Today's Document
Discoholic 🪩
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Andulka
Janaina Medeiros
cherry valley forever
Three Goblin Art
taylor price
Peter Solarz
Cosimo Galluzzi
roma★
if i look back, i am lost
tumblr dot com
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AnasAbdin
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sheepfilms
will byers stan first human second
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@unclepolyglot
Six year old, bouncing up and down with glee as desserts are unpacked: "I'm so appointed!"
Took me a moment to realize she had logically assumed "appointed" must be the opposite of "disappointed" and used it as a synonym for "excited."
official linguistics post
I actually really like the thing when you're starting to get the hang of a new language, enough to understand and say simple sentences but you gotta get creative to get more complex thoughts across, like a puzzle. I remember a time in the restortation school when a classmate who wasn't natively finnish and did her best anyway dropped something and sighed, telling me "every day is monday this week. I have had four mondays this week." And I understood.
I don't think I speak much of spanish anymore, but in the nursing school training period I did there, I did manage to get by with making weird Tarzan sentences. I got a nosebleed at some point and startled another nurse. Not knowing the words "humidity" or "stress", I managed to string together: "This is ok. It is hot, it is cold, I have a bad day, I am sad, I have blood. This is normal for me." And she understood.
And sometimes you just say things weird, but it's better than not saying it. One time, I was stuck in a narrow hallway behind someone walking really slowly with a walker, and he apologised for being in the way. I was not in any hurry, but didn't know the spanish word for "hurry", but I did know enough words to try to circumvent it by borrowing the english "I have all the time in the world."
The man burst into one of those cackling old man laughters that they do when something in this world still manages to surprise them. He had to be somewhere between 70 and a 100 years old, and I guess if there was one thing he wasn't expecting to hear today, it would be a random blond vaguely baltic-looking fuck casually announce that he is the sole owner and keeper of the very concept of time.
I’ve mostly learned Chinese in school, so I know a lot of academic vocabulary while having the language skills of a toddler in some basic areas. Once, I forgot the word for sad, which is a really dumb thing to forget. A bunch of the ways to say sad in Chinese are literally just “not happy”, but I also momentarily forgot how to say happy. So instead I said “there is an economic downturn inside my brain”.
When my wife and I were in Japan we went to an izakaya on our first full night in the country, and when it was time to pay we weren't sure where to do it, at the table or at the counter up front? Our waitress didn't speak much English, so I threw myself on that conversational grenade with, "Okane ga koko desu ka? Okane ga asoko desu ka?" Literally translated that's, "Money is/goes/should be here? Money is/goes/should be over there?"
She very gratefully confirmed that "Money goes over there," and we paid and left.
This is exactly what I was taught to do when I took Spanish (and I took a decades' worth, and my main teacher was amazing). He always tried to get us to tell him what we wanted or needed or was trying to say in the best way we knew how, because that is how people actually use language. Rather than have it be a barrier, he taught us above all to keep communicating. He never really told us why, or how valuable a skill it would be, he would just pretend he couldn't understand us anyway when we asked for a word we didn't know, and basically forced us to do exactly that. So it became completely normal to just...do that when we didn't know something.
Later, when I was in college and/or in the real world and I didn't know a word or couldn't remember or didn't have the words for a concept, I would I automatically do what I always did, what had become normalised: I would talk around it, which is what my teacher always called it. I even had one of my professors compliment me on getting what I needed that way, and she said that she'd never had another student do that and how helpful it was for her to be able to help me. I know that when I encountered others in my job with whom I had to speak in Spanish, and I couldn't communicate with them in the "proper" way, I could still get what I needed, or they needed, and there was always a sense of delight that even though my grammar was far from perfect, and I didn't always use the right words, that we all accomplished what we were there for. Most people don't care if you get it "right." They just want to be able to communicate effectively. (Can't speak for the French, though. 😉)
I also highly recommend doing this in your native language if you forget a word or blank on something. When I have conversations with people and they tell me they're blanking or can't think of something, I always, always ask them to describe it. Most people don't because they think it's weird and so either they don't get their point across or the conversation simply stops. But if they were more willing to keep communicating, we might get there. So I'm subtly trying to train everyone around me to do the same thing.
it's so much less frustrating and more funny when you can forget the word for windows and just say 'the doors for light to come in the wall' and if you forget the word for noodles you say 'you know the bread worms? from soup?' and if you forget the word for tiger you say 'those big assholes in the jungle, with stripes, they're orange.'
genuinely people love it when you do this. it makes the rest of the conversation so much more fun.
official linguistics post
Important information for writers who aren’t British but like to try to sound British in their British-y fanfiction
*cup of tea silently placed in front of person* You’re doing emotions and I don’t know how else to cope.
(my last job, we found out a co-worker had been found dead, and my super manly, gruff officemate was very obviously devastated; they’d been good friends, and started crying. I do not deal with emotions unless I can hug people, which, not appropriate. So tea was made, placed in front of him, and the office vacated.)
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Bonus 96: What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking
Sometimes, a phrase seems to leap off the page and lodge into your mind, crisp and shining like a precious jewel. Other times, you're reading something and it just won't stick, your eyes wandering away no matter how hard you try.
In this bonus episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, who's a psycholinguist based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and the author of two general-audience linguistics books, Memory Speaks and Linguaphile. We talk about moving from the style of scientific writing to literary writing by writing a lot of unpublished poetry to develop her aesthetic sense, how studying linguistics for a writer is like studying anatomy for a sculptor or colour theory for a painter, and how you could set up an eyetracking study to help writers figure out which sentences make their readers slow down. We also do a small linguistic experiment on air using the following words, which you can play along with: luggage, liminal, withstand, tremulous, pulchritude, zoo.
Listen to this episode about what psycholinguistics can tell us about creative writing, with Julie Sedivy, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.
I have a hypothesis about the "burger"-"chicken sandwich" discourse. I want to see something.
People NOT from the US: would you refer to any of these with the word "sandwich" in casual conversation?
Non-US: Yes
Non-US: No
I am American and I like buttons 🦅 🗽
Interesting, I want more data points.
People NOT from the US: would you refer to this food with the word "sandwich" in casual conversation?
Non-US: Yes
Non-US: No
USA! USA! USA! 🦅🎆
People NOT from the US: would you refer to this food with the word "sandwich" in casual conversation?
Non-US: Yes
Non-US: No
Still American, still like buttons
People NOT from the US: would you refer to this food with the word "sandwich" in casual conversation?
Non-US: Yes
Non-US: No
[Eagle screeching, gunshots] 🦅🔫
People NOT from the US: would you refer to this food with the word "sandwich" in casual conversation?
Non-US: Yes
Non-US: No
American Button
People NOT from the US: would you refer to this food with the word "sandwich" in casual conversation?
Non-US: Yes
Non-US: No
Americans it is vitally important that you do not mess with the data
People NOT from the US: would you refer to this food with the word "sandwich" in casual conversation?
Non-US: Yes
Non-US: No
Will you be my American boy (gender neutral)?
People NOT from the US: would you refer to this food with the word "sandwich" in casual conversation?
Non-US: Yes
Non-US: No
Americans I swear this is the last one, just press this button
i wanted to say that when I think of a "chicken burger" I think of a grilled chicken patty, not crispy chicken
I have become a regular at the local cafe. I sit at the lunch counter with my laptop to write. The workers keep me updated on all the tea.
Barista: Oh god here he comes.
Me: who?
Barista: White Ferrari guy. Hes banned from the other cafe. All he ever does is tell the same stories about the pyramids. Or ghosts. Or his car. Don't make eye contact with him. If he talks to you he won't leave you alone- Hi hello welcome!
I almost immediately accidentally made eye contact with him. He practically beelined to the chair next to me, and stares at my notebook. The vibe is immediately strange. I understand why he was banned from the other cafe.
White Ferrari Guy: What're you writing?
Me: (fuck it) I'm developing a script!
WFG: A what?
Me: A script. I'm developing an alternate script for the international phonetic alphabet. My goal is to make it one grapheme represent a single syllable, rather than one grapheme per phoneme. I'm happy with the consonants, but the vowels still need work. I'm experimenting with kerning based on Georgian script-
I look up, he is staring past me completely dead-eyed. He could not be less interested in what I'm saying. He leaves about a minute later.
[sheathes this notebook like a katana] your autism is weak, old man.
WHOA
this is one of the reasons it’s so hard to translate on the fly 😭 monoglots just don’t understand and think you’re bad at the source language 😟
it's time to create a fake distinction between squashed and squished where one of them is along a horizontal plane and one of them is along a vertical one and seeing how far i can take it
squished is the vertical one. and a helpful mnemonic is that i is a very narrow letter. because it got squished
official linguistics post
OP parcticing English (Cr 阿琛英文剧场)
The way he says "ohhh" is just sending me.
OMFG I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING
"THEY CAN FLY?!?"
On language, belonging, and embracing the different versions of ourselves.
In today’s new Longreads essay, Montserrat Andrée Carty writes about family and identity, growing up around different languages and cultures, and eventually embracing (and loving) her name over time.
We seek to become the truest version of ourselves, but what if there isn’t one true version, but multiple? Like father, like daughter, there are two versions of me.
At 5, I spoke all these languages fluently. Today, I only speak two of them, but understand all of them in some way, as they still live inside me.
Read her beautiful personal essay on Longreads.
@chatwiththeclouds I thought of you.
Thank you so much for sharing, that was a beautiful essay.
This is delightful! I checked the OED, and it appears that this is not the correct etymology of grapple; the OED doesn't support this etymology of sniffle but some other dictionaries do; and quite a few of these words are only tentatively attributed to this suffix, with etymologies along the lines of "origin unknown, but perhaps...".
But in any event, this is definitely a real suffix, and involved in the etymology of at least some of those words! And I'm sure Tumblr will be delighted to know about another word, not listed above, that also contains the same suffix: twinkle.
is it pronounced [ʕ]if or [ɣ]if
[ʛ]if
[ɟʝ]if
Kiki or Bouba
Ladybug: Kiki, Chat Noir: Bouba
Ladybug: Bouba, Chat Noir: Kiki
Kiki or Bouba
Marinette: Kiki, Adrien: Bouba
Marinette: Bouba, Adrien: Kiki
Kiki or Bouba
Marinette: Kiki, Ladybug: Bouba
Marinette: Bouba, Ladybug: Kiki
Kiki or Bouba
Adrien: Kiki, Chat Noir: Bouba
Adrien: Bouba, Chat Noir: Kiki
Kiki or Bouba
Ladybug: Kiki, Adrien: Bouba
Ladybug: Bouba, Adrien: Kiki
Kiki or Bouba
Marinette: Kiki, Chat Noir: Bouba
Marinette: Bouba, Chat Noir: Kiki
et tu, boopte?
the name "theresa" is so funny like. theres a what
de naam 'eris' is zo grappig. er is wat?
Navnet "erik" er så spøgst. Han er ik hvad?
Originally posted here on reddit.
"Hello everyone, I am a PhD student at the University of Georgia studying sign second language acquisition. I am looking for hearing ASL learners to take part in an exploratory study. If you have the time to help out a poor grad student I would greatly appreciate it!"
I'm not the OP but she gave me permission to signal boost this here. Please participate if you can!
