#little linguistics

[dearchloe]

little learning time: homophones

All characters are 18+

Today, let's talk about homophones!

That's a big scary word, isn't it? But it's nothing to worry about! A homophone is just a word that sounds the same as another word, even though it looks different and has a different meaning. Can you think of any examples?

Here's one! We and wee are homophones!

We is a word that's used to talk about yourself and other people together! For example:

"We need to talk about your potty habits," Mummy told Lily.

You see how here, Mummy is talking about herself and Lily?

Wee is different! It's what makes your nappies all warm and soggy sometimes! Or if you're super big and your mummy trusts you not to make a mess, maybe you do your wees in the potty. For example:

"I didn't wee on the floor!" Lily argued.

You see how here, Lily is talking about wee as an action she 'didn't' do? That means it's a verb, but we haven't learnt about those yet, so don't worry! Wee can also be a noun. We did learn about those. Do you remember what they are?

That's right! They're words that name a certain thing. For example:

"Did you do a wee in the potty, Lily?" Mummy asked.

Can you remember how to pick all the nouns out of this sentence?

It's important to know about some common homophones because if you don't, you might use the wrong word, and then your sentences won't make sense! Your mummy might even think it's just baby babble!

Look:

"Wee need to talk about your potty habits," Mummy told Lily.

That doesn't make much sense, does it now?

There are some super important homophones that are really easy to get wrong! Shall we learn them?

The first set of homophones come as a three! Can you count that high?

The words are to, too, and two. Let's take them one by one.

To is a word we use to show direction and movement. We could say that Mummy went to the nursery, or Mummy gave the bottle to Lily. Can you tell what's moving in each sentence?

Too is a word that means 'more than the right amount'. We could say that Lily was too little to use the potty, or Lily's nappy was too wet to last the night. You could remember this one by thinking that it has too many Os — more than both the other homophones in the set!

Two is a number! How are your maths classes going? We could say that Mummy has two little girls, or that Lily did a number two in her Pull-Up. Pee-yew! You could remember this one by thinking that the W in the middle is like two Vs stuck together. Or is that too complicated for little brains?

You should also know the difference between there, their, and they're!

There is a word we use to talk about places! It means 'in that place', or 'at that point'. It can also be used to say that something is present. We could say that the potty is over there, or that there were lots of nappies for Lily in Mummy's bag. You can remember this because the word there contains another word that we use to talk about places. Can you spy it? The word is 'here'! Why not write out the phrase here and there a few times? I'm sure that will help you remember!

Their is a word that we use to talk about things belonging to other people! Remember when we talked about nouns? Their is a word that describes who a noun belongs to, and that means it's a type of word called an adjective! But don't worry about that too much, we'll learn about adjectives another day. We could say that Lily and Katie loved their Mummy, or that when Lily tried to be big, Mummy and Katie rolled their eyes. How do you think we can remember this one? Would you like to come up with your own rule?

A rule that helps us remember something is called a mnemonic! Can you say that word? That's ok, it's a very tricky word for little mouths! Maybe it would help if you took your dummy out?

Remember, their is a word that you use to talk about things belonging to more than one other person! You can also use it to talk about things belonging to your nonbinary friends or caretakers, if they use they/them pronouns! It's super important to be respectful of other people's identities when you talk about them.

Now let's talk about they're! See how it has an apostrophe in the middle? An apostrophe is a special mark that does lots of different jobs, but in this word, it's telling us about something called a contraction. That means that this word should have extra letters in it! Can you guess what letters?

They're is a contraction of they are! See how the a of are has been taken out, and the two words have been joined together? Because this is a phrase that gets used lots and lots, people have come up with this shorter form to make it quicker to say and write. We could say they're both getting their nappies changed, or they're going to bed early.

This one is super easy to remember! You just need to look at your sentence and decide if it would make sense to replace they're with the words they are.

Do you want to try it?

Let's take this sentence from earlier, Lily and Katie loved their Mummy. If you got a little bit confused and wrote Lily and Katie loved they're Mummy, you could use this trick! So the sentence would say Lily and Katie loved they are Mummy.

Does that make sense? No, I don't think so either! So now you know that they're isn't the homophone in this sentence!

They're is used to talk about what two or more people are, or what a nonbinary person using they/them pronouns is! If you're talking about a single person who uses he/him, she/her, or other pronouns, you have to use a different contraction. Some examples are he's and she's.

Do you know about homophones now? Are you sure? Let's find out!

Can you choose the right homophone in the following sentences?

Lily and Katie are to/too/two confident about there/their/they're potty training.

The to/too/two of them decide they don't need there/their/they're nappies any more.

They think they can make it to/too/two the potty every single time.

There/their/they're not right about that, are they?

They take there/their/they're nappies off when Mummy isn't there/their/they're.

Lily and Katie are really to/too/two little to do this, though!

There/their/they're are lots of puddles on the floor when Mummy gets home, and she's cross.

Her to/too/two little girls have pottied everywhere without there/their/they're nappies on!

She smacks there/their/they're bottoms and puts them to/too/two bed early.

It's lucky Mummy has to/too/two boobies to/too/two give her to/too/two babies there/their/they're nighttime feed faster.

How are you feeling? Do you think you picked all the right homophones? Let's see!

Q1

The first homophone here is too! Remember, it means 'more than the right amount'! How much confidence do you think is the right amount for Katie and Lily to have in their potty training?

The other homophone in this sentence is their, because it's the potty training belonging to Katie and Lily — it's theirs, even if there isn't very much of it!

Q2

The first homophone here is two. Why's that? Remember, two is a number! Can you count that high? One little girl and another little girl make two little girls! The next answer is their. The nappies definitely belong to Katie and Lily! They're not Mummy's, she's far too big! What kind of nappies do you have? Are they as adorable as you are?

Q3

There's only one answer here, and it's to! Remember, we use this one when we're talking about movement. Katie and Lily are moving to the potty — or at least, they should be. Do you go to the potty, or does the potty come to you? Or are you too little for that, and you still potty in your pants?

Q4

The answer in this sentence is they're. Look at the sentence! You could use they are instead, right?

Do you think you're right about how good your potty training is? Does your mummy agree with you? You should listen to her! Lots of little ones get overconfident if they sometimes manage to get their wees and poos in the potty, but good mummies know that potty training is a long process and little ones can't always be trusted!

Q5

This sentence is especially tricky, because it has two homophones in it that sound the same as each other! The first one is their. That's because the nappies still belong to Katie and Lily even after they take them off. When your mummy takes your soggy nappies off, they're still yours! And no one else wants them, do they? That would be yucky!

The second one is there. How do we remember this one? That's right! It has the word 'here' in it, so it talks about places! This sentence is about where Mummy is. What does your mummy do when she's not there? Does she leave you all by yourself, or do you get to play with a babysitter?

Q6

The answer here is too! That's a tricky one, because of course, Katie and Lily aren't too little — they're just the right amount of little! But they're too little for the specific situation we're talking about, aren't they? Only very big girls get to go without their nappies, and it's always up to their mummies to decide when that happens!

Q7

Did you get this answer? That's right, it's there! Remember, we can use this one to talk about things that are present. That's not like a Christmas present, though. It's a word that just means the thing exists in a certain place, like these puddles exist on Mummy's floor. But of course a present could be present! I'm not sure Mummy wants any soggy yellow presents, though — and it's not even Christmas!

Q8

There are two homophones to decide on here, but we've seen both of them before! Do you remember? The first one is two, the number of little troublemakers that Mummy has. Do you have a sister, brother, or sibling? If you do, you have to be super grown up and good at sharing your mummy!

The second one is their. We talked about how the nappies still belong to Lily and Katie even though they took them off, didn't we? That's a very naughty thing to do, remember!

Q9

This answer is their again! That's because the smacked bottoms belong to the little girls, even though they probably wish they didn't! Do you get your bottom smacked sometimes? That's ok! Learning to be good is super hard sometimes, but it's just as important as learning all about homophones, and a smacked bottom is a really good reminder, isn't it?

The second answer is to. It's a direction of travel, isn't it? Mummy is taking her little cuties upstairs and tucking them into their cot! When's your bedtime? Is it nice and early so you're wide awake for school?

Q10

This is the last question, and there are lots of homophones to find! Did you get them all? Let's see!

The first one is two again! It's another number! Mummy has one boobie for each of her two babies — isn't that lucky? Do you have to share your mummy's boobies, or do you get them all to yourself?

The second answer is to. This is a little bit different, isn't it? It's not about movement, but you can also use to to mean something like 'so that'. Do you see how that works? Here, it's lucky Mummy has two boobies, so that she can feed both her babies at once!

The third homophone is another two. Did you know that? It's easy to work out! This sentence is telling you that Mummy has the same number of boobies as babies, so it uses the same word to describe each of those things!

And finally, the last homophone is their! Did you get it? The nighttime feed is a special time that belongs to Lily and Katie, when they can cuddle up together and spend time with their Mummy as a family. Doesn't that sound nice?

Did Katie, Lily, and Mummy work together to help you learn all about homophones? Do you think you know them super well?

Why not write a little list of all the homophones you can think of, and then try writing some sentences using them? Make sure to get them the right way round!

[official-linguistics-post]

on reconstruction and historical linguistics

to follow up on today's reblog, i want to comment briefly on the apparent misapprehension that linguistic reconstruction is just guesswork with a fancy name, because that's not accurate!

reconstruction is based on specific, well-attested constraints of linguistic development. we know from centuries of investigation that languages tend to change in predictable ways. we also have a decent understanding of the complexities introduced by phenomena like language contact, which can result in borrowing on multiple structural levels. our methods are well established and borne out by evidence.

comparative reconstruction involves applying these known constraints ("rules") in reverse on a collected body of words in related descendant languages. when possible, we also incorporate historical written evidence, which often provides midpoint references for changes in progress. it is always recognized by historical linguists that reconstruction can be imperfect; we cannot know what information has been lost.

the results of reconstruction can be mixed, but i'll let campbell (2013:144) explain:

How Realistic are Reconstructed Proto-languages? The success of any given reconstruction depends on the material at hand to work with and the ability of the comparative linguist to figure out what happened in the history of the languages being compared. In cases where the daughter languages preserve clear evidence of what the parent language had, a reconstruction can be very successful, matching closely the actual spoken ancestral language from which the compared daughters descend. However, there are many cases in which all the daughters lose or merge formerly contrasting sounds or eliminate earlier alternations through analogy, or lose morphological categories due to changes of various sorts. We cannot recover things about the proto-language via the comparative method if the daughters simply do not preserve evidence of them. In cases where the evidence is severely limited or unclear, we often make mistakes. We make the best inferences we can based on the evidence available and on everything we know about the nature of human languages and linguistic change. We do the best we can with what we have to work with. Often the results are very good; sometimes they are less complete. In general, the longer in the past the proto-language split up, the more linguistic changes will have accumulated and the more difficult it becomes to reconstruct with full success. (emphasis mine)

or, to quote labov's (1982:20) pithier if less optimistic approach:

Historical linguistics may be characterized as the art of making the best use of bad data, in the sense that the fragments of the literary record that remain are the results of historical accidents beyond the control of the investigator.

in sum, historical linguists are very realistic about what we can achieve, but the confidence we do have is genuinely well earned, because linguistics is a scientific field and we treat our investigations with rigor.

---

Campbell, Lyle. 2013. Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Labov, William. 1982. "Building on Empirical Foundations." In Perspectives on Historical Linguistics. Winifred P. Lehmann and Yakov Malkiel, eds. Pp. 17-92. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

hope you feel better soon!

I am riddled with ailments, but I stay silly!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Word List: Little Women

A List of Beautiful Words used by Louisa May Alcott in "Little Women"

Beautifier - something or someone that beautifies (i.e., make beautiful, or generally pleasing)

Countenance - look, expression; mental composure

Crosspatch - grouch (i.e., a fit of bad temper)

Elfin - of, relating to, or produced by an elf; having an otherworldly or magical quality or charm

Equipage - material or articles used in equipment; outfit

Exultation - the act of exulting (i.e., to be extremely joyful; rejoice)

Gull - any of numerous long-winged web-footed aquatic birds (subfamily Larinae)

Inkstand - inkwell, also: a stand with fittings for holding ink and pens

Lovelocks - a long lock of hair variously worn (as over the front of the shoulder) especially by men in the 17th and 18th centuries

Mortification - a sense of humiliation and shame caused by something that wounds one's pride or self-respect

Neuralgia - acute paroxysmal pain radiating along the course of one or more nerves usually without demonstrable changes in the nerve structure

Operatic - grand, dramatic, or romantic in style or effect

Personage - a person of rank, note, or distinction; an individual

Refractory - resisting control or authority; stubborn, unmanageable

Solitary - being, living, or going alone or without companions

Tranquility - the quality or state of being tranquil (i.e., free from agitation of mind or spirit)

Turquoise - a light greenish blue

Turtledove - any of several small, wild, African and Eurasian pigeons (genus Streptopelia) noted for plaintive cooing

Vittles - supplies of food; victuals—now chiefly used playfully to evoke the supposed language of cowboys

Warbled - to sing in a trilling manner or with many turns and variations

More: Word Lists ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[occlusivavelare]

People already know about the etymology behind the name Leto, I think, but I'm seeing many dismiss Paul, just because it's far more popular/common in Western societies.

Except that Paul comes from the latin "paulus" which means "tiny, small, of small quantity", and was originally given to the youngest member of a family. And, apparently, St. Paul gave himself such name (his og name was Saul) to emphasize his smallness in relation to the divine.

Baby Chosen One Atreides is, quite literally, just a Little meow meow.

[krisrix]

COC 15 ⁙ Sweet

🧋

[lovelesslittleloser]

Tbh this has been on my mind for MONTHS

Human codes… but they’re not actually codes??

A small group of humans is discovered by some curious aliens. Both sides can assume that the other is sentient. The aliens are trying to translate the humans’ language to their own, and the humans are trying to learn the aliens’ language. But since humans are tricky, they’ve decided that they don’t want the aliens to know their language, so they can have secret conversations.

So they go a little crazy. With written words, they randomly use lowercase and capital letters, even using numbers and symbols, and use a lot of slang, occasionally using words incorrectly on purpose. They’ll jumble the words a bit so that only human brains can guess their meaning (that thing where if you use all the letters and put the proper letters at the beginning and end it’ll be comprehensible), and even use additional or unofficial languages (commonly known words like ‘hola’, ‘si’, ‘oui’, etc, and piglatin, in which you typically take the first letter or syllable of a word, place it at the end, and add ‘ay’ to the end).

As for spoken words, they will do a bit of the above, mashing languages and slang, perhaps mispronouncing a few things, and quoting memes, vines, movies, and even singing parts of songs to throw off the aliens. Perhaps they will say something with a somber meaning in a joyful way to throw off the meaning, or even just naturally (‘I wanna die!’ ‘Mood’), or vice versa.

Additionally, there would have to be a TON of body language. Maybe even sign language, should they know any. Gestures and expressions, eyebrow wiggles and poorly-hidden grins. Ah, the beauties of communication.

[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.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

weird and only stp post but "the blade is your implement" fucks so hard as a sentence, the quasi-alliteration makes it both memorable and very pleasing to the ear and it's really good

[tamakidoll]

[official-linguistics-post]

i don't have a question so take this adorable picture of my cas instead

HELLO BEAUTIFUL BABIES

[quasi-normalcy]

I think that almost every nation had class distinctions in its accents, and you just never hear about them except for the British.

[mercuryferns]

So, my Czech friend was telling me something really interesting about Kaz’s name. Apparently in Czech, “kaz” means a flaw, a defect, if you make an adjective of it, it means "rotten". As he said, it suits the “dirtyhands” persona perfectly.

However, this also made me reflect on the more “Dutch inspired” names of the book, and specifically Wylan van Eck. I speak Afrikaans (a Dutch creole). Dutch people can sound off in the comments if it’s different for them, but these languages are obviously mutually intelligible so I’m going to assume what applies to us applies to Dutch too.

Wylan’s name was an issue for me for a huge reason: It’s spelling is aggressively American English, while the character himself is tentatively “Dutch-coded”:

1.) “W” doesn’t exist as a sound in Afrikaans. The letter represents a “v” sound.

2.) “Y” also doesn’t really exist in the same way as it does in English. In English it seemingly means whatever you want it to be in the given moment. But in Afrikaans, it’s “ay”. As in the word “ray”.

3.) “a” never means “ih”. Depending on accent it’s usually either “ah” or “uh”.

This may seem inconsequential, but let me tell you my surprise when my partner told me that his name is actually “WHY-lin”. WHATTTT??? I’ve been saying “VAY-lahn” this whole time????

(Not to mention his surname also means “of me”, which is clever, but to be honest it reads a bit stupidly to someone who speaks the language being imitated. She succeeded in other ways though!)

[aroaceleovaldez]

emo Nico x scene Will Solace...

[angel-blood-art]

i probably should have posted it here but i deciphered the fictional written language of jirga para lhao from gravity rush 2 and wrote an article about it!

[shittywriterbrain]

in the language worldbuilding notes. writing "dialect continuum" "mutually intelligible" and things of such nature