this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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Usually its like just a few words sprinkled in, or at most like one or two lines...

Literally I feel like they're just trying to say: "Hey this is a foreign language I'm sooo cooool!"

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[–] Pazintach@piefed.social 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If you listen to Gothic, Medieval, or Metal music, they mix different languages all the time. Finnish and English. Italian and French. And anything can be mixed with Latin. It's quite normal.

[–] leadore@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

Bismillah, No!

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago

That would've been brilliant for Firefly.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago

Styx would like a word.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 days ago

I think it just stands out because you suddenly understand a word in a different context. When English does it it doesn't stand out because it's so riddled with words from different origins that basically any random mouth sound passes as a plausible English word.

I went to a cafe and perused the menu, but I didn't see anything I liked, not even coffee, so I waltzed out and went to the gourmet delicatessen across the street where I got a Reuben with extra sauerkraut. Hard to say no to corned beef.
Afterwards I picked up the kid from kindergarten, and we picked a restaurant to go to. I wanted sushi, and they wanted tacos, so we compromised and got hamburgers.
We went home, took a shower with the new shampoo, got into our pajamas and read our favorite genre of story: macho poncho wearing jungle robots singing opera karaoke in a salsa tsunami.

We didn't adopt the words to be cool, it just fit better. It's hardly surprising that other languages would at least occasionally find one of ours useful in some mysterious way that words blend across languages.

[–] BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

That strongly depends on culture. In poland this doesn't happen at all. On the other side, in Japanese works I've seen not only English words included, but completely fake languages (Nier Automata Ost) or pseudo languages faking Latin or English (Madoka Ost, Hellsing TV intro)

[–] artwork@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Wonderful day!

Just in case, there's a term in "anglicism":

...word or construction borrowed from English by another language. Due to the global dominance of English in the 20th and 21st centuries, many English terms have become widespread in other languages.
Technology-related English words like internet and computer are prevalent across the globe, as there are no pre-existing words for them.
English words are sometimes imported verbatim and sometimes adapted to the importing language in a process similar to anglicisation.

Source

For more than a decade, I've been trying to learn Russian, mostly for the art and the job I have. And, I did notice that there are words, in common/casual speech that do indeed include pure English terms/words, or even adapted from.
There's a Russian page for "Anglicism", too:
- https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%BC%D1%8B

It makes sense, since it's one of the most easiest languages out there, with straightforward rules, with some exceptions you get on the road, and rare/archaic words you get eventually memorized in your own dictionary.
The Email messages are in the common/formal form/template even, you may know, too! I.e., header/body/footer/signature.

For example, I'll try recalling some:

- "гаджет" ~ "gadget";
- "дилер" ~ "dealer";
- "фрилансер" ~ "freelancer";
- "комп"/"компьютер" ~ "computer";
- "чилить"/"чилю" ~ "chilling";
- "таск" ~ "task";
- "бейба" ~ "baby";
- "чика" ~ "chick";
- "аутсорсинг" ~ "outsource";
- "секси" ~ "sexy";
- "гайд" ~ "guide";
- "булинг" ~ "bulling";
- "трабл" ~ "trouble";
- "маркетинг" ~ "marketing";
- "постить" ~ "to post" (social network posts/articles);
- "гамать" ~ "to play a game";
- "клатч" ~ "clutch";
- "дедлайн" ~ "deadline";
- "бит" ~ "bit";
- "байт" ~ "byte";
- "клуб" ~ "club";
...
- or even... "эйчар" ~ "HR" (head hunter, employer)...

These I recalled now only, and I do believe it's possible to write/base any English word in Russian.
Though, nowadays, my main is English, I was born in Lithuania, and Lithuanian language does also feature such words!
For example, "skenuoti" (to scan); "baitas" (byte), "seifas" (safe/safebox); "clubas" (club); etc.

Such a miraculous magnificent world of language development!

[–] ejs@piefed.social 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

global dominance of English in the 20th and 21st centuries is quite the euphemism for the global imperialist reign of Britain and the US and its cultural erasure globally

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's really not a euphemism. There will always be a language that's the most common for international trade, diplomacy, travel, and general discourse.

It was not always English, even when Britain was at the peak of its empire.

It's easy to claim that it's role as the lingua franca is bolstered by the international position of the US and Britain over the past 150 ish years, but that doesn't make it a euphemism.

[–] teslekova@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

Yeah, the lingua franca used to be French. 😄

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 4 points 4 days ago

I wager the same reason a lot of comic books reference japanese culture or style in some form: they revolutionized comic illustration and printing technology for the modern era.

The USA had a similar effect on Television, movies, and radio broadcasts.

If tomorrow India invented a Neutron Teleportation based communication technology and used it to broadcast media to a receiver through the crust of the earth faster than sattelite, then whatever media they broadcast in the beginning would likely have longlasting impacts on culture everywhere.

[–] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Watch firefly, they have a lot chinese words mixed in with English. I don't speak Chinese, so I don't know if it's real, but subtitles say [mandarin] so I assume they're real words. But they flip flop quite beautifully.

[–] WongKaKui@piefed.ca 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Aint no way, they spoke fake Mandarin 🤣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-wbpZ7-5gQ

I watched like 2 clips and I already cringed the fuck out

Nah bruh, I went to 2 years of elementary school in China and watched a lot of Mandarin cartoons and TV shows, aint no way they did this...

So butchered...

I can feel the host cringing

This sounds like how American teachers tried to pronounce my name... 💀

(Okay it's not fake-fake, just so awful you need a PhD in Chinese Language to understand it)

[–] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 2 points 4 days ago

Yeah well, that's sad to know.

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[–] Hegar@fedia.io 3 points 4 days ago

Because of the US and british empires, english functions as a prestige language, the language of international trade and english language media is widespread. Many people know at least a little english, and most languages have english loan words.

Plenty of US english songs have the odd spanish word. Doesn't 小蘋果 have a korean bit? Even hebrew prayers break into aramaic every now and again.

We live in a multi-lingual world and our songs reflect that.

[–] vrek@programming.dev 2 points 4 days ago

It's not Chinese but caliope mori does this alot with Japanese. A lot of it is pop rap and she is a ytuber so it may not be your style. She's incredibly talented though, she can do multiple simultaneous rhyme schemes while jumping between the two languages.

[–] fizzle@quokk.au 2 points 4 days ago

Why does songs from non-English countries have random English words?

Because most of the audience for non-English songs, particularly younger audiences, are bilingual (or multilingual) and likely speaks English better than you do.

Can you imagine if English songs randomly have Chinese words?

Yeah, that would be unusual, English speaking audiences generally don't speak Chinese.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

That feeling when you go to block someone, and you realize they're an alt of someone you already blocked....

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[–] Alatarius@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

This entire conversation reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU-wH8SrFro

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

There is no pure languages anymore. All languages borrow from each other. The tunisian dialect is full of french words

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 points 4 days ago

More people speak English than any other language

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