Tag: language

Why Are Your Fav Abbrevs Totes Legit Hard to Spell?

allthingslinguistic:

I’m on Mental Floss talking about the legit linguistics of abbrevs: 

Perhaps the best part of abbrevs is how they intersect with other slang, like acronyms. Most of the time, you just add an s or a z to the end of the acronym without actually abbreving it at all, as in lols and omgz, but acronyms with w are special. The best known are BTdubs (from “by the way” via BTW), dubsTF (from WTF), and FTdubs (from “for the win” via FTW), but I also found people on Twitter using OMdubs (“on my way” via OMW), BMdubs (BMW, as in the car), and even one guy who uses FWIdubs (“for what it’s worth”).

The “dubs” abbrevs really put the lie to the idea that people abbrev just because it’s easier, since all the w acronyms are actually shorter than their “dubs” versions.

[Read the rest.]

Why Are Your Fav Abbrevs Totes Legit Hard to Spell?

science-of-noise:

scotttumbls:

didyoudrinkmygingerale:

estifi:

didyoudrinkmygingerale:

adventuresineclecticism:

You don’t choose linguistics
Linguistics chooses you

Linguistics isn’t chosen by you
You are chosen by linguistics
It isn’t linguistics that you choose
It is you who linguistics chooses

2sɢ.sᴜʙ choose-ᴘʀᴇs.ɴᴇɢ-2sɢ linguistics
linguistics choose-ᴘʀᴇs-3sɢ 2sɢ.ᴏʙᴊ

/ju doʊnt tʃuz lɪŋˈɡwɪstɪks/
/lɪŋˈɡwɪstɪks tʃuzəz ju/

[tp[npI] [vpdidn’t [vpchoose [np[linguistics]]]]]

[tp[npLinguistics] [vpchose [npme]]]

∃x∃y(you(x) ^ linguistics(y) ^ ¬choose(x,y) ^ choose(y,x))

allthingslinguistic:

Three things that I like about this tweet, linguistically: 

1. It syntactically integrates the emoji into the sentence into what is, indeed, an adjectival position. This is (currently) a rarer way of using emoji – we more commonly put them at the end of an utterance to indicate how we feel about what comes before, or as an entire utterance to respond to what a previous person said – but if emoji do get linguistically integrated in a systematic fashion, this is what it could look like. 

2. The emoji that it uses is already a symbolic (linguistic) representation, since it consists of numbers, albeit in a specific format that has a different meaning from just “100″. If an emoji contains a word, is it language, a picture, or both?

3. Despite the fact that it’s talking about using emoji instead of words, it uses 24 words and only 2 emojis to do so. Emoji aren’t a simple replacement of words for pictures but rather the development of a more complicated system that integrates the two. You could call it 💯.

allthingslinguistic:

huffingtonpost:

One Woman’s Reaction To Every ‘White Man’s Sentence’

That’s how Melissa Lozada-Oliva begins her powerful spoken word poem “Like Totally Whatever” that she performed at the 2015 National Poetry Slam earlier this month. Lozada-Oliva details the subtle sexism engrained in the critiques of how women speak. 

Watch the full poem here.

In a generation or two, everyone will be speaking like young women anyway. 

Language Gothic

allthingslinguistic:

omnilang:

They say Hungarian has 18 cases. You don’t know what they are or how they work. Only that they exist and there are 18 of them. You are scared.

“Fluent in 3 months” Benny Lewis proudly proclaims. “Fluent in 3 months” he repeats, in an assertive tone. “Fluent in 3 months” he demands, “Or else.”

The website asks for your target language. You do not know what it has done to become a target, nor do you want to know.

Course progress: 100%
Due date: yesterday
You still cannot learn Ukrainian.

“How many languages are you fluent in?” asks the innocent onlooker. You forget what the question means. What is fluency? Have you ever known?

The Russian speakers say they speak the hardest language. So do the Finns. So do the Chinese. They are all wrong.

You look at the verb table. “I am. You are. He/She/it is.” What am I? Where are you? Who is he/she/it?

You cannot pronounce the Czech ř. You cannot begin to fathom it. You hear it when you close your eyes. It is the fabric of your nightmares.

Finnish has 6 moods. Indicative, Conditional, Potential, Ambitious, Disappointed, Regretful.

A worthy sequel to Linguistics Gothic. 

I, on the date: Are you, what do you think about Google Translation?
Date: I think he is an excellent tool for communicating with strangers! Now, no need to learn a foreign language!
And I’m sorry, but pour bread sticks in my wallet: I must go home now