To note:
FR: concentrer /EN: focus
FR: écureuil /EN: squirrel
FR: pingouin /EN: penguin
FR: câlin /EN: hug
the “PINE-GUINE” fucking killed me asfgashasfg
Google Translate: focus
This man, with extreme amounts of self-confidence: fUCK US
i hate languages
i was going to say ‘i have no idea what to do with this information’ but then i realized its a handy guide to generate fake words that sound english
Watching my toddler figure out how to language is fascinating. Yesterday we were stumped when he kept insisting there was a “Lego winner” behind his bookshelf - it turned out to be a little Lego trophy cup. Not knowing the word for “trophy”, he’d extrapolated a word for “thing you can win”. And then, just now, he held up his empty milk container and said, “Mummy? It’s not rubbish. It’s allowed to be a bottle.” - meaning, effectively, “I want this. Don’t throw it away.” But to an adult ear, there’s something quite lovely about “it’s allowed to be a bottle,” as if we’re acknowledging that the object is entitled to keep its title even in the absence of the original function.
Another good post to read for those writing small human characters.
My son was about three when he came to me in the middle of the day and said, “Mommy, there’s a knight behind the bush.” I thought he meant a toy knight or something. So I follow him outside and he goes, “Listen. Do you hear it? It’s night behind the bush.” It was a cricket. A cricket was standing in the little patch of shade under the bush, chirping. So, my son saw this dark area with accompanying nighttime sounds and decided, okay, well, that is a night right there. Their brains are incredible.
My little bean knows she’s two, constantly saying proudly ‘I’m two!’ And the other day she saw this very frail old lady who looked one foot in the grave, pulled a face and said ‘oh shiiiit. She’s three.’ I almost screamed.
I live in Korea and have a lot of international friends, and the same is true with language barriers in adults.
*Looking at a bowl of pears* “Can you please pass me the… apple’s friend?”
OH SHIT SHE’S THREE
idk I just love how we Young People Today use ~improper~ punctuation/grammar in actually really defined ways to express tone without having to explicitly state tone like that’s just really fucking cool, like
no = “No,” she said.
no. = "No,” she said sharply.
No = “No,” she stated firmly.
No. = “No,” she snapped.
NO = “No!” she shouted.
noooooo = “No,” she moaned.
no~ = “No,” she said with a drawn-out sing-song.
~no~ = “No,” she drawled sarcastically.
NOOOOO = “No!” she screamed dramatically.
no?! = “No,” she said incredulously.
I’ve been calling this “typographical nuance” and I have a few more to add:
*no* = “No,” she said emphatically.
*nopes on out of here* = “No,” she said of herself in the third person, with a touch of humorous emphasis.
~*~noooo~*~ = “No,” she moaned in stylized pseudo-desperation.
#no = “No,” she added as a side comment.
“no” = “No,” she scare-quoted.
wtf are you kidding no = “No,” she said flatly. “And I can’t believe I have to say this.”
no no No No NO NO NO NO = "No,” she repeated over and over again, growing louder and more emphatic.
nooOOOO = “No,” she said, starting out quietly and turning into a scream.
*no = “Oops, I meant ‘no,’” she corrected, “Sorry for the typo in my previous message.”
I cannot express how strongly I absolutely love language and writing and communication but if anyone asks why I will be showing them this post from now on
this is great, but I got to “no no No No NO NO NO NO” and immediately started singing “mamma mia, mamma mia, mamma mia let me go”
i really love our generation’s joke trend of like, very calm but incredibly inflated hyperbole. like nobody says “oh she’s pretty” anymore we say “i would willingly let her murder me” and everyone is just like “lol same”
i think “same” is also great and “me,” i love when somebody reblogs a picture of like, a lizard, and just says “me” and we all know exactly what they mean. the current online Humor Discourse is remarkable because we trade exclusively in metaphors and implications and nobody ever, ever says anything outright and yet EVERYBODY understands each other perfectly
This reminds me of the time when I was on vacation with my family and we were hiking, and after using a rest stop, the conversation turned to the grossness of outhouses and port-a-potties, and I said that if I ever got splashback from a port-a-potty, “my soul would depart my body.” My parents found that hilarious, and my dad commented that my generation can be so clever with words bc he would only think to say something like “It would be disgusting” which doesn’t convey the sentiment nearly as well as “my soul would depart my body.”
Adjacent but relevant is Tia Baheri’s “Your Ability to Can Even: A Defense of Internet Linguistics”
when I was studying Greek I would get frustrated and annoyed because often, at the beginning of a sentence or clause – or just scattered haphazardly throughout – there would be three or four “particles” with no specific meaning. the literal translation might be “so thus and”, but of course you couldn’t put that down. they were just placeholder words, colloquial linguistic padding.
now, of course, I realize that I start sentences with “okay but like”.
you can sing the praises of the Greeks all you want, but the fact is, Plato wrote with all the elegance and grace of an off-the-cuff tumblr post.
my professor literally told us to think of all the “ἤ̂ δ᾽ ὅς”es in the Symposium as “so then he was like”
This is so great.
why the fuck does english have a word for
but not for “the day after tomorrow”
???
Because you’re not looking hard enough! ;)
Overmorrow = the day after tomorrow
Ereyesterday = the day before yesterday
Example: I defenestrated my brother ereyesterday. I shall defenestrate my sister overmorrow! Because I hate my family and also windows.
english has some of the best examples of stupidly specific words, tbh
Rhotacism (n): excessive use of the letter “R”
Lingible (adj): meant to be licked
Whipjack (n): a beggar, specifically one who is pretending to have been shipwrecked
Yerd (v): to beat with an object with a stick
Roddikin (n): the fourth stomach of a cow or a deer
Balbriggan (n): a type of fine cotton, most often used in underwear
and my personal favorite
Cornobble (v): to slap or beat another person with a fish
This makes the English nerd in me extremely happy.
Who even made these words I’m going to cornobble them
My dick is lingible
But what are the first through third stomachs of a cow or deer called??
when did tumblr collectively decide not to use punctuation like when did this happen why is this a thing
it just looks so smooth I mean look at this sentence flow like a jungle river
ACTUALLY
This is really exciting, linguistically speaking.
Because it’s not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:
ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff
Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.
In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one I’m ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style.
Here’s what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speech–that is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate “this speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.” Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so we’re talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.
A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of “language.” Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin.
Tumblr English should literally be treated as its own language, because it does not follow the rules of any form of formal written English, and yet it does have its own consistent internal rules. If you don’t think that’s cool as fuck then I don’t even know what to tell you.
IT’S NOT ‘PEEKED’ MY INTEREST
OR ‘PEAKED’
BUT PIQUED
‘PIQUED MY INTEREST’
THIS HAS BEEN A CAPSLOCK PSA
THIS IS ACTUALLY REALLY USEFUL THANK YOU
ADDITIONALLY:
YOU ARE NOT ‘PHASED’. YOU ARE ‘FAZED.’
IF IT HAS BEEN A VERY LONG DAY, YOU ARE ‘WEARY’. IF SOMEONE IS ACTING IN A WAY THAT MAKES YOU SUSPICIOUS, YOU ARE ‘WARY’.
ALL IN ‘DUE’ TIME, NOT ‘DO’ TIME
‘PER SE’ NOT ‘PER SAY’
THANK YOU
BREATHE - THE VERB FORM IN PRESENT TENSE
BREATH - THE NOUN FORM
THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE
WANDER - TO WALK ABOUT AIMLESSLY
WONDER - TO THINK OF IN A DREAMLIKE AND/OR WISTFUL MANNER
THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE (but one’s mind can wander)
DEFIANT - RESISTANT DEFINITE - CERTAIN
WANTON - DELIBERATE AND UNPROVOKED ACTION (ALSO AN ARCHAIC TERM FOR A PROMISCUOUS WOMAN)
WONTON - IT’S A DUMPLING THAT’S ALL IT IS IT’S A FUCKING DUMPLING
the english language is cruel
English is a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.
you need to stop
i am reminded that english is a flawed language every time I am forced to use “that that” in a sentence
My mother Toni Morrison on AAVE (via howtobeterrell)
this is for whoever was telling me that AAVE isn’t a real thing… UGH
(via glassaquarium)
Note how precise each AAVE phrase is.
(via thecrayonboxes)
Cries from perfection
(via youngbadmanbrown)
For anyone who thinks aave is just slang. -Morgan
(via pocproblems)
A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
A question mark walks into a bar?
Two quotation marks “Walk into” a bar.
A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to drink.
The bar was walked into by a passive voice.
Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave.
THANKS FOR TEACHING ME THINGS THAT ENGLISH CLASS HAS FAILED TO ACKNOWLEDGE
Two students, James and John were given a grammar test by their teacher. The question was, “is it better to use “had” or “had had” in this example sentence?”
The teacher collected the tests, and looked over their answers.
James, while John had had “had”, had had “had had.” “Had had” had had a better effect on the teacher.
welcome to the english language
waht
I before E
except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbour
fuck the english language
