You know what I think is really cool about language (English in this case)? It’s the way you can express “I don’t know” without opening your mouth. All you have to do is hum a low note, a high note, then another lower note. The same goes for yes and no. Does anyone know what this is called?

These are called vocables, a form of non-lexical utterance - that is, wordlike sounds that aren’t strictly words, have flexible meaning depending on context, and reflect the speakers emotional reaction to the context rather than stating something specific. They also include uh-oh! (that’s not good!), uh-huh and mm-hmm (yes), uhn-uhn (no), huh? (what?), huh… (oh, I see…), hmmn… (I wonder… / maybe…), awww! (that’s cute!), aww… (darn it…), um? (excuse me; that doesn’t seem right?), ugh and guh (expressions of alarm, disgust, or sympathy toward somebody else’s displeasure or distress), etc.

Every natural human language has at least a few vocables in it, and filler words like “um” and “erm” are also part of this overall class of utterances. Technically “vocable” itself refers to a wider category of utterances, but these types of sounds are the ones most frequently being referred to, when the word is used.

Reblog if u just hummed all of these out loud as you read them

“The internet bastardized the English language”

FALSE, english was already a bastard with five estranged mothers and an active habit of shagging other languages in a Denny’s bathroom for twenty cent vocab

Someone offered to write me a fic about English, the loose bastard son and honestly? I’m into it

Bugs Bunny accidentally transformed the word nimrod into a synonym for idiot because nobody got a joke where he sarcastically compared Elmer Fudd to the Biblical figure Nimrod, a mighty hunter.

Etymology is ridiculous and terrifying sometimes

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/nimrod

English grammar crash course: “oo” words one goose two geese one tooth two teeth one foot two feet one moose two meese one boob two beeb

my beebs are pleased

the proto-indo-european word for horse, ekwos (which shows up in other indo-european languages, such as the latin equus and the greek ἵππος), very possibly comes from an adjective h₁eḱus, meaning “swift”

so basically at some point people were coming up with a word for horse and they were like "it’s the thing that goes nyoom”

proto-indo-european dude #1: hmm what should we call this animal PIE dude #2: let’s call them Speedy Boys cause theyre fast PIE dude #1: shit dude they sure are

*wĺ̥kʷos meaning “wolf” is probably derived from the adjective *wl̥kʷós meaning “dangerous”.

So, horses are fast boys and wolves are dangerous boys.

Fun fact for you, pals: Russians don't always think in English when listening to English songs. And you have no idea how weird that can be.

I know most of you never thought about that, but… GUYS.

“What Can I Do” [wɒt kæn aɪ duː] sounds awfully like “водки найду” [vɒtki naɪduː], which means “I’m gonna find some vodka”.

“Can’t Buy Me Love” [kɑːnt baɪ miː lʌv] is another gem, because I know a whole bunch of people who sing along to that with the phrase “кинь бабе лом” [kɪŋˈbɑːbi lom], which means “throw a crowbar to that [tough] woman”.

Don’t be alarmed, that’s just the way we hear things. 

I do that even when I’m sober… T_T

Michael Jackson’s “I’m bad” sounds awfully close to “Обед” [abed], which translates as “Dinner”. So we often call this song ”The song of a very hungry man” ;)

It happens in spanish too!

“I wanna love you” sounds like “Agua en el hoyo” (water in the hole) and a lot of people sing it that way instead.

See also “This is the rhythm of the night” -> “¿Esos son Rebook o son Nike?” (Are those Rebook or Nike?)

I see this entry is revived))

I need to make another example: “Let’s twist again, like we did last summer”, the “ like we did last summer” is often sung like, “и трусы с лавсаном (and the underpants with lavsan)”. I’ve seen people singing that in karaoke. As you might have guessed, that… amplifies the fun a bit.

To conclude this part, I also need to make an honourable mention. Thanks to Taika Waititi, “VLADISLAV! Baby don’t hurt me…” has gone GLOBAL)))

A little update to this since I’ve been told the Romanian version and it is just terrific.

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So I used to have a Russian friend who had a pretty thick accent and like a lot of Russians tended to eschew articles. She would say things like “Get in car.” And stuff.

Well one day this asshole who had been kind of tagging along with us asks her why she talks like that because it makes her sound dumb and I still remember her response word for word.

“Me? Dumb? Maybe in America you have to say get in THE car because you are so stupid that people might just get in random car, but in Russia we don’t need to say that. We just fucking know because we are not stupid.”

One time I was proof reading a paper for a Russian student. As I was correcting her paper with her, the many mistakes in her grammar started weighing on her. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, almost sobbing,

“In Russian I am so intelligent and clear. In English I am like [an] idiot”

Respect to anyone trying to master a foreign language. I get so sad thinking about that student.

Most people just don’t realize that people who speak a language with an accent, are fucking fluent in a 10000x more difficult language. Just respect other people. It ain’t that hard.

Most people who mock other people for their accent only speak one language themselves.

Me

How English has changed in the past 1000 years.

the big mans a lad i have fuck all, he lets me have a kip in a field he showed me a pond 

I think my favorite part is how the first three are totally comprehensible to a modern reader, and then the fourth one is just “Wait, what?” You can practically see where William the Conqueror came crashing into linguistic history like the Kool-Aid Man, hollering about French grammar and the letter Q.

^ I FUCKIN SPIT MY DRINK UP

Today on “rules of English language I didn’t realise were a thing until someone pointed it out”

three internet trends i will (regrettably) probably never grow out of:

• typing in a cresCENDO TO EXPRESS EXCITEMENT • …………..unnecessarily……. long……….. ellipsis’ • puttinfh a typo in eveyr other word to shwo u dont really give a fukc but u actually do

personally I enjoy Random Capitalisation to show things are Very Important

Gives me life

Oh, oh, this reminds me of the only known bilingual palindrome:

Anger? ‘Tis safe never. Bar it! Use love.

Spell that backward and you get:

Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which is Latin for:

Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!

@copperbadge

Whenever I see stuff like this I wonder how people even come up with it. 

Longest words

These are some of the supposed longest words in different European languages:

Irish - “rianghrafadóireachta” - photography

French - “anticonstitutionnellement” - unconstitutionally

Croatian - “Prijestolonasljednikovica” - wife of an heir to the throne

Greek - “ηλεκτροεγκεφαλογραφήματος” - of an electroencephalogram

Latvian - “Pretpulksteņrādītājvirziens” - counter-clockwise

English - “Antidisestablishmentarianism” - against the disestablishment of the Church of England

Swedish - “Realisationsvinstbeskattning” - capital gains tax

Czech - “Nejneobhospodařovávatelnějšímu” - to the least cultivable ones

Polish - “Konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka” the daughter of a man from Constantinople

Norwegian - “Menneskerettighetsorganisasjonene” - the human rights organisations 

Ukranian - “Нікотинамідаденіндинуклеотидфосфат” - nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate

Serbian - “Семпаравиливичинаверсаламилитипиковски” - (this is actually the last name of a family from Yugoslavia)

Agglutinative languages. Things get even weirder here:

Estonian - “Sünnipäevanädalalõpupeopärastlõunaväsimus” - the tiredness one feels on the afternoon of the weekend birthday party

Dutch - “Hottentottententententoonstellingsterrein” - exhibition ground for Hottentot huts

Hungarian - “Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért” - for your continued behaviour pretending to be indesecratable

Finnish - “Lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas” - (something to do with the Finnish Air Force. Hard to translate but impressively long)

Icelandic - “Vaðlaheiðarvegavinnuverkfærageymsluskúraútidyralyklakippuhringur” - key ring of the key chain of the outer door to the storage tool shed of the road workers on the Vaðlaheiði plateau (Icelandic isn’t even really an agglutinative language which makes this even more impressive)

Turkish - “Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine” - as though you are from those we may not be able to easily make a number of unsuccessful ones 

And then the longest word is, of course, German. It’s 79 letters long and almost impossible to use in context: 

German - “Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerk-bauunterbeamten­gesellschaft” - Association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services. 

If you know any more impressively long words that I missed, please let me know so I can add them! 

im going to have a stroke

Instead try… Person A: You know… the thing Person B: The “thing”? Person A: Yeah, the thing with the little-! *mutters under their breath* Como es que se llama esa mierda… THE FISHING ROD

Also consider Person A: pass me the thingy Person B: Cual thingy? Person A: The thingy on top of the deste

Sometimes bilingual peeps shuffle phrases while we think things through, just in case that language’s patterns trigger the right word or idea we want to use. But “turning off” language? Nah…

“Do you have a liga? You know, a… The fucking… the liga. The liga, that… El deste, para tu cabello. The hair… tie. Shit.”

Also, when I’m around other people who I share more than one language in common with, sometimes we’ll just mix them together because some concepts don’t translate well between languages and that could easily happen subconsciously.

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

there is a dictionary that has all of these stupidly specific and obscure words and a whole lot more. It’s absolutely beautiful.