#plain form of verbs
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Sampo Koski Lore Notes
Because we love our HSR conman, Trailblazers all over the internet have begun to form many theories surrounding our beloved scammer. There are a lot of details about this man that are peculiar, and for those like me who love to overanalyze their favorite characters and how they contribute to the lore, I have created a list of notes about Sampo that point to him being downright suspicious.
Warning: Very, very long post ahead.
He is has a lot of intel apparently... where does he get them from?
Knowledge Voiceline: "Come on, how did you guys end up in the middle of the Snow Plains? UFO? Let me guess, you took a train, haha. Seriously though."
About Natasha Voiceline: He's not from the Underworld.
He loves money; money is considered to be a form of pleasure; does this refer to the Masked Fools being hedonists?
Turn Begins 1: "We're just having fun." Elation??
Hit by Heavy Attack: "Hey! W-watch the face!" Sampo is not really the type to be narcissistic… unless this is a pleasure-related matter…
Ultimate: Unleash: "Betraying the king" is often seen in literary works and other similar fictional media, and these types of things are often used for pleasure and entertainment
Return to Battle, Health Recovery, Natasha's About Sampo Voicelines: He's also… altruistic?
Hook's About Sampo Voiceline: He can be everywhere
Character Story: Part I: He slips away easily
Character Story: He is good at disguises, as if he's an actor… as if he were wearing a mask… because actors and masks and roles… Masked Fools foreshadowing?
Character Story: Why did they choose this specific story to be the one in his profile? The tale seems so random… or is it?
Character Story: Everything is purely dialogue… almost as if it were a script. If we compare it to the others, they have character stories that match them well, such as Bailu, whose character story is in the format of a prescription because she is a doctor.
Light Cone - Eyes of the Prey: "In reality most prety don't realize when danger is encroaching. This one's no exception." After reading the description, it may seem weird since Sampo noticed the sniper BUT what if the sniper is the REAL prey?
Light Cone - Eyes of the Prey: "So that's what greed looks like. That amount is equal to several of my contracts already… No wonder someone wants him dead." Another reference to money being a form of pleasure.
Light Cone - Eyes of the Prey: "As if these thoughts were broadcasted out loud, the an in the scope turns his head, looking straight into the eyes of the sniper. 'I've been waiting for you. Would this much be enough for you to hear me out?'" The EYES of the PREY refers to the SCOPE of the SNIPER. The light cone depicts Sampo from the EYES of the PREY.
Splash Art: The city in the background is likely NOT on Jarilo VI
Splash Art: It looks like he's jumping off a ledge or something similar
Design: @littlekiara96 noticed that his design refers to death a little too much due to the amount of skeleton imagery on him…
Kit: His technique is to blind enemies, which may call back to the fact that he slips away easily without anyone noticing
Kit: Why are his weapons blades that turn into boomerangs and not anything related to his obvious line of work?
Kit: His basic attack is called "Dazzling Blades"; I might be overthinking but the word "dazzling" is something I would hear when one describes an actor…
Kit: His skill is called "Ricochet Love"; "ricochet" often refers to projectiles bouncing more than once off of a surface (verb) or a shot that bounces more than once off of a surface (noun)---so where does the "love" come into all this? Love is another form of pleasure; I don't know but this skill reminds me of the Masked Fools again just because of all the bouncing more than once off of a surface and the love thing..
Kit: His ultimate is called "Surprise Present"; Sampo can be called a master of the element of surprise as he often appears suddenly without anyone suspecting him to---the present can also be something unexpected and weird (like a RICKROLL) which gives off MAJOR Masked Fools vibes…
Kit: Why is his element Wind?
Kit: Why is his path Nihility? @gachagen pointed out that Nihility characters hide secrets (Welt, Pela, Silver Wolf, Kafka). For my own observation, Nihility states that the universe is meaningless while Elation states that the universe is one big joke; both paths seem to infer that the universe has little meaning…
Kit: Half his Eidolons are about his scamming business and the other half are about… love and enthusiasm; both aforementioned concepts seem to call back to the Masked Fools and Aha the Elation…
Achievements: Versatile Joker is a hidden achievement until it is unlocked… does this fact and the achievement itself indirectly infer to Sampo's secret connection to the Masked Fools and Aha the Elation?
Missions: Besides Pela, Sampo is the only other 4-star character from Jarilo VI who does not have a companion mission yet
Character Traits: He BOWS like an actor (as seen in the Jarilo VI Trailblaze Mission), as if he is bowing for his PERFORMANCE
Character Traits: If I had a penny for every time Sampo was aware that he was being watched like how Aha did in the Simulated Universe (Jarilo VI quest conclusion, Eyes of the Prey light cone), I'd have two pennies… which isn't much but it's weird that it happened twice…
And that's pretty much it! Feel free to add more observations in the replies, or reblog too.
#sampo#hsr sampo#sampo koski#honkai star rail sampo#honkai sampo#sampo honkai#honkai star rail#star rail#hsr lore#hsr theory#cw long post#cueue's other thoughts#cueue's eccentric theories
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Is there something up with the High Valyrian wiki?
https://wiki.languageinvention.com/index.php?title=High_Valyrian_language
I've had this link bookmarked since ages. I can't seem to load the page. I've tried all sorts of browsers and it is still not working. i wanted to get back into actively learning HV again and duolingo is kinda annoying so. Is there a different page/resource the wiki has moved on to? I also seem to recall an old forum for HV with a bunch of really good resources for it. is it possible for you to provide a link? Thanks so much anyway!!
Good question! This wiki, which you can find here..
...is a labor of love—not just from me, but from a team of dedicated individuals who want to get information about my languages up somewhere more or less permanent, editable by many, and all in one place.
For years I have had a hosting plan from DreamHost. For a fixed fee, DreamHost allows you, essentially, infinite storage. I've got a dozen or so websites hosted by the same DreamHost account. I have to pay for the urls (a yearly fee; everyone pays these), but the hosting itself is covered, no matter if I had one website or a hundred.
Creating a wiki that would function like Wiktionary was my idea. I love Wiktionary, and love the idea behind it. For example, let's say you wanted to look up mate. This is an English word. It's also a subjunctive form of matar "to kill" in Spanish. It's also the word for "saliva" in Swahili. It's also "dead" in Tahitian. It's also a word in several other languages. It's kind of cool to take an abstract form—going just by spelling—and seeing that it's a word in a bunch of different languages, all with different etymologies (some related, of course. For example, mate has something to do with death in a lot of Oceanic languages. In Hawaiian it's make, which looks like an entirely different English word!).
In Dothraki, the word tor is the number four. It comes from Proto-Plains *tur (and so would be tur in Lhazareen). It's also the word for "tower" in Hen Linge (this is one of the words coined by Andrzej Sapkowski, not created by me). In Noalath, from The Shannara Chronicles, it's the word for "wolf", and in Shiväisith, the language I created for the Dark Elves from Thor: The Dark World, it's the word for "sword". While it's true I didn't create the Hen Linge word, I created the others, so you can see it's a form I'm fond of, where the shape is possible.
Anyway, that's kind of cool! And that was the point of the site.
As it happens, the High Valyrian section of the site is…massive. To give you an idea, at the moment, the wiki has over 220,000 pages. Most of those are High Valyrian pages. This is because there's a dedicated team for High Valyrian that has added pages for every single noun, adjective, and verb inflection for every existing word on the wiki. To give you an idea, every verb of High Valyrian has around 200 forms (ipradagon "to eat", ipradan "I eat", ipradā "you eat", ipradas "s/he/it eats", etc.). Every single form for every single verb has its own page. This was accomplished primarily with a program that populated the inflectional pages, but however they got there, they're there.
Certain things on the wiki are templates that need to go through and "check" every single page. Additionally, a webcrawler goes through and checks every single page on the wiki. This requires a lot of RAM. As a result, periodically, the entire website just...shuts down.
Obviously this is not cool. I asked DreamHost about it, and though we have infinite space, we don't have infinite RAM. The first step was to disable all web crawlers. You know about SEO, and how you can do things to increase the page rank of your site? Well, we needed to do the opposite. We needed to make the site disappear from the net, effectively. And we did. This is why even if you type "David J. Peterson wiki language invention" into Google you get nothing. It's like we don't exist. We're there, but you have to know we're there and go to the site specifically. That helped, but our own programs still shut things down.
The second step was to get a private server (technically a virtual private server) for the site. This cost me an extra $25 a month ($300 a year) from what I was already paying. This definitely helped, but sometimes things get to be a bit too much, and so the site still shuts down. This is what you experienced.
You know how Wikipedia begs you for money every year? It's because of this. It's one thing to create an awesome resource; it's another thing for people to actually use it.
Hosting already costs me about $250 every two years, and every year I renew the urls for about 15 websites, which is another $300 a year. If I upgrade the VPS to the next level, it's even more money every year. And that's just me paying it.
Right now, we're in an okay spot. The site shuts down every so often, but most of the time it's more or less stable. Unless I start making a lot more money regulary, that's the way it's going to stay.
So if you go to the site and it's down, I'm very sorry, but it will be back. May take a few days, but it'll come back (as long as I'm alive, anyway).
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do you have any thoughts on the tower of babel
not a dispersion of nations or races in the sense it's often portrayed. this implying that at some point we lacked this glorious diversity, a certain lack of creativity on god's part. god is god: god would never feel threatened by union. the people of the world come together on the plain of shinar and agree to make a tower to see god. to see is lirot, לִרְאֹ֥ת, from the root רָאָה, to see, ra'ah: not only to see but to have vision of, to observe, to consider, to look upon. elsewhere in genesis the word is translated to visit. in exodus it is the word used to describe moses going over to look at the burning bush. it is the last verb to describe the actions of moses before god speaks to him. moses looks: god calls. the act of looking is the moment of choice. moses chooses god by looking and god calls out to him, knowing he has chosen. at babel looking precedes god too: the actions of men are יְהוָ֔ה לִרְאֹ֥ת, to see y---. but god is not ready to be seen yet. god is shy sometimes. he reveals himself at will. there are elements of consent to how god is seen by humanity: god uncovers himself, yes, but only to those whom he loves. only to his lovers. to be seen by strangers would be a violation. god does not want to be seen by the congregation at babel. man's heart yearns to visit god but not all men are capable of leaving god alone afterward; men have a tendency to fit things into words, into language, because that means they can control it. god, like a strong woman, will not be controlled by men. better to confuse the language of men and destroy their hubris than allow them to risk exposing him before he, himself, decides to lift the covering of his form (when god passes over moses at horeb he does not even see god directly, but he glows so fiercely he terrifies everyone who sees him- that is the power of god's form). better to wait for a good lover. men are lonely: but so is god.
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How I feel about formal speech in Japanese, as a halfie 🇦🇺🇯🇵
How much are one’s values and philosophy forced to be tied to the language you speak? Having grown up in Australia, I live in a culture where there’s no hierarchy-based formality built into the language. Our service workers never call us “sir” or “ma’am” (in fact it feels very off-putting whenever you get a usamerican waiter who does). Calling out to a perfect stranger on the street is done with a “hey, mate” or “hey, excuse me!”. Our speech patterns don’t change too much depending on our familiarity with whoever we’re talking to - and we certainly don’t have separate verb conjugations depending on formality.
Contrast this with Japanese which has several different speech registers depending on familiarity and hierarchy of the person you’re talking to.
Red: Keigo. Used by service staff. Used by low ranking staff to high ranking bosses in workplace situations.
Orange: Formal speech (sentence ending ます, です, ません, etc). Used by younger people when speaking to older people. Used by almost everyone when speaking to a stranger off the street.
Green: Semi-formal speech (sentence ending っす, しないです, etc). Used by people around the same age when speaking to someone they have only recently met, or to work acquaintances and similar.
Blue: Casual speech (sentence ending naked adjectives and nouns, だ, plain form verbs). Used by everyone to their own family. Used between good friends, even if one is a fair amount older. Used by bosses to their employees, teachers to their students.
(Please note this is graph was made by a me, a non-native japanese speaker, and is not backed up by any research. It’s based purely on vibes and its primary purpose is to assist in the explanation of my feelings about being australian-japanese. Also note that in reality there are not hard lines between each of these registers or strict definitions. If this were more accurate it would be more like a gradient)
I don’t want to be seen as rude, so when I’m in Japan I make an effort to speak in a formal register in certain situations (e.g. speaking to service workers, strangers on the street). I’m ok with the far left side of the graph. However, the purple dotted section is the part I have the hardest time with: people around my age who I am not (yet) friends with. As an Australian, I immediately want to speak in a casual register with anyone who has friend-potential — in my culture it’s polite and respectful to treat people like a friend from the start. Unfortunately, this has the reverse meaning in Japanese culture - it’s polite to keep people at arm’s length until you know they’re comfortable being closer with you. To use casual speech with an acquaintance carries an undertone of imposing a friendship on them that they may not want.
Culture and language are intimately linked, but is it possible to speak a language while being informed by a different cultural worldview? Is it possible to speak Japanese with both feet firmly planted in Australian culture? Does doing such a thing transform it into a different language altogether?
It’s certainly possible to speak English with my feet in Australian culture, and I would say that Australian English is a different dialect (with respect to formality registers) when compared to British English or US English. In fact I think US English is more similar to Japanese than it is to Australian English, if we’re just looking at formality.
A lot of what makes this a hard question is how homogenous Japan is, and how people in the Japanese diaspora (e.g. me and my family) don’t have a meaningfully different culture from mainland Japan, unlike other diasporas like Italian Americans. Since basically everyone who speaks Japanese is culturally and ethnically Japanese, the question of separating some of the cultural aspects from the language becomes almost unthinkable, and I would like to shake this unthinkable foundation of thought a bit.
Also, language is a collaborative thing. If I’m the only one speaking single-formality-register Japanese, I’m not speaking a new dialect, I’m just speaking normal Japanese in a weird way. It would take multiple people to understand the nuance of what I mean (not rude, just casual) for my single-register manner of speech to go from speaking normal Japanese rudely to speaking Australian Japanese normally. If I was to somehow assemble a bunch of Japanese-Australians raised in Australia, who learned Japanese with their family as their only input source (casual register only), would we be speak Japanese or some kind of new thing - Australian Japanese?
I wanna speak how I would normally speak in English, when I’m speaking in Japanese. But to do so carries subtext that I’m not trying to convey. If I want to speak without loading my speech with additional subtext I have to conform to the norms. But to do that would be to temporarily cast aside my cultural values on egalitarianism and respect!
So what’s more important - being true to myself and culture when speaking Japanese, or conveying the meaning I intend? Is it the responsibility of Japanese people to understand that people of different cultural backgrounds will speak their language, or is it my responsibility to conform to the way the language is spoken?
#opinion#langblr#japanese#japanese language#linguistics#language#learning japanese#日本語#jimmy blogthong
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So. I'm revisiting a very old draft I cooked up of a Dooku-Obi-wan tale. Flitting between this and my Gravity Falls idea and my SPM concept stuff is rather dizzying on its own, not to mention I also haven't tried to write in the SW universe in quite some time. Going to try and publish some more excerpts to get back in the groove. Still getting those writing land legs (sea legs?) back. Yeesh, I'm rusty. Shake off that rust. Shake it off, shake it off.
~~~~~~~~~~~
“You’re finally starting to ask the right questions, Master Kenobi, albeit to the wrong beings.”
Obi-wan stilled.
The comm screen faded to its grey, standby mode, casting the small room into an almost total darkness, save the weak luminescence of a handful of stars peering from the corner of a single window to his rear. Around him, a set of blocky transmitters hissed in short, labored susurrations - a system that even now was uploading his message to some server on Taris, flinging it forward to unfortunate Bandomeer and then on to far, far away Coruscant. Obi-wan ran his fingers over the small, nubby input/output indicators sprouting from the consol, which flickered in an unmetered, erratic pulse; green to red to green to red.
“I was wondering when I would see you again, Dooku.”
A metallic ping marked the initial reception of the message on Taris. It was fast - faster than he had expected, and Obi-wan couldn’t help but wonder about the encryption layers in the Count’s communication system. They were either so poor that his message would be hacked by every fifth-rate pirate this side of the Outer Rim, or efficient enough to meet the strict security needs of the heart of the Confederate uprising and still relay data at least a quarter-time faster than the Republic’s sclerotic, and expensive, hyperwave transmission lines.
“I’ve had other matters to attend to,” Dooku sniffed as Obi-wan’s vision settled into the darkness, the Count’s long, looming shadow beginning to creep from the tall, cylindrical ventilation system running vertically up the far wall.
“Other matters.” Obi-wan toyed with a switch on the console, one that would set all new, outgoing communications to encrypt using an archaic verb form of Ancient Nettlese as its key. A childish impulse - and one that would result in nothing but a few lines of perturbed binary from the communications droids - but one not without its immediate appeal. “Other matters like coordinating the battle on the Dolla plains?”
Irritation rolled off the Count in spiny, sawtooth waves. “I had a hand in the strategy, but was not the decisive body in the final assault. You, of all people, should be familiar with the delegation necessary to conduct a proper war.”
Obi-wan snorted. “I suppose delegation is easier when all that is required is a few keystrokes.”
#hello there#writing#the eternal struggle#obi wan kenobi#count dooku#i even know the exact plot (mostly) of this#gods writing for sw is so different than writing for stan and ford#emotional and rhetorical whiplash going on there
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Blue mackerel Dazai
Have you ever wonder why Chuuya calls Dazai mackerel? It's mostly because real Nakahara did it but what if not only? And why writer Dazai was called like that? I started thinking about it since i first glanced at kanji 鯖 / saba — mackerel 🐟
Let's analyze kanji! It has two parts: 魚 / sakana / fish and 青 / ao / blue 。Pronunciation seriously attracts my attention because… hmm、look: saba — 'Samu — Osamu。And blue mackerel is 青い鯖。There is also another word: 青鯖 / aosaba、dictionary says it's archaism which also means mackerel。And aosaba is more similar to Osamu。
Headcanon: Dazai calls his partner by his name (not a surname) and Chuuya just a little changes name Osamu)
Unfortunately, godness know when did 青 run away from 鯖、anyway I guess two-kanji-word used to use in the first part of the last century。But what came first: the nickname or the alias?
Tsushima Shūji (the real name of writer、津島 修治) had used name Dazai Osamu (太宰 治) since 1933 when he published novel "The Train"。
We know about Dazai and Chuuya first meeting and "mackerel" from Dan Kazuo's book about Dazai「小説 太宰治」 (or not because I can't find it 😔 Does anybody have this book in English or Japanese? I would be grateful if I could read it in Russian, but it's just a good dream、it's not easier than found the Book from anime。I found only one little translated story from the book)
Also you can find Nakahara's quote about Dazai in Japanese Wikipedia:
「青鯖が空に浮かんだような顔をしやがって」
「Aosaba ga kuu ni ukanda youna kao wo shiyagatte」
青鯖 / aosaba means mackerel。空 / kuu is the sky、and 空に it's "in the sky"。
浮かんだ / うかんだ — past plain form of the verb 浮かぶ / ukabu、to float、to show up。
ような is the thing that we can use to express similarity、in this sentence similarity with 顔 / kao / face, facial expression。
やがる / yagaru is slang curse word indicated contempt, hatred、and やがって is て-form of this verb。し / shi is from verb する、to do。
Well, Chuuya said 「Damn it, bastard with face looking like mackerel floating in the sky」or something like this。
Chuuya! Don't ruine my headcanon! 😡
Huh… Mackerel face? Fish with the blue stripes 🐟🐟🐟
By the way、those stripes and one of popular anime backgrounds are lookalike、isn't they? And that face everyone sometimes makes because of Dazai — 😰
Yeah, got it! I really hoped there could be an idiom about mackerel but it still can be called a metaphor。In that situation it could mean 「Fucking idiot with your scared face」— Dan wrote Dazai seems like he could start cry that moment。And 'cause Kafka Asagiri-sensei often creates reverse version of lifecanon-people maybe port-mafia-Chuuya called Dazai mackerel not because Osamu was scared but because he liked to scary others。
Imagine BSD wan for example where when instead of usual blue background the blue mackerel shows up in the sky。It's funny) Nakahara was genius, don't you think?
#bungou stray dogs#bsd dazai#bsd chuuya#bsd atsushi#bsd fanart#headcanon#language#why dazai was called blue mackerel#mackerel#blue mackerel#japanese#I'm still learning how to use tags
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Can you clarify/explain reflexive verbs vs base forms? Ex: yo duermo vs me duermo. I think it's basically I sleep vs I go to sleep, maybe? But for other reflexive verbs especially I don't understand the difference
It's a little difficult because dormirse is one of the weird reflexives
In general, the reflexive ending -se to an infinitive just means that the action can be done to oneself; the subject and object are the same
As an example: lavar "to wash" can be done with laundry, the floor, pets, children... etc. but then you have lavarse which is "to wash oneself", as in lavarse las manos "to wash one's own hands"
[lit. "I wash myself the hands"; body parts rarely have possessive adjectives like "my" if it's obvious whose body parts they are, similar to me duele la garganta "my throat hurts" or literally "the throat hurts me"]
Many verbs can be reflexive this way, like hablarse "to talk to oneself"... or they can be reciprocal which just means that two or more subjects do something to one another like conocerse "to meet one another" or "to get to know one another"
Sometimes verbs can be either plain reflexive or reciprocal depending on context; casarse can be "to get married" as in one person, or casarse as "for two people to get married to each other"
With other reflexives you sometimes stumble across weird ones. You can usually tell something is up when it doesn't make sense in the traditional reflexive sense - where "oneself" doesn't make sense
In your case, dormir is "to sleep" and dormirse is "to fall asleep" or "to go to sleep"
It gets a little more confusing than this with reflexives. I'll try to be comprehensive and clear, but just know that reflexives opens up to a whole lot of grammatical concepts that are weird and confusing and VERY advanced - I'm talking advanced in a way that native speakers don't often know how to explain, it's just the way things are and what sounds right
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The reflexive here is a special kind of reflexive where it adds a little something to it; sometimes the difference seems minimal to non-native speakers [like comerse with food is MUCH more common than regular comer; like me como la pizza is "I eat the pizza" and is much more common]
Other times you get an entirely new expression... like acordar is "to come to an agreement" while acordarse is "to remember"
And sometimes the difference is very subtle but significant like dormirse, or something like olvidarse "to forget" being a little more common than regular olvidar
The exact reasoning depends on the actual verb, sometimes it's a more passive expression (like romperse is "to break down" where it's implied "on one's own" rather than actually breaking something which feels purposeful)
And other times it's like dormirse where the meaning seems to be subtly different. When I explain it to people I try to tell them to think of verbs that change meaning depending on prepositions or additional words... like caer is "to fall", but caerse can either be "to fall down" or it can be "to fall out" as in teeth or hair etc.
A few common ones to keep in mind:
ir = to go
irse = to go away
dormir = to sleep
dormirse = to fall asleep, to go to sleep [can also be "to go numb" the same way you might say "my leg fell asleep"]
morir = to die
morirse = to pass away (suddenly or it impacts you emotionally)
acabar = to finish
acabarse = to run out, to be depleted
romper = to break [active]
romperse = to break [passive], to break down, to break on its own
encontrar = to find
encontrarse = to feel [like ¿te encuentras bien? is "are you (feeling) okay?"]
creer = to believe
creerse = to believe (usually without evidence)
parecer = to seem
parecerse (a) = to look like, to resemble
acordar = to come to an agreement
acordarse (de) = to remember
fijar = to affix, to put in place
fijarse = to stare at, to look at
imaginar = to imagine (as in to use one's imagination or to think)
imaginarse = to imagine, to put oneself in a situation
preguntar = to ask
preguntarse = to wonder, to consider, to contemplate
olvidar = to forget [feels active]
olivdarse (de) = to forget, to slip one's mind [feels passive]
pasar = to pass / to spend
pasarse = to overindulge / to be out of line / to exceed, to outdo
caer = to fall
caerse = to fall down, to fall out
concentrar = to gather / to pool, to pool together, to accumulate
concentrarse = to concentrate, to focus, to pay attention
dar = to give
darse cuenta = to realize, to come to an understanding
quedar = to remain, to be left
quedarse = to stay behind
[as in quedarse en casa "to stay home"]
hundir = to drive into, to plunge, to sink
hundirse = to sink down, to sink (boats)
ahogar = to smother / to stifle / to overwhelm
ahogarse = to drown, to suffocate
despedir = to expel, to emit / to get rid of / to fire someone
despedirse (de alguien) = to say goodbye, to say one's goodbyes
You are also going to want to be aware what's called los verbos de cambio or "verbs of change". These are verbs that mean "to become", and they're reflexive and used in different situations:
convertirse en = to become, to be converted to
transformarse en = to transform into
ponerse = to become (emotions)
[as in ponerse triste "to get sad", ponerse enojado/a "to get angry", there's ponerse rojo/a which could be "to blush" or "to get red"... these are understood as very temporary and usually emotions]
volverse = to become, to turn (drastic)
[most common is volverse loco/a "to go crazy" or "to go mad"; if volverse is being used as "to become" it's usually very drastic and unexpected]
quedarse = to become, to be struck + physical condition
[as in quedarse de piedra "to be stunned" which is literally "turned to stone", or quedarse mudo/a "to be struck silent/dumb/mute", or quedarse ciego/a "to be blinded", quedarse sordo/a "to be struck deaf", or quedarse paralizado/a "to be paralyzed"... also used as quedarse embarazada sometimes as "to get knocked up" or "to become pregnant", and there's an expression quedarse de brazos cruzados which is understood as "to stand around doing nothing" but literally "to stay behind/be left with arms crossed"]
hacerse = to become (with effort)
[most understood as "to make oneself" - this is used for something you achieve with personal effort often times; hacerse rico/a "to get rich", hacerse famoso/a "to become famous"... it's also often used for dietary restrictions or religious conversions; hacerse vegetariano/a "to become a vegetarian" or hacerse budista "to become Buddhist" as an example; it's also sometimes used for vocations or something you study and work at for a long time or with a vow like hacerse monja "to become a nun"... while not 100% the most common expression it expresses a devotion and work ethic rather than just expressions that use ser as "to be/become" with professions]
Be especially wary of ponerse because it honestly has so many additional meanings: ponerse la ropa is "to put on clothes", ponerse el sol is "for the sun to set", ponerse could be "to become", or an expression like ponerse las pilas is "to get your act together" or "to get yourself in gear" but literally it's "to put one's batteries in"
There are also some verbs that are just more commonly reflexive for your purposes... like concentrarse, or a verb like graduarse "to graduate" where simple graduar is "to calibrate", a couple others are jubilarse "to retire" or something like desahogarse which is "to vent" [lit. "to un-drown oneself"; in the sense of "get off one's chest" to make them feel better]
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Addendum: I do have to mention that reflexive endings get used for many things so it is sometimes weirder and more complicated and no one explains why; the umbrella term is "pronomial" which includes the reflexives, but it just means any time you see a reflexive ending but it might not fit the typical "to onself" definition
And, the weirdest one of all is se which you might think is reflexive but it also might not be
There are going to be times you see a se that isn't reflexive; sometimes it's passive, sometimes it's impersonal, sometimes it's taking the place of le or les in a sentence with indirect and direct objects
Really, se is the weirdest one and I only mention it because you're going to be confused by se many times; it's just versatile
In general, a se refers to a 3rd person something and it gets used in descriptions of 3rd person unspecified, or to mean "itself" or "oneself" in some cases. There's almost always a 3rd person-ness to se where something is happening but it might not be a "thing" so much as it happening "on its own", if that makes sense
I know, it's weird, I'm sorry
#Spanish#language learning#langblr#language#learning spanish#la gramatica#vocabulario#verbos#reflexivos#asks#long post
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Grammar - conjugations
Just trying to remember a couple of conjugations that sound close together that I sometimes mix up.
One is the future form of gwneud:
Gwneud - to make/do//auxiliary verb
Gwna(f) i - I will (do/make)
Gwnei di - you will [sing., informal]
Gwnaiff e/hi/etc. - He/she/it/etc. will
Gwnawn ni - we will
Gwnewch chi - you will [pl./sing formal]
Gwnân nhw - they will
In a pattern repeated across a few other forms, the negative and interrogative forms have a soft mutation on the first letter g, dropping it.
So ‘Will you...?’ becomes ‘Wnei di...?’, and ‘No, I won't...’ becomes ‘Na wnaf, wna i ddim...’
(The f at the end of wna is optional, there are a number of patterns where it may stay or be dropped entirely. Adre(f) -> home, bydda(f) -> I will (plain old future of 'bod').)
Wnei di'r gwely? Will you make the bed?
Wna i ddim y darlun. I will not make the painting.
Na wnân, wnân nhw ddim byd heddiw. No, they will not do anything today.
Gwna i bopeth yn iawn. I will make everything okay.
Another is the conjugation of cael asking for permission
Cael - to get, obtain, be allowed to do/have something. (It's a versatile verb).
In the present tense, in non-literary Welsh, you would just use the auxiliary 'bod' as per usual, ‘dwi'n cael’, ‘rwyt ti'n cael’, etc. In using its future and conditional tenses, it amounts specifically to the connotation of asking and receiving permission. May I go? Can he stay? Will we be allowed to bring our own water bottles? Could I have one?
Future
Ca(f) i - I will/can get/have/am allowed/
Cei di - You ... [singular, informal]
Ceith (N)/Caiff (S) e/hi/ac ati - He/she/it/etc. ... [3rd person sing.]
Cawn ni - We ...
Cewch chi - You [formal/plural]
Cân nhw - They ...
*N/S are northern and south Walian dialect variants, but don't take anything as too set in stone. I'm not the authority on it, anyway.
Conditional
Cawn i - I could ...
Caet ti - You [sing, informal] could
Câi fe/hi/rhywun - [3rd person] could
Caen ni - We could
Caech chi - You [plural/formal] could
Caen nhw - They could
The 'c' softens to 'g' when used in the interrogative, but the negative gets an aspirate mutation: 'c' -> 'ch'
Ga i fynd? May I go?
Châi fe ddim aros. He could not wait. (Conditional, in the sense of 'there is no way that he could wait', rather than past tense, which would be 'chafodd e ddim aros'. Maybe the next sentence is a clearer example)
Cawn i aros hwyr os caet ti gollwng fi adre yn dy gar. I could stay late if you could drop me in your car.
Gawn ni ddod â'n poteli dwr ein hunain? Will we be allowed to bring our own water bottles?
Cei, cei di un. Yes, you may have one.
Na chaiff, chaiff hi ddim tocynnau i'r cyngerdd mor hwyr. No, she cannot/will not be able to get tickets to the concert this late.
#grammar#welsh#vocabulary#sentences#conjugations#gwneud#future tense#conditional tense#tenses#Cymraeg#A note that is also in my pinned but worth re-iterating: tagged 'sentences' means I made that shit up; I could be wrong on the sentences
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✧˚ ༘ ⋆｡˚
[09 March '24 Japanese N4 log: T-119]
_____________________________________________
Going through Japanese grammar makes me sleepy. I want to improve my grammar by reading because it's how my English is this intuitive even though it's not my native tongue, but Japanese always comes off a disciplined language. Ah well.
Today's grammar notes below. Correct if required.
Verb-られます: Potential form of the verb. Used to describe the ability or possibility of something happening.
~ところ: describing a place, in the sense of "a place where we can get sushi" or "a place with a beautiful view".
Sentence (in plain/dictionary form)ってききました/っていっていました: used to convey an idea you have heard from someone else, or relay something someone has told you. Can be an opinion, rumor or news.
[Interrogative] Verb-たらいいですか: used to seek advice from someone about how to handle a situation, used with interrogatives.
#axis.n4#Japanese N4 prep#jlpt#jlpt n4#japanese language#studyblr#student#study blog#studyspo#japanese vocabulary#japanese langblr#nihongo#japanese#japanese grammar
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반말
반말 (Banmal) refers to the informal speech style used in Korean. It is characterized by a casual and familiar tone and is typically used among friends, family members, or individuals of the same age or lower social status. Banmal is the opposite of 존댓말 (Jondae-mal), which is the formal speech style used to show respect and politeness.
Here are some key features of 반말 (Banmal):
1. Verb endings: In banmal, verb endings are typically plain and simple without any formal markers. The verb stems are used without any polite or honorific suffixes. For example, "먹어" (meogeo) instead of the polite form "먹어요" (meogeoyo), which is used in formal speech.
2. Casual vocabulary: Banmal often involves the use of casual vocabulary and slang expressions that are more commonly used in informal settings. The choice of words tends to be more relaxed and familiar.
3. Omission of honorifics: Banmal does not include honorific titles or expressions that are typically used in formal speech. Instead, individuals may refer to each other by their names or nicknames without using any honorific markers.
4. Close relationship: Banmal is used when there is a close relationship between the speakers, such as friends, siblings, or peers. It creates a sense of familiarity and informality in the conversation.
It's important to note that the use of 반말 (Banmal) should be done with caution and appropriate context. Using banmal in formal or respectful situations can be considered impolite or rude. It is essential to understand the social dynamics and level of intimacy with the person you are speaking to before using banmal.
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その力を使いこなせる人を 「魔導士」 と呼んだとか。
sono chikara wo tsukai konaseru hito wo "madoushi" to yonda to ka.
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Those who could master that power were said to be called "sorcerers".
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I'm not on desktop so i can't go as in depth as usual, but some of these words:
力 ちから・chikara - power, strength, ability
使いこなせる・tsukaikonaseru - potential "can do [x]" conjugation of 使いこなす tsukaikonasu, [from jisho.org] to handle (men); to master (a tool); to manage; to acquire a command of (a language)
使いこなす is a compound verb comprised of the stem form of 使う tsukau, to use, and こなす konasu, to digest, to break down, to be 'good at'
魔導士 まどうし・madoushi - sorcerer, wizard, mage
魔導士 is a compound of two terms, 魔導 madou, magic, and 士 shi, soldier
魔導 madou is comprised of two kanji. the kanji 魔 ma connotes things like evil spirits, demons, and witches, and is a kanji that's commonly present in any words referring to magical or fantastical things. the kanji 導 dou is an alternate kanji for 道 dou, which can mean a "way" in terms of a path or a road or "way" in terms of teaching and principle. 導 may or may not have connotations separate from 道. it sure does look more fancy
魔導 is a less common way to refer to magic than 魔法 mahou - "magic" and "law" - is. 魔導 has a darker and more reviled reputation than 魔法, being more referred to as "heresey, evil ways, path of evil" and "sorcery, black magic" than just plain "magic"
there's another word used to describe a wizard/sorcerer/mage that's called 魔法使い mahou tsukai, "magic" and "user". using 士 rather than 使い has me wondering if "battle mage" might be a more apt translation of 魔導士 than just something like "sorcerer" or "mage"
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these kinds of posts have been very sparse the past couple of years! the weight of adulthood has been setting in the past few years and ive one half have been having a crisis over it and one half have been feeling my way through that crisis
we managed to nab this super famicom for a REALLY cheap price of under $200, and every game ive bought for it so far has been no more than $20, and it's been a blessing. searching up words on my phone takes more time than doing it on my computer, and my attention span is shit so im frequently having to lasso myself back into playing/reading/learning, but i know more vocab/grammar now than ever so i haven't been having to stall my flow for very long
this particular text box just managed to catch my attention enough to make a post about it. it's really simple but also fun to inspect
I've been jumping through a bunch of games because, again, shit attention span, but I've also just been really excited to touch on all of them, so I guess I'm hitting each a little at a time, lol. we'll see which ones I stay on over the next few months
hope everyone is ok, ik we're smack dab in the middle of this loneliness epidemic and this huge ass economic disparity/crisis and the like continued Slide into scarier more right wing policy/fascism pretty much. let's do our best in these times, love to yall
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T’owal T’uesday #11
For some reason I decided to recreate a screenshot from a tumblr post in T’owal. Here’s the original:
I think more effort went into making it look similar to the original than actually making the translation. There are a few too many differences between the fonts (serifs, line weight, general proportions) for it to really look right to me but it’s okay.
“m4m” becomes f.u.f in T’owal. I haven’t dealt with any abbreviations before, but I kind of like the look of the dots between letters but not after the last one. It stands for fes us fes (“male intended for male”) which is completely agrammatical but feels like it could work here.
A weird rabbit hole I ended up going down was figuring out what verb form should be on the button. In English the plain verb/infinitive and imperative look the same, so it wasn’t clear to me which was intended. Turns out, different languages do this differently: some use the infinitive or something like a verbal noun, and others use imperatives. I decided to go with the unmarked verb in this case to keep it from being too wordy.
New words coined for this post were hlade “key” (also “password,” or anything else that unlocks something), p’onta “avocado,” ts’obi “pocket,” and hek’e “assume.” Proper nouns were left as they were, though the “and” of “Hawk and Co.” was translated.
Here’s the full text, with an overly-literal translation to show the feel of the structure of the T’owal text without resorting to a gloss:
Sín fes, ts’ún we adin hné hyúno su – f.u.f (ZuZ
Guy, you accidentally took my jacket – m4m (ZuZ
Iwax / Iwax fem men af
Reply / Reply to this message
Há sáx hyúno Hok a Ko xen.
We have the same Hawk and Co. jacket.
Ts’ún adin twalthi e fwol psil hné sá su dne tiyeth Zuzu, a gúthos sá hne hné.
You, seemingly accidentally, took mine last night from the Zuzu couch, and you left yours.
Sá su pyén hláde su dax tso su fot.
Mine had my keys, which I obviously need.
Sá hne pyén p’ónta e ts’obi, a hék’e sú í, bmá xen dá.
Yours had an avocado in the pocket, and I assume that that’s equally important.
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ない＋そう＝なそう？なさそう？
Attaching the ～そう ending to the negative form can be tricky. Luckily, the rules are quite straightforward.
Verbs = なそう
要らない → 要らなそうだ
行けない → 行けなそうだ
聞かない → 聞かなそうだ
Remember that いない (negative form of いる) belongs in this category.
いない → いなそうだ
Adjectives = なさそう
寒くない → 寒くなさそうだ
安い → 安くなさそうだ
面白い → 面白くなさそうだ
Remember that a standalone ない (negative form of ある) is also treated as an adjective.
問題ない → 問題なさそうだ
However, adjectives whose plain form ends in ない should get a なそう ending rather than なさそう.
危ない → 危なそうだ
少ない → 少なそうだ
幼い → 幼そうだ
汚い → 汚そうだ
A good rule of thumb: なさそう should only be used if it isn’t unnatural to attach は or が particles directly before it.
#japanese#grammar#polyglot#studying#langblr#japanese language#study japanese#language study#japanese langblr#japanese studyblr#language learning#language lover#yuria studies
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「V〜方」と「V方法」の違いは何？
what’s the difference between 「V〜方」 and 「V方法」?
hi everyone! today i wanted to make a post explaining an intermediate grammar concept about the two different ways to say “way/method” with a verb in japanese! just as quick note, i won’t be glossing most of the kanji i use in this post, so be sure to use jisho or turn on rikaikun/chan if you need help reading. without further ado, 行こう！
V〜方（かた） = “how to V”
first, let’s learn how to add 〜方 to a verb:
start with plain present (dictionary) form
create 〜ます form
remove 〜ます and add 〜方
let’s try it with an ichidan verb (食べる) and a godan verb (作る).
食べる／作る
食べます／作ります
食べ方／作り方
easy, right? make sure you’re brushed up on your godan conjugation rules! now, how can we use these new forms?
first, it’s important to note that we’ve transformed the verb into a noun by adding 〜方. that means that instead of を, which attaches before verbs, V〜方 is often preceded by の.
❌ 石鹸（せっけん/soap）を作り方
⭕️ 石鹸（せっけん/soap）の作り方 = how to make soap
週末は石鹸の作り方をググって台所をひどく散らかしちゃった。 = this weekend so i googled how to make soap and made a huge mess of the kitchen.
in the above example, V〜方 refers to the actual, physical manner of doing something (in this case, making soap). you can think of it like an instruction manual or a recipe.
日本人の友達に箸の使い方を教えてもらった。 = i learned how to use chopsticks from my japanese friend.
卵の茹で方、わかってるの？ = do you know how to boil eggs?
with する verbs, のし方 is used with the verbal noun. this means の is used twice in the phrase:
❌ 車の運転し方がわからない。
⭕️ 車の運転のし方がわからない。 = i don’t know how to drive a car.
pretty straightforward so far! let’s add one more thing to this topic: V〜方をする.
V〜方をする = “to V in a certain way”
this phrase is useful in describing the particular ways people perform certain actions. by using an adjective, ような, or a noun + の, you can characterize their V〜方.
林田先生は厳しい教え方をする。 = hayashida-sensei has a strict way of teaching.
誰にもわかるような書き方をした本だ。 = the book is written so anyone can understand it.
吉田くんは乱暴（らんぼう）な運転のし方をする。 = yoshida-kun has a reckless way of driving.
getting the hang of it? let’s move onto V方法 now.
V方法（ほうほう） = “a way to V”
V方法 gets a little less literal and a little more conceptual than V〜方. let’s look at how to form it.
start with plain present (dictionary) form
add 方法 to the end
that’s it—even easier than V〜方! in japanese, when you put a plain form verb before a noun, you’re kind of using that verb like an adjective; so this time, the whole phrase has become a noun phrase.
let’s see some examples of V方法:
毎日勉強することが試験に備える（そなえる）方法だと思っている人は多い。 = many people believe studying every day is the way to prepare for exams.
困難（こんなん）から逃げる方法はない場合もある。 = in some cases there is no way to escape hardship.
do you notice how the feeling here is less “instruction manual” and more “means to an end”? it’s a subtle difference, but it’s there. compare these two sentences:
この��理の食べ方は何？お箸で？ = how do you eat this dish? with chopsticks?
健康を保って（たもって）食べる方法は何？ = what’s a way to eat healthy?
the context for each is a little different, but the nuance of 食べ方 vs. 食べる方法 comes across clearly. the former addresses the physical manner in which a food item is eaten (see, for example, this article about okonomiyaki). the latter, on the other hand, refers to the concept of eating with a goal in mind (i.e., staying healthy). in a word, the difference is this: V〜方 implies a specific/correct way to perform an action, while V方法 expresses a method to attain some goal. make no mistake, there is some overlap between the two—but there may always be a slightly different feeling that comes with each.
and that’s that on that! just kidding, i’m sure there are way more resources out there on this topic, and it’s always a great idea to ask native speakers what they think. as always, feel free to shoot me an ask with any questions or let me know if you found any mistakes! お疲れ様 and またね！！ 💮
sources:
dictionary of intermediate japanese grammar (日本語文法辞典中級編) by seiichi makino and michio tsutsui
how to use 方 by maggie sensei
some sentences adapted from jisho
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かもしれない - Might, maybe, probably (Colloquial: かも or かもしらん)
Plain Verb + かもしれない
［い］Adjective + かもしれない
［な］Adjective + かもしれない
Noun + かもしれない
*To make polite, change ない to ません (かもしれません)
This one is sooo easy. SCORE! You plop it on the end of any sentence to express uncertainty. No fancy conjugating or funny business. Just make sure you’re adding it to plain forms (not です or ます). Amazing. Here's a couple example sentences.
このいい服を買えば、人気になるかもしれない。If I buy these nice clothes, then I might become popular.
彼は何にも調べないで、日本に行くかもしれない。He might go to Japan without researching anything.
#Japanese grammar#Japanese N4 grammar#N4 grammar#intermediate japanese#beginner japanese#review japanese#review japanese grammar#langblr#studyblr#japanese langblr#japanese studyblr#study japanese#learn japanese#bunpro#peistudies#nihongo
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There is No Unmarked Women
Some years ago I was at a small working conference of four women and eight men. Instead of concentrating on the discussion, I found myself looking at the three other women at the table, thinking how each had a different style and how each style was coherent.
One woman had dark brown hair in a classic style, a cross between Cleopatra and Plain Jane. The severity of her straight hair was softened by wavy bangs and ends that turned under. Because she was beautiful, the effect was more Cleopatra than plain.
The second woman was older, full of dignity and composure. Her hair was cut in a fashionable style that left her with only one eye, thanks to a side part that let a curtain of hair fall across half her face. As she looked down to read her prepared paper, the hair robbed her of bifocal vision and created a barrier between her and the listeners.
The third woman's hair was wild, a frosted blond avalanche falling over and beyond her shoulders. When she spoke she frequently tossed her head, calling attention to her hair and away from her lecture.
Then there was makeup. The first woman wore facial cover that made her skin smooth and pale, a black line under each eye and mascara that darkened already dark lashes. The second wore only a light gloss on her lips and a hint of shadow on her eyes.
The third had blue bands under her eyes, dark blue shadow, mascara, bright red lipstick and rouge; her fingernails flashed red.
I considered the clothes each woman had worn during the three days of the conference.
In the first case, man-tailored suits in primary colors with solid-color blouses.
In the second, casual but stylish black T-shirts, a floppy collarless jacket and baggy slacks or a skirt in neutral colors.
The third wore a sexy jump suit; a tight sleeveless jersey with tight yellow slacks; a dress with gaping armholes and an indulged tendency to fall off one shoulder.
Shoes? No. 1 wore string sandals with medium heels; No. 2, sensible, comfortable walking shoes; No. 3, pumps with spike heels.
You can fill in the jewelry, scarves, shawls, sweaters _ or lack of them.
As I amused myself finding coherence in these styles, I suddenly wondered why I was scrutinizing only the women. I scanned the eight men at the table. And then I knew why I wasn't studying them. The men's styles were unmarked.
The term "marked" is a staple of linguistic theory. It refers to the way language alters the base meaning of a word by adding a linguistic particle that has no meaning on its own.
The unmarked form of a word carries the meaning that goes without saying _ what you think of when you're not thinking anything special.
The unmarked tense of verbs in English is the present _ for example, visit. To indicate past, you mark the verb by adding ed to yield visited. For future, you add a word: will visit.
Nouns are presumed to be singular until marked for plural, typically by adding s or es, so visit becomes visits and dish becomes dishes.
The unmarked forms of most English words also convey "male." Being male is the unmarked case. Endings such as ess and ette mark words as "female." Unfortunately, they also tend to mark them for frivolousness. Would you feel safe entrusting your life to a doctorette?
Alfre Woodard, who was an Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actress, says she identifies herself as an actor because "actresses worry about eyelashes and cellulite, and women who are actors worry about the characters we are playing."
Gender markers pick up extra meanings that reflect common associations with the female gender: not quite serious, often sexual.
Each of the women at the conference had to make decisions about hair, clothing, makeup and accessories, and each decision carried meaning. Every style available to us was marked.
The men in our group had made decisions too, but the range from which they chose was incomparably narrower. Men can choose styles that are marked, but they don't have to, and in this group none did. Unlike the women, they had the option of being unmarked.
Take the men's hair styles. There was no marine crew cut or oily longish hair falling into eyes, no asymmetrical, two-tiered construction to swirl over a bald top. One man was unabashedly bald; the others had hair of standard length, parted on one side, in natural shades of brown or gray or graying. Their hair obstructed no views, left little to toss or push back or run fingers through and, consequently, needed and attracted no attention.
A few men had beards. In a business setting, beards might be marked. In this academic gathering, they weren't. There could have been a cowboy shirt with string tie or a three-piece suit or a necklaced hippie in jeans. But there wasn't. All eight men wore brown or blue slacks and nondescript shirts of light colors.
No man wore sandals or boots; all their shoes were dark, closed, comfortable and flat. In short, unmarked.
Although no man wore makeup, you couldn't say the men didn't wear makeup in the sense that you could say a woman didn't wear makeup. For men, no makeup is unmarked.
I asked myself what style we women could have adopted that would have been unmarked, like the men's. The answer was none. There is no unmarked woman.
There is no woman's hair style that can be called standard, that says nothing about her.
The range of women's hair styles is staggering, but a woman whose hair has no particular style is perceived as not caring about how she looks, which can disqualify her for many positions and will subtly diminish her as a person in the eyes of some.
Women must choose between attractive shoes and comfortable shoes. When our group made an unexpected trek, the woman who wore flat, laced shoes arrived first. Last to arrive was the woman in spike heels, shoes in hand and a handful of men around her.
If a woman's clothing is tight or revealing (in other words, sexy), it sends a message _ an intended one of wanting to be attractive, but also a possibly unintended one of availability. If her clothes are not sexy, that too sends a message, lent meaning by the knowledge that they could have been.
There are thousands of cosmetic products from which women can choose and myriad ways of applying them. Yet no makeup at all is anything but unmarked. Some men see it as a hostile refusal to please them.
Women can't even fill out a form without telling stories about themselves. Most forms give four titles to choose from. "Mr." carries no meaning other than that the respondent is male.
But a woman who checks "Mrs." or "Miss" communicates not only whether she has been married but also whether she has conservative tastes in forms of address _ and probably other conservative values as well. Checking "Ms." declines to let on about marriage (checking "Mr." declines nothing since nothing was asked), but it also marks her as either liberated or rebellious, depending on the observer's attitudes and assumptions.
I sometimes try to duck these variously marked choices by giving my title as "Dr." _ and in so doing risk marking myself as either uppity (hence sarcastic responses such as "Excuse me!") or an overachiever (hence reactions of congratulatory surprise such as "Good for you!").
All married women's surnames are marked. If a woman takes her husband's name, she announces to the world that she is married and has traditional values. To some it will indicate that she is less herself, more identified by her husband's identity.
If she does not take her husband's name, this too is marked, seen as worthy of comment: She has done something; she has "kept her own name."
A man is never said to have "kept his own name" because it never occurs to anyone that he might have given it up. For him using his own name is unmarked.
A married woman who wants to have her cake and eat it too may use her surname plus his, with or without a hyphen. But this too announces her marital status and often results in a tongue-tying string.
Biological phenomena
I have never been inclined toward biological explanations of gender differences in language, but I was intrigued to see Ralph Fasold bring biological phenomena to bear on the question of linguistic marking in his book The Sociolinguistics of Language.
Fasold stresses that language and culture are particularly unfair in treating women as the marked case because biologically it is the male that is marked.
While two X chromosomes make a female, two Y chromosomes make nothing. Like the linguistic markers s, es or ess, the Y chromosome doesn't "mean" anything unless it is attached to a root form _ an X chromosome.
Developing this idea elsewhere, Fasold points out that girls are born with fully female bodies, while boys are born with modified female bodies. He invites men who doubt this to lift up their shirts and contemplate why they have nipples.
In his book, Fasold notes "a wide range of facts which demonstrates that female is the unmarked sex."
For example, he observes that there are a few species that produce only females such as the whiptail lizard. Thanks to parthenogenesis, they have no trouble having as many daughters as they like.
There are no species, however, that produce only males. This is no surprise, since any such species would become extinct in its first generation.
Fasold is also intrigued by species that produce individuals not involved in reproduction such as honeybees and leaf-cutter ants. Reproduction is handled by the queen and a relatively few males; the workers are sterile females.
"Since they do not reproduce," Fasold says, "there is no reason for them to be one sex or the other, so they default, so to speak, to female."
Fasold ends his discussion of these matters by pointing out that if language reflected biology, grammar books would direct us to use "she" to include males and females and "he" only for specifically male referents. But they don't.
They tell us that "he" means "he or she" and that "she" is used only if the referent is specifically female.
This use of "he" as the sex-indefinite pronoun is an innovation introduced into English by grammarians in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Peter Muhlhausler and Rom Harre in Pronouns and People.
From at least about 1500, the correct sex-indefinite pronoun was "they," as it still is in casual spoken English. In other words, the female was declared by grammarians to be the marked case.
Gender and labels
Writing this article may mark me not as a writer, not as a linguist, not as an analyst of human behavior, but as a feminist _ which will have positive or negative, but in any case powerful, connotations for readers. Yet I doubt that anyone reading Ralph Fasold's book would put that label on him.
I discovered the markedness inherent in the very topic of gender after writing a book on differences in conversational style based on geographical region, ethnicity, class, age and gender.
When I was interviewed, the vast majority of journalists wanted to talk about the differences between women and men. While I thought I was simply describing what I observed _ something I had learned to do as a researcher _ merely mentioning women and men marked me as a feminist for some.
When I wrote a book devoted to gender differences in ways of speaking, I sent the manuscript to five male colleagues, asking them to alert me to any interpretation, phrasing or wording that might seem unfairly negative toward men.
Even so, when the book came out, I encountered responses such as that of the television talk-show host who, after interviewing me, turned to the audience and asked if they thought I was male-bashing.
Leaping upon a poor fellow who affably nodded in agreement, she made him stand and asked, "Did what she said accurately describe you?"
"Oh, yes," he answered. "That's me exactly."
"And what she said about women _ does that sound like your wife?"
"Oh yes," he responded. "That's her exactly."
"Then why do you think she's male-bashing?"
He answered, with disarming honesty, "Because she's a woman and she's saying things about men."
To say anything about women and men without marking oneself as either feminist or anti-feminist, male-basher or apologist for men seems as impossible for a woman as trying to get dressed in the morning without inviting interpretations of her character.
Sitting at the conference table musing on these matters, I felt sad to think that we women didn't have the freedom to be unmarked that the men sitting next to us had.
Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman.
There is No Unmarked Woman - Deborah Tannen, 1993
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