No joke you guys NEED to get more comfortable blocking people. No more insulting people in public over different blorbo opinions no more making 2k long posts on how whatever ship you don’t like shouldn’t exist we’ve grown past that shit. Consistent posts about shit that make you uncomfortable? Block. Rancid blorbo opinions? Block. Is mildly annoying in your replies? Block. Pisses you off for reasons so petty you could never admit it publicly? Block. YOUR mental health will improve from not being upset 24/7, THEIR mental health will not be at risk of you lashing out because you happened to catch their posts on a bad day, and EVERYONE ELSE will benefit from not seeing the most embarrassing arguments known to man on their dash. “Oooh but they didn’t deserve it-” dude you’re presumably running a personal blog as a hobby not a public service. Who fucking cares.
Tumblr is so funny because you can make a post like “hey do not mix bleach and vinegar in your cleaning, you’ll make chlorine gas and you do not want to make chlorine gas. It is dangerous to mix these two specific chemicals together”, and the comments are like
“Um vinegar isn’t dangerous?? My mom cleans things with vinegar all the time and we have never had lung issues. White people are insane.” (<- does not use bleach, missing the point)
“OH MY GOD BLEACH IS CHLORINE GAS? NOBODY EVER TOLD ME I’VE BEEN CLEANING WITH BLEACH MY WHOLE LIFE, I WILL DIE.” (<- has literally never used vinegar in cleaning, and never mixed the two, missing the point)
“This is just stupid fearmongering, we use bleach and vinegar to wash the floors all the time, OP is lying.” (<- does not actually know what “vinegar” is, and is confusing the word for something else)
“Yeah this is true enough but also keep in mind that this kind of household cleaning product chlorine gas is too weak and unreliable to use for domestic terrorism purposes.” (<- raises concerns, but potentially has a point)
I’m sorry, I don’t want to come across as harsh, but this is honestly ignorant as fuck.
I’m not gonna claim to know everything about the importance of studying dead languages, but I think I can safely say that it would probably be a really bad thing if we lost these languages to time if we didn’t have people studying them.
We can lose hundreds if not THOUSANDS of years of story-telling history if these languages end up forgotten.
I can’t put it into clear words right now because I’m busy or go int depth because I only have a common sense understanding, but I just wanted to address this. So if anybody on Tumblr who’s more qualified to speak on this kind of matter wants to explain, then please take the floor for me.
Many, many English words have Latin roots, so studying Latin can expand your English vocabulary to the point that you won’t even need to check the dictionary meaning if you can recognize its Latin roots.
Additionally, you can make up new words as needed by mashing together Dead Words.
Lots of scientific jargon use Latin and Ancient Greek exactly because they’re dead languages - the meaning of those words are set in stone. Studying those languages can help you understand and remember the extremely complex strings of words common in those topics.
Latin is the Mother of Romance languages. Just studying Latin can make it easier to adapt to the grammar rules of the other Romance languages, or even help you Frankenstein out a meaning of a simple paragraph.
All translation is a series of compromises. Even if Ye Olde Latin Text has been translated to English again and again and again, there WILL BE several points where the translator had to circumnavigate the translation to a phrase because the exact tone and concept is difficult to convey in English!!! (I am bilingual and this problem frustrates me to no end!!)
And that’s approaching this problem in good faith. We have a history of people outright lying about their translation credentials, deliberately translating a text “wrong” for their own benefit, or adding flourishes that drastically change the tone of the translation. Reviewing that 18th-century English translation of some 13th-century Latin book instead of just thoughtlessly reprinting it is vital to having a clear understanding of that book and placing it in its proper context.
We have a LOT of untranslated archived material that have text written in dead languages, Latin included. Translating these provide us history.
