Tag: languages

operationsc:

flubz:

you-or-your-memory:

carryonmy-assbutt:

merinnan:

myangelofthelord:

merinnan:

marimopet:

gotitforcheap:

if you’re american and coming to australia, I’m gonna go ahead and say that you should be 100 percent way more worried about being king hit by a dude named “dane” in a bintang singlet than any fucking spiders that exist here

what does this say in english

“Good sir, if you are a resident of the United States of America and coming to visit the sunny land of Australia, allow me to inform you that you should be rather more concerned about being sucker punched by a gentleman named ‘Dane’ who is likely to be seen wearing a wifebeater with a beer company logo on it than by any of the dangerous spiders that exist on this lovely continent”.

ok so what does it say in american

“You’re more likely to get sucker punched/cold-cocked by an asshole than you are to be bitten by a spider”.

thank you

Well rattle my spoons, that don’t make a lick of sense. Wot in tarnation does this hootenanny say?

“If ya mosey on by Australia, you best be fixin’ to get to some fisticuffs more’n checkin fer spiders.”

This is a Rosetta Stone for a single language

justicemode:

squigglytext-blog:

shipvicturi:

So, I have an American friend named Jane who married this English guy about 7 years ago. They live in Sussex together (god rest their souls), and they had a little boy pretty much right after they got married. As he grew up, they figured he would have a mix of their accents with a heavy lean towards English (because he’d go to school with English kids and teachers and the like.)

That’s not how it fucking worked out at all though. Instead, he says individual words with either an American or an English accent. Like, one second he’ll be like, “Daddy, I’m knackered” and the next he’ll be like, “AY YO MA WHERE YOU AT???” Every time they send me a video I just fucking piss myself listening to this kid.

Ok so this is a very good example of what we call “code switching” in sociolinguistics. Without going into to too detail, this comes in a few kind of flavors. The most commonly talked about kind is the ones you see in bilingual kids and adults, where they switch languages (sometimes mid coversation!) Depending on who they are talking to or what about.

That kind is also interesting, but in this case we have a child who is budialectal. First, let me dispel a myth. Kids are VERY GOOD at learning languages when they are little. Learning two languages at once will not slow them down noticeably or cause any other issues. The same is true for dialects (or varieties, as we call them in sociolingusitcs).

Think of African American children. They are suuuuper amazing, because more than likely they acquire AAVE (African American Vernacular English) at home, and then are always told they can’t use it in school, where they are taught whatever “standard American English” is (it doesn’t reeeallly exist, but meh). And they switch between the two all the time!

Anyway, if a child is receiving input from one parent in one dialect, and a different input from they other, just like they would acquire two languages, they acquire two dialects. And they employ them depending on a bunch of factors! Who they are talking to, what about, etc!

You won’t hear a ‘blend’ because the dialects are two separate systems stored in two different grammars! And they will sound native in either!

-neighborhood linguist

I think one of my favorite things about this site is when an op goes “here’s a funny anecdote” and then suddenly the neighborhood subject matter expert shows up and explains what’s behind. Learn so much here.

official-german-translationen:

you-had-me-at-e-flat-major:

babephomeme:

ask-some-stuff:

languageoclock:

polysprachig:

languageoclock:

greenzaku:

theoceanempress:

kineticpenguin:

useless-netherlandsfacts:

maltese-boy:

rottenplantt:

commie-saskia:

languageoclock:

you-had-me-at-e-flat-major:

watercolorsheep:

catchingjinns:

spirited-simmer:

my-name-is-long:

renaissavce:

roumanian:

english: coconut oil

french: 🙂

english: oh boy

french: oil of the nut of the coco

IM CRYINGNFN

english: ninety-nine

french: 🙂

english: oh no

french: four-twenty-ten-nine

english: potato

french: 🙂

english: oh geez

french: apple of the earth

french: papillon

english: 🙂

french: don’t

english: beurremouche

French: pamplemousse
English: 🙂
French: pls no
English: raisinfruit

english: squirrel

german: 🙂

english: oh dear

german: oak croissant

english: helicopter

german: 🙂

english: uh oh

german: lifting screwdriver

english: toes

spanish: 🙂

english: no don’t

spanish

: fingers of the feet

english: ladybug

russian: 🙂

english: oh no

russian: god’s cow

english: shark

maltese: 🙂

english: pls no

maltese: sea dog

English: leopard

Dutch: 🙂

English: stop 

Dutch: lazy horse

English: glove

German: 🙂

English: what now

German: hand shoe

English: fridge
Dutch: 🙂
English: oh no
Dutch: cooling closet

English: wombat

Chinese: 🙂

English: don’t

Chinese: pocket bear

English: egg beater

German: 🙂

English: *sigh*

German: bike snow bat

English: moth

French: 🙂

English: stop

French: butterfly … of the night!

English: slug

German: 🙂

English: pls why

German: naked snail

English: pencil case

German: 🙂

English: ah crap

German: feather folder

English: ring

Spanish: :3c

English: no

Spanish: tiny anus

English: oxygen

German: 🙂

English: not again

German: angry material

English: Sorry

German: ^^

English: Wait

German: Guilt removal

jhiaxus-soup:

petermorwood:

insufficientlykinglike:

trust-gavroche:

but-the-library-of-alexandria:

magistrate-of-mediocrity:

serinsnart:

tosety:

the-true-space-fandom:

osointricate:

ravingliberal:

teddylacroix:

notalwaysluminous:

mrkevinmchale:

buzzfeed:

21 People Who Forgot A Word And Just Made Some Shit Up

im crying

a friend of mine forgot the word “lamp” once and said “light faucet”

I’m shaking from laughter. Yes, this is the right way to start a Friday morning.

Listen guys, I have a BA in English and an MA in Professional Writing and I have:

Forgotten the word “gums” and called them “teeth cuticles”
Forgotten the term “liquor store” and called it a “rum-o-rama”
Forgotten the word “mohawk” and called it a “head mustache”

The list goes on and on. Wording is HARD. 

You know that putty you put in holes before you paint a wall? I forgot the word “putty,” called it “hole-be-gone” instead, and now my whole family refers to it as hole-be-gone.

it’s hard to make the brain do the english, ok!?

I wish I had this skill.
When I lose a word, my brain derails. I use the term ‘derail’ because it is the mental equivalent of a train derailment (just easier to clean up)

At the staff meeting, my boss referred to the clipboard as “that snappy board”

My 4-year-old nephew didn’t know the word “knuckle” so he told us his finger knee hurt.

@parisdortdanslenoire arm corner

I had a French-Canadian friend who couldn’t remember the word for “feet” so they said “leg hands” and couldn’t remember eyes so said “seeing balls”

My German friend didn’t know how to say that the container holding her lasagna had leaked, so she said “the box drooled”

German for slug is “Nacktschnecke” (naked snail) so “Schnecke ohne Hause” (snail without house) is logical enough. After all, this is a language where gloves are “Handschuhe” and a bra is a “Büstenhalter” (though not a Titzling; if the place with the frequently-stolen signs is anything to go by, that’s more likely to be a town in Austria…)

I have the reverse happening to me in my native tongue. I often forget that we call spatulas a “frying shovel” in Swedish -_- my boyfriend teases me for it while cooking

thiswontbebigondignity:

thatswhywelovegermany:

latveriansnailmail:

thatswhywelovegermany:

Honestly, as a German I can not quite understand the obsession of the English speaking world with the question whether a word exists or not. If you have to express something for which there is no word, you have to make a new one, preferably by combining well-known words, and in the very same moment it starts to exist. Agree?

Deutsche Freunde, could you please create for me a word for the extreme depression I feel when I bend down to pick up a piece of litter and discover two more pieces of litter?

    • um = around
    • die Welt = world
  • die Umwelt = environment
    • ver = prefix to indicate something difficult or negative, a change that leads to deterioration or even destruction that is difficult to reverse or to undo, or a strong negative change of the mental state of a person
    • der Müll = garbage, trash, rubbish, litter
    • -ung = -ing
  • die Vermüllung = littering
    • ver- = see before
    • zweifeln = to doubt
    • -ung = see before
  • die Verzweiflung = despair, exasperation, desperation

die Umweltvermüllungsverzweiflung = …

This is a german compound on the spot master class and I am LIVING

avatar-dacia:

beka-tiddalik:

illuminice:

if anyone ever tells you that english isn’t ridiculous remember that the reason why we have a silent b in debt is because a group of guys got together to standardise english spelling and got to the word debt, which at the time was primarily spelled either ‘dett’ or ‘det’. so they basically went:

‘everyone speaks latin, right? so let’s put a silent b in debt. like debitum, which is latin for debt. problem solved.’

also the reason why there is a h in ghost is because when the printing press first came to england the only people trained to operate it were flemmish speaking, and they put a h after g because that’s what you do in flemmish. they put shit like ghirl and ghoose, but the only reason why ghost stuck is because people saw ‘the holy ghost’ in the bible and were like ‘well, that MUST be right’.

so yeah english is a really stupid language with some of the most ridiculous spelling

Anyone telling you that English isn’t a bullshit Frankenstein language is lying.

English mugs other languages in dark alleys and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.  Pass it on.