i once heard a scientist in a documentary about evolution refer to the human spine as an “architectural nightmare” and then procede to explain why every back is a bad back. it was so validating.
I adjusted my bra straps wrong one day and I’ve been in a ridiculous amount of pain for the past week.
It’s hard to understand how confusing freedom is when you’ve been a prisoner for so long, how hard it is to grasp that you have choice, that you can act; how unimaginable the sun is if you’ve been living underground for years.
Person A: You know… the thing Person B: The “thing”? Person A: Yeah, the thing with the little-! *mutters under their breath* Como es que se llama esa mierda… THE FISHING ROD
As someone with multiple bilingual friends where English is not the first language, may I present to you a list of actual incidents I have witnessed:
Forgot a word in Spanish, while speaking Spanish to me, but remembered it in English. Became weirdly quiet as they seemed to lose their entire sense of identity.
Used a literal translation of a Russian idiomatic expression while speaking English. He actually does this quite regularly, because he somehow genuinely forgets which idioms belong to which language. It usually takes a minute of everyone staring at him in confused silence before he says “….Ah….. that must be a Russian one then….”
Had to count backwards for something. Could not count backwards in English. Counted backwards in French under her breath until she got to the number she needed, and then translated it into English.
Meant to inform her (French) parents that bread in America is baked with a lot of preservatives. Her brain was still halfway in English Mode so she used the word “préservatifes.” Ended up shocking her parents with the knowledge that apparently, bread in America is full of condoms.
Defined a slang term for me……. with another slang term. In the same language. Which I do not speak.
Was talking to both me and his mother in English when his mother had to revert to Russian to ask him a question about a word. He said “I don’t know” and turned to me and asked “Is there an English equivalent for Нумизматический?” and it took him a solid minute to realize there was no way I would be able to answer that. Meanwhile his mom quietly chuckled behind his back.
Said an expression in English but with Spanish grammar, which turned “How stressful!” into “What stressing!”
Bilingual characters are great but if you’re going to use a linguistic blunder, you have to really understand what they actually blunder over. And it’s usually 10x funnier than “Ooops it’s hard to switch back.”
Pronouncing your own name with a foreign accent in mid conversation because you can’t switch the accent gears fast enough and then wincing at yourself as your ears scream bloody murder at you.
It even works in sign language. If I spend 3 hours using only sign language in class, then spend 45 minutes in my car signing song, and then go straight to work, I will lift my hands to sign something to someone and have a literal pause to be like “oh, yes, English time.”
Sometimes I wonder if native English speakers appreciate how much more comfortable the internet is for them than for the rest of the world
Like, you can go on tumblr and simply read stuff in your mother tongue? Amazing. Go on youtube and you don’t have to replay some sentences ten times to try to understand what they’re saying? Incredible. Look for practically anything on google and know that there will be a fuckton of results that you can read without having to spend half the time looking up words in a dictionary? Fascinating. Make a post or send an ask without panicking that you’ll make a silly mistake or that they won’t understand what you meant? Unbelievable.
Mars Engulfed : What’s happened to Mars? In 2001, Mars underwent a tremendous planet-wide dust storm – one of the largest ever recorded from Earth. To show the extent, these two Hubble Space Telescope storm watch images from late June and early September (2001) offer dramatically contrasting views of the martian surface. At left, the onset of smaller “seed” storms can be seen near the Hellas basin (lower right edge of Mars) and the northern polar cap. A similar surface view at right, taken over two months later, shows the fully developed extent of the obscuring global storm. Although this storm eventually waned, in recent days a new large dust storm has been taking hold of the red planet. via NASA
