Lady @Lady@cat.family

@witchfynder_finder yeah it’s common to either get “English is just a hodgepodge of different languages and that’s why it’s bad!” (which is a bad take because it invokes a concept of linguistic purity) or “English is the Most Multicultural language and that’s why everyone should speak it!” (which is a bad take because it reinforces and upholds colonialism) and it’s very rare to get someone actually saying, “hey let’s look at the different factors which have lead to this influx of japanese terms in english fan and online communities” or w/e, which is where all the actually interesting stuff is at

@witchfynder_finder literally you go pull up a grammar book from the right time period and they will have Several Pages dedicated to how each language has its own Journey to the Perfection which is Latin, and how English is only partway along that journey and it will be some time before it ever achieves that Greatness

now it’s all like ‘how dare you introduce habitual “be” ’

@witchfynder_finder oh yeah i think it’s really interesting because we’re in this shift, where like a few hundred years ago they were all like “English is Broken it needs these Rules to Change” and now they’re all like “English is Perfect The Way It Is and these Kids just don’t know how to Speak Properly”

which has corresponded with the shift of it from being a put‐upon more lower‐class language to it being a prestige one

@witchfynder_finder the very last thing any proper white english person wants to do is think critically about actual english culture

tell us more about the funny words in german, please

@witchfynder_finder it’s part of the white project of making english fade into the background imo; if you point out english’s notable aspects then you’re situating it historically within a culture instead of just accepting it as an unspoken norm

it’s not as overt as the people who said that it was fine that latin was a dead language because it had already attained perfection, but it’s the same sort of thing i think; exotification of the other for the purpose of normalizing the same

@witchfynder_finder see i just find that sad though because the best way to love the english language is to appreciate its unique aspects

and these lists are just like “here is why every other language is more unique and special than yours”

@witchfynder_finder my two favourite things about lists of untranslatable words is that (a) some of the words don’t NEED to be translated, because we’ve just adopted them directly instead, and (b) they never include words from English, despite us having some great candidates, like “spooky” or “angst”