#episode 87

[sailor-v]

[dailyimodna]

[jonstewartstuff]

I can’t believe Jon is doing a show tonight right before Game 3

Can he even focus on the show or will the topic be the Knicks and how Fuckface von Clownstick attending ruins everything as always?

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 87: If I were an irrealis episode

Language lets us talk about things that aren't, strictly speaking, entirely real. Sometimes that's an imaginative object (is a toy sword a real sword? how about Excalibur?). Other times, it's a hypothetical situation (such as "if it rains, we'll cancel the picnic" - but neither the picnic nor the rain have happened yet. And they might never happen. But also they might!). Languages have lots of different ways of talking about different kinds of speculative events, and together they're called the irrealis.

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about some of our favourite examples under the irrealis umbrella. We talk about various things that we can mean by "reality", such as how existing fictional concepts, like goblins playing Macbeth, differ from newly-constructed fictions, like our new creature the Frenumblinger. We also talk about hypothetical statements using "if" (including the delightfully-named "biscuit conditionals), and using the "if I were a rich man" (Fiddler on the Roof) to "if I was a rich girl" (Gwen Stefani) continuum to track the evolution of the English subjunctive. Finally, a few of our favourite additional types of irrealis categories: the hortative, used to urge or exhort (let's go!), the optative, to express wishes and hopes (if only...), the dubitative, for when you doubt something, and the desiderative (I wish...).

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

Thank you to everyone who shared Lingthusiasm with a friend or on social media for our seventh anniversary! It was great to see what you love about Lingthusiasm and which episodes you chose to share. We hope you enjoyed the warm fuzzies!

In this month’s bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about swearing (including rude gestures) in fiction with science fiction and fantasy authors Jo Walton and Ada Palmer, authors of the Thessaly books and Terra Ignota series, both super interesting series we've ling-nerded out about before on the show. We talk about invented swear words like "frak" and "frell", sweary lexical gaps (why don't we swear with "toe jam!"), and interpreting the nuances of regional swear words like "bloody" in fiction.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 80+ other bonus episodes! You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

'Irrealis' entry on Wikipedia

'How do you get someone to care about Shakespeare? Two words: Goblin Macbeth' on CBC

xkcd comic 'Conditionals'

'Pedantic about biscuit conditionals' post on Language Log

'The pragmatics of biscuit conditionals' by Michael Franke

Lingthusiasm episode 'This time it gets tense - The grammar of time'

'Realis and Irrealis: Forms and concepts of the grammaticalisation of reality' by Jennifer R. Elliott

'If all the raindrops' on YouTube

'If I Were a Rich Man (song)' entry on Wikipedia

'Rich Girl (Gwen Stefani song)' entry on Wikipedia

'Louchie Lou & Michie One' entry on Wikipedia

'Louchie Lou & Michie One - Rich Girl' on YouTube

'Semi-Toned - Rich Girl (acapella)' on YouTube

'Subjunctive mood' entry on Wikipedia

'Céline Dion - Pour que tu m'aimes encore' on YouTube

WALS entry for 'Feature 73A: The Optative'

Lingthusiasm bonus episode 'How we make Lingthusiasm transcripts - Interview with Sarah Dopierala'

Lingthusiasm episode 'Listen to the imperatives episode'

'Dubitative' entry on Wikipedia

'A grammatical overview of Yolmo (Tibeto-Burman)' entry on WikiJournal of Humanities

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

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Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

[thegraylushipper]

them winning as the best, healthiest, strongest, hottest couple in the series

[inkblackorchid]

See, that's what I'd like to know. Why is Kiryu the only one who got to take advantage of the angst potential of remembering being a dark signer? Can you imagine how good it could have been to do that with more people than just him? (Misty, maybe? Also Carly. Carly. HELLO.)

It also feels a bit wasted because, well... Crashtown is the last time Kiryu shows up in person. That's it. I think it would sting less if fully redeemed post-Crashtown Kiryu got to make a few more cameos later, but he doesn't. (All he does is become a young single dad of two orphans, which.... good for him?)

[existingtm]

lgbtq eldritch beings summoned by gay people being mirrors for each other

[mydysfunctionalvampirefamily]