Languages! Are! Weird!

What is the slang term for "a poseur"? Specifically, what would be the slang term, a noun derived from the verb "to pose" is English?

Spiral out, keep going.

You know that thing when you italicize a word to clarify that you're mentioning rather than using it in the sentence? Example:

Well, what if the structure of the sentence puts this mentioned word in the beginning rather than the middle? I'd have to capitalize it, right?

Is that appropiate?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Yes, you'd capitalise it.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

As far as I know pose(u)r is used just like that in English. Alternatively you could use "blender".

Edited by Kiefen on Aug 9th 2018 at 7:00:54 PM

Okay... Am I the only one here who thinks the result looks sort of weird?

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New question: I'm creating a table that lists the various body parts of a fictional alien species ^note the Bizarre Alien Biology factor requires it; I'm pretty much inventing whole new terms in the process., as well as certain properties of said parts (e.g. general location on the body); the body parts themselves are arranged in rows, while the columns denote the properties. The first three columns denote, in order, the (human-coined) scientific name, common English name, and the translation of the alien endonym for each body part.

Example for illustration, using only the first three columns:

Scientific name	Common name (English)	Translated endonym
caput* This is the actual real-life scientific term for the human head, incidentally.	head	head

In the above example, the translated endonym is identical to the common English name. How do I represent this in a way other than simply repeating the same term? I thought of the ditto mark, but it only applies when the repetition happens vertically rather than horizontally.

Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 10th 2018 at 9:08:49 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I noticed that I developed a catchphrase.

The trick is, it can't be translated to English well enough because of two things: the variety of Polish swearwords (the "diversity of the word" scene could be translated with "a rich language" as the punchline instead) and a rather antiquated expression that makes the whole thing Sophisticated as Hell.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

If a sentence starts with two words separated by a slash and neither of them is a proper noun, should the second word be capitalized as well?

Examples for illustration:

• Yes/No questions are allowed.
• Yes/no questions are allowed.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

The former looks more natural to me personally, but I can't say the latter feels outright wrong.

"life is just a series of increasingly canon-eluding ao3 tags" ~ everydunsparce "Keep your hellfruit away from me, tempter" ~ also Every

Makes me wonder, why did nobody catch on the Bite the Wax Tadpole thing with Dio's war cry. In Russian, it sounds like he goes "Ballsballsballsballsballs" ("muda" being the slang word for testicles).

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Because муди is comparatively obscure mat word. And muda is an even more obscure spelling variant. It isn't among the "Great Triad" of Russian cuss words - хуй (hui, dick), пизда (pizda, cunt) and ебать (yebat', fuck). It's also limited in usage to its literal meaning (or something that is connected to its literal meaning), as opposed to other mat words. The only other usage I can name is мудоёб (mudoyob, lit. ball-fucker. You can imagine what it means figuratively). And also probably мудак (mudak) and its derivatives.

Considering Russian's morphological derivation peculiarities, those three dirty words (and блядь, blyad', whore) are enough for everyday usage in any situation, so it's possible that many Russian-speaking people simply are not aware of its existence. I've literally just learned it from you. Thanks, by the way.

Edited by Millership on Oct 6th 2018 at 7:36:58 PM

Spiral out, keep going.

I learned "mudak" some time ago, not sure where from (I think the context was calling someone a nutjob).

Also, spell check please... In very, very Gratuitous Japanese. Does this really mean "Not A Bear's Bizarre Adventure"? The main problem is: does negation go after the verb in Japanese like this?

Edited by NotSoBadassLongcoat on Oct 9th 2018 at 11:53:13 AM

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Assuming that I'm reading it right (熊ではないの奇妙な冒険), that's more or less correct AFAIK. Also, it's not a matter of negation coming after a verb, it's a matter of conjugation form (every verb has a negative form in its conjugation); ではない is actually the standard negative form of だ and である (the latter is in turn a contraction of にてあり; here is だ's conjugation table, courtesy of Wiktionary), so you have nothing to worry on that front.

Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 9th 2018 at 2:06:04 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

...I'm a derp. I confused noun (what I actually had in mind) with verb.

Hell, I added furigana above the "Not A Bear" that gives an approximate idea how to pronounce it. If you click the link in the previous post, furigana-annotated version of the picture is in the comments.

Edited by NotSoBadassLongcoat on Oct 9th 2018 at 1:41:38 PM

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

... I have no idea why you'd choose Jivigyu as the furigana. Assuming that I'm reading it right, that is.

Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 9th 2018 at 2:56:48 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

It's a reference to my Twitch channel, Dzwiedz 24 - the English version of the title is "Dźwiedziu's Bizarre Adventure", and the furigana is a veeery close (as close as Japanese pronunciations allow) approximation of how "Dźwiedziu" is pronounced.

And "Dźwiedź" itself is a pun - the Polish word for bear is "Niedźwiedź", and there's a joke involving the removal of the supposed negation "nie". So "not a bear" would be "Dźwiedź".

Don't Explain the Joke, much?

Edited by NotSoBadassLongcoat on Oct 9th 2018 at 2:29:10 PM

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Consider a noun phrase like in the following sentence: "He's the Vampire King".

Would I be correct in assuming that the word "Vampire" is a noun adjunct?

Related question: Is there any real difference in connotation between "Vampire King" and "King Vampire"? Both titles are used to describe Bram Stoker's Dracula, the latter specifically being used by the character Abraham Van Helsing within the story.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

So, about that Japanese I was asking above...

Here's the final product:

There's a lot of more or less badly translated Japanese going on in there, but hey, at least the crew position names are correct! That, and there's a Punny Name or two hidden in there. I also corrected the furigana in the title.

And if the composer had the lyrics in katakana/kanji, and not just romaji, I'd use that instead, but hey, I work with what I can get.

Edited by NotSoBadassLongcoat on Mar 2nd 2019 at 1:46:39 PM

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

In English, when we're talking about a group of people which has its own name, say, a sports team, should we use the plural forms of the verbs and the "they" pronoun? Which of the following is correct:

1. Real Madrid have lost El Clasico. They didn't play very well.
2. Real Madrid has lost El Clasico. It didn't play very well.
3. Real Madrid has lost El Clasico. They didn't play very well.

The second one felt wrong as I was typing it, TBH.

Edited by Millership on Mar 3rd 2019 at 5:28:39 PM

Spiral out, keep going.

The first one, I think.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

You're describing an action done by the teammates - losing, so it's "they lost". Now if you were talking about something happening to the team as a whole, such as "got disbanded", you should use "it".

Edited by NhazUl on Mar 8th 2019 at 11:13:02 AM

The answer is, you can use either. I would advise consistency: don't use singular verbs and later plural pronouns. It depends on how you think of the organisation, at heart. Use "they" if you want to emphasise the actions of the members who participated. Use "it" if you're focusing on the orders given by the leadership, or on institutional continuity. The Roman Catholic Church as a whole is almost always referred to as "it", and that has much to do with it 1500 years of stability and strong hierarchy: we know it's an institution far more powerful than its members would be on their own.

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.

A French language questions about the ils/elles pronouns:

1. Is it correct that we should use "elles" only when talking about a group consisting exclusively of women, and "ils" in other cases (a mixed group of people and an all-male group)?
2. When not talking about people (or gendered animals) should the pronoun's gender be the same as the noun's gender? I.e. use "elles" for "les voitures"?

Edited by Millership on Apr 1st 2019 at 10:58:02 PM

Spiral out, keep going.

I am seriously wondering: who the heck used the word "potrzebie" in an Aspirin leaflet and in what context?

It starts making sense after finding out that medicine produced in East Germany for the Polish market had weird words and phrases like "przed społknięciem rozkąsić" (with the exception of "przed", those aren't actual Polish words and more like weird neologisms that are understandable for Poles, but will stump anyone with a dictionary).

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

On the first point, yes, that is the long-standing rule in formal French. For the second, you have some choice: if the noun has a natural gender, you may use the corresponding pronoun, or you may use the grammatical one for the noun used in the sentence. This can get interesting when the two do not match, especially with people: it is correct if quaint to say "J'ai vue une personne, elle avait une barbe..."

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.

I'm utterly confounded by why several languages have letters that represent what are unambiguously consonant clusters, i.e. two distinct consonants that are not mixed together during pronunciation. Best example: The Latin letter X, and its Greek precursor Xi. Notably, the early Cyrillic alphabet followed suit when it borrowed a lot of the Greek language's letters, but by the 18th century the letter Ksi was eliminated altogether; that's why you see the Latin-derived name "Maxim" being rendered as "Maksim" in those languages.

So again... Why would such letters exist in a language?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.