Linguistics - Blog Posts
Quick note on Charles's speech for fic writers or anyone interested, really.
Charles uses tag questions, where he ends a sentence with a question, doesn't he? I see a lot of "innit" thrown at the end of sentences, which is right, sometimes.
There is unfortunately grammar. First off, if the main verb is negative, the tag will be positive, and vice versa.
When the main verbs in the sentence is a form of "be" or a modal verb (must, could, would, have, will, can, do etc), he's going to repeat that same form at the end of the sentence. An exception to this is a positive main verb of "I am" in which case the tag will be "aren't I?"
"[You're] Not going back to hell, are you?"
"I wouldn't wanna be dead with anyone else, would I?"
"No, we're not going anywhere, are we?"
"Well, I can't see where you're pointing to, can I?"
"We don't want a repeat of the infamous puppy debacle of '94, do we?"
He uses "innit" a lot less than people think, I think. It took me a while to find examples of him saying this, I ended up having to search a transcript. It follows the same rules as above, except the subject is always a thing, or the pronoun "it," and the main sentence is positive, so that the tag can be the negative "innit" (isn't it). *Edit* "innit" is not used as a question! It's mainly used to reinforce a talking point! (Thank you @elizabear). While the other tags are like rhetorical questions, this one is flat tonally and can end with a period, too.
"Boxing's a gentleman's sport, innit?"
"Magical void, innit?"
"That's the injustice we fight, innit?"
When the verb is not one of those above" he uses a form of "do."
"Well, that sounds a lot like you, doesn't it?"
"Wanna keep things professional, don't I?"
Charles also ends a lot of sentences with just the word "yeah."
"Psychic thing makes case work go a lot faster, yeah?"
I am usamerican, but I have a masters in Linguistics. People who actually use tag questions, though, please add on or correct me!
why are british people always so mad when people make jokes about their accents. sorry you say yewchube. it’s funny though innit
A little something for Linguistics Tumblr.
So the Crunchyroll newsroom isn't a "room" so much as a Slack channel. We have news writers all over the US, in Australia, and in Japan. This means we have something akin to 'round-the-clock coverage, but it also means that our schedules respective to each other are skewed. For example, when the East Coast contingent is starting their day, the Japan contingent is shutting down for the evening.
Because of that, we started experimenting with greetings that could apply when Party A was coming in for the morning and Party B was leaving for the night. One person came up with "konbarning": a combination of "good morning" and "konban wa" ("good evening" in Japanese). It stuck.
Over the following months, "konbarning" got shortened to "barning" and other permutations. Now, a year or some later, this is how we announce our arrival:
I've had a dumb thought, perhaps the dumbest yet: the night is dark, and when we think of dark (or at least when I do) we think of the color black, soo that leaves me wondering if there are any examples in languages where "black" and "night" have a similar origin or shared ancestry
if teenagers are ever being mean to you just pull out any miscellaneous item you have on you at the moment and make up some bullshit term to scare them
idk I just love how we Young People Today use ~improper~ punctuation/grammar in actually really defined ways to express tone without having to explicitly state tone like that’s just really fucking cool, like
no = “No,” she said.
no. = "No,” she said sharply.
No = “No,” she stated firmly.
No. = “No,” she snapped.
NO = “No!” she shouted.
noooooo = “No,” she moaned.
no~ = “No,” she said with a drawn-out sing-song.
~no~ = “No,” she drawled sarcastically.
NOOOOO = “No!” she screamed dramatically.
no?! = “No,” she said incredulously.
English is a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.
i say we start a meme where we take jokes that don’t work in other languages and translate them without explanation maybe only tagging with the original language and confuse the heck out of everyone on tumblr who’s not in on the meme like
in italian we say “prince light blue” (prince azzurro) instead of “prince charming” and i just saw a joke that in english would be “if you can’t find your prince charming, the solution is to take a random dude from the street and paint him”
People who use the word “literally“ for something that can’t be literal is the reason I want man kind to be extinct.
english: coconut oil
french: :)
english: oh boy
french: oil of the nut of the coco
"Linda Yuen Lambrecht stands in front of a webcam, with her head to her hips -- her signing space -- perfectly centered in the frame; a white plumeria fastened above her left ear. On screen, three women look back at her.
"No American Sign Language [ASL]," Lambrecht reminds them with her hands, as the virtual class begins. "This is Hawaii Sign Language [HSL]."
More than 100 students have received the same reminder from Lambrecht. Since 2018, she's offered HSL classes to the public; first in-person and, since the Covid-19 pandemic began, on Zoom.
Lambrecht isn't just teaching. She's fighting erasure, globalization and the cruelty of time to keep an endangered sign language -- and with it, generations of history, heritage and wisdom -- alive.
But experts estimate that fluent HSL users number in the single digits. Time is running out."
Hello! Do you have any favorite fiction works that intentionally address/explore linguistics? (For example, the Arrival movie, or Out of the silent planet)
hmm i don't think i know a ton, but babel is an auto-rec for me (translation magic! also breaks your heart!) and i really enjoyed the original ted chiang story that arrival is based on, "story of your life." ann leckie's imperial radch series does fun things with pronouns too, although linguistics is much less central.
always happy to get recs!
Lingthusiasm 2022 Survey Results
In late 2022, we ran our first Lingthusiasm audience survey! We tried out some linguistic experiments, and now we have the results. To learn more, and stay in the loop for potential future surveys (we have ethics approval for 3 years!), join us on Patreon.
Fake-tanuki soup or Fake tanuki-soup?
連濁（れんだく; en: rendaku）is a phonological rule in japanese that makes the first voiceless consonant of a word change into a voiced consonant when used in a compound word. For example, おり ＋ かみ → おりがみ (ori + kami → origami) ("fold" + "paper" → "paperfolding") - the /k/ sound in かみ becomes a /g/ sound (which is the voiced version of a /k/ sound) by adding a voicing mark -> が.
What’s interesting about 連濁 is that native speakers can use it subconsciously as a sort of “order of operations” system for unfamiliar words, like PEMDAS or BIDMAS in maths. A classic example of this is the にせたぬきじる problem[1]. Native speakers can immediately and with confidence tell the difference in meaning between two compound words they have never heard before, despite the only difference being the voicing of a single consonant. Take the three words 偽 (にせ, meaning “fake” or “imitation”), たぬき (tanuki, the Japanese racoon dog), and 汁 (しる, meaning “soup” or “broth”). They can be combined into the following compound words: にせたぬきじる and にせだぬきじる (note the voicing mark, or dakuten, on the latter). Keep in mind, these two words do not exist in ordinary japanese - they’ve been created as part of a linguistics experiment.
You might think the meaning would be ambiguous in those compound words: is it (imitation tanuki)+soup or imitation+(tanuki soup)? Let’s imagine we’re referring to the former. First, we combine にせ＋たぬき. There’s a rule that rendaku can’t occur if there’s already a voicing mark in the second component of the compound, but we’re safe here - たぬき has no voicing mark. Therefore, it becomes にせだぬき. Then, we combine にせだぬき＋しる. Again, しる has no voicing mark in it, so we’re safe to add it in, and we get にせだぬきじる.
Conversely, let’s say we were referring to fake “tanuki-soup”. First we combine たぬき＋しる. This combines safely to たぬきじる. Then we combine にせ＋たぬきじる. But wait, the second component does already have a voicing mark, on じ! So we can’t add one to た. Therefore we end up with にせたぬきじる.
That’s a lot of thinking and linguistic hoops to jump through to make up 2 words, but here’s the thing: Japanese native speakers who have never heard these words before can instinctively deduce the difference in meaning with startling accuracy. They correctly determine the meaning of にせだぬきじる as “a broth made from imitation tanuki” and にせたぬきじる as “a fake version of a dish called ‘tanuki soup’”. Even more surprising is the research findings of Shigeto Kawahara, which show that children as young as 9 years old can consistently deduce the difference as well[2]. I think this shows how incredibly powerful the subconscious mind is at learning linguistic rules, and how bad the conscious mind is at learning them!
you know how mathematicians have the journal of recreational mathematics, right? where they publish stuff like, ‘oh i found this cool property of this one seemingly boring number’, or, ‘this is literally nonsense but it sounds ~scientific~’ and it’s all great fun to read?
well
behold, the journal of recreational linguistics
with such delightful papers as ‘tennis puns’, ‘animals in different languages’, and ‘gifts from a homonymous benefactor’
excuse me while i go read all 50 volumes in one sitting
NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh
They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.
So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:
“I” → “thou”
“Me” → “thee”
“My” → “thy”
“Mine” → “thine”
Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.
We could first imagine it in the first person-
“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.
And then replace it-
“Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”
NEXT ONE
"Speak of the wolf and the wolf is (coming) into the house" (Про вовка промовка а вовк і в хату) This is literally the "Speak of the devil" but with with a wolf. People don`t even use the second part about the house. They just say: "Speak of the wolf". Perhaps comes from long gone supestitions of not mentioning dangerous animals as if to not "manifest" them coming to you. Its literally the reason the original word for Bear is lost. People genuinely were afraid to call the dangerous beast by it`s name, replacing it will nicknames.
There is a saying in Ukrainian: "Tell an idiot to pray and he`s gonna smash his head" (Скажи дурню молитися і він голову розіб'є). Sometimes you can just say the firs half since everyone already know the second one. It comes. Context is It comes from the tradition of bowing/kneeling during prayer. And it can have two meanings:
No matter how easy, simple or straightforward the task is, a stupid person will still find a way to screw it up...somehow. Kinda like the phraze "You had ONE job, dude!"
No matter how healthy, constructive, well-intentioned, moral, wize, demure or logical the idea/cause/midset, an idiot will still find a way to either: a) completely misunderstand/distort it/miss the entire point....and screw it up, or b) go copletely overboard with no measure....and screw it up
This isn`t even related to anything specific in my life or on the internet, i just REALLY REALLY wanted to share some cool sayings/idioms from my language. Maybe language and folklore nerds will like it. Maybe writers and worldbuilders will get some cool inspiration for the way characters speak. Maybe i will just spread the good will of funny shit in my language and culture. I will post some more of these