a collection of love

things I love: art, the oxford comma, stories, stars, sunsets, languages, puns, dinosaurs, mugs, coffee, cuddles, dance, speech, theatre and a million other things.

[scienceshenanigans]

Good afternoon, the academic culture of “if you’re not overworking, you don’t deserve success” is unhealthy.

[raptured-night]

The Hidden Life of Modal Verbs | JSTOR Daily

A linguist explains why we get so distracted by the fiery language of politics, while ignoring urgent information reported by scientists.

[e-wifey-deactivated20201128]

people understand that Spanish speakers speak different dialects of the Spanish language but don’t understand that black people speak a dialect of the English language

[yellowjuice-deactivated20190512]

saw a variation of this conversation on twitter earlier

[brainstatic]

I just want to state for the record that this is completely uncontroversial among linguists. It’s the first day of sociolinguistics class.

[la-z-boy-linguist]

Why the Internet Tilde Is the Most Perfect Piece of Snark We Have

Is there any punctuation mark more of the times?

Came across this June 2017 piece in The Cut (which is doing some of my favorite accessible internet linguistic cultural analysis these days) about the changing use of the tilde online. As its use for sarcasm/mocking has increased, I’ve found myself trying to use it in irl conversation, and, almost as a reflex, will do a sort of shimmy/arm waving movement to convey the ~sarcasm tilde~ in person. Does anyone else do this??

[squidbroom]

*slaps the roof of a german sentence* this bad boy can fit so many commas in it

[lajvstudies]

11.3.2018 {45/100}

today was good.  Not my most productive day, but I needed some time to recharge and get organized, so that’s exactly what I did.  Tomorrow I can continue tackling this monster to-do list

-LAJV

[npr]

This Is Only A Test: Why Your Cellphone Will Buzz Wednesday Afternoon

Texts stating "Presidential Alert" will be sent to some 225 million U.S. cellphones at 2:18 p.m. ET.

[sydneysstudies]

27/9/18 Same exact spot as yesterday whoops :) I was super distracted tonight but I managed to mark a couple of assignments I got back today, get caught up on a calc note, and started a biochem assignment after a full day of lectures. Wish I got in some exercise and put away my phone to prevent distractions… but I’m going to focus on doing that tomorrow! Can’t wait for the weekend. 😍

[foreignerongermansoil]

Excerpt from Kató Lomb’s “Polyglot: How I Learn Languages”

[sydneysstudies]

28/9/18 I swear I don’t normally drink coffee… but I grabbed myself one after going to a workout class today on my way to the library. It’s nice to treat yourself every once and a while, even if it’s something simple! After my couple of lectures I went back to the library and found another spot to keep working on my biochem assignment and catch up on notes. I went home for dinner and finallyyy finished the assignment (which basically took me all day and yesterday because I kept getting stuck, asking for help, looking things up, and redoing my answers). I think today I learned that from now on I should try my best on assignment questions, but don’t dwell on it too long because it’s not worth my time. It’s more useful to take up the answers when they’re out, than to work in circles on questions which I might be going about in the wrong way.

[linguisten]

Language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. It is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end of understanding who you are and what society is like.

David Crystal

Topic day # 147: Sociolinguistics II

(via linguisten)

[lajvstudies]

9/15/2018 {38/100}

This weekend is one of my last free weeks before both speech seasons really kick off.  I still haven’t finished my own speech draft and I have a bunch of students to coach yet before we can head off to competition.

This weekend’s goals are

1) improve Lakota

2) work out some essay drafts for English and German

3) study some language diversity readings

-LAJV

[lajvstudies]

9/14/2018 {37/100}

I only had two classes today, so we’re focusing on organization and getting stuff done today.  In reality, I will probably just watch NCIS and scroll through Tumblr;)

[sweptunderthewug-deactivated202]

The five goals of sociolinguistic justice;

1. Linguistic Valorization

To show that all languages have worth, and to promote ideas of linguistic diversity and cultural appreciation of languages often seen as “less than” by dominant language speakers.

2. Linguistic Legitimation 

To help others understand the validity of their and others’ languages, and to understand languages as important parts of a cultural framework.

3. Linguistic Inheritance 

To guarantee the access of all to the language of their background, and to facilitate the passing down of languages as cultural artifacts.

4. Linguistic Access

To give access to different varieties and types of language and to facilitate understanding of complex social and political dynamics at play within language.

5. Linguistic Expertise

To give individuals confidence that they are the experts of the language they speak, and that they can contribute linguistic knowledge through their own metalinguistics.

[npr]

How many times per year does a gun go off in an American school?

We should know. But we don’t.

This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.” The number is far higher than most other estimates.

But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government’s Civil Rights Data Collection.

We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.

In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn’t confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn’t meet the government’s parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn’t respond to our inquiries.

“When we’re talking about such an important and rare event, [this] amount of data error could be very meaningful,” says Deborah Temkin, a researcher and program director at Child Trends.

The School Shootings That Weren’t

Graphic Source: Everytown, CRDC, NPR Research Credit: Vanessa Qian/NPR

[lajvstudies]

9/7/2018 {33/100}

Bring on the weekend!

I am now three weeks into the fall semester and only slightly overwhelmed.  I have a lot of planning to do to make the rest of the semester go smoothly.

[curlsandstems]

Have you ever seen a violinist going APESHIT?!

Be sure to check out IAmDSharp!

[thegreynightsky]

GO OFFF

[babydollbucky]

Ok so I’ve been playing for 18 years and i’m a string teacher. Can i just say how IMPORTANT it is for young kids to see a BLACK, MALE-PRESENTING PERSON playing, nae, SHREDDING on a violin? I’ve know maybe 5 black people who played stringed instruments throughout my schooling and teaching (predumably because i’m an upper middle class white woman). In districts where the population is predominantly black, funding is always low, so the instruments are crappy. Kids quit, or the program is dismantled. I’ve seen very few professional string players who are black.

Obviously there are black string players. We just don’t see them because they “don’t look like” string players.

This person is the real deal. They were clearly trained, and seems to have some fiddle training as well. How cool is that?