#linguistics major

[thelinguistthing]

Hi ! :D

I'm a first year French linguistics student ! I made this blog to find other language nerds like me and to gather interesting bits of data and informations about linguistics (and to compile said infos for my studies.)

Languages I'm studying:

French (native language),

English (fluent),

Italian (B2),

Korean (A2),

Chinese (A1) ,

Dutch (A1), update:

tag for Books Recommendations: #gem books recommendations

tag for for tracking my Dutch learning : #gemlovelanguage

Anyways, welcome !

[superevilstudycat]

oh to learn arabic oh to learn ladino oh to learn yiddish oh to learn greek oh to learn berber oh to learn farsi oh to learn marathi oh to learn urdu oh to learn french oh to learn hindu oh to learn tagalog oh to learn

[kat-kalamity]

yea sure whatever im a linguist and i specifically look for any hint in speech that someone might be a tumblr user WHAT ABOUT IT

the most disorienting thing thats ever happened to me was when a linguistics major stopped in the middle of our conversation, looked me in the eye, and said, "you have a very interesting vernacular. were you on tumblr in 2014?" and i had to just stand there and process that one for a good ten seconds

[i-miss-music-247]

Semantics, Morphology, and Linguistic Anthropology...

Let's do this 😤

[portalmonsterrr]

Modern AU where Alhaitham and Kaveh adopt baby Nahida  to save their failing marriage and somehow it works

[gongliyart]

College Bokuto !!

[spocks-kaathyra]

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

[ph4nt-mp]

I see your Scottish pirate-accented Wind, and I raise you my hawaiian pidgin english-accented Wind

[lanotteviene]

anyway it's funny in an interesting way how the internet turned Kafka into the sad boy with an existentialist + romantic flavour instead of the author of seminal works about alienation & the confusing, painful contrast between what society deems normal and what Isn't. how the rules that establish that divide aren't made clear, how to the marginalized they seem ever-changing, impossible to grasp, surreal to the point of despair.

if you've ever felt overwhelmed by the absurdity of a system that seems legitimately against you instead of for you, if you've had days or months or years where language or cultural barriers have made you feel wrong to your core, if you've dealt with so much stress or mental illness or abuse that you've struggled to recognize yourself in the mirror his work talks about your struggles and would probably speak to you

[thelinguistthing]

sneak peak of my hot linguistic summer XD

Trying to understand a bit of Thai and Korean at the moment for the internship in the lab (and for myself if I'm honest) while trying to teach some French slang to the others. French learners, have you heard of "Verlan"? Is there such thing in other languages?

Anyway having the library and the university for ourselves on top of the lab is incredible, honestly, why bother going on vacations?

(i'm also forever mindblown by the hangul/ 한글 writing system... i don't know how to explain it but it was made so logically, it's very satisfying and easy to learn !!! one day I will do a deep dive on it for sure)

Happy nerdy summer 🤓🏝️🌞 📚🌊 !!!

[superevilstudycat]

you're in her DMs, i'm in my philosophy lecture writing the filthiest most pussy throbbing naruto lemon you will ever read

[banefort]

im gonna be reallly annoying here for a second grrm shouldve added so much more linguistic diversity to westeros. especially the north and ESPECIALLY north of the wall. also there's no way daenerys's mothertongue would be high valyrian. thank you.

[momokatzetzgo]

Guys I like kinda need to be good at the deciphering system in Homicipher because I am straight a linguistics major; like if the monster dating simulator game defeats me through its use of intermixing SOV and SVO then I am COOKED for my syntax exam

[mxs1nister]

"words could not describe..." yes they could. they always can if you know which ones to use. that is the beauty of them.

[yonpote]

LMAO