#lingfishtics

[kingofthewilderwest]

Hi! I found your account through your old Shipping Names and Linguistics post, and I was wondering, do you know of any actual sources talking about the construction of ship names in English fandoms that might back up your observations? I am actually currently in my way-too-young cocky linguistics grad student stage of life and thinking of looking into something similar regarding Japanese ship naming. So, I figured it would be good to have a solid base in English fandom conventions to compare it with if possible.

Obviously that post was quite a while ago, so no big deal if you never really delved into it further. Thank you regardless!

Hey there and thanks for popping in!!! Now I'm curious about Japanese ship naming, and I think that's a fun adventure you've got! I wish you the best luck with your exploration. XD

From your message, it sounds like you read my pinned note or the note in the comments. For others coming into the conversation, this is my note:

I was trying to hedge my words in that comment, but also give a clear warning. I'll be more direct here, hah, and hope no one minds. The fact that the shipping names and linguistics post had a reblog renaissance in 2024 has been a bane. 😅 A small bane, but oh noooooOoOoOo.

I mean, it's good people are interested in linguistics, and I had fun writing that post at the time. Maybe that post did more good than I think it has. ^^ But one of the biggest issues tumblr has with linguistics is that Most Of The Information On Tumblr About Linguistics Is Sorta Wrong (TM), and it's galled me, oh it's galled me, oh it's galled me bad that I could've contributed to that. Ahahaha. I tried to be accurate in those old posts, but as above mentioned, I went waaaaaay beyond things I knew, and a first year PhD student is not anywhere as informed as they'd like you to think. (NO SHADE ON YOU. JUST SHADE ON MYSELF. JUST SHADE ON MYSELF!!!)

I haven't read that post since I wrote it, and I haven't braved myself to, because I don't know if I'll be begrudgingly impressed with myself, or cringing so hard I pop out of my skin. I've suspected it may be the latter, so I just wrote my friendly warning, prayed no one would dig up my other old linguistics posts, and fled into the night. XD

The short and the long of it is that I do not really want that post circulating nor for me to be intellectually connected with it today. I'm not going to delete or private it because I have more control if I still have access to it as OP, but I've sorta disowned it. Ahahaha. I ended up with a career in linguistics and am working in the industry, but I left education after my first year of PhD due to personal and health reasons, and have not been in linguistics academia since. This means I have not been around any sources you could ask for, and you're more likely than me to come across them. Best of luck in your hunt for information. ^^ I hope you run into some fascinating ideas.

I hope these responses come out as humorous rather than disappointing to anyone reading. I am grateful you stopped by! And now I'll have to learn about the Japanese side of ship names. Because I love Japanese and I love fandom shenanigans and that's, when I'm not making drastic claims on tumblr, still very fun stuff!!!

Enjoy your academic rabbit holes, enjoy your grad school years, enjoy linguistics, and enjoy all else you get your paws on!

[kingofthewilderwest]

I saw your post about #tag linguistics and it was fascinating! I was wondering if you knew any online resources/references describing the phonotactics of different languages for a mostly inexpert audience? When I poke around with my meager googling I tend to only turn up English, but I'd be really curious to see the basic rules laid out for comparison among a few different languages!

Oi! Hey there! ^.^ Hope you're doing well and thanks for the kind words!

Unfortunately I've been out of the academic loop since 2016 and I only remember a handful of resources, most of which aren't inexpert audience friendly(?).

The resource that pops to mind, regardless, is WALS Online - The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. It's a cross-linguistic feature comparison tool. It allows you to generate and investigate global maps based upon a single linguistic feature or multiple features simultaneously. I think it's a cool shortcut because it checks plausibility (for people who might not know interrelatability) on whether a language might have a combination of features. It helps visualize patterns across languages, language families, and regions.

For instance, since we're talking phonotactics, here's the map for syllable structure. Problem is WALS pulls no punches on jargon, and most of the sources it cites are, like, grammars you'd only find in print on a campus library.

On WALS, each language has a page where its features are listed. To learn the details of how the feature manifests, you'd have to use other sources. But WALS at least provides the relevant starting point of individual languages to investigate. Wikipedia ain't... always accurate or comprehensive, of course, in something like linguistics... but it's an easy way to start poking once you know the names of languages you want to snoop at.

You could try your luck with the currently-defunct World Phonotactics Website on the Wayback Machine, though that's not one I know much about, and there is the whole, uh, defunct thing going for it.

I'm sorry I can't be more help!

Nice stopping in, and thanks for the kind words of that viral post. Funny (if typically tumblr) story about that. I posted it eight years ago intentionally at an off hour of night in hopes it'd get two notes and fade into obscurity. That's why it has nicher fandom-specific references; it wasn't anticipated to escape containment, just be a convo between two friends. Yeah oops bwahaha. Gosh I was so energized at the time. Anymore I don't think it holds up remotely, factually, from any academic standing, and the inaccuracies make me twitch, but I doubt most people notice, and I hope it gives people the fun and excitement about linguistics I was feeling. ^.^ Linguistics is so cool!! And I s'pose it's been cool that one of my most-spread posts is nerdy. Oh, alas, science side of tumblr, I was amongst y'all once.

[kingofthewilderwest]

“You can tell someone is from X USA state if they say...”

[insert linguistic phenomenon that half of North America uses]

[kingofthewilderwest]

There is something beautiful about teaching teenagers about phonetics

Just, having a room of student go "AAAAA! AAAAA!" is just very cathartic, because sometimes you just gotta yell!!

I remember when I got to phonetics as an adult in college, there were lots of folks nervous about making noises in class. But you gotta sound it out!!! Be bold, have fun, it's the only way you're gonna learn it. Having a room full of students yell woulda been a blast.

I would walk around campus, making noises to myself all day long, as I worked out pronouncing non-English phonemes I wasn't familiar with, trying to get them down.

If I ever returned to academia and finished that damn PhD, I would try to instigate this screech session. ;)

[kingofthewilderwest]

I don’t have any degree in linguistics just an interest in internet language and fandom terminology - I saw your post on the 7 principles of ship names - for the 6th one something jumped out at me- it’s a joke that the ‘top’ of the ship goes first - especially for mlm and wlw ships- y’know how people have ended up making whole character archetypes out of this And that’s it’s own set of problems - i mainly am in anime fandoms and it definitely fits there. I’ve never sent one of these so nerves tm

Oh wow, thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your experience with anime fandoms and ship names! I appreciate it so much and your message was a wonderful addition to my day. I hope you’re fine with me responding to this, even while I see that you’ve been nervous after the fact about sending the message (between this message and the second message you sent me that I won’t publish publicly <3). I know it can be scary to message someone and, as a big introvert myself, sometimes I question my judgment after I’ve sent a message to someone I’ve never talked to before (or even sometimes people I’ve talked to before!). I think you’re awesome for sending your thoughts and think it’s cool. :) <3 <3

I am not in many anime fandoms so it was cool to hear more information about ship names for fandoms I have less contact with. You might not have a degree in linguistics, but no one needs a degree to have valid, interesting experience and knowledge I don’t--valuable things to share. <3 I hadn’t heard that top joke in my social circles before and I was wildly excited to hear it from you. It was cool to see whether or not my post about ship names could be applied to those other fandom areas I’m less familiar with, too. Wow!! Thank you!!! Linguistically, I think it’s cool and fascinating that my observations about other fandom circles ended up meshing with your experiences, too.

You do have a point, too, in that sometimes fandom archetypes or linguistic structures underlie problem-some things. “And that’s it’s own set of problems.” Yeah. Good call. My post focused on objective observations of what exists in language rather than discussing any moral implications or odd characterization choices. But it’s definitely true that language and values can get intertwined, whether for good or ill!

Thanks so much again for sending these observations! I always love learning. Seriously, you rock. I realize you’ve had some anxiety sending this, but I hope with this response, you can feel better and have a wonderful day, too, friend!

[kingofthewilderwest]

What is a white language?

The individual in this post is talking about languages spoken extensively by / closely associated with white people. So, like, it’s languages like English, French, German...

It’s a call-out post to treating the languages of POC / people who aren’t part of Western culture as more “exotic.”

Languages are a form of communication by everyday human beings. Treating someone’s language as this weird “exotic” thing is not good conduct and can hurt the speakers of those languages. It others people, it treats them and their culture as spectacles, it acts as though those languages are weird, it treats languages spoken by white people as default, etc.

[kingofthewilderwest]

1. You have to tell the world now, my friend >:) but also: 7, opinion on a controversial linguistics issue, and 15.

unusual asks

1. who’s your celebrity crush?

For the love of... [laughter] Of course. Of course. I KNEW that the second *YOU SPECIFICALLY* saw this ask set, you would send me this prompt.

Celebrity crush? Earl Scruggs! One can do worse than the best banjo picker in the history of recorded music, right? ;) Especially when he was a freaktastically wonderful human, too.

We’ll just ignore that he was born around the same time as my great-grandfather.

7. Opinion on a controversial linguistics issue.

Uff-dah. XD Which issue do I pick? Ummm.... the over-reliance on Chomskyan linguistics in some academic circles is to the huge detriment of linguistic study. Noam Chomsky with his position on things like universal grammar is not the best approach. His ideas (that we all are hard-wired with an internalized innate grammar) have not stood the test of scientific research and is too extreme on one end for nature vs nurture factors. For the sake of not turning this post into a long discussion (I don’t want to turn this into a discussion at all bwahahahahaha), I’ll leave it at that! XD

15. what’s a question you constantly get asked?

On tumblr? “Do you think rtte is canon?” Answer: Yes. Feel free to check out my FAQ tag and see my consistent rants about how canon =/= consistency. XD It’s like. The number one hill I will die on on tumblr: the only distinction that matters in material being accepted by someone in the fanbase is whether or not something is published from an official source. Everything else is an obnoxious debate missing the point of why and how consumer fiction is made in the first place. I want to stuff that discussion in a rocket and launch it to a distant, uninhabited planet to be forgotten about forever. XD Haha, with all love guys, I’m so sick of that discussion. <3 <3 <3 It’s become a pet peeve.

Irl? The usual linguist’s nemesis: “How many languages do you speak?” Answer: I know my field of research isn’t as well-understood by the public, so let me explain! Linguistics is the scientific study of languages. It is not the pursuit of speaking as many languages as we can. Just as you wouldn’t ask a heart doctor how many hearts they have, asking a linguist how many languages they have is technically irrelevant to the heart of what we do.

That said, because linguists like languages (there’s a reason we study ’em!), we often do choose to learn how to speak several languages. And it’s very valuable to know several languages to better study languages.

I personally am only fluent in English. But I am borderline conversational in Spanish (great reading/writing, shitty speaking/listening). Also, I have learned bits of Khmer and Koine Greek, and am teaching myself Japanese.

[kingofthewilderwest]

Okay. Please. For once. Could a fictional character who's a "linguist" not be written as just some fucking polyglot translator? I know fiction isn't going to get everything right and I don't expect it to, but you don't even have Basic Fundamental Linguist Fact #1 Right. A linguist *might* know several languages because they like languages, but that is NOT at ALLLLL what makes anyone, academically, a linguist. A kidney doctor is not someone who has twelve kidneys. An academic linguist is not someone who speaks twelve languages. Aughhh.