Not All Wugs

This is a place to submit linguistics jokes of all kinds! notallwugs.tumblr.com/submit

[danbensen]

The twentieth century witnessed many interesting things; one of them was the grammaticalization of ‘ass.’

“Words on the Move: Why English Won’t - and Can’t - Sit Still (Like, Literally)”  by John McWhorter   (via linguisten)

[sxfjan]

me: i study linguistics

everyone over the age of 40: oh good u can sort out all those uneducated people who don’t speak properly!

me:

[notallwugs]

[leftoversalad]

[thequeerwithoutfear-deactivated]

“that’s a made-up term!” yes. so are all terms. so is every word ever. language is constructed. that’s how language works. stop unevenly invoking the constructed nature of language to try to stop marginalized people from better representing their experiences and identities. 

[thequeerwithoutfear-deactivated]

like, when you say “that’s a made-up term!” we all know what you actually mean is “that term was made up by people i don’t think should be allowed to have a voice" 

[allthingslinguistic]

I really want to see a linguistics quiz show called The Grice is Right

Maybe instead of getting products and guessing the prices, you get sentences or scenarios and guess the maxims? (Someone please play this in a linguistics class.)

[kicktotheface]

Practising IPA like

[glottalplosive-blog]

[allthingslinguistic]

Happy Val-ling-tine’s Day, everyone! (See also last year’s Val-ling-tine’s cards)

[allthingslinguistic]

Other linguistics valentines include this and this. 

[st-chair-deactivated20220103]

japanese vs finnish

Japanese: hai, aisenai - yes, not love

Finnish: hai, ai se nai - shark, oh it’s fucking

[patthepatpat-deactivated2020051]

japanese vs polish

Japanese: daisuki - I really like you

 Polish: daj suki (you say it the same way) - give me bitches

[monktonk]

japanese vs swedish

Japanese: kissa – drinking tea

Swedish: kissa – peeing

[dariattic-reblogs]

Japanese vs Russian

Japanese: hana - a flower

Russian: хана (same pronunciation) - a word you use when something/one is about to get fucked up

[notallwugs]

The reason why dating is hard is because everyone keeps violating my preparatory conditions

[notallwugs]

Why did the phonologist buy apples at the store last night?

Because there were

Minimal pears.

[morphosyntax-deactivated2016101]

seriously tho, if you want to see a bunch of morphology and syntax lovers fight just casually bring up clitics, lay back and watch. 

[allthingslinguistic]

Linguistics Halloween Jokes

What are the ghosts of dead phoneticians called? Spectral-grams

What does a linguist dressed up as a pirate wear on their face? An I-PAtch 

What do linguist children say when asking for candy? Affix-or-treat! 

What does a linguist-ghost say? /bu::::/ 

What does a linguist become if bitten at the full moon? A wordwolf 

What do you call several jack-o-lanterns with the designs that change depending on their environment? Allo-phompkins 

What’s the most pragmatic way to disguise yourself? Wear a Gricean Mask-im 

Why can bags of bones travel through time? Because they’re skele-tense

What would you call a famous linguist with an appetite for brains? Noamnomnom Zombsky 

What is the appropriate month for making linguistics halloween jokes? Wugtober 

(Image source)

[dave-penn-deactivated20150418]

when u hanging out with ur squad but then u accidentally start talking too much about languages

[allthingslinguistic]

Three things that I like about this tweet, linguistically: 

1. It syntactically integrates the emoji into the sentence into what is, indeed, an adjectival position. This is (currently) a rarer way of using emoji – we more commonly put them at the end of an utterance to indicate how we feel about what comes before, or as an entire utterance to respond to what a previous person said – but if emoji do get linguistically integrated in a systematic fashion, this is what it could look like. 

2. The emoji that it uses is already a symbolic (linguistic) representation, since it consists of numbers, albeit in a specific format that has a different meaning from just “100″. If an emoji contains a word, is it language, a picture, or both?

3. Despite the fact that it’s talking about using emoji instead of words, it uses 24 words and only 2 emojis to do so. Emoji aren’t a simple replacement of words for pictures but rather the development of a more complicated system that integrates the two. You could call it 💯.

[notallwugs]

Baby, you dominate my PP.

[notallwugs]

News anchor: What's the mood over there, Bob?

Correspondent: Uh Kris, it's very unsure...probably subjunctive.