My English is usually good enough for anything I want to do, but recently I realized that spoken English seems harder for me to understand than spoken American (or is that mid-Atlantic? I love that expression, and I'm not good enough at accents to recognize where one starts and the other begins). Two things that made me realize that - watching an ( Read more... )

 Since I am (a) not a native English speaker and (b) interact in English mostly in its written form, even if I know an idiomatic expression as idiomatic, I can't help seeing through it to the words in their original meaning. Case in point: on Tumblr especially, the widespread use of the word "ass" for, I don't know, emphasis or something. "Speaking ( Read more... )

I've been on Tumblr for ages and I am still bewildered by the use of the emotional-disaster language when talking about fandom and fannishness. Everyone always has fits of ugly crying and having their life ruined. *shrug* I don't know if anyone does sociology and psychology of Tumblr or something - I'd read an article on this ( Read more... )

I've known it for a long time, but it's still unsettling that the word for 'Jew' in Western Slavic languages is one that exists in Russian but is offensive...

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So I went to Israel for a week and it was pretty awesome (and I have 700+ photos to deal with). I want to come again, with a route more tailored to my particular touristic tastes. I am not sure I'd want to _live_ there, though (summer weather!), even though I may end having to ( Read more... )

I swear there should be a day of the week called 'Approximate Wednesday', for me to post my reading lists ( Read more... )

... a strange moment: several times when discussing the recent 'hospital prank' story here, I've encountered the attitude of 'ha-ha, these people at the hospital somehow believed that the Queen would speak with an Australian accent, how silly of them' - not even 'attitude', but actually the first reaction ( Read more... )

http://firecat.dreamwidth.org/791082.html - comparison table for four translations of the same poem. Which led me to look whether I can find how it sounds in Polish, to feel which rhythm is better, and, when I couldn't find it, to try and read the original myself (stupid idea ( Read more... )

It's amusing to read an Avengers fic set in Palanga. I keep thinking "But I've _been_ to Palanga!", and also "But -11.1 degrees Celsius isn't bone-chilling! Cold, yeah, but not _that_ cold!"

... but the Russian language in Avengers fic is mostly tiresome. Though I get that Natasha's peculiar patronymic is comic book canon.

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It is perhaps ridiculous, but I read far more in English than I do in Russian (actually, since I mostly read nonfiction and, for relaxation, urban fantasy and mysteries, it's totally understandable - there's practically no Russian nonfiction about what I am interested in, and Russian urban fantasy genre is rather dubious. As is the mystery genre ( Read more... )