#language tag

[siobhanromee]

#This is pretty usamerican centric sorry:( #language tag #polls

[hedgehog-moss]

Nothing makes your native language feel foreign like having speakers of another language look at it a bit too closely in the way you do when words are new & intriguing entities instead of transparent conveyors of meaning. It’s delightful. I saw someone explain that rendez-vous is the 2nd person imperative of the French verb “se rendre” = to go (somewhere) and “dépareillé” (mismatched) comes from the word ‘pareil’ (same) so rendez-vous is just “you go (there)” and our word for mismatched is just “unsamed” and as a French speaker it was so destabilising. I had never looked at the word dépareillé and thought ‘unsamed’ in my life, it felt dignified and whole until you poked it. My English speaking cousin asked me what was our word for memo and I said “pense-bête” and he translated “think-dumb? we say memorandum and you say think-dumb?” and I was like nooo stop doing this

#language tag #tonight is language night

[luminarai]

the rest of the world more or less: we’ll call this type of trousers jeans, denims, or a variant thereof

danish & spanish: :)

the rest of the world: wh—

danish & spanish: ~*COWBOY PANTS*~

#languages #language tag #I think there’s one other country that calls them ‘texans’ which is equally and delightfully unhinged #and don’t get me started on the Dutch no idea what’s going on there #anyway I just looked it up and I thought it was amazing that Danish and Spanish apparently just went fuck the rest of y’all COWBOY PANTS

[unenomainen]

A finnish-japanese cat café called kissaten

#in finnish kissa = cat #and in japanese kissaten = cafe #so when you combine them you get a bilingual pun. love that for me #language tag

[whenthegoldrays]

And maybe put in the tags where you're from!

This question is mainly aimed at readers if Jane Austen. I'm curious how you pronounce it when you read about Maria Lucas or Maria Bertram.

#after our stephen discourse I got curious #polls #my polls #jane austen #pride and prejudice #mansfield park #language tag #elly's posts

[tamlinfairchild]

The fact that Alastair knows Tamil and specifically to read Tamil is too funny to me. Sir, who was your tutor? You're like 18 or 19, when and how did you learn it? How long did you learn it for you to be so fluent that you confidently say you know it? Can you pronounce the letter ழ? I have so many questions.

#mila reads #chain of thorns #alastair carstairs #tamil #language tag #namba mudiyavillaiiiiiiii #tlh

[blue-eyes-never-lie]

#abu simbel #egyptian #aesthetic #ancient #giza #egyptology #pyramids #egypt tours #ancient egypt #egypt #historic #language tag #artifacts #na fila #history tag #history #histoire #monument #love #gif #tumblr #halloween #quotes #spooky #fall #pink #flowers

[pristina-nomine]

I pity anglophones for they do not know the thrill of two characters suddenly switching to the informal 2nd person singular

#I’m being very eurocentric here but bear with me #also yea this is about #la passe miroir #messaggi in bottiglia #language tag #currently reading #la mémoire de babel

[megumi-fm]

a list of english words and their meanings because the gre verbal section is kicking my ass

abject: to the maximum degree; (alternatively) completely without pride or dignity

absolve: wash away guilt, obligation, or punishment.

adroit: clever or skillful

apocryphal: of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true

apposition: the positioning of things side by side or close together

beholden: owing; being indebted or obligated (to someone)

belie: disguise; contradict; failing to give a true notion of something

bloviate: to talk pompously and at length

bucolic: relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life

circumscribe: to restrict within limits

clemency: mercy

cursory: hasty and therefore not thorough or detailed

derision: scornful ridicule or mockery

desiccate: to remove the moisture from (something)

didactic: intended primarily to teach rather than to entertain

dispensation: exemption from a rule or usual requirement

docile: compliant; obedient; submissive

egregious: outstandingly bad or shocking

emulate: match or surpass (a person or achievement), typically by imitation

entail: require; call for

entreaty: an earnest or humble request

ethos: the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community

foil: a person/thing that contrasts with (and as a result emphasizes) the qualities of another

garrulous: excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters

glib: fluent but insincere and shallow

gregarious: sociable; fond of company

hackneyed: overused and unoriginal

idyllic: extremely happy, peaceful or picturesque

imperil: endanger; put at risk of being harmed, injured, or destroyed.

implicate: show (someone) to be guilty or involved in a crime

incorrigible: (a person or habit) cannot be changed or reformed

inept: unskilled, incompetent

intrepid: fearless; adventurous (usually used in a humourous connotation)

irreconcilable: (of two ideas or statements) conflicting; contradictory to each other

jargon: special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand

libertine: someone (usually a man) who freely indulges in sensual pleasures without regard to moral principles

librettist: a person who writes the text of an opera or other long vocal works

logorrhea: excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness

loquacious: talkative

onerous: (of a task or responsibility) involving a great deal of effort, trouble, or difficulty; burdensome

ostentatious: characterized by pretentious or showy display; designed to impress

palpable: tangible; (an emotion or atmosphere) intense enough to be felt

pat: simplistic; superficial and unconvincing

patina: gloss or sheen (on the surface of a metal) due to age or polishing; impression or appearance of something

perfunctory: usually an action, carried out without real interest, feeling or effort

perusal: the action of reading or examining something; scrutiny

pervasive: something unwelcome spreading widely throughout an area or a group of people

philistine: hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts.

polemic: expressing or constituting a strongly critical attack on or controversial opinion about someone or something

poring: to be absorbed in reading or studying (something)

pragmatic: practical; realistic

profligate: extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources

pugnacity: readiness to quarrel or fight

ramification: complex or unwelcome consequence

reactionary: conservative; opposing political or social progress or reform

repudiation: refuse to accept; reject

reticent: reserved; introverted; withdrawn

reverence: deep respect for someone or something (used in religious connotation)

roiling: (for a liquid) to make turbid or to move in a turbulent manner

scant: barely sufficient or adequate

scrupulous: careful, thorough, and extremely attentive to details

skein: length of thread or yard, loosely coiled or knotted; strand; an element that forms part of a complex or complicated whole

skewer: fasten together or pierce with a pin or skewer; subject to sharp criticism or critical analysis

sporadic: scattered or isolated

spurious: bogus; something that is not what it claims to be

staid: solemn; grave; serious minded; quiet

subsume: absorb something into something else

sullen: bad-tempered and sulky

temerity: excessive confidence or boldness

tentative: not certain or fixed; unconfirmed; provisional

tout: attempt to sell or show the merit of something

trite: lacking originality or freshness

truculence: eager or quick to argue or fight

understate: describe or represent (something) as being smaller or less good or important than it really is

vignette: a short description or account of something that expresses its typical characteristics very clearly

#vocabulary #english #language tag #langblr #english vocabulary #vocab list #english vocab #engblr #gre.txt

[tityre-tu-scurra]

As a (wannabe) queer polyglot it's extremely important for me to understand how pronouns work in other languages and how to use them properly, but my fussiness has arrived to the point that I have chosen my preferred pronouns even in Latin and ancient Greek

#I love learning languages and I can say I speak more or less 4-5 of them #Italian and English fluently. Spanish pretty well. Latin ermh I do my best. #ancient Greek I know the grammar very well but still don't manage to translate it. #Czech and Japanese I know the basics but I'm working on them. Czech in particular. #and overall I have a good ear so I understand the basics of Portoguese and French #but for pronouns it's difficult for me in Czech for some reason? #anyway my pronouns in Latin are illa/illam and illud/illud #while in Greek άυτή/άυτήν but only because the Σοφία is female so it's more handy #ight sorry for the long rambling #language tag #vagor dicens #pronouns

[atiglain]

I wish I understood a little more about the underlying ethos behind the tsalagi/ᏣᏔᎩ syllabary construction. Why did Sequoyah choose these specific symbols? Like obviously some of them resemble Latin letters and some of them Cyrillic or Greek but they do not correspond to the sounds those letters represent at all. And I think this is intentional but I do wonder about.. I Guess his art direction? I want to pick his brain he was obviously a super smart dude

But god the more i learn the more i realize how fucking genius this language is. I think it was Albert Gallatin that said that tsalagi could be read almost immediately after learning the syllabary? And he’s right, it’s way faster than Navajo/Diné which uses Latin script. Basically it has the efficiency mechanism of Japanese Kana but like. That’s the whole language. It’s really really awesome. Also I like the grammar structure and on an aesthetic level I think the syllabary is very pretty. I think I might put Diné on the back burner and just learn Tsalagi from now on.

#language tag #<-starting this #tsalagi

[coolxatu]

this is all i have going for me right now tbh

#language tag

[hedgehog-moss]

That viral video from last month of a giraffe pushing a tortoise was interesting to me because I saw it in French & Spanish corners of the internet and everyone was referring to the animals in the video as 'she' since giraffe & tortoise are feminine words, meanwhile on the English-speaking internet I saw a minority of people referring to them as 'it' or 'they', an overwhelming majority using masculine words, and almost no one use 'she'

Similarly romance language speakers humanised these animals using women's names while English speakers used men's names:

And of course it would have been different had the giraffe been an elephant (masculine word) but yeah I find it interesting that when it comes to personifying animals and things, speakers of gendered languages will go 50% masculine 50% feminine due to grammatical gender, while speakers of a non-gendered language with a neutral pronoun will go like 80% masculine 18% neutral 2% feminine.

It must feel weird to learn a gendered language and have to accept that a door is 'she', but it also feels weird to learn a non-gendered language like English and then scroll down hundreds of comments under an animal video and all the animals are 'he'. I'm reminded of a cartoon I saw on tumblr once with a speaking lightbulb, and all the comments referred to it as 'he' and a 'guy' (in french & spanish, people would call it she.) I wonder how it affects the way you frame the world in your mind? you ask a French kid to personify a spoon or a mouse or a raindrop, it's going to be a female character by default. I feel like that's something English speakers rarely consider—that compared to languages that are 'visibly', officially gendered in a 50/50 way, English is less neutral, and more masculine-gendered. When anglophones learn about grammatical gender they tend to react like "why is a chair a 'she' that's absurd?", but when the context calls for it they'll call a lightbulb 'he' without thinking about it

#language tag #the percentages in this post are not proven statistics they come from the Academy of Scrolling Down Tumblr Notes #(disclaimer)

[rose-bookblood]

Absolutely wild internet take I had to read today:

We should cancel Spanish because it has grammatical gender, therefore it's transphobic.

#I CANNOT #i immediately thought 'they must be usamerican' but. they're spanish #1) spanish is one of the most beautiful languages on earth according to me aka the most important person on earth /j #2) it's literally the 3rd most spoken language on earth. you're not going to eradicate it #also fun fact that adding a neutral gender to spanish is extremely easy and it's something that's already happening #(unlike with italian where it's real fucking hard) #language tag

[mmolia]

#help me decide #italian #spanish #portuguese #langblr #language tag #italiano #español #português

[whenthegoldrays]

Btw I always found it weird that Korean women call their boyfriends oppa (big brother)… until last night when I realized that Best Friend Number Two calls her boy “bro.”

#they're the same picture #elly's posts #language tag