Parks and Deserts

Heleen (31), linguist from Amsterdam, teaches Dutch as a second language passionate about Russian and languages in general. She/her

[parksanddeserts]

Fuck was playing an R&B classics playlist and realized too late it includes a song by Diddy. Don't want to listen to that horrible man.

[parksanddeserts]

Oh read a funny one regarding selection procedures at medical programs in the Netherlands. Because of the popularity of studying medicine they don't allow every student who applies with the right diploma (other programs generally do), but they often use these really unfair personality and ability tests that favor students with a network that can help. I'm for making it just a lottery.

Anyway, there's the additional problem that students with "migration backgrounds* are underrepresented, so the selection procedure is unfair for them. This researcher claims that it would be great and "easy" to include multilingualism as a positive trait in the selection procedure. The logic is: multilingual students are able to help patients who speak their respective languages (including examples like sign language and Frisian), so it's an asset.And I'm like: easy?

- All Dutch students are multilingual. They have all learned English since childhood and were taught a second (and optionally even a third) foreign language in highschool.

- Ok, so maybe count only additional foreign languages that children may speak. Although isn't it unfair if you don't see it as beneficial if a student is more fluent in French than the average highschool student or if they speak a different variety of French?

- Which brings me to fluency. How do you know if your student is actually fluent in the language? Many heritage speakers can barely speak in the language their parents speak, they have mostly passive knowledge. So will they actually be able to translate important information to patients?

- The researcher said "all multilingual students she knows have been asked to help translate for patients". Really? There's plenty of languages that barely anyone speaks. Your colleague who speaks Turkish may be of use quite a lot. But I'm sure your Frisian-speaking patient also speaks Dutch. So how necessary is that skill for translating. How do you know if a language is actually useful?

Anyway, many questions. This person has shared this recommendation based on her dissertation on various platforms and never explains what makes it so easy to use multilingualism as one of the selection criteria.

[parksanddeserts]

Wait... Canada is actively JOINING Eurovision while Israel is still included?

[parksanddeserts]

I feel like some researchers need to be more careful when stating things like "vocabulary in a second language evokes less emotion than in the first language" (just read a summary for a phd project that was awarded a grant). They probably base this on research about foreign languages learned in an instructional setting which means that participants do not use the L2 on a daily basis outside of the classroom. I'm actually offended by the idea that the language I communicate in with my partner should evoke less emotion than my native language. As if we are an incomplete person in languages we learned later in life. And what does that mean for people who are more proficient in their second language? Does language in general evoke less emotion in them? That doesn't seem right to me. Quite harmful for linguists of all people to spread such ideas without providing context.

[parksanddeserts]

During the last world cup our street was closed during Morocco matches because of some excessive fans ruining it for everyone (cars on fire, you know the drill). So I'm slightly annoyed that the match is at a reasonable hour on Saturday evening because it increases the chance of that type of stuff. I'm sorry for all the kind Morocco supporters, but let's hope Canada somehow beats Hakimi's team (and yes, that man is the second reason I hope they lose).

[parksanddeserts]

Spent so much time on giving a student feedback, turns out she didn't actually work on her method section so she was aware that all her descriptions of the analysis were incorrect. OK great, but maybe warn me before I give you elaborate feedback to explain why it's incorrect. Such a waste of my time.

[dogpuppy]

[chickenmim]

Dude... allow me to add to your trove.

I have a folder of these on my phone... I'm not sure what that says about me!

[teaboot]

This has always bothered me too and it didn't make sense until someone older told me that when they were growing up "scare quotes" were used the way we used *asterisks* or ALL CAPS for emphasis

[parksanddeserts]

Ugh unfortunately I didn't have to read the news to find out who won 😭

In the past, I felt a bit of affinity with Morocco because of the large community here. Now, even without considering that I wanted The Netherlands to win, I really didn't want them to get far. Celebrations here in the past have been so unpleasant (firework bombs, car on fire, etc.), I'm kind of sick of it, and I also don't enjoy being woken up by obnoxious car honking. And second, the Moroccan team behaved very poorly in the African Cup final, and I don't like their captain for a pretty important other reason either, so yeah, I had many reasons to want them to lose tonight. Let's hope Canada beats them. Would be an upset anyway lol.

[parksanddeserts]

People are rightdully angry with the municipality when trees with a falling risk aren't cut in time, resulting in damage or even casualties during storms. But people are also angry when the municipality does cut those trees, because it's important to have greenery and shades in the city. New ones take ages to get as large of course. Which I understand, but if the tree isn't stable, it will come down eventually? With the same result? I know these people just don't believe that, but given that the municipality has to replace the tree in the area, I don't see why they would spend the money on all of this if there wasn't a good reason. I want many trees and plants in my city, but not on my head please.

[parksanddeserts]

Yikes seeing pictures of crazy hailstones falling in some places.

[parksanddeserts]

Didn't realize my bf was sending his friend a serious voice message and I fear now that I'm heard in the background singing along to the Vengaboys.

[parksanddeserts]

The fact that heat waves are this common in The Netherlands is obviously a result of climate change. And I agree that we all need to consider the consequences of our energy usage. And I understand that this makes people critical of installing ACs.

But. We've all accepted that it's important to heat up our houses in winters. There's discussions about when and up to which temperature, but no one thinks this is an absurd thing to do. Even though temperatures are generally not that low here in wintertime. Heat can be extremely dangerous and our houses are much less suitable for these temperatures. Our house gets unbearably warm even if we keep the curtains closed all day. Yet people act like you're personally responsible for these temperatures if you even consider getting an AC installed. Funnily enough, those people usually live in a house in which it doesn't get warmer than 25 degrees during a heat wave.

[parksanddeserts]

Ok I'm officially against us having a monarch but I think it's very hilarious that when asked about sitting next to Infantino during the game last night, the Dutch king joked "I may have made some suggestions for the Peace Prize for the coming years"

[parksanddeserts]

Ok this is a spoiler of the NYT Wordle of today and today's NRC Vorto (Dutch wordle), so if you play them don't read this before solving them.

They're exactly the same lol? I was so confused. Funny though, got it in 3 in Dutch and in 4 in English, and in both languages I feel like my guesses were quite strategic (I think the NYT Wordle bot also got it in 4). Overall I feel like it's easier to guess the word in 3 in Dutch but I'm not sure if that's a native language thing or actually a characteristic of Dutch somehow.

[mordredsheart]

girl help they are giving jane austen the romeo and juliet treatment on substack

[mordredsheart]

“she wrote satire, not romance” i am killing you with my mind

[parksanddeserts]

Listening to a podcast about Shakespeare, and suddenly I remember how a friend of mine in highschool made her own adaptation of Macbeth for some sort of theater competition, and had us (her friends) be the actors. We weren't stage kids, barely practiced, it was a shit show and extremely awkward, which meant that I already had to fight to not giggle, because "off stage" was visible to everyone in the audience. I was able to hold it together.

But then my scene came. I had to deliver two pieces of news to Macbeth, the first one being the death of his wife, the second one about the moving forest or something? Unfortunately, the guy playing Macbeth forgot his lines, but vaguely remembered I had something else to say to him. So in response to the tragic passing of his beloved wife, he said "Ok. Any other news?" (Instead of the actual meaningful speech that was supposed to follow).

Anyway, I was so taken aback, I could no longer contain my laughter and that's how I ended up ruining whatever was left of that scene. My friend wasn't particularly happy and I felt extremely bad about putting an audience through that, but it's also still an extremely funny memory to me.

[girafeduvexin]

Anyway, on fera jamais mieux que ce graphique du LA Times.

[lilietsblog]

may i bring up the tricky&fun "distant adult family member a generation or more senior to you" case because im living with my great aunt now and i am dying

[dawen]

"God? -> yes -> Tu (believe it or not)" made me laugh. because yes! and English did that too! (see old hymns that use Thou for God, because yes, thou was informal. we/they talked about God as a Beloved Family Member and I'm not even sure I believe anymore but I STILL HAVE FEELS about that)

(side note, I find it very funny that English swung so hard towards formality that we lost our informal pronoun, and now we're swinging so hard to informality that a lot of us don't use Mr/Ms/etc anymore, we call our bosses by their first names, etc.)

[esoanem]

I don't think using the informal thou for god is actually about a close personal connection. I think that's mostly just a happy accident (and even that only really in a protestant theology).

No, it's just a historical accident that god uses the informal thou.

Explanation below:

The Old Testament was originally (mostly) written in Hebrew (and some small bits in Aramaic), and the New Testament was originally written in Greek. None of these languages had a formal/informal distinction in their pronouns so they consistently use the singular thou for god.

The Bible then gets translated into Latin (via Greek for the Old Testament) and again, Latin does not have a formal/informal distinction at this point, so naturally uses singular tu for god.

The issue is that then the Romance languages start using the plural vos (> vous in French) as a respectful singular thou, but at this point they're still mostly hearing the Bible and prayers in Latin where tu is still used for god.

People then incorrectly assume that their formal/informal distinction existed in Latin and, when they translate the Bible into their languages (and also English, which by that point has imported the formal/informal distinction from French) they use their informal pronoun.

This becomes especially important when the reformation starts emphasising personal connection to god and this informal pronoun acquires theological importance

Tl:dr: god gets the informal pronoun because god's had those pronouns since before they became informal