Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

pog-with-a-blog:

En Anglais, on ne dit pas “quatre vingt dix neuf”, on dit “ninety nine” qu'on pourrait traduire comme “Hurr durr, regardez mois, j'ai un système de numérotation fonctionnel” et je crois que c'est magnifique.

Full disclosure, I parlez exactly no Francais, but I speak enough Spanish and Latin to fucking laugh my ass off at this every time.

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

firlachiel:

cuddlyaxe:

thatswhywelovegermany:

jershmersh:

kiwiaupair:

rebecca2525:

sherlylikeswaffles:

wonderfulnonsense:

apfelgranate:

icoulduseinsouciantmaybe:

valarauka:

kkatkkrap:

fujisalci:

inkcaviness:

the-lonely-scottish-guy:

silent-cannibal:

absolut-niemand:

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.)

1. “Du gehst mir auf den Senkel.” = “You’re walking on my shoelace(s).”
2. “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”?

Holy mackerel I love this soooo!!

Also we have “noch in Abrahams Wurstkessel sein,” or “to still be in Abraham’s sausage pot”, which is basically saying you haven’t been born yet. As in, when Carter was president of the US, I was still in Abraham’s sausage pot.

I know “noch als Quark im Schaufenster liegen”, “to be still on display in the shop window as curd cheese” for not having been born yet.

Or there is the slightly less icky “mit den Mücken fliegen”, “to be flying with the mosquitoes”, or something my uncle says in his dialect: “Sternle putze”, “to be cleaning stars”.

Let’s not forget fremdschämen - to be ashamed/embarassed on behalf of somebody else. 

Or our wonderful alternatives to calling somebody “Wimp”: Schattenparker, Turnbeutelvergesser, Warmduscher… (somebody who only parks in the shadow, somebody who forgets their gym bag, somebody who only showers with warm water… the list is endless)

(Source: absolutniemand, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

pog-with-a-blog:

En Anglais, on ne dit pas “quatre vingt dix neuf”, on dit “ninety nine” qu'on pourrait traduire comme “Hurr durr, regardez mois, j'ai un système de numérotation fonctionnel” et je crois que c'est magnifique.

(via clockwork-mockingbird)

jamieoliveira:

Memento mori: (Latin: "remember (that you have) to die”)
The medieval Latin theory and practice of reflection on mortality, especially as a means of considering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits.

Mono no aware (物の哀れ): (Japanese: “the sensitivity to ephemera”)
The awareness of impermanence (無常 mujō), or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.

L’appel du vide: (French: “call of the void”)
The psychological phenomenon in which people, with no desire to die, find themselves faced with a steep cliff and experience a strong desire to leap.

Amor fati: (Latin: “the love of one’s fate”)
An attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good; or, at the very least, necessary.

L’appel du vide is the most interesting phenomenon, though, because it appears to be almost universal, to some degree or another.  (By degree, I mean: my dad only gets it if he’s really high up, whereas anything more than a story gives me that murmur in the hollow parts of my chest.)  The theory is that it’s the instinct to make a decision, do something really conclusive, in a situation where your brain feels in limbo, and at the top of a tall edge, there’s nothing more conclusive than jumping off.

(Source: aterraterra, via fireflyca)

slyrider:

belinsky:

‘staring into the camera like you’re on the office’ is such an interesting cultural phenomenon because it points to one of my very favorite things in pop culture, which is the use of commonly known fictional situations to indicate an emotion or context that is extremely specific and can’t necessarily be communicated with language alone.

why do characters on the office look into the camera?  on the office, the characters are being filmed as part of a documentary; they understand they are being filmed and can acknowledge that fourth wall and those theoretical future viewers.  but because the office is a comedy, that fourth wall acknowledgement is not about explaining motivations or gaining approval for an action, but about sharing an agreement with a group of people who are not actually there.  

characters on the office look into the camera when something ridiculous is happening that no one in the room thinks is ridiculous but the person looking at the camera, were they to say ‘this is so ridiculous’ to the people in the room, their comrades in fiction, they would get serious pushback or anger; to those characters the situation is serious.  the character looking into the camera is a more objective viewer, like the audience, and by looking at us they’re putting themselves on our objective team.  and in the future when this ‘documentary’ would air, they would be vindicated as the person who understood that the situation was ridiculous.

so in real life, when we talk about ‘looking into the camera like we’re on the office’, this very specific emotion is what we’re referring to: that we’re in a situation that any objective viewer would find inherently ridiculous, and are seeking acknowledgement from an invisible but much larger group that would agree with us, even though nobody in the situation would do so.  we’re putting ourselves in an outsider position, a less emotional position, and inherently a more powerful position, because we’re not vulnerable to being laughed at like all the ridiculous people we’re among.  we’re among them, but we’re not with them, and the millions of people watching us on theoretical tv would be on our team, not theirs.  that’s such a specific idea and concept, and one that’s really hard to communicate in pure language.  but we can say ‘looking into the camera like we’re on the office’ and it’s much easier to communicate what we mean.

for me that’s what pop culture is for, and why it’s so important that it’s pop culture.  maybe it feels more special if it’s only you and a grape who know that something exists, but the more people consume something, the more its situations and reactions become common knowledge, a sort of communal well from which we can draw to articulate real life problems.  and ultimately, the easier it is for us to communicate and understand each other.

@words-writ-in-starlight

allthingslinguistic:

ladysparklefists:

idk I just love how we Young People Today use ~improper~ punctuation/grammar in actually really defined ways to express tone without having to explicitly state tone like that’s just really fucking cool, like

no    =    “No,” she said. 

no.    =    "No,” she said sharply.

No    =    “No,” she stated firmly.

No.    =    “No,” she snapped.

NO    =    “No!” she shouted.

noooooo    =    “No,” she moaned.

no~    =    “No,” she said with a drawn-out sing-song.

~no~    =    “No,” she drawled sarcastically.

NOOOOO    =    “No!” she screamed dramatically.

no?!    =    “No,” she said incredulously.

I’ve been calling this “typographical nuance” and I have a few more to add: 

*no* = “No,” she said emphatically. 

*nopes on out of here* = “No,” she said of herself in the third person, with a touch of humorous emphasis.

~*~noooo~*~ = “No,” she moaned in stylized pseudo-desperation.

#no = “No,” she added as a side comment.

“no” = “No,” she scare-quoted.

wtf are you kidding no = “No,” she said flatly. “And I can’t believe I have to say this.”

no no No No NO NO NO NO = "No,” she repeated over and over again, growing louder and more emphatic. 

nooOOOO = “No,” she said, starting out quietly and turning into a scream.

*no = “Oops, I meant ‘no,’” she corrected, “Sorry for the typo in my previous message.”

(via allgreymatters)

Some of my favourite linguistic developments

latinahermione:

toddmonotony:

‘Is that a thing?’ for ‘does that exist?’

Deliberate omission of grammar to show e.g. defeatedness, bewilderment, fury. As seen in Tumblr’s ‘what is this I don’t even’.

‘Because [noun]’. As in ‘we couldn’t have our picnic in the meadow because wasps.’

Use of kerning to indicate strong bewilderment, i.e. double-spaced letters usually denoting ‘what is happening?’ This one is really interesting because it doesn’t really translate well to speech. It’s something people have come up with that uses the medium of text over the internet as a new way of communicating instead of just a transcript of speech or a quicker way to send postal letters.

Just the general playing around with sentence structure and still being able to be understood. One of my favourites of these is the ‘subject: *verbs* / object: *is verb*’ couplet, as in:

Beekeeper: *keeps bees*
Bees: *is keep*

or

Me: *holds puppy*
Puppy: *is hold*

I just love how this all develops organically with no deciding body, and how we all understand and adapt to it.

@edotschuy

(via academicfeminist)