#people speaking other languages

[not-poignant]

oh god im having a moment. this may seem obvious but…i know that utr is set in australia…theres more than a few references….to australia.. and ….australian things..but i only now realised that means everyone has an australian accent omg 😭😭😭😭(me to my brain: “why didnt you tell me” my brain back: “girl are you forreal”) idk why this is so surprising to me…im slow. so all the conversations that happened…. happened with an aussie accent….temsen…gary….gwyn 😭 i know faber has more of a british accent right? idk why i remembered that but then didn’t think about calebs accent… this is amazing, its also embarrassing for me but i am protected by the veil of online anonymity so im just rolling on my couch going through past conversations in the stories re-imagining them. wait that means YOU also have an australian accent!! i LOVE australian accent!!!! almost as much as kiwi but then again i hear that one even less than aussie accents… 😂 oke have a good sunday..or wait what time is it over there?! have a good time from 9pm germany 🇩🇪 cheers mate

Ahaha, this was so great to get

Okay so firstly, I think it's fairly universal that most of us don't think of ourselves as having accents, so unless a character has a very distinct accent, I don't think of their accents at all. For that reason, I also have zero problems when people just imagine the accent that is normal to them!

Secondly, what most people know as the Australian accent is very particular to certain parts of Australia. Most people haven't heard a Perth accent, which is a lot milder overall than say, a Queensland accent. And class really influences how people talk. Like, most of these people aren't saying 'mate' for a reason, it's just not part of their daily language. So...in that sense, it wouldn't be accurate to imagine a standard television Australian accent either. It's kind of jokey, in the same way that people put on really overdone German or Russian accents, you know it's not always reflective of reality.

I love Kiwi accents too btw, so good. :D Early Flight of the Conchords forever!

But, yes, they are in Australia and they do have...Australian accents. Kadek's probably one of the most 'ocker', Faber is one of the fanciest speakers (as is Flitmouse, though he picked up his accent out of choice lol), though Gary's up there too because he came from a very educated and relatively upper class family (as is Efnisien, when he can stop swearing for five seconds!)

Characters who have a more standard Australian accent would be Janusz, Caleb, Nate, Kadek and I would say Anton's about in the middle.

But, again, if it's just easier and more comfortable to imagine whatever your internal 'generic accent' is - imagine that! For me that's actually like... a neutral English accent, for I think most people it's American! I don't even think my neutral accent is Australian, lmao, because I'm influenced by coming from a family of immigrants (Dutch + English + Russian) and watching a lot of TV growing up of which the majority wasn't Australian, and of course thinking of my own accent as just 'neutral' which it absolutely isn't.

Accents are weird!

[queerasflux]

man I wish people understood how much it sucks ass to be neurodivergent and trying to find the middle ground where people like/tolerate you. like, I'm either "boring" (trying to wait my turn in conversations, holding space for other people, taking a back seat to let others get some spotlight) or "too much" (too loud/talking too much, getting excited to share, trying to participate in group conversations/activities). No one really talks about how much of being neurodivergent is just sort of trying to make yourself palatable.

I feel like so much of my life has been spent trying to find this effortless sort of middle ground everyone else seems to automatically already know, and I'm always swinging too far one way or the other. I'm lucky to have neurodivergent friends who grok me, but goddamn I wish that I could just like, exist without the constant background script in my brain that's like "you're being too loud. You're not talking enough. you're being self-centered. you're being boring. you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong." I feel like I'm back in high school trying to make friends but stuck as the eternal "weird kid"

it's just... lonely and sucks bad.

[elbiotipo]

Petty I know, but I think if you're a native English speaker you should be forbidden from making fun of any other language at all.

[frownyalfred]

Bruce learns Kryptonian secretly just so one day during a JL meeting he can turn to Clark and go “hal really thought that haircut made him look good huh” with the most deadpan expression ever

[phoenixkaptain]

Reading the novelization of A New Hope already changed how I saw Luke as a character but Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is going one step further and making me question the very fundamentals thought to be obvious about Luke.

Like, Luke is, for lack of a better term, a nerd. He studied languages and cultures -

“”Yes,” Luke admitted modestly. “I used to study a lot about certain worlds, back on my uncle’s farm on Tatooine. It was my only escape, and educational as well. This,” and he indicated the creature resting a massive long arm on his head and shaking him in a friendly fashion, “is a Yuzzem.””

-he wants to study more languages and cultures-

“Empty doorways beckoned to him and he was tempted, very tempted, to enter one of the ruined structures to find out if its interior was as well preserved as the outside.

This was not, he reminded himself firmly, the time for playful exploration. Their first concern was to find a way out, not to go poking around this ancient metropolis. However wonderful it was.”

Luke wants to know about people. He wants to know about cultures and creatures and he wants to be able to communicate and…

He really just. Is a great Jedi. He jumps between Leia and danger and he befriends the Yuzzem the prison guards thought would kill him and he wants to explore the creepy abandoned ruins of a civilization long past and he uses Anakin’s lightsaber underwater to cut the stem of a lilypad they use as a boat and he comments that the rock formations are almost too beautiful to cut down and he knows how to work Imperial explosives and

He’s a Jedi, man. He’s a Jedi. He’s been a Jedi this whole time, before any of us even knew what that actually meant.

[sysig]

The familiarity is not very comforting (Patreon)

[feroluce]

On Sampo's name (ALL of his names!)

I feel like everyone who's a fan knows the meaning of Sampo's full name by now- the sampo was a legendary item that could magically make endless supplies of gold, flour, and salt, all priceless items at the time! So it works perfectly for a scammer businessman like Sampo. ☆

"Koski" is the Finnish word for "water rapids" which might seem kinda random but actually makes sense for him, since Aha and the Masked Fools are also referred to with water terms:

This kind of analogy isn't specific to only Aha and the Masked Fools, but it does still tie them together. So water rapids fits perfectly! Sampo wants to stir the pot! He likes to shake things around and spice things up! He's taking that stagnant pool and turning it into water rapids! It would actually explain his ridiculous hair color, too; a dark blue wave tipped with white foam haha

EDIT: an amazing contribution from @ricochetlovebombs, who heard it from hoyolab user Rattaboy. If you interpret his first and last name together, instead of separately like I did, you would get something like "money river."

In other words, Sampo's name literally means CASH FLOW SKXJMDMDMD

What I really wanted to talk about is his drag alias name, though, Brughel Poisson, because to me that's where it gets really interesting.

So like in the English version, Sampo goes by Brughel Poisson when he's in disguise. Searching for just "Brughel" itself doesn't seem to get you much at first: a Flemish and Dutch Renaissance painter named Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who was famous for his landscapes and peasant scenery, especially Hunters in the Snow and The Blue Cloak.

He's referred to as "the Elder" because he had a son also named Pieter Brueghel (the Younger), and he began a long line of painters, all named Brueghel. Some of them did original work, and many of them created reproductions of the Elder's art to sell. The Elder was also famous as a printmaker. All of this is hilarious when you remember that Sampo is an infamous counterfeiter and has sold a relic called the Parallel Universe Printer JSKZJSMD

There is also something called Brueghel's Syndrome, named after one of Brueghel's paintings called De Gaper, which pictured a man yawning widely. It's a condition that causes the mouth to open and gape uncontrollably, twisting a person's countenance into a distorted mask of their usual face.

Tumblr doesn't have a way of censoring pics like twitter, so for the sake of the medically squeamish, I'm just showing De Gaper here. But if you look up Brueghel's Syndrome, you can find pictures of actual patients, some of whom really do make faces resembling Aha's comedy and tragedy masks!

In the Chinese and Japanese versions, his alias last name is a lot more silly- In those, "Sampo" is phonetically written as "san-bo" and "san-po." And in disguise, his last names are phonetically written as... "Bo-san" and "Po-san." The Chinese version uses different tones, but still. This smug asshole seriously just decided to write his own name backwards and called it a day NDMKXMDMD

In the English version, Poisson itself is kind of a reused Hoyo asset- it's also the name of Navia's fishing village in Genshin Impact. Which is a really silly name for a village, because it literally just means "fish" in French smzjxkdkdk but!

Again, more water imagery. And in English, if something is suspicious, we say that it's "fishy," which is perhaps the most fitting association yet for someone as shady as Sampo ☆

And for a good while I thought that was the only connection. But then. My beloved @hydrachea, who is an actual native French speaker, dropped this on me right after April Fool's Day:

Poisson is literally the word you use to pull an April Fool's prank.

[treesinspace]

The Quinton Reviews video was actually the first time I ever heard of The Beverly Hillbillies, but Quinton's dad talks about it as if everyone should know it, like the Simpsons. My theory is that maybe it is because I didn't grow up in an english-speaking country, and I'm curious!

If you have no idea what youtube video I am talking about, I would still appreciate your vote! Just vote whether or not you are aware of the sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies"

[royalarchivist]

[A sad violin song plays over an image of a sad hamster]

Pac: This doesn't have anything to do with me – I wear a blue sweatshirt, you're crazy, this mouse doesn't even have a sweatshirt, this hamster! [Reading chat] Am I a depressed hamster?

[ Transcript continued ↓ ]*

–

Pac: Actually– that's fine! I embrace that idea – of course I'm going to be depressed, are you crazy? [He hits his desk, then starts counting off people on his fingers] Fit is gone, Richarlyson is gone, Ramon is gone, Bagi and Empanada who were always there when we were there are also gone, I haven't seen them! It's just me and Tubbo, and sometimes Philza shows up.

Pac: I lost Chume Labs, I lost the Favela, I lost Murder Mystery, I lost Ilha Chume Labs, it's crazy! Look at how much I've lost, and I've gained nothing! Of course I'm going to be depressed, are you crazy?! How am I supposed to be happy?!

Pac: [Reading chat] "You have us Pac," that's true, thank you. No, that's true, sorry.

* NOTE: Please note that this is an incomplete transcript, as I was primarily relying on Aypierre's translation mod at the time and if I am not confident of the translation, I do not include it. As always, please feel free to add on translations or message me corrections.

[burning-sol]

chip art??? from me???? no freaking way!!!

[dailymanners]

Don't make fun of any accents, ever, for any reason.

The person on the receiving end will most likely fall in at least one of three categories:

Second language

Regional accent

Speech impediment

1. Second language

This person is probably speaking in this language to you because either you don't speak their mother tongue or you speak it worse than they speak the language you are speaking. They are making an effort for you. An accent doesn't make you dumb.

Making fun of someone for attempting to communicate in another language is the height of assholery.

2. Regional accent

Half the time you make fun of regional accents, you make fun of historically disenfranchised accents.

Southern accents? Congrats you're making fun of the way rural, usually poor, people speak. Their speech was highly influenced by black people.

Don't even get me started on making fun of AAE.

Again, an accent doesn't make you any less intelligent.

3. Speech impediment

They know they have a speech impediment. They are probably trying very hard not to sound like that. It is literally not their fault. They have had to deal with people making fun of it their whole life.

A speech impediment doesn't make you less intelligent either.

[llyfrenfys]

See, I personally find this quest to find pagan/pre-Christian elements in Welsh/Irish literature quite unnerving - I don't know about anyone else.

There's something to be said about genuinely discovering pre-Christian elements in a narrative or story and that being where evidence and study has led you. But I see some people on this fruitless quest to find pagan elements in very Christian texts and sometimes it feels like if no pagan elements can be found, people start making stuff up out of whole cloth - and that can be very dangerous for already not-well known texts in minoritised languages!

There's already so much misinformation out there about Irish/Welsh texts and literature in general - so it hurts to see people carelessly adding to the misinformation either out of ignorance or lack of respect for the source material.

I promise you the source material being Christian doesn't ruin it - you can in fact, enjoy these myths without making them into something they're not!

[shalom-iamcominghome]

What I love and what's heartbreaking about Diasporic languages (e.g., Ladino, Yiddish, ect. ect.) is that I see them as languages of survival. Survival of jewish culture and communities, survival of people in lands that were too often opposed to their very existence. These languages are beautiful to me because I know it's am yisrael chai is irrevocably true, heartbreaking because the Diaspora can be such a hostile environment.

And I don't think this is what many people (non-jews especially, when we're talking about jewish diasporic languages) get. Languages such as diasporic languages exist in context of survival. It's such a complex feeling I have, because I love these languages, and at the same time know why they often had to exist.

[bonefall]

it is healing to come onto this blog and see basic respect for diasbility after being in other corners of the fandom and reading the words “snowkit could never be a warrior because he wouldnt know what anything is. he wouldnt even know what a clan is because nobody could explain it to him” said in full seriousness

Im..... That statement is so ableist I cannot even imagine the worldview you'd need to have in order to come up with that.

They really think the only way anyone learns anything is through verbal-speaking-words-noises? No one has ever observed something before? Not even once?

This is beyond touching grass, this person just fell out of the fucking Jurassic Period when all they had was ferns and stegosaurs.

I just...

OH YES. I remember my first day of Society Lessons as a hearing person, where the everything was explained to me. Via Audiobook. FIRST they spoke and said, "you are standing on the ground." It was a life changing revelation, and the world began to spin.

But it did not stop.

THEN they said, "there are fingers on your hands." The sensation of flesh and bone crackling into existence is indescribable, but I did not yet know pain, until they told me, "that hurts." I began screaming immediately.

And yet... it continued.

They explained so much. Chairs. Tables. Walls. The sky. Frogs. Ionizing radiation. Breathing. I was told all of it, in one sitting, and only then did I understand. Only when my ears were bursting with normal hearing knowledges, did they begin... my final test.

A strange wall-chair-finger emerged from the sky-of-the-wall, stood on the ground several times, until it was in front of me. A second one came behind it, this one slimmer. The audiobook gave these things names;

Human. Father. Mother. Door. Walking. It was completely impossible to know what these things were until that very moment.

I watch a human dip a hook into water and produce a fish, and I recall my Society Lessons where they called that "fishing." I am decked in the face by a nefarious hooligan, and I have only the audiobook to thank when I know I have been "punched" by a "bad guy." It was only the magic of verbal-speaking-words-noise that made me understand that there are "other people" and that they "do stuff."

Sometimes, even, in "groups."

Before the Society Lessons Audiobook, I knew nothing. I was pure, innocent, uncorrupted by concepts such as "parents" and "door." I am grateful every day that there is no such concept as "being shown things" or "simple logical reasoning" or "looking."

Blessed be those amongst us who escape the horrors of the Society Lessons Audiobook. I pray that you never learn what anything is. Be free! Free as a bird, which also knows nothing and famously cannot learn. 🤗

DEAF/HOH FOLLOWERS I'm losing my mind do you want me to bump a 'Hearing Disabilities Herb Guide' to the top of my priorities? Something you can use to bludgeon whackadoodles like that. This is ridiculous

Obviously not a MEDICINE guide but like; common causes of hearing disability in clan cats. Accommodations for hearing loss vs congenital deafness. Actual difficulties of not having that sense Clan-by-Clan. Debunking of misconceptions like... not being able to learn APPARENTLY.

[bogkeep]

realized something earlier today. you know that trope where bilingual characters in fiction will sprinkle their native language into english sentences? and how i personally, while i can't speak for every bilingual person on the planet, don't really see that happening in reality pretty much ever, at least not with people who are passingly fluent in english? anyway i realized i DO mix languages, just the other way. i will happily throw english words and phrases into my daily speech when chatting with my peers in norwegian or czech like it's no biggie. because we all know english here, so it makes sense to swap in words if i'm falling short! but why would i say words other people don't understand in conversation...!

[canisalbus]

I just recently started following you so i don't have the full lore of your murderous gay religiously traumatized doggos, BUT, from my understanding, they are Italian and i don't know what part of Italy they are from, yet i can't help headcanoning Vasco as Tuscan, while Machete is probably from some part of Veneto. And as an Italian who has heard Tuscans and Veneto dialet, well it's an hilarious mental image.

Vasco is indeed Tuscan, Florentine to be specific. He comes from a wealthy and influential noble family that has lived in Florence for centuries. He's proud of his roots, and it's usually easy for strangers to tell where he's from. He's a resonably successful politician and has worked as an ambassador and representative of Florence on numerous occasions.

Machete is originally Sicilian (ironically about as far from Veneto as possible), although he was taken to mainland at young age and has lived in several places since then, before ending up in Rome. The way I see it, he exhibits very little local color, his demeanor and (even though Italian hadn't become a standardized language yet) way of speaking are formal, neutral and scarcely give away any hints about his personal history, at least in the 16th century canon.