i work as a barista & people tell me all the time that The Drinks Got Gender. Thats A Lady Coffee, people try to say
its fucking bean water
can’t believe i can’t just reply to this but: maybe they’re actually telling you that this coffee has an important status. Lady Coffee
oh shit i was in the presence of bean water royalty oh fuck i must have looked like such a rube. such a fool.
what the fuck does this post mean ive been trying to decipher its hieroglyphic encrypted message but i cant
“From a deconstructionist stand point, I have to disagree with a large portion of the customers that I, a humble barista tend to each day. The assertion that certain coffee drinks are more suitable for one gender or another is folly. For as we know: 1. gender is a social construct, & 2. coffee of any type is simply hot water strained through roasted beans, & has no greater affect on either culturally assigned sex.”
“What ho, kind friend! Is it not unfortunate that I cannot simply reply to this post, & most reblog it? What a farce, this blue website! Ah, but I digress: what if perhaps your customers were not asserting not the suitability of the drink for a given gender, but rather indicating some matter of status? Perhaps the coffee is possessing of a high rank in society. This is of course my purely grammatical viewpoint on the subject.”
“Oh, damnation! This does in fact seem much more likely than my own ludicrous assumptions, & I was no doubt in the presence of roasted bean royalty! Some emissary from foreign soil! Curses! What a country bumpkin I’ve made myself out to be!!”
THE ANCESTORS OF GIRAFFES LIKELY HAD ANTLERS FOR COMBAT PURPOSES, LIKE DEERS AND MOOSES. AS THEY GOT COMICALLY TALL, THE WEIGHT OF ANTLERS GOT TOO HEAVY FOR THEIR HILARIOUS NECKS, AND ANTLER FIGHTING BECAME OBSOLETE AND RIDICULOUS, SO THEY EVOLVED PAST ANTLERS. THE NUBS, OR “OSSICONES,” ARE VESTIGIAL STRUCTURES IN THE GIRAFFE’S SKULL. THEY’RE LEFTOVER SUPPORT STRUCTURES FOR THE ANTLERS GIRAFFES USED TO HAVE BEFORE THEY BECAME THE BIOLOGICAL JOKE WE KNOW AND LOVE TODAY.
THE PLURAL OF MOOSE IS NOT MOOSES.
“MOOSES” IS ONE OF MULTIPLE ACCEPTED PLURALS OF THE ANGLICIZED VERSION OF THE ALGONQUIN WORD “MOOSE.” IF WE WERE SPEAKING ALGONQUIN, THE PLURAL WOULD BE “MOSINEE,” BUT WHEN SPEAKING ENGLISH, EITHER “MOOSE” OR “MOOSES” WILL BE ACCEPTABLE AS PLURALS.
“MEESE,” FOR EXAMPLE, IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE PLURAL FOR “MOOSE” BECAUSE IT’S NOT DERIVED FROM THE SAME LANGUAGE FAMILY AS THE WORD “GEESE.”
THIS IS THE SAME REASON WHY THE PLURAL OF “OCTOPUS” IS “OCTOPUSES” IN ENGLISH AND “OCTOPODES” IN THE ORIGINAL GREEK, AND “OCTOPI” NOWHERE BECAUSE OCTOPUS IS NOT A WORD IN LATIN.
ALSO, THE STICKING POINT FOR YOU WAS “MOOSES” BUT YOU HAD NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT “DEERS?”
Life is about learning, right? Upon coming to Ireland, a couple things were clarified for me by my Irish friends. For instance, no one speaks ‘Gaelic’ in Ireland.
Before people start fainting, let me explain. Gaelic is a linguistic term that covers three different Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. It’s what’s called in the biz, ‘Q-Celtic’, because when certain words in the Gaelic languages were making ‘Q’ or ‘K’ sounds, their sister-words in ‘P-Celtic’ languages were making ‘P’ or ‘B’ sounds. Welsh, Breton, and Manx make up the P-Celtic, Brythonic languages.
Here’s an example:
In Irish, the word for ‘son’ or ‘boy’ is mac.
In Welsh, that word is mab.
See what happened there? This is why asking an Irish person if they speak ‘Gaelic’ will only get you a confused reply. The Irish speak Irish. Basta cosí.
The second thing my friends made clear was that Irish myth is Irish, Welsh myth is Welsh, Cornish myth is Cornish. ‘Celtic’ is another word that won’t get you very far.
Like Gaelic, ‘Celtic’ is a linguistic umbrella term. It makes about as much sense to talk about a book of ‘Celtic myths’ as it does to talk about the ‘Romantic cookbook’ you used for that lasagne recipe (Italian is a Romance language). Often, when people talk about ‘Celtic’ myth, what they really mean are the myths of one of the six languages mentioned above.
TL;DR. Celtic ≠ Irish
≠ Gaelic, etc.
Why does this matter?
It matters because these are different cultures we’re talking about, different histories and social identities. In calling the character Rhiannon a Celtic goddess, she loses definition. She becomes vague. In calling her a Welsh character, she has a context, a history. Cú Chulainn is not a Celtic hero, but an Irish one, with all the literary and historical implications that brings. It doesn’t help that we don’t have, archaeologically or linguistically, any evidence to say that all the cultures that spoke Celtic languages shared a similar cultural identity.
Liz Bourke and Charles Stross have recently blogged on similar lines, and I admit I was inspired to say something, myself, after reading them. (Check them out!)
Is this all a bit pedantic? Maybe. To be honest, it’s worth being a little persnickety if it means adding definition and clarity and understanding to our world. Understanding, in my mind, is always a good thing.
In Germany we don’t say “I don’t care” we say “Das ist mir Wurst” which roughly translates as “This is sausage to me” I think that’s beautiful.
no you don’t understand we actually do say that
i crashed my car into a bridge
THIS IS SAUSAGE TO ME
We also say “That’s not my beer” for “That’s none of my buisness” and I think that’s beautiful
is germany even real
My roommate dated a German. When I was making dinner one night, he asked my roommate, “this food… does it taste?”
At our confusion, he explained that in Germany, food either “tastes” or “does not taste”. Which he then said he supposed said something about German food.
To be fair we do say “it tastes good” and “it tastes bad” and many variations thereof, but when we want to be succinct, then yes, it just tastes or doesn’t taste.
Other fun turns of phrase in German include:
“Ich versteh’ nur Bahnhof” = “I only understand train station” for when you’re confused
“Hast du Tomaten auf den Augen?” = “Have you got tomatoes on your eyes?” for when someone’s not seeing the obvious
“Auf die Schippe nehmen” = “Take someone on a shovel”, basically means to take the piss out of someone
“Du gehst mir auf den Sack” = “You’re walking on my sack” for when you’re pissed off
the world is beautiful
also there’s two more variations of “Du gehst mir auf den Sack.” (btw by sack we mean testicle. yeah.)
“Du gehst mir auf den Senkel.” = “You’re walking on my shoelace(s).”
“Du gehst mir auf den Keks.” = “You’re walking on my cookie.”
ALSO WE HAVE THE WORD “DOCH” (basically means yes, but in response to someone saying no) AND IT IS A FUCKING TRAGEDY THAT THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE HAS NO EQUIVALENT
I MISS ‘DOCH’ SO MUCH you basically have to settle for “does so” or “yes it does” or something not half as succintly defiant
I also miss “aneinander vorbei reden” = “to talk past each other”, meaning when people are completely missing each other’s points / talking about two different things. It’s such nice imagery.
And we call stupid people “Hans Wurst” = “Hans Sausage” (no matter if you are boy or a girl)
Yeah, if we are surprised we say “Holla die Waldfee” = “Holla the forest fairy”
Seriously though, how do children grow up without “doch” und “trotzdem”?
