so fed up with people complaining about Gaelic spelling.
English spelling is essentially the combination of what happened when the ghosts of Shakespeare and Caxton staged an orgy with a Frenchman on a torn piece of paper, but do go off on Gaelic, why don’t you.
which is awesome but mostly i’m posting because i went from the 1/5 difficulty transcription to the 5/5 one and my eyes started bleeding, like, it’s obviously the same base for the hand but also the 5/5 is completely unreadable
in Serbian, we don’t say ‘middle of nowhere’ – we use ‘vukojebina/вукојебина’ which literally would translate to ‘where wolves fuck’ and i’m so proud of my countries language
Yours is a language of understated beauty. You have every reason to be proud.
In German we say “wo sich Fuchs und Hase Gute Nacht sagen” which translates to “where Fox and rabbit tell each other good night” and I think that’s really cute
Polish has two versions of “to get married” depending on whether you are marrying a man (wyjść za mąż) or a woman (ożenić się)
they are of course “meant” to be used by women and men respectively, and when someone mixes them up – which happens very often in common speech – it’s usually a matter of seconds before some smartass goes “haha, ożenić się, she’s a girl, what is she, a homo, you meant wyjść za mąż!”
same thing happened at the shop today, one local drunkard wanted to wish me all the best and that I marry well – and he said “ożenić się”
the second drunkard obviously started laughing “what, a woman! you meant-”
“and who are you to tell her what she can or cannot do, Heniek? She’ll want to marry a girl she’ll marry a girl!”
I have an urge to give him a beer on the house next time he’s here.
@myceliorum – holy sh t, the ‘like’ thing happened to us via the ‘valley girl’ thing. like it was sort of a ‘popular’ style of body language and voice to emulate for a while. like at least the rural kids felt a sort of kinship? it was almost a ‘cool older sister’ thing. and a lot of ‘valley girl’-ese is very similar to autistic stuff, so for the first and last time we were cool. ofc our “parents” were virulently against it b/c they said it encouraged girls to sound ‘stupid’/’retarded’ and hampered their prospects of being taken seriously. thanks.
also @clatterbane – there’s a name for that? 😛 there’s a whole branch of our family that does the ‘needs” and ‘warsh’ thing, never knew it was called pittsburgese, but it makes sense as they’re the side that was heavily in coal mining in the pa/md appalachians. a lot of them are embarrassed about it too. this maybe explains a bit of that.
My family did warsh too.
Also I didn’t realize waller was the same word as wallow until I was in my twenties.
My dad’s side of the family warshes, and everybody wallers. (Some noticeable dialect differences within less than 50 miles.)
Took me a long time to figure out it was supposed to be the same word, too. You at least see “hollow” on road signs sometimes, but for some reason I didn’t make the same connection with “wallow” spelling vs. pronunciation. Waller up the holler!
Polari was a form of slang used by gay men in Britain prior to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967, used primarily as a coded way for them to discuss their experiences. It quickly fell out of use in the 70s, although several words entered mainstream English and are still used today. For more about Polari: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari
[Full credits through the link]
Something interesting that showed up in my YouTube recommendations tonight.
(A little more info on Polari: How bona to vada your eek! As discussed there, it hasn’t only been used within gay communities, but that’s how it’s best known now.)
Translation as provided in comments (with thanks from the filmmakers):
Standard English Translation:
MAUREEN: I’ve read that.
MAUREEN: It’s all nonsense.
MAUREEN: The ending’s a disappointment too.
MAUREEN: Can you spare a cigarette, sweetheart?
MAUREEN: You from around here then?
ROBERTA: More or less.
MAUREEN: London’s the place to be… Nice shoes. What’s your size?
ROBERTA: Ten, I think.
MAUREEN: What about your HANDS? Are they a size ten too?
MAUREEN: I bet you know how to play the PIANO really well.
ROBERTA: Is this your usual spot?
MAUREEN: How do you mean?
ROBERTA: I know what you’re up to here, mate.
MAUREEN: Where do you live?
ROBERTA: Clitterhouse Road.
MAUREEN: I have a friend there. Pauline.
ROBERTA: Pauline Marsh?
MAUREEN: That’s the one. No matter what, I always find a FRIEND.
ROBERTA: How is Pauline?
MAUREEN: He’s had some bad luck. Dyed and totally ruined his hair.
ROBERTA: That’s not good. I hope he went straight to the hairdresser.
MAUREEN: That’s where he’d just been. The broad tried to give him a wig. Huge argument. Pauline told her to shove the wig up her arse.
ROBERTA: Did he really say that?
MAUREEN: Absolutely, and in plain English too.
ROBERTA: He’s all talk Pauline. Is he still with Phyllis then?
MAUREEN: Oh no. Haven’t you heard? He’s been a real whore. Sleeping around, picking up hustlers, trolling the back alleys. He actually had to be treated for STDs on two separate occasions last month.
ROBERTA: He didn’t.
MAUREEN: Pauline’s a complete wreck. Came home one night to find Phyllis blowing a Chinese guy he picked up in a toilet.
ROBERTA: Tell me more!
MAUREEN: It’s not looking good for Pauline. Broke, on the dole. He went in for a sex change and they had to redo the procedure.
ROBERTA: Speaking of genitals.
MAUREEN: He would rip you a new one.
ROBERTA: I can only hope.
MAUREEN: Mind you, the handsome ones do disappoint.
ROBERTA: Mmm.
MAUREEN: I was seeing this effeminate guy from Sheffield once. Feet the size of bowling pins. I thought I was in for a real fine fucking.
ROBERTA: Nothing to see downstairs?
MAUREEN:” Oh, tiny. You won’t need any lube to get that one in.” I said when I saw it. Mind you, he shot a massive load of cum. I had to use heavy-duty detergent to clean his semen stains from my bed.
ROBERTA: Oh vile…
Not in film———————————————————————————–
ROBERTA: What about this guy? Do you think he’s gay?
MAUREEN: Him? He’s totally gay.
ROBERTA: You think so?
MAUREEN: Ooh yeah. Just look at his shirt, Gay. Very Gay. Not to mention his trousers.
ROBERTA: I’d have sex with him, I would.
————————————————————————————————-
ROBERTA: Has Phyllis always been that way?
MAUREEN: He’s a walking sex club. An incredible stud. We were temping at a pharmacy. He blew me once while I was giving an old man his lice medicine.
ROBERTA: That’s skill, that.
MAUREEN: Oh, He used to do it all the time. When we were at the exchange together he’d have one hand on my erection and the other on the switch. He didn’t even get off the phone.
MAUREEN: Sad to think of him in prison really.
ROBERTA: What do you mean?
MAUREEN: He had a run in with the police.
ROBERTA: Oh dear.
MAUREEN: An undercover cop flashed his cock in the toilet.
ROBERTA: I hope he kept looking straight ahead.
MAUREEN: Well he’s cock-eyed, isn’t he? He can practically see sideways.
ROBERTA: What did the judge say?
MAUREEN: He was very harsh— asked if he was sorry.
ROBERTA: What did he say?
MAUREEN: Only that it wasn’t worth the look he got.
MAUREEN: I suppose we’ll all end up in prison soon enough.
MAUREEN: I nearly got arrested last week. I was blowing a young guy in that toilet near Clackett Lane, you know the one. [The ugliest face I’ve ever seen, but what a cock.] So I’m wiping my mouth as I walk outside when who do I run into but a cop. “There’s a queer in there” I said.
He caught the kid with his trousers down I suppose. He never saw what was coming. I’m sure it was a big commotion. Shame.
ROBERTA: You’re disgusting.
MAUREEN: What? Go on. Put your things in your little carryall. Off you go.
MAUREEN: You forgot your book… They cure him in the end.
Roberta spits in Maureen’s face.
[Additional context: Besides the book itself, that last comment was likely referring to the kid who was arrested, and another ugly bit of history which was still ongoing then: Alan Turing & the medical abuse of gay men]
Reminded of one misconception I saw come up again recently, by one wtfduolingo post I reblogged earlier.
I don’t recall running across the word in Swedish before, oddly enough, but I wasn’t surprised that it’s “dum” and “dummare”.
Compare to “dumm” and “dümmer” in German. Which got snagged into American English from the huge number of German-speaking immigrants.
(Where “mute/silent” is “stumm”, BTW, with a totally different etymology. That incidentally got taken into British English, as “keeping schtum”. Snitches get stitches…)
Speaking of very direct usage adoption, as Mencken observed in the 1920s:
Dumb-head, obviously from the German dummkopf, appears in a list of Kansas words collected by Judge J. C. Ruppenthal, of Russell, Kansas. (Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. v, 1916, p. 322.) It is also noted in Nebraska and the Western Reserve, and is very common in Pennsylvania.
Dumb still not really used in that sense in British English–or probably other versions–which is likely why Duolingo opted for the “stupid” and “more stupid” translation there. (Which kinda jumped out at me, when “dumb” and “dumber” is a less clunky rendering. Better to use something more readily understood across dialects, though.)
People are certainly welcome to a variety of opinions on the advisability of those descriptions anyway, of course. But, the real etymology isn’t what it’s often assumed to be. Because English, and alleyways.
im in physical pain every day because finnish tumblr users have the weirdest urls ever but nobody knows it because the urls are in finnish
seriously its shit like moomin-rectal-prolapse, jesus-spanker, foreskin-cum-burrito, turbo-bream-orgy and satan’s-titty-slurper and so on. and im not exaggerating at all. and this is not small minority among finnish tumblr blogs, its more like the standard to have urls like these. and none of you non-finnish-speakers have seen this mess because its written in finnish
i just spent a couple minutes going thru finnish tumblr tags. here’s a short list of some of my faves
roughly “chaotically fertilized” (or maybe inseminated? sikin sokin doesn’t really have a direct translation but it’s kinda like, willy nilly, disorganized, chaotic… like things can be “sikin sokin” (messy, disorganized, chaotic) on ur desk or in a drawer)
pourtmanteau of carousel (karuselli) and celery (selleri)
the lord’s vagina (vittu technically means like. the whole of the genitalia associated w vaginas not just the vagina, and is a curse word that has a denotion that boils down to abt the same as c*nt when used to refer to genitals, but with the severity/social acceptance level/usage of “fuck.” if you can put “fuck” there you can put “vittu” there. herra/the lord means specifically The Lord in the religious sense here)
foreplayground
satan’s pineapple
pourtmanteau of mental illness (mielisairaus) and dinosaur (dinosaurus)
extreme diarrhea
dick mountain
sex toy box
self-beer-er, roughly, but it’s a pun/joke on flasher (itsensäpaljastaja, lit self exposer) and beer (kalja)
I’m adding a few as well because I’ve loved these things since I joined Tumblr.
A portmanteau of umbilical cord and tightrope walker = umbilical cord walker.
The new shit house (outhouse), written in the style of 1500s.
The never-ending [state of being] fucking annoyed. Please refer to the entry “herranvittu” for the use of vittu.
I-won’t-give-up-beer.
Radical fuck satan.
Repe Sorsa is the Finnish name of Daffy Duck, so rebel-duck is not far off.
my translation skills might not be the best but let me add some:
onion of modesty
seashell fetish
broccoli worm
blueberry hater
gay drumming
brutal banana
ok first you need to know that the word “bead” is the same as “pearl” in finnish. so this could be pourtmanteau of analbeads and seashell, or anal pearl seashell.
I’ll probably have to change my tumblr name to fit in with the other finnish users – my username is way too normal
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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