- 📸 snapshots from the last few weeks

my motivation fluctuates a lot but lately my daily mantra of "i can do it i can do it i can do it" kinda helped tbh

Do y'all know any good linguistics books ?????

I'm really interested in the field & wanna read more up about it [& I cant afford to study it at the moment so I want as many books as possible]. Anything related go it works, but I'm particularly interested in language acquisition, accents, etymology, & language creation [Both in the sense of conlang creation & how new languages form & develop].

But again, I'm interested in it as a whole so books outside of those things are also good !!!

Also, while I'm mostly looking for books, YouTube videos & documentaries are also good !!!!

Every single person studying a language when they recognize the most basic word of the language in a text or a video

if I asked very nicely would you all be willing to take a one minute anonymous survey for my linguistics class. if the answer is yes, please click here. thanks :)

(sharing for a better response size would also be very appreciated)

I love you phonetics I love you descriptivism I love you minority languages I love you dialects I love you accents I love you suffixes and prefixes I love you fossil words I love you outdated letters and pronouns I love you etymology I love you preservation of endangered languages I love you visible remnants of the way a language used to be I love you linguistics

接続詞（せつぞくし）

conjunctions - words that are used to link phrases together

情報を加える // Adding information：

しかも　besides そのうえ　moreover, on top of that さらに　moreover, on top of that そればかりか　not only that, but also... そればかりでなく　not only that, but also...

情報を対比する // Putting into contrast：

それに対して　in contrast 一方　whereas

他の可能性・選択肢を言う // Giving alternatives：

あるいは　or perhaps (presenting another possibility) それとも　or (presenting another option within a question)

結論を出す// Drawing a conclusion：

そのため　for that reason したがって　therefore そこで　for that reason (I went ahead and did...) すると　thereupon (having done that triggered sth. to happen) このように　with this (adjusting a conclusion to the arguments given beforehand) こうして　in this way

理由を言う // Giving a reason：

なぜなら...からだ　the reason is というのは...からだ　the reason is

逆説を表現する // Expressing a contradiction：

だが　however, yet, nevertheless (contradicting what one would have expected) ところが　even so (spilling a surprising truth) それなのに　despite this, still それでも　but still (despite a certain fact, nothing changes)

説明を補う // Amending one's explanation：

つまり　that is, in other words (saying the same thing using different words) いわば　so to speak (making a comparison) 要するに　to sum up, in short

説明を修正する // Revising one's explanation：

ただし　however (adding an exception to the information stated beforehand) ただ　only, however もっとも　however (obviating any expectations that might arise through the previous statement) なお　in addition, note that (adding supplementary information)

話題を変える // Changing the subject：

さて　well, now, then (common in business letters after the introductory sentence; is often ignored in tranlations) ところで　by the way

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?

study date at a friend's house 🪴

🎧 - watch what happens next by waterparks

You actually CAN use different words to muffle emotional effects! we've been making euphemisms for death for as long as we've had language, that's why we say things like "passed away". even the word "die" was an old Norse euphemism for the old English word "sweltan", which itself is a euphemism for the even older word "diegan". (I really agree with your post, the origin of using "unalive" is incredibly dystopian and censorship is awful, I just wanted to infodump about linguistics)

that's actually really cool!!!! thank you for sharing!!!

also anon i'm in a linguistics fixation right now so we shall have a summer wedding

So if I’m speaking Spanish, and I need to say an English word — like a name, brand, website, etc — I say it like a Spanish speaker

However, I hear a lot of speakers drop into a very native English accent in the middle of a sentence to say “el Starbucks” and whatnot (I love hearing it. Just a random completely English-sounding word in a Spanish sentence)

So I’m wondering…

From my personal observations I think native bilinguals do this more, but I’m interested in more data. Feel free to reply or reblog for a more detailed answer!

(EDIT: sorry the poll is so confusing. “YES” means yes, you do the thing I described, changing your accent to a different one in the middle of a sentence)

his ass is NOT getting up for his 8am lecture

1.9.24 - feeling like i’m literally in the show community bc i’m taking spanish 1 at community college starting today. i haven’t been a student in years and i’m excited to be back in the classroom. let’s all manifest that i do well so i can become the hot polyglot i aspire to be

japanese is such a kind language. like you forget a character it will hold ur hand and tell u that everything will be ok and you can just write it in hirigana and everyone will understand :)

and then chinese is like oh im sorry you forgot a character? youre illiterate. you mispronounce a word? your mother is now a horse

allysion... girl i havent drawn u in 3 years