idiotlect

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This is such a cool idea. What other info could it be? Careers, hobbies, economic status, lifelong ambitions? Orientation, single/taken/etc status? Insect-style role in the hive (worker/drone etc)?

If human languages are based on primitive monkey-brain ideas of whether or not the person we’re talking about is a potential mate, then what different considerations might an alien race make?

Maybe they have two drastically different body types that need to pair off to defend from predators. Maybe their civilization depends on cultivating plants that grow best when sung to, and a range of different vocal tones per household is best. Maybe some are nocturnal and some are diurnal.

What else??

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I love Twitter bc everyone is dumb

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linguistics major is like the math major of being an english major. but it’s like the classics major of being a stem major

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i think you should be allowed to cite scholars who are bad people but only if you put the word (oof) or (yikes) after their name

like Parker (yikes, 1989) or Obbink (big oof, 2007)

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I got sent a review copy of The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book by Alex Bellos, so here are a few sneak peek images from the inside. 

It’s thicker than I was expecting (400 pages, including over 100 puzzles from the linguistics olympiads, with the creators and languages indexed, plus an additional few pages of context and solutions for each puzzle), so I haven’t read the whole thing yet but I think it’ll make a great “sudoku for language lovers” gift. 

So far it’s only being published in the UK, so if you want it and you live somewhere else, I’d suggest ordering it from UK book-buying websites. 

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Watching the world of Very Professional Paleontologists decend into meme communication because the biggest paleo conference of the year accidentally censored the words “Hell” and “Bone” has been a highlight of my day.

All hail Heck Creek and BOOOOONE.

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Heartbroken.

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 i recommend learning other alphabets if for no other reason than it’s very fun to see people replace latin alphabet letters with complete nonsense for Aesthetic

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‘pop’ is pretty heinous but like, I’ll accept it, yknow? it’s just the other half of ‘soda-pop,’ like how ‘cab’ and ‘taxi’ are the two halves of ‘taxicab.’ it’s fine. it’s chill.

but coke? that’s a fucking brand name! of a specific drink with a specific flavor! that shits RUDE, it’s CONFUSING, it’s DOWNRIGHT NONSENSICAL! fuckin misusing the art of language to confound your fellow man! the gall! learn some fucking respect

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Chrome extensions for language learning

TransOver: translates any word you find on a website. Provides multiple definitions for a single word, and has a lot of useful settings, such as font size, the option to chose which websites you don’t want it to translate on, or which websites you want it to exclusively translate on. 

Readlang: translates any word you find on a website. Allows you to save words into a list that you can learn from later, along with the option to memorize them through pre-made flashcards. This extension only works if the website you’re visiting is of your target language. 

Google Translate: similar to both extensions listed above, has less features, but more languages.

Language Learning With YouTube: this is an extension for learning a language while watching YouTube videos that already have subtitles or auto-captions. Its features include a pop-up dictionary, suggestions for the most important words to learn, and the option to have two subtitles playing at the same time.

Language Learning With Netflix: this extension is for learning a language while watching Netflix. It has the same features as Language Learning With YouTube; a pop-up dictionary, suggestions for the most important words to learn, and the option to have two subtitles playing at the same time.

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I’m posting this here because I’m honestly so sick and tired of this kind of thing. Especially in regards to endangered languages

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Hi there, I've been following your blog for a while now and since I have to write a 15 page research paper - and was able to brow beat my teacher into a linguistic topic - I was wondering if you could recommend any (scientific) books on to evolution of language, etymology or linguistics in general. The specific topic is how technology changes our language - googeln, cookies and co. Thank you!

Hi, a classic on the topic is AITCHISON: Language Change, first published in the 1990s, My current favourite is TRUDGILL: Millennia of language change, published earlier this year. Also worth reading: CRYSTAL: Language and the Internet; MCCULLOUGH (@allthingslinguistic) Because Internet; MAURAIS/MORRIS: Languages in a globalizing world. 

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Putting the full text of the NYT article that the first tweet was responding to underneath the cut.

Link to the original tweet: https://twitter.com/speechleyish/status/1275990670663012352

Link to a couple of more serious threads about exactly why the biennial “Durian: the Freakshow Fruit” articles are so annoying:

https://twitter.com/amirulruslan/status/1276088736296472577

https://twitter.com/amirulruslan/status/1276313332492845056

Keep reading

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“Let’s pretend, for a moment, that you are a 22-year-old college student in Kampala, Uganda. You’re sitting in class and discreetly scrolling through Facebook on your phone. You see that there has been another mass shooting in America, this time in a place called San Bernardino. You’ve never heard of it. You’ve never been to America. But you’ve certainly heard a lot about gun violence in the U.S. It seems like a new mass shooting happens every week. You wonder if you could go there and get stricter gun legislation passed. You’d be a hero to the American people, a problem-solver, a lifesaver. How hard could it be? Maybe there’s a fellowship for high-minded people like you to go to America after college and train as social entrepreneurs. You could start the nonprofit organization that ends mass shootings, maybe even win a humanitarian award by the time you are 30. Sound hopelessly naïve? Maybe even a little deluded? It is. And yet, it’s not much different from how too many Americans think about social change in the “Global South.” If you asked a 22-year-old American about gun control in this country, she would probably tell you that it’s a lot more complicated than taking some workshops on social entrepreneurship and starting a non-profit. She might tell her counterpart from Kampala about the intractable nature of our legislative branch, the long history of gun culture in this country and its passionate defenders, the complexity of mental illness and its treatment. She would perhaps mention the added complication of agitating for change as an outsider. But if you ask that same 22-year-old American about some of the most pressing problems in a place like Uganda — rural hunger or girl’s secondary education or homophobia — she might see them as solvable. Maybe even easily solvable. I’ve begun to think about this trend as the reductive seduction of other people’s problems. It’s not malicious. In many ways, it’s psychologically defensible; we don’t know what we don’t know. If you’re young, privileged, and interested in creating a life of meaning, of course you’d be attracted to solving problems that seem urgent and readily solvable. Of course you’d want to apply for prestigious fellowships that mark you as an ambitious altruist among your peers. Of course you’d want to fly on planes to exotic locations with, importantly, exotic problems. There is a whole “industry” set up to nurture these desires and delusions — most notably, the 1.5 million nonprofit organizations registered in the U.S., many of them focused on helping people abroad. In other words, the young American ego doesn’t appear in a vacuum. Its hubris is encouraged through job and internship opportunities, conferences galore, and cultural propaganda — encompassed so fully in the patronizing, dangerously simple phrase “save the world.””

— “The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems” by Courtney Martin

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the myth of persephone is about the trauma of the separation of mothers and daughters by marriage and this is the hill i will die on

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Just finished a book by philosopher Michèle Le Dœuff in which she dissects at one point a contradiction that often raises its head when people demand social change: the issue is dismissed as simultaneously too big and consequential to allow change, and too small and inconsequential to deserve change. I’m sure modern examples can be found but the one she gives is when 1970s French feminists wanted to have the national motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité changed to Liberté, Égalité, Solidarité so as not to have the word “brotherhood” in there. They were told changing the national motto is impossible due to its prominence and historical weight, but also that this is a trivial concern and don’t feminists have more important fights than nitpicking over a word? Le Dœuff’s rebuttal is “Either this matter is big and significant, and therefore it’s imperative to change it to reflect more egalitarian values, or it’s small and insignificant, and therefore it costs nothing to change it to reflect more egalitarian values.”

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