#somewhat-germane

[spinnenpfote6]

I just re-read some pages of The Fellowship Of The Ring and I don't get why so many people take issue with around-20-y/o Elijah Wood being cast. While Frodo Baggins is indeed canonically about 50 years old, the book specifically mentions how he looks like someone fresh out of his teens because he kept the One Ring for multiple years, which is known to keep their owner young and fresh (at least at the beginning until they rapidly age after getting rid of it) - not to mention that since hobbits age slower than humans, Frodo would only be in maybe his 30s. On one page we are being told that multiple people gossip and wonder about how young he still looks, including Gandalf. So if anything, you could say that Elijah Wood was too skinny or too attractive (though I do think he looks like Frodo is described), but not too young.

And I actually like that he looks young because it not only does it make him look cute and innocent, but we also get the notion of someone who has had a relatively quiet and happy, sheltered life before (aside from the terrible death of his parents) and of someone who is visibly sensitive and innocent and gets taken care of a lot. The BIGGEST reason I like his young looks however, is the parallel to young soldiers who are ripped out of their homes by outer forces, by older men who are the ones who started the wars. Young soldiers whose lives are practically destroyed before they even really begin, just like Frodo's - even if he's already half a century old. He comes back traumatized and sick/disabled having saved the world but having lost so much. Most likely his innocence too.

[hungwy]

JLPT N3 is comparable to CEFR B1; JLPT N2 is equivalent to CEFR B2, and JLPT N1 basically requires the same skills as CEFR C1. but consider the fact that to get to JLPT N1, the highest level of fluency for the most popular Japanese proficiency test, you need, on average, starting from no knowledge of Japanese at all (including kanji), 3000–4800 hours. to get to CEFR C2 in German, that being the highest level of the most popular framework for measuring European-language proficiency, you should study around 750 hours, maybe more. mind you this is measured with monolingual native English speaker -> target language perspectives in mind, but still, like, what the hell man. look at the requirements:

CEFR C2 (750-900 hours in German): "[understanding] with ease virtually everything heard or read … [and expressing oneself] spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations."

JLPT N1 (3000-4800 hours): "able to read [various and profound] writings with [logical/abstract] complexity … [and] comprehend orally presented materials [in a wide variety of settings] … spoken at natural speed … [and] also able to understand the details … such as the relationships among the people involved, the logical structures, and the essential points."

if you study German well for 3 hours a day, every day, nonstop, until you hit the 750 hours of study for CEFR C2, you're more than fluent in 250 days. okay, the US State Department says you need 900 hours, so the time it takes to become fluent changes to... oh... 300 days.

if you study Japanese well for 3 hours a day, every day, nonstop, until you hit the 3000 hours of study for JLPT N1, you're more-or-less fluent (not even definitively!) in 2.7 years. for 4800 hours it takes 4.3 years.

and studying 3 hours a day every day is basically unreasonable for most people! not to mention "real language heads" study for 10 hours a day. a regular person would probably do about an hour or two a day, right? and probably have weekends where studying doesn't happen. so let's say 2 hours a day, monday-friday; 10 hours a week. with 52.14 weeks in a year, you get about 521.4 hours of studying in per year.

with this regimen you achieve considerable German fluency in about a year and a half of study, and are probably on the same level as university students. the same habits will get you high-school-level Japanese fluency in 8 years.

now obviously all this assumes a lot: consistent learning ability, consistently paced lessons, not skipping any days, not forgetting anything, etc etc etc. but i think these numbers more or less hold

[please-let-this-work-oh-my-god]

One thing I find very interesting, as a learner of German, is Isolde's usage of du when speaking to Kakania. In German, there are three main second person pronouns: du, ihr and Sie. The first two are mainly used in informal and casual settings or when talking to people you're close with (with du being singular and ihr being plural sorta similar to english's y'all) while Sie is used in more formal situations (or situations which require some form of formality) such as talking to strangers, customer service or when you're talking to a doctor/patient. Kakania abides by this and uses Sie when talking to Isolde (such as in her speech at the end of chapter 6) but interestingly, Isolde doesn't reciprocate this and instead uses du when conversing with Kakania in German.

This is super fascinating to me because it implies different levels of closeness within their relationship. Isolde's usage of du implies a level of closeness and intimacy to Kakania as Isolde herself saw Kakania as a close friend (most likely due to the fact that Kakania was once of the few people in Vienna who actually sympathized with her and saw her as a human being) but Kakania's siezen suggests a certain level of estrangement or distance between her and Isolde. Of course. this could just be her maintaining her professionalism as doctors normally use Sie when talking to patients but with how things turned out after chapters 6 and 7, I'd like to think this goes deeper than just formality standards.

[iamthepulta]

*stares at 30 reblogs of "deep down you want to bite someone with 100% power just once"*

*writes: "m00t is reincarnated crocodile (beloved)" on notepad*

[buck-up-buck]

i think 7x10 just gave me my new favourite Buck and Tommy scene and I am going FERAL over it.

i-

can it be September please😭

[pinkinsect]

isaness fic where they sit down and explain to each other the specific way they come off through the translation software. mildly ooc content that appeals specifically to Me

[juliamccartney]

i love the german language so so much but the ability to create really long compound words actually comes with the downside of word processing programmes sometimes not being able to recognize longer words even though they are grammatically and orthographically correct, presumably because those words don't exist in the pre-installed dictionary and the programme isn't smart enough to take them apart. it'll underline these words as if you've made a mistake and you have to tell the programme every single time that no, this is actually a perfectly fine word and then sometimes it still stays underlined and if you are already stressed that just adds onto your stress

[leonsliga]

manuelneuer:

Danke für diesen unglaublichen EM-Auftakt, München! 🇩🇪 So haben wir uns den Start gewünscht! 💪 #EURO24

Thank you for this incredible start to the European Championship, Munich! 🇩🇪 This is exactly how we wanted it to start! 💪 #EURO24

[hanzajesthanza]

i was looking up tips for formatting bilingual books (for example, a copy of idk the iliad with ancient greek on one side, english translation on the other), but i didn’t know the word describing this kind of format 🤔

so i was stringing together keywords like “book with two languages” and one of the results was a reddit post with someone trying to find a book that alternates between multiple languages, i.e., there are no translations, it’s it’s one text, but half of the story is in english, then the other half, or interwoven throughout, is in french or whatever

and it took strength to not suggest the hussite trilogy 🥴

[ynneleac]

"If you don't give us the information we want, Mr. Bond, we will be forced to manipulate photos of you to look like a fairy twink and post them online. Do you really want us to be forced to take such drastic measures, Mr. Bond?"

[queerofthedagger]

I've been (mostly) out for years but sometimes there's moments like. over the last two weeks both of my clients, for some reason, just casually asked me if i had a boyfriend or girlfriend, and it's like. of course they would I've literally been to pride with one of them and all that! but also I'm really just out at work and get asked if i have a partner of any gender without the slightest awkwardness and as an early 90s kid that dug their way through an absolute cesspit of biphobia and bi erasure it maybe still makes me want to sob into my pillow a little, every once in a while like. fucking hell. a lot of shit still sucks but a lot of shit also got so so so much better already

[syssyadmin]

gay girls on the internet have convinced me to play signalis unintentionally 👍

[chiara-klara-claire]

2022-2023, tragedies, a bookmark I bought at Utrecht train station, moomin, Swedish and German novels, book about Dutch cities I got at the King’s day Rommelmarkt

[voiceemporium]

Cassandra Pentaghast in Dragon Age Inquisition voiced by Miranda Raison

[thatsuncleharrytoyouyoungman]

it feels illegal? to be able to read n understand the amt of portuguese i do considering ive only been learning it for 3 weeks i can understand more than i cld 3 weeks bc of what i've learnt but a lot of it is just bc span similarities n tht feels so crazy

[muninnhuginn]

kinda neat how media can be used as a jumping off point to learn about new things. there are the obvious things like documentaries, but then there are all sorts of other things. when 'hamilton' first got big, you ended up with people learning about aaron burr and the new york water system and various trivia from usa history around that era which wasn't even featured in the musical itself.

when 'mr bates vs the post office' came out recently over here (UK), a whole lot of people were able to appreciate the impact the whole horizon/post office affair had on its victims. sure, the story has been in the news for a few years now, but it's the first time it's been a story actively discussed in daily life. and people learning more about it has actively pushed the government to consider speeding up compensation or mass exonerations.

and even aside from these obvious instances, there are a lot that don't tell you up front and you realise as you're watching. when shows and films and books reference real life events through the veneer of fiction. suzume, referencing the tohoku earthquake of 2011 (something I imagine pretty much every japanese citizen is aware of - suzume's own age is very deliberate in how she lost her mother to the quake. she was very young at the time it happened, but it still had a huge impact on her and many others). link click, referencing the 2008 sichuan earthquake (and deliberately having the arc revolve around school-age children in a run-down old building when irl one of the reasons the casualties were so high was because of poor construction of school buildings). various kdramas referencing generational SK disasters: imf financial crisis (explored in 'reborn rich', but I imagine many other shows), sampoong department store collapse (referenced in 'move to heaven', but again, once I knew the history, it made a lot of sense why so many corrupt villains in kdramas were specifically involved in construction).

it's a mix of how, if you know the events being referenced, they'll impact you more. but if you don't know the events, then it gives you a reason to learn. I personally had very very vague memories of the 2008 earthquake, just in terms of some clips on the news at the time. I had no idea about the various factors that made the disaster so much worse until I realised what was being referenced when watching the show and decided to read up on it.

I have somewhat conflicted feelings on how fictional (or dramatised in the case of mr bates) media approaches specifically *disasters*, as opposed to other historical events, but I think the shows I've mentioned here at least take a victim-first approach.