The Mysterious Masked Linguist @maskedlinguist - Tumblr Blog

This is relevant once again. I apologize if you are a real human getting blocked/reported.

#sorry gotta start to go with this policy #I'm getting a lot of empty follows

I do think the ability to emoji-react is a net win for human communication. not only does it give you an outlet for 'I see and acknowledge this but don't have a verbal response' but it also adds a pleasing alethiometer element to things

my coworker announces that he's off to the dentist. someone reacts with a tooth emoji. is this a statement of dentist solidarity? a wish for my coworker to return with more (or fewer?) teeth than he set out with? simple word association? who can say

softness-and-shattering

Friend of mine calls it active listening. Ah yes we are speaking of tooths. I understand and respond. Here it a tooth image. I have heard you.

ratty-writer

english major brain: words can evolve and develop as a society goes on. the way a word is used is its definition. it's pointless to hold onto the idea of right vs wrong words human brain: THAT IS NOT WHAT LARP MEANS!!!!!

kingdeath000

now, pecker means penis. and wood means boner. so of course you would make assumptions about the term woodpecker. but no. the bird

sixthrock

I LOVE hearing that other languages have so many beautifully unique ways to construct dick jokes

ancientstuff

A new study coauthored by Yale linguist Claire Bowern suggests that tens of thousands of languages were spoken between 1,000 and 3,000 years

This is fascinating, if you're interested in ancient languages and language in general.

faggotfungus

o-craven-canto

Alternate timeline in which all Greek and Latin roots are swapped:

catastrophe -> contraverse cephalopod -> capitoped chlorophyll -> viridofolia democracy -> populimpery homicide -> anthropoctony homosexual -> equigamic kilometer -> millimensure interregnum -> mesarchy magnanimous -> megapsychic manuscript -> chirography motorcycle -> ergatorote microscope -> parvovisor oxygen -> acidofex polyamory -> multierasty television -> remotoscope universe -> monostrophe

drlinguo

Source

delphinidin4

Source: Starkey Comics

It's interesting that MOST of these (with the exception of "pixie") come out in English as the goblin side the equation, not the spirit or sprite side. No pretty fairies or elves.

thememedaddy

hometoursandotherstuff

ariaste

PLEASE explain the Latin fuck words. for science

Okay so. The Romans think that sex doesn't count as real sex unless Someone Is Getting Penetrated By A Dick Or Dick-Adjacent Object. Very sort of dick-centric system.

So Latin has six words for "to fuck", divided into three pairs: one pair for each of the possible Holes (ass, mouth, pussy). In each pair there is a word for topping and a word for bottoming.

Most people who know a little about Latin fuck verbs know 'pedicare' and 'irrumare' from the first line of Catullus 16 (Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō), which is a poem about saying "absolutely shut the fuck up and piss all the way off" to fandom antis and purity police who are making repulsive accusations about you personally, based on things they're reading into your work from a bad-faith perspective. Catullus was so real for that and it's incredibly endearing to me that he was dealing with the same thing we are still dealing with. I got a hater in my askbox doing this about The Wisdom of Emperors just the other day, but I took the high road and, unlike Catullus, did not tell them "I will assfuck you and I will facefuck you" So here sort of a chart about the verbs: Topping | Bottoming Mouth: irrumare | fellare Ass: pedicare | cevere Cunt: futuere | crisare

Another fun fact related to the fuck verbs was that the Romans didn't think about sexual orientation in terms of who you're attracted to, they thought about it in terms of "which is your favorite hole and what do you like to do with it." So you'll get graffiti (ancient roman subtweeting) about things like "Marcus is a fututor [cunt-fucker] and a pedico [ass-fucker] but omg girlies I also heard he's a fellator [cock-sucker] 👀👀👀👀" In the modern day we'd just call him bisexual, but in Ancient Rome it is not enough to know if someone is bisexual (they think it's kind of perverted if a man only fucks women, like do you have some kind of freaky pussy fetish???? you've never once even fucked a twink??? dat's gay, bro. gay to not be bi), you also have to know if he's being bisexual in a respectable sort of way

You will notice that pussy-eating is not on this list, because those words do not mean "to fuck", they translate more directly to just "pussy-licking" (cunnilingus), and because the Romans are sexist as all hell and think that's gross and filthy anyway. This is not ONLY because of pussy terror, it's also that the mouth is the most sacred part of the body -- so eating pussy or sucking a dick is actually considered slightly more "shameful" than getting fucked in the ass. (Please note as well that the fuck verbs are gender neutral -- if you're a roman man and your girlfriend owns a strap-on, she can [pedicare] you. but be careful because your sworn enemy in the forum will have a fucking FIELD DAY if he hears about that and will write a Mean Poem about you or subtweet you on a public wall)

The moral of this story is that the Ancient Romans were absolutely *GAGGING* for social media (see Martial's Epigrams, aka My Best Tweets), and the second moral of this story is that if this was a fun post for you, you should look at my kickstarter for alllllll of this kind of nonsense in the form of A Fantasy Novel That's Pretending To Be An Academic Paper With A Fake Bibliography And Foonotes aka The Wisdom of Emperors. And please signal boost this so everyone can know about Latin Fuck Verbs and Roman Subtweeting, we've really learned so much here together

smbc-comics

In the final round, they pelt you with eggcorns.

Check out the bonus panel on the site.

Upcoming book signings this summer.

───── ◆ ───── ◆ ───── ◆ ─────

SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE

Buy this comic as a print.

smoke-in-the-winds

It is funny how French is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world yet both the French and Quebecois language wonks have the paranoia of speaking a dying regional dialect deep in the hinterlands.

discoursedrome

I feel like France must be this way because their authorities instinctively understand that the French language was the metaphysical formula by which Louis XIV conjured France from the primordial chaos (confusingly also called "France"). They're worried that if they stop honouring the ancient pacts and just let people talk however, the whole thing will fall apart like Cinderella's chariot turning back into a pumpkin.

I'm fairly sympathetic to this in the context of Quebec, though, even though their laws often go overboard and it ceases to be cool when they cause trouble for their own local minorities. They're not really worried about French abstractly but its use in Canada, and there mainly as a proxy for a historically-embattled regional culture. And actually, since languages are the geographic boundaries of Internet-oriented mass culture, that part of the country is the main bulwark against Americanization, so I think it's even useful to the rest of us to have it there.

The problem with all this is just that languages belong to the young, and the young are traditionally not fans of language authorities piloted by a mix of career politicians and 65-year-old prestige authors. At this point new restrictions just feel like political pandering with a light dose of protectionism for local companies, and if they actually hope to arrest the decline of French rather than just use it as a vehicle for stunts, they will need to get a bit cleverer about it.

itheginger

i love the linguistic trend of expressing something difficult to describe by just not including an adjective where there usually would be one. “i had a day today,” or “he’s definitely one of the characters of all time.”

it’s like i can’t describe this so i just won’t. you get it tho.

captainclickycat

I've talked about reasons I don't like internet censorship a lot in the past, but one reason that's more specific than most is that if someone writes "shot" as "sh*t", no matter how clear the context is, I am not going to process the word as "shot".

captainclickycat