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[spindletrees]

Defend indigenous languages.

Defend minority languages.

Defend “economically useless” languages.

Sigh loudly at anyone who says that things have to be productive to be worth fighting for.

[thatspookyagent]

☝🏾☝🏾☝🏾☝🏾☝🏾☝🏾

[bearsister]

human beings are the funniest, if you gave a person a pile of alphabet magnets and two boxes labeled “even” and “odd” they’d start trying to sort the letters into the boxes immediately

[bearsister]

human brain sees arbitrary categories and goes apeshit

[cosmicibe]

Well yeah some letters are sharp and therefore even, you wouldnt call ‘O’ an even letter now would you

[a-logical-phallus]

NO IT’S THE EXACT OPPOSITE??? AN O IS ROUND SO IT’S LIKE A NICE ROUND EVEN NUMBER??? ODDS ARE SHARP?????

[cosmicibe]

?????

Even letters are square and jaggedy.

O is the opposite of square??

Look at a fucking O, you’re sliding all over the place with that round fuck. There’s nowhere to rest on an O, you can’t have a comfy sit on an O. It’s odd as fuck!

Even letters/numbers are resting places, look at T for example.

Now that’s a letter you can sit on, it’s got broad shoulders, its comfy, it knows not to take me to Applebee’s on a first date, there is room to have a seat and think with a T.

The alphabet could end on T and we would be fine, imagine the alphabet ending with O. Madness.

[romeomahbromeo]

EVEN is sturdy. even is curvy. O is even. I dunno what you’re talking about, I bet you think math is a blue subject (it’s not, it’s red.)

[autisticexpression]

OP’s theory is holding up well so far.

[gallusrostromegalus]

If we have even and odd letters, do we have Prime letters as well? Because I feel like Q is a Prime letter.

[maskedlinguist]

Q and X are definitely prime letters. At least in English.  I’d love to see input form other languages that use the Latin Alphabet.

[elodieunderglass]

isn't Bauplan more like "building plan"? but i guess that's how their body is built so same idea

In German apparently yes, that’s the literal translation. In bio it’s a synonym of “body plan.” The Vertebrate Bauplan, and so on. Don’t really know why!

[0pabinia]

Oh hey! We talked about this in seminar today! Bauplan (in this context) isn’t actually a native german word! It was made up by an Englishman (can’t remember the guy’s name) , who coined it in german to make it sound fancier. ‘Bauplan’ makes sense in german, but it makes more sense AND is more accessible just to say ‘body plan’.

And now you know!

[elodieunderglass]

Oh hey that is a GOOD FACT thank you so much! All I knew about it was that it started popping up in the literature and one day Dr Glass handed me something to proofread and I replaced “bauplan” with “body plan” and he put it back.

“Bauplan is correct, it’s what we say now.”

“But it’s not NECESSARY”

“But we’re doing it”

And they did it. They were all doing it. This was like … 2009. I was alone, and Oppressed.

So I slightly hated it. When it came up in editing I would query “body plan???” In an imperative way, but the meme had taken off and nobody would go back.

IN FACT! I HAVE SEEN WITH MY OWN EYES! PEOPLE TRYING “Baüplan” !!!!! Capital B! UMLAUT! Why! whY!

THANKFULLY TYPESETTERS ARE WISE TO THAT BULLSHIT.

Anyway I hated it, then I saw it outside of academia and was like WOW no actually I love it it’s the best word ever

[old-chatterhand]

Baüplan is the funniest thing

Let’s put the Metal-Umlaut into Science

[elodieunderglass]

I’m screaming

Look at some of these

The LITERARY BAÜPLAN

And

a book!!! By!! Mark FUCKING McMenamin!! The guy who stood up at a conference and said, STRAIGHT FACED, that arrangements of bones on the sea floor were made by intelligent ancient krakens composing art. And THE PRESS RAN THE STORY??? He is and forever will be some kind of irritating chaotic angel in my heart.

Fine. Fine. Let’s do this. Love me some baüplans. Nothing better than cladistíc análysis of the mörphologíe of the téléost linéage

[frlzimt-deactivated20180622]

Listen the worst thing about this is that umlaut like this does Not Make Sense. There is no possible diphthong in which the second vowel carries the umlaut. It’s always the first (at least in German). This is the funniest trend – I’ve seen it for almost all other dipthongs with umlaut; somehow for English speaking people, apparently umlaut needs to be second. My fav is “Fraülein” in Charlotte Brontë’s “Villette”, btw, but I digress. Tl;dr this is a drunk-looking and hilariously funny specimen, well done scientists

[okj579]

If it was an English diaeresis (which, on second thought, almost makes sense), then it does go on the u... or you could pronounce it /bayːplan/ (ow!).

[okj579]

@onlyusefulphrases

[perrielupin-deactivated20180301]

buzzfeed apparently only just realised that there are languages other than english

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

These strange indecipherable symbols on Ikea products are apparently actually ‘Swedish’ according to several noted academics who have spent decades studying Ikea

[okj579]

It seems that English’s newest infix has made it’s way into German. Overheard today: “unfuckingfassbar”

[theonion]

WASHINGTON—As legislators gathered Tuesday for a critical vote that would go a long way toward finally repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) was reportedly struggling to weigh the interests of her entire constituency against absolutely nothing. “Honestly, it’s a tough call—on one hand, you have opposition to the repeal from a majority of Republicans, virtually all Democrats, and the entire healthcare industry, while on the other, you have not one sound argument or credible opinion,” said Capito, admitting she was, even now, having difficulty balancing her desire to keep as many West Virginians insured as possible with there being no reason whatsoever to do otherwise. “This is an agonizing decision. Sure, there are sound justifications for voting no on ‘repeal and replace,’ but then there’s emptiness, literal emptiness, when you look for reasons to vote yes. All I know is, I have to get this right somehow.” At press time, Senator Capito had resigned herself to the fact that both sides had valid points and she would just have to go with her gut when the time came.

[badconlangingideas]

#501

Your conculture has a specific dialect for each season, but they don’t have established boundaries on when each season starts on their calendar.

[okj579]

Now I'm thinking of all the things you could do by intentionally using the wrong one!

[allthingslinguistic]

Linguist twitter is pretty excited to watch people refer to the Doctor across regenerations using singular they. 

[okj579]

Yessss! Big fan of singular they here

[linguisticconvoy]

Piece of cake..

[a6]

“lmao ____ people cant pronounce the _____ sound!!” wow ur right……. its almost like… there are thousands of languages other than english….. and they each use a certain set of sounds and dont use others……. and wow its almost like ur making fun of them when if you were 2 try and pronounce a ق or a ح u would sound like a fucking loser wow isnt that strange

[just-shower-thoughts]

Contractions function almost identically to the full two-word phrase, but are only appropriate in some places in a sentence. It’s one of the weird quirks of this language we’ve.

[thechubbynerd]

This post needs some kind of warning sign.

[hugealienpie]

I did not see that coming.

[pi3pr0xy]

Some people say the English language is confusing. To which I say… It’s.

[allthingslinguistic]

That’s the kind of linguist I’m. 

[okj579]

how people think bilinguals speak: bonjour comment ça va- oh my! :) was that français? silly me, im sorry, hon hon hon, oh! did i do it again? mon dieu, it's hard to switch sometimes, my brain doesn't realize, je suis désolée-

how we actually speak: no but you know that one thing, the uh, you put stuff in it?? no, nOT A DRAWER. it's... it's small!! and round!! oh my god, shit, fuck, u hh h... it's grey and metallic and uhhh.. fuck... it goes tin tin tin when you tap it with a fo- TIN CAN!! IT'S A TIN CAN!!

[linguistika]

linguists, explain

[lessermores]

Most Americans: Oops! or Whoops!

Southern Americans: Wup!

Midwestern Americans: Ope!

Italians: Ops!

French: Oups!

Spanish: Opa!

Russian: ой pronounced oj

German: Hoppla!

Hmm. Bigger question for me is why Midwesterners leave off the word after “with.” Can I come with…WHO? You? Them?

[okj579]

Perhaps influence from the German mitkommen? There is quite a bit of German heritage in the Midwest.

[vokabular-blog]

what

[gravelyhumerus]

fun bilingual things

- you know the word in second language but not first - your notes sometimes are in both languages at once. some words are quicker to write than their equivalents - phone autocorrects to wrong language - the words that are the same but slightly different in your two languages are always spelled the wrong way. no matter what. - certain memories only available in one language - music genres?? u like maybe alternative and pop music in your first language but like rap and musical theatre in your second - u know what verb tenses are called in your second language but not in your first - saying bullshit like “close the lights please” because it’s idiomatically correct but not in english

[okj579]

Yes, every single one of these!

[ithelpstodream]

[jehovahhthickness]

This shit was so funny

[quicklywisecollector7-deactivat]

Lls

[neo-soulless]

Im screaming at the way the other woman signed vagina

[gentlepromises]

i’m the kids 

[okj579]

I'm dying 😂