language

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

mildswearingat4am:

kvothbloodless:

bumblebeebats:

It baffles and infuriates me that Hogwarts students don’t take Latin or Greek. Accio? Literally “I summon.” Lumos? Fucking “light.” Expelliarmus? Expel weapon!! Ooooh I wonder what Levicorpus does– you Dumb Ass Bastard. You ILLITERATE. It’s called Levicorpus, it lifts someone’s body, it LEVIES your goddamn CORPUS-

Hermione ghost wrote this

Counterpoint: Hogwarts actively discourages students from taking Latin or Greek because if they knew either one every single magic twelve year old would be trying to mash up twenty words and make their own Ultimate Spell instead of using the Good Standardized Spells Known Not To Explode Magic Schools 

Tags:

#Harry Potter #meta #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

allthingslinguistic:

Noam Chomsky: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is a sentence that is grammatically correct, but semantically nonsensical. 

 Me, a Magic the Gathering player:

–Ausir on twitter

Tags:

#I don’t actually speak MtG #but apparently I’m a sucker for ”colorless green ideas sleep furiously” jokes #(this is the third one I’ve reblogged over the years) #language #Magic the Gathering

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

garashirs:

one of my favorite tropes of all time is when the author tries to replace curse words with a more ‘family friendly’ alternative or invent new words for worldbuilding purposes but they use existing words that make the whole thing unintentionally hilarious out of context

 

garashirs:

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like these absolute gems, for example

 

garashirs:

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akirakan:

@hayley566 you know what to do.

 

hayley566:

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Take your pick

 

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

“I’m losing the vaping groundcar!”

I now have

The oddest possible mental image

Tags:

#language #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(”maybe I would have listened…to you…if you didn’t keep saying ‘shock’…all the time…”)

spoonierbard asked: You have an ear for meter as demonstrated by your rewriting of various poetry or lyrics. Do you ever write any of your own verse?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

slatestarscratchpad:

Not seriously. I can’t bring myself to write serious emotional poetry because it always sounds overwrought and pretentious to me; I’m also pretty private about my serious emotions. I do occasionally compose things for fun. Here’s a poem I wrote a long time ago which I don’t think is online anywhere anymore, called “The Battle Of The Nouns And Verbs”:

The Nouns and Verbs go off to war
Nobody knows what they’re fighting for
No one has heard any insult or slight
But they gather their armies and go off to fight

The Nouns stand resplendent upon the field
They have swords, they have spears, they have many a shield
They have grain, they have meat, they have beer beside
They have valor and honor and courage and pride

They have horses and banners and many a lance
But they stand in one place, and they will not advance
They stand as if they have grown roots on the spot
The Marshal cries “March!”, but his armies march not

The Verbs fill with joy at their enemies’ plight
They yell and they jump and they shout and they fight
They pierce and they hack and they mow and they slash
They thrust and they bust and they shatter and smash

But their army, though valiant, is short of provisions
They lack food, they lack water, they lack ammunitions
They faltered and grumbled and groaned and retreated
Distressed, disappointed, disheartened, defeated.

The Nouns and the Verbs both pitch their tents
And they dig up some trenches and take the defence
The war hasn’t stopped, but they both feel afraid
So they summon their allies to come to their aid.

The host of the Adjectives comes from the West
They are brave, they are daring, the greatest and best
Their weapons are shiny and sharp and long
Their horses are fast and their soldiers are strong.

But out of the East, to the beat of a drum
The Adverbs, triumphantly, finally come
They have carefully planned after war was declared
They are really extremely completely prepared.

Boom! Smash! Pow! Smack!
The Interjections launch their attack!
Yikes! Whoa! Alas! Alack!
The Interjections get beaten back!

You and I, hand in hand
Come all the way from Pronoun-Land
The king there wants this war to cease
So he sends us off with his plan for peace.

But the king of the Verbs sees through our lies
Says the Pronouns are merely the Nouns in disguise!
So you and I, hand in hand
Journey back to Pronoun-Land.

A month and a year and a decade go by
And hundreds and thousands and millions die
And the carnage and terror and bloodshed don’t cease
Till there’s just the verb “make” and there’s just the noun “peace”.

The two of them ponder the cruelty of life
And in vain seek a meaning from all of the strife
And at last, come together, and take a deep breath
And they bow,
And shake hands,
And they…
Fight to the death!

Tags:

#poetry #language #death mention

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

I’m not sure what’s funnier: the fact that the French translation of this blurb doesn’t include the bit about “legume” being “a funny sounding French word”, or the hypothetical version where they *did* include it.

—

(Note also the translation of the “Yes, peas!” pun as “Oui, s’il vous pois!”, which–I don’t speak French anywhere near well enough to know how well that really works, but from what I can tell they may have actually pulled that one off.)

Tags:

#I was expecting dried pea pods #but it turns out these are actually pea-pod-shaped rice puffs but with the rice flour mixed with a large proportion of pea flour #I can see why people would like them but I don’t think they’re for me #now I know #oh look an original post #our home and cherished land #language #food

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

satanpositive:

Roses are red, that much is true, but violets are purple, not fucking blue.

 

feels-for-the-fictional:

I have been waiting for this post all my life.

 

marzipanandminutiae:

They are indeed purple,
But one thing you’ve missed:
The concept of “purple”
Didn’t always exist.

Some cultures lack names
For a color, you see.
Hence good old Homer
And his “wine-dark sea.”

A usage so quaint,
A phrasing so old,
For verses of romance
Is sheer fucking gold.

So roses are red.
Violets once were called blue.
I’m hugely pedantic
But what else is new?

 

ineptshieldmaid:

My friend you’re not wrong

About Homer’s wine-ey sea!

Colours are a matter

Of cultural contingency;

Words are in flux

And meanings they drift

But the word purple

You’ve given short shrift.

The concept of purple,

My friends, is old

And refers to a pigment

once precious as gold.

By crushing up molluscs

From the wine-dark sea

You make a dye:

Imperial decree

Meant that in Rome,

to wear purpura

was a privilege reserved

For only the emperor!

The word ‘purple’,

for clothes so fancy,

Entered English

By the ninth century

.

Why then are voilets

Not purple in song?

The dye from this mollusc,

known for so long

Is almost magenta;

More red than blue.

The concept of purple

is old, and yet new.

The dye is red,

So this might be true:

Roses are purple

And violets are blue

.

 

squeeful:

While this song makes me merry,
Tyrian purple dyes many a hue
From magenta to berry
And a true purple too.


But fun as it is to watch this poetic race
The answer is staring you right in the face:
Roses are red and violets are blue
Because nothing fucking rhymes with purple.

 

cryoverkiltmilk:

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hopelessromanticinspace:

Hirple – To limp or walk awkwardly

Cirple – An old Scots word for the hindquarters of a horse

 

nobodybetterhavethisoneoriswear:

“Roses are red, violets are purple,

My boner for you has caused me to hirple.”

…

My, how romantic!

 

wouldthatcreationhadformedmeman:

DYING. I AM DYING.

 

kiranovember:

Calling theshitpostcalligrapher! We need @theshitpostcalligrapher

 

theshitpostcalligrapher:

@kiranovember u better buy this as a commission lmao

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simonalkenmayer:

This post has evolved.

Tags:

#poetry #language #history #nsfw text #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog

Winnie ille Pu

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

pittrarebooks:

What’s even better than Winnie-the-Pooh? Winnie-the-Pooh in Latin, of course! Some of you may be saying, “Huh?” Why would you translate a children’s story into a dead language? I don’t know, but it is real and it’s
called Winnie ille Pu. Just look! Pooh Bear’s in a toga and it’s so adorable.

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Alexander Lenard translated A.A. Milne’s classic into the Latin language, and published it in 1960. Then and now, it proved quite unexpectedly to be very popular. Winnie ille Pu is the only Latin language book to ever become a New York Times best seller. Nothing is written in English—not even the map labels! It has been called “the greatest book a dead language has ever known.” Its popularity took even the publishers by surprise; they had only ordered a small printing to be made of the book, and within weeks it was nowhere to be found in bookstores.

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Lenard spoke 12 languages, and was a Latin enthusiast. Taking seven years to translate the whole of Milne’s first Pooh book, Lenard almost became an additional author in his own right. He tailored the translation to include its own alliteration, puns, rhymes, and other language-specific quirks. Actual Latin scholars would be able to read this book for its own enjoyment, not just as an exercise.

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One of the best things about Winnie ille Pu is figuring out how Lenard re-named all of the characters. Here is a list of their new Latin christenings:

  • Christophorus Robinus: Christopher Robin
  • Porcellus: Piglet
  • Ior: Eeyore
  • Bubo: Owl
  • Ru: Roo
  • Lepus: Rabbit
  • Canga: Kanga
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Now, you may be thinking, where is Tiggerus? I also searched for him in vain. Fun fact: Tigger does not appear until the second Pooh Bear book, The House at Pooh Corner, and he is the only new major character to be introduced.

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-Lauren Galloway, Archival Assistant

Sources:

McDowell, Edwin. “ ‘Winnie Ille Pu’ nearly XXV years later.” The New York Times. 18 Nov. 1984, http://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/18/books/winnie-ille-pu-nearly-xxv-years-later.html. Accessed 20 Feb. 2018.

“Tigger.” Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation, www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigger. Accessed 20 Feb. 2018.

Tags:

#Winnie the Pooh #language #neat

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

mikeyfriskeyhands:

My brother saved this document and everytime he gets angry at our neighbours for being loud he prints it to their wireless printer and you can hear the wife shout “Why the fuck would you print this AGAIN?!” to her son.

 

auntytimblr:

every time we serve chicken at work i think of this post

 

gallusrostromegalus:

1.  If you were wondering, you can type the numbers in the works cited into google and they appear to be medical journal articles about using medical imaging to detect and diagnose a rare form of Gastritis.

2. Please enjoy the offical powerpoint presentation of this paper at an academic conference by the original author, complete with Q&A:

 

zillyart32:

THIS IS GOLD

 

aprillikesthings:

oh m god please watch the video it’s some of the most contagious laughter on the planet

 

artikgato:

When I saw this cross my dash tonight, I smiled and thought “yess, the chicken chicken chicken post, I get to reblog it again and inflict it on all of the people that have followed me since last time”, and then I scrolled down more and to my utter delight there was A VIDEO, needless to say my night has been made

 

eliciaforever:

I HAVE NOT SEEN THE CHICKEN VIDEO IN TEN DAMN YEARS HOLY SHIT

STILL FUNNY

 

ruelukas22:

The bell

The last question

The woman howling in laughter 90% of the time

It’s all beautiful

It’s all

So beautiful

 

rowantheexplorer:

I love that he was absolutely 100% prepared for a question in chickenese.

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(though tbh I was already going to reblog it before that) #may or may not have reblogged this before #definitely have seen it before #chicken