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bidisastersanji · 6 months

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Was thinking about French gendered terms and Zoro trying to suss out if Sanji’s into men and I had some thoughts and oops now i wrote a thing so here you go:

In the early days Zoro drives himself nuts trying to figure out if Sanji bats for his team too or not. He listens in intently whenever the conversation steers the cook towards talk of his past dalliances, but, just his luck, none of the words used indicate their gender. And there ain’t no fucking way in hell he’s asking him or anyone on the crew directly, lest they immediately understand how bad he has it for the stupid cook.

He bides his time, surely someday he’ll slip up and mention something about the people he’s slept with, right? And sure enough one day, at a feast, a drunken Usopp starts asking what people’s types are. His face still schooled into a nonchalant, neutral expression, he does his best to hide how desperately he waits for Sanji to speak up about his type, only to once again be met with more general terms about people- someone with a kind heart, dependable, an equal… he’s so concentrated on trying to pick out any gendered terms he doesn’t notice the weird look Nami throws his way at each new descriptor in Sanji’s list of desirable traits.

He’s always known Sanji speaks French, finding it endearing whenever the cook curses (even at him), whenever he goes into small little rants to himself, or the face he makes when he can only think of a word in French, rapidly snapping his fingers until it comes back to him. But it’s only when they get to a town where Sanji starts speaking to a vendor excitedly about his produce that he realizes just how much this thing, this endearing thing that’s always been there, truly affects him, and his face burns at how different the cook’s voice sounds when he actually speaks it, how enchantingly low and throaty the foreign syllables ring in his ears.

Attached to living another day, he decides that stealing a book from Robin is a bad idea, and resigns himself to ask her directly for a favour. He swallows his pride and asks if she can lend him a French learning book and a dictionary, curious as to whether he can learn it a bit, and understand whatever the hell Sanji keeps cursing and muttering about around him, and what kinds of insults he’s been throwing his way. With her ever mysterious smile plastered on her face, a chain of Robin’s arms retrieve two books from her library and hand them to him. “Do come to me if you have any questions, Mr. Swordsman. My French is pretty good if I do say so myself.”

He’s out of the room, red as a beet, before she even finishes that sentence.

Learning the curse words comes to him unsurprisingly quickly given how often he hears a litany of « putain de merde », « fait chier! » and « enfoiré! » spilling from the blonde’s distracting mouth.

He’s very happily surprised when he learns that French is apparently a heavily gendered language- and that he can glean someone’s gender just from whether the adjectives applied to the subject are masculine or feminine. Now if the stars aligned and the cook would talk about his love life in French…

Zoro starts by going through the basic first chapters, taking great pains to hide and quickly dissimulate it in his haramaki anytime someone walks in on him- especially the witch. It definitely changes his usual routine on his watch in the crows nest, he muses to himself.

Weeks, months pass, and he advances further in the lessons, his vocabulary slowly growing, while he often goes to his dictionary for the more… colorful insults Sanji throws his way. He never says a word of French himself, not knowing how he could even justify knowing any without looking suspicious, and pretty sure his pronunciation would be way off anyways. But he starts to really enjoy it, being able to understand even a tenth of the things Sanji thinks he can say without the crew (save Robin) understanding.

And then Saobaody happens. And now he doesn't have time to think about learning French, not if he wants to get strong enough. Not if he wants to protect his crew.

He's at the table with Mihawk and Perona when his mentor asks for the salt (Passez moi le sel, s'il vous plait), and he executes himself without thinking. A quiet settles over the room and he looks up to see those intense red eyes boring into him, unnerving as ever.

"You speak French?"

"Not really," he grumbles, not wanting more excuses to think of the shitty cook, and his shitty cooking, and his stupid curly brow.

"Then you will. Consider this a natural continuation of my trying to beat some manners into your brutish mind."

Two years later, and he can't wait for dartbrow to show up. His pronunciation may still be shit, but he can't wait to use his newfound skill to his advantage.

With his now solidified grasp of the language, he slowly begins to understand that what he at first though was a mistake on his part- that he must’ve missed a part of a sentence, or mixed up some words- was not an error at all. It turns out, some of the French things that Sanji yells at him aren’t insults at all.

In fact… they’re sometimes downright complimentary.

And that's definitely a problem for Zoro, who now not only needs to keep pretending that he doesn’t know what Sanji is saying, but needs to pretend he doesn’t understand it when Sanji screams at him that he has a “stupidly pretty face” or that his “tits are even bigger than Nami’s and how is that even fair” . He doesn't know what to make of it.

And then one day… the stars align.

It’s another post battle party, and the cook has been drinking a bit more than usual, a tightly gripped glass of wine in his left hand, a cigarette in his right. Zoro is nursing his very own barrel of Ale when he hears the conversation turn to more gossipy topics, as it usually does the further into the night they are.

“Chopper was really into that nurse on Zou, wasn’t he?” Usopp starts to poke fun at the crew’s youngest member, laughing as the reindeer turns all red and tries to deny it.

“I mean it makes sense that she’d be his type! Right Nami?”

Nami nods at him, grinning wickedly. “Yeah, not all of us can be into rich little blonde girls can we?”

“You’re right, some of us are into rich blue-haired princesses,” he shoots back.

"At least I had the balls to do something about it before I left her island-"

Zoro is already tuning them out when Sanji sits down next to Robin just a few feet away, across from him and the campfire, his tongue loosened from a few too many refills and unconsciously reverting to his native tongue.

"Ils ont de la chance, ces deux là." he gestures to Usopp and Nami. (They're lucky, these two.)

Robin smiles at the cook, wordlessly prompting him to continue his thoughts.

"Qu'est ce que je donnerais pour pouvoir avoir quelque chose de plus qu'un coup d'un soir." Sanji sighs wistfully, lighting his cigarette. (What I wouldn't give to have something more than a one night stand.")

Robin chuckles. "Ne sont-ils pas satisfaisants?" (Are they not satisfying?)

At this point Zoro has tuned everything out, intensely focused on hearing what the blonde has to say, and not at all feeling a small churn of jealousy in his stomach for whoever shared Sanji's bed. His heart initially skips a beat at the plural masculine pronoun ('ils') used by Robin before remembering its actual neutrality in this context, as it's referring to the ""one night stands", a masculine word. Damnit. French is so dumb.

"Tu sais bien que je ne dirais jamais de mal à propos des belles demoiselles qui ont bien voulu m'accorder ne serait-ce qu'un baiser ou une étreinte. J'ai de la chance rien que d'avoir pu exister en leur présence."

(You very well know I'd never say a bad word about any of the beautiful ladies who've been kind enough to give me even a kiss or an embrace. I'm lucky just to have existed in their presence.)

Zoro feels his heart drop, a heavy feeling settling in his stomach. He's always known the pervert cook has been into women. Why was this confirmation hitting him the way it was? His eye darts up at his two crewmates, confirming that only Robin has noticed his eavesdropping. She opens her mouth to say something but Sanji continues, the glow of the flames dancing against his flushed skin beautifully.

"Et dans mon état normal tu sais que, par respect pour les sensibilités d'une dame, je ne te divulge pas beaucoup de détails sur ceux qui font l'affaire le temps d'une nuit. "

(And in my normal state you know that, out of respect for a lady's sensibilities, I don't divulge many details about those who do the trick for a night.)

Ceux. That's a masculine word for "those", isn't it? Zoro shakily takes another sip of his drink.

The archeologist's smile widens. "Oh, ne te fait pas de soucis pour mes sensibilités. Je brûle d'envie d'en savoir plus, et ne m'épargne pas les détails..."

(Oh, please don't worry about my sensibilities. I'm burning to know more, and don't spare me the details...)

"Je ne suis que ton humble serviteur...si ça peut te faire plaisir" (I'm but your humble servant…if it pleases you). Sanji's cheeks seem a tad more flushed than before. "En vrai ce n'est pas qu'ils ne sont pas satisfaisants...c'est qu'il ne sont jamais... assez."

(It's not that they're not satisfying…it's that they're never...enough.)

"Ah? Et que recherches tu? Qu'est ce qui serait..."assez"?"

(Ah? And what are you looking for? What would be… "enough"?)

The cook exhales another cloud of smoke, and nervously looks around. His eyes settle on Zoro, and indecision flits across his eyes for a second before continuing. Zoro can feel his gaze, can almost make out the deliciously unfocused expression on the blonde's face in his peripheral vision as he continues speaking French. His heart feels like it might beat out of his ribcage.

"Lui." (Him.)

Zoro forgets how to breathe.

Part 2 up now , and part 3 part 4

#zoro x sanji #zosan #zosan fic #this was SUPPOSED TO BE A LITTLE TEXT POST #and then #AND THEN THIS HAPPENED #should I continue this #let me know in the tags #sanji x zoro #i can say french is dumb because i am #i have so many more thoughts about french speaking sanji #share yours with me pleaaaseee #zoro learns French #zoro learns french fic

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punctuation-completionist · 7 months

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since today is punctuation day, i figured i'd talk with you about my favorite punctuation that is sadly not in unicode

(my apologies if these crop weird)

these six marks were invented by french writer hervé bazin in his essay plumons l'oiseau (or 'let's pluck the bird')

while the essay also had aim to switch the french language to a more phonetic writing system, it also gave us six new punctuation marks!

from left to right and top to bottom these are, the acclamation point, the authority mark, the conviction point, the doubt point, the irony mark, and the love point. so let's go over what these all were supposed to convey! (or at least what i expect they were supposed to)

the acclamation point was meant for praise, goodwill, and enthusiasm (ie "Well done [acclamation point]")

the authority mark was meant to be used in situations where the exclamation was serious and involved a degree of command or urgency (ie "Get in my office right now [authority mark]") i think this— along with the love point and irony mark— shows how a lot of these punctuation marks were a bit like early examples of tone tags, i'll get into it more later

the certitude point was used to show sureness in a fact. (ie "It's absolutely positively true [certitude point]") i think this might be the most useless of the bunch but whatever. i digress.

the doubt point is kind of the opposite of the certitude point, used when you aren't sure of something (ie "It should be done tomorrow [doubt point]") also it should be noted that the example used above is not the only way you'll see the doubt point, some also have it looking like this

the idea of irony marks has been widely suggested, for example the poet/art critic/song writer (i think, this guy's only wiki page is in french and i am guessing a bit on the word 'chansonnier') alcanter de brahm suggested an irony mark that resembled a backwards question mark (not to be confused with the percontation point which indicated a rhetorical question) and belgian inventor (among other things) marcellin jobard suggested a point that looked like an upwards arrow (this △ on top of this |, i can't paste it)

^ de brahm's mark

all that to say, bazin's mark was based off of the greek letter psi (Ψ) which some of you may recognize if you are familiar with the greek language or comics that shall not be named. it's used in situations of irony (ie saying "Wow, that sure was brilliant [irony mark]" if someone did something stupid)

and our last point is the love point, known for being so adorable, and indicating love or affection after a sentence (ie "Thanks a lot bud [love point]")

now we can obviously see that some of these are very similar to tone tags! the love point could be like a /pos, the irony mark is kinda like a /sarc, the authority mark could be like a /srs . i just thought it was interesting i guess. i don't have a point (heh) here exactly except that i guess people might actually need these punctuation marks ? so unicode? give me the love point or give me death

anyways so that's some fun niche history for y'all! hope you enjoyed

#punctuation #not counting #i mean i know there's like. things you can use but i don't like them as much #side note. why are all of these people french. bazin was french. de brahm was french. jobard was belgian but he was born in french afaik #and belgium is a francophone country... is there something about the french language that makes everyone start just making new punctuation #i mean to be fair i am in french and i did try to remake the entire language with like seven grammatical genders #so maybe it's just a thing #punctuation day

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