duolingo and chill

Today: Vorführeffekt, der (n.)

Studygram: @thespecsappeal​

地理（ちり）- geography

島（しま）- island

島国（しまぐに）- island nation

気候（きこう）- climate

気温（きおん）- temperature

名所（めいしょ）- famous place

名物（めいぶつ）- specialty products

建物（たてもの）- building

形（かたち）- shape, form

景色（けしき）- scenery, landscape

自然（しぜん）- nature

都市（とし）- town, city

田舎（いなか）- countryside

行事（ぎょうじ）- event, function

見学（けんがく）- field trip, tour

国土（こくど）- country, realm

都道府県（とどうふけん）- prefectures (都/道/府/県 are essentially all different names for prefectures. Tokyo is referred to as 東京都, Hokkaido is 北海道, Kyoto and Osaka are 京都府 and 大阪府, whilst the rest are all ~県.)

首都（しゅと）- capital city

南北（なんぼく）- north and south

城（しろ）- castle

壁（かべ）- wall

火山（かざん）- volcano

土産話（みやげばなし）- travel anecdote/story

地方（ちほう）- region

昔話（むかしばなし）- folklore, legend

周り（まわり）- surroundings, vicinity

地名（ちめい）- place name

出身（しゅっしん）- birthplace, person’s origin

梅雨（つゆ）- the rainy season

湿度（しつど）- (level of) humidity

Associating the entire religion of Islam with terrorism or oppression is narrow-minded and wrong. For centuries, Muslims around the world have been responsible for scientific discoveries, works of art, and major technological advancements. There is a great deal of diversity in the way Islam is practiced by the 1.6 billion Muslims around the world, it is a vastly complex and diverse religion. Read more

South Korean initiative Dot has created the world’s first Braille smartwatch.

Thinking you’re gorgeous

Not wanting to change anything about your body, personality, or life

Loving yourself is:

Knowing you have inherent worth regardless of your physical appearance or life circumstance

Knowing you deserve good things

If you live in Canada, you’ve probably heard this one, it’s the most popular Quebec swear outside the province itself. Tabernak is, like most swears in Quebec, a religious reference (from tabernacle)

On its own, tabernak is used, roughly, like fuck or shit. – Tabernak! – Qu’est qu’il s’est passé?? – Mon ordi a planché

But it gets better: les sacres tend to be strung along together to make a long rage-filled sentence, like this example from wikipedia: – Criss de calice de tabarnak d'osti de sacrament!!!

Furthermore, one can use en tabernak to describe two things

 Someone is angry : Il est en tabernak! : He’s super pissed

you a bitch

I’m used to translation difficulties with second and third person pronouns, but here’s an example of the difficulties in translating first person pronouns, from the anime Your Name.

Actually, the character’s dialogue is four distinctly different words in Japanese. However, as shown in a series of photos Japanese Twitter user @notactor surreptitiously snapped at during a screening that he says took place in Beverly Hills, the lines are translated as

“I.” “I.” “I.” “I.”

So what’s going on? Well, at first, Mitusha (in Taki’s body) calls herself watashi, which is indeed the Japanese word for “I.” However, Japanese has multiple pronoun options for the first-person singular, and as with many things in the Japanese language, the relationship between the speaker and listener is extremely important.

Yes, watashi is the first thing you’ll see listed for “I” in an English/Japanese dictionary, and it’s also the first pronoun you’ll learn in any Japanese class. However, watashi has a very dry, polite nuance to it. In conversations with peers or close friends, Japanese males, just like their counterparts in other societies, tend to use more coarse language to show familiarity and a lack of pretentiousness, so when Taki’s friends hear watashi coming out of his mouth during a lunchtime conversation, it takes them completely by surprise, as it’s closer to the softer speech usually used by women in Japanese.

Flustered, Mitsuha takes another swing with watakushi, the “I” alternative that’s closest in pronunciation to watashi. However, watakushi is even more baroquely formal than watashi. She gets a little closer on her third try with boku, since that’s definitely a word males use for “I” when talking with their friends…provided they’re all pre-teens, that is. So while Taki’s friends no longer think he’s talking like a girl, he now sounds like a little boy.

Finally, Mitsuha gets it just right with ore. While it’s too rough for most conversations in the business or academic worlds, ore is indeed the go-to choice for teenaged and adult men when talking with their buddies, as it implies a certain masculine confidence that guys are generally expected to acquire as they mature.

Alas, all of this is more or less impossible to directly translate into English, which is why the subtitling team essentially threw their hands up and just added each Japanese pronoun after “I” in the subtitles. Unfortunately, that means that the only people in the audience who’d appreciate the humor are the ones who don’t need the subtitles in the first place.

me: