Category: Tumblr

What is Yoda’s syntax in other languages?

What is Yoda’s syntax in other languages?

allthingslinguistic:

Sometimes people ask the best questions on Reddit:

What does Yoda’s syntax look like in non-English versions of Star Wars? For those who aren’t familiar with Star Wars (all two of you), Yoda is an alien who, when speaking English, uses what seems to be an OSV syntax instead of the traditional SVO syntax.

So how do foreign translations of the script handle this? I am particularly interested in what it looks like in non-SVO languages. Are there any translations where Yoda’s incorrect syntax is emulated by using an English-like syntax? Or are other languages’ syntax so free that mistakes in the use of case or verb conjugations must instead be used to emulate Yoda’s “alien” speech?

And some answers so far:

  • Czech: Free word order. Yoda speaks consistently in SOV. Interestingly enough, putting an object before a verb does sound unusual to most speakers of Czech.
  • Estonian: Free word order language. Yoda retains the English OSV order. This is grammatical in Estonian, but does make it seem as though Yoda is constantly stressing the object phrase as the main point of his statements. This gives his speech an unusual quality.
  • French: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.
  • German: A SVO or SOV language. Yoda brings the Object to the front (OSV), like in English.
  • Hungarian: A free word order language. There is nothing unusual about Yoda’s speech.
  • Italian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV. Note: OSV is also the syntax used in the Italian of the less-proficient speakers of Italian from the region of Sardinia.
  • Japanese: An SOV language. Yoda seems to use a more or less correct syntax, with a more archaic vocabulary.
  • Korean: An SOV language. Nothing is unusual about Yoda’s grammar.
  • Norwegian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.
  • Romanian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV. He also places adjectives before the noun instead of after the noun, and uses an archaic form of the future tense.
  • Spanish: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.
  • Turkish: An SOV language. Yoda speaks in OSV. Note: This order is also used in classical Ottoman poetry, so the syntax may have been chosen in order to emphasize Yoda’s wisdom or age.

UPDATE: Former police officer arrested after 3-hour standoff in Athens

UPDATE: Former police officer arrested after 3-hour standoff in Athens

gorogues:

We live in the strangest timeline.

My thoughts:

1. Oh Barry, look what you did.

2. I had to keep reading just to see which state the city was in, because during the Bronze Age, Athens *Ohio* was canonically in the same location on Earth Prime as Central City on Earth One. Which would have made this even stranger than it already is.

3. My brain kept reading Eastanallee into Eastallen.

Re: Spoilers for upcoming comics in April!

I haven’t been able to bring myself to open an issue of The Flash since I saw the list of casualties in Heroes In Crisis #1. I’ve been buying them. I’ve picked the next one up a couple of times to read it. But I just haven’t been able to do it.

I’m getting close to the why-are-you-buying-it-if-you-aren’t-reading-it point.

Cleaning up

So, with Facebook continuing to be a pain, Google+ shutting down, Twitter continuing to be a dumpster fire, and Tumblr clumsily kicking off a huge section of their userbase so that Verizon can better monetize them (making me wonder how long they’ll try before they decide it’s not worth it), I figured it was time to reconsider my social network presence.

Mainly I’m on my main blog at K-Squared Ramblings and on Mastodon at @KelsonV@Wandering.shop these days (Plus Flickr and Instagram.)

As far as Tumblr goes, I’m in wait-and-see mode. I’ve never been super-active here, and I’ll often go a few weeks without reading or posting, but I also have automatic cross-posting set up with Flickr, Instagram, and my blog. A lot of my posts here are duplicates.

I’ve saved a full archive of my Tumblrs, and I’m going to be going through over the next week or few cleaning out the duplicates, except for posts that got traction over here (like M’Hael’s, for instance). Hopefully it’ll result in a more focused blog going forward, with mostly Tumblr-original material (both my own stuff and reblogs), and it’ll be easier to pick out what needs to be saved in the event that Tumblr does go the way of GeoCities and Google+ (or even just the way of LiveJournal, which it’s halfway to already).

WTF? “Antarctica scientist allegedly stabs colleague for spoiling the endings of books”

Antarctica scientist allegedly stabs colleague for spoiling the endings of books

On Wandering.shop

A Russian scientist working in Antarctica is facing attempted murder charges after allegedly stabbing a colleague for telling him the endings of books he wanted to read.Sergey Savitsky, an engineer, is accused of stabbing welder Oleg Beloguzov in the chest, the Sun reports.

That’s the roof of a gazebo sticking out of the water. Correction: it’s an information kiosk.

That’s the roof of a gazebo sticking out of the water. Correction: it’s an information kiosk. Same style of roof as the picnic shelters, but not as tall. #flooded

Photo taken at: Polliwog Park

That’s the roof of a gazebo sticking out of the water.

—

Correction: it’s an information kiosk. Same style of roof as the picnic shelters, but not as tall. #flooded

eighteenbelow says:
Oh geez, that seems pretty extreme! I’d heard you guys got a lot of rain and flooding, but I hope it’s a good thing in the long run and helps alleviate the drought.

Thanks, I hope so too. Our part of town did pretty well. We had an inch of water in our garage, but it only went halfway back (apparently it’s not level) and the only things that seem to have any damage are an old suitcase that might dry out ok, and some empty boxes. Power only went out for about a minute before it came back on, and we drove through some flooded roads yesterday before holing up at home.

This park is a basin in the hills, and apparently used to be part of the same seasonal marsh system as the preserve I’ve posted photos from. It’s all playground areas, benches, and picnic shelters. A friend who used to live here says flooded during heavy rain when she was here, so I imagine it’ll be fine when it dries out. Muddy, but the area near the pond is usually covered in duck and goose dropping anyway. Not my favorite part of the park, let me tell you.

The local paper reported one death a few miles away, believed to be the same person who went missing during a rescue from a flooding homeless camp. Lots of mudslides, flooded garages and damaged stuff, but not much structural damage. A retaining wall a few blocks from us collapsed and crushed an empty car.

Other parts of the LA area fared a lot worse, especially near the mountains, and especially areas downhill from last year’s fires, but we’re ok here.

—

Notes: Flickr album with more photos, other commentary and pics here.

I really appreciate Morrison’s work on Flash and JLA

gorogues:

Oh my god, dude I love this. It’s like a plot out of the silver age.

[Yeah, the Silver Age was definitely the inspiration for this story!  There are plenty of winks and nods to it throughout the story, not the least of which is the dedication to John Broome. –Lia]

I really appreciate Morrison’s work on Flash and JLA because for him, bringing back the Silver Age didn’t mean just bringing back specific characters, it meant bringing back the creativity, the wild and madcap ideas, the storytelling sense that anything is possible.