vanillivilovesreus

Dear fellow ESL speakers, be honest: how often do you find yourselves saying "yes" in your native language when speaking English to English native speakers?

Yes, the question is born out of my frustration at all the Heated Rivalry fanfictions that have Ilya saying "da" far too often and in absolutely normal situations. Sorry, but that's not how reverting to your native language works, actually.

I have been known to use my native language in the following situations (but it's Linguistics, really):

spotting a horrifying pest I am mortally afraid of: screams in native language

getting hurt: the equivalent of "ouch" in my mother tongue (sorry but when in pain I can't be expected to translate my instinctive reaction).

counting: if I count in English I focus on the words not the numbers, so it's a pointless exercise.

frustration: you know when you're trying to do something, but for some reason you're not having any success? (looking at you, demonic jar I can't open) That's when the native language comes out. It will be either a persuasive "come on!" or an angry "why won't you open you evil jar" depending on the number of attempts. It will be, invariably, in my native language.

tiredness: I barely remember my own native language when I'm tired. I'll try my best in English but be ready for grammar to go out the window and for a few choice words in my mother tongue, mostly mumbled beyond comprehension.

For balance, I should also add some other situations when I totally use my native language on purpose because of semantics, thus I whole-heartedly approve those usages in fanfiction (but it's still Linguistics, really):

terms of endearment: yes, darling and sweatheart and honey and what-not are fine. However, I will call my loved ones by names my heart resonates with on a deeper level, and that's going to be in my native language.

saying "I love you": now, the English language is awful for expressing love because you people only have ONE VERB, whereas there are MANY different kinds of love. So I will say "I love you " in my mother tongue, it's just better that way, trust me.

idioms that I love so I will teach to my foreign loved ones, with the only purpose of using them in conversation. And also because everyone needs enrichment.

insults: if you've just tried to run me over with your car while I was crossing the street with the PEDESTRIAN GREEN LIGHT ON, you bet I'll have words while you speed away. And those words will be in my native language (let's file this under fear and/or anger).

Out of all the words one could say in one's native language, "yes" it's the one word that's becoming more and more common to say in English, no matter what language one speaks. Which is why Ilya saying "da" so often in fanfics just sounds off :)

A few tags from my original post, because I totally agree with you:

Dear fellow ESL speakers, be honest: how often do you find yourselves saying "yes" in your native language when speaking English to English native speakers?

Yes, the question is born out of my frustration at all the Heated Rivalry fanfictions that have Ilya saying "da" far too often and in absolutely normal situations. Sorry, but that's not how reverting to your native language works, actually.

I have been known to use my native language in the following situations (but it's Linguistics, really):

spotting a horrifying pest I am mortally afraid of: screams in native language

getting hurt: the equivalent of "ouch" in my mother tongue (sorry but when in pain I can't be expected to translate my instinctive reaction).

counting: if I count in English I focus on the words not the numbers, so it's a pointless exercise.

frustration: you know when you're trying to do something, but for some reason you're not having any success? (looking at you, demonic jar I can't open) That's when the native language comes out. It will be either a persuasive "come on!" or an angry "why won't you open you evil jar" depending on the number of attempts. It will be, invariably, in my native language.

tiredness: I barely remember my own native language when I'm tired. I'll try my best in English but be ready for grammar to go out the window and for a few choice words in my mother tongue, mostly mumbled beyond comprehension.

For balance, I should also add some other situations when I totally use my native language on purpose because of semantics, thus I whole-heartedly approve those usages in fanfiction (but it's still Linguistics, really):

terms of endearment: yes, darling and sweatheart and honey and what-not are fine. However, I will call my loved ones by names my heart resonates with on a deeper level, and that's going to be in my native language.

saying "I love you": now, the English language is awful for expressing love because you people only have ONE VERB, whereas there are MANY different kinds of love. So I will say "I love you " in my mother tongue, it's just better that way, trust me.

idioms that I love so I will teach to my foreign loved ones, with the only purpose of using them in conversation. And also because everyone needs enrichment.

insults: if you've just tried to run me over with your car while I was crossing the street with the PEDESTRIAN GREEN LIGHT ON, you bet I'll have words while you speed away. And those words will be in my native language (let's file this under fear and/or anger).

But one day, I think it was August 2021, I flipped a coin. Thinking back, I think it might have been the first time in my life I'd ever flipped a coin. But we were deciding where to eat, me and my friends.

And then it happened. The coin landed on the table, heads... and also on the floor, tails. I tracked the coin with my eyes, but suddenly realized I was looking at two things at the same time. It was like crossing your eyes, and seeing things kinda overlaid on top of eachother, kinda mixing and fading in and out, but with four eyes instead of two.

It was such a weird experience. At first I just stood there kinda motionless, trying to figure out what was going on. Then my friend bent down and picked up the coin off the floor, and said "Hah! Tails! Pizza!" and also she just stood there and said "Damnit. Heads. Guess we're gonna get burgers after all."

And I looked down at her and up at her at the same time.

That's really when the desynch started. I reached for the coin on the table and held a fuzzy, half-there, transparent coin in my hand.

I began to feel kinda sick. We got in the car and things got more and more confusing. Thank goodness I wasn't driving that day. My friends were having two increasingly different conversations and I just sat there kinda dissociating. By the time we got to the two different restaurants I was nauseated and I had a bad headache. I stayed in the car in the parking lot at the pizza place for a few minutes until the other car going to the burger place parked. One of my friends was worried and stayed with me, so that was nice. But when I tried getting out of the car, everything went wrong.

One of my bodies walked right into another car and fell down on the ground, while the other stopped and froze in place. The completely different sense of proprioception completely broke me.

I was basically bedridden for a week. Slowly I relearned how to move, and walk, and talk. I had two bodies, in two timelines, connected by a single consciousness. My brain(s?) had to learn how to control two bodies at the same time.

It's like, pretty weird, but I'm used to it these days. My two sets of eyes no longer overlay on top of one another, they're kinda separate. It's hard to describe. I think my brain got better at multitasking too, I can walk in one timeline and draw in the other, for example.

Things kept getting more and more different, as much as I tried to enforce keeping things the same. Finally I started seeing my therapist again.

I had to convince her that what I was experiencing was real. So I asked her to think of her favorite food and her favorite color. Then in the "Burger" timeline I asked her to tell me her favorite food, and in the "Pizza" timelines I asked her to tell me her favorite color. And I told her her favorite color in the burger timeline and her favorite food in the pizza timeline (Spaghetti and Red, btw.)

She quizzed me on a few other things and sometimes her answers differed between the two timelines which was pretty frustrating, and I don't think she really believed me at first, but she was nice enough to play along at least. And like, not have me committed.

I ended up scheduling my therapy so that I have meetings on pizza tuesday and burger friday, so they're kinda spaced out more evenly. It also just makes the meetings a little less confusing. Ironically doing the same thing in both timelines is actually more distracting than doing different things.

In late 2022 I transitioned. I decided to come out in the burger timeline and stay in the closet in the pizza timeline, so if everything fell apart I'd still have one normal timeline. And like, my parents did not support me. Most of my friends did, but some of them drifted away. And I found that just made me resentful of my parents and those friends in the pizza timeline. And the dysphoria of being a guy in the pizza timeline while living as a woman in the burger timeline was killing me. So when I got on HRT in early 2023 I decided I couldn't take it anymore, I had to transition in both timelines. So I did. Ironically things went a little smoother in the pizza timeline, probably because I was already more confident about presenting female.

I ended up making some transfem friends in the burger timeline, and I sought them out in the pizza timeline too.

It's kind of a mixed bag, this phenomenon. You know like, pain is a lot worse. One week I had a bad tummy ache in the pizza timeline and a bad toothache in the burger timeline. Or like, if I have back pain in one timeline, not having back pain in the other timeline doesn't relieve the feeling at all.

It's such a cool thing, like. When I first started out I had all these conflicting signals in my limbs and body and stuff. But now it's just like. Yeah I have a pizza arm and a burger arm, just like I have a left arm and a right arm. They're the same, but different.

When I make a drawing in one timeline, I don't have access to it in the other timeline, which is really annoying because I keep wanting to show people art I made in the other timeline. One day I'll figure out some kind of interdimensional data transfer protocol. I mean I guess I could like, convert the file into hexadecimal text, and then manually type it out and hope I don't make any mistakes. I'd have to compress the hell out of the file though. Maybe I'll try that one of these days when I don't have anything to do in either timeline.

But I get to spend more time with my friends, because I can schedule hanging out on different days of the same week. Does get kinda confusing when I confuse things that happened in one timeline for another.

Because like, ever since that coin flip, the timelines have been steadily moving further apart. You'd be surprised how little the weather has changed. Like, sometimes there's a little rain shower in one timeline a few minutes earlier than in the other, but all the big storms and hurricanes and stuff are basically the same. I guess it's harder to influence these continent-scale systems than the butterfly effect predicts.

I get to see almost twice as much meteors during meteor showers because I can look in two directions at once. Meteors hit the atmosphere in exactly the same way at exactly the same time.

But it does affect a lot of other little things. Even when you don't realize it, you affect the lives of everyone you come into contact with in little ways, and that spreads. I know people with different jobs in each timeline, people who have different relationships. Even people I don't know that well.

I wasn't quick enough in the pizza timeline to keep my friend from. Well. To save my friend's life. But I rushed over to her house in the burger timeline and talked her down. It's so weird, grieving a person you still talk to every week. Because it ended up being this kind of abstract pain. Everyone else is missing her and you're standing there like. Yeah. I have plans to see a movie with her on burger tuesday. I went to her funeral just to make sure that I saw the dead body so I could really internalize that she was gone. And I still didn't cry. It made me feel like a terrible person.

My friends never really take me all that seriously when I talk about being split like this. They kinda play along but I can tell they think it's a joke. It's whatever. But my friend's girlfriend came into my DMs one night sobbing and cry-typing and begging me to let her talk to her gf one last time. I wasn't sure it was a good idea. But I relented, and made plans to have a sort of interdimensional seance.

I could tell my friend--we'll call her Elsie, and we'll call her girlfriend Robin. I could tell Elsie was pretty awkward about it. I think she felt guilty on behalf of her other, dead self. Robin kept saying stuff like "how could you kill yourself, how could you do this to me," and I would have to say that, and Elsie was just like "I'm sorry." And it was really hard to get Robin to understand that we weren't talking to Elsie's dead spirit, we were talking to her in another timeline. I told her she didn't have to apologize, and I told Robin that guilt tripping the dead was kind of rude.

After that things went a little more smoothly, Robin asked about how Elsie's life had gone, how their relationship had progressed you know like if they were still together, things like that. Elsie said some stuff that I wouldn't have known, and Robin was like. Wow you really are talking to Elsie aren't you?

And I was just like :| yep.

Ever since then my friends keep trying to get my help with stuff. Like they'll ask me what their other self is doing, like, ok, for instance, my friend, we'll call her Jane, she wanted to ask out her crush, and she was like ok. Can you ask the burger version of my crush if she likes me back. Which kinda throws the burger version of her under the bus doesn't it!

And another of my friends wanted to know if she'd regret quitting her job, so she told me to ask the other her to quit her job, and then if it went well she'd do the same. I did ask, and she said no, obviously.

Because it is confusing. It would almost feel easier if there was no love there at all. But sometimes there was love. In the way they tried to protect you. In the sacrifices they made. In the ways they worried about you, cared for you, wanted a good life for you.

And at the same time, there were still things missing.

Maybe comfort did not come in the way you needed it to. Maybe your feelings were not always understood, or noticed, or handled gently. Maybe you learned to keep certain parts of yourself quiet because it felt easier than trying to explain them.

That kind of hurt is difficult because it does not always come from cruelty. Sometimes it comes from people who loved you deeply, but did not know how to emotionally connect in the ways you needed. People carrying their own wounds, limitations, fears, or ways of surviving.

And you are allowed to acknowledge both truths at once.

You are allowed to recognize their love and still grieve what you needed but did not receive. Those things do not cancel each other out.

Forgiveness, for a lot of people, is not pretending nothing hurt you. It is slowly accepting that someone can love you and still fall short of understanding you completely.

That does not make your pain dramatic. It does not make them monsters either. Sometimes it just means everyone was trying with the emotional tools they had, and some of those tools were not enough.

And I think many people quietly carry guilt for still feeling hurt by parents they know tried their best. But being loved imperfectly can still leave wounds. It makes sense that it affected you.

At the same time, you do not have to stay trapped only in anger forever either. Sometimes healing looks like understanding that your parents were human before they were parents. People shaped by their own experiences, their own upbringing, their own emotional gaps.

That understanding does not erase your feelings. It just softens the sharp edges around them a little.

You deserved emotional safety. You deserved gentleness. You deserved to feel understood, comforted, and emotionally close to the people raising you.

And if they could not fully give that to you, it is okay to mourn it.

But I hope you also know this: the love you needed is still something you can experience in your life. Through other people. Through chosen family. Through the way you learn to treat yourself now.

The story does not end at what you did or did not receive growing up.

—

PBS: Language as Prejudice - Myth #6: Women Talk Too Much (via misandry-mermaid)

Every EVERY women’s studies class I’ve been in has had this problem and failed to address it. 

The “African” football. I have thought about it for a few days if I should say something. But I think it is important.

It’s about the statements Basti Schweinsteiger and Rade Bogdanovic said at the World Cup about “African football” and Black players in general. Before I start: I have known Basti very well for many years and I am quite sure: he is not a racist.

That is also not the point and to attack him now in public doesn’t bring this debate forward in my opinion. We should instead talk about how a particular thought pattern - even when it absolutely isn’t meant in a derogatory way- has imprinted itself in football for decades. Players from Africa and Black players in general are wild, tactically and technically weak and not as knowledgable about the game as Europeans (aka Whites) and instead are physically strong, robust and athletic, etc. Everyone has heard something along these lines. And just like that, an entire continent is described in two sentences.

That this is not true (meaning also wrong in terms of football), is obvious - for example just watch the high quality Final of the Africa-Cup between Senegal and Morocco or the majority of the French national team or all the players that play in the top leagues all over the world, or Ivory Coast’s matchplan against Germany during this World Cup. Or you simply realize that Africa is a huge part of the world with so many different languages, people, and cultures. I read somewhere online, someone wondering if you’re still allowed to say that spanish football is mostly Tiki-Taka. Of course, you’re allowed. But Spain is just a country. Not a continent with more than 50 different countries.

This is all researched and proven of course. But these perspectives hold strong around today. Not out of some evil will. Rather, because these stereotypes are deeply anchored in our society and passed on as a matter of course.

I have the feeling that we often concern ourselves more with whether someone is a racist or not. I would hope that we could instead concern ourselves with seriously scrutinizing this thought pattern, that we still carry around as a society, and leads to these not intentional but in the end racist statements.

A good start could be to engage with African teams (of which nine out of ten made it to the K.O phase) and their countries in a more detailed and interested manner during the World Cup.