Wolfgay

I’ve even had it where I’ve known words as spoken words, and I’ve known words as written words, and it’s taken me a significant amount of time to realize that they were the same word. One example I can think of is the word indictment. I always thought “indictment” was pronounced “in-dict-ment,” and it was only when all these police indictments started happening on the news (with the news crawls below the words being spoken) that I realized it was “in-DITE-ment.” 

So yeah, never feel bad for discovering that a word in English is pronounced differently than you would’ve expected. English has had influence from SO many other languages over the centuries as it developed, and as a result, many of our pronunciation “guidelines” are borrowed from the languages the words originally came from. It’s massively inconsistent, and it’s one of the reasons that learning English as a second language is so difficult. 

As my favorite poster in the campus writing center used to proclaim: 

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”

Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”

Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.” 

Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”

Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”

Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”

Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.” 

“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”

“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”

“… well, actually…”

“… what?”

“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”

“…”

“…”

“…what?”

“we sent-”

“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”

“y-yeah”

“and they didn’t… die?”

“Well the first few did”

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”

aka The History of Russia

aka Arctic Exploration

1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.

2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)

3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.

4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)

It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.

“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.

“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”

Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.

“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”

“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”

Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”

Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible. 

“Well yeah, but only up to about Category 3 strength.  Then it’s time to pack the car and head inland for most people, although a few hardy souls stick around and ride them out.”

“Oh good.  Category 3 is what again?  Winds up to 75 kilometers per hour?”

“watch out! That line is still under current!”

“gah, it’s fine. I’m vaccinated.”

“you are WHAT? Vaccinated against electric shock? How is that even possible?”

“it’s just a saying. Like, when you work as an electrician for a while you get shocked here and there once in a while. You get used to it.”

“…”

“don’t look at me like that. It’s not even a high voltage, just the regular stuff.”

“but it has a potential of killing you, you know?”

“yeah but in a way it would be awesome. The burm from high voltage i mean.”

“i hope you are joking”

“no no listen to this. I have this one uncle who got hit by lightning while working on fields. Twice. He lost some hair and had to be in hospital for a while the first time but he got this sick burn mark on his shoulder. Getting something like that while beying payed for doing my job too would be prety badass.”

“…”

“what!”

“you are telling me your family member survived naturally occured electric shock of thousands of volts and survived?”