the ‘-’ in ‘uh-oh’

Doing that ling thing to get the ling bling.

[allthingslinguistic]

Linguist Breakup Lines

Chomsky (1957): Our relationship is due for a transformation.

Chomsky (1965): I know everything seems fine on the surface, but deep down we just aren’t right for each other.

Chomsky and Halle (1968): We just don’t seem to work in the same environment.

Chomsky (1986): I can see barriers to any future movement for us.

Greenberg (1963): With overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency you and I do not occur together.

Labov (1966): You’re out of my class.

Lakoff (1987): You’re dangerous, it’s like playing with fire.

Prince and Smolensky (1993): *FAITHFULNESS (from)

[allthingslinguistic]

I just feel tense and stressed ‘round you. 

You’re okay, but you’re always bound to your Auntie Cedant, and she really PRO-vokes me. 

[skippier]

what kind of baby do two birds who speak different languages have?

a pidgin

[incendavery]

a PIE pie

I spent so much fucking time trying to figure out how to translate eat me to make this joke and it probably isn’t even correct don’t look at me 

[allthingslinguistic]

Linguistic approaches to language learning: link roundup

I suppose it’s okay to admit after three years of linguistics blogging that I actually am one of those linguists who speaks quite a few languages, and I’ve studied even more at various levels. Here are some of my favourite posts about language learning:

Tips for learning another language

7 ways to fake-pronounce any foreign language

How to learn vocabulary in 12 steps (using science!)

Up-goer five, Taboo and language learning

How to learn a third language (while keeping your second one)

12 ways to stop freezing up when you try to speak a second language

How second language acquisition works

Why can’t adults learn languages like children? (video with Tom Scott)

Finding “lost” languages in the brain

Learning languages without conscious effort

How to teach old ears new tricks

Speaking to babies, pets, and language learners

Learning Indigenous languages

Should linguists or non-Aboriginal people learn Aboriginal languages?

Benefits of Indigenous language learning

Roadblocks to effective Indigenous language development

OLA - Oral Language Acquisition

CoLang and Breath of Life

Learning less popular and minority languages when resources are hard to find

How to teach when the teacher isn’t fluent

How to make learning materials for conversation and document at the same time

Sk̲wx̱wú7mesh language revitalization house

Languages and linguistics

Why linguists get annoyed when you ask how many languages they speak

Will learning a second language help me learn linguistics?

Will learning linguistics help with learning a second language?

Bonus fun link: Now You’re Just A Language That I Used To Know (parody of that Gotye song).

[marxistically]

Grortmanteaus (Greek portmanteaus)

Back in April, Tumblr was flooded with snemes (snail memes) and snake memes, or snemes. Humorous portmanteaus were created by combining snail/snake with other words. Yet humorous as they may have been, the recent Greek debt / Eurozone crisis shows how portmanteaus really do add to our vocabulary.

Prior to the Greferendum (Greek referendum), there was talk about the possibility of a Grexident (Greek exit accident), and with the No vote in this time of Grisis (Greek crisis), some believe a Grexit (Greek exit) to be inevitable. But for now, the Greek people as well as others are still waiting to find out if an acceptable deal can be made with creditors during this period of Grimbo (Greek limbo).

[coto524]

other people: robin what is it with you and languages?

me:

[dork-larue]

I love how, because of that “Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World, Too Pure” Onion headline, “cinnamon roll” has become a commonly accepted phrase for “a character who is cute and kind and typically gets more pain in canon than they deserve”.

Like, we didn’t have a real phrase for that common phenomenon (wubbie maybe, but that has negative connotations ie “this character has been wubbiefied by the fandom”) and then someone used a screenshot of a headline from a satire news website to describe it, and then everyone else was like “yes good let’s use this”. You couldn’t make that shit up. I bet there are people who use that phrase now who didn’t even see that headline.

Language is evolving right before our eyes in a very weird and beautiful way and I am very very sorry for future linguist who have to puzzle this shit out.  

[allthingslinguistic]

An interesting article about the “pop-punk voice”: “I made a linguistics professor listen to a Blink-182 song and analyze the accent”. The song is in the video above, and an excerpt from the article is below, although the whole thing’s worth reading: 

Penelope Eckert, a linguistics professor at Stanford, is one of the foremost scholars examining what’s known as the “California Shift.” The California Shift is a linguistic theory covering the particular changes in dialect that affect the Pacific coast of the United States. Eckert was nice enough to humor me and listen several times to a song I chose based on its particularly egregious “pop-punk voice,” Blink-182’s “First Date.” I love the song, but am aware others may find it horribly annoying. “It really does sound like someone’s messing around,” she told me. […]

Eckert walked me through the Blink-182 song word by word, pointing out places where DeLonge was playing around with accent. “When they say ‘to pick you up on our very first date,’ the interesting thing about ‘date’ is that he renders it as a monophthong ‘dehhht’ instead of ‘date,’ says Eckert. “In most American English it’s a diphthong.” A diphthong is a vowel sound with two simpler sounds in it; for most Americans, “date” is a kind of compound vowel made up of the “eh” sound and the “ee” sound. Not so much for Tom DeLonge, who eliminates all but the “eh,” making it a single sound, or a monophthong.

[glottalplosive-blog]

linguistics lad culture

one of the lads at cheeky nandos: what are your thoughts on chomsky?

me: such a LAD (language acquisition device)!

[askr-deactivated20230503]

look man im a native english speaker and i’ve been mispronouncing a crap ton of words because i never looked up the pronunciation for any of them but if you make fun of how a foreigner pronounces an english word either because of their accent or having never heard that word before i will fucking fight you because english has shitty pronunciation rules and none of them make sense fuck off

[boozefruit]

[m]&[m]s • TRY and top UMass Linguistics

[wuqs]

snake (snail snake)

[lesserjoke]

snail (snake snail)

[brightlyandwithbeautyy]

oh SNAP (snake snap)

[glottalplosive-blog]

okay but now i’ve started to think about the phonological properties of sneme

[glottalplosive-blog]

The signs as linguists

Aries: semiotician

Taurus: computational linguist

Gemini: phonetician

Cancer: morphologist

Leo: historical linguist

Virgo: acquisitionist

Libra: syntactician

Scorpio: field linguist

Sagittarius: semanticist

Capricorn: psycholinguist

Aquarius: sociolinguist

Pisces: phonologist

[allthingslinguistic]

These IPA Scrabble pictures are courtesy of Tom McCoy and the Yale Undergraduate Linguistics Society, who used my post how to make your own IPA Scrabble set (plus some bonus woodworking help; my instructions are for cardboard!) to make this gorgeous set of tiles. Including, ahem, a few bonus ones. Tom says: 

The Scrabble set was made by YULS (the Yale Undergraduate Linguistics Society), which was started by Aidan Kaplan, Alexa Little, and me. We also could not have made the Scrabble set without the help of Antonio Martinez, a non-linguist friend, who did the actual laser cutting and engraving of the tiles. I think the one major rule change we decided on was that you could use a tile for sounds like m, n, r, and l to represent the syllabic form of that sound. So, for example, “butter” could be played either as [b SCHWA t r] or [b SCHWA t SCHWA r], and “button” could be [b SCHWA t n] or [b SCHWA t SCHWA n]. We also thought of another variant that would be significantly easier to play (although we have not yet played it): Rather than phonetic Scrabble, it would be phonotactic Scrabble, in which you are allowed to play any string of sounds that *could* be an English word.

Has anyone else ever played IPA Scrabble? I’d love to see more pictures, especially if you have any particularly epic words! 

[harrywantsababy]

I just watched a kid break down in the bookstore because his books for the semester totaled $600 and that’s the american university system in a nutshell

[therainbowprogrammer-deactivate]

I was on the verge of tears when I got to the cashier so yeah, that’s messed up

[nihilisme]

Go here and just, don’t waste any more money okay?

[songscloset]

While I entirely support following that link, I also suggest going to Abe Books or Book Depository or even eBay to see if there are inexpensive print versions of books you need. I haven’t paid full-price for any of my texts while I’m in school… because that would DOUBLE the cost of school. I use the ISBN of the require books and search the cheap sites for them. Good luck out there, guys!

[shadesofmauve]

Paging FenrisLorsrai! Come work your resource magic on this post!

[rainydaypaperback]

I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED. (but I’ll post on my actual bookstore account)

Quick anddirty meta search for books: Addall. it’ll crawl 40+ book sites at once including ABE, ALibris, Amazon, Half in both domestic AND foreign versions.

Meta search #2! GetTextbooks.com which focuses specifically on textbooks. It omits some foreign sites that AddAll includes, BUT it also includes a whole bunch of rentals as well.  Renting is probably the most cost effective method overall.

NOW, HOW TO SEARCH!

First determine a few things:

Make sure you have the ISBN

IF IT IS A BUNDLE: Determine if you need a software key/CD/workbook/lab book or not.  Many times you do not.  Math classes increasingly NEED the software key, but more on that later

ASK THE PROFESSOR: If this is not the first edition of the book, can you use a previous edition?  One edition back is generally half the cost of current, two is generally about 1/8th the cost.  Generally you can get away with this if its material that doesn’t change rapidly. Your course on the Civil War, you can probably use two editions back. Your computer programming class on latest greatest language… you probably need newest edition.

FOR LITERATURE CLASSES: determine if you book is from before 1929. If it is, its in public domain, you can almost certain get a free copy online.  If they want a SPECIFIC copy for an essay bundled with book, see below.

Now, run your search by ISBN using the two metasearch sites.  Open them in separate tabs.  

gettextbooks shows you WITH the shipping, Addall does NOT show you the shipping.  keep this in mind when you’re comparing.  You’ll see a lot of duplication.  GetTextbooks will also show you SOME variants.

Now that you have those open, open two more tabs.  Run a second search on same two sites using the author and exact title you picked up from search #1.  This will show you all the international editions and weird bundles that don’t exactly match the ISBN of the bookstore

WHAT THE HELL IS AN INTERNATIONAL EDITION: its a paperback version of the US version with an angry notice on the cover saying “NOT FOR SALE OUTSIDE INDONESIA”. Its the same book, but way cheaper.  ignore the angry warning, the US Supreme Court has your back. NO, REALLY. Right of first sale, baby!  ignore the angry warning and you basically have same book, it just isn’t printed with ink made from student tears and unobtanium.

Now filter results based on whether you need any Extra materials or not. 

IF YOU DO NEED THE EXTRA MATERIALS: this is where it gets tricky. an intact bundle is generally the most expensive option or near top end of price curve.  If you NEED the other materials, you may be able to get them cheaper in pieces.  and you can buy mismatched pieces!

Say for example you need a math textbook, but need the software key for the math problem program.  The professor said you can use older book.  Buy a math book that one or more editions back and then buy the software key separately from the SOFTWARE manufacturer.  You’ll find the software keys on booksites all by themselves, but they’re generally way more expensive than buying the key direct from software manufacturer. and no shipping then!

NOW A WORD ON LITERATURE: sometimes profs want you to get a specific edition of something to read a specific essay in the book. You have about 50/50 odds that the essay is in the front of the book. IF IT IS, you may be able to read the essay on Amazon by going to that books page and clicking on the “look inside”.  They generally preview between 10-30 pages of books and that often means its the essay you needed, not the actually BODY of the book.  So you can look up the specific copy of Frankenstein on Amazon, read the essay, then download a free different version from Project Gutenberg.

FOR RECENT NONFICTION, make sure you have an up to date library card for your HOME library and the LOCAL city library where your college is.  Many have digital loans available, where you can check out the ebook for free and popular nonfiction is frequently available that way.

IF YOU CAN GET YOUR BOOKLIST BEFORE GOING TO SCHOOL: shop for the mundane things locally first.  There will be 50 people in CollegeTown looking for that book, you may be the only one in your home town.  supply and demand, if you found it in collegetown, it may be 10X price of your local bookstore.

and check you local library as well!  You may be able to check out some of those books from your local library and take them to school with you and renew them online one or more times, depending on how in demand they are.  There will be NO copies in CollegeTown library because there’s 50 people asking for it.  But your HOME town, you may be able to renew it twice since its low demand. Write on your calender when they’re due or need to be renewed.  Renew them OR tuck the whole pile into a Priority Mail flat rate box and send them home to your folks.  The cost of the priority box to send several library books home is probably way less than what you’d pay for them. (or if its stuff you know you need AFTER a break where you’ll be home, request a hold from school, pick up at home)

ONE LAST WORD BEFORE YOU BUY…

You determined you HAVE to buy a book and you’ve narrowed it down to a few choices of source.  Run a search for “coupon + Sitename” what looked like the lowest priced may not if you find a coupon for the 2nd or 3rd lowest priced option. Gettextbook will generate some automatically, but you may be able to find even better ones.

So make yourself some food, get a beverage, put on some tunes and compare prices!

and if you’re reached point of wanting to curl up in a ball and die, you can send us an ask with the ISBN for your book and answers to questions aobe (extra materials, previous edition, etc) and we’ll send you back an note with a link to the cheapest one we can find.  I do this for a living, send an ask and I’ll get it done usually within about 12 hours.

[shadesofmauve]

WHOOP WHOOP MASSIVE EXCELLENT RESOURCE ADVICE ABOVE!!!!

[linguisten]

What if I told you… ?