this is a blog

lingposting - final year linguistics student

[ducksarebloodthirstylittlebeasts]

depths of Wikipedia what are you doing

[kittycataphora]

what’s the historical equivalent for “serving cunt”

[kittycataphora]

My UnderGrad Dissertation!

Okay I’ve actually processed that I submitted it now so lets talk about it!

(yes i submitted it with the border leave me be)

Topic:

I have a background (and interest) in childcare and teaching, and since the pandemic have noticed certain behavioural changes in children returning into KS2, along with marked language and literacy difficulties. I wanted to compile a comprehensive list on all the different ways COVID19-related factors may have effected language and literacy development then side-eye the UK Department of Education for not taking proper action to help these kids improve before the attainment gaps get out of control. This topic was pretty personal to me which really motivated my research: these kids really need some help!

Some ways in which COVID19 has affected child language:

- Face Masks acting as low-pass frequency filters and obscuring articulators, therefore making building phoneme/grapheme correspondences very difficult

- Isolation meant no socialisation with other children; pragmatic talk and self expression abilities took a huge hit

- Reading comprehension absolutely plummeted outside of school by 66% !!

- Distance learning means children ‘tunnel in’ on their devices which makes their brain block out any stimuli occurring around them, such as speech

Findings:

tdlr: COVID19 has messed up attainment in KS2 literacy pretty badly, UK Government needs to pull their finger out and reform intervention methods in schools (using the suggestions I made ;) )

We already know the UK school system is a hot mess, but when it comes to intervention methods they fund nothing that will cover the novel language issues associated with the pandemic and 3 years on show no signs of doing anything of their own accord. These kids need to be put back on track quickly else they’ll suffer some serious language issues down the line. After evaluating the interventions on offer for their applicability to the “COVID cohort” (I love alliteration) I suggested some reforms/additions to certain schemes that will theoretically fill in the numerous gaps left by the current standard system.

Honestly writing this was traumatic but I’d do it again! Would love to hear what other people did their dissertations on!

[kittycataphora]

Final grade: A- !!!

Super super proud of myself, next up is the research masters project 😮‍💨

[kittycataphora]

HAPPY PRIDE EVERYONE!

[kittycataphora]

My UnderGrad Dissertation!

Okay I’ve actually processed that I submitted it now so lets talk about it!

(yes i submitted it with the border leave me be)

Topic:

I have a background (and interest) in childcare and teaching, and since the pandemic have noticed certain behavioural changes in children returning into KS2, along with marked language and literacy difficulties. I wanted to compile a comprehensive list on all the different ways COVID19-related factors may have effected language and literacy development then side-eye the UK Department of Education for not taking proper action to help these kids improve before the attainment gaps get out of control. This topic was pretty personal to me which really motivated my research: these kids really need some help!

Some ways in which COVID19 has affected child language:

- Face Masks acting as low-pass frequency filters and obscuring articulators, therefore making building phoneme/grapheme correspondences very difficult

- Isolation meant no socialisation with other children; pragmatic talk and self expression abilities took a huge hit

- Reading comprehension absolutely plummeted outside of school by 66% !!

- Distance learning means children ‘tunnel in’ on their devices which makes their brain block out any stimuli occurring around them, such as speech

Findings:

tdlr: COVID19 has messed up attainment in KS2 literacy pretty badly, UK Government needs to pull their finger out and reform intervention methods in schools (using the suggestions I made ;) )

We already know the UK school system is a hot mess, but when it comes to intervention methods they fund nothing that will cover the novel language issues associated with the pandemic and 3 years on show no signs of doing anything of their own accord. These kids need to be put back on track quickly else they’ll suffer some serious language issues down the line. After evaluating the interventions on offer for their applicability to the “COVID cohort” (I love alliteration) I suggested some reforms/additions to certain schemes that will theoretically fill in the numerous gaps left by the current standard system.

Honestly writing this was traumatic but I’d do it again! Would love to hear what other people did their dissertations on!

[kittycataphora]

UK linguists

drop ur dissertation titles

i’m interested

[linguistness]

Weird German words that are equally as weird in Swedish, #2

Since I’m a native German who’s currently learning Swedish, I noticed that Swedish shares some of our weird German words.

Today’s example is the word glove

The German word for this is ‘Handschuh’, the Swedish word is ‘handske’. 

Both of these literally mean ‘hand shoe’

[blueskittlesart]

literally obsessed with kanji. finally a good character for me to latch onto

[tibbycaps]

[kittycataphora]

when i’m reading something smart and a word i don’t know comes up and my internet voice just goes *radio static* then carries on with the sentence

[kittycataphora]

just a kiki girl

living in a bouba world

[researchwithaciir]

bouba or kiki?

bouba

kiki

what are you talking about?

Voting ended onFeb 20, 2023

[yandere-angela]

i love finding out the meaning of slangs for “attractive woman” in various languages

chick (english) - baby chicken Schnecke (german) - snail/slug sild (danish) - herring fıstık (turkish) - pistachio тёлочка (russian) - heifer ծիտ (armenian) - sparrow

[yandere-angela]

[jheselbraum]

Girls night

[kittycataphora]

Blurb on a ling-adjacent book: Finally SOMEONE made this weird language stuff INTERESTING

Me, on my fifth article about how vegetables were named:

[kittycataphora]

Crazy for Cuneiform

(TW for Trypophobia)

So I went to the Imperial British Museum recently and PLEASE look at the cuneiform that was on display!

The left is the Cyrus Cylinder which is a super important artefact of Persian history

but just LOOK at how tiny the script is!! It’s so neat and uniform and it’s just so small I’m mesmerised

These were Assyrian I believe, the way the script overlaps with the relief like Wow

There’s So Much text - these were triple my size

Would I recommend a visit? Absolutely not the museum is a glorified thieves stash and none of these writings were translated. Shout out to the ancient people that wrote it though 💯🫶

[elijah-terry]

linguistics survey on pronouns

Hi! My name is Gabe, and I’m a linguistics student. In my graduate course, I am doing a research project on the way people use pronouns to construct/reinforce language and gender ideologies, looking specifically at the way people with multiple sets of pronouns are referred to by others.

If you use more than one set of pronouns (i.e. she/they, he/it/ae, etc), please consider filling this survey out! it takes about 15-20 minutes depending on your level of detail, though as much detail as possible is encouraged!

here is the link to the survey!

[kittycataphora]

ONLY ONE CAN SURVIVE

θ

ð

Voting ended onFeb 3, 2023

I’m tired of living the lie that they’re different phonemes 🤧 (/j)

[kittycataphora]

Results are in

[kittycataphora]

ONLY ONE CAN SURVIVE

θ

ð

Voting ended onFeb 3, 2023

I’m tired of living the lie that they’re different phonemes 🤧 (/j)

[jabalinya-deactivated20230507]

When Semitic had this poll it was pretty clear that [θ] won and some of the Central languages doubled down so hard they beat up [ðˤ] and revoked its voicing and its pharyngealization.

[kittycataphora]

king of θə ring