Throwback to the time my poor German teacher had to explain the concept of formal and informal pronouns to a class full of Australians and everyone was scandalised and loudly complained “why can’t I treat everyone the same?” “I don’t want to be a Sie!” “but being friendly is respectful!” “wouldn’t using ‘du’ just show I like them?” until one guy conceded “I suppose maybe I’d use Sie with someone like the prime minister, if he weren’t such a cunt” and my teacher ended up with her head in her hands saying “you are all banned from using du until I can trust you”
God help Japanese teachers in Australia.
if this isnt an accurate representation of australia idk what is
Australia’s reverse-formality respect culture is fascinating. We don’t even really think about it until we try to communicate or learn about another culture and the rules that are pretty standard for most of the world just feel so wrong. I went to America this one time and I kept automatically thinking that strangers using ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ were sassing me.
Australians could not be trusted with a language with ingrained tiers of formal address. The most formal forms would immediately become synonyms for ‘go fuck yourself’ and if you weren’t using the most informal version possible within three sentences of meeting someone they’d take it to mean you hated them.
100% true.
the difference between “‘scuse me” and “excuse me” is a fistfight
See also: the Australian habit of insulting people by way of showing affection, which other English-speakers also do, but not in a context where deescalating the spoken invective actively increases the degree of offence intended, particularly if you’ve just been affectionately-insulting with someone else.
By which I mean: if you’ve just called your best mate an absolute dickhead, you can’t then call a hated politician something that’s (technically) worse, like a total fuckwit, because that would imply either that you were really insulting your mate or that you like the politician. Instead, you have to use a milder epithet, like bastard, to convey your seething hatred for the second person. But if your opening conversational gambit is slagging someone off, then it’s acceptable to go big (”The PM’s a total cockstain!”) at the outset.
Also note that different modifiers radically change the meaning of particular insults. Case in point: calling someone a fuckin’ cunt is a deadly insult, calling someone a mad cunt is a compliment, and calling someone a fuckin’ mad cunt means you’re literally in awe of them. Because STRAYA.
case in point: the ‘Howard DJs like a mad cunt’ meme.
i think especially with relatively near future sci-fi and alternate present/just off reality sci-fi and fantasy, it’s a lot more effective to play off of “this word is the same, but the thing it refers to is in fact different than what you’ll initially picture or assume” than to invent a bunch of cutesy fake slang (again, ESPECIALLY for things we already have good words for)
like, for a real life example of what im talking about– we had “phones” in 1977, and we still have “phones” in 2017, but MAN would a time traveler from the 70s be confused by the things we call “phones” now, and the ways we use and relate to them– “im typing this text post on my phone, and autocorrect keeps cramping my style” is a straightforward and easily understandable sentence to me in 2017. it would sound like word salad to someone from 1977. (how can you TYPE something on a PHONE?? what does “post” mean in this context, or “text”? the fuck is “autocorrect”??)
but we still call them “phones”, you know, and not, idk, “cyberrectangles”
interplanetary shuttle system makes use of automated, pre-scheduled wormholes to get you to your day job on mars every morning – still called taking the bus.
super high-tech window protectors that keep out the deadly light of the ultra-bright sun? “close the curtains, tom, it’s almost dawn.”
your zero-g space station’s air filtration system is malfunctioning, threatening to cause a fiery explosion as all the waste co2 builds up in the engine room rather than the greenhouse? time to call the plumber.
You look into the mirror to check your outfit for the day, lips pursed in thought. “Turn it around” you say out loud, and the reflection of you rotates as it still copies every movement you make so you can check out your own ass without twisting around.
You press the button on the vending machine for the snack you’ve been craving for days but haven’t had time to indulge in. The delivery space quickly builds up the sweet circles with a little bit of jam in the middle, and announces cheerily, “Your biscuit is ready.”. “What the fuck,” you say to nobody in particular, “That is clearly a COOKIE.”
I have to say, listening to my friends talk about Final Fantasy XV is pretty wild when you know Latin but absolutely nothing about the game. Everyone’s name is literally a Latin word, and it’s beautiful.
So far, I know the protagonist is a guy named Nightlight, son of King King, and he’s on some type of road trip with his friends Quicksilver, Fire Knowledge, and Smol Sword of Friendship.
Okay, hang on. Forgot that Fire Knowledge had a middle name too.
Ignis Stupeo Scientia.
That’s actually a grammatically complete sentence. Literally, “I am stupefied by knowledge of fire”. Dude is a caveman. No one show him a wheel; it’ll blow his mind.
Even better: while Gladiolus literally translates to “little sword”, it also means a type of lily. So an equally valid translation for his name is Friendship Lily. His options are pretty much either “thinly veiled dick joke” or “actually a My Little Pony”.
In Austria, we call kittens at that age “Autodromkatzerl”, which translates to “bumper car kittens”, because of the way their tail sticks up. It’s not a really common word, but a very cute one, I think
this is a genuinely delightful bit of knowledge, thank you for sharing this!! omg
Also, academic texts. Full of bullshit. You could sum that stuff up in like three paragraphs, but some old white dude is gonna ramble on using unnecessarily lavish vocabulary for three whole pages until you want to cry.
And then the guy who wrote it has the fucking audacity to stand up in your dissertation seminar and tell you “Now remember that you should always keep your language simple and make your argument in a concise and brief manner.”
For real though, this just adds to the inaccessibility of college. I was unable to get through 75% of any assigned reading because my undiagnosed ADHD made it impossible to trudge through the swamp of unnecessary bullshit they wrote in textbooks.
I literally could not concentrate long enough to pick the facts that I needed to know out of their flowery language.
The accent circonflexe (^) exists in French words to replace the “s” that no longer exists but used to be there in older French.
For example: fenêtre used to be fenestre
It is still possible to see the “s” at times in family words like “défenestrer”.
knowing this, « être » becomes much more regular :
être → estre (es, est, sommes, ê[s]tes, sont ; ser-)
some French derivations become clearer :
fenêtre → défenestrer → L. fenestra
fête → festival
hôpital → hospitaliser (E. hospital, ise)
intérêt → intéressant (E. interest, -ing)
ancêtre → ancestral (E. ancestor, -ral)
arrêt → arrestation
épître → épistolaire (E. epistle)
some English cognates become more obvious :
hôtel → hostel (E. ‘hotel’ borrowed from French)
forêt → forest (tipp to remember ^ goes on the ‹e›)
bête → beast
côte → coast
honnête → honest
pâte, pâté → pasta, paste
quête → quest
enquête → inquest
tempête → tempest
vêtements → vestments (ie. clothes)
baptême → baptism
sometimes, the acute replaces the circumfex for phonetic reasons :
ḗcole → escole → L. schola (E. school)
ḗtranger → estrangier (E. stranger)
ḗtudier → estudier (E. study)
dḗgoûtant → desgoustant (E. disgusting)
dḗbarquer → desembarquer (E. disembark)
rḗpondre → respondre (E. respond)
rḗpublique → L. res publica
Also, where « c → ch» (eg. cantare→ chanter) :
château → castel (E. castle)
pêcher → L. piscare
and « w → gu » (eg. war→ guerre ; warden→ guardian) :
guêpe → E. wasp ! (this is my n° 1 favourite cognate)
bonus etymologies :
tête → L. testa
fantôme → L. phantasma (E. ‘phantom’ borrowed from French)
Pâques → Gk. pásxa → Am. pésaḫ (E. Paschal)
Also just be aware that the circumflex has some other uses too, like distinguishing « sur — sûr » or « dû » and the vowel quality in « âge »
Where was this post when I was doing A-Level French! This is actually a really interesting language change called “syncope” (the loss of a medial segment within a word) and what makes it even more interesting to me is that not only was the -s- dropped post vocalically and largely before voiceless stops, but that the circumflex was (unnecessarily but coolly) adopted as an orthographic marker of the lost -s-. Even more interesting is that syncope usually occurs in vowels. I love this.
An Old English word for library was “bōchord”, which literally means “book hoard”, and honestly I really think we should go back to saying that because not only does it sound really fucking cool, but it also sort of implies that librarians are dragons.
confession: in the Russian alphabet, the letter х is pronounced like a hard h so whenever I see a phrase like “Sorry for your loss xoxo”, instead of hugs and kisses my brain always briefly interprets it as "Sorry for your loss HOHOHO" like some jolly Santa Schadenfreude laughter there
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