wordmoth

[wordmoth]

My syntax teacher made me cry because I was trying to finish the final project for the course so I showed her the syntactic analysis I made. She proceeded to say that I, was not only on the right track, but I could end up providing evidence for the existence of head movement in the language I'm working with.

I don't want that. The formalist will come for my ass and I'm just a stupid little undergrad who barely understands X-bar theory. It was an ACCIDENT I SWEAR

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It's interesting that the neo-latin name for the German Language is "Lingua Theodisca", which is etymologically related to the word "Deutsch" (deutsch comes from proto-west germanic "þiudiskaz", hence "Theodisca") but the neo-latin name for Germany is usually "Germania" (and rarely "Teutonica"), never "Theodiscia"

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I ADORE this concept and the subsequent reasoning here

reading about apple pies while eating fries and somehow tasted apple pie instead of fries??? what the

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Sin: A Linguistic Anthropology of Moral Failure

In ancient Greek, hamartia (often translated as “sin”) originally meant “to miss the mark.” In Hebrew, chet carries a similar connotation. Why have our words for sin moved from describing an action to defining identity? What happens when moral failure becomes linguistically essentialized?

Through colonial translations, sin becomes “badness,” rather than a deviation. This shift has theological weight, but also psychological consequence. Language doesn’t just describe sin, but it can also trap it, shaping how we understand human agency and redemption in a ripple affect through culture. Language colors our view of the world, after all.

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Holy Pronouns! God, Gender, and Grammatical Person

The Hebrew Bible’s name for God, YHWH, famously avoids full pronunciation. But what’s less discussed is how pronouns operate when referring to the divine. God is often “He,” but rarely is this grammatically consistent- sometimes God speaks in first person plural (“Let us make man…”) and occasionally shifts between grammatical genders (like the Shekhinah, a feminine noun, representing divine presence). The divine subject challenges fixed linguistic categories. What if theology requires us to develop pronouns not yet invented, but ones that bend time, agency, and personhood? Divine neopronouns, anyone?

[wordmoth]

About Glossilalia

Glossolalia (speaking in tongues) is often dismissed by outsiders as nonsense, but what if we approached it linguistically, as a socially-coded ritualized form of language play that resists semantic control?

In Pentecostal settings, the act of speaking an “unknowable” language re-centers divine authority over institutional language norms. What does it mean that the Holy Spirit is “speaking,” but no one (not even the speaker) understands? This could be read as a rejection of linguistic hegemony: no grammar books, no colonial script. Just breath, sound, spirit. A divine deconstruction in a way.

[wordmoth]

Me posting on tumblr:

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Interesting etymological surprise of the day: miniature and minimum are unrelated. Minimum is from Latin for "smallest". Miniature, through a series of etymological twists, comes from Latin minium meaning "red lead". This was the basis of the verb miniō "to color red", from the use of red lead as a pigment. From this verb came the Italian miniatura "manuscript illustration", borrowed into English as "miniature", from the frequent use of red ink. Since those illustrations were often quite small, the word came to mean "small", probably influenced by the unrelated minimum

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[wordmoth]

If you did this I’d donate a building in your name somewhere

if I wrote my own language learning textbook or app all grammar explanations would have several levels to choose from ranging from "explain it in linguistic terminology" to "explain it like I'm a child and never learned a language before"

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[wordmoth]

Sometimes I think the biggest assets in my life are my friends. They tell me when I’m about to make stupid decisions and love me when I make those decisions anyway.

[wordmoth]

WARNING do NOT start reading books and comics or watching movies or looking at art!!! you will start wanting to create art yourself. or god forbid. writing.

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have you guys done that “what kind of reader are you” quiz and if so what did you get

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[wordmoth]

Tell me a soft memory

[wordmoth]

Mrs. Claus opens "The Year Without a Santa Claus" by claiming the eponymous year took place "before you were born". Seeing as the movie was released in 1974, this means the year must have been before then.

Bounding this on the lower end is the presence of ice hockey - mentioned by Heat Miser - and the use of telephones. Ice hockey was invented in 1875, while Alexander Graham Bell built the telephone in 1876, meaning the year must post-date these. These figures give a range of approximately 100 years during which Santa may have taken his holiday.

Yet, narrowing this further is the presence of a December calendar counting the 1st to a Wednesday. Between 1876 and 1974, only the Decembers of 1880, 1886, 1897, 1909, 1915, 1920, 1926, 1937, 1943, 1948, 1954, 1965, and 1971 started on a Wednesday.

But still this can be narrowed further.

When Santa set out that Christmas Eve, we see what appears to be an almost full Moon in the sky. Within the years listed, only 1920 had a full Moon on Christmas.

Ergo, 1920 was the year without a Santa Claus.