#linguistics essay | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

freckliedan · 5 months

Note

omfg so im reading your linguistics paper rn and im at the part where you talk about how its taboo to post abt the vday vid or dailybooths etc. but i feel like the chains have loosened over the years so to speak? cuz like, on twitter people have just. posted full dailybooth screenshots, or reference the 2009 phan song all the time which itself refs vday. and im wondering if thats like, because the community had gotten smaller after the dapg hiatus that ppl were more lax about it, or if it felt like dnp were more lax about it, or if these are all younger fans who werent aware of this etiquette at all but since so many younger fans have been joining like post coming out they just dont see it as taboo at all? some self-policing does still occur, specifically w ppl reposting dans nakedbooths, but its def not the case of YOU HAVE TO BE COMPLETELY SILENT ABOUT THIS anymore. i havent even finished reading yet but im enthralled

OOH thank you for the question i have so many thoughts on this actually. (context)

i think there's multiple reasons why the taboo on discussing the vday vid & other deleted social media things has grown lesser? under the cut bc i got wordy.

partially i'd chalk it up to the change in phandom demographics. like, there's a way lower proportion of us now who were around for the direct aftermath of the first major leak in 2012, or who even were a part of the phandom when a majority of folks had been present for that. things were so bad and painful then & in the era directly afterwards! people still learn about that but the knowledge of how bad things got is always going to be different from the lived experience.

so that's reason one: i think that within the fandom the strongest emotional reaction to the existence of the vday video & deleted social media posts will always exist in ppl who were around in 2011-2013 & similarly deeply ingrained in folks who joined right after that in 2014-15. and i think there's still a lot of us but there's also just like.. so many less of us now, too. the vast majority of my mutuals from 5 years ago have abandoned or deleted their blogs.

i do think another part of why things have gotten less taboo is bc it's no longer something that has the potential to out dan and phil/how directly they've acknowledged the social media posts (& to a lesser degree the vday vid)?

like. dan literally used screenshots that he almost certainly got from the phan directory in basically i'm gay. they acknowledged that the manchester eye meant something to them in giving the people what they want/witl (watched them at the same time, can't remember which had that in it). i know they knew how people would react to them mentioning iconic teen dalien moments in the big wheel in the sims.

there's also the fact that like... angry phil DMs/copyright strikes are a thing of the past? i'm not going to tell people where to find the vday video but it's stupidly easy to locate on more mainstream platforms at this point in time. shit, that brings me to another point: fans who joined more recently weren't around for the era where blogs were getting taken down for what they were posting. another reason it's more chill now.

like, the openness of the secret is like, something that makes seeking out the taboo less of a thrill?

but on the other hand! learning in detail abt the vday vid and old social media posts is something i think people find less necessary now? that used to be the most concrete like... phan proof. proof they were queer. and now that they're explicitly gay and openly together to the degree that they are it's like. the value of the information has lessened.

to go in a different direction. i definitely wouldn't call it a formalized etiquitte that the youngun's just don't know, especially when it comes to the social media posts—they've always circulated and even 5 years ago when i wrote that paper they were more openly talked about even tho the vday video wasn't (though again: 5 years ago was still wayyyyy more lax than 2013/14).

ultimately there's always just been so much clout tied up to knowing about the vday video & social media posts? so even though being too blatant has always been a taboo transgressing that norm with skill has also always been a phandom value.

i'm not going to get too far into the ways that dan and phil's fandom literacy and the fan response of archiving everything play into things bc i think i covered that well in my paper but yeah!

i don't have a good conclusion but: less % of the fandom being present for the aftermath of dnp being outed by the leak + greater aknowledgement of these subjects by dnp + less value for the information in the vday vid & deleted social media posts = more casual attitude towards vday vid & social media posts and a healthier phandom overall

#jam replies #jam thoughts #linguistics essay

51 notes · View notes

lurkingteapot · 11 months

Text

Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It's so interesting. I'd wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of "yeah, that's what it literally translates to, but that's not what it means" or has answered a question like "how do you say _____ in (language)?" with "you don't, it's just … not a thing, we don't say that."

I've had my fair share of "[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it's text!" "[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it's text!" and every time. Every time I'm just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.

Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. To lots of people, it doesn't. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It's great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn't available through my local library very much wasn't available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show. When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.

Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn't led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.

And that's … idk if it's fine, but it's what happens! A lot of the time, concepts -- expressed in language -- don't translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn't very idiomatic because there's a register mismatch or worse. And that's even before cultural assumptions come in. It's normal to have those. It's also important to remember that things like "thanks I hate it" as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn't easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.

Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don't have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator's discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it's the listener's responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it's lacking).

Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of "Go?" - "Go." does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as "is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?" - "yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are" in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It's arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying "Are you going?" - "I am (going)" might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.

This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking "are you going" or "is she going"? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it's important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like "are we all going?" - "yes" or "they going, too?" might work. Context!

As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it's because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it's because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn't. However, because in most cases translators don't have access to the original authors, or even the original authors' agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn't get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it's more of a "fuck it, I've got to put something and hope it doesn't get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down" (especially fun when you're working on a series that's in progress).

For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there'll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what "effectively" even means …

ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I'd love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don't speak the material's original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we're basically working from a secondary source, and if we're doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there's nothing substantial being (literally) lost -- or added! -- in translation?

1K notes · View notes

disease · 5 months

Text

“For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.”

—ALDOUS HUXLEY | “SERMONS IN CATS” >> MUSIC AT NIGHT AND OTHER ESSAYS [1931]

#quotes #aldous huxley #linguistics #sociology #literature #essay #sermons in cats #music at night and other essays #30s #text #u

209 notes · View notes

visualtaehyun · 5 months

Text

Pronoun changes, my beloved!

Apologies in advance for how chaotic and lengthy this will be but this is my jam lmao For ease of understanding, I'll color-code all words referring to Mork and Day like this!

Disclaimer: not a native Thai speaker, still learning 🙏

Last episode, Mork called himself พี่ /phi/ once so I'd been waiting that entire episode for either of them to initiate a switch in pronouns!!

เดย์ พี่เอง /Day, phi ehng/

It just makes sense tbh, considering all of Day's friends defaulted to calling Mork พี่ /phi/ and Porjai also just calls herself พี่ /phi/ while calling Day น้อง /nong/, น้องเดย์ /nong Day/ or just เดย์ /Day/.

Real quick- พี่ /phi/ = lit. older sibling; respectful yet familiar form of address for someone older (2nd or 3rd person pronoun); can be used to refer to oneself in reference to someone younger (1st person pronoun) น้อง /nong/ = lit. younger sibling; mostly used to refer to someone younger (2nd or 3rd person pronoun) but can be used to refer to oneself in reference to someone older (1st person pronoun)

So, episode 5!

Day accidentally calls Mork พี่ /phi/ and another boundary's crossed 👀 Of course our flustered Day tries to backpaddle immediately to Mork's delight (Day is so teasable, I completely understand Mork haha):

อะไรของคุณ /a rai kaawng khun/

ไอ้น้องเดย์ /ai nong Day/ -> Nong Day? Sweet, affectionate. Ai nong Day? Teasing, trying to annoy Day 😂 พี่ยืมเสื้อตัวนึงนะ /phi yeuum seuua dtuua neung na/ -> The tone of his voice 🫠 This is when Mork starts calling himself พี่ /phi/!

Mork has officially abandoned the polite formal คุณ /khun/ that both him and Day previously used to call each other and he now mostly calls him by his name, เดย์ /Day/, but sometimes he doesn't~

เราเองอ่ะ ก็โพสต์อะไรบ้างดิ /rao ehng a, gaaw post a rai baang di/

เรา /rao/ as a 2nd person pronoun is used by older people for calling someone younger or in general by someone more senior for calling juniors (though I've also heard it between age mates or even by younger people when scolding someone older they're close to lol it sounds a bit condescending or patronizing though). It's not formal or polite, it has a degree of familiarity though!

Quick intermission for the photo caption (though the subs provide a very good alternative pun!)

ข้าวเช้าแบบปัง ปัง /khaao chaao baeb bpang bpang/

ปัง /bpang/ = bread, hence the pun, but it's also an onomatopoeic expression for a loud noise (like Bang!) and, in the same vein, slang for 'popular'. I guess it's comparable to saying sth. or sb. is 'the bomb' in English or like- A bangin' breakfast lol You'd obviously lose the bread pun though.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming!

Mork calls him น้องเดย์ /nong Day/ and himself พี่หมอก /phi Mork/ but he also phrases his question with a คับ /khap/ at the end (that's a polite male ending particle) - it's halfway between sweet and teasing but Day's reaction tells us that he's accepting it at face value. :)

Place your bets now as to how everyone will react once they hear the changed speaking habits of these two lmao Personally, I wanna see Night's reaction the most

Gee is up first!

Last night, Day did still call him คุณ /khun/ HMMM 😏 (Gee's also referencing the love song Mork sang for Day in ep. 4)

I wanna highlight the little banter about the hotpot restaurant here too because it's something I hear irl a bunch but rarely in (BL) series!!

Day: มึงดูตากูด้วยค่ะ /mueng duu dtaa guu duay kha/ Gee: มึงก็ให้พี่มึงป้อนซิคะ /mueng gaaw hai phi mueng bpaawn si kha/

These two (as well as most of Day's friends) use กู/มึง /guu mueng/ with each other which- nothing new there, close friends often use these rude pronouns with each other BUT what's interesting to me is the particle they both use at the end: ค่ะ/คะ /kha/! They're polite feminine ending particles so usually used by women, when speaking politely. But in this case, they're both using them to sass each other! :D

I've exhausted my time for this evening so the rest of the episode will have to wait until later, sadly. And this post only covers part 1/4 hahaaahh... 🥴

#last twilight #thai bl #sea tawinan #jimmy jitaraphol #jimmysea #local woman harps on about linguistics #i'm obsessed with this show but my thai obsession won out after all #i'm almost surprised i managed to go 4 weeks just peacefully watching without the urge to write a full length essay about the language lmao

144 notes · View notes

iohannesrhetor · 3 months

Text

I have made a 30 minute video-- it is 20 minutes of lecture and 10 minutes of essay on the semantic evolution of the word "wholesome" in the last ten years.

I had a lot of fun making it. I hope you enjoy.

Please pardon the excessively link-baity thumbnail.

youtube

#heartwarming #linguistics #language #semantics #cultural studies #gen z culture #language change #youtube #video essay #Youtube

48 notes · View notes

pclysemia · 3 months

Text

The classical dictum also attributed to Heraclitus: "...you never step twice into the same river..." is also essentially pragmatic, presumably pointing out to the ever-changing context -- time, the river, the self.

Mind, Code and Context: Essays in Pragmatics, by Talmy Givón (1989)

#talmy givón #mind code and context: essays in pragmatics #linguistics #language #pragmatics #self #reality #transcendence

44 notes · View notes

a-tired-humanist · 7 months

Text

To be honest, I feel like some people are expecting way too much out of tumblr level essays. Just because someone is a linguistics, philology, literature or cultural anthropology student in their real life, it doesn't mean they should be expected to produce academia level essays on their free time for fun.

I promise you, those students and graduates are probably brilliant and far more capable of nuance that you are giving them credit for. But, let's be honest, no one writes the 10 to 20 pages with correct citations you are expecting them to for fun, unpaid and in their spare time.

Academics already work so much without compensation. So you can either pay us to write you the 15 pages of nuanced critic you are expecting of us, or stop expecting it and let us have as much oversimplified fun as the next guy.

Also, mind you, whatever essay we write here, we can't reuse for other purposes without risking a self-plagiarism issue.

So, yes, I can write a nuanced essay on the many ways Greek mythology retellings reflect on societal change and (pop) feminism. I can. And probably someday I actually will. But here all I will say about it is:

Demeter being the villain of the story in retellings reflects more on current mother-related trauma and Christian purity culture than it does the original text. And, even though that is not by any means an incorrect way to rewrite a story (because no creative endeavor is inherently wrong), the trend is getting tiring and starting to reflect heavily on the current cultural perception of the story.

If you want nuanced ideas on how vampires reflect societal changes better than almost any other monster, you can read my BA Tesis. For nuanced takes on how horror movies are linked to inmaterial human heritage through folklore and how horror movies aimed are children are starting to occupy the space left behind by the traditional fairytale after those had their teeth filled, you can read my Master's Tesis (if you speak Spanish, because unless you work for an Academic publication, I am NOT translating it for you)

#literature #lit crit #cultural anthropology #tumblr essays #greek mythology #horror movies #linguistics #philology #for the record: i am a cultural anthropologist

68 notes · View notes

cin-cant-donate-blood · 9 months

Text

Today we're learning about criminals, prostitutes, secret languages and medieval heretical sects!

I want to rant about Swedish etymology, specifically regarding the word bög. It is pronounced a bit like "beg," but with the lips pursed to an O and with a long vowel (IPA: \bøːg\).

The word means "gay man" and occupies a somewhat complicated place somewhere between a slur and the established word for homosexuality. I don't really like the phonoaesthetics of the word, but then again, perhaps I just had it hurled at me one too many times in elementary school.

Anyway, etymology.

There are two main competing etymologies for this word. I'll start with the one that I think is less likely: that the word is related to English bugger and French bougre. These words have been used in various parts of Europe to mean "sodomite" for centuries, deriving from accusations leveled at the Bogomil and Cathar heresies by the Catholic Church during the medieval period. These groups were gnostics, and (according to the Church) hated the sinful physical world to the point of being antinatalists: people who believe having children is morally wrong. So far this might in theory be true, but they were also quite dubiously accused of encouraging sodomy among followers to this end. The word bugger itself is presumed to either come from Bogomil or Bulgarian, since the Balkans were the origin point of these heresies.

We know for a fact that the word was borrowed into Swedish as buger (bugern, bugrar, bugrarna) around 1900, a word used by, among others, Swedish literary titan August Strindberg. That's also where the etymology for bög becomes a bit troublesome, because bög does not appear to have been a warping of the pronunciation of this word: it is already known to have existed in the Swedish lexicon at this time.

The alternate explanation goes back to the knallar, peddlers in particularly mid-southern Sweden (Västergötland/Westrogothia) who walked door to door selling whatever they could carry with them in the countryside. These people saw their peak around the 18th and 19th centuries, before declining into obscurity at the start of the 20th. These wandering salesmen are a fascinating topic in their own right, but what's particularly important for us is their secret language, Månsing (sometimes Monsing). The Swedish language has a rich and fascinating vocabulary of words I like to call "permanent slang." These words come from thieves' cants, the secret languages of professionals (such as Månsing and Knoparmoj, the chimneysweep language), and several minority languages like Yiddish and Romani Chib. Well-known Swedish words like tjej (girl), jycke (dog) and sno (steal) are all regarded as slang in the public eye, even though the words have been in use for well over a century, if not several centuries. Since slang is usually either quickly invented and forgotten or incorporated into standard language, this is very interesting in my opinion.

One such source for "permanent slang" is Månsing. The language is extinct now, and only caught the attention of linguists when it was already in decline, but we still have a few hundred vocabulary words documented, and one of the oldest and most widespread is bögis. This word bears a striking resemblance bög, and the -is ending is a very common Swedish diminuitive, probably first introduced in Månsing where it was probably borrowed from latin, such as in the Månsing word for dog, kanis (from canis). This ending was then (perhaps humorously) added to other words, like jamis, cat (from the Swedish verb jama, to meow).

The problem is the meaning of the word. Bögis does not mean gay, sodomite, or anything of the sort, it means peasant or farmer. The related word bögishäck means farm, and so on.

The reason why this is still a plausible origin of bög has to do with the relationship these peddlers had with farm owners. The knallar were seen as anything from semi-honest traders to downright scam artists and smugglers, so what would farmers have been from their perspective? Either prospective customers or potential victims to mislead and make money off of. This use of the word bögis came to enter city slang, where it took on a new meaning among people who had different life experiences.

In the late 19th century, slang and cant dictionaries start reporting the word bögis or bög as being part of the lexicon of the lower layers of the growing city of Stockholm. The "lumpen," the thieves and prostitutes, used the word to either mean "someone who is easily fooled" or as a synonym for "mark" or "target," that is, someone you intend to either sell something to, or rob. The connection to the way the knallar used it is fairly obvious.

Over time, the word came to usually refer specifically to the customer of a prostitute, and eventually specifically one of a male prostitute, and then also the male prostitute himself, though the path there was long. In the early 20th century, bög was still competing with the previously mentioned buger, as well as with sodomit, kvinnohatare (woman-hater), homofil, homos, and several words relating to pederasty.

By the 1910s it appears that bög was winning out, and as the gay movement came to Sweden in the 70s, the word began to be reclaimed by activists, though the exact level of offense the word carries is still a bit complicated, as mentioned.

This etymology makes bög a sister word to the English word gay, which was also originally slang used in growing cities by thieves and prostitutes. It also connects it to schwul, a German word with a similar story.

This also gives us an interesting social history of the LGBT+ movement: perhaps the reason why queer rights became an issue in the 20th century is because there was no such thing as a queer subculture until the 19th century, and the reason why it emerged then is very specifically because that's the when big U Urbanizarion took place, and thus when urban crime and underground communities emerged, which have a very distinct character from their rural counterparts. In other words, maybe big cities led to the emegence of an underclass of thieves and prostitutes, and maybe we have thieves and prostitues to thank for queer rights today! That's just a speculation, though.

My main source today was the work of Fredik Silverstolpe, who has researched swedish queer history for decades. I can give you some links if you DM me, but they are all in Swedish.

#queer history #swedish #sweden #etymology #linguistics #thieves cant #secret languages #svenska #social history #history #language #mini essay #essay

64 notes · View notes

just-late-roman-republic-things · 5 months

Text

One of the most helpful things for me when learning languages was to first learn a bit of phonology. It looks like a lot of scary charts/symbols at first, but once I got used to it, it was so much easier to figure out how to pronounce sounds in other languages.

Here's the full IPA charts for consonants and vowels with audio samples. Here's a really good introduction to what the technical words mean - originally aimed at people inventing languages, but good for language learners, too.

You can also look up "[language] phonology" on Wikipedia, scroll down to the charts of vowels and consonants, and click on any symbol for a longer explanation of what it is and an audio sample. Like, I was trying to figure out French vowels earlier*, and the French vowel charts helped me understand the difference between "u" and "ou". Sometimes I'll goof around with Wikipedia articles just making weird sounds with my mouth. That and Youtube tutorials have been the most helpful things for me.

(*There's a French biography of Marcus Agrippa I really want to read!)

#it'll also help you discover fun quirks of your own accent #try counting how many vowels sounds your native accent has! it might be more or less than you were taught in school!#my own dialect of english has 17!!#linguistics #jlrrt speaks #phonology #jlrrt essays

37 notes · View notes

thodi · 1 year

Text

FEBRUARY '23 READINGS

Only English Would Try to Shorten a Word This Way • prose

In the Shadow Library • prose

The Archive Of A Vanishing World • prose

@thingsorganizedneatly

Dear Neighbour • prose

Ocean Vuong on Taking the Time You Need to Write • prose

The Physical Traits that Define Men and Women in Literature • prose

Poet Mary Oliver: a Solitary Walk • interview transcript

How India's lattice buildings cool without air con • prose

BookTok’s Busy Year: Plagiarism Scandals, Period Drama, and CoHo, Of Course • prose

The Darker Side of Jane Austen • prose

How are you doing? • visual essay with activities

Crow, Donkey, Poet: Sumana Roy on the Useless in the Poetic • prose

How Airports Liberate—and Constrain—Those Who Pass Through Them • prose

Is There Something Wrong with Me? • prose

Welcome to the Ambaniverse • visual list

Beware a world where artists are replaced by robots. It’s starting now • prose

Violent Delights • prose

Why I Had to Get Older to Write About Youth • prose

Everyday Wellness for Everyday Creatives • prose, list

Our Struggle • prose

Sleazeballs are hot again • prose

Gwen Stefani: "I Said, 'My God, I'm Japanese'" • prose

Is Social Media Making You Sick? • video

Vigilantes for views: The YouTube pranksters harassing suspected scam callers in India • prose

The Mechanical Imagination • prose

Trying to stay awake • prose

Here's How Author James Patterson Writes 31 Books at the Same Time • interview transcript

The Heart Wing • prose

“What I Said on My Private Island Was Taken Out of Context!” On Celebrity Apologies • prose

The Pain Scale • prose

"They're coming for every second of your life." - Bo Burnham • video

Empyrrhical Evidence • prose

Liquid animations ✨ • video

Life Is a Particle Time Is a Wave • video

112 notes · View notes

freckliedan · 5 months

Note

I think a big thing with things like the vday vid is that they're out now. Before, we were still playing that game of "we know, and they know that we know, but we aren't supposed to know so we'll pretend we don't know while they pretend nothing happened" or at least those of us with an ounce of respect for them were playing the game. They were pretty violently outed against their will, and the damage it caused was very apparent to those of us who cared about them beyond just wanting to prove that our OTP was canon or whatever. But like you said, there's not many of us left who were here to experience that firsthand.

I would argue that the majority of todays phandom got here post-BIG, and so when they learn about the vday vid, it just feels like a cute little bit of history to them, whereas it feels more like a war flashback to us Olds. I think we the phandom have loosened up on the "rules" so to speak, because that video can't be weaponized anymore. It can't be thrown back in their face as "proof" of anything. Dan and Phil have managed to completely remove any power it had over them.

It's still a deeply intimate moment that we were never meant to see, and for that reason alone, I do think we probably should continue to discourage people from seeking it out, but if someone gets curious and goes googling, that's on them. The etiquette these days is less "do not ever look this up, do not ever acknowledge it" and more "if you're gonna watch it, watch it, just don't repost it anywhere and draw unnecessary attention to it" and that seems to work out well for everyone involved.

Its probably the closest, truest, most personal look we've ever gotten into their relationship, and the fact that they're still together to this day despite everything we put them through, I think that probably makes the video feel a little more special to everyone, even those of us who would have protected it with our lives a few years ago. It doesn't feel so taboo anymore because we aren't putting them at any risk by talking about it now.

i legitimately have nothing to add you're so hitting the nail on the head. it's really amazing to me that the most common experience i hear about in new fans is that even if they had the opportunity to watch, it felt too intimate and they never finished watching it/didn't watch in the first place. i can't even put into words how glad i am about that.

#jam replies #anon #history #this is re: linguistics paper conversation #i will say. and this something someone else told me. the level of mainstream platform the vday vid has been posted on at this point is #balls to the wall insane to me #linguistics essay

42 notes · View notes

wearethewitches · 3 months

Text

Gith/Tir'su language essay

So. So, I had need of the Gith language for fic purposes and realised that the dictionary is woefully lacking, so here is my extremely amateur analysis of what phrases we do have (and how the current translations lack depth, in their meta explanations).

Example, to underpin one of my main theories that words turn positive and negative using 'k :

shka'keth "asshole".

shkath zai "for honor." used as a greeting

First of all, I'll start with the word for honour. Take away zai and you're left with "shkath". Now, going by Githyanki culture, honour is one of those big deal things and behaviours are rigid, etc., so using the "shka" start to the word for both honour & asshole? Doesn't fit.

You know what would fit, to replace a normal insult in our culture that means someone with unreputable behaviour, etc., etc.,? Coward. Or honourless. (Because we do actually have a word for coward, which is not surprising. But I'm going for cultural vibes here, so honourless works better.)

So, my theory: "shkath" is the root word for honour. "shka'keth" is the negative - honourless. A coward, in other words. Like in Mando'a, I'd imagine there's a boatload of worser insults than being called the petty equivalent asshole that gets the Gith going in terms of offence, from both insulter and insultee.

To support my supposition, and second theory that the phraseology is backwards:

Vlaakith'ka sivim hrath krash'ht. "Only in Vlaakith may we find light."

Ignore the latter half right now. We're focusing on "Vlaakith'ka" and the very reasonable opinion that the translation is a negative. Why? Because "only in Vlaakith" in our language is a conditional phrase. To compare, there's this:

Vlaakith gha'g shkath zai. "For the honor of Vlaakith!"

Not a conditional, also uses our honour words. My additional theory of everything being backwards is mostly from this, because "for honour" is at the end of the sentence.

Breaking the sentence down:

Vlaakith - Vlaakith (noun)

gha'g - the (article determiner + ?)

shkath zai - for honour (again, backwards, noun + preposition)

((I have no idea what gha'g is, and my best guess is that it's "the" plus some kind of determiner. Maybe I'll figure it out later in this post, I don't know. At the moment, I'm just making basic connections and suppositions.)

Going back to Vlaakith'ka, "Only in Vlaakith":

Vlaakith'ka - Vlaakith (noun) + 'ka

My theory of 'k being a negative removes the conditional phrasing. "Only in" is inherently negative in Githyanki, and to make it a positive, removing the "only", I believe you'd only need to take away 'k.

So: Vlaakith'ka (only in Vlaakith) becomes Vlaakith'a (in Vlaakith).

Two examples of a working negative. I can't currently find any reason why there's a difference in vowel usage - Vlaakith'ka vs. shka'keth - but I

My last theory is that "is" is the root word for "being"/"person"

Examples of is in Gith words:

istik "stranger", used to refer to non-githyanki.

is'tark "coward"

ghaik "mindflayer"/"illithid"

ghustil "healer"

jhe'quith dvenzir "the termination of the frail"

jhe'stil "a superior" (to oneself).

k'chakhi "idiot"

kith'rak "captain"

hta'zith "die, creature!"

Mla'ghir "liberator"

qua'nith "psionic detector"

ra'stil "ally"

tl'a'ikith "sword spirit"

vin'isk "minion" or "underling"

zaith'isk "purifier"

Vlaakith

zerthi "Zerth's teaching", a Githzerai Zerthimon monk

This laundry list of words have one thing in common, and it's their use of is, ith, il or i as what I believe to be references to different classes of people.

Ghaik exclusively use the ik, with the exception of the word for stranger, istik. However, due to the scattered nature of the Gith words we have, I don't think it's too hard to believes that istik might actually be is'tik in the same was as "coward" is is'tark, or alternatively, ist'ik. By this line of thought, we can separate ghaik into gha'ik...

Which PROVES MY POINT, because we've previously seen the word gha'g used as an article determiner, i.e. "the", and 'k itself being used as a negative. K on it's own may therefore have a negative root in all forms. The definitive translation of Vlaakith's own name is "death", even, which may have a more cultural role in elevating "kith" words, versus k within other words.

Recall further that words are back-to-front, meaning:

Mindflayers, "ghaik", are gha'ik -> "the being [negative]", using "the" here to indicate an ultimate threat.

Strangers, "istik", are ist'ik -> "person [negative]".

Gathering the many uses of "kith" throughout the Gith dictionary brings results pertaining to positions of power, such as Vlaakith herself and the kith'rak (dragon knights), as well as variations referring weak or distinctly "other" beings, such as the frail (jhe'quith vs. jhe'stil), and psionic beings (nith).

I also believe that the phrase "hta'zith" (die, creature) is a play on the word for Githzerai Zerthimon monks, "zerthi", contracting "zerthi" and "ith" -> "zith" to refer to them in a derogatory/negative fashion.

Jhe from jhe'stil and jhe'quith may be a translation of "power"; therefore, stil is superior (il being another hierarchal translation for person/being) while quith is weak, the literal translation being "frail person". Healer, ghustil, perhaps meant to be ghu'stil is also a position of power.

Overall, the morphology of the words is distinct in regards to referencing peoples of any kind, with grammatical gender referring to class structure within Githyanki culture. Otherwise, there are very few other rules I can gather, excepting the negative role of k.

If anyone who actually has an interest would like to add to this, I would be very grateful, and if it wasn't 1am, I would genuinely have more thoughts.

#long post #githyanki #gith #language #languages #linguistics #morphology #fantasy languages #dnd #bg3 #baldur's gate #dungeons and dragons #it's all very interesting to think about #especially when we don't have the big dictionary they gave devora #who played lae'zel #i really want to explore the role of R and G #but there's not enough material #essay #the essay

13 notes · View notes

bookwyrminspiration · 27 days

Note

Do you like babel. I have the book but I haven’t started yet

oh I adore babel. I talk about it so much and am constantly reccing it to people--in fact, I did so just yesterday after quoting it in class discussion!

With a complex, diverse main cast and a heavy focus on language--as an art, as a field of study, as a tool of oppression by colonial empires--it creates such a captivating world and worldview. Following the 4 main characters throughout their college schooling and seeing them try to reconcile and come to terms with their circumstances and their losses and their supposed helplessness is such an emotional journey, and its one many can see themselves in.

You'll find a lot of people who've lost/struggle with their heritage language(s) echoing the characters' sentiments and experiences, though the relations can and do go beyond that.

I'm trying not to spoil anything, but if you'd like a more official summary/sales pitch or would like to talk about it more I am always delighted to discuss babel :)

#babel rf kuang #quil's queries #sunsplatteredfeathers #i wrote an essay on babel earlier this semester #which was a segue into writing an essay on how fandom spaces can contribute to and reinforce linguistic identities #especially for non-english languages #because of the informality of fandom being less anxiety-inducing to participate in #which can help overcome the mental block of 'my [language] isn't good enough'#because fandom doesn't have the requirement of being perfect and perfectly formal #anyway #LOVE babel #please read!#and if you do i'd love to hear all about it!

9 notes · View notes

skitskatdacat63 · 6 months

Text

Please god, can someone give me the strength to write ANOTHER 900 word essay in German, I DON'T WANNA I DONT WANNA PLEASE NO

#disliking this course more than i thought i would #oh yes german linguistics!!! okay!!! sure i love that!!!#and then my grade is dependent on literally only writing assignments #i actually want to die. this brings me soooooooo much fucking pain #i just really despise the whole idea of it #you put a bunch of people in one class with differing skill level #and then make them all write 900 word essays in a language theyre not 100% on yet #and the content is soooo much just him rambling in class IN GERMAN !#and not all of it is on the slides so fuck if i remember #and even if i did remember its so much me trying to focus on catching what hes saying than actually absorbing it #and the topic even if i was writing in english would make me struggle #and you guys know!! im great at rambling!! BUT NOT AUF DEUTSCH #and then. when you finally finish slaving over this fucking disaster of a paper #you submit it. and his only comment is just: sehr gur gemacht.#yeah why the fuck would i feel the need to burn myself like this +#only to get feedback that feels like he only looked at the word count and nothing else #like not even going to correct my grammer or???? what am i learning other than writing the same kind of bs sentences over and over #i despise word count essays btw #youre not really writing for quality youre writing for quantity #bcs if the only real outline you get is that you hit the word count then why do i give any shit about the quality of it #like i submitted a paper for my other class and she gave like 100+ edits on it #not only comments but also grammer correction #and like????? why do i not get that from the class that is teaching me a foreign fucking language #yeah sure its not bad to correct the grammar of your first language but cmon my god please help me a bit or smth #but yeah its due on Wednesday and i just think im going to fucking die before then #choking on my stress tears or smth #as i said it would be fine if it felt like he was actually checking them in depth #but i hate assignments where im only doing it for the grade. like i actually want to uhhh learn yknow???????#but yes i need someone to cheerlead me on or smth bcs itll take so much resolve to not just give up #and i wont give up bcs i want to keep my gpa but thats exactly thr issue isnt it? that i dont care about the content?

15 notes · View notes

cangrellesteponme · 25 days

Note

Genuine question after reading the mey-rin essay (which I love btw, the way you wrote it? Immaculate): do you think the writing of women in Kuro could improve if they had more focus? Like, with Lizzie i personally did a whole 180° on how I feel about her once her past was more shown during book of Atlantic. Mey-rin I already loved her and after her own "focus" my love for her increased even more, it felt like reading something more real other than just a stereotype or a trope. I feel like they would all be more enjoyable (tho I'm biased because I love them) if they had more time to shine. *pls Yana, Ran Map focus one day, I would love to know more*

hi anon, first of all thank you, i’m glad you liked the essay :))

short answer: yeah, no. focus is not inherently redeeming.

so, we all clear on my take ? good, good. let’s get into a bit more detail. (and into some proper capitalisation)

Now, focus is great and all, but there has to be a reason the new information we get is interesting. In the cases of Lizzy and Mey-Rin, it kind of is the same phenomenon: now that we have more of this background information, it recontextualises aspects of the character we might not have cared for before, and we gain a renewed appreciation for a character we understand better. This works well, and kind of is a requirement, because they both got very rocky starts. We’re turning elements readers have identified as “bad” into parts of a more complex, “justified” whole.

However, I’m going to be very honest here, I think it’s stupid and doesn’t change the fact that the writing of women in Kuro is fucking horrendous.

It’s great for Mey-Rin: it doesn’t necessarily detach itself from previous characterisation and actually strengthens it (hence the feeling of it turning the stereotype more real), and causes no real change in the character. On top of that, the timing is perfect: right before a demonstration of pure loyalty, Yana shoves a big, red “THIS CHARACTER IS THE WAY THEY ARE FOR THIS REASON” sign, which associates the recontextualised elements with a virtue readers will absolutely love. All in all, absolute banger (with a few problems), let’s not write another essay.

But what the fuck was that with Lizzy? Don’t get me wrong here, I love writing about how awful gender is sometimes, but did we really need to do it… like that? In case what I mean isn’t clear, let’s do a quick recap. This very normal child with normal child behaviour (being girly, childish, emotional, and lowkey annoying, in a normal kid way) was very strongly hated (and. well. mocked by the narrative) for those traits, and her turning point is…? Let me check my notes. Ah, yes, the turning point is that Lizzy behaving like a girl is okay not because it just fucking is, but because it’s actually all a lie and deep down she’s a strong warrior who’s just acting like that because she was told to. Obviously you can’t just be both, silly! And yeah there’s more nuance to that, but I’m not writing a Lizzy essay, for a plethora of reasons. What bothers me is that the readers’ enjoyment of the character is dependent on the denial of her previous femininity, and it’s not just an unexpected effect – it’s how it’s written.

(and, sidenote: as a lizzy enjoyer i kind of hate the fandom’s general perception of her? at least with mey-rin it truly improved with time, but with lizzy… people still think of her the exact same way, they just spend a lot of time talking about how much they enjoy the “cooler” parts of her, instead of spending time shitting on the rest of it. anyway, no lizzy essay, i should keep my takes to myself before i end up in trouble!!)

So, based on those two examples: no, focus is not enough to let Yana show that she’s always been capable of writing women.

And as much as I love Ran Mao (which is a lot) I think I will have to deeply sigh at every single aspect of her character if we get more detail. I’ll take it, because I love her, but I will be even more acerbic in my criticisms. Because focus won’t fix her. If you pull a magnifying glass on shit it’s still shit. And the writing of women in Kuro is, in fact, very shitty.

so, anon, i hope my answer is at least interesting? obviously if yana somehow puts her head on straight and starts writing ran mao well i will be here for it but the odds are… not in our favour. as for the other women… well i’d love to see more of lady midford, but that seems unlikely, and i’m always here for more grelle, and her writing is… a complicated issue other people explain way better than i do. so yeah.

#kuroshitsuji #ota's ask answers #if i ever write another essay it would probably be about agni because yeah he's my favourite character #and it would be more literary. and actual character analysis. the mey rin essay was a lot of... fandom sociology?#which is not my field of study at all i'm a linguist #i have a pal in gender studies but that's about it for my exposure to that stuff

9 notes · View notes

anyonewestofbree · 2 months

Text

pitching a fit because no one is inviting me to be very smart on their podcast with all my perfect takes on jurassic park park such as quit calling it a theme park!! It’s a ZOO GUYS IT’S A BAD ZOO let me share all my zookeeper thoughts about it please, I know the line between theme park and zoo could be argued blurry but I just simply disagree on purely subjective reasons, it just feels like characterizing it as a theme park falls into the trap that the series does limply try to get you to understand but never with true proper conviction, in the conceit of the world these are living animals!! And they always get turned into monsters and calling the park a theme park and not a zoo contributes to the idea of these creatures as attractions, not animals!! let the dinosaurs be ANIMALS and let me talk about imagining theropod husbandry manuals!!!! Safe enclosure design!! PROPER positive reinforcement operant conditioning with dinos!! Y’all don’t understand how much we zookeepers still actively dunk on Prattkeeping, we have FEELINGS anyway I’m just yellin

#it’s the perfect whirlwind of animals media criticism and linguistics #I’ve got a lot of brands but these are several #plus I’m on PTO so weed and video essays are the primary objectives #talk tag

11 notes · View notes