methods.

The Replies (Probably): Lots of people were happy to give alternatives for specific languages in the replies of my DL post. The community here is pretty active, so if this post blows up at least 20% of what the last one did, you might be able to find some great stuff in the replies and reblogs.

I wish you all the best~

[xhanisai]

I can’t believe I have to say this again.

But like.

Do not leave comments that bash on the actual show whilst ‘complimenting’ my fanworks. It does not make me happy at all IN FACT I really HATE it when people do that. 

I create stuff for this fandom because I adore the show with all its flaws and everything. I grew up with the show and I adore the characters so much. So when I receive comments or tags saying stuff like “Ugh if only the writers knew how to write like that” or “You should be in charge of canon cos canon is shit lol”, it just fucks up my mood and it makes me feel grossed out. 

There are millions of things out there to write or say to other people about their work without having to bring down canon and what the actual professionals have worked on.

Keep your gripes about the show off my work.

[greenunoreversecard]

HEYYEYHEY CAN I REQUEST LLOYD (ninjago) HEADCANONS PLEASEEEE (ty :3)

A/N: Ofc!I'll do general character ones, as well as x reader ones :) hope ye likey likey:pp

Lloyd, The Greenest and Geekest mf.

General character headcanons:

Half Japanese half Chinese

His hair is box blonde dye and you cannot change my mind.

Left handed

Severely dyslexic and hands off all scroll reading and just reading oriented tasks to kai.

Def gen z vibes. Like, the others give off more inbetween z and millenial, so they dont always get his humor. And sometimes he uses that to his advantage and "Speaks in code" (uses as much slang as possible)

Has LED lights in his room set to forest green.

Has given himself a smiley face tattoo.

Cried over a dead goose once.

OK, just to preface i see cole as a stoner of Sorts and uses the excuse "it gets me closer to my element"

With that in mind cole let lloyd try it and now sometimes when he is told to unwind, of feels like he needs to take a chill pill he and Cole spark up

in the beginning of his leader ship role, he used to Say;"kick ass and take names" and if things went wrong he had the fuck it we ball mindset, but got better with time. There are still times they wing it, though.

if he isnt in his gi he almost exclusively wears his pajamas (aka a Hoodie, tshirt and sweats)

Vv tired, and now has a raging addiction to energy drinks due to his lack of Sleep.

He used to eat worms as a kid bc he Thought he it was evil.

Has a eyebrow piercing, and wants a tongue piercing.

Wears "reading" glasses, that he should technically wear all the time because he can't see up close and has a astigmatism,, but he says yolo. Zane then make him contacts after he almost ran into a moving blade and got his head severed.

Adhd and OCD, as well as the normal line up (anxiety, depression, cptsd)

Lloyd in a relationship:

Hes very distant in the beginning, it'll take time to warm up to you.

He tends to be orage cat vibes.

On the cat trend, he gets close for a bit Before becoming distant. Going through waves of affection, kinda.

He hasn't had like, any good relationships in his life so he tries to "protect" himself when he feels he gets to close to you, and so he pulls away.

He does the fuckboy face when your sad bc it makes you laugh, as well as That weird dice roll

He actually does the face/dice roll combo whenever he Sees you as he walks over, it's an inside joke now

primary giving love language: acts of service and quality time

Primary receiving love language: gifts and words of affirmation. But physical touch is also high up there.

Also, not expensive gifts. He hates those. Give him a stick you saw on a walk that made you think of him. He'll cherish it forever. And maybe cry.

He will cry.

will make noises at you and expects a noise in response or he'll be sad.

Also randomly bites you. He's a nommer

also sends you memes throughout the day.

As well as random pictures with the caption;"BABY LOK THIS IS S. US IF WE WHERE *insert whatever item here*

Called you babe, baby, love, shitface, asshole.

Expect kind and loving gentle bullying.

Doesnt know how to express his emotions to just expect him to come up to you, lightly shake your shoulders and aggressively say;"I love you bitch.i ain't Evea gon stop lovin you. Bitchhhhhhh" (vine reference)

Sends you .5 of everyone, himself included. He's addicted to Taking them. You will not get out of it.

Also sometimes just walks around in nyas stilettos for fun.

You two have fashion shows.

You also take over the Living room sometimes and build giant ass forts to watch shitty reality tv in and make fun oF The people

Overall, once he realizes you won't leave he's the most funniest loving chaotic guy.

But expect it to take a hot minute for him to realsie this

give him time,, but also have some deep talks..

Let him vent

and for the love of God don't hurt the baby's heart.

Expect inside jokes

[dedalvs]

it's fascinating to me how endlessly complicated High Valyrian seems to be when you answer questions about it. Is there any language in the world more or less at the same level of complexity?

It depends how you're thinking of complexity. All the languages of the world are equally complex. They have to be, because they all need to perform the same function, and they're all used by the same human brains living inside the same humans living human lives. I think English speakers (and hypothesize that, by extension, the same would be true of Chinese speakers, Hawaiian speakers, Vietnamese speakers, Swedish speakers) look at certain other languages and think of them as more complex in the meta sense because they are more morphologically complex.

By this, I mean in English, for a noun you need to know its singular and plural form—that's it. For a verb, you need to know its -s form, its -ed form, its -ing form, and, very rarely, its -en form. There is some irregularity in form for almost all of these (-ing appears to always be regular), but there aren't more forms, outside of "to be", which has a unique first person singular form.

And...that's it, really. We have adjectival comparison, I guess, but even that can be traded out for an expression (aside from "better" which can't be replaced easily by "more good", most comparatives can be replaced—e.g. you can say something is "more red" than something else even though you can also say it's "redder" than something else). There aren't many word form changes in English a user has to learn in order to be able to use those words in a sentence. The same is true of those languages I listed in the parenthetical phrase above.

Compare that to Spanish, where there are more word form changes for verbs in the present tense (indicative and subjunctive) than in the entirety of English. And that's just one tense for verbs! There's loads more that needs to be memorized; many more word form changes you need to know to be able to use words effectively in a sentence. And there are irregularities on top of that!

Is it the case, therefore, that Spanish is more complex than English?

Certainly, Spanish is more morphologically complex, but does that mean you can express more in Spanish than you can in English? Certainly not! So then what does it mean when we say Spanish is more morphologically complex than English? What's the upshot? What does it mean for the language user?

Perhaps it would help if we compare some Spanish verbs and their English translations:

hablabas "you were talking"

hablé "I spoke"

hable "you would speak"

The precise translation of these verbs will depend on context, but this is a fine example. These are all single words of Spanish. They're different forms that must be memorized, but they're single words. The English requires at least two words for each concept.

So which is more complex? On the one hand, you have fewer words but more forms. On the other, more words, and more words = bigger.

And that, essentially, is the crux of it.

Any time you have complexity baked into single words morphologically in one language, you'll find complexity in the form of multiword expressions in a less morphologically complex language. The meanings are always there(*), but they're expressed in different ways.

As English speakers, we're used to having to express things in multiword expressions, and a speaker of a given language will find their own language to be simple just because. We extend that to think of languages like ours as simpler than those that are different. But, in truth, it's six of one, half dozen of another. Furthermore, there's just as much complexity in languages with less morphological complexity. Consider the following expressions in American English:

I walked to the store. ✅

I walked to a store. ✅

I walked to store. ❌

That's pretty standard. English has articles and you need to use them, right?

I ate the dinner. ✅

I ate a dinner. ✅

I ate dinner. ✅

All those are okay. They don't mean the same thing—and, indeed, the first two have much more restricted contexts—but they're all okay. That's a little weird, isn't it?

Not as weird as this:

I made it by the hand. ❌

I made it by a hand. ❌

I made it by hand. ✅

The first two aren't just weird: they're yikes-a-doodle-do wrong. You might try to brush it aside and say that it's just an expression, and, sure, it is, but ask yourself this: how'd that expression come about in the first place? This one is actually from Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet) and still works the same way in American English:

You kiss by the book. ✅

You kiss by a book. ❌

You kiss by book. ❌

And just for funsies:

He won by the nose. ❌

He won by a nose. ✅

He won by nose. ❌

You might think the way these shake has to do with what they stand for—that the semantics of the noun in question condition whether or not you can use articles—but consider the first one "store" and compare it to this one:

I walked to the Barnes & Noble. ✅

I walked to a Barnes & Noble. ✅

I walked to Barnes & Noble. ✅

Barnes & Noble is a store, but refer to it by title, and suddenly it's all okay.

Now, if your native language is English, ask yourself: when and how did you learn all of this? Did someone sit you down and tell you where to use which articles and where not to? I'm sure there was some level of instruction you got in elementary school (whether it was accurate or not), but how much of a difference do you think that made? Did you just not use articles before then? And even now, could you explain this? Do you even think about it? Or do you just do it—flawlelssly and effortlessly? Adult learners of English will tell you learning this stuff is a nightmare. Throw in phrasal verbs (pick up vs. pick out vs. pick on vs. pick up on vs. plain old pick) and suddenly English doesn't look too simple anymore.

Bringing this back to your question, when you look at High Valyrian, is there a natural language with an equal amount of morphological complexity? Sure. Maybe something like Latin. But understand that any language will be as complex—not more, not less: as. The only difference with High Valyrian, actually, is its vocabulary isn't as large (give me a couple decades), and it doesn't have nearly as many users as any natural languages. It's also being kept artificially small, in that the language is built up to fit a fictional reality, rather than being expanded to handle anything, the way modern languages are. But pick up any language and it will be equally complex.

(*) From above, it is not always the case that the same "meanings" will be in the equivalent translation of a given sentence. A good example is gender. If you say El río es largo in Spanish it means "The river is long" in English. Like, exactly that. There is no question that these two phrases are functionally equivalent. HOWEVER there is more information in the Spanish sentence. The words el, río and largo are all masculine gender. What does that mean? Nothing more than that they're not feminine. If you hear el in Spanish there are a limited number of words that can legally follow it. When you hear largo, you know that what it refers to has to be in the same class. The function of this is simply to enrich the signal. If you only hear "is large" in English from the previous sentence, you have no idea what noun is large. If you hear es largo in Spanish, you also don't know—but whatever that thing is, you know it has to be masculine. That means that if a Spanish speaker has to guess what es largo they were trivially have a better shot at guessing correctly than an English speaker guessing what "is large" (e.g. if an English speaker has a one in a million shot, a Spanish speaker has a one in 500,000 shot, because roughly half the nouns of Spanish are masculine and half feminine). This means, technically, there's more information in the Spanish sentence than the English sentence, and that information is not represented at all in the English sentence, and is, essentially, unrecoverable. But that "information" is more morphological in nature than semantic.

[amanhashisneeds]

High Concept: Girl Script

alright, someone has to say it: there is a practical problem in making your fuckdoll completely unable to read or write.

don't get me wrong! the idea is VERY hot. i love the idea of stripping away language from a slut because language is just so human, and stripping away someone's ability to speak, read, or write, partially or fully, is in essence turning that person into an animal.

but this is the real world. and as much as i actually want to do that, it'll make doctor's visits, using the internet (for porn, of course), and, frankly, living in the modern world very difficult to navigate. and yet, it remains extremely important to control her information diet. you can't have your toy just being able to read or write anything. that would be chaos!

my solution: girl script. girl script is a hypothetical english writing system to be used only by bimbos. only pro-bimbo content is allowed to be written in it. any content which doesn't reinforce their submission or sexual objectification is kept in the regular latin alphabet -- which girls should ideally not be taught in the first place, but, if necessary, girls can be forced to unlearn it.

girl script should ideally be clunky and unwieldy. it should be difficult to write in in order to discourage intellectual activity. i propose a system of ideograms, somewhere in between emojis and sitelen pona, so that writing anything takes a lot of physical effort and pushes the limits her already tiny memory. additionally, using an ideogramic system means that every symbol has to be individually taught. therefore, your slut can't write down words she isn't allowed to know, and she can't easily create new words in order to try and get around this limitation. for example, you could entirely remove her ability to write non-degrading words; she doesn't know how to write the word for "vagina" or "boobs," but she does know how to write "cunt" and "tits."

it would still represent english words, so it should be very easy for a man to learn it and translate. however, for convenience, programs could be written which automatically translate from girl script to the latin alphabet and vice-versa. it could also be used as a sort of international bimbo auxiliary language, like how simplified chinese is used for multiple languages across china. though differing grammar may make this difficult, if the system is simple enough, that may not be a serious obstacle for comprehension.

i'm open to iterations on this blueprint or any other ideas on how to make a closed information ecosystem for bimbo girls. it's important to me that our dollies never come into contact with any thoughts we don't want them to have, so that they can't even think of anything other than pure obedience.

[reccyls]

what language do you think all the ikevil guys soeaj? I feel like Will and Victoe definitely know a few maybe? And Liam can definitely speak French

As nobility, I think William and Elbert would definitely have learned at least one of French or German, which were the two most popular non-English languages at the time (though the lead has always gone to French, I believe). Additionally, I believe William speaks Italian, as the titles of his route's premium stories all contain Italian in them. And I think William would be familiar with Latin, at least with reading and writing it. Even during the 19th century, education of the elite (especially those aiming to go into higher education) would have included some Latin or Ancient Greek component--given that he speaks Italian, Latin would probably have been the better choice.

It's possible Alfons may have picked up on a few words and phrases due to his proximity to Elbert, but I don't think he knows much more than that.

I'll just note that Queen Victoria's childhood education includes French, German, Italian, and Latin. I imagine Victor speaks all of those as well.

Harrison also probably knows one of French or German.

Jude probably has a working knowledge of multiple languages for his business: a number of European languages, maybe some Chinese as well. Also I believe Kate comments on his dialect and wonders if he is an immigrant, so his mother tongue could potentially be another language.

Ellis's father is a priest (? or another religious role, if that's not the right one) so he likely knows some Church Latin. Probably just prayers, though.

I can't remember if Roger has a medical degree or not. If he does, he would be required to read both Latin and Greek. Even if he doesn't, I think he'd learn them anyway over the course of his research.

I also can't remember about Liam, you may know more than me, haha. Everyone at the theater seemed to accept Liam's lie that he was going to study overseas (can't recall if any particular country is mentioned) at face value, so he probably does speak at least one foreign language. Could definitely be French.

So obviously all of Vogel speak both German and English. I think Darius would likely have attended Gymnasium, which would have meant he needed to learn Latin and Ancient Greek. He would have had to learn a modern language as well, which could very well have been English.

I don't know if either Ring or Nica would have had the opportunity to study other languages, given their apparent backstory

[revalition]

OCT 18 - ELECTROCHEMISTRY Go to party planet. Love and be loved by drugs.

.... (looks at calendar) yup definitely october 18th today, don't mind us. this didn't even take that long, I wish I could have done more for one of my fav boys. we were putting off a task we didn't want to do (update resume) which meant getting stuck doing nothing at all for 2 days :)))

tomorrow is full of stuff we dont want to do too so... might fall behind on skilltober a bit. it's ok. but it's almost 2am and we gotta be up at 8 so gonna stop rambling now!!! (much love from the main guy who runs this blog and echem!! we're both here!)

lotssss of stuff under the cut! of my wonderful guy!

fun facts:

- has a swear score of 9/10 (calculated by yours truly) second only to half light

- he damages volition only once and heals volition 10 times! that's also the most healing out of any of the skills

- this impolite guy never once says sorry or please. he does say thank you once (to idiot doom spiral for inviting them to party)

- calls you Harry 3 times, boy 7 times, son once, man 13 times (+ calls volition man twice lol), baby 13 times, darling once, buster once, sir once, chief once, buddy 2 times, brother twice, detective 3 times... he talks to you a lot! I'm sure I'm missing some too

- calls himself your mesolimbic reward pathway, your glands, receptors/GABA-receptors, your pleasure response/centres, your electrochemistry, your parasympathetic nervous system, your moral compass (uhm...), your brain (that's a bit presumptuous) again probably missing some

- the 30 screenshot limit is *evil* >:(

also, electrochemistry's name translates directly to electrochemistry in almost all the languages disco has been translated to (which is interesting on its own, electrochemistry is the study of the chemistry of electrons moving) except the chinese translation -- 食髓知味

I don't speak a word of chinese so forgive me if this is off but google translate directly translates it to "Eat the marrow to know the taste". Apparently it is an expression meaning that once you've had a taste of something (the marrow) you will want to have it again, and is used in a negative way.

it... describes echem's role in the game quite clearly. anyway this seemed way too cool to not share.

onto the quotes!

he's so sassy

true! true! tell him echem!

I love love love this one. echem recognizes joy. kim's joy!!

shhhhhh

volition only trying to rein in electrochem... he's all alone out here haha

so delightful, happy electrochem!!!

no 😭 why is he *like that* sometimes. rhetoric knows he's gonna suggest something stupid before echem even opens his mouth. actual idiot. this is a godly check too! he gets sooo stupid at high levels...

hitting this guy with a rolled up newspaper >:|

pleaseee volition make him stop talking. he's so bad. I know he's just doing what he knows, but he's doing it in a manipulative way

look how stupid he is <3 this is when you make the jump for your coat, while you're falling through the air...

alternate outcome!! this line is actually so sad ☹️ noooo... sweetie your precious friend is still there it's okay you'll be okay

electrochemistry making this horrible situation even worse! pleaseee dude not *THE EXPRESSION* I want to strangle him. volition fighting for his life out here

he wants to be famous <3

I didn't mean to put 3 quotes in a row of authority and echem getting along but here we are. echem just wants to buy stuff he doesn't know any better!

one millisecond before hurling the pétanque ball into the ocean... at least he had fun doing it

he praises you for pouring your alcohol on the ground to honour the people you and kim have killed in the line of duty. okay my dude...

YES shit on the kingdom of conscience! someone has to!

what is wrong with him? (affectionate)

these increasing difficulty electrochemistry checks... thanks for making everyone regret asking man. and regret ever leveling you up that high in the first place...

if you rejected the task to find a drink, echem doesn't want it!

echem turning down the opportunity to use the expression, and it's just cause he isn't interested... dying. dying here.

this is a classic and a favourite. I was like 3 minutes into the game when I got this and was like ohhh... what's with this guy. oh dear.

bad :( don't call him a *lamo* stupid skill. him referring to himself by his own name is funny, I don't think any of the others do that

idiot doom spiral cuts him off here. but electrochemistry is the only skill that talks about the basal ganglia (Ancient Reptilian Brain). After some research it looks like the mesolimbic pathway and basal ganglia are closely related, and certain structures are even shared between them. Which might explain why electrochemistry is more in tune with ancient reptilian brain than the other skills. There's actually a really similar thing with perception (smell) talking to limbic system, and the olfactory system and limbic system share pathways in the brain. fascinating. which then raises the question of if pre-martinaise harry knew these things -- knows what a mesolimbic pathway is, and an olfactory system and a basal ganglia, and then named them accordingly? or if it was something else...?

(hopefully this is right, I'm a programmer not a neuroscientist. if someone who actually knows about brains knows more please say something lol)

anyway. onto other quotes.

look at them, look at the idiots <3

he's so sarcastic. look at him, focusing on what really matters! good job buddy

he's gonna kill volition one of these days. also happened in my first playthrough lol, my very high electrochemistry meant I became very fond of volition very fast.

volition... volition beloved, trying to stop you. electrochemistry *lying*. I believe volition about the vow, shush. but also... it is sooo sad that he thinks you guys can't make it without speed :( it's clearly that thought process, that it's better to risk your own health and save as many people as you can, that got things to be as bad as they are... he's got so many issues.

anyway. I've never hit 30 screenshots so fast, yikes. I love this guy so much. I have *so* many thoughts about him... how his role in harry's life would change after being sober and clean for a while... he just wants you to be happy.

[n1ghtfurys]

Google translate

More könig fluff just because

You're sitting on your sofa, watching a shitty hallmark movie and eating a chinese take-away. You're so engrossed in this shitty movie; this girl has just missed her flight and ends up running into her crush from highschool. Typical hallmark but sometimes you just need something silly and mindless. 

König on the other hand doesn't care, even a little bit about the movie. Not when you're sitting next to him, looking so perfect. So angelic. You're not even doing anything, just eating and watching a movie. You're not wearing anything special, just one of his old t-shirts and a pair of shorts he can't see because of how big his top is on you. The situation is so mundane but he can't drag his eyes back to the screen. (Looking back on it you imagine he had little pink hearts in his eyes.)

“Ich liebe dich.” He says it before he even processes it, you've been seeing each other for three months but he's still so thankful he said it in German and not English.

“Hm?” You turn to him and tilt your head to one side but he just smiles and shakes his head. You don't think much of it so you shuffle until you're comfortably nestled into his side before you go back to the movie. The smile on his face grows less forced as he traces his fingers up and down your arm. Even if you didn't understand what he said, it's true. He does love you.

Years later you decide to learn German. For many reasons, most of them being if you ever did have kids you want to be able to understand them when they speak to König.

König originally thought nothing of it, encouraged it even because how cute would you be speaking to him in German. 

That is until you come barreling down the stairs shouting for him like he'd done something terrible.

When he sees you round the corner it looks like you're on a mission for his head. “I can't believe you!” You jab your finger into your chest as you speak. “You never told me!” 

He looks so confused as you repeatedly jab him in the chest. 

You realise he might not be getting that you're not all that upset with him, not really, so you figure you should tell him the phrase you just learnt. “Ich liebe dich.” Saying it doesn't seem to make him any less confused but he takes hold of your hand the next time too go to jab him. 

“You said it to me. Ages ago, but I didn't hear properly.” You smile watching him fidget with your engagement ring.

“You let me believe that I told you I loved you first.” You jab him once more for good measure. “But you just said it in a language I didn't know.” Your mock serious face dissolves into a goofy smile as you see him relax.

“I can't believe you didn't tell me.” You whisper to him as he lifts you off the ground. A habit he's developed since he prefers not having to lean down so far for a kiss but you've gone quite fond of it so you don't mind.

“I can tell you now.” He smiles as he says it. “Ich liebe dich.”

You can't help but pull him in and kiss him. You feel him smiling against your lips. 

“You're so fucking sneaky.” You try and fail to sound serious, not that either of you mind. He never really expected you to remember it but knowing you did makes his cheeks warm, even after all this time.

And now you're gonna be his wife.

[necromancy-enthusiast]

Traditional Chinese Translation of Homestuck Analysis-Beta Troll Typing Quirks

That's right, there's a full traditional Chinese translation of Homestuck. You can find it, along with links to other translations, here. If you want to jump to Hivebent when all the beta trolls are officially introduced so you can see this for yourself, here's a link to the first page.

But first, I'll give as succinct of a rundown of the elements of the Chinese language that are relevant as I can. The Chinese writing system doesn't have an alphabet, instead words all have unique characters. So a lot of the trolls' quirks just can't be 'transliterated', because they have something to do with spelling. Similarly, Chinese characters don't have upper or lower cases.

There are multiple ways to type Chinese on an electronic device, but the most common is using a Latin script keyboard. You type out the pinyin of a Chinese character (which is the system mostly commonly used to romanize Mandarin Chinese nowadays) and some suggestions for characters with pinyin romanizations spelled that way pop up in a little window, and then you pick the one that you want.

Chinese also has A LOT of homophones because instead of making a wider variety of noises like English, Chinese opted to differentiate words partially based on the tone they're spoken in. This is absolutely fantastic for puns and wordplay, English could never hope to be anywhere near Chinese's level in that regard. This comes into play with some of the trolls' typing quirks.

And just to clarify, sometimes I say 'Chinese' and sometimes I say 'Mandarin', that's because Mandarin is the official dialect in both mainland China and Taiwan and now the mostly widely spoken one in the world. It isn't mutually intelligible with most other Chinese dialects (this is part of why some people argue that Chinese isn't a single language but a language family). However, written Chinese can generally be understood regardless of the dialect you speak, even if people speaking in different dialects often have different ways of saying the same thing, like greetings and whatnot. When I say Chinese I mean things that broadly apply to written Chinese or the Chinese language/language family as a whole, when I say Mandarin I mean things specific to the Mandarin dialect. I think that about covers it. This post is already getting a bit long so I'll put everything else under a cut. Here's the breakdown:

Aradia: Replaces characters with the Arabic numeral for zero 0. I looked it up and apparently the Chinese character for zero also carry connotations of negation or mean things like 'nought' or 'no', which seems to fit with at least most of the instances she uses it in. Apparently this character can also have some link to death and dead spirits, which would fit given how she's a ghost at the beginning of the story.

Tavros: Uses the character 呃 a lot, which can be used like 'uh' or 'eh'. Uses 嗯 which can be used like 'hmm' or 'uh' as well, or like a general mumbling/light groaning sound, but with less frequency. Still, types haltingly, and uses commas, a lot, like in English, without any periods, Since Chinese doesn't have upper or lower cases, Tavros cANT DO THAT THING HE DOES IN ENGLISH, WHERE HE TYPES IN ALL CAPS OTHER THAN, THE FIRST LETTER OF SENTENCES, sO UNFORTUNATELY, there isn't a lot else to say here.

Sollux: Still refers to the others by their nicknames like KK and AA. He uses reduplication more often than most of the others, which is when you repeat part of a word or even a whole word for various reasons, often to stress your point. He also replaces characters that are pronounced as 'shi' in Mandarin with the Chinese character for 4, which is pronounced as 'si' and written as 四. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be reminiscent of his lisp. EDIT: AS @autumntides reminded me, in at least Mandarin and Cantonese four is a homophone with death, and thus it carries the stigma of death and unluckiness. This fits in well with Sollux's mage of doom class and everything related to it, like Vriska mind controlling him to kill Aradia and him dying during the vast glub because he didn't make it into the game in time before Feferi revived him. I still think it's also the lisp, though.

Karkat: He doesn't type in a larger font size then the others so he doesn't really have any typing quirks, at least none I've been able to ascertain, but he's just as imaginative with his cursing. It can be pretty rough for me to parse and equally rough to translate into English in a way that doesn't sound really awkward, but one of my favorites is 'Rotten bloated corpse of God Almighty! Goddammit, what the fuck does your pockmarked think stem want?'

Nepeta: Uses onomatopoeias that equate to 'cat sounds' like meow and roar, as well as a good bit of reduplication. Still uses asterisk marks and speaks in the third person to indicate when she's role-playing.

Kanaya: Doesn't use punctuation. That's it, since she can't capitalize things like she does in English. I really wish I could say more but that's all I can see. She's still verbose, though.

Terezi: Replaces words that are homophones or near homophones with the numbers 1, 3, and 4 in Mandarin with their Arabic numerals, presumably to resemble how she types in leetspeak in English.

Vriska: Still types out characters 8 times occasionally, but rather than letters (since the Chinese writing system doesn't have an alphabet) it's the whole 'word' like 月月月月月月月月. Replaces words that are homophones (or almost homophones) with 'eight' in Mandarin with the Chinese character for 8 八. I'm pretty sure it's meant to signify that she's dragging the word out rather than repeating it, like when she does thiiiiiiiis in English.

Equius: Still uses % like X's, but he just types it and then types out the word. Again, I don't know exactly what kind of keyboard he's using, but if he's using a Latin script keyboard, he's just typing things like %xuan but when he's finished typing it looks like this %選.

Gamzee: Types out every other character in a slightly smaller font size then the default, he's the only one that changes his font size to resemble his English typing quirk. I'm guessing/hoping they have a set up where he can just as easily change font size as Latin script keyboards can change between lower and uppercase by hitting a certain button, but who knows. He uses ta ma de 他媽的 a lot, which is pretty much the Chinese equivalent of 'motherfucker/motherfucking', and cao 操, which is just 'fuck' but the verb.

Eridan: Still refers to the others by their nicknames like Fef and Kan. A lot of reduplication. A LOT of it, way more than Sollux or Nepeta even. I think this is supposed to be reminiscent of how he doubles his Vs and Ws in English rather then symbolizing true grammatical reduplication, though. It also seems to be that his specific flavor of reduplication is like Vriska's, it's meant to signify he's dragging the sound of a word out rather than repeating it. He also types ~ right after reduplication, seemingly to resemble the waves on the ocean and that he's sort of saying it in a 'wavy' manner, like how in English the comic remarks that he has a 'really weird kinda wavy sounding accent'. Honestly it's annoying to look at, and other Chinese speakers have told me the same thing when they saw how he types. Maybe that was intentional?...

Feferi: She does the same thing as Equius does with X but uses ) ( in front of words whose pinyin romanization starts with H. Uses 'gulu' in the place of 'glub' as transliteration. Replaces characters like those for 'is' 是 and 'have' 有 for characters that have that character in it but also have the character for fish 魚 like 鯷 and 鮪. Also occasionally uses ------ before characters, I think it's meant to symbolize that she's saying something excitedly.

And there you have it. This was rough and took a lot of time, but it was fun if at times deeply frustrating. I may do more of these posts comparing the Chinese translation to the original English, I'm particularly interested in the alpha trolls, but who knows. If you enjoyed this I'd greatly appreciate you sharing it :)

[absolutebl]

Hello! In the latest EP of I Feel You Linger in the Air, Yai addresses Jom as Por Jom. Jom seems surprised but I have no understanding of what Por means so it's significance is lost on me. Perhaps you can help shed some light? Also, how was Yai addressing Jom before?

Por/phor honorific in Thai - I Feel You Linger in the Air

I'm glad you asked it so I don't have to.

I have not encountered it before in BL.

Any of the the Thai language spies still out there wanna weigh in?

I did some poking around - but I could be way off base. Still this what I discovered:

Por is a paternal honorific, luang por is used for respected monks.

So I am assuming this use is relatively old fashioned (the reason we don't hear it often in our normal BL) and either one step more intimate or, more likely, one step more respectful than no honorific. Possibly scholarly?

I'm thinking all this has to do with Jom's demonstration of education. Yai has figured out that one of the reasons Jom doesn't belong and cannot fit in with the servants is that he is more educated than a peasant, which adds up to him being originally from a high status and wealthy family, especially speaking English and having travelled (he has a non-Chang Mai accent).

There is very little Thai middle class at the beginning of the 1920s since trade is being dominated/dictated by the West, or Chinese merchant operations, and Siam is a monarchy. So for a nationalize Thai citizen it's either military, landed gentry with trade operations (like Yai), military, or... none of the above. This changes, especially in the south, throughout this decade (as it did in other parts of the world). So there is a rising bourgeoisie going on in the background but it's not that obvious in Chang Mai at this time.

What this means to Yai is that Jom's family either got wiped out or politically entirely disenfranchised possibly as part of the 1912 attempted coups (or even WWI)? This would be mystifying for Yai because Jom doesn't act like he comes from a military family at all. So his background and status is very confusing for Yai, but Yai does know one thing...

Jom is NOT lower class by the standards of Yai's temporal worldview and existence.

For a young man to be educated and yet entirely alone is very dangerous and suspicious. Also, let's be clear, Jom doesn't look or act like a laborer. He red flags "cultured" all over the place.

Yai is paternalistic and caring towards Jom out the gate because Yai has a big ol'crush but also because he recognizes "his own" is trying to survive while isolated and scared. Yai wants to rescue Jom.

Some Historical Context for I Feel You Linger In The Air

I love history and so here's some quick info that any Thai watcher would likely know, but you might not... ready?

Remember:

Burma (Myanmar) to the west is occupied by the British.

The French hold Vietnam to the east.

Everyone is bickering over what would become Cambodia & Laos.

China occasionally gets involved from the North (also, lots of immigrants from China at this time accounting for a large percentage of the merchant/middle class)

Eventually, Japan would invade during WWII.

In part, The Kingdom of Siam was kept a "neutral" party because none of the surrounding colonial powers wanted to risk offending any of the other players in the area.

Siam re-negotiated sovereignty in 1920 (from USA) and 1925 (France & Britain). But during the time of this show (mid to late 1920s) it was back to it's customary type-rope balancing act of extreme diplomacy with the allied western colonial powers that surrounded it. Recognizing that Thailand was never colonized, it's boarders were constantly nibbled at and it was "ambassador-occupied" off and on by Westerners whose military backing and exploitive business concerns simply outmatched the monarchy, especially in the technology department (as well as by reputation on the global stage at the time).

In other words, the farang in this show (James & Robert) are bound to be both the baddies and the power players of the narrative.

The king of Siam at the time (Vajiravudh AKA Rama VI) was initially somewhat popular but also regarded as overly extravagant since Siam was hit by a major postwar recession in 1919. It should be noted that King Vajiravudh had no son because he was most likely gay (which at the time did not much concern Siamese popular opinion, EXCEPT THAT it undermined the stability of the monarchy).

He "died suddenly" in 1925 (age 44) with the monarchy weakened and succession handed off to his younger brother.

In 1932 a small circle of the rising bourgeoisie (all of whom had studied in Europe, mostly Paris), supported by some military, seized power from the monarchy in a practically nonviolent Siamese Revolution installing a constitutional monarchy.

Siam would then go through: dictatorship, WWII, Japanese invasion, Allied occupation, democratic elections, military junta, the Indochina wars, communist insurgency, more democracy and popularization movements, multiple coups, more junta, more monarchy, eventually leading us to the somewhat chaotic insanity of Thai politics we have today. (Which is, frankly, a mix of monarchy, junta, democracy, egocentric popularism, and bribery.)

(source)

[kiwibirbkat]

You can pry Marcy streamer AU from my cold dead hands

Marcy Wu Streamer AU!

Started streaming as a backup while waiting for her webcomic to blow up

When their account gained traction they used it to help advertise their comic

They do both for a living now

They game on it and sometimes do vlog type streams

She does a lot of charity streams (angsty charity week fic anyone???)

Annual subathons

Lives with the girlfriends (Anne and Sasha)

Sleep schedule? Non-existent!

Anne and Sasha are fan favourites even if they do end some streams early to force Marcy to sleep

She does sub only drawing streams for their comics especially after a hiatus

Or they do public drawing streams of intermission episodes

Anne and Sasha sometimes come onto a stream with them

Marcy has a lot of guilt from Amphibia still :(

(And scars)

Not fully disabled but they need a walking aid sometimes and a wheelchair if the pain gets really bad

They still have traces of Darcy her head but they can't control her they just give advice

Or complain that Marcy won't kill anyone

They can't go to Amphibia but they can call/text through dimensions since Anne gave sprig her phone and Polly figured out how to make more

Marcy refuses any type of therapy (they don't think they deserve help)

But she will break down crying in their girlfriend's arms sometimes

She/they (realized she liked they/them pronouns after everyone referred to Darcy as they seeing as they were multiple minds)

Anne has a pet cat that looks like Domino and she lives with them

Marcy has that gaming posture (atrocious)

They post all of their VODs on YouTube

Marcy has crocheted all of them plushies of their family in amphibia (Sasha with Percy, Braddock and Grime, Anne with Sprig, Polly and Hop-pop, and Marcy with Olivia and Yunan (and a secret andrius plush that they can't look at most days))

None of them have their powers but they do have traces of energy, which is why Darcy stays in Marcy's head instead of just shutting off

Marcy dyes some of her hair green in reminder of when they had cool anime powers

Also, she's worked a lot of aspects of Amphibia into their comic so they have an excuse to make Amphibia merch

Marcy speaks Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Portuguese, and Ukrainian and voice over all of their streams in these languages to post them on their separate VOD channels

Most of their fans are worried about her because she's always up so late

They're trying to learn more (Greek, German, Russian, ect.)

Because of Darcy and her wit powers they learn easier (super brain)

All of her fans theorize on why them and their girlfriends went missing for like a year seeing as frogvasion has been wiped from the media

The calamity trio know most of the Disney protags (Dipper, Luz, Molly, Star, and the other people in included in those franchises)

They all live in the same world (-star, Marco and Tom but dimensional scissors yk?)

Luz reached out to Anne for help building a portal, Dipper and Mabel met Molly while ghost hunting

They have all separately run into Star while researching energy levels that came from Stars weird dimensional travel

Therefore Marco added them all to a discord server and the rest is history

They sometimes guest star on Marcy's channel

June has programmed Marcy a game before

Sasha is planning to propose (shhh don't tell Anne and Marcy)

Marcy has cut contact with her family (I don't care what cannon says her parents aren't good people)

(She would not cling onto any sort of affection this much if their parents loved them)

(Fight me)

Marcy hates going to the doctor or bathing (the bath reminds her of the rejuvenation tank and she just generally distrusts the government after Anne told them about the whole thing with Mr X)

The only doctor they trust is the dentist for some reason???

When asked Marcy just shrugs

And the vet but they aren't the one getting tested at the vet and she cares about Domino 3 too much not to go to the vet

Marcy Wu=autism

Marcy has severe anxiety

Marcy has depression

Marcy streams from bed sometimes just because they're in too much pain to walk and their girlfriends aren't their to put them into her wheelchair but she has that grind set for their stream dates

Marcy has crocheted enough Olivia and Yunan plushies to give a small army

They give them away during giveaways as beta designs for some of her characters

[culiehua]

Jem's ancestral origin

bc @jaimrennnn pointed it out again, here are my thoughts on Jem's maternal ancestry bc it only now occurs to me that the following are not just regular thoughts normal non chinese people have 😭:

Literary review: Jem speaks Mandarin and not Shanghainese, it's assumed he is from the north. But where? Why?

Now this is where it gets interesting:

一 The language(s)

Nothern Chinese dialects include quite a few different dialects; there are over 300 languages in China in total – and most are not mutually intelligible. At all.

(As someone who is also fluent in Mandarin and wouldn't understand a thing in ancient Shanghai... I feel his pain)

Mandarin is the official language in all of China TODAY, however, the Beijing dialect based Mandarin as we know it today did not undergo nationwide codification until the early 20th century.

And it was only in the 1800s that a shift to Beijing based Mandarin happened. Previously, and into the 1800s, Nanjing based Mandarin was the official Standard during the Ming (1368-1644) and part of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).

While both would be plausible Mandarin varieties that he could have spoken given the time period, what we see Jem use though is the Beijing based version of Mandarin. While Nanjingese is semi-intellegible for speakers of Beijing Mandarin, it is notably different. So you are right: He does not use any other variety in the written text we see, therefore Mandarin being his only Chinese language means he or rather his family are likely not only from Northern China but speak a dialect that, at least in unintonated pinyin form, is exactly the same (note: we are assuming they don't have a notably different one bc dialect speakers are very particular about keeping their dialects alive as they do not really exist in written Chinese).

But there's more! The northern Mandarin dialects (not just Mandarin the official language) may belong to the same language family and some can be vaguely understood amongst each other (that's why it is also common to have instances where people speak with each another in different dialects, each understanding the other but unable to speak the other dialect) but 1) not all provinces above the Yangtze are Mandarin variety dominant: Zhejiang and south Jiangsu for example are predominantly Wu-dialect heavy (think Shanghainese) which are... not understandable as a Mandarin speaker lol while some dialects from Sichuan or Shandong for example may be easier to understand (remember there are many dialects, even from different language families, in each province).

and b) there's also the fact that even Mandarin varieties don't... necessarily understand each other. You can definitely hear the difference in speech even if they aren't different in grammar or vocabulary!

What do we know about Jem tho?

Jem speaks in a very... classic kind of way I suppose? There are no real regional colloquialisms, he sounds very Standard Mandarin (pronunciation not evaluable) but he does use some literary words that I'd never use in my life (separate post on that) which makes his Mandarin very textbook elegant. He doesn't have the classic /r/ marker at the end that many northeners have either. He doesn't have the Dongbei Mandarin accent either, the Xiajing dialect is something else, etc etc.

He does use the the Wade-Giles system of romanization (based on the Beijing dialect, was the anglophone system of transcription in the 20th century) when speaking English though (I Ching, Kwan Yin) which amuses (and...confuses) me bc he speaks Chinese in perfect Hanyu pinyin? So I'd say he englishifies Chinese terms when speaking English.

(There's also the problem that he was young when he lost contact to the language environment and that he had two L1s growing up resulting in crosslinguistic interference anyway. Mixed linguistic backgrounds do often result in the development of a "clearer" accent, or lack therof...)

二 The Ke family name

I've talked about it before, but Chinese family names have meaning. In the past last names were location bound, i.e. you'd have wider clan names for all the people from one region (which is what put Ke on the top 100 most common last names list in the first place. Yes that list exists). So you can look up where these names originate from or rather where they are common.

So far, I'd narrow the name origin down to these places: Shandong and Hubei (Wu dialectal regions excluded bc we assume he has no other background dialect; nomadic tribes also excluded bc traces unclear).

Why they would make sense:

Hubei the hometown of bronze and birthplace of Chinese modern industry for Steel works (haha... "they shatter even the strength of iron or of bronze". But that was after Jem). It's basically in the heart of China, a lot of cultural history, and the weather is very hot (they are called one of the three furnaces...) it's said that people there are louder and easier riled up bc of the weather. But the Hubei dialect does sound pretty different from the Standard. So there's that.

Shandong is famous for being a cultural and religious center for Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism (Hometown of Confucius!!) ... and also for having the tallest people in the country. The people here are also very bold and straightforward but also very hospitable with a generally good reputation, the common hero personality. It is also an agricultural center (ahem, Ke ≈ tree, remember). Character wise, it fits. There are a lot of Shandong people who moved to Beijing a long time ago since it's very close.

Given that neither Jem nor Wenyu seem like hot-headed people, but rather practical, calm, honest and are believers of buddhism and chinese philosophy (reincarnation wheel + with how often Jem refers to that thousands years old book you'd believe he has it printed behind his eyelids...), I'm rather inclined to guess their ancestors are from Shandong originally, i.e. the chill ones. (Yes you cannot generalize people but we have nothing on them 😭). However, I believe they have lived in Beijing for generations.

What is also interesting is that the average victorian Englishman stood at 167cm. As of now, the English average height is 175±6(m) and 162(w). In Shandong, the average height now is 175(m) and 169(w). But in the Qing dynasty the average northern man was this tall already. So I'd go on the taller spectrum for the nephilim and say Wenyu, as a northerner, is atleast 170. Jem is considered tall, somewhere between 178 and 180cm. Calculating this into the height, Jonah is max. 178cm. Since the Carstairs weren't tiny either, this fits. (Shandong people are the tallest people in China, followed by Beijing people. Tall girl Wenyu supremacy!!). I think Shadowhunters are taller bc of exercise that's why you have Will at the same height but Jem could definitely not do as much physically, having to rely more on efficiency and genes so I believe he has tall!genes but he definitely did not get that primarily from the victorians.

三 Wenyu's pre-Shanghai residence

From what we also know, the Ke family ran the Beijing Institute as well (Jia, née Ke, and her hubby). It wouldn't be far fetched to say that they've been running it since way back. After all, the Ke's are also still in charge of Shanghai and the Herondale's ran London well into the 1990s.

What we also know is that Jem's mom, Wenyu, was sent as an ambassador of the nephilim to the emperor for a meeting at the Yuanming Yuan, burned down around a decade and a half prior to Jem mentioning it, so the visit occured before Jem could ever remember it.

Historically, from mundane history, we know this: Emperor Xianfeng ruled from 1850-61, the Garden was burned down by Europeans in 1860 during the 2nd Opium War.

Wenyu was born in 1839, so she probably went there as a late teenager. She had Jem at 21 and also moved to Shanghai with Jonah years later. Now why would China's nephilim send some random teenage girl to Beijing to talk to the ruler? Why would they send her from perhaps angel knows where thousand miles away? Unless... she was sent from the Beijing Institute? Who knows. Chaos breeds demons. (It's also odd that Cassie changed the timeline to this happening when Jem was 2 or 3. Was this supposed to mean that he might have witnessed it? Idk).

Beijing was the capital, and if the nephilim, as a race, would send an ambassador, it would make the most sense to send one from the local institute. Jem did not grow up learning another local differing variety either, leading me to believe both Wenyu and Jem were born in Beijing and learned court Mandarin.

四 Conclusion

I believe that Jem's maternal family originates from the Shandong/Beijing area but lived in Beijing for centuries before taking over Shanghai too, since they are not shown to know or speak any other distinctive dialect and the Shandong dialect, due to it's close similarity to the Standard variety, could have lost it's accent over time there with the surrounding Beijing dialect, the court dialect and their complete mutual intelligibility. Clan origin, height and personality also hint at this, as well as Wenyu's travel log. Jem's Chinese is very standard and does not deviate; he seems sophisticated and has a clear pronunciation. Beijing born and raised!

[indireneedofanap]

As a literal half Chinese, half white girl I cannot express to y'all just how upsetting it is to see how this fandom treats the fact that Marinette is mixed. Homegirl is not a "whitewashed asian", shes literally half white.

"She can't even speak the Mandarin!" So? I can't speak Cantonese. My father is an immigrant, but I was born and raised in America similar to how Marinette was born and raised in France. Growing up I wasn't taught how to speak Cantonese because the only language my parents shared (and therefore communicated in) was English. That doesn't change the fact that I'm half.

"She looks too white!" No she doesn't? She might be (debatably) white passing, but many wasian people are, myself included. People seem to like to ignore the fact that when a kid is mixed, they may end up looking more or less like either parent. My father has dark tan skin and my mom is white. My older brother is the same skin tone as my father, possibly darker, while the rest of my siblings are more pale than my mom. Genetics just work like that, and Marinette does come off visually as being a mix of her mom and her dad.

"it's impossible for her eyes to be blue!" Not really. I babysit 3 kids, their mom is white with blue eyes and their dad is black with dark eyes. 2 of the 3 kids ended up with lighter eye colors like their mom.

"We don't see her experience her culture!" And what, exactly, is her culture in your eyes? She's mixed with Chinese, but she grew up in France. They never make a point to hide the fact that Marinette is mixed or that her mom is Chinese. There's little traces that really sell the fact that it's a mixed household all over their apartment: my personal favorite being the Chinese wall scroll art they casually have hanging up in their western style apartment, which is practically identical to my sister's house. There's nothing screaming "IM CHINESE LOOK AT HOW CHINESE I AM!", it's just casually shown throughout the show, which is the case for most mixed kids. Marinette's race isn't treated poorly, it's just treated casually, and I love that. You don't need to prove anything to anyone simply because of your race. People claiming that she's "not Chinese enough" are, in my eyes, hypocritical. I'm half Chinese, I'm half white, so what? I'd never deny it, but it also doesn't change the fact that I grew up in the American Suburbs, just like how Marinette's race doesn't change the fact that she grew up in Paris around predominantly French culture. Treating a character as if they need to look or speak a certain way simply because of their racial identity with disregard for their nationality and experience is ignorant in its own right.

You know who else is Teenage, Half Asian Superhero raised in a western society? Mark Grayson from Invincible (the show, not the comic). His Mom, Debbie, is Korean while his father (who's technically a Viltrumite Alien) appears white. His racial identity (in regards to being half Asian) is also never something that's shown to be of any importance to the story, but is also never swept under the rug. It's just there because that's how mixed families are in reality. The same energy applies to Marinette.

Her representation may not be accurate to everyone, but its accurate to me and many of the other half-Chinese people I've encountered :)

Note: I'm not speaking on Miraculous' depiction of Chinese culture via Sabine or her Uncle, just the depiction of a mixed Chinese/white kid via Marinette .

Also want to add that many people feel her character is "whitewashed" because the original concepts of her as a comic character made her appear more obviously Asian, where her on screen 3D counterpart is less so. Im not sure what happened during the creative process and if the decision to make her mixed was added later on, but the discussion above is simply in regards to those that claim her depiction in the show is inaccurate to actual mixed kids and not in relation to how her character changed during conceptualization.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Have been waiting for someone to open a Strenritter ask! My top top top Q about them: what language do they use when speaking to each other?! Clearly, the Sterneitters are supposed to be ✨diverse✨TM, which I guess makes sense, since Quincies are basically like “special” humans meaning that they can come from anywhere on earth.. Characters like Jugram and Bazz have obvious Germanic influence, Cang Du is Chinese/East Asian-coded, Bambietta and Berenice Gabrielli have vaguely Italian sounding names, Askin is apparently a Turkish name; I could go on, but you get the idea. So I’ve always wondered: what language does Kubo imagine them speaking in: English (?) German (?) or do they have some magic Quincy universal translator planted in their ear and they can just speak their respective mother tongues and everyone will understand? Also, when they talk to the shinigamis, do they speak Japanese? Can the shinigamis speak English?! These thoughts have been keeping me awake for weeks and I need answers 😭😭.. Curious to hear what you think!

There is a long answer to this but I am doing Dog Activities at the moment so a short answer I will elaborate on later:

1. Dead people and anyone in spirit world gets universal translation *unless they are consciously choosing to speak a specific language*. Iba actually understand his boss when Komamura is talking to himself in Wolf right up until Komamura decides he's going to tell Kenpachi a joke in Wolf, and Iba sighs wistfully, and writes another incomprehensble email to Duolingo about including Wolf or Bird as a language.

2. The sternritter speak a lot of languages but the one language NONE of them speak with any competence is German. Even the ones that grew up speaking German don't speak it anymore because they deleted that knowledge in favor of being better cultists.

[lu-zijing]

I am reading the BSD Manga right now—

(Am trying so hard to catch up so I can see why people have said certain things..... Like that it's no point trying to describe the plot to someone at this point.....

((Lookingforwardtothenewchapers--

Do You remember the whole talk about:

"HOW THE HECK does Fitzgerald understand Japanese??"

Still in love with this thing- Have been seeing it around on Pinterest: BIG credit to whoever made this:

He likely learned Japanese, I mean come on, he's rich, AND in the business work, of course, he could or would learn it. If not for anything else, then likely for the Work.

I feel like Royalty and Rich people tend to learn many languages, compared to "commoners" -of various reasons-, I mean at least in movies, I don't know how the real world works—

That's what I'm thinking now, but not gonna lie in the start I was like: YEAH HOW THE HECK DOES HE!!????

But Anyyyhoww, I was reminded of it again as I was reading the manga and came to this panel:

Even though Fitzgerald DOES speak Japanese, he has difficulty remembering some of the names -at least, parts or sounds of the name.

This is something shown more or less as a joke at least two times in the series of what I know of, possibly more.

Here in the panel, I showed just now, which is from Chapter 64 of the manga - Atsushi directly SAYS (or well, "thinks") that Fitzgerald's bad at remembering JAPANESE names. Not just names. Specifically JAPANESE NAMES.

And it was the same that one time in the anime when he couldn't remember Akutagawa's name.

Chapter 34 in the Manga:

THAT WAS LEGIT ME IN THE START—!

As a person from the West who does not speak any Asian language- ((YET—) I can relate to this.

(( I Swear I relate SO MUCH with the fact that he couldn't say Akutagawa's name right, -and just ended up with:

"Yes. That."

I relate to it with more names than just Akutagawa🥲

Heck I even first learned how to write it here recently- Thank all I am not the only one and it's actually a thing-

So you see, I have especially had difficulty remembering Japanese names. Something I noticed after beginning to watch much more anime.

In the start, I always switch the names up, don't hear, or more exactly: don't remember the little differences between names such as for example Tetchō and Teruko.

Until I hear them a couple of times, see them written, hear them clearly, etc.

-When I see it written like this I find it obvious, but not when I hear it for the first couple of times -

I assume it's because the sounds are so foreign to -in this case- English-speaking users, and therefore we easily mix the small differences up.

But it wouldn't sursprise me if some might be better at it than others, for various reasons of course -for example watching a lot of Japanese media, and hearing the language a lot - like watching Anime, but not the dub ofc- but well, generally speaking I think there must be more people who has it like this.

I mean even IN the show-! That's kinda relieving—

Like, I have an easier time remembering Chinese names than Japanese. Are Chinese names simpler? Is it because I have watched AND read a lot more Chinese material? Maybe because I'm learning Chinese? Or am I just better at remembering Chinese names??

Sorry me rambling there *ahem* back on track-

POINT BEING:

This definitely shows that even though Francis definitely SPEAKS the language he's still a Native English speaker, having apparently not been in Japan long enough -or whatever reason- to stop mixing the sounds in names up as we sometimes do.

Or perhaps he just isn't bothered enough to try, I could imagine he could be like that-

A little Fun Fact which I found cool, since I relate to it!

Can't believe Francis is the first character I "officially/publicly" announced I could relate something with.

I mean it's not like I am the only one who can relate with this, it's not that rare to speak English but still, that it was the first thing- It's not that I don't like it, I had just not expected it.

Some people out there must relate to it as well? Guys??

Please don't tell me it's just me -and apparently Francis- who has it like this-

Although, having an In-character-from-the-show on your side isn't bad. Especially when he's one of my favorite side-characters- ~

But anyhow! No matter what, Thanks for reading~! ✨  Hope you found it interesting-！

[ceoandslutler]

have you heard kuro dubbed in any language other than english? or in any other asian language other than korean or chinese? well i found a persian one and it's so fucking bad that it's hilarious.

(also stay tuned to find out why the persian dub of kuroshitsuji being so bad has directly to do with anti-shipping sentiment and puritanism)

i would like to politely invite anyone who's ethnically from/lives in/speaks the language of a country with an ultraconservative government to contribute to this post if they know a dub of kuro (fandub or licenced by a company) in their language to contribute to this post (agree or disagree that policing media causes a drop in its quality and accessibility in other countries) but let's keep it civil. if you are not from a country like this but have something to say, feel free to add anything on, the conversation is open to all :)

so i just heard the homemade persian dub of kuro's first ep made by some young people who sound like they're in uni (probs 18-23 yr olds), tears have been flowing from my eyes for the past 20 mins

(link under the cut)

to save time, go watch the bits i linked below or just laugh at the whole thing (full link) but don't blame these kids for being awful at this or just skip to the end of the post. as i said, there is a reason this dub is so bad and no official dub exists and it has to do with... anti subculture?!?*

but first, the funny stuff

ciel's voice is awful but just listen to the goofy dub laugh seb's va did at the start I'M FUCKING SOBBING (00:15-00:35), and also not ciel's va MOANING after the op song (2:35) ??? i REPEAT the woman who VA'd ciel was fucking MOANING, the YAWN was the worst part, dub team shotacons???

also SHEEL FANTOMHAYO?? THE KID'S NAME WAS DUBBED AS SHEEL FANTOMHAYO. (refer to 6:30 in the video linked)

now this isn't because we lack a 's' in our language (my alias is literally a persian name meaning shadow aka ✦sayé✦), we've just transliterated it as shiyel, but SHEEL???

the other guy calls him fantomhayo too (8:25) and the fantomhayo condition strikes again with sebastian's va talking about the fantomhayo hospitality at 12:40 ish in the video.

this is particularly bizarre because we do have a V in persian, please guys, use it!

please note: i have nothing but good things to say about finny's va... the way the va says "sebaastiyaan!" (12:43) is so cute <3

at 13:00, we get this golden crumb "meyrin... oh meyrin" from this college aged dude doing sebastian (who is SO lost) then he proceeded to say in persian "i beg you, ON MY LIFE, just pour the fucking wine in the glass and walk away" save me from the bad dub, ono daisuke, save me...

the furnace scene is just gold (18:50 onward is comical, the scream at the end... priceless), these people deserve an award, im tempted to do subs on this whole video because the translation is so wrong yet absolutely too hilarious to leave untranslated. also, i like how you can hear other people talking in the background constantly, they didn't even bother finding a quiet room 😭😭

finally i translated some of the best comments under the vid (everyone fuckin hated it 😭)

..tldr: irani/persian speaking netizens are brutal. but also, it shows that persian speakers are used to quality dubbing, otherwise this wouldn't be so offensive. if we were used to badly done dubs, the comments wouldn't look like this. many famous kdramas and jdramas and indian/turkish films have been dubbed. animated movies e.g. disney films and most commonly 70-80s anime have huge followings in iran and were dubbed extraordinarily well. in fact, in iran, many of our own films are dubbed especially if the original footage did not capture the audio well enough/the director was unhappy with the actor's delivery and it's usually hard to tell if this has happened because it's done very well. shockingly, dub is more popular than sub. so why does kuro not have an official dub? why is the fandub so bad???

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING

*IMPORTANT: an anime like this is not allowed to be legally dubbed by studios in iran because iran is under an islamic theocracy (the islamic republic) and all media that promotes devil worshipping and blasphemy is banned, homosexuality is too (anyone can tell kuro has homoerotic undertones, the homophobic heads of media would never let this queer gothic romance through). oh and trans people are "allowed" on TV but only if they're not vulgar/explicit (not even then, half the time) & grelle would not make it into the anime AT ALL. even if we ignore all the devil worshipping and queerness, sex is banned too (as well as lewd appearances of women), so season 1/2 & boc would never make it. oh and alcohol, bom would never make it. oh and also, women's empowerment is banned too so boa would never make it. when will it end? will someday everything be banned? sure looks like it. but isn't this what anti shippers want? i mean kuro IS problematic media, it never condemns people for having sex or partaking in drinks, not even murder is condemned.

moving on, the subtitled version of the episodes are very well done for what they are but it's still not good, you won't understand what's going on properly. meanings are lost. a dub is much more accessible to those who can't read subs and generally a necessary option. people NEED dubs. don't get me wrong, the iranian fansub team are dedicated however subs are much easier for fans to do than dubbing. as you heard, kuro's persian fandub was frankly terrible. these kids didn't even know how to pronounce ciel's name and it's NOT because of the language barrier, my theory is that because the internet access is so limited, they had to figure out how to pronounce ciel's name purely from the japanese original or another lang dub and had no access to the eng dub. as you can see, they are not able to follow the mouth movements either (don't have editing software); i assume the internet restrictions targeted streaming platforms w the dub on it (because the government wants to CONTROL what media people consume) so they had to figure everything out from japanese or another language, (they probably used another fandub to translate since the ed seems to credit the eng vas while they can never be heard in the bg) which is not easy. unfortunately english is taught in schools around the world not japanese so the dubbers' translation was quite honestly terrible- after all, they had no official script to base their translation off. BUT if a professional dubbing studio (e.g. iran's glory entertainment) got their hands on kuro, it'd probably be dubbed very well. if mehrdad raissi, CEO of glory, was on for seb's role, it would be glorious (pun intended). if he did flynn rider well, he can do sebs well too. but that studio often has their shows played on state televisions and the last thing they want is to get blacklisted and arrested for dubbing the gay demon butler anime. please do not take this fandub as representing all persian-language dubs. and remember, kuro itself is banned for being problematic media in counties like iran... no sebaciel needed (although anyone can definitely see the gay undertones to the story from a cover alone).

if you want to ban people from shipping things or making fan works that are problematic... soon you'll have to get rid of problematic media in general. and already, antis sound like the media people in charge under a dictatorship. "violence is okay, murder is okay but s-sex?!? women in scandalous clothing!!! oh good heavens..!" this is the kind of mindset which leads people down the rabbit hole of "this is problematic!! let's ban it!!!" until there's nothing left, a slippery slope. imagine this was the english dub of kuro. imagine it was banned in western countries and a team of young'uns had to gang up and make their own dub using only the japanese raws. imagine problematic media like kuro wasn't picked up the west because it's "shota" and that's bad. we'd be stuck looking at the same sanitised stuff and if we wanted to watch kuro, our options would be trash dubs (no offense) like this one. pretty scary to think this could be the state of the english dub if puritanism was as bad here as it is in countries like iran. policing media and deciding what creators should or shouldn't create will take you to the side of theocratic dictatorships and you will fall into alt right puritan lunacy, fanpoll are about as woke as a dictatorship, remember that.

don't sound like this:

NEVER sound like this.

it is clear that conditional freedom is no freedom at all. there should be zero criteria to the media we want to create, no religion or purity culture to it. just be media literate. let nobody control what you want to create or consume! (or you'll end up in a world where the media that is deemed "problematic" is maintained but only through underground circles, losing quality and accessibility day by day, until these channels are shut down too and only a sanitised husk of options for media consumption remain)