• 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    2 hours ago

    I’ve learned a little bit of two other languages (Spanish and Japanese) and I’m pretty confident that most languages have a ton of nuance like this that you will never understand until you are actually totally immersed in that language and culture.

    I mean, everything I learned in Spanish and Japanese is all super formal. Nobody actually talks that way IRL. There’s words that from a translator or dictionary mean one thing, but are colloquially used totally differently. Like calling testicles eggs or nuts. “Chupa mi heuvos.” They’re not saying to suck their literal eggs.

    I know less Japanese than Spanish but I already notice that, like, “no” isn’t ever annunciated the way I’m being taught. Instead of “iie” I’ll often hear just “ya.” It teaches to end every statement with “desu,” but I have never heard a sentence end with a desu or desu ka in any Japanese media (which is more than just anime). It’s all way more casual. Questions are still understood to be questions if you use the right inflection; no need for extra syllables.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      4 minutes ago

      There are better cases for elision of sounds than iie and iya, as the latter (iya) is a different word, sort of like no and nope in English. For example in more formal contexts you’d use ~teiru at the end of verbs and pronounce the i vowel, but in casual speech it’s elided to sound like ~teru.

  • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Simple - one must strive not simply to be A shit but to be THE shit - The plutonic ideal of shit, the perfect shit from which all other shits are derivitive. Anything less is a failure. So following this logic.

    “You ain’t shit” = You are invalid from the rubric, so below par as not to be mentionable.

    “You are shit” = Acknowledgement that you are shit of average or middling status but with the implications that vast improvement is nessisary because you are still a failure.

    “You are not the shit” = More directed pointed reminder that you are far below the goal of being THE shit and maybe are overestimating yourself.

  • uienia@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Itt: monolinguist native english speakers who thinks a completely common concept is exclusive to english.

  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Learning slang, in which words aren’t meant literally, is pure memorization and no more difficult in one language than another.

      • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        I’ve known of this supposed sentence and still can’t parse whatever the fuck is connecting the two groups of bullying animals who are both from the upstate NY city.

    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      So do “based on” and “based off” now. I can’t figure where “based off” came from or why we need it. A base has always been something you put things on. Things sit ON a base. They’re based ON it. Don’t get me started. Ok, too late… sorry.

      • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Based off OF. they took parts off of the base and put them in their stock script about a love triangle.

        • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          My daughter says based off. Come to think of it I remember long ago noticing that DJs say a song is “off” an album and thinking no, songs are ON albums. OCD is a beautiful thing.

    • MycelialMass@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Disagree, to me ‘down’ implies youre open to chill events (i.e. sitting down) whereas ‘up’ youre open to more active events. But thats me.

      • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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        3 hours ago

        I don’t think that’s a universally recognized distinction, but the more you use it that way and spread it around it could be one day soon.

        Language is weird.

  • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    The King’s English

    I take it you already know
    Of tough and bough and cough and dough?

    Others may stumble, but not you,
    On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.

    Beware of heard, a dreadful word, That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
    And dead: It’s said like bed, not bead – For goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!
    Watch out for meat and great and threat… They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

    A moth is not the moth in mother, Nor both in bother, nor broth in brother.
    And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
    And then there’s dose and rose and lose – Just look them up – and goose and choose.

    And cork and work and card and ward, And font and front and word and sword.
    And do and go, then thwart and cart, Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
    A dreadful language? Why, sakes alive! I’d learned to speak it when I was five.
    And yet, to write it, the more I tried, I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five

  • Owen Earl@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    shit - adjective, bad

    the shit - noun, good

    .

    you are shit - shit is an adjective, you are bad

    you ain’t shit - shit still functions as an adjective, in some contexts this might be a good thing, but the phrase “you ain’t ____” most often is used to say the person doesn’t reach the level of the blank. For example “you ain’t all that” means you think/act like you are “all that” but you’re not at the level of “all that” you’re less than all that. If you “ain’t shit” it means you’re so bad that you’re less than shit, you dont even reach the level of shit with how bad you are. This is a devestating insult.

    you are not the shit - the shit is a noun, its good, so not being the shit is insulting

    you are the shit - the shit is a noun meaning good so this is a complement

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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      9 hours ago

      ain’t is a contraction of “am/are not” popularized in the early 1700s, combined with the syncopic haplology of a definite article: so still works with the noun part. I agree this doesn’t make it easier for people to learn English, but it’s not like every other language in the world doesn’t have this.

  • P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br
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    5 hours ago

    English: the most junkiest language I’ve learned until now. And it’s unfortunately the most prominent around the whole world, until the tragic downfall of the United States of America arrives.

      • spinnetrouble@sh.itjust.works
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        12 hours ago

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

        “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct sentence in English that is often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann’s Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought. The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the word buffalo:

        • As an attributive noun (acting as an adjective) to refer to a specific place named Buffalo, such as the city of Buffalo, New York;
        • As the verb to buffalo, meaning (in American English[1][2]) “to bully, harass, or intimidate” or “to baffle”; and
        • As a noun to refer to the animal (either the true buffalo or the bison). The plural is also buffalo.

        A semantically equivalent form preserving the original word order is: “Buffalonian bison that other Buffalonian bison bully also bully Buffalonian bison.”

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        8 hours ago

        It doesn’t, but that won’t stop pedants from pretending it does so they can feel smarter than you.

    • Tyfud@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Buffalonian bison that other Buffalonian bison bully also bully Buffalonian bison.

    • BossDj@lemm.ee
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      10 hours ago

      In the title of the show, there are spaces between Tom and And and And and Jerry.

  • affiliate@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    i’d still take this over the ett/en thing in swedish. basically, “ett” and “en” both mean “a” if they come before the word, and “the” if they get smashed onto the end of a word. (e.g., “ett apotek” means “a pharmacy”, but “apoteket” means “the pharmacy”; “en hund” means “a dog”, but “hunden” means “the dog”.)

    but despite “ett” and “en” meaning the same thing, they aren’t interchangeable. some words are “ett” words, while others are “en” words, and you just have to remember which ones are which.

    to further complicate things, there are some words that can end with “et” or “en”, but each ending means something different. this typically happens with “ett” words using “en” for the plural forms of the word. for example, “barn” means “child”, “ett barn” means “a child”, “barnet” means “the child”, but “barnen” means “the children”. (it’s worth also mentioning that “barn” means either “child” or “children”, depending on the context.)

  • aeronmelon@lemmy.worldM
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    10 hours ago

    English American Culture.

    The structure of those sentences are very straightforward. The cultural zeitgeist that caused that one iteration to become positive in meaning is just random chance.

    Like nested replies on Reddit that all say the same thing. All of them are being upvoted, except one of them is randomly being downvoted into oblivion.