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Celebrating Non-English Speaking Artists & More
4 months ago
I truly admire the many non-English speaking artists who come to FA (or Twitter) and use a language not native to them.
It's easy for us English-speakers to sometimes bemoan about "an artist not understanding our instructions", but I think the responsibility is on us (with Google translate available these days) to find a sort of balance, and if we have the time and energy, learn one or two nuances to make communication easier. Just don't go too hard, some peeps might find it patronising.
A couple of things I've learnt over the years in the fandom:
- Most European countries place the $/£/€ sign AFTER the number. This is why I can usually tell someone is from Europe if they write: 200$ or 150 €.
- Decimal placement. In English speaking countries, one writes €150.90, while it's 150,90 € in the EU.
- Russian and Ukrainian speakers add ) to the end of sentences as a smile emoji equivalent to : )
- If someone typos an English sentence like "zhqt time is it?" on their phone, they're likely from France and using an AZERTY keyboard.
- British vs American spelling. You can pretty much tell you're talking to a person from the UK if they're typing: colour, realise, or tyre. Though I've seen a couple of UK peeps use American spelling to blend in with the fandom's American predominance.Also, British spelling is superior, and I'm not even British.
- Metric system and temperatures. You know who you are.
- Height and weight. This is another dead giveaway on where someone is from. If they gave their height of their OC in cm/m, they're almost likely not from the Anglosphere. Personally, I still cannot wrap my head around pounds (lbs), and my only reference to what inches are is penis sizes.
Over
~ JAF1320
It's easy for us English-speakers to sometimes bemoan about "an artist not understanding our instructions", but I think the responsibility is on us (with Google translate available these days) to find a sort of balance, and if we have the time and energy, learn one or two nuances to make communication easier. Just don't go too hard, some peeps might find it patronising.
A couple of things I've learnt over the years in the fandom:
- Most European countries place the $/£/€ sign AFTER the number. This is why I can usually tell someone is from Europe if they write: 200$ or 150 €.
- Decimal placement. In English speaking countries, one writes €150.90, while it's 150,90 € in the EU.
- Russian and Ukrainian speakers add ) to the end of sentences as a smile emoji equivalent to : )
- If someone typos an English sentence like "zhqt time is it?" on their phone, they're likely from France and using an AZERTY keyboard.
- British vs American spelling. You can pretty much tell you're talking to a person from the UK if they're typing: colour, realise, or tyre. Though I've seen a couple of UK peeps use American spelling to blend in with the fandom's American predominance.
- Metric system and temperatures. You know who you are.
- Height and weight. This is another dead giveaway on where someone is from. If they gave their height of their OC in cm/m, they're almost likely not from the Anglosphere. Personally, I still cannot wrap my head around pounds (lbs), and my only reference to what inches are is penis sizes.
Over
~ JAF1320
Also one common thing that made people spot me as non-english native:
Putting a space before a question mark/exclamation mark
"Like this !"
another one is how quotation marks are used like „hello“ or «hello», that's when I know someone's from Europe lol >:3c