Linguistic Inquiry

Lol; it's funny that you mentioned this; I heard the word "courva" in one of those nearly-avoided-death-in-traffic videos, and I was reminded of the subtleties of the term in Polish.

The harder the glottal fricative is pronounced when uttering the [k] sound in "courva," the more it moves toward a harsher oath, and if you really want to lay on the "fucker" to the "mother," you add a "mosh" (with a long o, the length of which can also modify the utterance to various levels of severity).

I'm not an expert in Polish, and I honestly only know how to ask for a cigarette and compliment beer, but it was all I needed to know to impress the people I was trying to, so this little intricacy of the language struck me as particularly intriguing when I figured it out, however accurate my alcohol-misted memory might be of the mid-nineties, which is when I think I learned it.

Hey, who knew - this is turning into a much more linguistic inquiry than I thought it would.

>Schwabe.

Also, I tried google-translating this and google-searching it, and it's utterly mystifying me.

Is it the past-tense of "schwab," as in "I schwabe my mouth with a q-tip," or is it a derivative of "schwa" somehow, which is the sound represented by a backwards "e" and which is pronounced like an "uhhhhh"?

Or something else?

This is what i imagine when someone claims german is a beautiful language

You mean die Unberechtigtedeutschespracheverherrlichung?

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It‘s a term for germans. Der Schwabe. Someone from Schwabenland aka a historical region in germany.

>I schwabe my mouth with a q-tip
This is just too perfect

Also, it‘s a noun, not a verb.

Well, shit; that's pretty efficient.

I mean, you're sort of killing the joke by demonstrating the literal derivation of the words being used, but you're not wrong.

The humor is in the degree to which you find the specificity of terms to which degree dehumanizes the person in question, and each adjective takes away their humanity until they become a meme in your head, and lose all persona whatsoever.

This is probably also why memes are so efficient in communicating the human condition.

My appreciation of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has advanced to being stronger than Turkish Coffee.

And I heard that in Turkey, people give you cigarettes a lot, and those go really well will coffee.

It was literally only one guy who happened to serve there in the late 1980s as a U.S. something-or-other, and I have no idea, in retrospect, whether or not they were just trying to bribe him not to murder their children, but that's how these things go - you hear someone whose been there tell you that "Turkish people are cigarette-giving bastards," and you think "damn, that would be awesome - I hope it's true," and then there you go: a completely random and anecdotal piece of evidence that overrides any other thing you might have heard about the place, because it's just better if you imagine them as people who will randomly give you cigarettes.

Hell, I still hope it's true, even recognizing how fucking stupid it is.

>die Unberechtigtedeutschespracheverherrlichung

So, Google translated this as "the unauthorized German language glorification," and I don't quite know how to take it.

If that's a meta-joke about the overuse of suffixial additions to make German seem more complicated than it actually is, and which contributes to the barrier that prevents more English-speakers (who should probably know more of it than they do, considering that literally the linguistic bridge passes from "High German" [problematic, but just treat it like a linguistic term] to "Old English" [have you tried to *read* Beowulf in its original script, mah dood?!], then I'm laughing.

If it's a term that actually exists among German-speakers, and represents some kind of prescriptive attempt to maintain some sort of homogeneity among the language, then I'm also laughing, but in the ironic sense of language itself being a living, changing thing that will always overcome any attempts to standardize it.

Either way, I'm laughing, though.

>The humor is in the degree to which you find the specificity of terms to which degree dehumanizes the person in question, and each adjective takes away their humanity until they become a meme in your head

I mean, I realize this makes me a monster, but I also understand how many times I've been memed, and how much mirth it brings others to do so, and have willingly participated with such endeavors to the point where I probably lost my soul, and literally don't exist to basically any other human but as some collection of tropes and archetypes that would qualify me as such.

Maybe I'm a meta-meme.

I mean, I've never met a meme I didn't like.

Wokka-wokka.

And that's basically everyone until you actually give a shit about them.

Chuckle Monster

>forgot the pic

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I just invented it. Nobody actually talks like that. But it‘s very easy to construct a monster word for every occasion.
Whenever you hear words like that, they could just as easily be deconstructed without the phrase loosing much.
I don‘t think non native speakers should be afraid of those mashed together words. You don‘t really need them.
I could say „er hatte grosse Verlustängste“ but i could just as well say „er hatte grosse Angst vor Verlust“. The first might be a bit more elegant. The latter a bit more simplified. You‘d probably avoid mashing words together if you write children‘s books for example. It does require some level of being able to comprehend abstract thoughts and connections. You don‘t have to bother with that when learning german as a second language. You can communicate and understand perfectly well without it and if people talking to you have any sense of empathy, they‘ll avoid mashing words together to not overcomplicate it for non native speakers.

>Latinate structure of suffixial additions that can get incredibly specific,
afaik it's because the protestant reformation stopped rampant latin/french loaning in the language unlike in english. I know in swedish you wouldn't use a word like "satisfaction" but you would say "to-peace-putting" really quickly, replicating the latin words components.

And, because humor is the perforated border between our complete self-absorption an the infinite void of pain that accompanies our insignificance in the universe, there is the word "sonder" - youtu.be/AkoML0_FiV4

I'm thinking that's closer to the first option, and that seems reasonable.

I mean, how often do we see that poem of English words that should rhyme but don't, and which only seem to advertise the exclusivity of native speakers?

Knowing that you just made the word up actually makes the joke quite hilarious, though.

It's a real over-9000-knee-slap-to-the-max.

>advertise the exclusivity of native speakers?

I think with prose and poetry that‘s inevitable.
Every language is to some degree closed in itself and using words as a form of art makes the beauty of said art exclusive to the language it was originally made in. You might be able to translate the intentions and emotions, but you surely can‘t translate the linguistic nuances. The beauty of constructing art with words is built upon your choice of words and how magnificent your choice was depends on the alternatives you had. Every language has different sets of synonymes, so you really can‘t compare or translate that.

You make an indisputable point here.

Perhaps our greatest point of myopia comes from the idea that we should distinguish between prose and poetry, though.

Every language sings itself, whether that means a tonal inflection that you'd only be able to detect if you acquired such attenuation from birth or whether it means Walt Whitman's barbaric *yawp*.

When strangers meet, studies have shown that it isn't their appearance or any other appreciable difference that others notice first - it's the way they talk.

We imagine the panopticon so often in this culture, perpetually watching our every move, but what about the panaudicon?

You are wise to be a sensitive listener, user.

And that's today's installment of "Pretentious Asshole: The Post"

>And that's today's installment of "Pretentious Asshole: The Post"

Kek

What if they don‘t speak? And how do we judge speak? Do you still know the study you‘re referring to?

It really saddens me to think that i‘ll never be able to become fluent in the subtle nuances of a language that isn‘t my first. It feels like this makes me miss out on a lot of truly great art that simply isn‘t translatable to the degree of it‘s magnificence.

>What if they don‘t speak?

Oftentimes, that means they are only feigning the ability to speak until they can sufficiently determine that their listener honestly gives a shit about what they have to say.

Other times, they have some kind of impediment. You never know until to pay enough attention, though.

I don't think this corrupts or invalidates any part of that study I remember hearing once about but can't cite because I don't have access to the databases that require subscription by enrollment in a major university.

It's probably something that you feel like might be true even without having to see empirically reproducible results, because you sort of already have those results when you remember all the times you've met strangers, but I suspect that depends on how honest your memory is.

I may be imagining all those times when I've paid attention to people who were communicating in non-verbal ways, but you have no idea how fucked I am if that's the case, karmically speaking.

I guess I just have a lot of faith in my ability to determine non-verbal communication.

Oh, so you include non-verbal communication? I thought this was only about verbal communication.
But wouldn‘t that make it a cross-discipline? You can‘t observe non-verbal communication without it being part of the panopticon. I honestly don‘t think that people get first impressions from people‘s optics, verbal or non-verbal communication but from their interpretation of said observations. And that would make it highly subjective. Which would imply that most first impressions would be grossly distorted by the observers history on which he based his interpretations. However, from my experience (which might not be valid), first impressions are often rather accurate. Now, does that mean that people have better judgement skills than we assume or that people often follow stereotypes? Or both?

Your logic is truly dizzying.

We are a collection of information. Every being you determine as a bound collection of data exists by whatever limits you confer to their binding.

This includes empirical input that you might determine from both ocular and aural sources, and if you are in a culture that permits it, possibly the epidermal exchange of ions to some degree (which, from my own cultural experience, extends to a handshake before you have some 'splaining to do to your S.O.)

Stereotypes exists in both audible and visual forms, and when they meet, it's like crack to the part of your brain that wants to be able to predict everything it sees.

There is nothing so satisfying as watching an animal who behaves exactly as you want it to.

It's jarring to reflect this kind of awareness upon the self, but necessary. Sometimes, it hurts. That's okay. The hurt you feel is only part of the same kind of tired, sad trope that you have become in whatever moment you might feel pain from the judgment of others.

Keep holding on, though. Even if it's only dreams that offer you more, it's something that you experience in a conscious body, however ethereal and impermanent.

That's not meaningless, even if it seems to be when you awake.

Wait - okay, that was the epilogue of "Pretentious Asshole: The Post"

I'm actually making myself angry with this shit that I can't seem to remember until I'm telling them to someone else, so rest assured you're not the only one who's annoyed, if you are.

hehehehehehe good post