language

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

misbehavingmaiar:

sebastian-bond:

but-the-library-of-alexandria:

the thing about writing fantasy stories is that language is so based on history that it can be hard to decide how far suspension of disbelief can carry you word-choice wise – what do you call a french braid in a world with no france? can a queen ann neckline be described if there was no queen ann? where do you draw the line? can you use the word platonic if plato never existed? can you name a character chris in a land without christianity? can you even say ‘bungalow’ in a world where there was no indian language for the word to originate from? is there a single word in any language that doesn’t have a story behind it? to be accurate a fantasy story would be written in a fantasy language but who has the time for that

Tolkien had the time apparently

LIsten. Linguistics Georg, who invented over 10,000 conlangs each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted. 

Tags:

#language #yes this #I have been thinking lately about how much of the development of English comes down to sheer serendipity

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sinesalvatorem:

@ilzolende​ and I were discussing linguistic sound change. I mentioned I’d read that ת (tav) has gone from ‘th’ in Biblical Hebrew to ‘t’ in Modern Hebrew and ‘s’ for some Ashkenazim; while ב (bet) and ו (vav) merge for (some) Sephardim, because of Spanish b/v merger.

Which eventually led to this story:

The Gileadites encamped at the Jordan and waited to slaughter the retreating Ephraimites. To distinguish them, they asked all comers to say ‘shibboleth’, because the Ephraimites could not pronounce the /sh/ phoneme and instead said it as /s/.

Gileadite 1: …So then you kill anyone who mispronounces ‘shibboleth’. Understood?

Gileadite 2: Understood.

(Modern) Israeli: Shalom!

Gileadite 2: Hey, we’re testing nationality. Say ‘shibboleth’.

Israeli: Uh, OK. ‘shibbolet’?

Gileadite 2: …u wot, mate?

Israeli: I said ‘shibbolet’, just like you asked.

Gileadite 2: Um, wrong, I guess. *slash*

Gileadite 1: No no no! That wasn’t an Ephraimite! That was a… Weirdo. Anyway, we’re just killing people who say /s/, dude. Listen for a /s/.

Gileadite 2: OK, got it.

Ashkenazi: Shalom!

Gileadite 2: Hey, we’re testing nationality. Say ‘shibboleth’.

Ashkenazi: Oy vey, what is this ‘shibboles’ thi-

Gileadite 2: *slash*

Gileadite 1: NO! We’re checking if they say /s/ at the beginning, man! The beginning!

Gileadite 2: Make up your MIND.

[One diversity training session later]

Gileadite 2: *sigh* OK. Sibboleth: Kill. Shibboleth: Let through. Shibbolet or Shibboles: Turn away. That’s everyone, right?

Gileadite 1: Yep. Good luck!

Sephardi: Shalom!

Gileadite 2: Hey, we’re testing nationality. Say ‘shibboleth’.

Sephardi: Um, why ‘shivolet’?

Gileadite 2: *throws down sword* Fuck it, I QUIT.

Shibbolef?

Tags:

#language #fun wif forn fronting

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

91625:

prokopetz:

Thanks to heavy metal, I know how to proclaim dire prophesies and graphic death threats in like half a dozen Scandinavian languages, but I don’t know how to ask for directions to the bathroom.

WHERE IS THE SKULL WE SHIT IN

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

justice-turtle:

useless-swedenfacts:

my biggest pet peeve wiht the english language is that you don’t have sin/sina

in swedish if u have two people who use the same pronoun u can always tell whos doing what bc its like ‘han tog sin väska’ (he took his[own] bag) and ‘han tog hans väska’ would be that he took the other persons bag

but in english its like if u have 2 ppl w/ the same pronoun:

“she took her bag” whose bag????WHose BAG was it her OWN bag or the other her’s bag??????????????

“he ate his donuts” were the donuts his own???? did he fucking eat someone elses donuts??? YIU DONT KNOW bc english is a bullshit language 

oh my god that would be so useful for slash porn, why have not english-speaking fanfic writers borrowed this yet

get on that ^_^

Tags:

#language

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sdhs-rationalist:

disneysmermaids:

cherribalm:

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS

i cannot overstate how much i need this

Tags:

#useful things #writing

boston

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

pervocracy:

Coworker: Hey Cliff, how do you spell “Korea?”

Me: K-O-R-E-A.

Coworker: What?  No.  Korea, like a job.  I’m looking for a new korea.

This reminds me of the beefa story.

Girl: I saw a beefa yesterday!

Kid!Mom, who has recently moved to Massachusetts from New Jersey: A beefa?

Girl: Yeah!

Kid!Mom: Is that some kind of cow?

Girl: No, no! A beefa! You know, *sticks out front teeth*

Kid!Mom: …a beaver.

Girl: Yes!

Kid!Mom: You mean a beaver.

Girl: Yes! A beefa!

Kid!Mom: *long sigh* *wonders what the hell her parents have gotten her into*

Tags:

#my home away from home #(that is my Massachusetts tag) #language #accents

sdhs-rationalist asked: 17, 36, 42, 63

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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17. Who would be your ideal partner?

My first reaction is “????“ and my second is “for starters, someone I’m not scared of”. Over the past year or so, I’ve been learning that perhaps this is not as exacting a standard as I once thought.

36. Favorite clean word?

Meridian. It has such a nice flow to it.

42. Are you a good judge of character?

My gut is a paranoid wreck. Intellectually, I don’t know.

63. Biggest Fear?

Hmm. I’m not sure. *digs through brain* Well, I don’t think I would call that the biggest fear, and lately it’s turned out that that one wasn’t quite a fear per se at all…

Memory of seven-year-old self: *gives me a Look*

…oh, of course, you’re right. It could never have been anything else.

Death, specifically my own.

(You can tell how good I’ve gotten at suppressing it by the first paragraph of this response. Even now, as I type this, I am careful not to think too hard about what I’m saying. It is a hard-won skill, honed through sheer self-preserving necessity for a decade and a half, and it is still best to avoid straining the limits when possible.)

Tags:

#tales from the askbox #ask meme #oddly this skill *doesn’t* extend to a general capacity for doublethink #I have to learn it all over again for each new thing I try to suppress #(but the price of failure is never *quite* so high) #death tw #sdhs-rationalist

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{

Objectively Correct Vowels, by Alison Morais

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sinesalvatorem:

Because so many people were being Wrong On The Internet, I decided to upload an accent sample which uses all the relevant vowels in the manner G-d intended.

Transcript:
If I err on the side of caution, then I can’t marry either Mary or Kerry.

My reaction went something like this:

“So, brain, was any of that weird?”

Weird is such a subjective term.

“Was it different from how we would say it?”

Well, her “can’t” [here pronounced in an attempt to mimic it] is all British…

“I meant the other bits. Were they different?”

The difference is insignificant.

“So there was a difference?”

I don’t know. The difference is insignificant.

English plays so fast and loose with vowels that there’s no point paying attention to fine distinctions. We might not even use consistent vowels for any of those words ourself; I honestly don’t know.

“No wonder you’re so terrible with accents.”

Yes.

Tags:

#language #reply via reblog #in which Brin somehow manages to be among the most singlet people she knows #(to be fair keeping the original dialogue format rather overstates the extent to which the two are separate entities) #accents