Comparatively Internal

Dyllan | they/them | autistic | A historical linguist in training struggling through a(n) MA. There are no rules here, only chaos | main: SchwaZombie

[gendercensus]

The 2024 Gender Census is now open!

[ Link to survey ]

The 11th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th June 2024.

It’s short and easy, about 5 minutes probably.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful - it’s what helped us get 40,000 responses last year.

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

For the curious, you can also spy on some graphs and demographic data for the incoming responses here.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

Image credit: Malachite and rhodochrosite.

[pokkin]

They should make an alternate version of boba tea called kiki tea and its filled with spikes

[comparativelyinternal]

Dropping out is. Yeah.

[hbmmaster]

one of those false etymology posts but with the actual etymology of the word

[hbmmaster]

I was today years old when I realized helicopter is helico- (as in helix) -pter (as in pterodactyl) 😂

[hbmmaster]

sooo was anyone going to tell me that the -ter in daughter is the same suffix as the -ther in mother father and brother but under an exception to grimm's law or like

[hbmmaster]

OMG WAIT I FIGURED IT OUT

IT'S "LASER" BECAUSE IT'S LIGHT AMPLIFICATION BY STIMULATED EMISSION OF RADIATION

WHAT???

[rewordfully]

you know how mathematicians have the journal of recreational mathematics, right? where they publish stuff like, ‘oh i found this cool property of this one seemingly boring number’, or, ‘this is literally nonsense but it sounds ~scientific~’ and it’s all great fun to read?

well

behold, the journal of recreational linguistics

with such delightful papers as ‘tennis puns’, ‘animals in different languages’, and ‘gifts from a homonymous benefactor’

excuse me while i go read all 50 volumes in one sitting

[comparativelyinternal]

Thinking about how the day I was told, by someone with a doctorate in linguistics no less, that if any of us wanted to have a career in linguistics we needed to learn computer programming and at least two programming languages, was probably one of the first steps towards me feeling alienated from my degree programme

[aforlorngazeintoyesterday-deact]

we need to destigmatize dropping out of college I am so serious. like dude if u realize that is Bad For You then you can just Leave. I am so fucking serious. just stop. there are other options and you don’t need to force yourself through shit you can’t do and go into debt. i promise you can just Not.

[high-pot-in-noose]

I propose a new gender-neutral counterpart of 'lord' and 'lady.’

As many linguists among us already know, 'lord' is from 'hlafweard' — meaning ‘bread warden’ — and ‘lady’ is from ‘hlaefidge’ — meaning ‘bread kneader.’ These definitions are not gendered by nature, but the fact remains that they are gendered in their modern forms. And so we must piece together a similar meaning that may then be shortened to our modern standards.

I recently saw a reblogged post of someone else touching on this topic who suggested ‘bread eater’ and ‘hlafetan,’ which then consequently became ‘ledan.’ However, there are two issues with this suggestion.

1. ‘Bread eater’ would actually be ‘hlafæta,’ and it already has a meaning — ‘household servant.’

2. ‘Hlafetan’ actually translates into ‘bread to eat.’

This isn’t to say that ‘ledan’ can’t be used at all, though. In fact, I propose that it would actually be a great alternative to ‘heir’ while also having the bonus of being a true title and not just a descriptor.

But for a true equivalent of lord/lady, I’d go with ‘ladren’ from ‘hlafdrihten’ — meaning ‘bread master/ruler.’

[thoodleoo]

[rock-cake-with-a-pin-in-it]

source: https://mltshp.com/p/1IIRD

[comparativelyinternal]

Where's the ablative you COWARDS

[cryptotheism]

"idk I heard this wasn't true" how about I cite a source right through your god damn eye

[molly-ren]

hey what's up with the "!" in fandoms? i.e. "fat!" just curious thaxxx <3

I have asked this myself in the past and never gotten an answer.

Maybe today will be the day we are both finally enlightened.

[molly-ren]

woodsgotweird said: man i just jumped on the bandwagon because i am a sheep. i have no idea where it came from and i ask myself this question all the time

Maybe someone made a typo and it just got out of hand?

[stevita]

I kinda feel like panic!at the disco started the whole exclamation point thing and then it caught on around the internet, but maybe they got it from somewhere else, IDK.

The world may never know…

[molly-ren]

Maybe it’s something mathematical?

[michaelblume]

I’ve been in fandom since *about* when Panic! formed and the adjective!character thing was already going strong, pretty sure it predates them.

[hosekisama]

It’s a way of referring to particular variations of (usually) a character — dark!Will, junkie!Sherlock, et cetera. I have suspected for a while that it originated from some archive system that didn’t accommodate spaces in its tags, so to make common interpretations/versions of the characters searchable, people started jamming the words together with an infix.

(Lately I’ve seen people use the ! notation when the suffix isn’t the full name, but is actually the second part of a common fandom portmanteau. This bothers me a lot but it happens, so it’s worth being aware of.)

[nentuaby]

“Bang paths” (! is called a “bang"when not used for emphasis) were the first addressing scheme for email, before modern automatic routing was set up. If you wanted to write a mail to the Steve here in Engineering, you just wrote “Steve” in the to: field and the computer sent it to the local account named Steve. But if it was Steve over in the physics department you wrote it to phys!Steve; the computer sent it to the “phys” computer, which sent it in turn to the Steve account. To get Steve in the Art department over at NYU, you wrote NYU!art!Steve- your computer sends it to the NYU gateway computer sends it to the “art” computer sends it to the Steve account. Etc. (“Bang"s were just chosen because they were on the keyboard, not too visually noisy, and not used for a huge lot already).

It became pretty standard jargon, as I understand, to disambiguate when writing to other humans. First phys!Steve vs the Steve right next to you, just like you were taking to the machine, then getting looser (as jargon does) to reference, say, bearded!Steve vs bald!Steve.

So I’m guessing alternate character version tags probably came from that.

[word-for-today]

Word for today: bang path

The use of exclamation points to distinguish between variations of a character or name

[gendercensus]

The 2023 Gender Census is now open!

[ Link to survey ]

The 10th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 9th May 2023.

It’s short and easy, about 5 minutes probably.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful - it’s what helped us get 40,000 responses last year.

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

Image credit: Avery at Tradescantia Hub

[gendercensus]

Monday 10th April 2023

So far so good, the survey has been open for about 8 hours and there are almost 6,000 responses! Keep 'em coming, folks!

If you're into this sort of thing, I've made the usual public spreadsheet of data-crunching, which I'm hoping to update manually twice a day or so. (Probably more often towards the beginning of the survey, while everything is busy!)

It compares this year's participation with the previous two years, and gives some info about ages and locations of participants, plus how everyone's finding the survey this year.

[nevver]

Beware the Ides of March

[official-german-translationen]

Salvete, Gaius Iuli'us Caesar sum et pilorum album quam nivem habeo et aureos, sed interdum virides lauros et imperium Romanum construxi et eius eram quasi primus Caesar (sic merui nomen meum) et multi indicant mihi me Marcus Crassus similem esse (si non scitis Marcus Crassus, vobis opus est pecunia). Brutus non est filius meus quod est bonum nam ET TU, MI FILI???!?. Iamia sum sed dentes albos et rectos habeo. Pallidam cutem habeo. Etiam, maga sum magicum ludum, nomine Pigverruca, visitans quod desinam (ego sum MMCXIV), veni, vidi, vici. Classicus sum (si vos id non suspexistis) et multas togas emptas in Basilica Iulia habeo. Ratio amo et bellum Gallicum gero. Veluti, hodie omnia Gallia occupata. Omnia Gallia? Certe! Non est vicus parvus inter Aquarium, Babaorum, Laudanum et Brevisbonum. Ambulabam foris Pigverruca. Ninxit et pluvit et Gallia divisa erat in partes tres, quod me fecit felix. Marcus Porcius Cato me observavit. Digitum medium illo monstravi.

[diehellasrache]

#I hate that I know what this is

[gothiccharmschool]

This is amazing. This is perfect.

[yandere-angela]

*experiences a moment of linguistic existentialism where i suddenly become hyper aware that the sounds i’m hearing are but sounds that my brain perceives as meaningful when in reality they are noises emitted by the biological functions of another animal*

[gendercensus]

One-off survey on gender and language

You are invited to participate in a survey to learn more about how some particular gender-related words are being used.

This survey is open to all, regardless of gender or trans status. It opened on Monday 20th February 2023, and it will stay open for at least a week. If the survey is still open, your response will be counted.

If your birthday is January-to-June, click here to participate.

If your birthday is July-to-December, click here to participate.

Thank you!