Language Archives - Superman and God

Something’s Fishy

Google Translate is amazing. You can write fairly natural English and it'll produce a reasonably acceptable German equivalent most of the time. Results may vary if you start to use wildly creative colloquialisms or misspell words. Now, if you speak German reasonably well, then as you can see, even fairly well-written English sounds a little off in the translation once you write longer, more complicated sentences. These errors magnify when you start to use complex or metaphorical expressions,

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R, Matey!

R is a really interesting sound. Or rather, it's a letter that has an interesting range of possible pronunciations. It can be rolled or glided in the back of the throat like in some dialects of German, trilled in the front like in various Spanish dialects, or pronounced as a fairly tight, fluid liquid up against either the palate or alveolar ridge, like in English. In some Asian languages, R and L aren't well defined,

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