gonna grow you a place safer than this

Die temu ad die

Hmm. Accidentally looks like latin.

It accidentally is latin

honestly christianity really hit the jackpot with "jesus christ" rolling off the tongue as an expletive so well. the number one problem with fantasy settings is that whatever names you come up with to take in vain will never hit as well as "jesus christ"

this guy gets it!!!!! this is the kind of rock solid phonetic structural integrity you have to compete with!!!! and no amount of marika's tits or thal's balls or odin's beards will ever get close because with ol jeezy boy his name alone has all the features you need

official linguistics post

This meme is inescapable on French insta so I'm posting it here for all to enjoy

Always reblog flash debate

on it boss

reminder that the presenter says "oh, shut up" not "can it"

Native French speaker here. "Ta gueule" is actually more like "shut the fuck up" in terms of level of disrespect

also worth noting is that the "are you happy" is the correct gender

official linguistics post

in an interesting case of linguistic convergent evolution, the english words scale, scale, and scale are all false cognates of each other

scale as in „to climb“ comes from the latin scala, for ladder.

scale as in the measuring device comes from the old norse skal, for a drinking vessel sometimes used as a weighing device

scale as in the dermal plating on the skin of some fish and reptiles comes from the old french escale, for shell or husk.

Three languages enter, one language leaves.

official linguistics post

fantasy characters: “Geez”

me: who the fuck spread Christianity there

this two-years-old shitpost just gained a hundred notes who the snickerdoodles dug it up

W H A T

@rogha

In moments like this I always fall back on the fact that they also aren’t speaking English because they don’t have England or the many languages and conquering peoples that contributed to the creation of the English language and therefore the work musr be a translation into recognizable terms in our world’s terms. Call that Tolkien Brainrot.

Definitely funnier if you make fantasy explanations though,

Champagne is a wizard who sells bubbly alcohol.

It’s called English because of the original Lish people, all languages start with En here.

French fries are not potatoes they’re roots of the french plant.

Goodbye is now short for ‘good be your eye’ wishing you luck seeing the path ahead.

Jesus Christ is a long dead lich who used to cause everyone problems and we haven’t stopped saying her name when things go wrong.

And that’s the Pratchett approach

the most disorienting thing thats ever happened to me was when a linguistics major stopped in the middle of our conversation, looked me in the eye, and said, "you have a very interesting vernacular. were you on tumblr in 2014?" and i had to just stand there and process that one for a good ten seconds

#i was in a car with a linguist i had never met before the car trip and like half an hour in he looked at me#after i finished describing a geology thing that was happening out the window and asked if i'd ever spent much time on tumblr#the fuckor of it all#and then we spent six more hours driving#it sure does leave linguistic markers! i'm not sure i'm good with it (tags via @thoughtsformtheuniverse)

it is one thing to be a linguist and another to be a linguist who knows enough of 2010s Tumblr to spot one of its enjoyers

I'm so fascinated by languages with different levels of formality built in because it immediately introduces such complex social dynamics. The social distance between people is palpable when it's built right into the language, in a way it's not really palpable in English.

So for example. I speak Spanish, and i was taught to address everyone formally unless specifically invited otherwise. People explained to me that "usted" was formal, for use with strangers, bosses, and other people you respect or are distant from, while "tú" is used most often between family and good friends.

That's pretty straightforward, but it gets interesting when you see people using "tú" as a form of address for flirting with strangers, or for picking a fight or intimidating someone. In other languages I've sometimes heard people switch to formal address with partners, friends or family to show when they are upset. That's just so interesting! You're indicating social and emotional space and hierarchy just in the words you choose to address the other person as "you"!!

Not to mention the "what form of address should I use for you...?" conversation which, idk how other people feel about it, but to me it always felt awkward as heck, like a DTR but with someone you're only just becoming comfortable with. "You can use tú with me" always felt... Weirdly intimate? Like, i am comfortable around you, i consider you a friend. Like what a vulnerable thing to say to a person. (That's probably also just a function of how i was strictly told to use formal address when i was learning. Maybe others don't feel so weird about it?)

And if you aren't going to have a conversation about it and you're just going to switch, how do you know when? If you switch too soon it might feel overly familiar and pushy but if you don't switch soon enough you might seem cold??? It's so interesting.

Anyway. As an English-speaking American (even if i can speak a bit of Spanish), i feel like i just don't have a sense for social distance and hierarchy, really, simply because there isn't really language for it in my mother tongue. The fact that others can be keenly aware of that all the time just because they have words to describe it blows my mind!

But you do have it! because American English has titles and also hierarchical treatment of last names (if your name is Jeremy Jefferson, there's a huge semantic weight difference between Jerry, Jeremy, Mr. Jeremy, and Mr. Jefferson, for example). English marks hierarchy and familiarity even if it doesn't do it in more grammatical terms. Think of being a kid and your parents yelling your full name across the house when you were in trouble.

I speak Icelandic. Icelandic doesn't have titles or last names or everyday use of a formal plural or any other obvious markers of formality and intimacy. Formality is still marked, just in non-grammatical lexical terms...but because it's not marked in ways I as a L1 English speaker recognize, it's harder for me to reproduce.

The reason you feel like this doesn't exist in English to the point where it exists in Spanish is because it's easier to spot for a L2 learner who has to think about categorizing the new language in a way that makes sense in the L1, and unless you have some more in depth information about language registers and intimacy marking and whatever it's easy to consider this as a novel phenomenon in the L2. But a lot of this semantic stuff is pretty universal, just marked in different ways.

THANK YOU. This is a misconception. Speaking from my experience of living in Japan and studying Japanese while being a native speaker of American English:

1. For folks who don't know, Japanese words/grammar change depending on formality, the genders of the speaker and listener, the age of the speaker and listener, etc.

2. But English words/grammar ALSO change depending on the above contexts described. It's just not formalized in grammar books. Consider the differences:

Etc. People will be like "it's wild that Japanese has different words for 'meal' depending on formality!! Gohan? Omeshi? Crazy!!!" But ENGLISH IS THE SAME WAY.

And this actually makes it harder for speakers of languages like Japanese to learn natural English, because they've been taught that there's no difference in tone between telling a waiter "I'd like a coffee" and "I want coffee." Since one of those feels easier to learn, they'll choose the option that makes them sound weirdly dickish to the waitstaff.

In short: English has levels of formality! Conveniently, saying otherwise fits the stereotypes of rigidly hierarchal East Asians, refined and sophisticated Europeans, and lawless/casual Americans and Australians—but us not recognizing these differences makes it harder for ESL speakers to learn real English

official linguistics post

For a bit of fun linguistic trivia that only other nerds will care about (it's me. I'm the other nerds), i.e. stands for "id est" and e.g. stands for "exempli gratia."

[Tweet from Merriam-Webster, @MerriamWebster, saying,

End ID.]

fascinated by how "dislocate" seems to be a word used almost exclusively to refer to the misalignment of bodies, or parts of the body, from their proper place. it's distinctly anatomical. you don't say "i dislocated my keys" for instance, even though that's technically a correct and coherent sentence.

on the other hand, it would be really funny to say "i misplaced my shoulder" to announce a devastating injury

it went that way 👉

It's because the dis- prefix in English carries a strong sense of undoing or reversal, whereas mis- means to do badly

So if my keys are misplaced that means I put them in the wrong spot, but if they are displaced it means someone else moved them from where they were supposed to be.

There's a lot of dis- words for bodyparts! Dislocate, dismember, disarticulate - if a corpse is disarticulated that means it's all jumbled up and torn apart. If it's misarticulated you put it together wrong in the first place (and your name is Victor Frankenstein).

....a better minimal pair would have been disassembled (taken apart) vs misassembled (put together wrong) wouldn't it

The existence of the word "misadventure" (unfortunate event happening to you, typically of your own doing) implies the existence of "disadventure" (unfortunate event of someone else's doing) and I'll be bringing this into my vocabulary for situations where other people's mistakes have become my problem.

New DnD creature called a "misplacer beast" that's just really clumsy

i love how everyone on this website interacts with each other in ways that are so socially impermissible irl. how did we get here

like i know none of us call people we barely know "bestie" out loud. i know none of us say "i am kissing you on the mouth" in response to every mild compliment. but god i wish we did

(recent) tumblr exclusive linguistic phenomena:

I think my absolute favorite is "Thank you for the input, Tumblr user [[wildly inappropriate username]]"

fun fact about languages: a linguist who was studying aboriginal languages of Australia finally managed to track down a native speaker of the Mbabaram language in the 60s for his research. they talked a bit and he started by asking for the Mbabaram word for basic nouns. They went back and forth before he asked for the word for “dog” The man replied “dog” They had a bit of a “who’s on first” moment before realizing that, by complete coincidence,  Mbabaram and English both have the exact same word for dog.

on a similar note, a traditional Ojibwe greeting is “Nanaboozhoo” so when the French first landed in southern Canada they thought that they were saying “Bonjour!” Which is fucking wild to think about. Imagine crossing the ocean and the first people you meet in months somehow speak French. 

Given that we famously don’t know the origin of the English word “dog”, I have decided to adopt an utterly batshit folk etymology conspiracy theory. As a treat.

For a while I just assumed that the English “potluck”, was derived from Chinook Jargon “potlatch”. Both describe comparable practices of guests contributing resources to a larger community-wide feast. But a little digging quickly reveals no etymological relation; instead of one, I got TWO! interesting linguistic insights into distinct cultures.

Here’s some more!

‘Ciao’ is from what now.

Per Wiktionary—

Okay then!

Tumblr is just a community developing a new dialect in record time

The fact that in mere months "I'm bald" became an actual way of saying "None of the above" is insane. It's insane.

Y'all want to know what thought is fucking with me today?

Parrots can learn the concept of questions. I don't know about the claim that chimpanzees that were taught sign language never learned to ask questions, or the theory that it simply wouldn't occur to them that the human handlers might know things that they personally do not, or that whatever information they have might be worth knowing. But I don't even remember where I read that, and at best it's an anecdote of an anecdote, but anyway, parrots.

The exact complexity of natural parrot communication in the wild is beyond human understanding for the time being, but you can catch glimpses of how complex it is by looking at how much they learn to pick up from human speech. Sure, they figure out that this sound means this object, animal, person, or other thing. Human says "peanut" and presents a peanut, so the sound "peanut" means peanut. Yes. But if you make the same sound with a rising intonation, you are inquiring about the possibility of a peanut.

A bird that's asking "peanut?" knows there is no peanut physically present in the current situation, but hypothetically, there could be a peanut. The human knows whether there will be a peanut. The bird knows that making this specific human sound with this specific intonation is a way of requesting for this information, and a polite way of informing the human that a peanut is desired.

"I get a peanut?" is a polite spoken request. There is no peanut here, but there could be a peanut. The bird knows that the human knows this. But without the rising intonation of a question, the statement "I get a peanut." is a firm implied threat. There is no peanut here, but there better fucking be one soon. The bird knows that the human knows this.

from what i hear from retail workers, many humans (called "customers") don't actually have this nuanced an ability to communicate

One of the ballsiest things Tolkien ever did was write 473k words about some hobbits called frodo, sam, merry, and pippin and then write in the appendices that their names are actually maura, ban, kali, and razal. 

This just in: Eowyn and Eomer’s names actually start with the letter “L.” [source for other nerds] 

#wait so they have hobbitish names and common names?

No, they have Westron names and English names.

What you’ve got to understand is that everything Tolkien wrote was him pretending to merely translate ancient documents. He was writing as if the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were actually been written by Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam (or Bilba, Maura, and Ban) and he was just some random contemporary academic translating it all into English for us. 

There are many languages in his books, but generally speaking, everything written in English in the books is a translation of the language “Westron.” Therefore any names that come from Westron, he translated. Names coming from other languages, like Sindarin, he left as they were. Why? IDK. Maybe because the stories are from a hobbit perspective and hobbits speak Westron, so he wanted the Westron parts to sound familiar and the other languages/names to remain foreign? 

“But Mirkwoodest!” you cry, “The word ‘hobbit’ isn’t an English word! And the names Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck” all sounds super weird and not like English at all!”

Psych! They are in English! (Or Old English, German, or Norse.) Once again you underestimate what a nerd Tolkien was. Let me break it down: 

In Westron, hobbits are actually called “kuduk,” which means “hole-dweller,” so for an English translation, Tolkien called them “hobbits” which is a modernization of the Old English word “holbytla” which comes from “Hol” (hole) and “Bytla”(builder). 

“Maura” is a Westron name which means “Wise.” Weirdly enough, “Frodo” is an actual Proto-Germanic name that actual people used to have and it means the same thing. 

“Banazîr” is Westron for “half-wise, or simple.” In Proto Germanic, the prefix “Sam” means half, and wise is obviously a word we still use. 

“Razanur” means “Traveler” or “Stranger” which is also the meaning of the word “Peregrin(e)” This one is a twofer because  “Razar” means “a small red apple” and in English so does “Pippin.”

“Kalimac” apparently is a meaningless name in Westron, but the shortened form “Kali” means “happy,” so Jirt decided his nickname would be “Merry” and chose the really obscure ancient Celtic name “Meriodoc” to match. 

Jirt chose to leave “Bilba” almost exactly the same in English, but he changed the ending to an “O” because in Westron names ending in “a” are masculine. 

I’m not going to go on and talk about the last names but those all have special meanings too (except Tûk, which is too iconic to change more than the spelling of, apparently). 

The Rohirrim were also Westron speakers first and foremost, so their names are also “translations” into Old English and Proto-Germanic words, i.e. “Eowyn”  is a combination of “Eoh” (horse) and “Wynn” (joy/bliss). 

“Rohirrim/Rohan” are Sindarin words, but in the books, they call themselves the “Éothéod” which is an Old English/Norse combo that means “horse people.” Tolkien tells us in the “Peoples of Middle Earth” that the actual Westron for “Éothéod” is Lohtûr, which means that Eowyn and Eomer’s names, which come from the same root word, must also start with the letter L. 

The names of all the elves, dwarves, Dunedain, and men from Gondor are not English translations, since they come from root words other than Westron. 

The takeaway from this is that when a guy whose first real job was researching the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter “W” writes a book, you can expect this kind of tomfoolery.

Notes: Sorry I said “Razal” instead of “Razar” in my original post I’m a fraud. 

Further Reading: 

Rohirric , Westron 

I’m having a stroke

Tolkien was the most extra son of a bitch my goodness

This is why C.S. Lewis wanted to punch Tolkien in the face sometimes. 

In the great hierarchy of nerds, Tolkien remains at the very top.

No one can top Tolkien.

pretend? pretend to translate????

… who is Jirt?

“fish don’t even know theyre wet” and? you don’t even know youre luft (air equivalent of wet)

This is a really good example of how we can just make up words that work. “Luft” is a perfect word for this it feels correct and we understand and can feel it.

Like it would’ve necessarily work with other words but “luft” is a combination of sounds that means luft (air equivalent of wet).

Thank you but the reason it works is because it is a deliberately chosen word!

The closest word we have in English for ‘wet but with air’ would be ‘aerated’, which is the past principle of the verb ‘aerate’. As a multi syllable Latin derived word, aerated wouldn’t feel equivalent to wet even if you just used it as an adjective in a sentence- so to have something that feels like ‘wet’ I looked for a monosyllabic air-related word with a German root.

As many have pointed out in the notes, ‘Luft’ means air in a lot of languages, because it comes from the proto-Germanic word ‘luftuz’. It’s also used in English as a chess term, and is a doublet of ‘loft’. Because it’s rare in conversational English but has the right etymology to evoke the idea of air and the texture of ‘wet’, it is very easily appropriated for the concept of ‘air equivalent of wet’.

official linguistics post

official fish post

official linguistics post

TBH it makes sense that the Doctor is kind of clunky with gender, because they’re learning about it primarily through contact with the English language.

Like, forget alien cultures/languages for a second. Half of my actual, human family speaks a language that doesn’t have gendered pronouns, and they’re VERY clunky with gender in English. They mix up everyone’s pronouns (usually gender-conforming cis people!) all the time, because they never had to keep track of that in their native language. They’ll regularly flip between “she” and “he” even for macho bearded dudes, or high-femme ladies, as if they’re picking the word at random.

Growing up around that makes you really notice how fucking weird English is.

In English,* my gender is immediately everyone else’s business — one of the first things they’ll learn in order to even start talking about me. On top of that, they have to keep subconsciously reminding themselves of it over and over… something native English speakers only realize we’re doing when we meet ESL speakers who don’t do it.

And again, that happens even for gender-conforming cis people. Transphobes might think these people have “simple” genders, but even their genders require a lot of mental work in the background. Native English speakers are just oblivious to that mental workload, because we’ve had to do it all our lives.

And that sucks on multiple levels! It put way more pressure on me when I was starting to explore my own gender. Plus, it automatically makes gender one of the most prominent, memorable features about a person (because English is forcing you to memorize it), which is… not ideal. Having a gender is one thing, but this extreme focus on other people’s genders is a language-specific thing.

When transphobes complain about how annoying it is to keep track of people’s genders, they’re sort of onto something, but they’re putting the blame in the wrong spot. It’s not trans people making them do that. It’s this weird, invasive feature of the English language.

So anyway, if many human languages don’t do this, I bet most alien languages don’t either.** The Doctor does try to get things right in English, but it’s tough to do that when English is paying attention to something you don’t normally need to pay attention to.

Some of my relatives try to juice their accuracy by really overcompensating and over-emphasizing gender, to the point of stereotype. Whenever the Doctor makes a big deal about women being Like This or men being Like That, I see that same compensating behavior. They’re trying to make English make sense.

*and other languages with gendered pronouns

**the human languages that gender pronouns tend to share lineages with each other, similar to languages that gender their nouns. If history had unfolded slightly differently, this feature could very easily have gone extinct or never developed.