#i am not a linguist

[zoloftoxycodone]

Stop calling it "proto-punk"

I'd argue that the term "proto-punk" isn't accurate.

Proto is a prefix meaning "first" and I don't think that proto-punk is in itself a form of punk but a precursor to. We don't call post punk "eschatopunk"

Therefore I think we should be calling it "prepunk". This is because it sounds dirty.

[hidefdoritos]

You know how, when someone thanks you for doing extra work, often rather than saying "You're welcome!" (which feels like agreeing that they're an inconvenience) you say "No problem!" (because you don't want them to feel like they're a burden)?

Just found a spot in the book of Philippians 3:1 where Paul repeats an earlier exhortation to rejoice in the Lord. Then he says that writing the same thing again "grieueth mee not" (1599 Geneva Bible), or "to me indeed is not grievous" (KJV), or as the ESV puts it in 2016, "is no trouble to me."

So if you see someone whining about the death of the phrase "You're welcome," well, precursors to the phrase "No problem" have been around in English for at least 400 years.

[consult-sherlockholmes]

Any tips on the British accent?

In a week I’ll have to fake it for some personal purposes. And I need your help.

Which British accent are you exactly referring to, given all the different accents depending on the area in the UK. But I assume you mean the received pronunciation of southern England.

The best way to emulate another accent is to first observe. Watch videos of people talking with your desired accent, listen closely, but also look how they move their lips and shape the words and try to recreate that. Many vowels and consonants are also differently pronounced in comparison to American English, so it is best to research that a bit, and maybe go to Cambridge Dictionary's website, where you can listen to recordings of words in both American and British english. Also certain vocabulary is more common in British English than in American English, that is also important to note.

Personal purposes? Are you trying to fake being British to show off?

[artmctalon]

Did a bunch of orthographic doodles during my breaks at work, as I was working through ideas concerning language construction.

I have been fiddling with a couple conlangs for a while now, mostly for this worldbuilding project I've also been fiddling with on and off again, involving the Vita-Ra.

Right now I have a proto-language of roots that I want to develop into a language family, and this was me ideating on what sort of writing system the early language speakers might have invented. I figured that like the Oracle bone script, early forms of writing would be recognizable pictographic representations of existing things, which would over time evolve into a writing system with more abstract, simplified characters (like how the Phoenician abjad was influenced by more representational hieroglyphs in its evolution).

Still trying to figure out the visual aesthetic. Some of the designs, I find too off balance or messy. Also, I think a couple characters just look like I straight-up copied a Hanzi logogram (hell, the character for "Ko" might as well be the same thing as the Chinese character for "river").

Still, it's a work in progress. And there's still plenty of potential I can work with.

Probably gonna binge some Artifexian vids this week.

[exercise-of-trust]

i don't generally bother posting the stuff i knit exactly from existing patterns but i finally wove in the ends on a couple frankensteined socks and figured i might as well throw them up here? they're very dumb but i'm fond of them.

for the first pair i made up a colorwork pattern for the feanorian heraldic symbol, and slapped it together with the pisqu sock structure and toe pattern, and a snippet of a mitten for the sole halves. the yarn is 100g of jamieson's of shetland that i got on the high street of fort william, as a treat after walking 100 miles from glasgow to get there, and i had... maybe 10 yards total left over? i had to cut off the long tail from my cast-on and use it to graft the toe closed on the last sock; it was nerve-wracking. if i did this pattern again, i'd probably put the toe motif in between the two heraldic lozenges, but the first time through i wasn't sure how the math would work out so i frontloaded them. ah well!

the second pair is the structure of an existing sock i've forgotten the name of (worked in the round from the tip of the heel to a hat-like shape with six sides; two opposite ones are grafted together to form the instep and the other sets of two open into the cuff and close into the toe), with the colorwork pattern from the gogink sweater yoke. i thiiiink you could do this with basically any colorwork sweater yoke, but i've only tried it with this one. if i did it again i'd add some short rows to the front side of the cuff; the construction sort of pulls it down so that the heel side of the cuff is higher than the front, and a couple short row rounds would probably level it back out. i like these because they neatly smash the cuff-down/toe-up binary and make everybody mad, and i am at all times an imp of the perverse.

[awkwardturtletrash]

Im not an expert at all but Im opinionated. I did a research paper on the Gullah dialect of Creole languages for a syntax class. It is very much a ‘vibes’ based language due to their abstract use of such limited vocabulary. Some words have dozens and dozens of different meanings, tenses don’t matter, verbs and nouns are meaningless, and tone carries most of it.

It can still be researched, recorded, and has a historical path. It is a rigid, definable language to native speakers . It’s very much something that has to be told to understand, it’s very much against other language’s natural code of conduct. But it exists historically, proven despite its rejection of syntactic law.

Emojis and “chat” are neither of these things. They aren’t natural progressions of grammar, they’re humorous references. They’re jokes. Grammar isn’t just references that mean other things, it’s a system of communication through shared representation of concepts. It IS rigid because it fucking had to be. Otherwise there would be no point.

Gullah is extremely socially based and doesn’t make sense to those unfamiliar with what they’re taking about, it can come across as “vibes.” This is because it is shaped by colonialism, slavery, had time to develop, and location.

Memes and a quote from twitch are nothing grammatical. They’re not new forms of language. I understand you want your wasted time to be more important or mean something but maybe be more interesting than calling images pertaining to Seinfeld equal to ancient texts. Just a thought!

"chat is a pronoun" has officially joined my list of internet linguistics pet peeves. "emojis are hieroglyphs" is welcoming them to the club.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

hope you feel better soon!

I am riddled with ailments, but I stay silly!

[ifindus]

Human names for HWS Norway

I’ve seen several posts about human names for the nations going around lately and I wanted to offer my own opinion on Norway’s name, as a Norwegian person. This is not meant as critique of other people’s headcanons, it’s just my personal opinion and meant to offer some insight into the cultural and historical background of certain Norwegian names. I’ve made several posts about this topic, but I realize that it’s been years since last time and I think it’s about time to make a new one.

First; some background on naming traditions in Norway. In Norway surnames especially are very diverse and carries a lot of history and meaning behind them as they often are names of farmsteads or places where the families lived in the 1920s. This is when it became mandatory to inherit surnames from your parents. Before this, people often changed names when they migrated and took the name of the place they moved to, as a sort of “nickname” when people needed to distinguish you from other people with the same name. “Oh yes, that’s XXXX from this farm, not XXXX from that farm” etc. The patronyms had a similar function to this and prior to 1920 everyone was named in official documents in this fashion: “First name, Name of father -daughter/-son, Name of place/farmstead”. This explains the origin of the modern surnames ending with “-sen”, where “sen” means “son”. These surnames were inherited by people who did not have a connection to a farm or a place, perhaps because they lived in the cities and were working class.

Next; a critique on the more widely used name in the fandom: Lukas Bondevik. Neither of these names are good picks for Norway in my opinion. Starting with the surname; Bondevik. As its own name, it is fine, it means “farmer’s bay”. The problem with it is due to its close association with a conservative politician who at one point was prime minister in Norway. The Bondevik-government is not uncommon to talk about and when I just google the name “Bondevik”, every single result on the first page is of this politician. Again, because Norwegian surnames are so personal and geographically locked, you end up giving Norway a history relating to this specific family. There are only 201 people in Norway with this surname, most of them are related to each other, and the name will be associated with this conservative politician. It would be similar to England being named Arthur Thatcher or Arthur Churchill, or America being named Alfred F. Kennedy or Alfred F. Reagan. There is no avoiding this.

Continuing with the critique on Lukas. There is no way around this name as it has been the go-to choice for the fandom for several years now, picked out of a list of names Hima suggested. Personally I do not think this name fits Norway as a character due to both cultural and historical Norwegian associations. Lukas is not a name that was used in Norway before the 1990s and it did not become a popular name until 2008. Lukas is not a name with Norse origin, its origins are biblical, and is a new trendy name that has entered the Norwegian society with the globalisation and Americanisation of our media. It is a very young name and you will not find people over 35 with this name still today. If you talk about hws Norway where he exists before 1990, he would not have this name. It is both culturally and historically inaccurate. It is also, in my opinion, a bit of a fuck-boy name – it gives modern, upper-class or city boy vibes. Not a name that I think fits hws Norway.

Lastly; my own suggestions of names for Norway. I will never stop advocating for Sigurd as the best name for Norway. It is a name of Norse origin and has been relatively popular through all time periods, never going out of fashion, a solid Norwegian name. Because of its history you can find this name in any social class (though perhaps not upper-class today?), and it does not betray any age nor will it ever become outdated. Its meaning is “victory” and “guardian”. I must admit it does not sound very good when pronounced in English, but it is a very pretty name in Norwegian (the "d" is silent). The name has a long history, but is not closely associated with one specific person. There is a famous myth/story with origins to before the Viking Age about “Sigurd Fåvnesbane, the dragon slayer”, and I like the parallel between hws Norway and this myth, and hws England and the story of King Arthur. Sigurd is a good Norwegian name and its connotations fits the character of Norway very well.

My suggestions of surnames for Norway are Nordvik and Ødegård. I still cannot choose between these two as I love them both. Nordvik means “northern bay” and it is such a generic surname you can find it everywhere in Norway where there’s water. I like it because it ties in with the original meaning of the name “Norway”, the way to the north, and associates with the sea, which has been of huge importance to Norway through history. Ødegård means “desolate farm” and only became used as a surname/nickname after the Black Plague, which saw many farms abandoned. Ødegård was the name these farms got and people who moved there took it as a surname in the process previously explained. I like this name because it is not tied to any specific region either, so the geographical origin becomes more intangible and creates an air of mystery.

This is my personal take on the names for hws Norway, and again; is not meant to be a critique against anyone using the popular fandom names. I know habits are hard to change and at this point is probably very integrated when talking about the character. Anyone is free to use any name they want of course, I am just offering some cultural and historical background and insight on them as “Norwegian names”. If anyone has other name suggestions for Norway they are unsure about or wish to know more about, I’ll gladly make an input if Norwegian advise is wanted.

[naorazy-vavilon]

My favorite thing about science is that it usually says that nothing in our world is specific ,categorysable or simple

And it usually is funny because

"Oh you study Xscience? Can you tell me about X?"

'X doesn't exist.'

Love science

[a-book-of-creatures]

Maybe they were confused by Andromeda, as opposed to Gynomeda?

andromeda

in an astronomical-astrological miscellany, bavaria, late 15th c.

source: Coburg, Landesbibl., Ms. 5, fol. 87r

[ryllen]

Fun fact for the day, that u may or may not already know,

[frenchiepal]

17.12.24 🍞 🍪 sooo tired :') i'm really looking forward to the holidays, half of which i will probably spend sleeping. apart from that the workload has become a bit more bearable so yayy🍀

🎧- breath of life by florence + the machine

[embervoices]

Inasmuch as languages can exist without sound, of course they can exist without vowels.

Does that question change when we specify spoken language?

Not necessarily - there's quite a lot of sounds that can be made by vibrating something other than vocal chords, eh?

I admit to doubting a human natural vocal language will develop without vowels, for the reasons given in the OP - they're the first sounds humans tend to make, involuntarily, and thus ones we notice quickly as a species when sound is the mechanism for communication.

But that clearly doesn't mean, given a difference in parameters, it wouldn't in some other context.

Clearly they already do when we remove "vocal" or "natural" from the criteria, so why wouldn't removing "human" potentially change it, too?

So what would an alien sound-based language sound like if the sounds they could make most easily weren't what we recognise as vowels?

How many musical instruments do we have that could perhaps demonstrate the alternatives? Can we involve pitch without it being vowels?? Would only percussion ones count for this? Do drums make vowels??

Now I'm pondering... I'm not sure I know enough about the distinctions made in linguistics to follow the thread fully...

I know you said not to ask you about the hyoid bone post because you’re not an anatomist but I have a question relating to it that I think you’d be equipped to answer: Are vowels actually necessary for speech? Could a language exist without them?

i mean... in the most technical sense, i guess it could, but... why. vowels are foundational sounds - literally, they're the first sounds we figure out how to make before all the rest of the articulatory system gets involved as motor skills improve. and you'd be absolutely nerfing the number of possible distinct words, especially if you consider that vowels often carry suprasegmental information like tone and length that most consonants can't express.

[www-bestiemme]

I’m so unhappy with how Kim looks but I’ve spent 5 hours on this we move on, WHATEVER

[agarafile]

i've seen a lot of people say that the way to go for fanfics and fanart to express how pearl (and impulse and tango) could communicate with the robot talk should be sign language. and that is so great!! but auslan (australian sign language) is very different from asl. which would, unfortunaly, only contribute to the miscommunications