#or what distinguishes a language from a dialect

[weirddreamsandfish]

I fucking loveeeeee languages and linguistics. Nothing more human than creating a language

[deception-united]

Let's talk about character voices.

Giving a character a unique voice in your writing involves several elements, such as word choice, sentence structure, dialogue quirks, and mannerisms. Incorporating these elements into your writing can really help create characters with distinct voices that resonate with readers and bring your narrative to life, as well as avoiding making all your characters sound the same, which is important especially when switching POVs.

Here are some tips you may find helpful:

Distinct vocabulary: Choose words that reflect the character's background, personality, profession, interests, experiences, and education level. For example, a well-educated professor would probably use more sophisticated language.

Dialogue quirks: Give each character specific speech patterns or quirks that set them apart, like repeated phrases, stuttering, using or avoiding contractions, or speaking in a particular dialect or accent, but don't overdo it to the point where it's distracting or it's hard to decipher what's being said.

Sentence structure: Pay attention to the rhythm and structure of their sentences. Some characters might speak in short, abrupt sentences, while others might use long, flowing ones. This can convey their confidence, hesitation, or urgency in the particular scenario, but also their general demeanor or manner.

Internal monologue: Show the character's unique thought process through their internal monologue. This can help readers understand their motivations, fears, and desires, further distinguishing them from other characters. (This may not necessarily apply to your story if you're writing in a third person omniscient perspective, or if you intend to exclusively follow the internal monologue of the main character.)

Physical gestures/actions: State what the the character's physical gestures and actions are while speaking. A nervous character might fidget, slouch, or avoid eye contact, while a confident character would stand tall and make direct eye contact.

Background & history: The character's upbringing, cultural influences, and past experiences can all shape the way they speak and interact with others.

Consistency: It's important to maintain consistency in the character's voice throughout the story and make sure their speech patterns, vocabulary, and mannerisms remain true to their established personality and don't contradict with anything.

Real conversations: Pay attention to how people speak in real life, and the tone, vocabulary, and speech patterns of different people, to help create more authentic and believable dialogue.

Read aloud: Reading your dialogue aloud can help you identify areas where the character's voice may not sound authentic. If it doesn't sound like something they would say, revise.

Hope this helps!

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[non-main-branch]

You know. When Spock says things like “Vulcans have no emotions”, I think of the time I asked my language instructor for the difference between two words in the target language, because she had corrected me on using one in place of the other. I knew them to translate to “feeling” and “emotion” (I mean. The “emotion” word was literally a loan word). And I think we use those words very interchangeably in my dialect of English. She said that the word translating to “emotions” meant the expression of a feeling, whereas the word for “feelings” referred to the internal state of a person.

I think maybe at one point in English, and in maybe in other dialects of English than my own, there was/is this same distinction, because the verbs “to feel” and “to emote” do have different meanings to me. But I could see how an “emotion” could become indistinct from “feeling” in a culture where feelings are, for the most part, automatically emoted, like the Star Trek future world seems to be… at least, the very culturally-American window of it that we get to see.

I could also see how that would be confusing to someone learning the language, who perhaps might rely on etymology to understand nuances of a new language… such as the fact that to “emote” is literally from Latin prefix e/ex, meaning, like, outside. As in “exterior”. And I can see how someone who held this misunderstanding might continue to use the language with the definitions that most fit what they mean, even after learning that a subset of the speakers, ahem, illogically do not distinguish them. Even if a given person they interact with has no clear cut distinction between feelings and emotions in their culture, there are other cultures on earth that do distinguish them, so it’s worth maintaining that distinction for those who do. And for those who don’t, well, the distinction is not all that relevant to their interactions with Vulcans, as Vulcans do not emote in the first place, therefore it is not logically imperative to shed light on Vulcans’ very special very private feelings.

All this to say that, at some point, after Jim has undeniable proof (a bond with Spock) that Vulcans feel—and feel deeply—he says to Spock, “oh my god, Vulcans are so full of shit, they’ve successfully conned us all into thinking they don’t feel, and on top of that, they say they don’t lie!”

And Spock responds, “Jim, Vulcans have never claimed they don’t feel, only the true fact that they do not emote as humans do. Furthermore, it is my experience that the majority of people to hold this misapprehension come from cultures like yourself, which do not clearly distinguish between feeling and emotion. There are many earth cultures that do make such distinctions and as such are less inclined to dismiss the possibility of our having feelings, though given the private nature of our internal lives we have never sought to clarify this point.”

“… oh my god, Spock, they gotta know. We gotta tell people this.”

“please do not” *

Anyways, that’s my headcanon, please do wear it out

* Alternatively: “I would ask that you do not, Jim”

I see this being more aos vibes.

[ifishouldvanish]

Fashion and Power; Hair and Identity: An Analysis of Olrox in Castlevania Nocturne

So. I've been thinking a lot lately about Olrox's design and how he dresses.

Like we have Drolta who is serving cunt in a totally different, usually wildly anachronistic, outfit every other scene... And we have Alucard still wearing the same tattered, moth-eaten overcoat he was sporting 300 years ago...

And then we have Olrox, whose outfit is very much in keeping with the style we see worn by our model french nobleman, the Marquis:

You can see the similarities between their looks: the stockings and shoes, the cravat, the tall collar, the pleats, the contrasting trims and accents, the highlights that suggest the fabric has a silken/satin sheen.

...But for his first appearance in Boston, he's wearing something similar—but not so flashy. Which makes sense, because a lot of the above details would be too ostentatious for colonial sensibilities and just not as accessible there. His Boston look is very clearly in the same style as Julia's outfit:

The boots with the dramatic cuffs, the wide lapels, the longer coat, the way the trims and accents are much more subtle, and the lack of that satin sheen we see in the French outfits.

I point this stuff out because it tells us that not only does Olrox dress well, but he dresses according to what is in fashion around him. He's not like Drolta, expressing himself by wearing whatever the fuck he wants—nor is he like Alucard, still dressing the way a past version of himself once did, existing sort of outside of time. That Olrox has two subtly different outfits in the span of ten years seems to indicate that this is a man who speaks the language of fashion, who understands the role it plays in society, and how it is used to assert power for oneself in the right contexts.

I've seen the take a few times of like, "Olrox is probably itching to take off those stuffy white people clothes" or whatever and... I can't say that I agree. I get the sense that he enjoys not just wearing fine clothes, but dressing in a way that signals to the people around him: "Do not presume that you are better than me". It serves as a form of armor, a safety blanket, a way to protect himself and assert the power he fears he will be denied otherwise.

I've said this before but like... his dialogue in his scenes with Drolta and Erzsebet is positively laden with these sort of subtle, calculated assertions or denials of power. From the moment he first arrives in Machecoul, he refuses Vaublanc's escort, thus refusing to engage on the terms they are trying to set for his visit: you are not my host, I am not dependent on you, I am here acting on my own interests and not to answer to your beck and call. He speaks carefully, politely, and hides his true feelings behind a façade of respectability. Saying all the things they want to hear, but wearing none of it on his face, in his eyes, in his tone of voice. He's playing a part, playing the game, and playing it well—all the while hiding his true intentions and dodging questions he doesn't want to answer.

That Olrox is such a careful, eloquent speaker can be read as a quintessentially 'Aztec' thing: the Nahuatl language is very full of metaphor, the nobility spoke a different dialect that distinguished them from the rest of society, and the ability to speak beautifully and wisely is something that was regarded very highly. Furthermore, the words we have on record that Motēuczōmah Xocoyotzin said to Cortés and that the Spanish would later use to claim the Mexica thought Cortés was a god, were probably more like... sarcasm. You've heard of malicious compliance; the Mexica were apparently fond of malicious politeness: over the top flattery meant to mock rather than praise. Which is exactly the vibe Olrox gives off in his exchanges with Erzsebet. ("Yes, charmed to meet you", "Flattered, for a god to have heard of me," "As you well know, I both admire and worship you, goddess," etc.)

I think his manner of dress functions as an extension of this.

While Olrox's clothing bears like, zero resemblance whatsoever to how men styled themselves in the Mexica empire (Fantastic references by Daniel Parada on ArtStation), the Mexica did have strict sumptuary laws about which classes of people could wear which types of clothes/colors/fabrics/jewelry/hairstyles. Maybe he was a commoner who had to wear clothes out of rough maguey fiber and never wants to go back to that. Maybe he was nobility and this is a mentality that he has clung to. Either way, fashion as a language of status, power, and control is something Olrox would understand intimately.

Consider Drolta for a moment: in retrospect, the fact that she has so many outfits and wears whatever she wants to the point of outshining Erzsebet in every scene she's in, was a strong indicator that she was the one with the real power, the one pulling the strings all along.

And here creates a stark contrast: Drolta who asserts her power by dressing in a way that expresses herself in her own visual language, vs Olrox, who is asserting his power in the visual language of his oppressors. Even in Drolta's more conservative outfits, there are a lot of details that are undeniably her own spin on the style; she's playing with these conventions rather than conforming to them. She does not have to play the game and follow the rules in the same way that Olrox does.

So now let's address the elephant in the room:

Olrox's hairstyle is... not at all accurate to how men were wearing their hair in pre-colonial mesoamerica, which was either a sort of shoulder-length bowl cut, shorn on the sides, or long but matted and tied back. (More fantastic references by the same artist on ArtStation) But unlike his clothing, it's also not a style that would be considered fashionable to the European upper class.

I've seen plenty of people theorize that it's meant to resemble a style that would have been appropriate for Mahican men at the time—a way to pay homage to the man he loved. But I don't really think this is the case. For most tribes in the northeast, men either traditionally wear two braids, or in times of war, a 'roach' or 'mohawk' hairstyle: with most of the head shaved except for a single lock, which might be adorned with feathers, beads, and so on. At most, Olrox's single braid could maybe be a nod to this, but not the hairstyle as a whole.

Honestly, I struggle to find any tribes whose men traditionally wear their hair loose, and I'm sure half of this design choice was just the animation team trying to give him some likeness to his voice actor. Zahn McClarnon, who is Hunkpapa-Lakota, often wears his long hair loose—though this hairstyle isn't necessarily characteristic to the Lakota either, who also traditionally wear their hair in 2-3 braids (and which to be fair McClarnon also wears often). The other half of this design choice I'm sure lies in the fact that loose hair lends more flexibility for animators to use it expressively in-frame.

Regardless, any piece of media is in conversation with a contemporary audience. Nowadays, it's pretty common for indigenous men from various cultural traditions to sport long, loose hair. And there's a reason for this: regardless of the specific beliefs and practices around hair from one tribe to another, hair has become a strong marker of cultural identity for the larger, pan- indigenous community, as the forced assimilation of indigenous people often manifested as the cutting off of indigenous men's hair in boarding schools. In this context, to grow out one's hair can be a way of reclaiming a part of their identity which has long been forcibly taken from them.

So... the cultural/historical inaccuracy of Olrox's particular hairstyle aside, we can still look at the significance of hair itself in a broader sense: Hair is important to his character.

I look all the shots we get of Olrox's hair, the way it is used in the frame, used so expressively, and it feels like... yeah. His hair is the piece of himself he refuses to let go of. The clothes can change, he can bow down to Bàthory, get branded, etc. But his hair is an inextricable part of him. In this context, his hair becomes his identity, this stand-in for his true self when all the rest of him (clothes, speech, etc) are functioning instead as a sort of social camouflage.

We normally see Olrox's hair neatly swept behind his shoulders, often with a few strands framing the side of his face. But we get a couple of scenes where this isn't the case:

The first time we get a shot of Olrox's hair kinda spread out and disheveled outside of motion scenes is the cut to him and Mizrak lying in bed after having had sex. Paired with the askew angle of his body contrasted against Mizrak's rigid body, Olrox's hair suggests that he is in a vulnerable state, that he has let his guard down if not physically, then emotionally. He has "let his hair down" and already caught some kind of feelings for Mizrak—while Mizrak spends this scene putting up a giant brick wall.

The majority of Olrox's hair here is also to his left—away from Mizrak. While Olrox has given up some measure of power here, he doesn't need Mizrak to know that yet. He turns his head to see what Mizrak is doing, and receives a clear message: Mizrak is not ready to give up any power or control. Not ready to be vulnerable with him. And so Olrox takes this cue to sit up and let his hair return to its usual, neatly gathered position—thus putting back up a kind of wall of his own as he tries to coax some honesty out of Mizrak through more deliberate means.

In the S1 finale, we see Olrox's hair cover his face just as Machecoul falls to Erzsebet and becomes enshrouded in shadows. One Nahuatl expression, "Axcan mixtlapachmana yn tonatíuh" translates to, "Today the sun has covered its face." This is an expression of grief over the death of a leader or elder, the fall of a city, or the loss of a tradition. Despite the stoicism on his face in this moment, Olrox's hair tells us how he really feels. Something has been lost, and despite the fact that he probably expected it—despite the fact that he has been here before—he is still grieving that loss.

During the S2 branding scene, we see Olrox get on one knee and bow to Erzsebet—thus arriving at the inevitable conclusion of the game he's been playing all season. In his effort to survive by playing along, conceding his pride, his ego, his integrity, his self—he still finds himself trapped. As he accepts his fate, his hair fails over his face in a pattern that resembles the bars of a cage or prison cell. (Interestingly, his dialogue before this is "What did he do?", which makes this whole scene echo his "what crime did you commit?" scene with an imprisoned Edouard in the catacombs back in S1)

In S1, we also got a scene where Olrox bows to Erzsebet, but it's very different from this one. He never gets on his knee, and his hair remains neatly draped over his shoulders. He's conceding a little bit of power, but it's a strategic thing he ultimately does with some degree of willingness. In the S2 bow however, it is because he recognizes he is cornered and no longer has any moves left to make.

In S2E6, we see Olrox waiting at the harbor, preparing to leave to return to the New World. In the previous episode, he asks Mizrak to come with him—who refuses on the grounds that they would spend their lives hiding from Erzsebet. I'm sure @mysteryanimator could write an essay about the framing in this scene and how it makes it so that Olrox is boxed in and can't leave—but his hair is flowing freely. He doesn't have to leave. He has always had a choice: the choice to stay and to fight, and to win true freedom—not just a life on the run, or the sort of double life of having to carefully navigate the social world of others and keep his true self hidden in order to survive.

Now, in the S2 finale, Olrox turns a dying Mizrak into a vampire—but they have an interesting conversation leading up to that moment, and for just about the entirety of this conversation, Olrox's hair is obscuring his face. There is something he is hiding from Mizrak in this scene, something keeping them apart and keeping this conversation from being an open and totally honest one. I've written about what I think this scene foretells, and @mysteryanimator has also done a really thorough shot-for-shot analysis about the visual storytelling happening here, which also touches on the role Olrox's hair plays in this scene.

After Olrox turns Mizrak, we see him lying in bed with his shirt open, exposing his chest and bisecting his heart. The Nahuatl "Omeyolloa" translates to "two hearts", or "the heart is split in two", and refers to an internal conflict. But Olrox's hair is splayed out around him, adding to the sense of vulnerability and being laid bare. While Olrox's hands are folded in his lap with apprehension or restraint, his hair seems to reach in Mizrak's direction in their stead. The hair gives voice to the half of his heart that cares about Mizrak and wants to reach out to him, while the rest is immobilized by the guilt or remorse over what he had to do to keep him.

I've also written a bit of analysis about how this shot mirrors the shot of Julia bleeding out in S1E1: how Olrox's hair is pooled around him the same way her blood was, and how these compositions suggest a sacrificial offering. In this scene, Olrox is offering his hair—his self—up to Mizrak in a gesture of love and penance.

Anyway I could probably go on but I have reached the 10 image limit and this is long enough already. I guess if there's a point to be made with all of this, it's that I don't think the cultural/historical inaccuracy of Olrox's design detracts from his character, but actually does a lot to tell a story about how he has been affected by the forces of colonization, and in what ways his identity as a Mexica man influences the way he now navigates the world around him.

But mostly??? I just love Olrox Castlevania Nocturne and like thinking about him a totally normal amount 🫠🫠🫠

[nordickies]

Have you ever thought about ancient personifications? Like who the parents of the Nordics would be? I always thought that the Scandinavian trio would share an ancestor and Finland would share a common ancestor with Estonia and Hungary. What are your thoughts though? :)

I’ve been thinking about it! I just haven’t come to a satisfying conclusion yet.

First of all, I’m personally not into the idea of personifications being biologically related, since that tends to make their lineages incredibly complicated very fast. I also have a lot of questions about how they’re even “born” in the first place—so that whole theory is still very much in development, lol.

I’ve been wondering whether there could have been multiple personifications before the current Scandinavian ones, rather than a single "Scandinavia" as many people headcanon. For example, could there have been Danes and Jutes before Denmark? Götaland, Svealand, and Gotland before Sweden? I'm not fully committed to the idea, but it has crossed my mind. I just can’t picture the current Scandinavian personifications being older than their established kingdoms, so I guess they were “born” sometime between the 9th and 12th centuries. If that’s the case, then there were probably a lot of "ancients", maybe even multiple generations, that the current personifications never met.

The idea of Finland, Estonia, and Hungary sharing some kind of lineage is cute, but it wouldn’t be anything recent. Linguistically, Hungarian split from the Finnic languages around 5,000 years ago. For comparison, French and Portuguese became separate languages about 1,200 years ago, and Proto-Germanic was still spoken roughly 2,500 years ago. Finnish and Estonian diverged into seperate languages sometime in the first millennium AD. Meanwhile, the East Scandinavian languages, Old Swedish and Old Danish, became distinguishable by the 13th century, though dialects and borders were pretty undefined before the creation of standard languages. The Western Scandinavian languages, Norwegian and Icelandic, split around the same time. So from a linguistic viewpoint, it makes more sense for the Scandinavians to be more closely "related" to one another.

That said, building national family trees based solely on language is really murky, as language is not ethnicity. I'm just referencing them to give a sense of timeline for the historical context here

It’s all pretty complicated! I’m still pondering it, so I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts on the matter!

[theladysunami]

As someone who doesn’t speak a lick of Chinese (and really struggles to distinguish tones), I have some question for any fluent Chinese speakers.

It’s a common trope in SVSSS fanfiction where Shen Qingqiu and/or Shang Qinghua use terms for modern technology and the PIDW natives around them are puzzled by it.

What sort of homophones (or near homophones) are there for words like “airplane,” “cell phone,” “television,” “refrigerator,” “microwave,” and so forth? In other words, what might PIDW natives think they’re hearing while trying to listen in on the transmigrators? Are there any (near) homophones that depend on the dialect being spoken?

If the PIDW natives saw the words written, rather than heard them, what meanings might they come up with based on the characters used?

I can guess at some possible interpretations by looking things up in Yabla’s Chinese English Pinyin Dictionary, but they’re rough guesses at best.

I’d be delighted if someone actually knowledgeable could provide some insight on what Mobie-jun and Luo Binghe might think their husbands are talking about when they hear them use words and phrases “from their hometown.”

Edit: Apparently my homophone guesses weren't nearly as terrible as I'd feared, so I'm going to edit this and stick some of them under a read more for fun.

Native speakers please feel free to bully me if I screw up!

Airplane (飞机, fēi jī) "Flying Machine" 飞, fēi: "to fly" ● 机, jī: "machine" Possible Homophones: ● "Flying Chicken" (飞鸡) We definitely need fics where everyone thinks SQQ insists on calling SQH a chicken for some reason.

Cell Phone (手机, shǒu jī) "Hand Machine" 手, shǒu: "hand," "to hold" ● 机, jī: "machine" Possible Homophones: ● "Head/Chief Chicken" (首鸡) ● "Hand Muscle" (手肌) Does Shizun need a hand massage, or miss the "top-dog" chicken he grew up with? Who knows!

Telephone (电话, diàn huà) "Electric Talk" 电, diàn: "electric" ● 话, huà: "language," "speech," "talk" Possible Homophones: ● "Palace Talk" (殿话) ● "Shop Talk" (店话) The most likely guesses seem to be that the phrase has something to do with situational modes of speech. How one speaks in a palace hall, or how one speaks in an inn/shop.

Television (电视, diàn shì) "Electric View" 电, diàn: "electric" ● 视, shì: "to look at," "to regard" Possible Homophones: ● "Court Examination," "Imperial Exam" (殿试) ● "Think on/Remember a Matter," "Worry About Things" (惦事) Why demon lord husbands would pine after imperial exams is anyone's guess.

Refrigerator (冰箱, bīng xiāng) "Ice Box" 冰, bīng: "ice" ● 箱, xiāng: "box" No homophones needed. Meaning is obvious. Huzzah!

Microwave (微波炉, wēi bō lú) "Tiny Wave Stove" 微, wēi: "tiny" ● 波, bō: "wave," "ripple" ● 炉, lú: "stove," "furnace" Possible Homophones: ● "Power Sowing Furnace" (���播炉) No great options here, so they'd likely assume it's some special pill furnace variety.

Car/Automobile (汽车, qì chē) "Steam Vehicle" 汽, qì: "steam," "vapor" ● 车, chē: "vehicle," "chariot" (archaic) Possible Homophones: ● "Qi Chariot" (气车) ● "Near Vehicle" (汔车) A Qi powered chariot sounds pretty neat actually. The phrase could mean something like "whatever vehicle is nearest" though? Or a short range vehicle? (Google translate interpreted 汔车 as "car racing").

Courtesy of @hopingforbrain

airplane's full name can be heard as 'beating (up) flying chickens to the sky'. not in the wanking way, but actually throwing hands with the poultry.

[silasoctakiseron]

I don't wholly agree with that post because it is still absolutely fucking insane and inconceivable that even under the iron grip of a despotic emperor nine individual PLANETS don't even develop canonically distinguishable accents from one another let alone new vocabularies and linguistic structures over the course of TEN THOUSAND YEARS. Once again, we're talking about roughly three times the amount of time that's passed since humans on ONE planet wrote in cuneiform. It's not because House society is focused exclusively on death and destruction and can't innovate, either, because linguistic development generally isn't a consciously innovated process, it's just what happens when you have a geographically isolated society who develop their own way of speaking unique to that area (and then have them mix with other geographic areas and create new dialects and languages on top of that, etc., etc.).

Unless John is killing everybody and restarting all of society every like 50 years absolute max, so there's zero development of slang or grammatical restructuring or whatever, it's impossible and makes no sense. There's literally:

An ENTIRE MILITARY, a system already known for creating new terms to describe phenomena encountered in specific contexts which enter common parlance via returned soldiers,

Populated almost exclusively by TEENAGERS, who are major drivers of linguistic growth and create common speech that shapes language for decades after they've become adults,

Who are some of the few House citizens to ever travel to non-House planets where OTHER LANGUAGES ARE SPOKEN, notoriously one of the ways that root languages combine into new languages and old languages are shaped in new directions.

Cf. l'Académie française, which is currently furious about the fact that "pure" French is being shaped in a dramatically different direction than the academy would prefer by a large population of kids from colonized countries who create popular slang based on youth subcultures and the languages they speak at home.

[storkmuffin]

Hiii! I have a question for you. What are your favourite ateez lyrics that you think sound better in korean? I mean either those that don't translate well to english or those that, for some reason, just don't hit the same way in another language. I'm asking this because I'm a native spanish speaker and sometimes I try to translate a song into english to show my friends and it's just not the same, so I suppose the same happens with korean lyrics.

Also, I found some videos in youtube by Learn Korean with GO! Billy Korean in which he analyses the way each member of ateez talks (intonation, speed, filler words...) and I just found the videos so interesting I want to share them!!

OK so your question assumes I've listened to or read the English translations of the songs, and I am sorry to say that I have not.

I assume that all of 멋-흥 (The Real) is vastly incomprehensible to people who are not native Korean speakers or fluent enough in order to distinguish regional dialects and know a LOT of Korean idioms. I really like this song, because it tickles my Korean-English bilingual brain, but the WHOLE THING is untranslatable because it's about using Korean regional dialects.

선도부 (The Leaders) is another one that I am wondering how they translated and how anyone can understand it or get the full flavor of it if they're not actually Korean nationals raised in Korean culture.

Many of the lines I think lose something in the English version, when they make one, and I assume the same happens in subtitles (is that what they have for the songs??). I'll give you examples! From here on out I am assuming you can read 한글.

In Ice on my Teeth as an example, Mingi has a line;

무거워 툭 떨어지는 make it rain

The english version has it as

Drip too hard, make me wanna go reckless.

툭! is phonetic onomatopoeia for the sound something big and heavy makes when it falls on a hard surface (tuk!) so Mingi says in the OG Korean that the Rollie on his wrist and the diamond (ice) around his neck are so heavy that they fall with a thump (and then in the music video the ceiling actually falls down onto the desk he's sitting at). Not captured in the English.

Hongjoong comes in immediately after Mingi's part with a pun:'

어머나 몸에 감기네 에취

에취 is achoo. 어머나 is oh dear. 몸에 감기네 can be a pun - I'm catching a cold in my body but it can also mean Ropes of Diamonds are Wrapping around my Body and the ice is so cold it's making me sneeze, achoo because 감기 (Gamgi - a cold) and 감기다 (gam-gi-da - verb for to wrap) use the same sounds.

None of this happens in the official english version.

Man on Fire has really fun wordplay and sound play and punning that involves the sound ta or tae or tam. There's all these TA and TAE and TAM sounds throughout, right?

태워 다 감당해 오직, I desire./ 너라는 붉은 태양 매일 잃어가지 이성의 초점/ 태양을 탐한 죄악/ ... 너라는 태양을 삼켜 타오르게/ .. 타올라도 (타버린데도) / ... 타오르는 홍채

There's the sun (태양 tae-yang), to burn (the infinitive is 타다 -ta-da) and then variations on the word to burn- 태워 (tae-woh - imperative form so it's burn it), 타오르게 (ta orugae - in order to burn it up), 타올라도 (ta olla do - even if I burn) 타버린데도 (ta boh rin dae do - even if they say I will burn), 타오르는 (currently burning up) and to desire/ covet 탐하다 (tam-hada)).

The you in the song is the Sun, gonna burn the man on fire, but since they're also Ateez, they're going to covet/ lust after/ desire the sun and then also swallow it in order to burn up even faster. The English lyrics around the Korean song about how the man on fire set himself on fire by swallowing the fucking sun and how the beloved is a burning red sun in Korean talks about 'walking into' flames for you. I feel like that's so much milder.

And then there's this line in that same song

'이성으로 닿을때 T 안내고 F 해

which is just such a Hong Joong clever pun, but explaining it in full probably requires SO MUCH explanation. Like the whole T/F thing and how that's become a form of social descriptor in Korea such that 'doing T or F orientation' has now become a verb. T 안내고 is a pun on 티 안내고 - T would be being Thinking rather than Feeling, 티 안내고 which is what it sounds like at first until he says the F 해 means hide-your-reaction, be-placid-on-the-surface which is something Koreans are supposed to all do to be polite.

And one last example - in I'm the One, the Korean 이건 무슨일이야? is translated in the English version as What is Going On Right Now? which is literally correct but doesn't capture the whole sense of like, I don't quite know what's going on but I know enough to disapprove and trust that I'm going to do something to fix it to my liking before I'm done mood of the way San sings the Korean lyric.

EDITED TO ADD: 이성으로 IS ALSO A PUN. 이성 can mean rationality (so it ties in with the MBTI 'T' reference) but 이성으로 닿을때 can also mean, in the most roundabout way, touching as man and woman (이성 is heterosex or other-gender and 닿을때 means touching/ coming into contact). So this is also a pun about, when we touch as man and woman I will give into the feeling without appearing to.

Oh and F 해 could also be F(uck)해 too I guess lol

Does any of this make any sense whatsoever? It's so hard to explain lol. But yes - MUCH IS LOST in the translation. So I hope everyone takes the opportunity to learn Korean. Ours is a really fun and funny language!

The Go Billy Korean videos are really fun. Are they actually helpful to people in attempts to learn Korean?? How do they seem to people who don't speak the language at all beyond knowing how to sing along to song lyrics?

[boatemlag]

"By far the most complicated system of honorifics comes from the borderlands region of the Codish [sic] Empire. Utilizing prefixes and suffixes (and infixes in certain dialects), Çotilkan (commonly referred to as Southwestern Codish Dialect) distinguishes on a spectrum between younger and older, respect and disrespect, ally and foe, family and non-family, and more, depending on a complex system of social rules.

Some selected examples:

Studies have found that çotilkan-speaking youth tend to flatten some of these honorifics, depending on who they are speaking to. A study by Dr. Gorgonix that conducted interviews with teens and young adults from the region indicated that while teens are aware of most if not all of these honorifics, regardless of whether they could elaborate on their use cases, recorded conversations with peers showed that most of these honorifics were not being used as described.

For example, a native çotilkan-speaker might describe -lor as an honorific reserved for respected enemies. However, a sixteen year old bilingual participant used it to describe a friend who is a Mythland citizen. When questioned in the post-interview, the participant cited that their mother, also a native çotilkan-speaker, used the honorific to refer to Mythic nationals, and that it was common for people in their town to do the same. When asked if this implied some level of respect or familiarity, the interviewee responded that it was for “people whose family we know.” Additionally, the interviewee elaborated that enemy was “too strong” a term to use to describe usage. When asked what term the participant would use, they responded saying they didn’t know, and then suggested the national-codish word teral, commonly translated as opposite.

Furthermore, in a survey, 47% of çotilkan-speaking youth reported that they don’t use non-family oriented honorifics to distinguish between family members and people they know. Some comments reported that youth reserve non-family honorifics for speaking to elders. In that same survey, a whopping 52% of participants reported avoiding honorifics that imply disrespect. Notably, most of these participants reported being bi- or multilingual. It is worth mentioning that national-codish does not have honorifics that denote disrespect, whereas national-mythic does not use honorifics at all. (These two languages had the highest rates of bilingualism with Çotilkan.) 

Surveys conducted specifically in Mythland had even more stark results. 67% of native çotilkan-speaking youth only use a handful of honorifics; 42% of those only use honorifics for elders, family members, and government officials; 20% of those only use honorifics in front of elders and government officials. Even more shocking, 15% of respondents report never using honorifics."

excerpt from "Tug-of-War: a linguist's approach to examining the erasure of individual cultures in the borderlands of the Cod and Mythic Empires" by Honesty Growing

[gumjester]

old riddlish dialects

someone commented on my fic about my old riddlish dialects/languages, and i realised i don't think i ever presented them in the public forum!! so here we go! all are pure headcanon and linguistic patchwork. i wrote these in 2020 i think ? and it may show. still, i would love to expand on them further someday soon :}

The only reason I can think of for there being more than one native language of Wonderland is if there were separate languages evolved from different ancient clans that then merged over the proceeding centuries. So here we are.

Sisash probably evolved from the centre of Wonderland, surrounded by wilderness and beasts that could sense your every sound, so relied more on silent hand signs and phonemes like shh and sss that couldn’t be distinguished from the rustling of trees. While more audible today, those phonemes and hand signals still make up the bulk of the language.

Torrol is mostly spoken at the coasts, and was likely formed there, too. While it still rhymes, like Riddlish, it makes use of melody and words with long, clear vowels that can be heard far out to sea. This language seems to have been purpose-built for two things: shanties, and communicating over long distances, mostly in warnings. There is just one word for love in Torrol - “besh” - but over fifty for danger, varying from danger posed by angered tides, to many fish, to one big fish, to fire.

Riddlish itself seems to be an amalgam of many now-extinct languages, but most prominently the academic language of Leverse, created as a way for scholars to communicate magical concepts effectively. Leverse was the main language used to communicate with what few outsiders came to Wonderland, in hopes that if nothing else, they would find common ground through magic and spells. Leverse was also adopted by the royal family and courts and thus became widely spoken, meshing over time with less distinguishable and unique languages to create Modern Riddlish.

Today there are still many dialects of Riddlish, such as: High Riddlish - a needlessly complicated version only spoken by the royal family and their courts (Lizzie can speak this one, though she doesn’t like to), Common Riddlish - the simplest and most widespread form of Riddlish that basically every Wonderlandian knows, Burrows Riddlish - spoken by most Wonderlandian inhabitants that live underground or in the dark, meaning different communication methods are needed (spoken by Kitty and Bunny), and Dinnerplate Riddlish - an almost unintelligible form of the language that is mostly spoken for entertainment at tea parties, but is a local dialect of the inhabitants of the Hatter’s Table (spoken by Maddie).

Grimmlic has been integrated, willingly or not, into almost every language in Wonderland, meaning that many original words are no longer in use, or have been completely lost to time.

Riddlish can be written in Grimmlic or Wonderlandian script, as can Torrol (though it is more complicated), but Sisash cannot be written in Grimmlic, only the logographic Wonderlandian script.

(and just for fun, i'll include my logographic script for Riddlish. done in 2021)

i have never studied linguistics at length but i do like the subject!!!!! this was my general fiddlings with logograms and connecting them through different space 2 convey different meanings.. like if the temporal attachment indicating past is written aside the next logogram rather than beneath it, it indicates a different tense, or even a different mood, which i feel like is so intrinsic to riddlish -- the feeling conveyed through the words rather than the meaning. i do love written languages so may pick this up again soon now that i have more time !!!! <3

[outofangband]

Silmarillion and Sleep and Dream Thoughts Part One (revised and updated edition)

So I have my post on complex trauma and sleep in general but I wanted to share more thoughts with example ideas as well as cultural concepts of nightmares

I also have a follow up here which I’m in the process of rewriting

This could not encompass every culture obviously and I want to make another one with more specific character headcanons so please feel free to request!

-References to specific nightmares are relatively few in the Silm and related texts. There is Idril’s nightmare of Eärendil’s death, Túrin’s fever dreams, Morwen’s imaginings of hearing Arroch while half asleep, Húrin’s uneasy nightmare filled sleep in The Wanderings, and a few other instances of uneasy sleep or nightmarish visions, including some prophetic ones

Some general thoughts

-I talked about elven states of consciousness here! And that goes a bit into different dream states. In short, I believe that while Irmo is the master of visions, not all nighttime dreams are attributed to him or his Maiar (though it might be believed that it is due originally to their Song that these exist), one reason why elves distinguish between a variety of dream states and states of consciousness.

-Lucid dreaming is more common in the elves and practices involving it are done by many cultural groups including the Vanyar, Doriath Sindar, some Avari groups, and some of the Nandor.

-Nightmares of trauma plague the first elves, both who went to Aman and those who stayed. Some believed them to be an aspect of Morgoth’s dark powers rather than an effect of the lasting fear of them

-Elves seem to be able to go into a sort of half sleep where they can continue to move and function while part of their mind are shut down. I will be distinguishing between this and traditional sleepwalking which is not a conscious choice

-On that note traditional sleepwalking is fairly uncommon among the elves and is viewed differently by different cultural groups, some viewing it as a sign or warning, others as something inherently disordered. 

-Interpretation of dreams and even what sort of dream is significant also varies among cultures 

 Language thoughts:

-There are no known words created by Tolkien himself in any of his languages for nightmares (though there are words for dreaming, day dreaming, and visions) so these are my headcanons

-Each elven language has a word for frightening or upsetting dreams. Most have more than one and many distinguish between frightening dreams that could potentially warn of a future incident and ones that are unpleasant reminders of the past though obviously these are not mutually exclusive

-The Noldor have words for anxiety dreams around crafts and projects as well as for restlessness that comes from having to sleep when work is unfinished 

-Some of the Avari have specific words for dreams without any speech or elven figures in them

-Bëorian and Hadorian Taliska have words for dreams that invoke fear specifically that are usually meant to mean dreams of being chased, pursued or attacked. The language of the Halidan has more words for a variety of dreams including words for nightmares that cause sleepwalking and dreams not remembered. Many have a negative connotation similar to words for illness. All have a word for dreams one remembers only vaguely or from emotions. Several of these words come from Silvan dialects and the language they spoke in the East

Angband Related Things:

-I’ve talked about the Maiar of Námo and Irmo who were recruited or taken by Melkor before and it is due in part to their influence and spell work that sleep is so disrupted for prisoners within the fortress. True dreams for example are extremely rare and often heavily controlled.

-Former prisoners of Angband obviously suffer nightmares. Their sleep tends to be disordered and sleepwalking and talking are much more common. Many come to fear their sleeping hours and take precautions during them to avoid encounters with others (I’ve spoken for example about Maedhros despising sleeping near others especially ones he does not know because of what he might say in his sleep or act in the twilight between sleep and wake) Others have the opposite and hate sleeping alone, becoming acutely aware of the shadows and darkness around them, suffering paranoia and insomnia. 

-Many, especially those who had been slaves in the mines, experience panic upon waking over the fear that they should not have slept or have slept in the wrong place, the punishment for either within Angband being an awful one

-Sleep is an area where there is a lot of stigma and mistrust regarding captives. Those who return under the will of Morgoth often are described as being sleepwalkers (a translation for a term I made up that is neither the half sleep of elves or traditional sleepwalking but something in between)

Other:

The exact nature of elven foresight is somewhat unclear from the books. According to Laws and Customs of the Eldar, elven mothers often give their children names from their own foresight of their fate and there are numerous instances of visions, premonitions and dreams that predict or hint at the future as well as more explicit examples such as with Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings. 

For humans, it’s even more complicated. 

Does Huor have prophetic dreams or visions? His final words to Turgon, “from you and me, a new star shall arise” obviously foreshadows the fact that from his line and Turgon’s, Eärendil will be born and eventually become a star point in the sky. No explanation is given in the text for this and whether it is dramatic irony or textual foreshadowing or if Huor is truly capable of seeing or knowing into the future. 

[thosearentcrimes]

Read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. It rules, what else is there to say? Wonderful book on so many levels.

So, the first thing I'll say is that the concept of kemmer ran so omegaverse could crawl. Now, I do not put these into relation purely because they involve the application of concepts of heat/rut to human beings, which would not be a sufficient basis for comparison. Instead, it's that they are both obviously fujoshi-coded. Now, you might wonder, how can kemmer be a fujoshi-coded plot point if it doesn't involve men and is obligately heterosexual? Well, for the former objection, yes it does. They literally all use he/him pronouns lol. There's a whole bit in the book about it (that's obviously a bit outdated with advances in transgenderism, but still holds up). And for the latter objection, it is important to remember that yaoi, especially but not exclusively in the fujoshi subculture, spans a sort of spectrum from "just two guys having sex with each other", through "seme/uke" to "procreative penis in vagina sex in the missionary position" (currently mostly omegaverse, but obviously kemmer falls into it). But of course kemmer is far more interesting conceptually than even the most creative treatment of the omegaverse concept could be.

The worldbuilding is really fun. The way LeGuin allows the reader to sink into an understanding of an authentically alien-feeling world while maintaining enough predictability and familiarity to keep the reader following along is very impressive. I'm not entirely sure what shifgrethor is supposed to be if it's not another word for honor, but the book and its setting is so charming that I treat that as an amusing mystery rather than idle mystification, as I very well might if I were less positively inclined. And similarly for some other elements of the worldbuilding.

I suspect there is a fair deal in the novel to displease conlangers however. There are terms nominally brought in from the Gethenian languages, but it's fairly obvious each term is generated arbitrarily as needed, for spice, even when there is already an equivalent term. Additionally, one feature that is liable to irritate the sort of linguist so impressed with themselves for rejecting both prescriptivism and Chomskyism that they fail to notice they have become as pedantic and rigid as either of those factions tends to get. That is, at one point the novel makes note of the great number of distinct words for snow. Personally I think there's nothing all that wrong with it. To linguists it is a very important matter whether the phenomena invoked are in fact distinct words or not. For everyone else, the point of the factoid, even when it related to specific human groups, was to establish that there were a people who distinguished a very large variety of kinds of snow, which they had established designations for, and that this taxonomy of snow and ice demonstrates an intimate understanding of snow, ice, and related phenomena. These three claims are all true, the precision of the specific statement notwithstanding. And on Gethen, the precision of the specific statement can be assumed, because it says so in the book. That is not to say that a deeper engagement with the referenced factoid wouldn't have helped the book. Notably, I think it is a bit silly that Karhide apparently only has the one language. Given how politically and physically isolated it is, there should be a pile of dialects and arguable distinct languages floating around. But that's a minor quibble.

An interesting, but not particularly bad thing about the book is how heavily the shadow of the Cold War falls on it. Large parts of the book are quite unimaginable outside its context. That the book was published in '69 is hardly surprising. With the benefit of decades of separation from even the Cold War itself, this becomes far more a contextual curiosity than anything else, however. I am excited to see how deranged the present era will seem in the future, if I live that long. It seems plenty deranged already, to be quite honest. Probably did back then too.

I can warmly recommend reading The Left Hand of Darkness. I suppose there are some people who wouldn't like it. It's done in a fairly particular style, and some people might object to the treatment of sex (and gender and sexuality) sufficiently to reject the book entirely. They can if they want to, but I think they're missing out. Very fun book.

[olorinscombatboots]

linguistics hcs: voseo in (fëanorian) quenya

i am currently taking a course on spanish dialects and yesterday we talked about "voseo" which in oversimplified terms is a variation in 2nd person informal pronouns and verbs, e.g. tú tienes -> vos tenís. the rules and commonality of voseo depend largely on the region, so in some places it is the default, in some places it is not used or barely used at all, and in some places it is a complicated little shit (for example, here in chile, you will sometimes hear the tú pronoun with the vos form of the verb, e.g. tú tenís, and the vos pronoun is reserved for Very familiar or informal situations).

my knowledge of quenya grammar is pre-elementary, so everything i am about to say is based exclusively on what i think would be fun, but!!!! let's go back to valinor in the years of the trees. while i'm pretty sure tolkien never made a distinction between formal/informal 2nd person in quenya, i do think the noldor would have naturally created one (they were big fans of their monarchy which would lead to quite the hierarchical society, they canonically mess around w grammatical rules for fun, and i also can't imagine they wouldn't employ a high level of formality when speaking to the ainur or at least the valar in particular).

now, i am a big fan of the hc that fëanor created the exclusive 1st person plural in quenya (as in "WE do this but YOU the listener do NOT") so he could make subtle grammatical jabs at indis and her kids. we also know the fëanorians used linguistic differences as political markers (see: shibboleth of fëanor). ALL THIS TO SAY, i think fëanor also created a quenya equivalent of voseo. it's not an exact equivalent because of historical context and reasoning for the shift in spanish, but suspend ur disbelief. here's what i think happened in quenya:

c. the noldor's arrival in valinor, they introduced a formal 2nd person form ("usted" for the sake of comparing this to spanish) (this was probably also picked up by the vanyar, if u care) (i will think about telerin languages another day, i'm already giving myself a headache)

fëanor, in an effort to distinguish his house and followers from the rest of the finwëans (specifically the nolofinwëans bc this is fëanor we're talking about), introduced a More Familiar informal 2nd person (see: chilean voseo) used only among the fëanorians

fëanorian "voseo" functions very similarly to chilean voseo overall. the pronoun itself is reserved for very informal/familiar contexts, close relationships, etc, but the VERB takes over from the standard informal form ("tú" conjugations) in the fëanorian dialect as another political marker

so for example, fëanor would "vos tenís" his kids, but "tú tenís" fingolfin's kids

i am inclined to say that this shift happens after the unchaining of melkor, when the political divide is a lot more dramatic, and therefore the whole thing is very controversial, but definitely is the standard in formenos during the exile

could also be used for dramatic effect

imagine the scenes if fëanor addressed fingolfin w the Fëanorian Super Informal Pronoun in "get thee gone and take thy due place"

imagine the scenes if fingolfin addressed fëanor w the Fëanorian Super Informal Pronoun in "thou shalt lead and i will follow"!!!!!

the fëanorians in beleriand definitely preserved this, bc of course they did

whether this phenomenon exists in other languages besides quenya i am unsure

i am too exhausted after all that to write any sort of proper conclusion. i hope it made sense. feel free to ask questions or add things on. live laugh linguistics

[olderthannetfic]

I was that AAVE anon and thank you for responding. I was just really confused about these being for ONLY black people because I don't use these AAVEs personally at all, especially in real life because my native language is not English.

And I was also pretty sceptic about that these words are exclusive for black people, because I once stumbled upon a post here that showed a tiktok explaining that you can't use the word stud because that's only for black butch lesbians. Also that one post's tone too was pretty insufferable. Basically it was like "See? This word is for black butch lesbians only!!! Don't use it or you're a racist pig!" While others pointed out that it was also used for horses for a longer time. The original post didn't help me learn anything, it just showed me that the poster is insufferable and that I need to be more sceptical about everithing posted anywhere no matter who posts it.

Next time I'll search better if I stumble upon some words from English slang or something. Sorry for wasting your time! 🙈

--

*giggling*

Yes, anon, I figured you weren't a native speaker. For the record, 'AAVEs' isn't how we use that. AAVE is the name of the dialect: African American Vernacular English. As a term, it works how any name of a language or dialect does. You can say things like "I don't speak AAVE" or "This is grammatical in AAVE". If you want to describe vocabulary, I'd say something like "This word comes from AAVE".

I know what you mean. There's a plague of social media posts about how some word or other is only for black people. (Not surprising given the even bigger plague of appropriation from AAVE.) Half of them are completely accurate and half of them are absolute nonsense, and there's no way to tell which is which from the posts themselves. The only way to distinguish is by already knowing enough that you don't need the damn post in the first place.

[swiftrunnerfelidae]

They told me their name meant "Great Falling Water". I would tell you their actual name, but human tongues cannot pronounce the elven language - you need an elven mouth to speak their consonants, and only elven throats can sing their vowels, and the human ear cannot distinguish the subtle differences between their beautiful words. Luckily, while my hands could not form the right symbols for proper elven sign, they use a different dialect of it for speaking with their children which I could just barely mimic.

This was good in several ways - from speaking with them, they told me that human language sounds little different from the hooting and jabbering of monkeys to all elves. Some elves spend the time trying to understand, but most recognize that they cannot. But sign languages can be understood. I have tried teaching them ASL, as they teach me more of proper elven sign - while they can no more form the hand signs of ASL than I could shape my hands to perform their delicate motions, they can still learn to tell my signs apart from one another, just as I could learn to recognize theirs. But until such a time, we sign back and forth in the language of their children.

I had tried asking if they had children of their own, but Great Falling Water seemed puzzled by the question. "No one elf keeps a child," they signed to me. "We grow our children together." I tried to explain again - no, not as in a child you keep, but a child that you... I struggled, searching through what elven sign I knew to explain the concept to them. They had not taught me the signs to explain my question - I suppose fitting, in a language for children. I thought then of the monkeys the elves so often compared us to, and tried a different tactic.

"When humans make children," I signed to them, using the ASL sign for "human" as the elven sign for us was still new and in flux, "we come together as monkeys do. The child grows inside one of them, until they are large enough to come out, but the child is..." I struggled a bit, thinking through the construction, the way to weave together the elven sign as I needed it. "Both humans make the child, so we say the child is of both humans. Do you have a child like that?"

Great Falling Water paused, considering this. It was hard to tell where they were looking, their eyes so different from a human's, with no pupil to track their focus. Eventually, they started to sign again. "I might?" they signed, a little flourish on the motion twisting a statement into a question. "I would not know for sure. Our children change so much as they grow, and we all help them to grow. Humans..." They paused, and now they were at a loss for signs. "Humans keep their children so close, they know who made the child? Even when the child becomes an adult?"

"We do, yes. Or at least most of us do."

They seemed concerned by this, a motion moving along their body I had come to recognize as how elves show their confusion and distaste. It had, unfortunately, become quite familiar to me.

"To keep such control over a child..." They let the last sign linger, not clipping it off in the normal way as the thought trailed away from them. The chirps and sighs of conversation surrounded us in the village as we both sat there, the difference between human and elf brought so much into focus for both of us.

Suddenly, a trilling chirp came from nearby - it was from the children's hall. Great Falling Water perked up, standing up quickly as a sound rippled through the village. "What is happening?" I signed quickly to them.

"We have a new adult to welcome," they signed back, a nervous excitement in their motions, before they moved briskly to the hall. With no other elf I recognized, I followed.

I had been allowed into the children's hall before - with supervision, of course. Understandably so. The great pool in which they raised their youngest, and to which their elder children had to frequently return, was precious and had to be protected. It was the purpose of the hall - to protect that pool from anything that might swoop in from above, while the fine grate kept anything large enough from entering from the river that gave it its water. Still, I was a good foot taller than even the tallest elf, and lacked the cultural experience to know what was safe and what was not when around elven children, so I had - much like today - stayed to the back, where I could simply see over the elves and be out of the way, observing without taking part. And there, at the front of the small crowd, was the new adult. They glistened slightly, in a way somehow different from the elves as they emerged from the water. I had seen it once before, on a different elf, a full adult, right after they had grown - but this was different from merely growing. This was a transformation, from child to adult.

I had learned from Great Falling Water that elves put much emphasis on the first words a new adult said, as only an adult elf could truly speak their language - understandably so, having seen both child and adult elves, and been permitted to - carefully, with much supervision - examine them a bit. The murmurs of the crowd fell silent, as the new adult rose to their feet, a nurse helping them stand. They breathed in, and spoke something in Elvish - and a cacophony of Elvish met them in reply. I saw the new adult relax, leaning more against the nurse, as they were escorted back to their room to rest and finish recovering. They had gone through one of the most strenuous growths in an elf's life, and had a whole new body to learn.

I carefully tapped Great Falling Water on the shoulder as the celebration died down. "What happens now?" I asked, curiously.

They turned to face me, signing with joyous energy. "Their molt will be boiled down into tonight's soup." They paused, then quickly continued. "Only for the village. All must be for elves. I am sorry."

I couldn't help myself. I gave a brief sharp laugh. "It is okay. It is not something I would wish to join in on."

Great Falling Water clicked their mandibles together, a moment of thought as they collected themself. "It is still difficult to understand why, but I will respect that," they signed. Their wings and elytra trembled a little, a nervous little tic of Great Falling Water, before they moved on. "Come. We shall have to help you have your own food tonight, I suppose."

I nodded, as I saw the rest of the elves carrying out the pieces of the new adult's molt, curved sheets of chitin that still mimicked the child form before metamorphosis, only disjointed into separate parts. "We shall," I signed back. "We shall."

[haggishlyhagging]

Japanese illustrates the complex interaction between male social/political dominance and control of language use. It manifests not only the three ways patriarchal language infiltrates our minds and the ways we talk (or are permitted to talk) or are talked about by men, but also provides instances of women's defiance of PUD [Patriarchal Universe of Discourse] rules. When men name the world of their perceptions, they also name the place of women in that world; these names lexicalize men's concepts and form semantic sets within a culture's vocabulary. When men control the social and grammatical rules of a language and have mandated their dialect as the standard, they define what women are allowed to say and the way in which they must say it. The "place" of a woman in a man's world isn't only reflected in certain sets of words in the language's vocabulary but is also marked in her speech by specific suffixes. Japanese women aren't utterly silent, however, and have words for describing their own experiences, including derogatory terms for men.

In a 1988 Weekend Edition, National Public Radio (NPR) did a segment called "Japanese Women's Language." A man's voice introduced the segment as "a story about sexism, although most people in the country we're about to visit wouldn't call it that." Patronizingly acknowledging that, "of course, the United States has its share of sexism," he went on with his ethnocentric description of "sexism" in Japan:

now imagine a culture that forbids women most of the time to speak the same language as men, a society where women actually have to use different words than men do to say the same thing, or else they'll be shunned.

Men's subjugation of women in Japan goes back at least 1,000 years, to a time when women were forbidden to speak to men. In the 1930s, the Japanese government issued edicts warning women not to use words reserved to men, and the resulting differentiations remain in force, if not the edicts themselves (NPR). The significant adjectives that distinguish onna kotaba, 'women's words', from the male dialect are 'soft' and 'harsh', the equivalents of English 'weak' and 'forceful'. One example of the pressure on women to speak softly and submissively, if they speak at all, is the custom of hiring elevator "girls" in Japanese department stores.

According to the NPR report, women hired as elevator "girls" must be "pretty, young, and very, very feminine." One of the behaviors that conveys onna-rashisa (the stereotype of femininity) is the ability to speak women's "language" correctly, and this aspect of the elevator operator's job performance is closely monitored. They are expected to talk in "perfect women's language," and "never slip and use a masculine word." Their fluency in the linguistic display of submissiveness is insured by one-half hour of mandatory daily practice, during which any "unfeminine" pronunciations are corrected. In order for a woman, any woman, to be perceived as "nice," she must speak "correct women's language" (NPR). Women who don't speak the submissive dialect men assign to them don't get jobs.

R. Lakoff (1975) and Mary Ritchie Key (1975) both noted that the sentences of English-speaking women are likely to be longer and wordier than those of men, and the same apparently holds true for Japanese. A man might be able to say, "Open the window!" but a Japanese woman, in order to get the same thing done, would have to say, "Please open the window a little bit, if you don't mind!" The result is that a woman's sentence has only one or two words in common with a comparable male utterance (NPR) and is much longer. Not surprisingly, Japanese women's dialect is perceived as more subservient and tentative than men's, because the women must use submissive, self-effacing phrases equivalent to the tag-questions that Robin Lakoff (1975) associated with women's speech in English. These phrases translate into English as "do you think," "I can't be sure," and "will it be," and their use in commonplace statements means that Japanese women say an average of 20% more words than men to describe the same thing. In Japanese, it is impossible for a woman to speak informally and assertively at the same time (NPR).

-Julia Penelope, Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers’ Tongues