#idk how to feel about the fact that closest French phrase to the common space seems to be “petite bite”

[nid-pysgodyn]

Watching QSMP as a linguistics person is so fun.

Aside from everyone's language learning experiences, the main thing I find interesting about QSMP is watching how certain words fall into common knowledge.

When two or more speakers of different languages start talking, very often on QSMP, they will default to English. The English language acts as a common space for a lot of cross-linguistic communication on QSMP. But there are also non-English words that fall into that common space, such as 'fofoca', 'enigmas'*, and 'no mames'.

A fun consequence of them entering the common space is that the English creators don't really "leave" that common space. The English language is the common space, so they all just speak in the common space all the time. And thus we get 'fofoca', 'enigmas'*, and 'no mames' replacing their English alternatives among the English creators like Philza and FitMC.

FitMC has gone up to Phil claiming to have 'fofoca'. Phil says 'no mames' in normal speech. I myself have seen these phrases actively replace their English alternatives among the English speaking fans when they talk about QSMP.

And the best part is that there is potential for more. Obviously there's the barrier that the borrowed word has to be in very high frequency and have a meaning that others will also want to convey. This is often the case for linguistic borrowing. But hopefully, over time, we will see more non-English words enter the common space of QSMP. ------------------------- *While 'enigmas' is a word in English as well, the way it is used on QSMP uses the Portuguese meaning, which is different to the English meaning. English would use 'puzzles' or 'riddles' instead of 'enigmas'.

#qsmp #overanalysing #idk how to feel about the fact that closest French phrase to the common space seems to be “petite bite” #I want to see “tu es le meilleur” make it #Vous êtes tous les meilleurs #qsmp english