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Random Stuff VII: The Admins Awaken

Young Bard

By Young Bard
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Kaymyth
Kaymyth

I don't think I'd be able to look my reflection in the eye if I didn't share this little bit of discovered madness with you all:  

Mestiv
Mestiv

Probably most of us:

Young Bard
Young Bard

For you music folks:  

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Pestis the Spider

Pestis the Spider she/her

Posted
Posted (edited)

When you learn most languages, you have a choice of two genders: male and female. When you're an English person learning German, your chances of getting it right are even slimmer: 1 in 3. Masculine, feminine and neuter. (Der, die and das respectively, for anyone interested. The teacher had a couple tips, but they were usually suffixed by "except for these exceptions to the rule, so it's probably better just to learn each one individually anyway..." <_<)

Well, let me just mention that there are 3-7 genders in Polish (depending on how you count), and then you have to modify every single word in a sentence according to this gender. :)

 

But I do agree that German der, die , das is really annoying. It's just so much to remember, without any reasonable rules, really. I'm still wondering why girl is a neuter gender in German - das Mädchen. It's a girl, why would she be neuter gender? O.o

 

 

Oh yeah, Spanish has gendered words too. Maybe it's just English that's an odd one out.

Nah, not really. It's a little odd one for European languages, true, but not that much. It has some basic genders of the nouns remaining though. Like you know that all non-personal nouns are neuter (it) by default. Except for ships. Ships are a "she". English used to have gendered nouns like German, but it disappeared. 

 

EDIT: Oops, looks like I'm too traditional. Apparently nowadays "she" for ships is only optional in Modern English and "advised against" in American English. My mistake. :(

 

But other than European language, I don't think English is that much a odd one out. There are languages that are classified as completely genderless (while English has some genders reamining, though mots is gender-neutral). As far as I know Hungarian (though really difficult language with lots of grammar) does not use genders. Similarly Finnish and Estonian. Chinese grammar is all based on word-order in a sentence (and pretty simple in fact), so there are no grammatical genders either. Japanese has these differences in male and female speech, but despite that they don't really have a grammatical gender. 

 

Well, I just really like to talk about languages. :)

Edited by Pestis the Spider
ChickenPlague

ChickenPlague he/him

Posted
Posted (edited)

Latvian grammar has some amazing stuff too.

All nouns for example can be seperated into 6 categories (3 male, 3 female). Then you bend(probably the wrong word) each of these categories in 7 questions. Here is an example of an english word (Peter) and a latvian word (Pēteris(It's 1st category(meaning it ends with s or š))) being bent(again) to answer these questions.

N.(what?) Peter Pēteris

Ģ.(whose?) Peter's Pētera

D.(whom?)* Peter Pēterim

A.(what?)** Peter Pēteri

I.(with what?)*** with Peter ar Pēteri

L.(where?) in/on/at Peter Pēterī

V.(!)**** Peter! Pēteri!

*"whom/what does it belong to?" and the like.

**For example the sentence "John hit Peter." uses this. "Peter stood." does not

***Diferentiates from A. in plural form.

****Used when calling out to someone.

Mind you the first category is one of the simplest.

Also those (A., I., N.)were not the full names (obviously) I just can't translate them well.

Edit:Pēteris is actually 2nd category.(they're called "deklanācijas" in Latvian)

Edited by ChickenPlague
TwiLyghtSansSparkles

TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her

Posted
Posted

In a recent update for the Fantastic Beasts movie, it was revealed that in America, Muggles are not called Muggles. American witches and wizards refer to someone born without magic as a No-Maj. 

 

Can I take a moment to say how much I love this? 

 

It's not because the name No-Maj is more creative than "Muggle." Nor is it because it rolls off the tongue easier; to tell you the truth, I think "Muggle" is more fun to say. No, I love the name No-Maj because renaming Muggles for the sake of it is such an American thing to do. 

 

I imagine it happening like a conversation from Scandinavia and the World, between Wizarding England and Wizarding America: 

 

"So, son, what have you done about the Muggles?" 

"Muggles? No. That's your word. I'm independent now." 

"Honestly? We're really going through this again?" 

"They're….um….let's see….no magic…no-mag…ic….No-Maj!" 

*blank stare* 

"That's right. Muggles are No-Majes now." 

*sigh* "Why can't you just call them Muggles?" 

"Because America!" 

2
Pestis the Spider

Pestis the Spider she/her

Posted
Posted

Latvian grammar has some amazing stuff too.

All nouns for example can be seperated into 6 categories (3 male, 3 female). Then you bend(probably the wrong word) each of these categories in 7 questions. 

 

Ah, declension is the pain of many central and eastern European languages. In Polish we also have seven cases ("questions") and I heard that this is a fairly normal number for Slavic languages (though Russian has 6 cases only). But for example Finnish has 15 cases and Hungarian has 18 cases. xD But I actually heard that it's because they don't use prepositions like "in", "on" etc. so they just inflect nouns instead. So I understand that they basically use different suffixes instead of prepositions and that's why they have 18 (that's a crazy huge number) cases. That's interesting. :D

 

The problem of cases is why learning German was a real pain for me. English is simple, it doesn't have any cases, so it's fine. But German has 4 cases, while Polish has 7 cases. It's really difficult to learn how to fit 7 cases into 4 cases, when I try to translate something from Polish to German. It just doesn't want to fit. Oh well. 

Kaymyth

Kaymyth she/her

Posted
Posted

Ah, declension is the pain of many central and eastern European languages. In Polish we also have seven cases ("questions") and I heard that this is a fairly normal number for Slavic languages (though Russian has 6 cases only). But for example Finnish has 15 cases and Hungarian has 18 cases. xD But I actually heard that it's because they don't use prepositions like "in", "on" etc. so they just inflect nouns instead. So I understand that they basically use different suffixes instead of prepositions and that's why they have 18 (that's a crazy huge number) cases. That's interesting. :D

 

The problem of cases is why learning German was a real pain for me. English is simple, it doesn't have any cases, so it's fine. But German has 4 cases, while Polish has 7 cases. It's really difficult to learn how to fit 7 cases into 4 cases, when I try to translate something from Polish to German. It just doesn't want to fit. Oh well. 

 

I...I think that is the first time I have ever heard anyone refer to the English language as "simple".  :blink:

2
DreamEternal

DreamEternal

Posted
Posted (edited)

I...I think that is the first time I have ever heard anyone refer to the English language as "simple". :blink:

But it is simple. So stupidly simple it can wrap upon itself and become hard because of lack of well-defined rules.

Edited by DreamEternal
Pestis the Spider

Pestis the Spider she/her

Posted
Posted

I...I think that is the first time I have ever heard anyone refer to the English language as "simple".  :blink:

Are you saying that English is difficult? Because I've never heard anyone say English is a difficult language. The only problem is pronunciation, because in English it's totally random, with almost no rules whatsoever. English pronunciation is annoying and impossible to guess by just looking at the word. But you can just remember most of these, so it's only slightly hard memory-wise. 

 

But English grammar is really simple. There are no cases, almost no genders. Verbs are not modified by persons (only 3rd person gets an "s"), word-order is much more fixed than in Polish, and there are no randomly dropped words from sentences (In Polish we drop a lot of words in the sentence, and it still makes sense. It's actually not really correct not to drop these words.). Also in English there are basically no moods, no aspects, almost no inflection (numbers, adjectives, adverbs are not inflected, and the rest is barely inflected).

 

There are articles (a/the) though, which are fun, and a little hard to learn to use properly. I probably don't use them properly in 100% cases. 

 

The only problem English has is 16 tenses. It's a lot of tenses. Fortunately the rules of how to use them are not that complicated. Also most normal people use about 4-6 cases (I think) in everyday conversations. 

 

I don't mean that English is super simple. It's definitely not the simplest one. For example Chinese has much simpler grammar than English (but Chinese has other difficulties...).

 

All languages are really difficult to master. But if I was to make a scale of difficulty for languages I would put English closer to the "simple end" rather than "difficult end". But it's just my personal opinion that depends on my background (I am Polish) and my personal preference. So I think that if I were from other place in the world, my opinion would be different. I also think that a lot of Polish people would agree with you that English is hard. 

Kaymyth

Kaymyth she/her

Posted
Posted

I think a lot of it comes from the fact that most of the people I meet who learn English as a second language come from Romance language backgrounds (usually Spanish).  English is such a hot mess in comparison to Spanish/Italian/French/Portuguese.  We have more irregular verbs than regular ones.  Our spelling is all over the map.  And I'm crap when it comes to the building blocks of grammatical structure.  (Hilarious, coming from a writer, but I couldn't diagram a sentence to save my life.)

 

English:  the language that lurks on dark street corners, accosting and beating up other languages, then rifling through their pockets for loose vocabulary.

4
TwiLyghtSansSparkles

TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her

Posted
Posted

I wrote a fan letter to JK Rowling a few weeks ago.

Today I went to work as usual.

Moments after I arrived, I got a text from my brother. "You have mail from Scotland," he said.

Did she reply?

Or is it junk mail from the most inefficient spammers in the UK?

Did she actually write back?

Or is it a form letter?

HOW AM I GOING TO MAKE IT THROUGH A SIX HOUR SHIFT WITH THIS SUSPENSE????

5
Pestis the Spider

Pestis the Spider she/her

Posted
Posted (edited)

I think a lot of it comes from the fact that most of the people I meet who learn English as a second language come from Romance language backgrounds (usually Spanish).  English is such a hot mess in comparison to Spanish/Italian/French/Portuguese.

I agree. As I said, I think it really depends on a person's background. I also think that English is generally easier for European people thant Asian or African etc. It's because English shares a lot of similarities with other European languages, while Asian/Africa/far away from UK languages have totally different structure. It's always like that. The easiest language for me to learn is Czech or Slovak, because that's just across the border and they're super similar to Polish. And the further from Poland the less similar the language is to Polish. 

 

And also romanic languages are generally considered to be rather easy (but beautiful and romantic :) ). Well. French has this funny issue of having half of the word silent. And somehow French spelling still makes more sense than English spelling. It amazes me. xD

 

 

We have more irregular verbs than regular ones.  

Oh, c'mon, it;s not that bad. I think German has more irregular verbs. And there are also languages with so many irregular verbs that no one even bothers to make lists of them. Or that there are no regular verbs at all. So English is not that bad. :P

Edited by Pestis the Spider
Delightful

Delightful

Posted
Posted

In a recent update for the Fantastic Beasts movie, it was revealed that in America, Muggles are not called Muggles. American witches and wizards refer to someone born without magic as a No-Maj.

Can I take a moment to say how much I love this?

It's not because the name No-Maj is more creative than "Muggle." Nor is it because it rolls off the tongue easier; to tell you the truth, I think "Muggle" is more fun to say. No, I love the name No-Maj because renaming Muggles for the sake of it is such an American thing to do.

I imagine it happening like a conversation from Scandinavia and the World, between Wizarding England and Wizarding America:

"So, son, what have you done about the Muggles?"

"Muggles? No. That's your word. I'm independent now."

"Honestly? We're really going through this again?"

"They're….um….let's see….no magic…no-mag…ic….No-Maj!"

*blank stare*

"That's right. Muggles are No-Majes now."

*sigh* "Why can't you just call them Muggles?"

"Because America!"

No-Maj reminds me of Noradz, from Deltora Quest. Thought you ought to know.

*collapses*

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