#the grammarians

[sesame-sim]

BOOK - The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine

QUICK SYNOPSIS - Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, a pair of red-headed twin sisters, get in an almost lifelong rift over who gets to keep the family dictionary.

IMAGE 1 - A couple years after first-born son Don Wolfe went off to university to study psychiatry, younger brother Arthur enrolled to study economics. This was purely to satisfy his father. Words had always been held in high esteem in Arthur's eyes far more than numbers ever were so he spent much of his time holed up in the library reading. One afternoon he aided a female student with finding the poetry section and got to talking about the beauty of words. She asked him if he was a Simlish major.

ARTHUR: (bitterly) No, I'm in economics. In a few years I"ll be counting the coins of others, piling it up, hiding it in safe, filthy little bundles. That'll be my profession. SALLY: Don't be such a snob about money! Lawyers make money. Doctors make money too. ARTHUR: But their days aren't spent COUNTING money. SALLY: (laughing) I wonder. (Then, slyly) I understand your point that numbers aren't as noble as words. Numbers are quite useless. By the way, we had SIX inches of snow but it's above THIRTY-TWO degrees so it won't stick for long. But the ground is still treacherous and I've got to make my way to a THREE o'clock lecture in FIFTEEN minutes without breaking my FOUR limbs or my grade is going to plummet to ZERO."

IMAGE 2 - Arthur blinked at her. Then he walked and talked with her straight out of the library doors after she had checked out her book. He reasoned he had to make sure she didn't take a tumble.

BOOK TIME/PLACE - 1950, their university was not mentioned in the book

MY SAVE TIME/PLACE - Sim Year 50 / Sim Day 5694 / Winter D9 / MON / Britechester

SONG PAIRING - From 1950, Bewitched by Bill Snyder

[notaplaceofhonour]

wishing everyone a happy new year but spelling it differently every time like shana tova shanah tovah shana tovah shanah tova l’shanah tova

[flyingpurplepeopleprogrammer]

Sure. I get it. You want to be brainwashed. You've been very clear about that.

But I want you to be a little less ambiguous.

It's not your fault, actually. It's the language itself that's unclear - a noisome contrivance of language that one can only "be brainwashed" in the passive voice.

So what I want to know is how you feel about two different things:

The first "being brainwashed" is the "becoming" part of being brainwashed. What do you think that's like? Is it something you want? How does it feel?

The second "being brainwashed" is the "being" part of being brainwashed. The brainwashing has happened. You're better now. And you get to notice - or maybe not - the difference between the old and the new you. How does that feel? Is it different? Should we fix that?

[johnthestitcher]

A double treat for all the grammarians out there ....

[consanguinitatum]

Having a Tennant sorting Saturday....

So this is how a David Tennant researcher like myself spends her Saturday: organizing all my research into a new content management system, so I can make sense of the reams of information I have. Here are but a few of the thousands of images and files I'm working with today....

Of course, much of this will eventually show up on either A Tennantcy To Act or on its companion podcast...or both!

Join me! - Subscribe!

[haveyouheardthispodcast]

[specgram]

The October 2024 Issue of Speculative Grammarian

The editors and publishers of Speculative Grammarian are pleased to announce that another issue of our esteemed journal is now available. This issue offers many excellent articles, including our unprecedented endorsement for president, an informative enumeration of widely-held but unsubstantiated claims, and the revelation of a fairly screwed-up potential new linguistic (non-)universal—along with the usual collection of letters from our readers, breaking news, a Linguimerick Centenary, serendipitous fieldwork, linguistickish puzzles, and more…

[infirmux]

you people want toxic lesbian romance but will not even watch la morte vivante AFTER LOUS EXCEEDINGLY POLITE REQUEST TO THAT EFFECT

[eizneckam]

sukinako wo possum ga wasureta

[sixbucks]

[katzenklavierr]

Discussion about neopronouns is all in good fun so I'm not about to Well Actually any memes about it but I'm starting to think people don't actually know the difference between pronouns and vocatives or what constitutes a "standard"/neo distinction to begin with

[sesame-sim]

Books I'm Currently Playing

Click for tagged posts

Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain along with Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever

Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur

Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi

The Color of Water by James McBride

Will update this whenever any books are added in or retired from the lineup. FYI I add a new book in after every 5 sim years in my save.)

[fierceawakening]

I am probably the only person who even cares but someone please give that sentence a mood marker it’s so pretty but then it just looks wrong

[nerdypagan1]

I want to maybe blame latin or something? stealing constructions from other languages is why we ended up with a couple weird rules in english, like not splitting an infinitive.

POWEROUS

[arabicfornerds]

How the Broken Plural Helps Classify Arabic

The Arabic broken plural has the effect that scholars still debate how to properly classify the several branches of Semitic languages.

[specgram]

The January 2024 Issue of Speculative Grammarian

The editors and publishers of Speculative Grammarian are pleased to announce that another issue of our esteemed journal is now available. This issue offers many excellent articles, including a look into the shallowly cute yet deeply unsavory nature of a well-known “educational” children’s song; a view of the future of linguistics as seen from the past (part, the first); and an excerpt on the Effolk dialect from the not-entirely-reliable Jimmypedia—along with the usual collection of letters from our readers, breaking news, limericks, serendipitous fieldwork, book announcements, linguistickish puzzles, and more...