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February 27, 2024

February Update

Hello, no post for February due to the usual reasons (too many obligations). I'll leave you with a random observation of mine.

I was recently playing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door in anticipation for the remake that is coming out. I noticed that the phrase "this guy" appears very frequently - "this guy likes to do this", "what do you think of this guy?" I had never noticed before, but this time around it stuck out a lot. I suspect that this is a translation artifact from the Japanese word 'koitsu' (こいつ), which is highly casual and usually translated as "this guy". I'd have to check the Japanese version to be certain for sure, but I'm certain it must be some sort of translation artifact. People simply don't say the words "this guy" that often in English.

I often have little observations like these that aren't big enough to put into a post, and I never quite know what to do with them. I'd have put it on Twitter in another time, but I don't go on Twitter as much as I used to. I guess I may as well share them here. :)

- Karen

January 16, 2024

A Funny Example of Enregistration

Enregistration is the process by which linguistic features become associated with particular contexts. For example, light novels having long, sentence-length titles is now so established that it's an easy way to parody light novels. Phonology can also be 'enregistered,' such as the vowels that make up Indie Girl Voice. While these two examples are obvious because they 'stick out', enregistration also applies to more subtle cases we take for granted. For example, most gamers expect video games to be dubbed in American English or maybe Received Pronunciation, so the use of other English accents in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was confusing and off-putting to some viewers - the silent norm had been violated.

American English enjoys a special status as a near-default language of media. People enjoy Hollywood films, American music, American television, and American video games all around the world, even in places where American English isn't spoken. This can lead to an association of "American English" with "media." As shown in the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 example, people may be upset when this register expectation is violated. However, sometimes it can be violated in a much funnier way - by real flesh and blood Americans. The following post from Tumblr demonstrates:

whenever someone calls USAmerican English the ‘movie accent’ I remember how somewhere last year I was on a train when suddenly the silence was broken by an american voice behind me somewhere and I immediately thought “Oh no, someones playing their tiktoks out loud again” and automatically turned around to put a face to my annoyance like you do when someones driving bad, and turns out a few rows down were just some actual in the flesh USAmericans having a nice conversation amongst themselves. I am sorry Americans I’m glad they let you out of the phone - kleefkruid

This person had so strongly registered American English as "English spoken in movies and on social media platforms like TikTok" that their first thought on hearing an American accent was not that Americans were around, but that someone was playing a TikTok video of an American English speaker on their phone's speaker. Sounds silly, but if you live in a country with no American English speakers, it might not be that crazy an assumption.

Another series of Tumblr posts to this effect:

hearing Americans speak in real life is so jarring omfg... Get back in the TV right now
#My pakistani friend who told me once after I gave him some really heartfelt advice that he felt like he was in a movie - Source

December 26, 2023

December Update

It's been a slow year for the blog - between health problems, financial difficulties, and outside responsibilities, there simply hasn't been much time or energy to devote to it. But I want to keep readers informed of any progress I make monthly, since I am still working on a rather large project behind the scenes. The project involves a big linguistic analysis over a period of nearly 30 years! I'm about 62% of the way through the material. I've had to develop some new tools to work on this, which I also look forward to sharing with everyone. Once they're done, I hope they'll make it easier for future projects of this scale.

I always tell myself after I finish a huge project like this that I need to shift gears and focus on something smaller, but the truth is that putting out content monthly, even small articles, is kind of difficult for me at this point in my life. I intend to keep putting out monthly posts with updates on what I'm working on. But I want to be honest with readers too about what I can and can't do.

Wishing you a happy December! - Karen