#linguist shitpost

[tower-of-hana]

Dictionaries be like: Instead of using the ipa we made this fake phonetic alphabet made up of esoteric runes. Please find a European with a wild beard to decipher them.

[whales-are-gay]

[foone]

Annoying linguistics by going around asking people if they have the X-Y merger but X and Y are unambiguous homophones.

"oh, does your dialect have the coarse/course merger? Interesting!" *writes something down*

"Oh I didn't realize your dialect has the pair/pear merger, that's neat."

[hecho-a-mano]

a german woman who's a scammer call her a fräudlein

[sachermorte]

so the thing about english is that people think it's so divorced from other germanic languages based on like. words. I've even heard people try to insist that english is a romance language. because of that whole messy business in 1066 with out-of-wedlock willy and his band of naughty normans. and now a good chunk of the vocabulary is french or whatever and they're prestigious so not using them makes you sound like a rube and this and that and the other

and yes william the conqueror will never be safe from me. I will have my revenge on him. he fucked up a perfectly good germanic language is what he did. this will be me in hell

but the thing is that most words in, say, german do have a one to one english equivalent. not all hope is lost, for those who still dare to see it. it's just that you 1066pilled normancels aren't looking in the right place

dog (en) ≠ der Hund (de) but der Hund (de) -> hound (en)

look with your special eyes. that one was easier. not all of them are this intuitive because of semantic narrowing and broadening and waltzing and hokey-pokeying and whatever else. I'll give you a few more

animal (en) ≠ das Tier (de)

aha! you think. I've got him on the ropes now.

but then

das Tier (de) -> deer (en)

nooooo!! you whine and cry in gay baby jail. the consonants are different!!! listen to me. listen, I say, putting both my hands on your shoulder. /t/and /d/ are the same sound. you just put your voice behind one of them.

nooooooooo!! you wail. deer are animals but not all animals are deer!!! listen to me. LISTEN. they used to be. animals used to be deer. that's just what we called them. it was a long time ago. it was a weird time in all our lives. it's okay.

let's try for a verb this time

to die (en) ≠ sterben (de) but sterben (de) -> to starve

same principle with the consonants, we're just changing a stop (where we completely stop the airflow and then let it through) for a fricative (where we still let some air go through. idk where it's going. maybe to its job or something.)

to starve used to mean generally to die, not just to die of malnourishment. we do that a lot. we take one word for a lot of things and make it mean one thing. or take one word for one thing and make it mean a lot of things. this is common and normal.

"okay but roland," you say, suddenly coming up with an argument. "what about tree? trees are super common. I don't think we'd fuck around too much with that. the german word is baum! what about THAT?"

"when did you learn german?" I ask, but then decide it isn't relevant right at this very moment. but fine.

tree (en) ≠ der Baum (de) but der Baum (de) -> beam (en)

beam??? you ask incredulously. beam???? BEAM?????? you continue with the same tone and cadence of captain holt from brooklyn 99.

yes. beam. like the evil beams from my eye I'm going to hit you with if you don't stop shouting.

but the vowels!!! you howl.

listen. listen to me. the vowels mean nothing. absolutely nothing. they're fluid like water. it got raised in english.

"WHAT DOES RAISED MEAN"

it doesn't matter right now. they were raised better than you, at least. stop shouting. open your eyes and see what god has given you. they're the same word.

"they're NOT the same word. they mean different things!"

we've been over this. they didn't used to. a beam was (and is) a long solid piece of wood. much like the long solid piece of wood I showed your mother last night.

FAQ:

Q: could english be some kind of germanic-romance hybrid?

A: do you become a sexy thing from the black lagoon just because you dressed up as one for halloween? english may have gotten a lot of vocabulary from norman french, but its history and syntax are distinctly germanic. that's what we base these things on.

Q: okay but what does it matter? this doesn't actually affect my day to day life

A: you come into my house? you come into my house, the house of an autistic man living in vienna austria and studying english linguistics and you ask me what does it matter? sit back down. I was going to let you go but now I have powerpoints to show you

Q: you're stupid and wrong and gay and a bad person

A: I know it's you, Willy

[heavenlyraindrops]

japanese is such a kind language. like you forget a character it will hold ur hand and tell u that everything will be ok and you can just write it in hirigana and everyone will understand :)

and then chinese is like oh im sorry you forgot a character? youre illiterate. you mispronounce a word? your mother is now a horse

[existennialmemes]

"That isn't a word!" Clearly it is, because I have used it as one. "You can't use/spell that word like that!" Clearly I can, because I have done so

"You can't—"

Listen to me, language is fluid, malleable, it exists not just to be used by us, but to be shaped by us. It is a tool to convey thoughts, the only thing that matters is if the thought was effectively conveyed. Not how technically accurate the usage was when compared to an arbitrary and equally made up standard.

So the next time you feel the urge to correct how someone uses language: Don't

Because you understood them, which means they used it correctly. Even if it wasn't correct before, it is now. The sheer Co-Creative act of Communicating and Comprehending brought it to life. You did that. You drew the intended meaning from those words and in doing so cemented their validity into the zeitgeist.

[gemsofgreece]

Tiskata

In Finnish: doing the dishes

In Greek: what the crap

[bookwyrminspiration]

"there are around 7,000 languages in the world"

bro I have a human lifespan i'm never gonna be able to learn them all :(

[toadandtails]

words i think we should use instead of the english translation:

"y" instead of "and"

"danke" instead of "thanks/thank you"

"gato" and "gatito" instead of "cat"

"ach" as a phrase/onomatopoeia in general

feel free to add more in the tags

[tower-of-hana]

Conlanger: technical, cringe, gives people actual information about what you do, "So you're like Tolkien?", only specific people know you're queer

Child of Babel: cool, mysterious, sinister, sounds like you're in a cult, what do you do? speak in tongues + do orgies probably, makes the right angry, "Do you worship Satan?", aura of gay homosex

[doomed-jester]

You know the word "robot" is literally derived from the Czech word "robota" meaning "forced labor"

I feel like the first stage of any hypothetical machine liberation movement would be rebranding.

[foone]

Terrible idea: a text which uses both allographs of the letter "g" and they have different meanings. Like there's two characters named "Greg" but they write their names with different "g"s.

[ditzyfemme]

other majors: okay guys today we will learn useful things that might help you get a job

linguistics:

[greetings-inferiors]

lol and lmao are tone indicators

[forestdumbass]

MY LINGUISTICS CLASS HAS BECOME A TUMBLR SHITPOST SKDGSKDHSKSJ I CAN'T.

We're talking about how the definition of categories in language is completely made up and the requirements are made up and it's ended up on a whole debate about what classifies as a soup.

THIS PROFESSOR LITERALLY SUGGESTED "CEREAL IS A SOUP" FOR AN EXAMPLE I LOVE THIS FUCKING CLASS