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Nov. 1st, 2024 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynLinguistic stuff today:
I asked an ASL online community about overlap between dive signs and ASL, because I remembered my post from ages ago about how the ASL for 'under God' is a SCUBA dive sign for 'incoming shark'. There are a few overlaps, it turns out; there are, it seems, false friends in every form of communication. THANK YOU in ASL is a distress signal in dive sign meaning SHARE YOUR AIR WITH ME. The sign for the letter F is dive sign for ALL IS WELL, which makes sense because to non-diving non-Deaf folks the sign for the letter F is basically the English language gesture for OK. And the thumbs-up gesture that most English speakers and a lot of Deaf folks use for 'I'm good' is dive sign for I NEED TO GO UP NOW.
Separately, in Dutch, a number of their really bad swear words are disease names. Like, if you call someone kanker or kankerlijer, you're saying 'not only are you as bad as cancer, but you HAVE cancer, and you ACTIVELY INDUCE CANCER IN OTHER PEOPLE'. They have a couple of diseases that they use for swearing, kanker and pokken and klere/kolere being the ones I remember off the top of my head. Currently I am trying to find how one translates a possessive disease name into Dutch because there is a particularly nasty form of gangrene named after a specific doctor and it is exactly the kind of word I wand to be able to use when I talk about Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott.
I asked an ASL online community about overlap between dive signs and ASL, because I remembered my post from ages ago about how the ASL for 'under God' is a SCUBA dive sign for 'incoming shark'. There are a few overlaps, it turns out; there are, it seems, false friends in every form of communication. THANK YOU in ASL is a distress signal in dive sign meaning SHARE YOUR AIR WITH ME. The sign for the letter F is dive sign for ALL IS WELL, which makes sense because to non-diving non-Deaf folks the sign for the letter F is basically the English language gesture for OK. And the thumbs-up gesture that most English speakers and a lot of Deaf folks use for 'I'm good' is dive sign for I NEED TO GO UP NOW.
Separately, in Dutch, a number of their really bad swear words are disease names. Like, if you call someone kanker or kankerlijer, you're saying 'not only are you as bad as cancer, but you HAVE cancer, and you ACTIVELY INDUCE CANCER IN OTHER PEOPLE'. They have a couple of diseases that they use for swearing, kanker and pokken and klere/kolere being the ones I remember off the top of my head. Currently I am trying to find how one translates a possessive disease name into Dutch because there is a particularly nasty form of gangrene named after a specific doctor and it is exactly the kind of word I wand to be able to use when I talk about Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott.
