#they’re either words/things in English or other languages typically Latin or Greek

[quibbs126]

So on one hand, it does kind of suck that Elita isn’t allowed to have her pre-Elita name anymore with presumably the Disney copyright issues. Like it’s I assume why she can’t have her origin name in TF One and honestly I feel like she sticks out in that regard

But at the same time, I just have to say

Ariel is just a normal person name. Like that does not sound like a Transformer name to me, that could just be a human character’s name

Sure Orion is also a human name, but I feel like the full name being Orion Pax makes it slightly better? Like adding the Pax part as the second part of his name, it makes it not just sound like a human, at least to me. It’s flimsy but it’s something. And also Orion is the name of a constellation, so slightly more space-y

Ariel meanwhile is just a human name, no two ways about it

Hell, in her original design, she just kind of looks like a robot girl to me, rather than someone able to actually transform into a vehicle

And sure, you can change her spelling to Erial or Aerial to make it less human-like or give it a flight pun, but in the former it’s a bit weak, and in the latter case, while it’s nice and I like it, she isn’t known to turn into a flying vehicle other than her Power of the Primes toy, so it’s also a bit flimsy

I like the idea of Elita having a former self, giving her more parallels to Orion/Optimus, and I’d like to see more spins on this Ariel design, since I think Animated was really the only one to do so, but she’s also stuck with a very non-Transformer sounding name to me

It’s like when I hear there’s a bot called Minerva, though I’ve gotten more used to Ariel at this point. But also from what I can gather on the Wiki, the bot Minerva either is or is named after a human character called Minerva, so she’s got more of an explanation to have a human sounding name, even if that explanation doesn’t carry over continuities

Maybe she needs a new backstory-her name. Granted, I talk all this and I’m not sure what this new name should be. But I think she should have a new name, at least so that the character of Ariel can appear in some way again

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 26: Why do C and G come in hard and soft versions? Palatalization

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 26: Why do C and G come in hard and soft versions? Palatalization. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 26 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics! I'm Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: And I'm Lauren Gawne, and today, we're getting enthusiastic about palatalisation. That is to say, “What the heck is going on with G and C?” But first, thanks to everyone for your enthusiastic recommending during our November Recommend-A-Thon.

Gretchen: Yes, thanks so much for all your tweets, and posts, and shares, and all of the new people that you've brought in with you to listen to Lingthusiasm.

Lauren: We will be thanking every one of you who made some kind of public declaration about their love of Lingthusiasm. We'll give you until the end of the month to add yourself to that esteemed group of people, so we can thank you all in our annual anniversary post.

Gretchen: Yes, so you have till the end of November 2018 to be part of this year's Recommend-A-Thon thank you post, which will live in perpetuity on our website. Last year we thanked 100 people. This year, I think we can thank even more. I'm really excited by what we've seen so far.

Lauren: I'm feeling very confident about that. And of course, you can continue to recommend us to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life any time of the year.

Gretchen: I also want to thank everybody who came out to the live shows.

Lauren: Yay! I'm not gonna lie, we're recording this before the live shows.

Gretchen: So we're really hoping people actually come.

Lauren: We are just going to have to assume that they were an absolute rolling success.

Gretchen: We're recording well in advance at the moment to make sure that we have episodes for when Lauren's on leave. We're very excited about those live shows. I assume they were great. Thanks so much to everyone who came out in Melbourne and Sydney. It was so fun to get to see those cities. We also want to remind you that if you're thinking about getting Lingthusiasm merch for any linguists or language enthusiasts in your life, if you want to get someone a scarf with the International Phonetic Alphabet, or tree symbol diagrams on them, or a tie with the IPA on it, or various baby outfits, or T-shirts that say, “Not judging your grammar, just analysing it,” or many other things, now is a great time to place an order so that arrives towards the end of the year.

Lauren: Remember, it's also totally okay to use this as a list of suggestions for other people to buy you, or if you enjoy doing a bit of holiday shopping for yourself, we're not gonna stop you.

Gretchen: We definitely noticed from last year that RedBubble typically runs some sales this time of year, so hopefully, you can take advantage of those to get you and/or your friends and family some great Lingthusiasm swag.

Lauren: Speaking of the holiday season, it's a very important holiday season coming up that's the Northern Hemisphere winter conference season, which I'm usually excited about. Not doing so much travel this year.

Gretchen: Well, the Australian Linguistic Society is also having its annual meeting in Adelaide in December, which I'm going to be at because I'm still in Australia. Our latest Patreon bonus episode is all about the academic conference circuit and how to make it work for you.

Lauren: I had a lot of fun in this episode. This is all of mine and Gretchen's favourite survival tips for navigating academic conferences. If you've never been to one before, or you've only been to a couple, they're lots of fun, and they can be even more fun.

Gretchen: Yes, so you can go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to check those out, or lingthusiasm.com/merch for the merch. We’ll repeat those links at the end of the episode, so you don't have to write them down now.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, G and C are really weird letters because they're these two letters that, in a whole bunch of languages, often come with multiple sounds. You have the sounds in their names like /dʒ/ and /s/, and then you have other sounds like /g/ and /k/, and then even more sounds. These letters are so weird.

Lauren: I'm not known for being the most reliable when it comes to a spelling bee, and I feel like it's often letters like G and C that trip me up because they have so many different pronunciation disguises that they put on.

Gretchen: They really do. They especially do that in different languages. You can do a brief sample of this through different languages' words for “cheese.”

Lauren: Ooo, let's do a cross-linguistic cheese platter!

Gretchen: Cross-linguistic cheese tour! First, we have the Latin “caseus” (/kaseʊs/) meaning “cheese.” And this gives rise to a whole bunch of other words for “cheese” in different languages. You have English “cheese” (/tʃi:z/), you have German “Käse” (/ke:zə/), you have Spanish “queso” (/keso/).

Lauren: Yeah. Because I was like, “Well, in Italian you have ‘formaggio,’” which is like a completely different historical word. But then I remembered that my favourite Italian pasta from Rome is cacio (/katʃo/) e pepe and that's – the Italian-Latin word for “cheese” is still hidden in that very excellent pasta dish.

Gretchen: And then because I started thinking about this, I was looking up other languages’ word for “cheese,” and I saw the Dutch “kaas” (/kɑːs/), which, I don't speak any Dutch, but there's one Dutch word that I know which is “pindakaas,” and “pindakaas” literally translates as “peanut cheese.”

Lauren: Oh. Oh, hang on. Like peanut butter?

Gretchen: Yeah, so the Dutch word for “peanut butter” is literally translated as “peanut cheese,” which at first seems like, “This is maybe an interesting dish,” but then you're like, “Is ‘peanut butter’ really any better as a term for it?” Because it's still a dairy metaphor.

Lauren: Yeah, because I was like, “That's a weird choice,” but actually, it's not that different.

Gretchen: It's really not that different at all. Especially, if you think of a cream cheese, which is like a creamier cheese, maybe? Peanut butter is kind of creamy sometimes.

Lauren: I'm still gonna eat it no matter what it's called.

Gretchen: Then you have Irish “cáis” (/kɑːʃ/), which is also from Latin “caseus”. “Caseus” is spelled with a C and an S. They're pronounced /k/ and /s/.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: But “cheese” takes that initial /k/ and makes it /tʃ/. “Käse” and “queso” and “cacio” keep that initial /k/ sound at the beginning, but “cacio” changes the /s/ into /tʃ/.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Dutch keeps it the way it was. And then Irish also changes the second one into “cáis” (/kɑːʃ/). Different languages have taken this one word that seemed like it had a fairly straightforward pronunciation and altered it in slightly different ways.

Lauren: I was trying to make a cheese metaphor about things, like, fermenting and going funky with age, but I guess this is why we’re a linguistics podcast and not a food podcast.

Gretchen: “Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a food podcast about linguistics.” And this is all this weird stuff that C gets up to between different languages, historically, and in different languages in the modern era. G does the same type of thing. If you were a kid, you might have learned about hard G and soft G, or hard C and soft C.

Lauren: I really struggle with the idea of hard C and soft C, and hard G and soft G. Just to help other people who might as well, hard G is the /g/ sound and soft G is when it's used more like /ʒ/.

Gretchen: Yes, /ʒ/ or /dʒ/, which is one of the reasons why this terminology is not generally linguist-approved.

Lauren: Yeah, I just – I think about, for example, when I was chatting with Suzy Styles on the work we do about how we have this cross-sensory idea and “hard” and “soft” as a metaphor just don't work for me for those sounds. Apologies if I leave Gretchen to do all of the explaining the difference between them today.

Gretchen: Well, I don't think I'm really going to use the terms either. I'm just gonna mention the specific sound because you see when it happens cross-linguistically, there's a lot more going on than just that. These are two letters that both have that hard-soft thing going on. We don't talk about “hard Q” and “soft Q,” or “hard P” and “soft P.”

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: So why do these letters come in hard and soft versions, even if you can't remember which version is which? To do this, we need to also go back to the Romans.

Lauren: Yes, there were simpler times back in Old Latin.

Gretchen: The Latin alphabet comes from Greek, as a lot of people know. But this is one of things that always puzzled me as a kid – because I was a kid who was into the Greek alphabet – I was like, “Look, the Greeks have this letter, kappa, which stands for the K sound, and it looks like a K, and it's where we get the modern K. And they have this letter, gamma, which was very clearly supposed to be a G. Who invented the C? Why is it there, and why does it cause me so much trouble?”

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: It turns out that this is explained by the Etruscans, who were people that didn't make a distinction between the /g/ sound and the /k/ sound, like the sound in “gamma” and the sound in “kappa.” They borrowed the Greek alphabet for their language, which we don't know very much about, but we know that they didn't care about the difference between gamma and kappa because they just borrowed one, which was gamma, and they used it for both because it didn't really matter for them. Then, the Romans actually didn't initially borrow their alphabet from the Greeks. They borrowed it from the Etruscans.

Lauren: Because the Etruscans were living on the Italian peninsula, so they just borrowed it from the locals.

Gretchen: Yeah, so they just borrowed it from the locals.

Lauren: I do love an ethically locally sourced alphabet, personally.

Gretchen: Nice, locally sourced alphabet. We have fragments of pottery from the Etruscans, but we don't know a whole lot about their language. We know it wasn't Indo-European because all the Indo-European languages do distinguish between the gamma and the kappa sounds. So the Romans borrow it from the Etruscans, and then they're left with like, “Oh, geez, we actually do want to make this distinction between these two sounds that we have, but the Etruscans don't have.”

Lauren: And so someone invented the letter G.

Gretchen: Like an actual person?

Lauren: Apparently. I mean, I'm quoting from Wikipedia.

Gretchen: Do we know their name?

Lauren: Apparently, his name was Spurius Carvilius Ruga, which definitely doesn't sound like a spurious name at all.

Gretchen: That's a really spurious name. So he invented the letter G?

Lauren: Yeah, so at this point the letter C was the third letter in the alphabet, still, and he was like, “Well, look, we have this /k/ sound.” K wasn't cool anymore as a letter to represent /k/. They were all using the rounded – what we think of as C now. He was like, “We need to make more of a distinction.” And so apparently – there are people who disagree with this, but I like this story about young Spurius – created the letter G and was like, “Now, we can make the distinction again.”

Gretchen: If you look at a capital G, it just looks like a C with an extra stroke added on to it, right?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: A gamma is like a right angle in the top left corner (Γ), and then you can curve it to make a C, and then you can add an extra stroke to make the G.

Lauren: So that's where the Romans got to. And he popped it in the alphabet in the seventh position, which is originally where a little Greek letter known as "zeta" used to live.

Gretchen: So is he responsible for the demotion of zeta as well?

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, well, no, Z also wasn't cool anymore, because the Romans didn't need it, so they never really borrowed it from the Greeks. Because, again, they got all their alphabet from the Etruscans. So the Romans weren't really down with –

Gretchen: Oh, that’s it. Okay.

Lauren: – zeta. They kind of had it there. He's was like, “Well, let's just drop that letter out, and we'll add this cool, new G thing that I invented.”

Gretchen: So he kicked out zeta and replaced it with G?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: That's great. I love that. Latin actually pronounced – all of their C’s and G’s were /k/ and /g/.

Lauren: Imagine doing a Latin spelling bee. It would be so great. I mean, I guess that’s why they don’t have spelling bees in most languages that have regular orthographies.

Gretchen: Yeah, so easy! You know, you have your classic Latin phrase "veni vidi vici" (/weni widi wiki/) “I came. I saw. I conquered.”

Lauren: I like that you’ve used the original Latin pronunciation there, so you sound a little bit ridiculous.

Gretchen: I'd always pronounced this /vɛni vidi vitʃi/, but then I had a Latin teacher who told me, “No, no, it's actually /weni widi wiki/," and it just sounds so foolish.

Lauren: Yes, every time I hear it. So that "vici" is the C – what we think of as C – being pronounced as /k/, as in the word for “cheese.”

Gretchen: Then, in Late Latin, everything starts to go wrong. And by “wrong,” I mean “great.”

Lauren: For the Empire as well as the language.

Gretchen: Yeah, the Empire was a bit messed up. But also the language started fragmenting and becoming all these different versions. In many of the different areas, people started pronouncing the C and the G in a different way, sometimes.

Lauren: I love the “sometimes” bit. We talk about the environment that sounds are in can make them change, adds a bit of context. And that's really where the fun and the messiness of language can really play out, when you have language changing over time.

Gretchen: Yeah, we need to talk about a particular area of the mouth. This is the roof of your mouth. I'm touching it right now, but you can't see me, because it's inside. This isn’t gonna be a very useful demonstration.

Lauren: If you have clean-enough hands, and you don't mind looking a bit ridiculous in public, you can turn the tip of your finger up to the ceiling and press it into the roof of your mouth or use your tongue.

Gretchen: This is the back part of the roof of your mouth. Not the front bit right behind your teeth, but the back bit by your molars. There's kind of a little lump there. This is known in linguistics as the “palate.” There's a whole bunch of sounds that involve the palate and involve some sort of constriction at the palate, the back part of the roof of your mouth.

Lauren: It's a big chunk of space. You've got that soft bit further towards the back that you might not want to prod if you have a sensitive gag reflex.

Gretchen: Yeah, we don’t advise that.

Lauren: And you have that hard bit closer to the teeth. There's a lot of space to play with there.

Gretchen: Yeah, so there's a lot of space. You can drop your jaw and let a lot of space happen there. What's crucial about the palate is it's a space where you can make both vowels and consonants. You could make an /i/ sound, and your tongue will be towards your palate. You can make a /j/ sound, and your tongue will be towards your palate. You could make a /ʃ/ sound, and your tongue will be towards your palate.

Lauren: I'm just sitting here quietly going “sh, sh, sh” to myself.

Gretchen: I was teaching a roomful of Intro to Linguistics students about the palate, and I was saying, “Okay, we're gonna make a distinction between where S is produced, which is towards the front of the roof of your mouth –" and we don't call that the “palate,” we we use the “palate” just refer to the back part of the roof of your mouth – “and the /ʃ/ sound, which is on the palate or near the palate." I was getting the room to say “sss,” “shh,” “sss,” “shh,” back and forth. Then, I was like, “You guys thought you were enrolled in Intro to Linguistics, but you're actually enrolled in Intro to Parseltongue.”

Lauren: The very “sss-shh”-y sounds of the snake language of Harry Potter, for the three of you out there who aren't familiar. If you don't feel like making these sounds, or you want to see what other people's tongues are doing, as always with these episodes, I'm linking you to one of my favourite websites, which is where they stuck a bunch of phoneticians in an MRI machine, and you can see their tongues doing all these things, if you just click on the column of sounds called Palatals.

Gretchen: That's great. I like that website so much. So the palatals, and the /dʒ/ sound is also towards the palatals. At least it's a lot more similar to the palatals than /k/ and /g/.

Lauren: In contrast, /k/ and /g/ are made a bit further back from the palate, closer towards the back of the mouth.

Gretchen: If you’re just thinking about these palatal sounds, the thing is that because there are both vowels and consonants that can be palatal, and you have a vowel that's produced near the palate, and a consonant near it, the vowel tends to attract the consonant and make it more palatal and make it more similar to each other, because humans like to be efficient about these things.

Lauren: Even if you don't remember any terminology, and you certainly don't have to, the takeaway here is that our mouths are very good at being lazy, and they will strive to do as little moving as possible. It's like, “If I'm already there for the vowel, why am I taking myself all the way to the back of the palate? I'm just gonna hang here.” I'm always happy to celebrate laziness.

Gretchen: These palatal vowels, these vowels that are produced near the palate, tend to pull certain consonants with them. This is what happened to the /k/ and the /g/ sound.

Lauren: And it didn't necessarily happen the same way in all the different languages that descend from Latin.

Gretchen: Right, so in French, which is probably the most familiar to English because we borrowed a lot of words from French – so, sometimes you have /k/ becoming /s/ in English from Latin, sometimes you have it becoming /tʃ/ in English from Latin. You have things like “caseus” becoming “cheese,” but also something like “circus" (/kirkus/) becoming “circus” (/sɝkəs/). All those /k/’s get pulled more towards the roof of the mouth.

Lauren: But only if the vowel is luring them there, right? If the vowel isn't near that palatal bit, if the vowel is already back where the /k/ is, then it just stays there.

Gretchen: Yeah, so that's the thing. In a word like “circus” the /k/ is before an I, which was pronounced /i/, /sirkus/, whereas, the second C is before a U and that one stays /sirkus/, not /sirsus/.

Lauren: I like how I’m like, “/sirkus/ sounds completely normal. /sirsus/ sounds very wrong.”

Gretchen: Yeah, /sirsus/ is just like, “No, that didn't happen.” So, /i/ and /e/, which became I and E in English, are the ones that tend to pull the consonants towards them. Whereas /u/ and /o/ and /a/ are the ones that let the constant stay where they want to be.

Lauren: Which solves a mystery of – I mean, spelling bees are entirely mysterious to me, as I think we've established – but it solves that mystery of spelling bees, because I was always like, “Why would you ask...” – because you can ask in a spelling bee the origin of a word. And so if you ask like, “I have to spell the word 'circus.' Please, spelling bee master, tell me the origin of the word.” If I know it's a Latin word, like, “Well, that means it probably is C-I and not K-I, because originally it was probably /kirkus/”

Gretchen: Yeah, because you don't have K's in Latinate words because all of their C's changed when they were in front of an I or an E.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: This also explains why there's some disagreement about how to pronounce the word “Celtic.”

Lauren: Oh, yeah, there's a really great post by Stan Carey that goes into the history of this, but – I don't know. I have to think really hard if I say /kɛltɪk/ or /sɛltɪk/. But I think I say /kɛltɪk/.

Gretchen: I definitely say /kɛltɪk/, but there's some sports team that's correctly pronounced /sɛltɪk/, because that's what people say when they talk about the sports team?

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: I've definitely heard people say /sɛltɪk/. This is one of those ones where if you're obeying the Latinate rules, you're like, “Well, C-E, that must mean that the C is pronounced like an S.” And yet – because when Irish and Scottish Gaelics borrowed the Latin alphabet, it also hadn't had this sound change happen yet. All the C's were still pronounced like /k/, so all of the C's in Gaelic are hard. And so “Celt” /kɛlt/ is – there's no K in Gaelic. The C's are all pronounced /k/.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: So if you use the Gaelic pronunciation, then it's /kɛlt/, but if you're looking at it, and you're like, “Well, but I thought my rule was the C gets pronounced like S," then it's /sɛlt/.

Lauren: Which brings us to another major scandal in terms of how words are pronounced, which is, of course, the word that I say as /dʒɪbəɹɪʃ/ (gibberish).

Gretchen: And the word that I said on a previous episode as /gɪbəɹɪʃ/ because – I don't know. Why not say it that way?

Lauren: Yeah, I – to be honest – had not paid much attention to your pronunciation, but we had quite a few people draw attention to the fact that we have different pronunciations for this word.

Gretchen: Yeah, and this is the same thing like with /dʒɪf/ and /gɪf/ (GIF) where –

Lauren: Which is definitely not a major argument at all.

Gretchen: No, no one cares about that one on the internet. I've never heard any argument about it. With the G's, when we get a word from French, or from Latin, or from Italian, or sometimes from Spanish – but generally, Spanish, that's its own thing – we tend to pronounce that G as a /dʒ/ or a /ʒ/ like in “rouge.” But when we get it from a different language, we often pronounce it as a /g/ instead.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: So of course, when we get it from an acronym like with GIF, all bets are off, really. There's no statistical bias in either direction.

Lauren: We have been talking exclusively about C and G, but they are not the only letters that cause me grief with spelling, which is fundamentally about palatalisation. There are other sounds in English that are also very attracted to the palate.

Gretchen: Yeah, and these are both /t/ and /d/, T and D, and /s/ and /z/, or S and Z. They're pronounced more towards the front of the palate, but, again, if they're in front of an /i/ or an /e/ sound, they tend to get pulled back towards the palate instead of pulled forward. They all get pulled toward the centre of the mouth.

Lauren: The palate is like the black hole at the centre of the mouth universe.

Gretchen: It's got gravity pulling everything towards it. Yeah, it's a very attractive place. I think it's also kind of a very easy place to say because it's just right there in the middle. So it could be anything. You don't have to go to a lot of effort to make it happen.

Lauren: Yeah, the tongue is just kind of going straight up from its neutral spot. What kind of examples do we see with these letters?

Gretchen: There's some ones that are really old that are embedded into English spelling, words like “station” and “ratio” with that T-I-O-N ending. They were at one point pronounced like /statiʌn/ and /ratio/.

Lauren: Again, would have made spelling tests a lot easier.

Gretchen: Way easier, /ratio/! The Romans said this. But /ratʃio/, /io/ gets shortened into /raʃio/ or /steʃiʌn/ and eventually gets /steʃʌn/ and /reʃio/, and other words like that. Then there's also some that are super new, and they're not even reflected in standard English spelling. They're only in representations of informal speech. That's the words like "didja?"

Lauren: As in, “Didja find out any good facts about palatalisation? Yes, I did.”

Gretchen: Yeah! If you have “did” and “you” – well, “you” can become “ya,” obviously. Then that "ya" sound, the Y at the beginning, it's also palatal, so it can pull the D towards /dɪdʒə/. I went to . a really great restaurant when I was in New York City a couple months ago, which was pointed out to me by someone on Twitter as a linguistically interesting restaurant that I should go to. It is called “Jeet Jet.”

Lauren: “Jeet Jet?”

Gretchen: “Jeet Jet,” spelled J-E-E-T J-E-T.

Lauren: Oh, as in, “Did you eat yet?”

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: “Jeet Jet.”

Gretchen: “Jeet Jet?”

Lauren: That was great. Everything is just lapsing into the palatal centre.

Gretchen: So palatal! It's a palatal palace of food.

Lauren: This is why we're not a food podcast.

Gretchen: Every so often when I used to mark linguistics papers for Intro to Linguistics, you’d get somebody who would write – instead of “palatal,” they'd write “palatial.”

Lauren: Did you draw a little palace?

Gretchen: It sounds like it’s a little palace! But also, why is it not “palatial” because “palatial” is actually the palatised version of “palatal?”

Lauren: It makes sense. We might have to let the language kick on for another couple of centuries to let that process happen.

Gretchen: What's really cool about palatals is that they keep going with the trajectories of the language. In French and Italian, the C's and G's became /dʒ/and /ʒ/ and /ʃ/ and /s/, and that's pretty well-established. In Spanish, they did this other thing. The Spanish C in front of E or I went to /θ/ in Spain, like "cerveza" (/θerbeθa/), and to /s/ in South America like /serbesa/. The J, and G, and also the X – they’re now like a /h/ sound, like in "Xavier” (/havier/). But they stopped for a while at a /ʃ/ sound. For a while, this X in Spanish was pronounced /ʃ/.

Lauren: Hmm, just hung out there for a while?

Gretchen: Yeah, you can see that trajectory happening. It happened at a very specific point in Spanish history, because this point when X was being pronounced /ʃ/ also happened right around when the Spanish conquerors were first coming in contact with Nahuatl speakers in Central America. In Nahuatl, there was a sound /ʃ/, and the Spanish speakers were like, “Well, we have a letter to represent /ʃ/. It's an X. We're going to use the X to represent /ʃ/ like we do in our own language.” They transcribed certain Nahuatl words, like the word “Mexico” – /meʃiko/ – perfectly reasonably.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: But then Spanish kept changing, and not a lot of people spoke Nahuatl, and so /meʃiko/ became /mehiko/, because the X sound was shifted from /ʃ/ to /h/.

Lauren: And so “Mexico,” did the pronunciation of it – just went with it even though it was meant to be /ʃ/?

Gretchen: A representation of the Nahuatl word.

Lauren: Ah, there you go.

Gretchen: Other languages looked at it – like English looked at the spelling of this word and said, “Well, you have an X there. We have an X.”

Lauren: “We pronounce it /ks/."

Gretchen: “Here's how we pronounce the X.” And this is where we get /mɛksɪko/, but it's actually an attempt at representing this Nahuatl sound, but then Spanish changed out from under it.

Lauren: It reminds me of when “Beijing” was updated from the older word, “Peking.” We still have “Peking” in “Peking Duck,” and you have that /k/ there in the “-king.” When it was updated, it becomes “-jing,” because over the centuries since it was originally written down, palatalisation has occurred in Mandarin Chinese.

Gretchen: Oh, that's so good! I just thought the Europeans are really incompetent at transcribing things.

Lauren: I mean, the Europeans were pretty incompetent, and I'm sure that was part of the problem. But you actually have that palatalisation happening in Mandarin as well. It's not just an Indo-European phenomenon.

Gretchen: Oh, so there's just a sound change happening in Mandarin as well at the same time. That's so good.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: There's also a really interesting historical example of other languages doing palatalisation, because once you can spot palatalisation, you can find it everywhere. It's in so many languages. I'd be honestly more surprised to find a language that had never done any sort of palatalisation – that hadn’t done it – than I would be surprised to find it in another language. Bantu languages, which are spoken in a wide swath of Africa, they have a set of prefixes that go at the beginning of certain nouns and verbs to indicate which category the nouns belong to, in a very, very simple explanation of that. One of these prefixes is used before a noun to make it the language related to that noun.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: So you have things like – in the Congo, the language that’s spoken is Kikongo.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: In Rwanda, the language that’s spoken is Kinyarwanda. In Botswana, the language that spoken is Setswana. What's really interesting here is that this prefix, you can tell it's started out as /ki/, but in some languages it's become /tʃi/ or /ʃi/ or /si/ or /se/. You can tell that's because this palatal vowel has brought it more towards the vowel. So you have Kiswahili, but isiZulu or isiXhosa], or Tshivenda. Some of them still have the /ki/, some of them have changed it to /si/ or /tʃi/. You can see this relationship because they all have the same prefix, but it's changed differently because the sound changes have happened differently in the different languages.

Lauren: Exactly the same set of changes as we get with our cheeses of Europe.

Gretchen: The same cheese-changes. I have a very vivid memory about when I first learned about palatalisation. This was when I went to Scottish Gaelic summer camp when I was 10 or 12?

Lauren: The thing is we don't have summer camps in Australia. So I find all summer camps mysterious. I'm like, “Of course, you went on summer camp for Gaelic. Like, that's that weird thing that North Americans do. They go on summer camp.”

Gretchen: It is not very common to go on summer camp for Gaelic. Most of the other kids that were there, were there to learn, like, fiddle, or step dance, or something, which is still fairly rare. Most people go, like, canoeing or something.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: But I was a budding linguist, and I wanted to learn Gaelic. So when I was learning Gaelic, they told me about this distinction between broad vowels and slender vowels. This is super important in Gaelic and in Irish as well, because a whole bunch of consonants in Gaelic change the way they're pronounced depending on which vowels they’re next to.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: So you end up with all these silent vowels where the vowel itself is silent, but it's just being used to tell you how to pronounce the consonant that it's next to.

Lauren: This is a bit like when I realised the reason you don't hear, in Spanish or in English – the word “guitar,” you don't hear that U – is because Spanish uses U in the same way there, to indicate that it should be a /g/ and not a /ʒɪtɑɹ/.

Gretchen: Exactly, it means the same U that's in, like, "Guillaume" to indicate that that is a /g/ – or in “guerre,” “guerrilla,” for “war.”

Lauren: Yeah, it was a complete revelation for me when I was like, “I'm not meant to – the U is just there to help me, not to hinder me.”

Gretchen: Yeah, it's to help you according to a completely different system that you only understand incompletely.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: This is the same thing for Gaelic. If you have a word, “fáilte,” which is the word for "welcome," and the last two letters are T-E, the way you know that that T is pronounced like a /tʃ/ is because there's an E next to it. Or if you have names like “Sean,” or “Sinead,” or “Siobhan,” the way that you know that that S is pronounced like a /ʃ/ is because it has an E or an I next to it.

Lauren: Just, like, “Come with me towards the palate.”

Gretchen: This is the kind of thing that they teach you in Gaelic 101. They’re like, “Here's the broad vowels. Here's the slender vowels. Here's why they're so important,” because they tell you how to do this with all your consonants. And yet, afterwards, I was like, “But English also kind of does this. Because if you have a word like “circus,” the way that you know how each of the C's is pronounced is based on the same distinction between what Gaelic traditionally calls “broad” and “slender” vowels, but we can call “palatal” or “non-palatal” vowels. The slender vowels in Gaelic are the same thing as a palatal vowel, or a front vowel to use the proper linguistic term. All of those are the same class of things that all cause the same types of sound changes. The “broad” vowels, or the “non-palatal” vowels, or the “back” vowels are all the same category of stuff that doesn't cause the sound change. And that totally rocked my world when I figured it out the first time.

Lauren: I think the thing is, given my general spelling issues, even though I have trouble with spelling, I really appreciate that palatalisation makes pronouncing things easier. In many ways, it's really great that the writing system we have captures this history of how these sounds were all the way back to Latin, all the way back to our friend Spurius, and they're there to help us.

Gretchen: Yeah, it makes certain connections easier to see. A word like “electric,” “electricity,” the C is still there, and when you add an I on to it with the “-ity” ending, you can see it change pronunciation. You can see the connections between those words more straightforwardly. Whereas, if there was a K at the end, you wouldn't necessarily know that it was one that was going to change its pronunciation if an I was added to it. I think what fascinates me about palatalisation is it's one of the ways in which linguistics lets us peer deeply into the soul of a language, or into history of a language, and into the connections between languages, and lets us think of these things that we think of as messy and anomalous as actually a unified part of our shared anatomy across all of the spoken languages that we have this in common, which is that we all find it easier to pronounce things in a certain area of our mouths the same. That makes us part of this really big human story in what seems to be just annoying ways to spell things.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm, and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We're also now on Spotify, so if you use that, you can find us there. You can follow us at @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. And you can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, and my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. To listen to bonus episodes, ask us your linguistics questions, help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Recent bonus topics include: hyperforeignisms, multilingual babies, homonyms, and how to have a good time at academic conferences. You could help us pick the next topic by becoming a patron. Can't afford to pledge? That's okay too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life. Especially this month, we're doing our special anniversary round to help the show grow.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producers are A.E. Prévost and Sarah Dopierala, and our editorial manager is Emily Gref, Our production assistants are Celine Yoon and Fabianne Anderberg. Our music is by The Triangles. Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[formerly-rosaline]

About Rose

I’m not sure if I already have one of these, and I can’t find a template to make one, so I’m just gonna shoot my shot and do my best here.

Full name: Rosaline Pearl Sirena Draconus Durant

Time and place of birth: Wednesday, April 1st, 1992 at 3:01am (the witching hour) in the Touro Infirmary Hospital of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Zodiac: Aries sun (fire), Pisces moon (water), Aquarius rising/ascendant (air). Pisces, Aquarius, and Capricorn (earth) dominate her natal chart. Monkey (water). Alder tree. Red hawk/falcon. 

Species explanation and list: Came about through ritual as well as conception originally; her soul collects more species each time she’s born (reincarnated) to non-human souls. Her soul is fragmented, there are more Roses throughout the world of different names. She only inherits certain traits from each species. She is predominantly draconic, sirenic, and succubic. Rose also has some wolf/lycanthrope, vampire (tribrid - blood, energy, and sexual separate from the succubus), banshee, Valkyrie (last life as one), Amazonian, basilisk (possibly only for this life), fairy, human, and possibly more - she doesn’t know everything just yet. Without feeding, her abilities become even more drastically limited. 

Characteristics: Abilities may begin in childhood, but Rose’s memories don’t begin to resurface until teenhood and young adulthood. She may also repress her memories, furthering the process, in attempts at normalcy. Jack of all trades. Artist, but not in the layman usage of the word - dancer, singer, creative writer, musician. STEM major, always good at STEM. Linguaphile; often multilingual. Current fluencies: English and French, with some German, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Korean, and Russian. Much of her interest in languages and ability to learn them rapidly stems from former lives. Very pensive and philosophic, a stoic in the regular sense of the word but an existentialist in practice. 

Favorites: 

Fast food: Whataburger

Ice cream: chocolate chip cookie dough

Sushi: eel

Starburst: pink

Jolly Rancher: blue

Color: every shade of blue

Feature: her eye color

Dish at Olive Garden: The Tour of Italy

Italian dish: Alfredo anything

Asian dish: Japchae

Steak: Medium rare filet mignon

Eggs: over easy

Pizza topping: pineapples

Comfort food: macaroni and cheese

Wine: Riesling

Thanksgiving dish: Stuffing

Ice cream topping: mochi or cookie dough

Alcoholic drink: Scotch

Starbucks drink: Chai latte, affogato

Harry Potter film: Deathly Hallows part 2, but book is Goblet of Fire

Marvel movie: Avengers Infinity War

Beatles Song: Hey Jude

Instrument: drums

Band: Snow Patrol 

Person: George Lewis

One Hit Wonder: Cars by Gary Numan

Beach: Pfeiffer Beach, Los Padres National Forest, California

Animal: goat

Season: fall

Thing about a rainy day: staying in

Flower: Lily. Seriously. Don’t fucking buy her roses, it’s not funny.

Sea creature: her damn self

Winter sport: luge

Fairy tale: Vasilisa the Beautiful 

Eye color: green

Day of the week: Saturday

Way to relax: hot bath

Thing to do: make others smile

Mental disorders: PTSD (doesn’t deal with her past traumas, emotionally detached, dissociates regularly), bipolar disorder. Eating disorders, elaborated on at the end of this post to prevent triggering. Substance abuse disorder (alcoholism and more).

Abilities: generally, able to do much by pure will and thought. “If looks could kill,” incarnate. Some technopathy. Outbursts of preternatural strength. Slight elemental control, minor mind control. Communication with entities beyond the veil despite her attempts to shut them out. Astral projection. 

More abilities and characteristics, positive and negative, by species:

1. Dragon: old soul/wise beyond her years, increased intelligence, heightened senses, increased empathy and strength, stronger persuasion via a golden tongue, foresight or future-delving. Manipulation, word twisting, speaking in riddles. Strong debater. Bloodthirsty. Intensely greedy. Power hungry. Delusions of grandeur. Arrogant. Pansexual. Extroverted. Stubborn and/or hard-headed. So cold you’d bet she’s anemic. Close-minded. TOO LOUD. She wants your heart, but on a GOLDEN platter; she’ll never love you. You are so beneath her, who the fuck do you think you are? Enemy of the siren. Fiercely loyal to those who have earned it. Family is the most important thing. Money can buy happiness, and it has for her. Warmest smile. Tacky bitch. Really good at Words with Friends, Scrabble, fighting you, chess. Wants you to succeed in life, and gives you unsolicited advice on how to do it all the time. Annoying. Always has an upset tummy. Does she have IBS? Beyond the veil: red with orange eyes. Your typical bigass crimson red dragon, will breathe fire on you. Her kind is less prevalent than they once were.

2. Siren: leads people astray readily. Seduction. Outright deception. Enticement and intimidation via a silver tongue. Increased strength and agility. Strong swimmer. Telepathy with other sirens. Enemy of the dragon. Brutal bitch. Savage, almost feral at times. Ambivert. Manipulative. Intensely maternal. Your mom friend to the extreme. Loving. Pansexual. Invasive. Monster. Might eat your liver in the pool. Always too hot. God, that voice, let’s hope you never hear it. Opera. SUSHI!!!!. Friendly, communal even, but only with those she considers family. Too good for pop music unless it’s Ariana Grande; increased hearing, gets audio overload at any normal volume. Subtitles, please. Can’t fucking understand English to save her life. Will teach you sirenic, but you can’t speak it. Whistle notes. LOWER YOUR FUCKING VOICE. Half-naked, huge tits. Firm hugger. Beyond the veil: ugly ass deep sea thing you never want to see, but her Venetian red tail is pretty... Second, translucent eyelid. Sirens of the sea are populating as rampantly as always, given the content of the earth which is saltwater. Avoids all of her kind to protect one she loves.

-Unpopular with both dragons and sirens due to some old war. These two species are most dominant.

3. Succubus: a touch that can manipulate, seduce, control, compel. Feeding, starving. Glamour. Conceited. Preppy bitch. Sarcastic. A gaslighter. Manipulative. Extroverted. PANSEXUAL, literally doesn’t care, will fuck you, don’t let her. Fake. Craves you. Enemy of the siren. She’s that overly sexual friend where you can never really tell whether they’re kidding or really trying something with you, you know? She’ll never tell, either. Got that?? Fear her. Run; she will definitely fuck your brains out and fucking eat you, God she’s fucking starving. RUN. Don’t give her a drink, and so help you if she gets to three or more. There is no God; God is dead, she has killed him, she drained his chi. RUN AWAY: fucking demonic. Don’t let her in. She made sure no one is here to help. Don’t look at them. They won’t help you; they’re under her control. You will be too. Beyond the veil: Horns. Tail. Wings. Greyish-purple all over, even her eyes; looks like a gargoyle. She doesn’t eat enough to pigment, and who cares? Glamour will make her perfect anyway. Finds feeding unethical. Slip-ups happen, though; I’m coming for you.

4. Wolf: increased agility, strength, and durability. Heightened stamina, senes. Increased stamina. Fast healing. Telepathy with other wolves. FIERCELY loyal. Respectful. Hungry. Bloodthirsty. Feral. Beast. Aching in her soul and bones. Titanium. Sushi. Friendly and communal all the time. Pansexual. Major ambivert. Audio overload too. Will cry if someone raises their voice from across a room. You’re too boomy. Stop that. Will kill anyone who makes you shed a tear. Don’t let her. Specifically tell her not to while you are crying. She will do it, I swear. Alpha bitch. Beyond the veil: albino Eurasian wolf, mistaken for an Arctic wolf. Icy grey eyes. Her kind is dead; those eyes show it. What’s an alpha without a pack? Heartbroken. 

5. Valkyrie: Literally wishing to death, has to stop herself from it because it’s so easy. Planting doubt in the minds of the steadfast and resolute. Asexual. Will give you hallucinations. Manipulative. Spooky bitch. Might want you dead, might not. Don’t cross her or she’ll imagine you to eternal slumber. You won’t be in Valhalla, either.

6. Amazonian: Increased strength. Tracker. Skilled with weapons. Will navigate. Misandry. Lesbian. Introverted. Feminist bitch. Will stab you.

7. Banshee: Future-delving. A screech that will drive you mad and physically harm you only when members of inhuman royalty are dying. Introvert. Asexual. Beyond the veil: Blind as a bat, deaf as a white cat. Only sees the astral world in her head. Just looks like herself minus the white eyes. Only brought out by screaming, and terrified the entire time, but can remain after. Will cough or vomit blood for a while after screaming. Can’t control it. Scared bitch. Voice may not return to normal for weeks. Enemy of the siren. Prefers to, and sometimes must remain after screaming, mute. Cannot sign. Can see and feel your energy.

8. Basilisk: Increased ability to intimidate. Muted. Affinity for reptiles. No other abilities or notable change. Beyond the veil: she cannot turn into the giant snake of lore, nor turn to stone. If looks could kill, she would just kinda spook you. Literally just herself. Angry bitch.

9. Fairy: No increased abilities but she’s cuter and has more of a sweet tooth. Vocal change to higher pitch. Please give her Jaffa cakes, hot tea, and head pats. Beyond the veil: a tiny, wingless fairy of greens, golds, and purples. Don’t let the look fool you. Evil bitch. 

10. Vampire: Increased sense of hearing and smell. Bloodlust. Ability to compel. Seduction. Extrovert. Clean freak. If there's no blood on her, it's like she never did it. Feeds on the environment around her, including people, naturally. Constantly tries to keep that shut off. Wants very badly to eat you. Hungry bitch.

Sometimes she wakes up a certain species, sometimes situations or location bring them out. Sometimes the need to feed or emotions will cause certain species to rush to forefront. This is akin to having different personalities, but it’s all her. 

Face Claims: 

-Young Adult (main): Penelope Mitchell, The Vampire Diaries, The Curse of Downers’ Grove, Hemlock Grove.

-Adult: Jennifer Morrison, House, Once Upon a Time, Star Trek.

-Teenage: Jenny Boyd, Legacies, Hex, Viking Quest.

-Child: Emily Alyn Lind, Revenge, Enter the Void, J. Edgar.

Physically in this realm: curly blonde, cornflower-eyed, average height (around 5′6″), girl next door but relatively average appearance, with multiple piercings (nipples, several ear piercings, and belly). Birth mark on the top of her left breast.

TRIGGER WARNING: EATING DISORDERS, SELF HARM:

.

.

She has a highly fluctuating weight (between 114 and 178) due to eating disorders - anorexia nervosa restrict type and bulimia nervosa binge purge type. Sheuses exercise, laxatives, suppositories, etc rather than the usual purging. Faint cut scars adorned her thighs and left wrist; she had them tattooed to cover them but the white lines still showed. There was a flower over the wrist, a portrait of a fox on her right thigh, and a portrait of a Renaissance-era woman on her left. There were cigarette burns inches below the Renaissance woman and the flower tattoo. There was another one midway on her outer right forearm.

.

.

[serialreblogger]

technically (nothing good starts with “technically” so i apologize in advance but) what “platonic” typically means in modern parlance isn’t “not sexual,” it’s “not romantic” - like, an ace person who’s married isn’t in a “platonic” relationship with their spouse, and would probably be offended if anyone tried to describe it that way, whereas two people who are having sex with each other but genuinely don’t harbor any romantic feelings will probably fall back on “platonic” as the fastest & easiest way to describe their relationship

the problem is really just that we don’t have enough words in the English language for all the different forms relationships can take. “platonic” means multiple things - there’s the original “pertaining to the philosophy of Plato” definition, which morphed and divided into “pertaining to Ideals” and “pertaining to non-sexual iterations of relationships that would typically be sexualized” (because of how Plato defined the ideal relationship between a teacher and his student; don’t get me started on pederasty right now), and finally has come to mean “pertaining to the specific kind of relationship that is otherwise known as ‘friendship’.” 

when people use “platonic” to mean “non-romantic [but not necessarily non-sexual],” they aren’t using it wrong, per se. They’re just using a more recent definition than “non-sexual relationship that would typically be strictly or primarily sexual.” In modern history, “platonic” has typically been used to refer to non-sexual, non-romantic male/female relationships because non-sexually-motivated interactions are considered unusual enough to merit labelling (the exception, chiefly since the mid-1900s when it became more common to acknowledge same-sex attraction, is when “platonic” is used to assert that same-gender individuals - typically men, because “male deviance” is generally seen as more threatening to social order and thus more strictly controlled - are or were in a relationship that was Not Sexual, and, it is implied, therefore more pure).

The reason “platonic” is beginning to be used specifically for non-romantic relationships, whether or not those relationships are sexual, is because many people find that sex does not do much to define their relationships, whereas the difference between romance and friendship is significant enough to need a name.

it’s easy to see how this can result in confusion, though, and it’s frustrating! outside of the aspec community, there aren’t really any words that in themselves differentiate between romantic feelings and sexual attraction or activity. and it’s not because there’s not a difference: if our society didn’t already recognize the difference between sex and romance, children either would not be allowed to watch Tangled, or they would get to watch 50 Shades of Grey.

the problem is that until very recently, we have been prevented from talking about our non-normative experiences around sexuality, relationships, and gender. it has been actively unsafe for us to acknowledge our non-normative identities, sometimes literally (we all know the manifold risks of physical abuse and even death) and almost always socially (exclusion is an agony unto itself. if it weren’t, we wouldn’t have the Trevor Project).

as a result, we don’t yet have any well-established language with which to discuss those identities and experiences. we have to make do by repurposing the words we already know, or else inventing ones, often made up of combined fragments we can recognize (“demi-” “bi-” “a-” “pan-” “poly-” “-gender,” a scattered inheritance of latin and greek). there are impediments to understanding each other either way, and the need to define and redefine each word over and over to ensure it retains any meaning is constant, and exhausting. (it’s frustrating, how hard it is to communicate; when you’ve been denied the right to your own words.)

there’s also not really a word for the overarching normative dialogue that’s shaped what words we’ve been allowed up to this point; “heteronormativity,” “amatonormativity,” the “sex/gender binary” and “patriarchy” and “slut-shaming” and the expectations around “‘starting a family’ (having children),” and the intersectional bigotry against “miscegenation” - they’re all tied into the same fundamental phenomenon, the same rigid socio-sexual mores that are the inheritance of eurocolonial Christianity; but sometimes i call it “nucleofamilialism,” the enforcement of a nuclear family model with a father and a mother who have All The Correct Parts to biologically produce the Right Amount of children; the model focused on maintaining “the most basic form of social organization,” as Wikipedia puts it: the nuclear family, the nucleus of Western civilization. such as it is.

nucleofamilialism, if you like, is the antithesis of queerness, and the reason Anglo-colonial cultures lack the most basic words to describe relationships, and gender, and social and sexual experiences. we don’t have the words yet to talk about ways of being that fall outside the narrow “one man, one woman, in holy matrimony, destined for parenthood” that has delimited gender and sex and sexuality by force and by violence for centuries.

we’re all just trying to talk to each other. there’ll be misunderstandings, that’s inevitable, but it’s not the fault of the people who are Deviant that we don’t have the language to describe ourselves. we’re making our words up as we go because we don’t have a choice.

all we can do is try to hear what each other’s saying, underneath our halting, imperfect words. all we can do is talk to each other, and hope some of our words stick - hope the kids coming after us will inherit our language, or any language. just so long as they aren’t forced to live in silence.

fellas i dont know how to tell you this but if you're having sex with someone your relationship is not platonic even if you're just friends with benefits it's still sexual and therefore not platonic because platonic literally means not sexual i cant believe some of the things you people make me read

[otapleonehalf]

Defining Anime

What is anime? Before we can define something we have to know what it is we’re defining.

The Entomology of Anime

Remember the dad from My Big Fat Greek Wedding and how he insisted that every word comes from Greek?

So no one is actually sure where the word “anime” (written in Japanese as: アニメ) actually came from, but there are two main theories.

The first, is that it’s effectively an abbreviation of the English word “animation”.

animation -> animeishiyon -> anime

This is the currently more popular theory. The second theory, which was more popular in the 80s, is that it’s derived from the French word “animé” meaning animated or lively.

animé -> anime

But it doesn’t matter which theory you like because both the English and the French are derived from the same Latin root “anima” meaning spirit. And the Latin is in turn derived from the Greek “anemos” meaning wind.

anemos -> anima -> animation -> animeishiyon -> anime

anemos -> anima -> animé -> anime

So there you go.

Defining Anime

Anime as it’s used in the Japanese language is simply the word for animation, any and all kinds.

But anime as it’s used in the English language is used to refer to animation that originates from Japan.

Look up “anime” in an English dictionary and we get this:

Dictionary definition an·i·me noun: a style of animation originating in Japan that is characterized by stark colorful graphics depicting vibrant characters in action-filled plots often with fantastic or futuristic themes. – Merriam Webster Dictionary (2017)

The dictionary definition is obviously just meant for someone who has never heard of anime and has no concept of what it could be. It gives a very generalized idea of what anime is, and isn’t useful to those who specialize in the niche interest.

As a result, English speaking anime fandom has been left to their own devices when it comes to defining the word that describes what it is they’re passionate about.

Defining by Nationality

I want to get this one out of the way. Monty Oum, the director of RWBY, puts it nicely in an interview from 2013:

“Some believe just like Scotch needs to be made in Scotland, an American company can’t make anime. I think that’s a narrow way of seeing it. Anime is an art form, and to say only one country can make this art is wrong.“

It’s not as if only Japanese people are allowed to write haiku or play the biwa. There’s no reason anime should be enforced as an art form that’s dependent on the artist’s citizenship status. So let’s move on to a different method.

Defining by Geography

Animation that was entirely made in Japan and then solely released in Japan may have once been a commonality but contemporary anime is a vaster art form that can’t be pinned to a single point on a map, thanks to globalization. After all as western fans, we’re proof that anime has crossed boarders and expanded beyond Japan.

Many anime are not even physically made in Japan anymore. In 2012, Jonathan Clements estimated a third of the labor for Japanese animation was outsourced outside of Japan and speculates that number has only risen since.

Hand animation for in-betweens and other parts of the animating process are outsourced primarily to South Korea, but also other places like China and India, for the sake of cutting costs. A simple solution many take is to simply insist that only the lead creatives of an animated project must reside in Japan in order for that project to be categorized as anime. Yet there are many examples where none of the projects staff reside in Japan, providing widely accepted exceptions to the idea that anime must be created in Japan.

South Korean animation is included in online anime databases such as MyAnimeList, Anime-Planet and Kitsu. Films that are entirely produced and debut in South Korea like Yobi the Five Tailed Fox, The House and Oseam are counted as anime by the aforementioned sites despite having no apparent connection to Japan.

Simply expanding Japan’s aura to neighboring countries doesn’t tidy things up as one of America’s largest anime conventions has yet to realize.

Otakon tries to take the geography route when defining anime, as in anime music video, for its annual event. Here’s an except from Otakon’s AMV Guidelines via its website in 2017:

“’Anime’ footage is loosely determined by the animation studio that produced the art for the show. If it is an Asian studio, then the footage will likely be allowed. If it is not, then your entry could be disqualified.

Sorry, but by this definition, ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ and ‘The Legend of Korra’ are not ‘anime’ and will be disqualified.

We have to draw the line somewhere.”

Otakon defines anime as animation produced by an Asian studio, ergo making Avatar footage disqualified from its AMV competitions.

But whoever came up with this policy clearly didn’t choose the best wording. The studios responsible for the art and animation of Avatar are DR Movie, JM Animation and MOI Animation which are all South Korean studios. South Korea is an Asian country, ergo Avatar actually fits Otakon’s definition of anime perfectly.

It doesn’t make sense to narrow anime down to animation that was made in Japan, debuts in Japan and intended solely for the Japanese market just so it can be tied down to one spot on the planet. This method isn’t useful when there are anime conceived to cater to overseas markets like Afro Samurai, Space Dandy, and The Big O II which were developed with the intention of airing on American TV. Nor does it provide clear guidelines for when Japanese studios collaborate with talent from around the world, like in the cases Oban Star Racers and Mysterious Cities of Gold which are both French co-productions. Is it really worth excluding such titles from the category of anime in the current global era? I think not.

Defining by Art Style

This is a fun one. Anime is anime because it looks like anime, right?

But what does anime look like?

When most people hear the word anime, certain visual qualities spring to mind. Big shiny eyes, crazy colored hair that stands on end, long bodies in elaborate costumes. Shows like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Sailor Moon, Code Geass,  Tenchi Muyo!, and Lucky Star flash in our heads when we think about the art style associated with anime.

But if that’s what anime really looks like, then why would there be an discontent over shows like Avatar or RWBY being called anime?

We’ve already gone over why the country of origin of these shows isn’t the best measure, so what’s wrong with just judging an anime by its looks?

The issue with this approach is that it’s incredibly subjective. There’s no list a visual traits shared among all anime. Anime like Tekkonkinkreet and the Tatami Galaxy hardly resemble the same art style of shows like Sailor Moon.

They might not immediately come to mind when the medium of anime is mentioned but that doesn’t mean they don’t still exist within that medium.

And then there’s anime that imitate western animation and actively defy typical Japanese aesthetics, like FLCL or Panty and Stocking.

In the case of Panty and Stocking, not only is the whole show modeled after a western art style (as opposed to only a few seconds), but the content of the series is effectively a love letter to western media. Under the assumption that anime must have a certain look to it, a show like Panty and Stocking would have it’s anime status revoked.

So even if there is a supposive art style only anime can have, when did that art style come into being?

Classics that originate from the 1960s like Kimba the White Lion and Sazae-san pull heavy inspiration from western animation.

Astro Boy fits in much better with characters like Steamboat Willie and Betty Boop than he does with any of the characters from say, Akira or One Piece. So is it really okay to exclude works as important and influential as Astro Boy from anime because the art style is dated?

Personally, I’m glad not everything in anime shares the same art style. I’m not sure the medium would have the same appeal if every thing looked like this.

(This is from Kamichama Karin by the way.)

The medium of anime clearly encompasses infinite art styles that don’t necessarily share key qualities with each other, rendering art style a useless means of defining anime as a whole.

So what methods of defining anime are even left at this point?

Defining by Intended Audience

This is my personal method of defining anime and it’s the most practical method I’ve encountered, and that is  to define anime by intended audience. If an animated work is intended for a Japanese audience OR an audience of anime fans, then it’s anime.

Here’s a flowchart to help explain it:

Let’s run through some examples with this method:

Sailor Moon

Is it an animated work? Yes -> Was it originally made for a Japanese audience? Yes -> It’s an Anime

RWBY

Is it an animated work? Yes -> Was it originally made for a Japanese audience? No -> Does it resemble Japanese animation? Yes -> Was it made for fans of Japanese animation?

The creators of RWBY have been explicit about how they set out to create something that anime fans would enjoy, so the answer is Yes -> It’s an anime

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Is it an animated work? Yes -> Was it originally made for a Japanese audience? No -> Does it resemble Japanese animation? Yes -> Was it made for fans of Japanese animation?

Well, Avatar aired on Nickelodeon and was geared toward children who watch Nickelodeon, whether those kids knew about or liked anime wasn’t relevant. No -> It’s not an anime

But the creators of Avatar have talked about how they took inspiration from Japanese animation and Asian media and knew that what they made could appeal to anime fans and wanted those fans to be able to enjoy the show as well. Yes -> It’s an anime

So something like Avatar could be argued either way BUT AT LEAST YOU CAN ARGUE IT!

You can back up which ever conclusion you reach with this method using context that surrounds any title. No more debates that are baseless like:

“But Avatar looks like anime!” What does anime really look like? Style is subjective. There are plenty of anime Avatar doesn’t resemble at all.

“But Avatar isn’t from Japan!” Neither is a lot of anime. Anime is medium of art, one that can, has and will continue to expand beyond Japan’s borders.

This method gives one the ability to construct a logical argument on why something should or shouldn’t be considered anime.

That said, there is a hole in my method. That hole is a universal audience. What if an animated work is aimed at everybody?

There’s a few examples that I think fit this case.

Ghibli movies, specifically the more recent ones, are made while the staff is well aware that their work is going to be seen overseas and that their audience is not just confined to Japan. Ghibli films are popular all over the world, and not just with anime fans.

Pokemon is another example of an anime becoming a international phenomenon. It has effectively grown out of the label of anime and is something much bigger that’s meant for global audiences to consume.

So is it possible for something to expand beyond the label of anime and become something more universal? I consider the examples above to still be anime. I don’t think it matters, at least for now, but it is worth thinking about as our world and the media with it becomes more and more global.

So next time you’re debating what is and isn’t anime, try considering who was intended to consume the work. It could make navigating those grey areas of anime a little easier.

[This post was adapted from my panel “But That’s NOT Anime!”. The information in this post was last updated Aug. 2017]

OtapleOneHalf.com // OtapleOneHalf.tumblr.com

[fractempyreal]

Do you have a rules page/bio page? I keep trying to load your site but it keeps crashing almost seconds after I do on desktop? Sorry, didn't want to bother you but I was just curious. Thank you

I do! It’s on my theme and it’s the star that’s hovering above the little info box to the right, but I’ll put them here under a readmore if you can’t get to them. Note that some of these do need to be edited, and the bio is limited for the most part until I kick myself to finish it, but this is the gist of it.

RIFP mobile users. Here we go:

✔ CROSSOVERS, OCS, DARK THEMES, PLOTTING, MUTUALSX M!A’S, HARASSMENT, SHIPPING, DRAMA, PASSWORDS, INCEST, PEDOPHILIA, ETC.

CANTO I: BEGINNING

This is an independent RP blog for the character Vergil from Devil May Cry. This blog is in no way affiliated with the games, & all content on the blog belongs to their rightful owners. Content on this blog will be NSFW in terms of BLOOD, GORE, DARK THEMES, POTENTIAL BLASPHEMY, & SEXUAL CONTENT. Vergil will be a mix of game & book canon along with my own headcanons, potentially with a slight canon divergence in terms of the post-events of DMC3/Nelo Angelo, at least until there is more known about Devil May Cry 5.

Vergil is not a kind person, nor is he weak. If you challenge him, he will respond. I do not hold back my muse & I ask that you not try to be cheeky & test this unless you are willing to accept that Vergil will indeed wail on your muse to put them in their place. Respect my muse, I respect yours.

Most interactions will take place Post-Nelo Angelo incident unless requested otherwise.

Triggers will be tagged _______ tw, & if there happens to be something specific that you need tagged, please let me know! I have no triggers of my own, but I do ask that the DADDY KINK BE TAGGED.

On the subject of Nero being Vergil’s son, this is not something I’ll consider as canon UNLESS IT’S ALREADY BEEN DISCUSSED WITH THE MUN.

I do not send in passwords. I make it a habit to go onto a person’s blog & read their rules, so I hope that I’m given the same courtesy in return.

I don’t do M!A’s.

I DON’T TOLERATE INCEST, PEDOPHILIA, RACISM, DUB/NONCON, OR ANYTHING OF THE LIKE. PLEASE DON’T FOLLOW ME IF YOU WRITE OR CONDONE THESE THINGS.

CANTO II: THE DESCENT

I am a HIGHLY PRIVATE & SELECTIVE BLOG. I run multiple other blogs on top of this one, so I will not have time to RP with everyone & for this, I apologize. There are, of course, other fantastic Vergil blogs to follow & interact with in the DMC RPC!

I will follow where I see a possible interaction. I am MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, meaning that I will only interact with people who I am in a mutual follow with. Some things that tend to have me turn away from following a blog aside from incompatible muses is too much OOC content, inactivity, missing about/rules page ( this applies to both canon & OC blogs ), or simply not a lot of effort placed into replies, since I do tend to read people’s replies.

I typically unfollow a blog after an inactivity period of 4 months without hiatus notification unless they’re a friend. If this happens to be a category that you fall into, & you return to a blog that’s been inactive & I have unfollowed, simply hit me up or like some of my posts so that I realize you’re still around for me to follow back.

I don’t press for exclusivity. Usually, a person’s muse will naturally become a main muse for me, but that does not necessarily mean that I won’t interact with a duplicate. Please do understand that, being a private RP blog, those who I have known for a long time will be prioritized, but I will get to other threads in a ( hopefully ) timely manner.

On the note of exclusivity, I don’t really practice it outside of shipping. Otherwise, I am open to interacting with other duplicates of Vergil as long as the other mun is comfortable. DMC muses, I won’t be practicing exclusivity with simply because I wouldn’t want to tie someone down when I can’t promise high activity.

I sometimes don’t notice the moment that someone’s followed me. I typically follow back after 3-4 days. If I have not followed you back in that time, then know that I have made my decision & ask that you respect that. Trying to harass me into following you will not work in your favor & will result in a hard block.

Asks & questions about my muse are open to anyone, but interactions/memes are limited to mutual. Personals are free to follow my blog as long as they are aware of RP etiquette & don’t reblog threads or spam like/reblog my posts as it ruins my notifs bar, & will result in a hard block. You are more than welcome to reblog images that I reblog.

CANTO III: INTEMPERANCE

THIS BLOG WILL MORE THAN LIKELY NOT CONSIDER SHIPPING WITH ANYONE UNLESS WE ARE ALREADY CLOSE FRIENDS. Considering how difficult it would be to ship with Vergil, not to mention that I’ve had enough issues in the past concerning ships & I would rather avoid it. I ask that this wish be respected.

If by any chance I decide to smut with someone, the post will be properly tagged with a simple NSFW so that it’s easily caught by blacklist. Depending on my partner, I can either place the post under a cut or not.

CANTO IV: INFERNO

I do not tolerate anon hate, theft or constant vague blogging/drama from anyone. Callouts are fine when they have fundamental reason to be spread & I will tend to reblog a couple depending on the level of seriousness, such as theft, abuse, racism, etc.

AGAIN, DO NOT FOLLOW ME IF YOU SUPPORT WRITING INCEST, RAPE, PEDOPHILIA, UNWANTED SEXUAL ADVANCES ,OR THINGS OF SUCH NATURE. There is no debate, no ifs or buts, just turn around & leave. I have been in the fandom long enough that I’ve seen the ships that dominate the community & I want to see absolutely NO PART OF IT on my blogs.

CANTO V: ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO ENTER HERE

My name’s Whitney! I’m a 22+ year old nerd that’s been stuck in DMC hell ever since I was 8. Save me.

I am a busy person, working two jobs & attending University. With that being said, things will be slow on this blog. While I don’t mind being reminded about a certain thread, I would appreciate not being harassed over replies. I’m just here to have fun.

ABOUT

NAME: Vergil

AGE: Old af, appearance to be in his early 40’s in events of DMC5

GENDER: Cis Male, he/him pronouns used

SPECIES: Half-Devil, Half-Human

ALIASES: Dark Slayer, Son of Sparda, Nelo Angelo, The Alpha and the Omega

LANGUAGES: English, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Dimoori Sheol

HEIGHT 6’5”

HAIR: A snowy white with a bluish sheen to it, it’s appearance is rather sleek. Pushing it back away from his face more often than not, it can at times look rater spiky despite the reality that it’s extremely soft & silky to the touch. With his hair down, the relationship between him & his twin is irrefutable, thus the act of pushing his hair back is to keep himself from looking anything like his brother.

EYES: Powder blue, like that of ice. They’re piercing—– haunting—– they’re the eyes of a man that has seen much as well as lost. There is seemingly no warmth to them, & accentuate that there indeed is a difference between he & his brother.

DISPOSITION: Usually a cold & aloof man, he is one of few words. He is not warm nor friendly towards strangers, disregarding them from the get-go unless he finds use of them. Most put him off as cold & unfeeling, which in most cases is correct as long as it’s someone that he doesn’t know. It can be unsettling to make an attempt to interact with him if you have no reason to. He doesn’t like having his time wasted.

BODY TYPE: Aside from being imposing in stature, his physical makeup is also rather intimidating. Broad & extremely muscular, he maintains the appearance of an individual that puts himself through vigorous daily training. HE IS EXTRAORDINARILY POWERFUL, & HIS STATURE DOES LITTLE TO HINDER HIS SPEED.

GENERAL APPEARANCE: A picture of elegance & class, he dresses himself in only the finest materials. He is always clean shaven & his wardrobe is well-maintained. Usually dressing in dark colors, they accentuate his sharp features as well as bring out the piercing, pale iciness of his gaze.

SPEED     ⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿ AGILITY     ⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿ STRENGTH     ⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿ DEFENSE     ⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿ STAMINA     ⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿ STRATEGY     ⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿