#language barriers

I think it finally clicked why I don't think my writing is all that good in english, and it has a lot to do with language barriers! None of you have ever seen me write like a story or anything because of this exact reason, but I still think it's a funny enough thing to comment because I never really thought about it this hard–

My native language is brazilian portuguese, and it's a way more complex language than english is– no hate to my english speaking baddies over here obviously, but just to put it into perspective..

English has 12 verb tenses, portuguese has 25. And even then, when conjugating verbs, all of them have SIX FUCKING VARIATIONS because it's one for each of the different pronouns. So putting it side by side looks like this:

Pretty fucking ridiculous right??? And that's without counting the fact that those blue pieces on the words are not concrete for all other verbs. Them bitches have their OWN rules.

Yes I will bitch about this part of my language every chance I get because when I was 12 I had to do this shitty exercise with a ton of different verbs on all verb tenses. TRY DOING THAT 25 TIMES FOR EACH. TRY. I CHALLENGE YOU BRO MY WRISTS WERE ALWAYS ON FIRE– ahem back to what I was saying–

You must be thinking "oh that's already kind of a lot, damn, must really feel different but I mean that's probably all there is–" WRONG!!! What if I told you our words are like twice as big. Like for real usually just on the size of the words itself if you were to translate something to portuguese it usually adds one to two lines to the text. I actually did this little test on one piece of fanfic I was reading the other day (Cherished by Thatsnakesmouse, it's a fluffy Dr. Pepper oneshot but I recommend it!) and it really did add 2 more lines.

Slight SPOILER WARNING if you wanna read

You can see on the screenshots that the words are way bigger and not only are they bigger they are way more formal sounding than the english text– this doesn't happen in this example specifically, but it's not uncommon for some parts of translated text to sound poorly written or poorly explained. Is that the writer's fault? Not at all! (obviously) And I only noticed the actual specific reason reading smut with my friend believe it or not– it's not just difference in phrases or whatever, there are actually words MISSING.

You see, in portuguese we describe shit heavily with big and fancy words all the time, it would be considered too much in english but it's bare minimum in any brazilian text that isn't super casual. Giving a very bad example with numbers, let's say in english you would use 1 to 2 words to describe a thing, while in portuguese it would be 4 or even a whole damn SENTENCE. Adapting a phrase from english to portuguese is super simple because most of the time the words used aren't translated to fancy words, but doing the opposite??? Oh boy. I actually read something about it these days that said some of the best brazilian poets and writers were usually never that acknowledged worldwide, because their works would sometimes be entirely impossible to translate, or would lose all meaning and "whimsy" once it hit english– because many of those words just don't exist or aren't usable in the way they are here.

Putting it simply– 2k words is A LOT in english, but 2k words in portuguese is usually not that impressive depending on the way the writer is doing it– because for many people, at least half of that will be describing atmosphere or a character. We lay a very heavy hand on detail here! I have like roleplay action paragraphs that are 10x bigger than the average character description in english. Because that's just basic for my language.

That's obviously not to say english texts suck, this is all just a fun thing I noticed! I actually enjoy reading in english a bit more, because I'm not particularly patient– sometimes it's just more relaxing and fun for me to read something that goes directly to the point of the story instead of something that takes it's time to integrate me into the scene, and sometimes I'm fancy enough to read the 6k word shit that stalls on details for far too long– all about balance!

Rambled pretty badly but like, idk I find it kind of interesting– oh and the funniest part? I often catch myself using the gboard translator to write from english to portuguese. It's kinda genius if you think about it because like it adds the bone of the paragraph and then i just have to fluff it up– BUT I STILL FIND IT IRONIC GIVEN ALL OF THIS.

If you actually read this idk what to say other than thank you you are a cutie and probably didn't have anything else to do did you?– /lh /silly