thisisnotchina:

paindrownedbysound:

I really want this as a tattoo when I’m older.. It means ‘forever’ and I just think it looks beautiful..

uh…this is really taking 老是 out of context. it really means “always” as in “you’re always doing that.” it doesn’t really make sense to get this tattooed by itself?? cuz it’s kinda like if you just got a tattoo of the word “constantly” or something. like it just doesn’t really mean anything on its own. do some research next time bro

p.s. i would hazard to guess that this is even more meaningless in japanese, which i’m pretty sure doesn’t really use the verb 是, so idfk why you tagged it japanese along with chinese.

crying

gqid:

Although there are many English-language resources and glossaries about transgender, genderqueer, and non-binary terms, there are not as many in other languages. I have begun a few pages at the Non-Binary Wiki, which anyone can edit, to list terms and their meanings in a few languages:

Glossary of Chinese gender and sex terminology

Glossary of Japanese gender and sex terminology

Glossary of Korean gender and sex terminology

Glossary of Russian gender and sex terminology

Glossary of Spanish gender and sex terminology

More will be added - these were created as just a start to this project and anyone is welcome to create further language pages or edit the ones that already exist to add new terms, citations of sources, or correct any errors. I am focusing on collecting terms related to non-binary gender identity, although general gender and sex terms can also be added to these glossaries. I am very excited about this project!

~Marilyn

zuky:

tabulanonrasa:

littleredridingcat:

annamay-wrong:

spicyobsession:

annamay-wrong:

omfg i lost it

dead and dying

儿儿儿儿儿儿儿 that’s beijingese for hello nice to meet you

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OMG

no they did not. LOL.

and everyone still thinks it’s only “ching chong”

This kinda fucked up and I really like Beijing dialect, it’s like the capital of internet slang and speed slurring — but I laughed.

crying laughing

littleredridingcat:

you can attain native fluency when people pull their eyes up at the corners and call you “Ching chong Chinese girl” when white people tell you “go back where you came from” when the asshole on the bus tells you your breakfast “smells like shit” when you’re too embarrassed to speak your native tongue in public with your parents when you’ve lost so much of it you can’t be called “fluent” anymore and instead have to sit by and watch pretentious white boys write papers in Chinese and Japanese and get called “cultured” “educated” “worldly” when you’re too embarrassed to introduce your aunt to your friends because she doesn’t speak their language when you’ve forgotten all the words. when you try to study it in college to pick it up again. when it’s not your area of focus or study and you speak it anyway, you whisper it in your head and translate coworker conversations, looking for the right phrasing. when you smile at the lady who works the dumpling cart, call her aiyi and have her eyes crinkle in a smile only shared between two people of the same background, to have her tell you that you’re welcome back any time in a warm voice like your mother’s. 

allaboutchinese:

会读的人请大声朗读~ If you can read this, please read out loud~

ugh this thing

For one thing, the idea that there is only one right way of doing English – and everyone else is doing it wrong – is inherently flawed. And by “flawed” I mean illogical, elitist and even oppressive. Judgements about what counts as “right”, “good” and “correct” in writing and grammar always – ALWAYS – align with characteristics of the dialects spoken by privileged, mostly wealthy, mostly white people. We make these judgements based on learned biases, as well as a certain emotional attachment to our own way of doing things. But when people study dialects in an objective, scientific way (which is what cunning linguists actually do), they find that low-prestige dialects, such as African-American Vernacular English or Cockney English, have fully-formed grammar rules of their own that make just as much sense as any others. They are perfectly valid and functional forms of communication used by millions of people. The only difference is that they don’t have people running around telling everyone else to do it their way.

howtodropoutofschool:

• BBC Languages Complete with courses, activities, videos and tests- You can even watch BBC News in different languages!
• Livemocah: Beautiful interface that encourages learning through demonstration, deconstruction and practice.
• Learn10: Quick daily language…

rubdown:

flawlesstrueperfection:

he’ll say “are you married?” we’ll say “wow those are pretty invasive questions for a snowman”

I feel this is the perfect segue for me to tell this story. For the first 22 years of my life (I am 24 at this time), I didn’t know what a parson was. I thought “Parson Brown” was just a man’s name. And so when it got to this part in “Winter Wonderland”:

In the meadow we can build a snowman,
Then pretend that he is Parson Brown
He’ll say: Are you married?
We’ll say: No man,
But you can do the job
When you’re in town

All throughout my entire childhood, tweenhood, teenhood, and early adulthood, I thought these horny ladies were building a snowman named Parson Brown, who must’ve been some kind of local hunk everyone had the hots for, and they were pretending to have sex with him in a meadow. I thought “do the job” was a sex thing and it was okay because none of them were married, which was very decent of Local Hunk Parson Brown in Snowman Form to ask them. Last year Sarah told me what a parson was and explained the real meaning of the lyrics, but it’s still really hard for me to buy. Like, really? REALLY? THESE WOMEN AREN’T HAVING SEX WITH A REAL DOLL SNOWMAN THEY MADE IN A FIELD BECAUSE THEY’RE UNWED AND TURNED ON AND IT WAS LIKE THE 1930S? I don’t know, my version makes more sense and has more intrigue. 

sqbr:

[Black and white photograph of eight woman in victorian dress, both male and female, posed with glasses and bottles of wine]

knowhomo:

Queer Avoidance, Vocabulary, Euphemisms, and the Language of Lesbians

9 Ways the Early Twentieth-Century Newspaper

Reviewed Broadway Plays & Avoided Saying the “L” Word

1. “A Twisted Relationship” - New York Times, 1926
2. “A Warped Infatuation” - New York Times, 1926
3. “Tormenting Impulses” - World, 1926
4. “Bondage” - World, 1926
5. “The Poisonous Serpents Spell of Decadent Women” - Evening News, 1926
6. “A Cancerous Growth” - Daily News, 1926
7. “A Monstrous Sexual Perversion” - New York Evening Journal, 1934
8. “L—N” - New York Herald Tribune, 1934
9. “A Naughty Word” - New York Herald Tribune, 1934

16 (Ninetieth/Twentieth Century) Euphemisms for Lesbian Relationships

1. Smashes
2. Sentimental Friends
3. Special Friends
4. Romantic Friends
5. Two Hearts in Counsel
6. Love of Kindred Spirits
7. Boston Marriages
8. Urningin
9. Gynander
10. Viragint
11. Invert
12. Contrasexual
13. Androgne
14. Moderne
15. Roaring Girl
16. Female Adventurer

Lists From:

Richards, Dell. Lesbian Lists: A Look at Lesbian Culture, History, and Personalities. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1990

Taking note of this because of Reasons.

420goku:

420goku:

MY DAD GAVE ME A GOLDEN GAYTIME IVE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER

I DIDNT REALISE HOW THIS MIGHT SOUND TO NON-AUSTRALIANS IM REALLY SORRY

crying with laughter. 

allaboutchinese:

汉字的演化 Evolution of Chinese Characters

ai-yo:

queerqueenofcolor:

spartanbitch:

suzy-carmichael:

• lakeisha: a swahili name meaning “favorite one”
• lateefah: a north african name meaning “gentle and pleasant”
• latonia: a latin name. latonia was the mother of diana in roman mythology
• latisha: means “happiness”
• takiya: a north african name meaning “righteous”

yes.

amen.

I was JUST thinking about the inherent White Supremacy in “baby name culture” and how PoC, specifically Black people, are penalized for giving their children “unusual” names. Names which come from a variety of African and European sources, but to which White Supremacy remains wholly ignorant because the entirety of White Supremacy is about visible credits of a cycle of what’s “in” for The White Race and what’s “out”. How many times will the name “Tyrone” be seen as a marker of “da ghetto” and impoverished slovenliness simply because it’s on a Black male body before people look into the etymologies White Supremacy tries to hide because it knows Black people are geniuses. 

During the 60’s civil rights movement generation had many African Americans converting to Islam partly because of such leaders like Malcolm X and giving their children Arabic/African names.

And as mentioned above name like Tyrone, Tyrell, Tyson ans many other Tys (feel like I about to start listing Lannister names) are Irish. The Tyrones I’ve met have been Black or White Irish. 

Thing is that anything and everything a Black person does will be looked at as negative and ghetto.

selchieproductions:

Some people seem convinced that learning a new language is a simple act of learning new combinations of syllables to signify an already rigid meaning as determined by one’s own language, that summer is the same thing as été or samhraidh, only pronounced somewhat differently. This, of course, is not true. Learning a new language equals learning how to comfortably inhabit another way of conceptualising the world, and said way of doing aforementioned thing will never be as simple as learning words, syllables, sounds. Idioms prove this to us on a daily basis; “hinter schwedischen Gardinen” means something completely different if the phrase is translated word by word into any other language. Only Germans think of Swedish curtains as prison doors. 

Je t’aime is different from I love you, not only from a phonological point of view and when someone understands lagom, they haven’t just learnt a new Swedish word, meaning something along the lines of adequate, they have managed to crack one of many cultural Swedish codes as well.  

Different cultures put more emphasis, care more about different things. This does not mean that any one language is the owner of so-called untranslatable concepts, it just means that the world around a language’s speakers has influenced them in different ways. A language, ultimately, is a tool acquired and developed by our ancestors to heighten our chances of survival, and thus it is only natural that one language focuses more on the texture of snow, where another creates hundreds of words for different waves. 

It brings us to the age old question, if I cannot name it, does it exist and the answer is of course. Only a closed, prejudiced mind colonised by itself declares anything a linguistic, cultural or physical terra nullius.

Cultures give birth to languages, languages define cultures. 

fireofspring:

asianhistory:

“In his Web blog entry dated October 7, 2010, Neil Gaiman, author of the Newbery-winning title The Graveyard Book (2008), quoted a passage from a Chinese reader’s message to him:

[O]ne sentence in Graveyard Book said “mass graves is a good place for munching a meal”. [I]t is insulting to Chinese!I know you are just for fun, but I cannot bear it! 

Gaiman quoted further communications between him and the reader, and showed the process of how both reached the revelation that the source of “insult,” or offense, came not from Gaiman’s original English text, but from a word choice in the Chinese translation of his book, published as Fen Chang Zhi Shu [坟场之书] in China in 2010. The last quote, written seemingly in a beginner’s English, from that reader says, By now I know it is translator’s fault, not of yours…. “Plague pits is good eating” in Chinese that I translate means “鼠疫坑很好吃” is not insulting. [A]nd the translation in the book that the translator wrote “万人坑很好吃” is insulting (as cited in Gaiman, 2010) Most Westerners will require some explanation of Chinese language, history, and culture to fully understand what caused this peacefully resolved conflict. From Gaiman’s book, the word “plague-pits” in “ ‘Plague-pits is good eatin’,’ said the Emperor of China” (2008, p. 84) is translated into “wan ren keng [万人坑]”, literally meaning “ten-thousand people’s pit.” The lure and danger of adopting this translation are both strong. “Ten-thousand people’s pit” is a colloquial term in Chinese and semantically a good match for “Plague-pits.” The term has been found in an ancient text “Jiashen Zaji” [甲申雜記], written by WANG Gong in the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960-1127), to refer to massive graves for people who die in a famine, thus “ten-thousand people’s pit” makes a more colloquial choice than “shu yi keng” [鼠疫坑, or plague-pit], a made-up word combination in Chinese. However, 900 years after Wang’s time, “ten-thousand people’s pit” is no longer a neutral noun, but in certain contexts can be a politically and emotionally charged term, thanks to the history of Japanese colonization and military aggression during the first half of the 20th century in China. Though not its only usage in contemporary China, the term is frequently used to refer to the massive pits, discovered in various parts of China, prepared by the Japanese colonizers and army for Chinese forced labor (coal miners, in particular) and victims of massacres, including those who were buried alive. Any ghoulish humor in “ten-thousand people’s pits is good eatin’ ” can be lost to a Chinese audience. In the case of the anonymous Chinese reader who took the trouble to send an electronic message to Neil Gaiman and exchange information and opinions with him back and forth, he or she was greatly offended—imagine how a Western audience would feel about a ghostly joke like “Auschwitz is perfect for partying.”

(source)

I can only assume that an overseas Chinese was responsible for the translation?