#dialectal linguistics

[luulapants]

Luula! I saw your reblog post about taylor swift and billie eilish and audio processing with white girls singing pop, you know the one I mean? You tagged it with don't make me go sociolinguistics on your ass....

I am asking (out of sheer curiosity and genuine interest) please go sociolinguistic on their asses.

I want the explanation on why I don't understand rap...

Please thank you 🙏

Hey, anon! Honestly, good on you for asking the question.

The short answer on why you don't understand rap is pretty simple: it's because you don't listen to rap.

The long answer starts with this premise: all natively spoken human languages and dialects are created equal.

No language is easier or more difficult for an infant to learn - there may be a more stringent academic standard, but as for the basic language that people speak, any child can learn any human language with equal ease*. No language intrinsically sounds more or less appealing or sophisticated; any such judgment is based on how you were socialized to feel about the people who speak it.

(*the obvious exception to this rule is physical limitations, such as the ability to hear (Deaf children will struggle with vocal languages compared to sign) or a speech impediment (a language without 'th' will be easier for a child with a lisp).)

I don't know what dialect of English you speak, but I'm making a leap to assume it's a white dialect adjacent to Standard American English (SAE). If that's correct, try giving this a listen:

This is much easier for most white people to understand not because MC Lars enunciates better - he's speaking quite quickly - but because he's rapping in a very standardized white American dialect, which is probably familiar to you. Compare to this song by Denzel Curry:

This is slower - fewer words per minute - than the MC Lars song, but I'm guessing it was harder for you to understand, because Denzel Curry speaks Black American English (BAE), a dialect you probably don't understand well.

There's a prominent perception in the US, not said as openly as it once was, that BAE is "broken" English, or English poorly spoken rather than a distinct dialect. I can't tell you how many white people have told me they tried to watch HBO's The Wire but "couldn't understand it" because the characters "don't enunciate." The characters enunciate fine, but they speak a BAE dialect white people are rarely asked to listen to. I'll admit, it took me a little while to get my ear around that particular Baltimore variety, too, but after an episode or two of working at listening, I got the hang of it just fine.

That's sort of the crux of the matter, though: who do we believe is worth our time and effort to learn to listen to?

Most Black folks in the US could understand that MC Lars song, because most Black folks in America are biglossal - they speak both the BAE they grew up with and the SAE they had to learn in school. Black children are put at an enormous disadvantage when they are forced to learn a new dialect on top of their other school work. Non-English speakers get special supplementary classes when they enter school - BAE speakers are made to figure it out on their own. Then, throughout their life, they're expected to "code switch," switch dialects, when they need to be understood by a white person. Society tells them it's essential to put in the effort to learn to understand and speak SAE.

White people are almost never expected to even understand BAE. Most white Americans easily learn how to understand British English, though. Most will feel as though they didn't actually work to learn it, that it came naturally. There is absolutely no practical reason British English should be an easier shift from SAE compared to BAE, except that white British people enjoy a level of privilege that makes the effort of tuning one's ear feel expected.

There's something to be said about the fact that the things many rappers - Black rappers and rappers of other minority backgrounds - are rapping about will not speak to your experience. You may feel like you can't relate to Kendrick Lamar the way you can relate to Chappell Roan, but honestly how many white girls on tumblr are rocking out to "Pink Pony Club" who have NEVER been to the club? And how many more could absolutely relate when Lamar says in "PRIDE.":

Now, in a perfect world, I probably won't be insensitive Cold as December but never remember what winter did I wouldn't blame you for mistakes I made or the bed I laid Seems like I point the finger just to make a point nowadays

And, yes, there are references and turns of phrase that you'll need to go look up. We do that for all sorts of things. Did you read Shakespeare in school? Weren't there footnotes telling you what it meant? Have you ever looked up a list of words that are different in British and American English? Don't you know that Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" is about Jake Gyllenhaal even though he's never mentioned?

I will again refer to Claire Vaye Watkin's On Pandering, in which she observes that people on the periphery - social and racial and gender minorities - learn to appreciate the things that the privileged - straight white cis men - tell them is art. How many great works by rich white men have you stretched yourself to find meaning in, even when they don't really speak to you as a person at all? And why are you not willing to stretch that same way in the direction of the less privileged? Why can spend the time and energy to find universal meaning in the works of Dickens but not in the works of The Notorious B.I.G.?

The fact that you can't understand rap has nothing to do with rap and everything to do with you, your socialization, your values, and the culture you were raised in. You don't understand rap because you haven't learned how to understand rap. You haven't learned how to understand rap because you don't think it's valuable enough to justify the effort. You don't think it's valuable because you don't think Black culture and Black language and Black artists are valuable.

You don't understand rap because you don't listen to rap.

[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?"

[synticity]

fuck yeah linguistics surveys!!

the team that did the Scots Syntax Atlas (incredible tool!!!!) is collecting data in Ireland and Wales!! Please share these links around!

Republic of Ireland: speakforyersel.ac.uk/roi/ Northern Ireland: speakforyersel.ac.uk/ni/ Wales: speakforyersel.ac.uk/wales/

[heywriters]

Just when you think you understand a language, slangs and idioms come at you from behind. In English, my first language, there are phrases that can confuse me in a busy conversation.

"We're cooking!" and "We're cooked" have opposite meanings.

"That's cool" and "That's hot" mean similar things.

"Fired up" and "Got fired" have wildly different meanings, and so do "Knocked out" and "Knocked up."

And if you move slightly to the left in any country/continent, they use different terms and idioms! How does one keep track?! Especially when new to a language?

[english-lessons-bolzano]

Lexical similarities between Slavic languages

Silvio Pasqualini Bolzano inglese ripetizioni English

[amanufacturedheaven]

Rare Language Learning: Polari

If you have ever used the words:

- Naff

- Butch

- Camp

You have unknowingly been speaking the sociolect known as Polari, the language of queer people primarily used in the 30s to the 70s. Polari is now an endangered language, as labelled by the University of Cambridge

Something of note: Many resources out there imply (or state) that Polari was a language invented and used solely by white cis gay men, which is decidedly untrue. Many words of Polari come from drag culture, lesbians, and the Romani people and their language. The use of ‘the language of British gay men’ may be a more palatable title to the general public, but it is not to me. I did my best to curate a variety of resources, but unfortunately much of queer history has been lost many more decades than I’ve been alive, if you have any other resources for studying Polari I would love to read them, message me or leave a link in the replies.

Articles

Learn Polari, the Secret Language of the Gays ⚢ Out Magazine

Polari: The code language gay men used to survive ⚢ BBC

Polari and the Hidden History of Gay Seafarers ⚢ National Museums Liverpool

The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language ⚢ Fabulosa!

Polari People ⚢ Fabulosa!

Polari: a language born from prejudice ⚢ Englishpanish

The secretive gay language that gave LGBTQ people a voice ⚢ GAYTIMES

A brief history of Polari: the curious after-life of the dead language for gay men ⚢ The Conversation

Study Material

The Polari Bible ⚢ Internet Archive

Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang ⚢ Internet Archive

Sociolinguistics / Polari ⚢ StudySmarter

FlashCards ⚢ Quizlet

New Polari Translator ⚢ LingoJam

Polari: A sociohistorical study of the life and decline of a secret language. ⚢ Dissertation, University of Manchester

Polari: a language born from prejudice ⚢ Englishpanish

Simon Bowkett: a short blog in Polari for LGBT+ History Month ⚢ Civil Service LGBT+ Network

[linguisticdiscovery]

Map of British English dialects

by Ryan Starkey (Starkey Comics)

Author Ryan Starkey accompanies the map with a great article:

I’ve spent the last few years pooling together every study, survey, map, and database I can find, and then subjecting my image to several rounds of peer feedback. […] The end result is an image which is, to my knowledge, the most detailed map of British dialects ever made.

He also discusses “Why this map is wrong, and always will be”, and just how difficult it is to create a precise map of dialect regions.

Why is there so much dialect diversity in the U.K.? Because the longer a language is in a region, the more it tends to diversify. This is partly why, for example, there is a much larger variety of dialects spoken in the Eastern U.S. than the Western U.S.

Further Reading

The stories of English (David Crystal)

This is the perfect book to read if you want to know more about the history of dialect diversity in English, because the entire focus of the book is to show that English is not just one unified language (hence the plural “stories” in the title). It’s one of my favorite popular language books.

[thelingodingo]

Inarizaki's Kansai Dialect

Japanese Dialects are split into Eastern and Western, with the Standard Japanese dialect being Eastern (Kanto region) and Kansai region dialect being Western (eg. cities of Osaka and Kyoto, and of course Hyogo prefecture- where Inarizaki is from). The pitch, tone, and stressing of the sounds is different from standard Tokyo Japanese so you should be able to hear the difference in how the Inarizaki members speak even if you don't know any Japanese.

just in case yall didn't know, Suna is the only member on the team that does not use Kansai dialect as he was scouted from Aichi prefecture, so he basically just speaks in the standard dialect

Some linguistics of the dialect that may or may not be heard in the show:

"ya" ending vs the standard "da" ending.

Kore kirai ya. vs Kore kirai da. (I hate this.)

the use of the "h" sound instead of "s"

Han vs standard san (honorific suffix, not really used anymore)

Negation suffix "-hen" instead of the standard "-nai".

Taichou kanri dekitehen koto, homen na. vs Taichou kanri dekitenai koto, homen na. (Don't compliment him when he's obviously not taking care of himself.)

verb "oru" vs the standard "iru".

Dareka ga mitoru yo, Shin-chan. vs Dareka ga miteiru yo, Shin-chan. (Someone's always watching, Shin-chan.)

verb "temau" vs standard "teshimau"

Naitemau yaro! vs Naiteshimau darou! (You're gonna make me cry!)

Negation "suru" verb becomes "sen" instead of "shinai".

Ki ni sen dee. vs Ki ni shinai yo. (Don't worry about it.)

Some words that are different in Kansai dialect:

Honto becomes Honma (really)

Sodane becomes Seyade (thats right)

Nande becomes Nandeyanen (why)

Totemo becomes Meccha (very)

ii becomes ee (good)

"aho" means stupid in Japanese, but apparently in the Kansai dialect calling someone an "aho" is actually a compliment?! (even though it has the same definition)

Overall, I could watch the Karasuno vs Inarizaki episodes a hundred times just to listen to Inarizaki's dialect and how different it sounds to the rest of the characters in the entire show.

Although Karasuno speaks in the standard dialect (which isn't very strange since Miyagi is a suburb close enough to the Kanto region), theres a few lines here and there where one of them says something using the Tohoku dialect (the dialect that would be used often in the rest of Tohoku, such as Aomori).

(I especially like Kita's voice, thank you Nojima Kenji.)

[serpentface]

WARDI WRITTEN LANGUAGE (BASICS).

Couya's full name (properly 'Haidamane Couya') written formally and with common handwriting conventions.

The Wardi written language derives from earlier proto-language systems consisting exclusively of logograms without direct phonetic meaning or grammatical structure. These symbols gradually became simplified and abstracted to the point of many having little intrinsic clarity, and combined to communicate abstract concepts.

The development of a full written language did not occur independently (as very few written languages do), and its phonetic elements (namely its use of syllabograms) were largely derived the 'ancient' Burri writing system, gradually synthesized with native writing conventions, and in the contemporary forms a wholly distinct system. The language's Relatively universalized form is a very recent phenomena, developing within the past two centuries with the region's conquering/unification into a single entity.

The contemporary written language is a mixture of logograms and syllabograms. It is read from right to left and arranged in horizontal columns. The most formal variant of this system contains each character within a square outline, usually separated by a small space. This outline confers little phonetic or symbolic information beyond making distinction between syllables exceptionally clear, and can be (and often is) omitted in handwriting. The separation of words is conveyed through a narrow rectangle or line in formal contexts, and again often omitted in handwriting (instead indicated instead by a wider blank space).

The pure logograms that have been retained in this writing system tend to be those of very common words or specific concepts (most logogram characters for types of livestock, key crops, water, major body parts, etc are widely recognized and in common use). There has not yet been any attempts to fully 'formalize' the language and omit potentially unnecessary logograms, and they remain frequently used as shorthand while conveying the same semantic information.

Many of the syllabogram characters are directly derived from logograms that depicted monosyllabic words. For example, the spoken word 'gan' means 'cow', and the character for the syllable 'gan' is identical to the common logogram for 'cow'.

The name Gantoche (literally "cow-eye") could be written either fully with syllabograms as:

or through logograms as:

Both ultimately communicate the same meaning, but the former clarifies pronunciation (the words gan and atoche are contracted, it's gantoche and not gan-atoche).

It is a relatively easy written language to learn, as the pure syllabogram characters indicate their own pronunciation with little ambiguity and often have consistency to their construction (ie the character for the syllable 'man' contains most of the same elements as that for the syllable 'wan'- the dot placement in particular has indication of the vowel sounds).

The inclusion of logograms in general and many of the syllabic characters being directly imported From logograms complicates matters. These characters lack visual consistency, and can be confusing to the large swath of the public who know common logograms but not the full written language itself. Ie: the word 'ungande' meaning 'liver' will be composed of logogram-derived syllable characters for 'un' (which alone means 'hand') and 'gan' (which alone means 'cow'). Someone who is only semi-literate in common logograms may be confused at the meaning, especially since these same exact same characters may be used elsewhere on their own to indicate 'hand' or 'cow'.

One major exception to this tendency is that current religious doctrine requires established logogram characters describing God to be used in place of syllabic characters. The word for god is 'Od', and has its own unique character (as do each of the Faces, the capital F 'Face', and Its deified pronoun). The syllable 'od' [oʊd] is very common in the Wardi language, and a wholly separate character is used for the phonetic sound when it is not a reference to the deity (ie 'lion' (odo [oʊdoʊ]) does not contain the same character for God in spite of its first syllable having the exact same pronunciation). Names are a bit of a gray area (ie: the name 'Odabi' is very common and carries the meaning of 'gift/blessing from God'). Religious leadership is currently experiencing a mild schism on whether the written character for God is separated due to being wholly sacrosanct (and thus inappropriate to include in the written form of a personal name) or as more of a functional delineation of the sacred and mundane.

[randomtheidiot]

[drafty-castle]

A question:

Tag your answer and where you learned it! (Because I’ll assume the ro-sham-bo’s of the world learned it online.)

[unbfacts]

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania possesses a unique English dialect known as Pittsburghese.

[nordarknessdimsthesky]

A linguistic analysis of tumblr hyperbole in the tags

This post expands my previous analysis of hyperbolic reactions to cluster tags by themes. There were too many themes, some of them overlapping, to create a cohesive graph. Instead, I present several overarching themes from a data set of 50 tags observed and documented in various corners of tumblr.

1. Feeling Normal™️

Tags within this cluster profess Normal feelings (read: extreme excitement, enthusiasm, obsession, derangement, etc.).

#mmmmrrrghuhhhhghhh #I'm so normal about it teehee #absolutely not rending my clothing #feeling very normal and not feral at all #i will simply never recover #gif sets sent to personally destroy me #i can't cope #the eyes #i'm a puddle #i am INCONSOLABLE #i am DISTRAUGHT #IM NOT OKKAAAAAAYYYYYY #FEELING TOTALLY ONE HUNDRED PERCENT NORMAL

2. Feralness

The following data points conjure animalistic behavior. There’s a non-zero amount of biting and chewing involved.

#chomping biting barking #biting my arms off #rattling my cage #[incoherent biting noises] #chewing glass #chewing through wood #*shaking the bars of my enclosure* HELLO!!!!!!!! #climbing the walls #biting gnawing chewing #im gonna rip off my front door and eat it

3. Noisy Emotional Outbursts

These tags encompass crying, screaming, yelling, and other loud reactions.

# shaking sobbing crying #SCREAMIIIING BANGING MY HEAD ON THE WALL #*no thoughts only wailing* #i am SOBBING #IM CRYING LIKE A BITCH #*just fucking yelling* #S C R E A M #screeching into a pillow #brb sobbing for 5-7 business years

4. Throwing

All of these tags except the last one involve being thrown instead of throwing things. I, personally, am entertained by the range of places/situations people are throwing themselves into.

#i am going to THROW MYSELF into the SEA #hurl me into the sea #hurl me into the sun #trebuchet me into the sun #hurl me straight at europa #vent me out of an airlock #slam me against a wall #put me in a box and throw me down the stairs #throwing myself into traffic you know? #just defenestrate me already #defenestrate me #absolutely hurl me through plate glass #i'm going to start tossing furniture

5. Bodily Harm

There’s a good deal of overlap with the previous theme. Nearly all of the tags involving throwing would result in varying degrees of bodily harm. Here are the tags outside of the Throwing subgroup.  

#im going to throw upppppp #tearing my hair out #banging my head against the wall #SCREAMIIIING BANGING MY HEAD ON THE WALL #biting my arms off #microwaving myself #crumple me up and microwave me

6. Absurdism

My personal favorite cluster. The imagery conjured and resulting comedic hyperbole is just [chef’s kiss].

#im gonna rip off my front door and eat it #crumple me up and microwave me #put me in a box and throw me down the stairs #defenestrate me #absolutely hurl me through plate glass

7. Keysmashes

These tags center less around meaning and more around style, so they form the last group. A handful of these could fall under Noisy Emotional Outbursts because they represent reaction noises. In my linguistic judgment, keysmashing increases the hyperbole – consider augh versus aughfhghghghhh – the latter reads as prolonged and more intense emotionally.

#aghdjakgsjadhjaka * #hrhrhrhgnnnghhhhh #aughfhghghghhh #mmmmrrrghuhhhhghhh #I'm so normal about it teehee #waughfhghghh #oughhhhghghhh

*one digression in a friend discord server was how people interpret keysmashes in their minds. Some hear the first couple letters and then some sputtering, others hear static. It’s a common joke that you need a minor in linguistics to understand conversations in this friend group. Such is the nature of things when the chaos linguist energy is strong.

[nicolos]

do we think people in westeros can speak high valyrian. like. in the great houses or whatever. do the maesters speak it??? or is it all common tongue whatever that is

[sesamenom]

Various inhabitants of rivendell

(inspired by @thesummerestsolstice here and here)

[sprinklecipher]

Hi there! I’m interested in how the meaning of "potato bug" varies by region, so I'm running a very short (~1 minute), anonymous survey to find out!

---SURVEY LINK---

You can complete the survey even if you've never heard of "potato bugs" before (but please indicate as much when prompted). Also, please be aware that the survey includes several photos of insects, so I'd advise against taking it if you're squeamish about bugs

Thanks and have a great day! :)