Яolcats!
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In the beginning, there were lolcats; now, there are Яolcats!
Translation provided: "Is most powerful laptop in all of Tbilisi, can it be?"
Comment: "(The cat, he is quoting famous Russian comedian)"
TIME Magazine's Claire Suddath commented on Яolcats last week, claiming that it is funny (she's right) but that lolcats are not (she's wrong). Suddaths's (tongue-in-cheek?) complaint about lolcats is most relevant here on Language Log:
Lolcats is stupid. There, I said it. People who attribute grammatically incorrect statements to unsuspecting housecats are the same people who speak to children in baby voices and pat pregnant women's bellies without asking permission. Besides, even if your cat could speak, and it happened to ask for a cheeseburger, why would it spell "cheez" with a "Z?" Why? It's one thing to pretend that your cat can talk, but it's another thing to pretend that it has a debilitating speech impediment.
If Suddath pronounces "cheese" in any way that sounds different from what "cheez" is meant to represent, then I hate to tell her, but she's the one with the speech impediment.
And let's look at the text of the lolcat example in her "speech impediment" link:
Dis iz da spoon u wil now uze to measure ma foodz
The only noteworthy deviation from Standard English in terms of pronunciation here is "th" being represented with "d". (I take the "a" in "da" and "ma" to simply represent schwa, which is not at all an atypical pronunciation of the vowel in these function words.) This is a very typical dialect variant, not a speech impediment. Of course, it's also a prototypical child's pronunciation of "th", but not because they have a "speech impediment". (Children are cute, hence the cat is cute — that's supposed to be part of the appeal of lolcats, innit?) Yet another sad example of how the media grossly misrepresents linguistics.
[ Hat tip: Emily Matthews ]
Heather said,
March 21, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
I also think the phrasing of the lolcats titles plays on the the dictatorial nature of both pets and small children. Unsuspecting housecats my azz.
Sili said,
March 21, 2009 @ 1:18 pm
Some of us never quite acquire the s/z distinction.
Of course, I'm not a native speaker.
Wells Hansen said,
March 21, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
Ms. Suddath has not grossly misrepresented linguistics. She has only missed the comic intent of lolcats with the same insouciance that leads Mr. Bakovic to think that Ms. Suddath's comments may not be tongue-in-cheek. Anyone who finds talking cats cute or funny (I do) will find them cuter and funnier (as do I) when the critters employ the odd nonstandard diction or orthography. Someone can squeeze a dissertation out of the question of why this is so. BTW, in 1998 Alexandra Sellers published a book called "How to Speak Cat" that purported to describe cat phonetics and grammar. Seriously.
Pavel Iosad said,
March 21, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
The translation is hopelessly wrong, not sure why. Actually it's "How does one open [a Russian rip-off of Classmates.com] on this thing?" (Maybe it's from another lolcat on the same picture). The mistakes aren't really funny either (just two of them in such a looong phrase, for God's sake), and plainly wrong as mistakes – there are at least two more or less consistent systems for misrepresenting Russian on the internet, but this doesn't seem to represent either of those.
sam said,
March 21, 2009 @ 1:58 pm
I had a serious inner debate about whether I could still enjoy Rolcats even though the English caption is totally not a translation of the Cyrillic. (I have no idea if it's even all Russian…)
GeekGirlsRule said,
March 21, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
I have to second Pavel, as to what the LOLcat actually says. I wasn't sure what it wanted to open, not being familiar with the site, but I knew the translation was wrong.
J. said,
March 21, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
Whether in the mouths of cats or soldiers – in light of the August war, I think I'd prefer to hear no jibes in the Russian language about Georgia. And I fail to see how gulags are ever funny.
So I guess I disagree with Baković and Suddath. Call me a downer.
Östen Dahl said,
March 21, 2009 @ 3:12 pm
The Russian cats, coming originally from the site Kotomatrix.ru, are very different from Western lolcats. Most of them speak perfectly grammatical Russian and are able to express themselves in complex sentences, sometimes even using poetry. The cat in the Language Log posting is actually an exception.
Pekka said,
March 21, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
@Pavel & others: I believe that part of the intended humor in Rolcats is that the English translations are not equivalent to the Russian. In fact, it appears that they are just making all the English texts up on their own.
Troy S. said,
March 21, 2009 @ 3:43 pm
While I am not a Russian linguist, I do have some familiarity with Cyrillic, and there is nothing that looks like "Tbilisi" in the above example, so I'd agree they're probably making up the English "translations".
John Cowan said,
March 21, 2009 @ 3:50 pm
The only true Яolcats would be those who speak Arabic, Azeri, Bakhtiari, Balochi, Persian, Gilaki, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Pashto, Punjabi, Qashqai, Sindhi, Sulu, Takestani, Turkmen, Uighur, Western Cham, Urdu, etc.; Hebrew, Yiddish; Mandekan, Assyrian, Modern Aramaic Koine; Dhivehi/Maldivian; or Tamasheq.
And I so do not think that either Lolcats or Яolcats are either cute or funny.
Steve Harris said,
March 21, 2009 @ 3:58 pm
Going back to the original thread:
The humor of Lolcats (such as it is) is not in pronunciation or even, so much, grammar, as it is in spelling. It's the spelling of a none-too-bright first-grader, more or less, thus equating the cat with a 6-year-old, i.e., cute.
On the Rolcat version, I sense a disconnect from the original. It doesn't seem to have the same purpose.
Or so I grok it.
Psi Wavefunction said,
March 21, 2009 @ 4:04 pm
J: "Whether in the mouths of cats or soldiers – in light of the August war, I think I'd prefer to hear no jibes in the Russian language about Georgia. And I fail to see how gulags are ever funny.
So I guess I disagree with Baković and Suddath. Call me a downer."
Who the hell are you to order us what we can and cannot express in our language??? A little racist, don't you think?
-Psi-
PS: Yeah, the translation is completely off… probably fabricated by an English speaker trying to imagine what kind of jokes a Russian LOLcat would make… and getting it epically WRONG.
Neal Goldfarb said,
March 21, 2009 @ 4:52 pm
@Pavel: "The mistakes aren't really funny either (just two of them in such a looong phrase, for God's sake), and plainly wrong as mistakes…"
Maybe that's what it means for something to be "not even wrong"?
Nicholas Waller said,
March 21, 2009 @ 5:38 pm
@ Pekka "In fact, it appears that they are just making all the English texts up on their own."
This is a technique that works well for both the reimaginings of furious-Hitler-in-the-bunker from Downfall and also The Magic Roundabout, rewritten in English by Emma Thompson's father completely ignoring whatever the original French said.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants said,
March 21, 2009 @ 6:17 pm
Blogger Joe Mathlete has written some rants about Lolcats. He's not a fan of the reliance on misspellings.
http://joemathlete.blogspot.com/2007/09/fk-you-lolcats.html
Catsar said,
March 21, 2009 @ 7:10 pm
I encountered Яolcats (56 examples) for the first time last week: http://fishki.net/commentall.php?id=49157
rone said,
March 21, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
I'd just like to say that i appreciate the play implicit in Яolcats, pronounced yaolcats ("yowlcats"). I also quite like the mistranslations, even if they rely heavily on finding a parody of Soviet-era language (or the Western stereotype thereof) funny.
Eli Morris-Heft said,
March 21, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
A comment for those who are convinced that lolcatitude lies in the spelling: Recall that there is indeed a grammar and syntax for lolcat which can be considered a true and proper dialect of English. (I seem to remember a discussion thereon on this very blog.) Not all lolcat captions follow this grammar and syntax, so perhaps not everyone picks up on it, but I know that I have found lolcat captions that are grammatical, marginal, and ungrammatical. Spelling, while perhaps the most outward of signs of the lolcat caption dialect, is – I would propose – not the most important, nor the most relevant.
Chris Croy said,
March 21, 2009 @ 8:25 pm
Lolspeak is dying. If you look at the lolcats that are getting airplay, they're increasingly being written unironically in perfect English. Even the ones in lolspeak are way more coherent than they used to be. Lolspeak is on its way to becoming the Yiddish of the Internet.
RE: Rolcats not being funny – The joke is that the Russian lolcats are being 'translated' to talk the way Russians were stereotyped as under Communism. I'd have guessed this was a very American brand of humor, but Mark Perakh's Russian joke collection makes me think it's a brand of humor we borrowed from Russia itself.
http://members.cox.net/marperak/jokes/
JimG said,
March 21, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
ебу мать вашу! Iz ne laptop. Iz old Citizen basic calculatr SDC-875, sold in UK.
Duna said,
March 21, 2009 @ 8:45 pm
I believe that Rolcats (sorry don't know how to do Cyrillic on my keyboard) is indeed just making up English captions – but on purpose, to make jokes based on Western stereotypes of communism, etc. (Comrade cats for example: http://rolcats.com/2009/02/25/184/). Putting a new joke on top of an old one, in effect.
misterfricative said,
March 21, 2009 @ 9:11 pm
I've always thought of Яolcats as being an extension of the well-known meme: In Russia, Lolcats laugh at YOU (or some similar reversal of a popular phrase).
And for me, the 'cute' spellingz and kittehmacro Loldiolect and transparent mistranslations are just the icing on the cake; the real humor comes from the anthropomorphisms. And while Lolcats are funny because cat behavior is willfully misinterpreted as stereotypical human behavior, likewise Яolcats are funny because their behavior is willfully misinterpreted as stereotypical Sovietized human behavior.
And yes, I love them both. And the hotdogs too :-)
Karen said,
March 21, 2009 @ 9:41 pm
yaolcats doesn't even pretend to be accurate translations. That's not what they're doing, for better or worse.
Kotomatrix.ru – the original Russian site – is rather different from icanhascheezburger, in that the cats usually (almost always) speak correct Russian and are frequently – as noted above – poetic.
Which, if indeed any, of the three you like is one of those YMMV/de gustibus things, isn't it? Wouldn't the world be boring if all websites were alike?
Karen said,
March 21, 2009 @ 9:43 pm
ps – complaining about "cheez" with a Z as even a non-"debilitating speech impediment" strikes me as akin to people who spell "was" as "wuz" or "could have" as "could of" when representing the speech of people they look down on.
VK said,
March 21, 2009 @ 9:45 pm
The idea behind Яolcats has nothing to do with translation. The "translations" are completely made up, and generally attempt to portray cats living in an authoritarian state. That's the only reason they are funny, in fact.
The creator of the website confirmed this in one of the early comment threads. I don't have the energy to find the reference right now.
K. D. said,
March 21, 2009 @ 10:39 pm
My particular idiolect and the dialect of many of those I know frequently replaces 'th' with 'd', mostly in the onsets of function words like in your example (so "da" instead of "the", "dey" instead of "they", etc.). I was pondering this just yesterday actually, but as I was reproducing the pronunciations to myself in the car (what else is there to do while driving?), it sounded stilted and too contrived, but as I conversated with my mother and brother later, the 'd's were flying. I often wonder how widespread it is outside of my little corner of the world (rural southern Ontario, Canada).
vanya said,
March 22, 2009 @ 9:22 am
Suddath is wrong about "speech" impediments, but right about the sense of humor of people who enjoy LOLcats. I assume if you think they're funny you might also enjoy sending glurge emails to people about angels saving babies and think Garfield is a funny comic strip.
Яolcats is just condescending. But ironically many of the Russian captions are pretty funny, adding another layer of irony to the circumstance of "clever" Westerners finding humor in mocking Eastern Europe.
language hat said,
March 22, 2009 @ 11:42 am
I believe that part of the intended humor in Rolcats is that the English translations are not equivalent to the Russian. In fact, it appears that they are just making all the English texts up on their own.
They're clearly just making all the English texts up on their own, but I'm not sure why that would be "part of the intended humor." If you don't know Russian, you wouldn't be aware of it, and if you do know Russian (based on a small sample of myself and a few other people, true), it doesn't add to the humor, which is extremely limited in the first place. The original Russian captions are much better (and are, as others have said above, a completely different sort of thing than LOLcats).
I assume if you think they're funny you might also enjoy sending glurge emails to people about angels saving babies and think Garfield is a funny comic strip.
I assume if you're willing to make snide remarks about people who don't happen to share your sense of humor, you're also willing to set up gulags and invade Poland. Say, this is fun! Thanks for getting me started!
Karen said,
March 22, 2009 @ 12:12 pm
I have an aunt who loves those emails and hates Garfield. I have no idea what she thinks about LOL cats, though.
Older said,
March 22, 2009 @ 1:00 pm
Karen — don't forget "wimmin" and "vittles." But then it's hard to reproduce dialect in print, especially if the differences are small.
Eric Baković said,
March 22, 2009 @ 1:06 pm
For those who missed it the first time: there's a reason I put "provided" after "Translation" in my post. And yes, I do think that's part of what makes it funny, but I don't think you need to know that for it to be funny.
Thanks to those who express concern about what I and others find funny — I hereby express concern for your lack of a sense of humor. :-)
TB said,
March 22, 2009 @ 1:25 pm
When my brother showed me the Яolcats site, I did a little googling and found this article, which may be of some interest, about a Russian rough equivalent to lolcats and other such Internet memes.
http://www.readrussia.com/magazine/spring-2007/00014/
I find lolcats funny about 5% of the time. That's not a bad percentage. The misspellings and weird grammar, I thought, stem from the poor translation of Japanese and Chinese that we encounter in old video games and electronics instructions. Cats, of course, are not native speakers of English; they grow up speaking Cat. That's what I always thought the idea was, anyway.
vanya said,
March 22, 2009 @ 3:30 pm
Oh please, Hat. Humor is subjective, if I seem too snide then people can be snide right back about my cruel insensitivity to cat lovers. Dogs rule, what can I say. On LOLcats that is.
I do really believe Яolcats are condescending to Russians and a tad offensive.
TootsNYC said,
March 23, 2009 @ 11:58 am
I love LOLcats. But I do think they are much less funny when they have way too many phonetical spellings and bad grammar.
They need some, in order to be true to the dialect. And, frankly, to be funny.
But when my daughter and I can't even figure out what the original words were . . .
Skullturf Q. Beavispants said,
March 23, 2009 @ 1:48 pm
I HAZ IDIOSYNCRATIC CONJUGATION
Rory said,
March 24, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
Did no-one else notice Suddath's lack of agreement in "Lolcats is" ?
pavel said,
March 24, 2009 @ 10:39 pm
vanya: Suddath is wrong about "speech" impediments, but right about the sense of humor of people who enjoy LOLcats. I assume if you think they're funny you might also enjoy sending glurge emails to people about angels saving babies and think Garfield is a funny comic strip.
Various commentators, include vanya, seem to be implying that LOLcats either are or are not funny – simple binary distinction, applying to the whole genre… But hold on, that's kind of like saying all works of a particular genre of, say, fiction, are or are not X (where X is a relevant property). I happen to be a huge fan of LOLcats, but I do find that some examples are better/funnier than others.
(And no, I enjoy neither emails about angels saving babies nor Garfield.)
procrastionatez said,
December 5, 2010 @ 8:54 am
I don't know why I find it so important to note this, esp since this post is very old, but I feel compelled to point out that lolcats is not merely a dialect, an imagined how they would speak, but an imagined how cats may type. It heightens the silliness inordinately. They do lots of typos! Because they're cats! They don't know how to spell AND they have to do it with paws! Oh the humanity…