aphanon_meme | part 353 whalers on the moon

part 353 whalers on the moon

We've been here over a year now! I can hardly believe it! Dreamwidth's been pretty good, I'd say, with almost no downtime to speak of and all that! Anyway... how is your spring going? Or I guess it's almost summer, isn't it? Hopefully it's been well! I've been catching up on work and new movies, all very exciting stuff, I'm sure.

Enjoy part 353!

Latest Page

View flat!

*There is a rules page here. Please read it before reading and posting.

*There is a contact post here. Please use it for contacting me privately.

*There is a meme calender you can use for tracking and listing meme events!

*Dreamwidth, unfortunately, no longer supports any type of anonymous image posting.

*If you would like the Dreamwidth layout to look more like Livejournal's, you can use this workaround for your browser

Note: All entries prior to Part 331 originated on Livejournal.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Are you working on something fandom-related? If not, what are you planning to work on in the future?

Currently working on that same long Nor/Ger thing I've been working on for ages. Slapped some words down on it this past weekend.

I want to do some early 1700s Sweden stuff, but it's a matter of deciding which battle.

Started researching for something involving Czechia and Slovakia, but whether anything will come from that, I'm not sure.

I'm working on the second to last chapter of a really long wip. There are so many things that I want to happen in this chapter, so the whole thing is kind of a mess for now. But I figure I'll just write everything that comes to my mind and then edit the heck out of it later to make it balanced.

Once I'm done with this story, I want to write a historical fic about Prussia and Old Fritz as a fill to a kink meme prompt. I've got Frederick's biography and a book about his views on war that I can use as background material, and I'm pretty excited about reading both.

Also important, if you speak Standard German (Hochdeutsch) you can speak to 82 million other people. If you speak Standard Austrian German, you can speak to 8 million other people. Of course the two standard languages are closely related so that's an oversimplification but generally speaking it's more important for Austrians to learn either a new dialect or a new language to communicate outside their borders than it is for Germans, so why not keep up English outside of school?

This makes a lot of sense. It does seem that if your national (or regional) language is less widely spoken, you're more likely to practice English.

In Finland German and French used to be the foreign languages what came to education and business (alongside Russian and Swedish) so the elder generation, including middle aged Finns, typically speak German or French (or Russian or Swedish) as their strongest foreign language. Of course there are elderly people who speak no foreign language but if you did study one, English just wasn't that important.

It has become important in Finland only rather recently and while the amount of students who choose something else as the first foreign language (A-language) has diminished a lot, about 5 percent of the students still choose to study something else than English as their A-language. Another 5+ percent (in 2012, the amount increases every year) are immigrants, who study Finnish as their A-language and often have no or poor English skills.

Yep, of course like I said it's an oversimplification because dialect continuums are tricky to measure, but if a Berliner and a Viennese tried speaking to each other in their local dialects they likely wouldn't be able to understand each other and would have to switch to Hochdeutch (best case scenario) or English (worst case scenario). There are also amusing stories from northern Germans I've heard getting so lost in Bavaria they started speaking English instead lol.

So yeah I agree, even when the East-West divide starts to be reduced I'd bet Austrians will still stay better at English than Germans.

· Latin: RESPONDEAT SUPERIOR
· English: LET THE SUPERIOR RESPOND

And I am laughing so hard because it's a very popular legal tort theory where an employer is responsible for the actions in tort of their employees (acting in the scope of their employment)

^ that was yours truly I don't know why it logged me out to post that

So if we look at the characters, Austria would speak better English than Prussia? Nowadays, which form of English does Prussia use as her main guide?

Historical Prussia and Old Fritz sounds amazing! I hope you get around to writing it and I'll definitely be keeping a lookout on the kink meme.

Good luck with your long wip! You can do it!

Ehehehe, my favorite topic!

Yes absolutely Austria speaks English better than Prussia. I mean, it depends on how realistic you wanna be about when nations pick up languages and which ones they pick up, but English only really became a Lingua Franca after WWII. Of course with the British Empire right there there's always been some interest in English in continental Europe but it took the double hegemony of America and the UK to really get it going. So while Austria and Prussia both had dealings with England in their history, and I can see Prussia starting to pick up some phrases for when she was training little America, I don't think either of them really started going with it until the end of the War (Austria) or the fall of the Wall (Prussia). They both speak the former Lingua Franca (French, Prussia better than Austria) and when you're in the business of Empire building, even if it fails, you want to push your own national language.

That being said, because the first modern language education method used to be named after Prussia, I tend to think she's pretty good at picking up languages. So Austria may have ~50 years on her, but they're not terribly far apart in ability. She just has a thick accent, not so thick she'd incomprehensible, but noticeable. As to which English she uses, definitely American. She and America are bros and hang out quite a lot, and until recently her people were very Pro-American so it's just altogether easier for her to practice American English. Austria probably speaks British English though, that's what is taught on the continent and it's perceived as Proper English and we all know how Austria feels about being perceived as Proper.

Speaking of strong language ability, does she know any sign languages? How good would she be at learning those?

Hmm I'm not as familiar with Sign languages, especially the one(s?) used in Germany, but I'm gonna say she doesn't. I bet she's tried out of curiosity, but I also think she'd be the kind of person that falls into the trap of thinking signs are just gestures to replace words. Spacial and facial grammar would be totally lost on her.

And while I don't think she personally holds this prejudice, it's important to note that that teaching method named after her I mentioned was based on the belief that the purpose of learning a new language is to be able to read its literature. Given that she's a canon bookworm I imagine even if she doesn't believe that literally, the ability to have access to entirely new bodies of literature probably motivates her like crazy. Though written versions of Sign languages have been created there's not much of a body of literature yet, and without motivation even someone with the best ability is gonna have a hard time.

There is a tumblr post that says there are countries with free universities, and there are like 190,045 people there gasping in disbelief and asking if it's true......

tumblr is dumb, water is wet
tell me something new

I've got about 2 wips that I'm actively working on, one ensemble and one GerIta. I've got a bunch of fusion/crossover AUs that I'd like to start but I don't have the time or juice to do it now.

All the tiiiime! I am too shy to send love unanon unless it's to people I already know as friends

there exists people who have not yet learned everything about the world and from time to time encounter new information, more news at eleven

murricans

http://xkcd.com/1053/

The fuck is with Tumblr's hivemind hateboner for John Green

Maybe it's me, but I think I've read worse fic than this. Considering this is GoT...

tumblr has a hivemind hateboner for anything that's white, male and successful.
But I think they hate white teenage girls even more.

mostly because he acts like the savior of the young adult lit genre when he really isn't and acts like his books are so innovative when they really aren't

it might be kind of overwrought but i can definitely see where they're coming from

And the they hypocritically make PSAs to artists to be confident and proud and praise themselves for their art.

10000 comments

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 30 of 400

part 353 whalers on the moon

Wips, future works

Re: Wips, future works

Re: Wips, future works

Re: Percentage of population able to hold a conversation in English in the EU by country.

Re: Percentage of population able to hold a conversation in English in the EU by country.

Re: Percentage of population able to hold a conversation in English in the EU by country.

ooc

Re: ooc

Re: Percentage of population able to hold a conversation in English in the EU by country.

Re: Wips, future works

Re: Percentage of population able to hold a conversation in English in the EU by country.

Re: Percentage of population able to hold a conversation in English in the EU by country.

Re: Percentage of population able to hold a conversation in English in the EU by country.

no subject

no subject

/ooc

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject