#ask me about linguistics

[lingthusiasm]

New Lingthusiasm merch! Gavagai, Ask Me About Linguistics, and More people have read the text on this item than I have!

A new round of Lingthusiasm merch is here! We have three new designs available across a range of items.

Gavagai: lo, un-detatched rabbit parts!

Imagine you're in a field with someone whose language you don't speak. A rabbit scurries by. The other person says "Gavagai!" You probably assumed they meant "rabbit" but they could have meant something else, like "scurrying" or even "lo! an undetached rabbit-part!" We undergo this experience practically every time we learn a word, and yet we still manage to do it.

Inspired by the famous Gavagai thought experiment, these items feature a running rabbit and the caption "lo, an undetached rabbit-part!" in a woodblock-engraving-crossed-with-vaporwave style in magenta, indigo, teal, cream, and black/white on shirts, scarves, and more!

More people have read the text on this item than I have

"More people have been to Russia than I have" is a sentence that at first seems fine, but then gets weirder and weirder the more you read it. Inspired by these Escher sentences, we've made self-referential shirts saying "More people have read the text on this shirt than I have" (also available on tote bags, mugs, and hats, with the appropriate tweaks in wording), so you can wear them in old-time typewriter font and see who does a double take.

See our bonus episode Linguistic 〰️✨ i l l u s i o n s ✨〰️ (#57) for more about this classic sentence.

Ask Me About Linguistics

We've made a design that simply says "Ask me about linguistics" in a style that looks like a classic "Hello, my name is..." sticker, and you can put it on stickers and buttons and shirts and assorted other portable items for when you want to skip the small talk and go right to a topic you're excited about.

Lingthusiasm merch generally

If you’re looking for subtle-to-obvious ways to signal that you’re a linguist or linguistics fan in public, gift ideas for the linguistics enthusiast in your life (or handy links to forward to people who might be interested in getting you a gift sometime), we also have many previous items of Lingthusiasm merch!

There are subtly linguistics-patterened scarves, mugs and water bottles with linguistics-related jokes on them, NOT JUDGING YOUR GRAMMAR, JUST ANALYSING IT shirts, nerdy linguistics baby clothes, and more items to browse.

We love to see your photos of Lingthusiasm merch or any diy linguistics crafts projects you might make! Feel free to tag us @lingthusiasm on social media or share in the #merch-crafts-objects channel in the Lingthusiasm Discord.

Stay lingthusiastic!

[coveredinsun]

i love fanon calling gimli the “lord of aglarond” because aglarond is the name for the glittering caves in SINDARIN!!!!!!!! gimli brought legolas there and legolas said “HOLY FUCK” and called it beautiful in his own language and gimli just adopted that!!!!!!!!! so now the love between them will carry on forever in name long after they’ve sailed away together!!!!!!!!! CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME

[reasonsforhope]

Interior Department Announces New Guidance to Honor and Elevate Hawaiian Language

"In commemoration of Mahina ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, or Hawaiian Language Month, and in recognition of its unique relationship with the Native Hawaiian Community, the Department of the Interior today announced new guidance on the use of the Hawaiian language.  

A comprehensive new Departmental Manual chapter underscores the Department’s commitment to further integrating Indigenous Knowledge and cultural practices into conservation stewardship.  

“Prioritizing the preservation of the Hawaiian language and culture and elevating Indigenous Knowledge is central to the Biden-Harris administration's work to meet the unique needs of the Native Hawaiian Community,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “As we deploy historic resources to Hawaiʻi from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the Interior Department is committed to ensuring our internal policies and communications use accurate language and data."  

Department bureaus and offices that engage in communication with the Native Hawaiian Community or produce documentation addressing places, resources, actions or interests in Hawaiʻi will use the new guidance on ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) for various identifications and references, including flora and fauna, cultural sites, geographic place names, and government units within the state.  The guidance recognizes the evolving nature of ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi and acknowledges the absence of a single authoritative source. While the Hawaiian Dictionary (Pukui & Elbert 2003) is designated as the baseline standard for non-geographic words and place names, Department bureaus and offices are encouraged to consult other standard works, as well as the Board on Geographic Names database.  

Developed collaboratively and informed by ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi practitioners, instructors and advocates, the new guidance emerged from virtual consultation sessions and public comment in 2023 with the Native Hawaiian Community. 

The new guidance aligns with the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to strengthening relationships with the Native Hawaiian Community through efforts such as the Kapapahuliau Climate Resilience Program and Hawaiian Forest Bird Keystone Initiative. During her trip to Hawaiʻi in June, Secretary Haaland emphasized recognizing and including Indigenous Knowledge, promoting co-stewardship, protecting sacred sites, and recommitting to meaningful and robust consultation with the Native Hawaiian Community."

-via US Department of the Interior press release, February 1, 2024

--

Note: I'm an editor so I have no idea whether this comes off like as big a deal as it potentially is. But it is potentially going to establish and massively accelerate the adoption of correctly written Native Hawaiian language, as determined by Native Hawaiians.

Basically US government communications, documentations, and "style guides" (sets of rules to follow about how to write/format/publish something, etc.) can be incredibly influential, especially for topics where there isn't much other official guidance. This rule means that all government documents that mention Hawai'i, places in Hawai'i, Hawaiian plants and animals, etc. will have to be written the way Native Hawaiians say it should be written, and the correct way of writing Hawaiian conveys a lot more information about how the words are pronounced, too, which could spread correct pronunciations more widely.

It also means that, as far as the US government is concerned, this is The Correct Way to Write the Hawaiian Language. Which, as an editor who just read the guidance document, is super important. That's because you need the 'okina (' in words) and kahakō in order to tell apart sizeable sets of different words, because Hawaiian uses so many fewer consonants, they need more of other types of different sounds.

And the US government official policy on how to write Hawaiian is exactly what editors, publishers, newspapers, and magazines are going to look at, sooner or later, because it's what style guides are looking at. Style guides are the official various sets of rules that books/publications follow; they're also incredibly detailed - the one used for almost all book publishing, for example, the Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS), is over a thousand pages long.

One of the things that CMoS does is tell you the basic rules of and what specialist further sources they think you should use for writing different languages. They have a whole chapter dedicated to this. It's not that impressive on non-European languages yet, but we're due for a new edition (the 18th) of CMoS in the next oh two to four years, probably? Actually numbering wise they'd be due for one this year, except presumably they would've announced it by now if that was the case.

I'm expecting one of the biggest revisions to the 18th edition to add much more comprehensive guidance on non-Western languages. Considering how far we've come since 2017, when the last one was released, I'll be judging the shit out of them if they do otherwise. (And CMoS actually keep with the times decently enough.)

Which means, as long as there's at least a year or two for these new rules/spellings/orthographies to establish themselves before the next edition comes out, it's likely that just about every (legit) publisher will start using the new rules/spellings/orthographies.

And of course, it would expand much further from there.

[annabelle--cane]

anyway sorry, I see solid definitions for artistic categories and immediately become the most annoying person in the world

[visualtaehyun]

Thai QL fandom 101

Disclaimer: not a native Thai speaker, still learning 🙏

ซีรีส์วาย /see ree waai/ = "Y series", Y standing for Yaoi -> BL shows

ซีรีส์ยูริ /see ree yuu ri/ = "Yuri series" -> GL shows

คู่จิ้น /khuu jin/ = shipped couple; the word จิ้น in there comes from the English imagine -> a working partnership between two artists, you might see it romanized as koojin on twt and co.

คู่จริง /khuu jing/ = real couple -> it's a pun on koojin and often used to ask if they're a ship or real

แฟน ๆ /faaen faaen/ or แฟนคลับ /faaen club/ = fans -> since the word for 'partner/bf/gf' is also แฟน /faaen/, artists usually make sure to call fans either of these two, or:

มัมหมี /mam mee/ = mommy; the word หมี in there means bear -> fans are called mommy both by their artists and calling themselves like this, it encompasses all fans, they often call their chosen artists their baby

มัมหมา /mam maa/ = mama; the word หมา in there means dog -> this is also a word to call fans but these fans are actually attracted to their chosen artist or, even funnier, attracted to the other half of that artist's koojin 😂 so you could be a mommy of NetJames and dote on James like your son but thirst after Net lmao

ชื่อด้อม /cheuu dawm/ = "name [of] dom", fandom name -> Thai artists usually have a name for their fandom, e.g. Becky Armstrong > BeckysAngels, GeminiFourth > KhunNoo, so there's even more ways to address fans

กัปตันเรือ /gap dtan reuua/ = captain of the ship -> another person or artist who's close to a koojin who posts content of them, is seemingly always present during their moments, or actively ships them themself, e.g. Kong is the self-proclaimed captain of the KengNamping ship

(from DMD Friendship The Reality EP.3)

ในฐานะที่ผมเป็นกัปตันเรือ [...] /nai thaa na thee pom bpen gap dtan reuua/ = As captain of their ship, [...]

ขายจิ้น /khaai jin/ = "sell a fantasy"; contains the same จิ้น as in koojin -> doing fanservice

(from รถทาเลนท์ EP.21)

ขายจิ้นแน่ ๆ !!! /khaai jin naae naae/ = Fanservice for sure!!!

งอน /ngawn/ vs. ง้อ /ngaaw/ = sulk vs. try to make up with (previously explained here)

อ้อน /aawn/ = act cute, plead, this emoji 🥺 lol -> comparable to Korean aegyo (애교) but is more used to describe being cute and clingy or acting like a kid with relatives or elders, someone who is/behaves like that can be described as ขี้อ้อน /khee aawn/, e.g. Sea Tawinan gets described like that all the time in bts content of Last Twilight

(from Before Last Twilight)

ซีในกล้องเนี่ยะ เขาจะเป็นคนที่ขี้อ้อน /Sea nai glaawng niia khao ja bpen khohn thee khee aawn/ = Sea on set- he's a clingy/affectionate person.

[chocodile]

Would it be safe to assume hyden doesn't enjoy being called a "bunny" then?

He might not mind it as much as one might assume. Like, he knows he's a Rabbit, he just figures he's a different kind of Rabbit. You know, the kind that, in a just world, would possess razor sharp teeth and claws. A superior kind of Rabbit.

So "Rabbit" is fine… "Bunny", on the other hand, reads as sort of twee and infantalizing, culturally. It would be a bit like being called a "boy" or "girl" as an adult… situationally okay from family/close friends or in playful contexts, but something that would usually imply condescension coming from a stranger.

Of course, he's far too much of a sigma male to be fazed by mere mouth sounds made by lesser minds. No, the worst thing about it is that "Bunny" was Milana's pet name for him. Hearing it brings up some bad memories about their break up.

[the---hermit]

Not me adding annotations to a book to make it more accessible for my mom when she will read it

[firstroseofspring]

b’elanna vs her mother at similar ages, plus some sketches!

[ribbittrobbit]

Hiyaw and Himik, the twin deities of noise and silence, of movement and stillness, of action and contemplation.

The church of Taw (from the root word for volumen/ strength of voice), has a dual structure to mirror its deities. Clerics choose to walk either the path of silence - the most radical followers dedicate themselves to a vow of complete silence and contemplation, retreating to monasteries in the most remote regions- or the path of noise - the order dedicated to the service of the church and its followers outside of the monasteries. The central principle of the religion is the duality and balance between the two deities' domains. The silent order serves to balance out the order of noise, to be the stillness to their movement, the deliberation to their action and vice versa. The religion is a relatively small but ancient one, with many devotees among musicians, poets and performers and a great emphasis on ceremony and the performance of rituals that combine the texts of Hiyaw and Himik.

(did i just spend the last two days thinking about making an entire fake religion complete with a clerical structure for my fh sona? yes. did i bastardise the filipino words like "scream" and "quiet" to find matching names for them? also yes.)

[linguisticillustrations]

Optimality Theory diagram (tableau) for foot/syllable metathesis in Naijá (also known as Nigerian Pidgin) used for the "unconventional negative" (UNC.NEG) form of nouns.

Examples of this and related processes (taken from an author's post on Mastodon):

Tone metathesis in documented varieties of Naijá [fádà] “father” [fàdá] “rev. father” [màmá] “mother” [mámà] “trendy old lady” (other meanings are possible)

Truncation in the Wafi variety [bâ:g] “bag” [â:g] “inferior bag” [stô:v] “stove” [tô:v] “cheap stove”

Syllable metathesis in the Wafi variety [pòló] “polo shirt” [lòpó] “inferior polo shirt” [àʃáwó] “sex worker” [àwóʃá] “cheap sex worker” [láptɔ̂:p] “laptop” [tóplâ:p] “cheap laptop”

From the article:

Akinbo, Samuel Kayode and Ekiugbo, Philip Oghenesuowho. 2024. "Iconicity as the motivation for morphophonological metathesis and truncation in Nigerian Pidgin" Open Linguistics 10(1): https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2024-0013

[possamble]

if you're ever wondering why some japanese fantasy media with meticulous worldbuilding randomly has like normal-ass months and dates. it's bc calendar months being named after specific myths or historical figures is not a thing in east asian languages, all months are just called month 1, month 2, month 3, etc. so setting a normal date based on a 12-month calendar doesn't actually seem incongruous with fantasy

[faunina]

The super rolled R's in the wresting video is just how Asuka speaks. She's kind of infamous for having a super heavy Kansai accent, which in other parts of Japan and in Japanese media can also be used as a shorthand for 'speaking like a thug'. By contrast, Iyo Sky speaks with a very politely-accented Kanto accent.

Basically imagine a rough and tumble Bostonian or Austinite talking shit to a New Yorker, who then gives them a crisp private school "BITCH" in response.

ooohhh, that is so interesting!!!! and also hilarious, thank you for telling me!

[lorephobic]

2, 17, 22 for Saltburn

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

this means nothing to anybody who follows me for saltburn, but i just answered this question about my other blorbo and came to the exact same conclusion for the complete opposite reason. oliver quick would NEVER top because he is clawing to be the main character of every room that he enters. he wants to be desired so badly that he'll reinvent himself into whoever he thinks you want.

there's a sort of trope in obsession-related media where the obsessor ends up forcefully taking from their victim exactly what they want. and i think that oliver subverts this narrative by never taking anything from felix. he never asks for more than he's given. when he finally has the opportunity to kiss felix, he doesn't. he takes from venetia, and he takes from farleigh, and he takes from james and elspeth, but at the crux of his character, is his need to be taken by felix. this is, of course, a metaphor for bottoming LMAO

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

ok so tbh i'm not a huge fic person because i'm so incredibly picky about the way that the media that i care about is interpreted, which is why i've never read a single saltburn fic and honestly i probably won't ever, just because i feel like there is very little room in this story to expand and no way to twist and rewrite it in a way that is true to the characters that i care so much about. but WITH THAT BEING SAID, i was honestly so totally astonished by @125hr's cattonquick art that it made me realize that maybe i do want to see more beautiful art of them kissing and we can all pretend like they had their moment<333

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

this should honestly be it's own post, but since my last rewatch i've been thinking a ton about the final dance being a reflection of felix's initial tour through saltburn, which has been talked about! but what i haven't seen talked about is all of the other scenes that end up echoing each other. felix's life on the screen and oliver's role in it form a perfect mirror image, starting and ending with oliver staring at felix at parties and not being able to touch him. starting and ending with oliver watching felix have sex with someone that's not him. starting and ending with oliver fucking people who aren't felix in an attempt to get closer to him. on a second rewatch, when you know all of the signs, there's such a devastating sense of oliver returning back to square one, lost in a crowd full of felix's friends and nobody even knows his name. there is a time before felix and there is a time after felix and exactly at the center of this timeline, there is a man on his hands and knees in a bathtub getting the closest he will ever get to the thing that he wants.

[waitineedaname]

for some reason the intro to phonology and syntax classes for grad students are also the advanced phonology and syntax classes for undergrads, which means the professors are spouting off dense syntactical theory to undergrads who have already taken the intro class with them, meanwhile there's six of us grad students sitting to the side staring at each other like this

[sentence-arborist]

what is a syntax tree and how did you construct that, that is fascinating

A syntax tree is a way of representing the constituent structure of a sentence (i.e. how it can be broken up into parts) as a graph. It's one of the most common representations used in contemporary syntactic theory.

As for how you construct it, there are various both general and language specific rules but the simplest explanation would be that you "split" the tree each time you reach a unit of syntax that could be replaced by a simpler atom.

For example:

The sentence "I knew that guy" can be split into a subject "I" and verb phrase "knew that guy", which you could replace with a simple verb (e.g. "I ran"), so you split these two parts into an NP and a VP (under an IP for complicated theoretical reasons).

"knew that guy" can be broken up into a verb "knew" and an object "that guy", which you could replace with a simpler noun phrase (e.g. "I knew him"), so you split these two parts into a V and an NP.

"that guy" can be split into a determiner "that" and a head noun "guy", both of which are substitutable ("the guy", "that dog"), so you split these two parts into a D and an N.

Add some extra details that are required for theoretical reasons that I can't easily go into here, and boom!

[ID: Syntax tree for the sentence "I knew that guy".]

Of course, nothing's ever quite that simple.

For one, substitution isn't really the only test that goes into making the divisions on the tree. For example, there's active debate among different syntacticians over whether you should split ditransitive verb phrases like "give me a cake" into [[give] [me] [a cake]] or into [[give me] [a cake]]. The substitution test I gave above would suggest the latter, but I personally believe the former is better suited to account for the data in object symmetric languages like the Kordofanian language Moro. So I would represent the verb phrase "give me a cake" with a trinary branching tree like below, but other syntacticians would hate this.

[ID: A syntax tree for the verb phrase "give me a cake"; it shows a trinary branching structure, where the V-bar node dominates a V node and two NPs.]

For another, almost any actual syntactic framework is going to require more in your trees than I'm including here. A proper LFG c-structure, for example, would require at least node annotations (and possibly lexical entries on the leaves), resulting in a tree that looks more like:

[ID: The same syntax tree for "I knew that guy", but now each node is anotated with an equation. Most nodes have an "up arrow equals down arrow" equation, but the NP node that dominates "I" has a "down arrow equals up arrow SUBJ" equation and the NP that dominates "that guy" has an equation "down arrow equals up arrow OBJ".]

And that's without getting into whatever the hell the cartographic Minimalists are off there doing with their hundreds of functional projections... But I digress. Main point being: a properly done syntax tree is much more complex of a beast than the instructions above would suggest, but they're still a good place to start!

[pinkinsect]

can you elaborate on what you mean when you mention the "blue lock sociolect." because the linguistic/social situation that must be developing in this stanford prison ass training center fascinates me endlessly

hello this is going to be a lot. tldr at the end.

for anyone unaware, i use blue lock "sociolect" in this case specifically meaning the dialect that develops in the blue lock facility. i'd classify it more as a sociolect than a dialect, because while they now have a geographic location in common, i would say the speech features show up more in certain characters who've leaned into the blue lock egoist mentality more. the way hiori speaks changes as his view of himself and soccer change. (i also think that bltv enjoyers start talking like this. horrifically)

the blue lock sociolect is a phenomenon i invented in my mind palace to cope with the way i feel when i read blue lock and see phrases like "you're an eyesore, you pink-haired philistine" and "rotten orange." i brought it up in this post on my other blog some time ago, but in short, i've decided that the rather. unique way the blue lockers speak to one another is a result of putting 300 [and lowering] boys age 15-18 from all over japan in a hypercompetitive environment with very little adult supervision.

it's all about the individual, hence many of the insults taking the target's most striking physical trait and combining it with something the speaker decides is negative about the target. with japanese being a language with pretty structured assignments of appropriate politeness based on age, experience, and status, i could see it eroding given the general lack of older adult presence (ego appearing on a screen for like 15 minutes doesn't count, especially since he's rude as hell), and the mentality the players are encouraged to accept. rin isn't the best example given his dedication to hating across languages, cultures, and age ranges, but isagi pretty much comments on how he's rude as hell by social norms once, then clearly gets used to it.

i think the blue lock sociolect starts to diversify a bit once we enter the nel. the blue lock boys are shown studying english, but the nel introduces an environment where a lot of their teammates will most likely be speaking a language other than english or japanese within their teams (except for manshine but that's british english which isn't usually what's taught in japan so even then their contributions to the sociolect will be a bit different).

we don't know exactly how accurate the translation software is, or how it handles the cultural differences in honorific language, but based on some of the things we've seen (ness calling kunigami "kunigami-san" that one time, also ness being shown saying "ja" through the translation, "beinschuss" from kaiser, whatever's going on with charles, etc.) they're not always consistent.

(i haven't checked out the raws for these yet though, so im actually not entirely sure what's coming through in japanese.these could just be translation choices.)

this multi-language environment and the non-translation of certain speech could also have an impact on our blue lock players' vocabulary and introduce other languages' terms and speech patterns. japanese already has a pretty huge collection of loan words that eventually create "foreign" phrases that don't exist outside of japanese, so this facility could make this phenomenon occur more rapidly.

we see otoya say "golazo" during the fc barcha match, and while darai says the same thing during their bowling match, it wouldn't be too far off to assume that otoya picked it up from his spanish speaking teammates.

i could add more but this is getting too long so tl;dr: putting 300 15-18 year old boys in a prison with barely any adult supervision would make neat language shifts.

some features of the blue lock sociolect i think exist:

the particular type of insult we see so much of in blue lock

general lack of/comparatively less importance given to honorific language and polite conjugations of words

shounen protag accent (you'd know it when you hear it.)

increased usage of german, english, spanish, italian, and/or french terms

FAR less subject omission than average japanese, especially when the subject is "i" [thanks aryu.]