• finitebanjo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        6 days ago

        People reference hit song lyrics all the time. Really muddies discourse with other cultures, sometimes.

        Interpreter: “Ok he said uh… hang on before I can translate that, do you know who Hannah Montana is?”

        • AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          6 days ago

          Not just song lyrics, but any piece of media

          rant

          This is horribly rampant issue on Reddit. Swaths of comments reduced to three-word dialogues from movies that even most Americans may not have seen.

          While it might be acceptable in a community specific to that piece of media, it always comes across as lazy everywhere else.

          A simple link to a relevant clip or snippet would help contextualise the reference, but if commenters were willing to put in that effort, they probably wouldn’t resort to quoting three-word phrases in the first place.

          Unfortunately, this practice is becoming common on Lemmy.

          Some might see my rant as gatekeeping, but it genuinely hinders meaningful discussion on the topic at hand.

          It is a pet peeve of mine that led me to unsubscribe from many, otherwise good, subreddits and eventually leave that platform altogether (thanks to a push from its CEO).

  • Routhinator@startrek.websiteEnglish
    19·
    6 days ago

    Forgot the best one.

    The French have a few examples of naming things the way they sound. Their word for bullfrog is the sound they make:

    Ouaouaron

  • Underwaterbob@lemm.eeEnglish
    10·
    6 days ago

    There’s a Julia Donaldson - Axel Scheffler children’s book called “Charlie Cook’s Favorite Book” in which the sound a frog makes is “reddit”.

  • AItoothbrush@lemmy.zipEnglish
    121·
    6 days ago

    I dont know why hungarian is there but 💯🇭🇺HUNGARY MENTIONED🇭🇺💯 /s. Also yes we do say brek/brekk or brekeke

  • bulwark@lemmy.worldEnglish
    122·
    7 days ago

    Hot take, English got it wrong. I’ve never heard a frog make a sound like “ribbit”. German or Turkish, on the other hand, seems like a sensible and appropriate sound a frog would make.

    • zod000@lemmy.mlEnglish
      18·
      6 days ago

      I’ve definitely heard some sort of frog/toad make the “ribbit” sound, but I’d say the German “kwaak” is probably more common. The various Asian sounds seem odd to me though. I suppose it is entirely possible the frogs makes different sounds there.

      • zurohki@aussie.zoneEnglish
        10·
        6 days ago

        IIRC different species of frogs make wildly different sounds, so all of the languages might just be what type of frog lives in that country.

    • Supervisor194@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      6 days ago

      Hot take, English got it wrong. I’ve never heard a frog make a sound like “ribbit”.

      It’s a real thing. Super common in the Southern US when I was a kid.

      • jawa21@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Yeah, that’s the kind of frog sound I’ve always known to be most prominent. I was also wondering just how much the most common species in a region affects the onomatopoeia, along with the language used.

    • SassyRamen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      6 days ago

      Have you ever set by a creek on a warm summer night? It’s more like riib riib riib riib, but I can see where ribbit came from

      Edit: found this which is pretty close to what I’m talking about.

      • SolarMonkey@slrpnk.netEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        When I was young and lived in the country with a big pond and marshland, most of the frogs went “THUMMM” at night (like this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6qHBRXLHXnc) and the others were more like a high pitch creaky door or one of those hollow wooden frogs with the back ridges that you play with a stick, like this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p-XPYXuCOjg

        I’ve never lived near any sort of frogs that I’d describe as making a riib sound

        I think this is the sound you are talking about? It’s kinda harder to pick out in your video for me, but there’s a distinct riib sound there over the top of everything else that’s absent from the other video. If that’s not the sound you are talking about, I’m pretty sure it is the source of “ribbit”. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8fJWGKbXw4Y

        • SassyRamen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          6 days ago

          Yep, that’s a far better example of what I menat.

          Where I grew up if it made a deeper noise it was a bull frog. Normally a Ruuuurp like call.

    • davidagain@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      Fun fact: Most frogs don’t say ribbit, but one of the earliest film sound libraries included a frog that does say ribbit, and so that sound is the sound of a frog in many films and television programs, but not in nature documentaries which record their own audio.

      So much of the English speaking world, far, far more broadly than the spread of that type of frog, think frogs typically say ribbit.

      If you watch a nature documentary about frogs, you’ll hear a vast array of different sounds, and this map will make much more sense.

    • JackFrostNCola@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      Exactly what i was thinking, it would be like asking people what a bird sounds like and getting completely different results from different locales.

  • frigidaphelion@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    6 days ago

    Amphibians are so sick. My parents made a little fish pond like ten years ago and of all the cool things to visit/reside in it over the years the frogs are the coolest by far.