#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.

[third-time-charmed]

Fun fact about names in Golden Regrets: "Forte," which is Alicia's second surname alias, is taken from Latin meaning "by chance." It shares a translation with the Italian "a ventura" which is where the aventurine stone gets its name from.

He named her after himself. 🙃

Also, "Pativalo," her first surname alias, is a heavily modified form of a Romani word that means "honor" or "trust".

[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.

[liviecurated]

and that's on being supportive parents!

[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.

[yeoldenews]

I'm not sure if you'll know the answer to this, but for the regency era, how common are contractions in letters and speech? Not the "Wm." for William kind, but your standard "couldn't," "wouldn't" and "shouldn't?" Thanks!

All common English contractions did exist by the Regency period. However, there is very limited period documentation or scholarly research as to whether they were viewed as "proper" English or not at the time.

Contractions were first used in the English language sometime in the last half of the 16th century, and by the late 17th and early 18th centuries were approaching what most people today would probably consider over-use.

By the time the Regency era rolled around however, many older uses of contractions had already fallen, or were in the midst of falling, out of favor. 'Tis, 'twas, ne'er, e'er, e'en, tho', thro', etc., were mostly confined to poetry by the early 19th century (though 'tis seems to have hung on a little bit longer than the others).

The last half of the 18th century had also already seen the almost complete disappearance of the most common use of English contractions in the 17th and early 18th centuries - using 'd in place of -ed - as seen here in an example from the 1736...

The frequency of use of contractions in the Regency period specifically, seems to have varied greatly from person to person. Jane Austen herself used very few contractions in her novels compared to some of her contemporaries. Couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't do not appear at all in Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility or Emma, and all other contractions were used very sparingly.

In P&P, I counted one appearance of "I'm", one of "you'll", one "won't", two "can't"s, three "shan't"s and six "don't"s.

I compared this to Evelina, by Frances Burney (published in 1778) which (just in Volume One) includes: 14 occurrences of can't, 4 of won't, 35 of don't (vs only 15 of 'do not') and 11 of shan't (3 spelled shan't and 8 sha'n't).

Though couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't all appear in Evelina as well (in an archaic forms which included a space between the modal verb and n't: could n't, would n't, should n't), I did notice they are used much more by lower class characters than by upper.

There seems to be some evidence that negative contractions (those ending in n't) began to be considered improper English in the latter half of the 18th century, and subsequently generally fell out of favor with the upper classes.

The Grammatical Wreath... by Alexander Bicknell, published in 1790, specifically cautions against using contractions in correspondence with social superiors.

"And be careful in not omitting any letter belonging to the words you write; as, I've, can't, don't, shou'd, wou'd, &c. instead of I have, cannot, do not, should, would; for such contractions not only appear disrespectful and too familiar, but discover ignorance and impudence."

This very interesting paper (which you can view in full if you have a free JSTOR account) analyzes the grammatical trends found through 50 years (1730s-1780s) of the correspondence of writer Elizabeth Montagu. The author marked a significant falloff in the use of negative contracted modal and auxiliary verbs over the course of Montagu's letters. In the 1730s Montagu used un-contracted negatives 62% of the time and contracted 38%, but by the 1780s Montagu used no contacted negatives at all.

Granted these are only the letters of a single person and, as the author notes, could have many other explanations (age, change in social class, familiarity with the correspondent, etc.), it does seem to reflect what I've personally observed in writing from this period.

So the answer to your question is - yes, contractions existed and yes, they were in fairly common use - with the asterisk that how they were viewed by society is not terribly well documented for the Regency period.

So I'd personally say feel free to use them in any Regency era stories you may be writing, but do so sparingly with very proper or upper class characters.

If you're aiming for very authentic period flavor, you could also try throwing in some contractions that have fallen out of use over the past two centuries - shan't, mustn't, needn't, mayn't, etc. I'd especially recommend using 'shan't' in place of 'shouldn't' where appropriate, and also remembering that if you're using 'can not' instead of 'can't' it is always one word - cannot.

One thing that is period authentic, but I won't personally recommend to any Regency era writers (unless you want to throw some meta commentary on the chaos that is the English language into an epistolary) - is that no one really agreed where to put the apostrophe in wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't until well into the 19th century. It's very common to see the n't separate as in the examples from Evelina, but I've also seen wou'd'n't, would'nt, wou'd'nt, etc. etc. etc., sometimes multiple different ways within a single paragraph.

Hope some of that was helpful. I had fun digging into it!

[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!

[grymm-gardens]

Cassandra and the Nevarran Accent

and how it is a perfect recreation of the dead Gothic language

Accidentally discovered that Cassandra Pentaghast's accent matches up flawlessly with the extinct language of the Ostrogoths, and the Visigoths of pre-medieval Europe a few years ago and many of you wanted to see my notes so ive polished them up as much as I feel like and I am blessing you all with them now

I'll start by just going over the gothic language basics and then giving some good examples of Cassandra speaking, I am not a linguistics or etymology expert by any means, I am just a dumb ass who really likes ancient languages so bear with me, and ask questions if i make no sense

Gothic Language Basics

Phonetics-

Gothic does have very similar pronunciation to other Germanic languages with a few differences from it Frankish, and roman neighbors.

I am focusing on the basic and grammar and pronunciation as well as the phonetic alphabet, Gothic had a runic alphabet so there are a few letter without direct cognates and those will be spelled as they are pronounced for convenience

Rules - E, and O are always long, I is always short, A and U have both short an long variations EI digraph pronounced as long eye IU falling diphthong as in ew AI and AU digraphs each with numerous pronunciations

Short vowels - a, aí, i, aú, u Long               - ā, ē, ai, ei, ō, au, ū Diphthongs - ái, áu, iu Consonants  - b, g, d, kwa, z, h, th, k, l, m, n, ya/ja, p, r, s, t, w, f, x/ks, hw Significant Phonetics and Grammar

A lack of a short o sound, shift to an au sound instead

typical pronunciation of th, as well as V and W

light emphasis on the "hwh" sound of WH

Guttural sounds on vowels a, au, o ,u, and on consonants k, g, h

partly pitch, partly stress accent (think swedish as a very melodic example, german for a more stress based example)

no switching of the v and w pronunciation as seen in some west germanic languages

no rhotic r

no evidence of the Germanic umlaut

The way that i was going to have audio of her speaking here but tumblr is being a fucking menace so you will just have listen for yourselves, but pay close attention to how you will hear inconsistent pronunciation of the short o sound as in cot, no pronounced rhotic r's, proper th pronunciation, as well as her unique stresses on many other vowels

this isnt even to mention her hallmark guttural ugh sounds which are so unbelievably consistent with gothic it makes my heart sing

Some bonus Geographical Evidence if we look at the neighboring countries and languages at the time gothic was in use we see The roman empire - heavy use of greek and latin, the Franks - origins of the french language, the saxons -an ancestors of modern germans, the britons -ancestor of modern day britain and the empire of hispania - modern day spain these match up extremely well with nevarras neighboring countries being Orlais, The Anderfels, Tevinter, The Free Marches, even the way the Antiva is seperated from Nevarra by Tevinter matches the way The roman empire is positioned bewteen the goths and hispania The direct equivilents match up as Nevarra -The Goths Tevinter -The roman empire Antiva - Hispania Orlais - The Franks Ferelden/The Free Marches - Briton/Germanic States The Anderfels - Saxony Considering how much this geography influenced the gothic language its reasonable to assume Orlais, Tevinter, The Anderfels and The Free marches should have had similar effects on nevarran language.

maps for reference

Primary source was this Gothic Grammar Guide by Joseph Wright from 1910 that was based on the king james bible translation done by 4th century gothic priest Ulfilas

[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.

[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

[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

[ryllen]

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

[www-bestiemme]

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

[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.

[secondbeatsongs]

can someone explain to me the semantic difference between "crashing out" and "freaking out", because I've yet to see one used in a situation where the other wouldn't also suffice