LINGUISTICS Y'ALL

I’m a fan of Anthony Burgess, not only because he spoke 14 languages, but because he wrote A Clockwork Orange. If you’ve ever read A Clockwork Orange, you may have noticed that Alex DeLarge and his friends speak a dialect called Nadsat (-надцать, an ending on many of the numbers from 11-19 in Russian, I suppose this was implying that this language was an adolescent language) with many made-up sounding words. Burgess based Alex’s street slang off of Russian. Here are some of my favorite examples:

“Long time is right, I don’t remember them days too horrorshow. Don’t call me Dim no more either, Officer call me.”

“There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim.”

“Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.”

“Naughty, naughty, naughty! You filthy old soomka!”

anyone on HBO wanna hire me to make their fake TV language? I will add a complex case system that’s even bigger than Finnish as revenge for what you did to game of thrones

Don’t forget to make some unnecessarily complex verbal morphology

Also:

- pointless vowel shifts that happen randomly, without any explanation

- more tones than Vietnamese

It will have the four horsemen of the linguistic apocalypse

Give me a project and I guarantee I’m adding phonation contrasts, ejectives and massive verb complexes so help me God.

anyone on HBO wanna hire me to make their fake TV language? I will add a complex case system that’s even bigger than Finnish as revenge for what you did to game of thrones

Don’t forget to make some unnecessarily complex verbal morphology

Also:

- pointless vowel shifts that happen randomly, without any explanation

- more tones than Vietnamese

It will have the four horsemen of the linguistic apocalypse

how do you say “season 8 ruined my life” in high valyrian??

Ya girl bout to find out, Duolingo bless 🙏

if you’re irish and you complain about britain “erasing culture” but can’t even speak the language/ don’t know shit about ireland before 1910 then just shut your cakehole nobody cares

Them being Irish and not being able to speak the language/not knowing shit about Ireland before 1910 is a direct result of Britain erasing culture, you goddamn Vitamin D-deficient circus clown

hey guys after like a 10 year hiatus I just got back from living in China for six months (i got kicked out, long story) but in other news you can absolutely live in China for six months using only the phrase  不要 ( búyào) and be completely fine

不要 ( búyào) – DO NOT WANT

to those of you asking me to explain details lmao búyào !!! 不要 !!!

I always thought it was extreme that the Dutch sometimes swear with infectious diseases, but living here means learning to get around by bike. This has really forced me into this angry defensive mentality. When there’s always a threat of being hit by a car, knocked over by…

In Russian we like to say “холера вазми!” Which basically translates to “May cholera take you” and it’s such a loose curse that my grandmother says it and no one bats an eye.

people will see a meme in spanish where the latin roots all align with the english words and be like “this transcends language” no it doesn’t you just know how to read

skcnoencjs fucking. meme says “yo” and “mi mamá” and suddenly these bitches finished the tower of babel

every time i have an inner transformation i pick up duolingo again

Millennial self change is marked by duolingo and meal prepping

Numbers and how to tell time will always be my least favourite things to learn when learning a new language