kittyc

@kittyc@blorbo.social

came over in the great twitter migration. fandom acct, mostly danmei: mdzs/cql, tgcf, tyk/shl. other interests that may occasionally spill over onto here: farming, nature, (uk) politics, social justice, lgbtq, books and shows

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skinnylatte, to magASEAN
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

When I was growing up I was a devout student of southeast Asian colonial and post-colonial history but my studies largely focused on the British empire. I am now spending my free time reading about the Dutch.

HOLY SHIT.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2012.719362

kittyc,

@MarkRNay so firstly, that “position of dominance and power” didn’t come out of nowhere. it wasn’t as though European countries were dominant and powerful from some kind of neutral starting point on.
And secondly, we are still reaping the benefits of colonialism today.

So the answer to the question “how long must we apologise” is basically “until our apologies stop being just lip service, and start involving real consequences”.

kittyc, to random

Well I’ve finally finished #SideStoryOfFoxVolant and all I can say is ow. It hurts. Harsh man, harsh.

kittyc,

@kittyc I mean, I loved it, but hooh boy, did nobody in this story get their just desserts. None of the nice people, anyway.

kittyc,

@kittyc hu fei was basically the only man in the story who respected women, and out of his 2 love interests, one became a nun, and the other died a tragic death saving his life 😭

kittyc,

@kittyc Props for him being allowed to have two love interests in the first place, though

kittyc,

@kittyc I was obviously shocked and appalled at what transpired about Tian Guinong, butkind of gratified that my hunch about him and how he treats Nan Lan was right.

kittyc,

@kittyc and while I have no idea if there’s a sequel to the story in Jin Yong canon, in my head there absolutely is a future where Hu Fei and Yuan Ziyi meet again in middle age and start a personally fraught and politically ill advised but fiery and flawlessly beautiful love affair

reginasbread, to random
@reginasbread@homo.promo avatar

American woman living in the UK posted a reel complaining that she couldn't get used to grocery shopping there. she has to shop more often bc fewer preservatives = food gets bad quickly. Her bread got moldy! then, Europeens went ha! USA sucks! now you'll learn how to eat! every day, we buy bread from bakeries that are so traditional that queen Victoria bought buns there. I wanted to give them unsolicited advice to buy sourdough, but it's dangerous to stir bread drama.

kittyc,

@reginasbread as a German living in yhe UK, this is hilarious to me. Supermarket bread here is an industrial ultra processed food absolutely laced with preservatives. I shudder to think what it’s like in the US if it’s even worse there

ludovica, to linguistics German

Being a #German speaker in English speaking online spaces is weird bc you'll see people say "Did you know German has a word for XY" and it'll be some old-fashioned literary thing like Weltschmerz or Fernweh that most people never use, so you feel like the "German has a word for everything" is a strange exaggeration

But then you see somebody be like "Does anybody else experience detailed description of something" or "Why does nobody talk about a specific condition under specific circumstances"

and you realize not only does German have a word for that, but it's actually an active part of your vocabulary and comes up in conversations a lot?

Anyway I taught somebody the word Nachmittagstief (the drop in energy you experience at 3pm) yesterday

#language

kittyc,

@ludovica @kate so true, when I was at uni in Germany 20 years ago, English language academic writing was always held up by progressive academics as something really great and to be aspired to, because the style was so simple and accessible (and that in turn is probably also partly a result of so much English academic writing being done by non-native speakers, at least compared to German where that proportion is basically 0%)

kittyc,

@ludovica this is probably a bit different for me cos I’m from a middle class household in Germany with parents from different areas, so basically no dialect spoken in our house, and Weltschmerz and fernweh are both totally part of my core vocab 😂

kittyc,

@ludovica 💯, this was one of the reasons I abandoned literature studies in favour of more outward looking and less stuffy disciplines

kittyc,

@ludovica oh absolutely, I meant dialect as opposed to accent, of course I have a recognisable accent as in, people can tell I’m from somewhere roughly in the northwestern third of Germany. But whereas I can easily understand actual rhineland dialect, I don’t speak it (which is a source of regret for me, even as a child I was always on to my mum to teach me but no joy)

kittyc,

@ludovica god yes, it’s such a fascinating network of complexities and societal fuckery, like, regional dialects are in a way also sociolects because there’s a reason my mum did not talk Platt to me even though I wanted her to (because being a standard German speaker did objectively make my life easier), but it’s not as straight as “poor/uneducated = dialect”, because e.g. the traditional city elites in cologne are heavily dialect speaking as a point of pride.

kittyc,

@ludovica it’s almost like sociolinguistics is a whole field for a reason 😂

kittyc,

@ludovica only austrian words i know are because I read all the Christine Nöstlinger as a child - and some of those I’m still not 100% sure how to pronounce/stress, because I’ve only ever seen them written down :)

kittyc,

@ludovica ah, my mum’s dialect isn’t that plattdeutsch (that they speak in east frisia etc.), but Platt is what Rhineland people call their own dialect unless they’re referring to very specific more local varieties, eg Kölsch, Bönnsch etc. :)

kittyc,

@ludovica 😂 that actually sounds familiar from when I moved 150 km south at the age of 12, I had a new teacher called Mr Graus and I thought my nee classmates were pulling my leg cos it absolutely sounded like the more standard “Kraus” to me when they said it

kittyc,

@ludovica wait, what, “weiches p” as in, b????

kittyc,

@ludovica that is beautiful, Germans would usually solve that ambiguity by just doung the plosive (I think it’s called that, just doing the consonant without a vowel) if it’s a t, and lengthening the vowel (going deeeee) if it’s a d. Because the d is voiced and the t isn’t, and we have that distinction really intuitively

kittyc,

@ludovica @cumulus that would make sense, definitely if I just say the consonants without any vowels, I use my voice box for d but not for t

kittyc,

@cumulus @ludovica this whole conversation is making me want to go back to uni and study linguistics this time, thank you both so much :)

skinnylatte, to random
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

I like many parts of Mastodon except the parts where German men express great surprise and disbelief that the rest of the world is ordered differently from their society. Maybe they are to Mastodon what Americans are to Twitter.

kittyc,

@skinnylatte i suppose at least they’re doing so in English, so hopefully they’re not quite as insular as the American equivalent? But yes, annoying all the same.

kittyc,

@skinnylatte omg, what?? Do you speak German? What is those guys’ deal? So weird (sorry, you can tell I’ve led a sheltered life, I have, like, a hundred followers and occasionally post thoughts about cdramas or my dinner, so the reply guys haven’t found me thank god)

kittyc,

@skinnylatte i think it’s due to lack of option to qrt. Not that that would really be better as such, but I think that’s what they might have done in the other place

kittyc, to random

#TGCFReadAlong welcome, waning moon officer, the most tragic figure in all of tgcf if you ask me

kittyc,

He struggled against obstacles as banal and boring as they were insurmountable his whole life, and then he died: The Yin Yu Story

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