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Like askerian, who bestowed this gem of wisdom upon me this evening:
I swear, I'm gonna frame that paragraph.
And for the other bit of trivia this even, from
hl, about what I thought was a typo... but wasn't. Instead, it's a very cool adaptation of the language:
I love what humans do with language.
And another one, this time from German:
One of the most fascinating aspects of language, especially in gendered languages, is how people have figured out ways to adapt those gendered forms into a world where we're starting to incorporate -- explicitly incorporate, that is -- both men and women. Just like the old English argument over whether "him" and "he" really is inclusive for "her" and "she", or how saying "the world of man" is supposed to automatically include women, even if the message becomes that only men are worth mentioning and women are an afterthought... the ways we take language and poke here and pull there to make it start changing to reflect new priorities, sheesh, I could go on aboutman's human linguistic inventiveness all day.
English cheats because it comes in little chopped-up bits that you can reassemble just about any possible way (and some that really shouldn't be but why not.) English is flexible and comes with interchangeable pieces, like someone wearing belts around their thigh, sunglasses as a hairband, and colored socks on their hands as funny gloves because it's fashionable and even if it doesn't catch on it's fun right now and so long as people know what it's saying then it's all good. French is a dowager countess with petticoats and a corset, and god forgive you if you dress her up wrong, because she won't.
I swear, I'm gonna frame that paragraph.
And for the other bit of trivia this even, from
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[Invitad@ is] to get around to referring to the person as male or female. In Spanish male is neutral, except it doesn't work so well (mostly like in English -- except that in Spanish you've to refer to gender in a lot of places), so in some net places, specially if the writing isn't formal, the '@' is used to get around that. It's because the male ending of the phrase would require an 'o', and the female one an 'a', and the '@' looks like an 'o' with an 'a' inside. It's like writing invitado/a except slightly prettier and slightly shorter...
I love what humans do with language.
And another one, this time from German:
The AutorInnen / AutorIn is a shorthand for saying Autoren and Autorinnen [male author and female author]. The capital i in the middle means that it is supposed to stand for both forms. It *looks* like a generic femininum with the i (which usually you can recognize the femals version of the word by) capitalized, but is specifically meant to include males, too. It's just a stylistic form that not everyone is fond of (it's a bit leftist/feminist. also, possibly "out"). But I think for the purpose of keeping the lines as short as possible it would be preferrable to always saying "Male and Female Authors".
One of the most fascinating aspects of language, especially in gendered languages, is how people have figured out ways to adapt those gendered forms into a world where we're starting to incorporate -- explicitly incorporate, that is -- both men and women. Just like the old English argument over whether "him" and "he" really is inclusive for "her" and "she", or how saying "the world of man" is supposed to automatically include women, even if the message becomes that only men are worth mentioning and women are an afterthought... the ways we take language and poke here and pull there to make it start changing to reflect new priorities, sheesh, I could go on about
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Date: 13 Feb 2011 04:34 am (UTC)Let's just say belts on your thighs and funny gloves are *exactly* how tees and tanks and jeans are getting interpreted in Japanese Harajuku-style for these dolls. It's pretty amusing. It's even more awesome when you are having conversations about these items with folks from Poland and Russia who have adapted them in their own very cool ways. There are days I lurve the interwaebz.
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Date: 13 Feb 2011 09:17 am (UTC)(And thank you for fixing the year/age thing in your poll - went swimmingly this time!)
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Date: 13 Feb 2011 09:27 am (UTC)This is why, sometimes, I hide in the simple beauty of Mandarin. There's a language that isn't at odds with itself and getting odder all the time. I mean, sometimes it's good to have the French Countess for tea, y'know? At least you know what to expect...
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Date: 13 Feb 2011 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Feb 2011 06:30 am (UTC)Ah, that would be the Seriously Anal Retentive, OCD-half of the personality. The rest of the time, really, English has a great personality! Absolutely charming on blind dates, too, I hear. Probably won't pick up the bill, and may embarrass you by talking too loudly about the prices of things and get a little grumpy if there's no cheap beer, but otherwise? Totally a charmer. Really!
Just don't use the wrong fork with your salad, or OH BOY.
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Date: 13 Feb 2011 03:44 pm (UTC)I love the @ sign use in Spanish, too: elegant and inventive.
Humans are such clever monkeys.
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Date: 15 Feb 2011 06:31 am (UTC)Not only are we clever monkeys, we're also very good at making fun of our cleverness! Or just basking in it.
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Date: 14 Feb 2011 05:56 pm (UTC)(I love it for that.)
The second: I've been seeing Latin@ around as a gender-neutral way of referring to Latin people, as well.
I join you in your love.
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Date: 15 Feb 2011 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Feb 2011 06:15 am (UTC)Yeah, Germans are very inventive when it comes to their language, but unfortunately they're also very passionate about it, which means you get factions of people arguing the correct gender of "Nutella" or "Ketchup", the participle of "downloaded" and what meanings words really have. And then of course there are the two orthographies at war and the questions of how to pronounce /ch/ at the beginning of a word. These discussions can go on for hours, and they never lead to a result, but they're very useful in making you identify with the region you grew up in.
I've heard Austrians and the Swiss have a more relaxed approach.
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Date: 15 Feb 2011 06:26 am (UTC)Okay, I probably wouldn't want to be in the middle of such an argument, but the fact that such arguments might occur strikes me as... absolutely awesome. And a perfect time to make popcorn. Because arguing about the gender of KETCHUP is just... dude, that's priceless. (And makes me almost regret having a main language that lacks these nifty features. Well, not entirely, but still.)
The 'participle of downloaded' reminds of a friend's discussion about conjugating verb-loanwords in Japanese. I can't remember now what word it was, but she was going on about how there was a debate over whether you should conjugate the word per Japanese word, or if you should leave it intact (unchanged in any way) because it's not a Japanese word. The irony was that it was a word being treated like a verb -- like, oh, 'orientate' that isn't even bloody well a verb. It's a freaking noun (orientation) that's been mangled into a verb (orientate) and here it'd become a loanword and as a native English speaker, I'm going: that's not even a word to loan!
Language is just crazy. Seriously crazy... but the fact that you can have twenty different ways to solve the same question -- getting back on the point -- is something I find pretty cool about German. Okay, I hated it as a theology student (since all the Big Names were German philosophers) and learning the jargon that always seemed to consist of six German words all squished together (and I got graded on spelling, damnit), but still. I wanted to make my own words!
But not words that are nouns that should be verbs. I do draw the line somewhere.
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Date: 15 Feb 2011 06:43 am (UTC)As far as loanwords go: Handy! Don't get confused when Germans call their mobile phones that. It really is our word for it. And we stole it from English, where it doesn't even mean that.
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Date: 15 Feb 2011 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Feb 2011 07:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Feb 2011 07:27 am (UTC)Like my favorite, which sounds like 'kah-why-oo', I think it is, something like that. It's the word for cute/pretty, plus the sound-word for a bird's song, and together it comes very close to approximating the Japanese word -- kawaii -- for 'cute'. It completely boggled me the first time I heard someone say it in a Taiwanese drama, because it sounded almost like the Japanese, but just enough off (and with tones!) that I had no earthly idea. It takes a similar meaning/sound word, elaborates just enough, and comes up with something that's... does that count as a loan-word? Or would that be a loan-sound? Or a riff, maybe?
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Date: 15 Feb 2011 08:33 am (UTC)Are you looking for 電話 (note to self: relearn basic Japanese vocabulary). Because telephone is electric + conversation/talk in Japanese. (I also love Japanese compounds. They're so versatile. And if you want to really show of you can use Katakana instead of Furigana to insert a foreign term.) Movie was 映画 reflected + pictures in Japanese. My Chinese co-students were often confused because some words were the same while others very much weren't.
Regarding the "kawaii" imitation - partial substitution, maybe, if I understand the Wiki page right. A loan translation, maybe?