#noun class

[lily-claw]

got inspiration from @marronje 's art and also from these ones

[mapswithoutwyoming]

fun fact: in gendered languages, or more generally languages with noun classes (since noun classes don't always indicate gender), the class of a noun which does not clearly fall into a class by semantics - such as the gender of a genderless inanimate noun - almost always just comes down to the phonetics of the word itself. In romance languages, since some old words and suffixes for men and women (semantically) ended in ways that evolved into -o* and -a* respectively in the modern day, when that formalized into a gender-based noun class system, inanimate nouns were classed based on how they ended.

It'd be like saying "toy" is a masculine word because it sounds like "boy" and "swirl" is a feminine word because it sounds like "girl". Really the whole point is that adding agreement in adjectives or pronouns adds redundancy, which lets sentences remain easier to understand even if they're a little garbled. It is an accident of history that the noun class systems most common in Europe are exclusively gender-based and thus socioculturally loaded. Check out the Bantu languages for some very interesting and complex examples of class systems.

going around on a building with a clipnoard assigning pronouns to various objects

[dramatic-dolphin]

waaagh i fucking love linguistics i am going to eat this book. sorry librarians

[phyripowritesthings]

I heard it's @lietweek so I bring some liet! I'm a big fan of Random Bystander POV, especially looking at characters who aren't human, so here's one of those! tangentially, this is for the prompt hurt/comfort :)

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the road of life

characters: Lithuania + 1 random human word count: 1016 summary: On a summer day in Vilnius, a woman meets someone familiar, although she has never seen him before.

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Miglė is staring at nothing in particular and shredding pieces off her supermarket sandwich, when she is startled.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” a man is asking, and though his voice is soft, it’s enough to make Miglė jump. She looks up at the man, who is patiently standing next to the park bench she’s on, facing the water. He’s in a tie and slacks, holding a battered notebook in one hand and a cup of takeaway coffee in the other.

“Oh, no, go ahead,” Miglė tells him, and he smiles kindly as he sits down on the bench next to her. For a few seconds, he closes his eyes and leans back into the pleasant shadow of the trees. He can’t be much older than her, she guesses, although he looks tired, worn around the edges. Then again, Miglė most likely looks tired herself. Sighing, she shreds her sandwich some more, eating some bits of it.

Behind the bench, and on the other side of the water, the city is alive with the sounds of tourists and workers and students, and Miglė wonders which of these the man next to her is, if any. Tourist seems unlikely if just from his outfit.

She glances at the man out of the corner of her eye, only to find that he has pulled a bright purple scrunchie out from somewhere and is tying his shoulder-length hair back with it. When he catches her eye, he just smiles, almost apologetic as if he knows it’s a little strange. Miglė can’t help but smile back.

“It’s very warm,” the man offers, and she nods.

His hair is dark brown, but when he shifts into the sunlight, she can see some grey shot through at the temples. He’s quite handsome, really.

“It’s always getting warmer, lately,” he adds absently, while he’s rolling up his sleeves. Across his forearms, Miglė can see the faint, pale lines of crisscrossing scars, and she quickly looks away.

“You… Sound like you’re from the North,” she says instead, looking up at the man’s tired eyes. They’re green, startlingly so. Miglė didn’t think people actually had eyes that green, the color of a pine forest, or maybe even of a stormy sea.

“So do you,” the man is saying, taking a sip of his coffee. “What brings you all the way to Vilnius?”

Shrugging, Miglė answers, “You know, the usual. Work, mostly. Love, although that’s…” She tears off another piece of her sandwich.

“Yes, I know what that’s like,” he says softly. He sounds so familiar, as if he could have been her neighbor growing up.

It isn’t as though Miglė never meets other people from her home region in Vilnius, but something about this man and his kind voice and his tired smile makes her fiercely miss the place—the fields and backroads and familiar people. Swallowing heavily, she blinks at the man while he just looks at her with those strange eyes. It should be unnerving, and she can’t figure out why it isn’t.

“So, what… What brings you to Vilnius?” she asks him.

“It’s a long story,” he replies, and his eyes scrunch at the corners when he smiles. “But much of it, I think, is probably the same as yours.”

Miglė bites her lip. For his sake, she hopes that it isn’t the same, but she can see in his face that it must be. That, possibly, whatever he’s been through would make her struggles pale in comparison. And yet, here he is, in his slacks and his seashell-patterned tie, drinking coffee on a Vilnius park bench.

And, of course, here she is, as well. That must count for something, right?

A gentle breeze ruffles the man’s ponytail and carries a whiff of a smell over that is somehow familiar as well. Like her father’s infamous stew, maybe, or like freshly-harvested fields back home.

“Have we ever met before?” Miglė asks the man, leaning a little towards him.

“Who’s to say?”

“Really. Something about you… I’m from Auksūdys.” She watches him absentmindedly touch his shoulder. He has long, ink-stained fingers, and many little nicks on his index finger.

“I haven’t been there in a while,” he mumbles. And then something under his breath that she can’t quite make out, while he quickly opens his little notebook and jots something down. His handwriting is spidery, the kind Miglė would expect in letters from centuries past.

“Where do you work?” he asks as he looks up again.

“At… The government.” She doesn’t go into any more detail than that, because that would surely bore him.

“Really?”

“I want to… Do better. To help the country.” Miglė knows it’s vague, and it’s hard to remember that goal sometimes, but the man on the bench next to her smiles warmly.

“The country will certainly appreciate your help,” he says, which should, of course, sound completely ridiculous—the kind of stupid joke one of her friends back home would have made—but Miglė believes him somehow, and a hesitant but real new determination blooms under her skin.

“Thank you,” she says, and watches the man stand after he tips the last of his coffee back.

“No, thank you.” He bows his head, some strands of hair escaping from his purple scrunchie and falling around his face. “Perhaps we’ll meet again someday, Miglė.”

As he leaves, he tosses his empty coffee cup in a trash bin, and Miglė can only stare after him, dumbfounded. He didn’t sound like he was from the North anymore, but she couldn’t have pinpointed this accent. Who is he? Somehow, it isn’t surprising that he knew her name—although it would have been terrifying in any other case.

Something in Miglė tells her that she definitely knows his name as well, that it’s written not just in her passport but into her very being, and into every street in this city. In this country.

“That’s ridiculous,” she mutters to herself, and then quickly eats the many bits of her sandwich before she can say the one name she keeps thinking.

Lietuva.

[kelasian]

ṭuṇuṇ’ yulid yuraŋ /ʈʰuɳuɳˀ jul̪it̪ jur̪ɐŋ/

CL1.person CL11-GEN CL11.language

"language of [the] people"

[sannehnagi]

Lexember 2

tīne, 4th class noun, lake, large body of water.

Depicts borders with the water radical inside.

e’otīne /ɛʔɔtiːnɛ/ the lake

Iatīne /iˑjatiːnɛ/ the lakes

ītīne /iːtiːnɛ/ the two lakes

iotīne /jɔtiːnɛ/ a lake

Þutīne /ðutiːnɛ/ lakes

uītīne /wiːtiːnɛ/ a couple lakes

[theyuniversity]

💡🧠 Grammar Lesson: Collective Nouns

A collective noun is one that is structurally singular but refers to a plural. Examples of collective nouns include the following (but there are countless others):

group

collection

litter (of animals) 🐈🐈🐈

herd 🐄🐄🐄

flock (of birds) 🐦🐦🐦

school (of fish) 🐟🐠🐡

family 👨‍👩‍👦

trio

pair

team

Notice that each of those nouns is singular (the words do not end with -s) but refers to more than one item.

In American English, collective nouns are generally singular except for “people” and “police.” (In British English, collective nouns are plural.) For example, a football club (soccer team) is considered a plural entity in British English, whereas in American English, it is treated as one singular unit:

Image via EnglishClub

Proceeding in American English, the following are correct:

My family is going to Maui during winter break. 🏝🐳

Our football team is exceeding expectations this year; it might actually compete for the league title. 🏈🏆

A flock of birds flying in perfect synchronicity is a sight to behold. 🕊

The trio of appetizers appeals to my younger brother. 🍠🥙🥑😋

The group of contestants expects the judges’ results by next week. 🤞

⚠ However, there is one big exception:

“A lot of [x]”, “a bunch of [x],” and “a number of [x]” are all considered plural. The most basic reason for this is that all of them essentially mean ‘many’ (and “many” is always plural). For example, all of these are plural:

A lot of movie-watchers were disappointed by the director’s latest film. 🎬👎

Lately, a number of dogs have been barking at odd hours of the night. 🐕

A bunch of children are looking forward to receiving Christmas presents from Santa. 🎅

💡 Pro Tip: If you are concerned that you might misuse “a lot of,” “a number of,” and “a bunch of,” just replace them with easier synonyms, including “many” and “several.” 👌

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[melit0n]

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[builtyouahousefromabrokenhome]

Cue the classist discourse after the 28op article in The Standard lol ...

28op as a brand (like quite a few other fashion brands these days) is going for a "chavvy" image*, but obviously marketed to an audience who has the money to pay for the items. So middle/upper class people, who will be fascinated by that image lol. (I'm not necessarily thinking about Louies in that target demographic - I think his fans are more like a [substantial] bonus target audience, who'd probably buy the stuff no matter what image they'd go for.)

As someone who is actually working class it's a bit hilarious sometimes, same as other instances where rich people are appropriating and making money off poor people culture. E.g. when luxury brands copy dollar store bling earrings and sell them for like $1000.

But it's also upsetting when people make it out that the (genuine) working class background that Louis is reconnecting with and channeling for it* "makes him look dumb", like excuse you? Are you saying that working class people and self-described "chavs" are dumb lmfao

_____________________ * Based on stuff Louis has said about 28op so far

[papsiguesss]

So making that Fear in the Night cut made me realise something right.

Cushing's character is named Michael and he teaches Latin.

My chosen name is Michael by extension (I go by Mike technically but same name really, name unrelated to this particular character) and I have a high school Latin degree.

*looks at left arm* please do not burn off in a fire

(I am actually left handed so I would be quite fucked lmao)

[moonsidesong]

played around witg that infinite craft thing with my buddy it was very fun. we invented narutrillion (trillion naruto)

[thepandalion]

in pronouns class

[gongziyus]

you're not gonna believe this but. very difficult to find intelligent thought on love in the time of cholera on reddit.

[irlwakko]

*points to empty seat in the total drama fandom* hey is anyone scal-ing here

[lapdogchase]

i experience near panic attack level anxiety every time i go to my history class and i have no fucking clue why

[broke-on-books]

Just used knowledge of a word from my 3rd language (v low proficiency level) to help me w a word from my 2nd (almost fluent). Is this what photosynthesis feels like