#but it's linguistics

[eri-pl]

Feanor and "Thou": Quenya addition

Tagging @dfwbwfbbwfbwf and @eloquentsisyphianturmoil because we've had a nice discussion in the first one and I think you may be interested.

So I checked, and Quenya indeed has polite 2nd and familiar 2nd person (as I have remembered)

tye = thou = familiar

lye = you (singular) = polite

le = you (plural) = independent on social status plural form

(more grammar and some ranting below the cut)

tyet = the two of you (familiar)

But also, Quenya has a dual! (= a form you use for exactly two of people or of something. It is a thing in some languages. Here in Polish we have some vestiges of it.)

let = the two of you (polite)

I wonder what you say to a pair of mixed social status? My guess would be let.

Also, based on the data we have, I would assume that the "On the holy mountain hear in witness and our vow remember, Manwë and Varda" used 'tyet' to address them. And not to be affectionate.

Also, some Tolkien quotes from the abovelinked site:

In CQ [= Classical Quenya, more commonly labeled PQ] tye had gone out of use except in colloquial language where it was used chiefly among kinsfolk, but also as an endearment (esp. between lovers). When used by parents to children there was nothing “imperious” about it — for children used tye to parents and grandparents etc. — to use the adult lye was more stern (Quenya Pronominal Elements, 1968, VT49/51).

Slight tangent, but Quenya also distinguishes inclusive "we" (we including you) and exclusive "we" (we but not you), both in plural and in dual.

Also, of course, each pronoun has more of it, like even in English "I" has "me", "mine", and "my". In Quenya there are even more of those. But I don't know Quenya and I don't feel competent to wrap my mind around all those pronouns.

Also, I fell into a research-hole...

In his own translation of Pater Noster to Quenya (yes, Jirt did things like this) Tolkien uses... the polite you?!? What?!?

Excuse me sir, what. Just what. I mean English does it with 'thee'... I guess you don't like it? But. It actually uses the very familiar / baby-ishword for "daddy" in the original... It's very obviously familiar second person? Oh, Jirt, you got me confused rn. Unless you wanted it to sound official not colloquial? But still. Why. Like... I feel like it's just missing the point...

[victusinveritas]

[the-last-teabender]

A little something for Linguistics Tumblr.

So the Crunchyroll newsroom isn't a "room" so much as a Slack channel. We have news writers all over the US, in Australia, and in Japan. This means we have something akin to 'round-the-clock coverage, but it also means that our schedules respective to each other are skewed. For example, when the East Coast contingent is starting their day, the Japan contingent is shutting down for the evening.

Because of that, we started experimenting with greetings that could apply when Party A was coming in for the morning and Party B was leaving for the night. One person came up with "konbarning": a combination of "good morning" and "konban wa" ("good evening" in Japanese). It stuck.

Over the following months, "konbarning" got shortened to "barning" and other permutations. Now, a year or some later, this is how we announce our arrival:

[tayalla]

there's this word in Serbian 'vukojebina' which literally means 'the place where wolves go to fuck' but they use it to mean 'in the middle of nowhere'. it sure does the job well, but the visual stayed with me longer than I would have liked it to.

[theshmaylor]

To celebrate rawdog winning word of the year per the American Dialect Society, I'd like to tell the story of how I learned that the meaning of rawdog changed in the past couple years.

If anyone doesn't know, the original and long-held meaning of rawdogging was fucking without a condom. The new meaning has extended to doing any kind of action unshielded, plain, or without preparation.

So, about a year ago, I'm eating lunch with coworkers. It's an office job and we're generally pretty professional. People swear a lot, but there's never any innuendos or sex talk.

A coworker is describing a recent trip she took to a vendor to get a demo of equipment we were considering purchasing. Someone else asks "Did you meet Bob LastName while you were there? He's kind of an interesting guy."

"Yeah I did, and he is a little strange. I walked into the breakroom one morning and he was rawdogging two blueberry bagels"

Cue my high-pitched shriek of "He was DOING WHAT."

Followed by my coworkers explaining the meaning and my faint, flustered reply of "ah...well... I'm used to that meaning.... something else." Some people knew what I was talking about, but unfortunately others did not, and I had to face the ordeal of explaining as delicately as possible to a group of coworkers aged 22 to 60

[kwekstra]

Highlights from the conference room where they nominated contenders for Word of the Year 2023:

• They put Skibidi Toilet on the projector to explain what “skibidi” means.

• Baby Gronk was mentioned.

• We discussed the Rizzler.

• “Cunty” was nominated.

• “Enshittification” was suggested for EVERY category.

• “Blue Check” (like from Twitter) was briefly defined as “Someone who will not Shut The Fuck Up”

• The person writing notes briefly defined babygirl as “referencing [The Speaker]”. He is now being called babygirl in the linguist groupchats.

• MULTIPLE people raised their hand to say “I cannot stress this enough: ‘Babygirl’ refers to a GROWN MAN”

[freshwaterbear]

visit the wiki page for wave (audience) for more fun facts!

[adhd-languages]

i’m obsessed with these…

(From DepthOfWikipedia on Instagram)

[prokopetz]

Americans giving Australians shit for calling a minor traffic accident a "prang" or a "bingle" as though "fender bender" is not the goofiest possible thing to call two cars crashing into each other. Like, at least the Aussie version doesn't rhyme!

[fozmeadows]

fact: when pidgin dialects involve english, -glish becomes the suffix, eg: chinglish, konglish, hinglish fact: slash pair name order puts the top first and the bottom second, eg: deancas vs casdean conclusion: english is an uke language and that’s why we have an omegaverse, not an alphaverse

[ikuzeminna]

I need your help with a hypothesis!

For context: My linguistics professor and I got into a discussion after a test she did with us, and I was of the opinion that the reason for the results was different from the one she offered, so she encouraged me to test my theory.

What I need

All you need to do is draw a coffee cup (with a handle, not the disposable stuff) and then answer three questions.

I don't need to see the coffee cup. You can draw it wherever you like; on a piece of paper, digitally, in the sand, on a foggy window. Anything works. It does not have to be good. A doodle is fine.

You have to draw the coffee cup before you see the questions. This is very important. If you decide to help me with this, please doodle the coffee cup before you keep reading.

Assuming you have drawn the coffee cup, I now need you to answer these three questions:

On which side did you draw the handle?

Are you right-handed or left-handed?

Do you primarily write using the Latin alphabet or a different one? (please specify which)

More context

Most people will draw the handle on the right side. My professor says it's because most people are right-handed, so they draw the handle in the direction that would be comfortable for them to pick up.

I said drawing it on the right side just felt more comfortable to my hand and argued it's probably because we write a bunch of letters like that. B, b, D, P, p, R all look like a tiny "handle on the right side" and are all a straight line followed by a round one (so "cup first, handle second," like most people draw cups). The Latin alphabet doesn't have letters like that that face the other way, except maybe d, depending on how you write it, so it makes sense to me that people writing mostly Latin letters would go with the handle on the right side.

Which means that I need to know what Asians, Arabs and Greeks do and if the distribution of left and right sides of handles differs from the Latin alphabet group. Cyrillic seems to favor right, too, though it'd be interesting to see if there are differences.

If there are, my theory is right. Doubly so if there is a sizeable increase in a group whose alphabet has letters that benefit the left side choice.

So feel free to spread this to as many people as you like and put the answers in the comments or the tags of a reblog. The more answers I get, the better I can assess whose theory is better.

Thank you for your help!

[unhonestlymirror]

[victusinveritas]

The sea is filled with jerks.

[max1461]

I'm gonna reblog with some videos of people speaking various American Indian/indigenous American languages, because I think most people don't even know what they sound like. Not to be judgement of that—just, you know, I think people who want to be informed should know what they sound like!