Your web-browser is very outdated, and as such, this website may not display properly. Please consider upgrading to a modern, faster and more secure browser. Click here to do so.
No, this is not “Can I touch your butt” in Elvish. This is “Can I touch your butt?” in English, transcribed using the letters of the Elvish alphabet. There is a difference.
In Elvish, the letters of the alphabet correspond to sounds, not to words. The above text spells it out using one symbol to represent one letter of the original English, which is incorrect:
- c-a-n i t-o-u-c-h y-o-u-r b-u-t-t
If you really want to spell out an English phrase using the Elvish alphabet, you would do so phonetically, which would basically equate to one symbol per phoneme (sound):
- c-a-n a-i t-u-ch y-o-r b-u-t
If you actually wanted to write “Can I touch your butt?” in Elvish, one (very rough) translation would be:
Annog nin daf pladan tele ci?
Which, in Sindarin Elvish, roughly translates to, “Would you give me permission to touch your rear?”
Written in tengwar (the Elvish alphabet), it would look like this:
Sorry for the blurry quality.
damn, the lotr fandom doesnt fuck around
now i want to learn elvish
My fandom, ladies and gentlemen. I’m so proud. *wipes tear away* ;-)
holy shit
And I thought the Sherlock/Homestuck/Harry Potter fans where nuts…
this is probably the best post I’ve ever seen
Don’t fuck with the elves, people
Generally speaking don’t fuck with any fandom which a) is more than thirty years old or b) has a strong showing of people who can speak a fictional language.
Lord of the Rings is one of two fandoms I can think of that meet both criteria. They are our elders and we owe them our respect.
117,034 notes (via nikineon & dajo42)
What does English sound like to foreign ears?
We’ve all heard examples of fake Chinese or German from speakers who lack familiarity with either language. While typically cringe-worthy, these examples do raise interesting questions regarding our own language. What does English sound like to non-English speakers? After more than 40 years, Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol” remains one of the most illuminating examples.
The entire song is nonsense verse, neither English nor Italian, but the sounds are meant to resemble English. Linguist Mark Liberman wrote an interesting post about this sort of thing over at Language Log discussing yaourter, the French word for an attempt to speak or sing in a foreign language that one doesn’t know all that well. This often involves trying to sing a foreign song with nonsense or random words filling in the blanks. Liberman shares this wonderful quote from a random Internet user:
Just for the story, in France, when we don’t speak English and we want to imitate the sound, we call it “yaourter”(to yoghourt), the imitation sounds like a very nasal language, kind of like a baby crying. It mostly imitates the “cowboy” accent.
This is fascinating *A*
I love when they mimic Americans speaking English in anime and it’s all “Shit!” and “OH MY GOD” and “pera pera pera” or something like that XD
I HAVE ALWAYS WONDERED
This is amazing.
It sounds like it should be American English but it’s just…not, and as somebody whose mother tongue is American English that’s really fascinating. And frustrating. It’s almost hard to listen to.
Is no one gonna mention how rad this song is tho?
This song is catchy as hell but listening to it is like someone flipped off the part of my brain that understands language. It sounds exactly like American English, but doesn’t make a syllable of sense.
What does it sound like to British and Australian speakers?
Wow. When I listen to this I can TELL my brain is taking the way it sounds like American English, my first language, and trying to force everything possible into words I know, and it’s really weird.
(Source: blogs.howstuffworks.com)
60,107 notes (via kaossparrow & m-i-s-u)
No no no no. Seriously people learn the words the troll terms come from. Things will make more sense.
Mate + Esprit
“Esprit” comes from the french so that’s:
mate + eh-SPREE
may-teh-SPREE (my favored pronunciation) or mate-SPREE
…which makes ‘hatesprit’ even funnier
Hatesprit is still the best word I’ve ever got a friend to start saying.
HATESPRIT IS THE BEST WORD. PERIOD.
also, maybe i am just a n00b to linguistics over here, but uh. don’t loan words… frequently… not keep the pronunciation of the original word? like, if you wanna say mate-spree (or HATE-SPREE) i have no complaints but
i feel matesprit is just as valid?
Often, but not universally, especially with relatively obscure words like esprit (which clearly is not in most of our everyday vocabularies, which is a shame because it’s a lovely word). I’m afraid that in this case, Merriam-Webster and Oxford agree - it retains the French pronunciation.
Of course, you can pronounce matesprit however you wish, but going by the correct pronunciation of the words of which it is a portmanteau, the softer pronunciation would seem to be more correct.
(Source: unpopular-hs-opinions)
63 notes (via robokittens & unpopular-hs-opinions)
