#grammar english

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[stingrayextraordinaire]

Another year, another group of my delightful ninth graders trying to spell the word "tragedy" for their Romeo and Juliet assignment.

Last year's collection

[littlemizzlinguistics]

Studying linguistics is actually so wonderful because when you explain youth slang to older professors, instead of complaining about how "your generation can't speak right/ you're butchering the language" they light up and go “really? That’s so wonderful! What an innovative construction! Isn't language wonderful?"

[el-blog-pepe]

The Gerund

A gerund is a verb form that ends in “-ing” and functions as a noun in a sentence. It’s an essential aspect of English grammar, allowing verbs to play the role of subjects, objects, or complement to other words in sentences. Here are some key points about gerunds with examples to help illustrate their use: 1. As a Subject of a Sentence Gerunds can act as the subject of a sentence, where they…

[prokopetz]

The reason the English language's rules for constructing compound words don't seem to make sense to speakers of more reasonable languages is because, in this respect, English obeys Roger Rabbit logic: in, for example, German, you can construct extemporaneous compound words whenever you like, but in English, you can only do so when it's funny.

[cashthecomposer]

Tell me where you're from in the tags, if you want.

Reblog for sample size!

[ew-selfish-art]

DpxDc AU: Justice League requires all of its youngest members to list at least one adult emergency contact in case something happens out in the field- And Lancer did tell Danny to put his number down if he needed help!

Lancer wanted to call CPS, wanted to call them for years, but something was wrong with his beloved town and the government agents that came were always… ill mannered. To say the least. So with the young Mr.Fenton appearing wounded in his class on multiple occasions, sleeping through lectures even more often, Lancer felt himself gradually accept that no other adult was going to step up to protect this child.

He figures out his Identity as Phantom and it makes his rage boil hotter than Dante’s sixth layer of hell. Danny refuses to abandon his parents (who continue to hunt him unknowingly), and he refuses to let any of his ghostly responsibilities fall wayside (this CW fellow is a real piece of work!).

But for all the things he expected when he told Danny that he could be trusted and could help- Ms. Manson and Mr.Foley coming to him for help, patching wounds, offering snacks and covering for Danny when attacks occurred in class- he hadn’t expected the Justice League to be knocking on his door.

Lancer blinked at the appearance of Batman in his classroom after the final bell, but then his stomach dropped.

TELLTALE HEART THATS THE BATMAN!!

“Phantom listed you as his emergency contact. Have you had any recent communication with him?” The deep, gravel voice startled Lancer.

Lancer checks his phone, Danny had skipped class today; and while Lancer was working with Danny to get him after school lessons and tutoring for all of the hours he missed, it was uncommon for him not to respond at Lancer’s text asking for a confirmation of his safety.

“Not in 24 hours, but I can message him again.” Lancer is shaking as he types on his phone to team phantom-Who wouldn’t be nervous at both the implications of Danny’s safety and the Batman??

Superman flies into the room from the open doorway, “No luck, without a heartbeat I can’t find him. Where ever they have him it’s lead lined or he’s keeping himself invisible.”

SCARLET LETTER ITS SUPERMAN!?!

Danny doesn’t reply to Lancer, and neither do Danny’s friends.

“He has two team members with whom he is inseparable, if none of them are responding then all three have been accosted. I’m coming with you until we find them.” Lancer declares and while he’s sure that Batman is unimpressed, Superman gives him a sad smile and nods.

Thus Lancer joins the Justice League for a day, Helps to save Team Phantom and Informs the takedown of an illegal government agency.

Batman also slides him some adoption papers and a card for a lawyer if Lancer decides to formally adopt Danny. Lancer also wins a Wayne Excellence Award for Teaching that year but he’s pretty sure the money is unrelated to Danny’s alter ego- after all, Lancer is a fantastic teacher.

[inkiedraws]

They make me wanna rip apart cardboard with my bare teeth.

[linku0501]

Relativity falls fiddstan?? If it tickles your fancy ofc

Yes.

[cubbihue]

Me da ganas de escribir un fanfic sobre tu AU de Fairy Timmy ¿crees que me podrías esplicar más sobre el proceso de adopción de hará y ahijado y la creación de los dobles que remplazan a esos ahijados? ¿quien fue el ultimó ahijado antes de Timmy en ser adoptado por sus padrinos mágicos?

Ask Translation: It makes me want to write a fanfic about your AU of Fairy Timmy. Do you think you could explain to me more about the process of adopting fairies and godson and the creation of the doubles that replace those godchildren? Who was the last godson before Timmy to be adopted by her magical godparents?

Of course! On top of the DMV and Fair Foods, the Godchild has to go through special training with Jorgen before adoption. Jorgen has the final say on adopted Godchildren.

Changelings are made through the hard work of the Godchild. It can't be outsourced to someone else. The Godchild compacts their Unwishes, cooks it, then carves out their own replica. The more wishes, the better the mold.

It's been so long since the last godchild, that the records are lost.

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

Translation below ! Traducción a continuación

Lo siento, mi español es como mas o menos. me puedo leer pero mi traduccion y mi forma de escribir es muy malo :(

Con el DMV y comida de hadas*, el ahijado debe pasar por un entrenamiento especial con Jorgen antes de la adopción. jorgen tiene la ultima palabra sobre los ahijados adoptados.

Los dobles se crean con al trabajo duro del ahijado.No se puede delegar en otra persona. El Ahijado compacta sus Deseos, cocina y luego crea un propia réplica. Más deseos, mejor es el molde.

Ha pasado tanto tiempo desde el último ahijado, que los registros se han perdido.

*no sabo la palabra correcta para "Fairy", pero mi padres se dicen que es "hadas"

[stingrayextraordinaire]

My students’ adventures in trying to spell “tragedy” for their Romeo and Juliet quiz.

[yudol-skorbi]

FINAL PART 3 OF EDDIE'S UNFORTUNATE CRUSH IS HERE there will be a couple of bonuses in the future by the way

part 1 part 2

[incognitopolls]

Vote before looking in the comments as I'm sure people will have things to say that could influence your vote.

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[hungwy]

Found another kind of guy on reddit

[synticity]

Can you please, pretty-please do a "3 linguistics papers to read" about neopronouns? I'd love to get some academic perspectives on them! :)

Ooh, yes, I can do this!

Three papers to read about neopronouns

The first one I'm linking is by Em Miltersen from 2016, which I am highlighting because the data comes specifically from tumblr!

Miltersen, E. H. (2016). Nounself pronouns: 3rd person personal pronouns as identity expression. Journal of Language Works-Sprogvidenskabeligt Studentertidsskrift, 1(1), 37-62. Open access to the paper here

Next, a very short paper by Rose et al., 2023, which is just looking at whether people even find neopronouns acceptable / grammatical:

Rose, E., Winig, M., Nash, J., Roepke, K., & Conrod, K. (2023). Variation in acceptability of neologistic English pronouns. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 8(1), 5526-5526. Open access paper is here

And then finally, I'd recommend this super cool paper by Laura Hekanaho, 2022, looking at the metalinguistic commentary and ways people talk about neopronouns - overlaps a bit with Rose et al.'s paper, but goes into much greater depth:

Hekanaho, L. (2022). A thematic analysis of attitudes towards English nonbinary pronouns. Journal of language and sexuality, 11(2), 190-216. Author's copy of the paper here

One thing about neopronouns is that there's comparatively little linguistics research published about them, and what does exist is very focused on English. Part of this is because the ways neopronouns are cropping up in English speech communities (especially online) are different than in other language communities, and the other part of the reason is that they're just super rare -- best estimates of how many people use neopronouns are very very low (the US Trans Census and the Gender Census report numbers <10%, and that's out of only trans people), and their appearance in every day language appears to be very rare.

What this means (frustratingly! and I hope this is changing!) is that at best neopronouns are mentioned in footnotes of linguistics articles and books about other stuff. There's also Dennis Baron's 2020 book, What's Your Pronoun, which is a really thorough documentation of historical attempts to coin gender-neutral pronouns in English... but Baron kind of comes to the conclusion that singular 'they' has 'won' the competition, and that none of the neopronouns he tracks have become mainstream.

Anyways, my personal opinion as a linguist is that I get frustrated with linguists who dismiss neopronouns because they're rare. Just because something's rare doesn't mean it's not a part of the language, and therefore a real part of the phenomenon we've decided to study! Devil's hole pupfish of english, tbh.

(Previous "3 papers to read" post was "3 papers to read about singular 'they'." If you like these posts, you can request a topic in linguistics and I'll do my best to recommend 3 open-access published papers to read!)

[buckyscap]

all this time we've talked about how comforting it is for logan to have wade by his side on his cold nights with all those nightmares and ptsd because wade can physically handle him. okay but what if he accidentally stabs althea, though?

maybe wade forget to tell her because for the first few nights together, logan stops having nightmares. but then on one summer night, it comes back unprompted. he's grunting, screaming, and al comes over to check and then he stabs her in his sleep while wade's still out working.

what if wade comes back to see logan's claws piercing through al's body, then they both stare at each other in horror before logan repeatedly mutters i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm so sorry and suddenly wade's on his side, screaming begging at him not to retract his claws yet as he finds something to stop al's bleeding? what then

what if logan runs away as wade's waiting for al's surgery in the hospital because he thinks he ruined it all over again, that he's hurting the people he loved again. so he runs because he can't have himself hurt wade's remaining family this time.

what if wade's in the hospital alone, thinking he wants nothing more than logan to be by his side, because he can't bear to lose another family member, because logan is family? what then