Call me Sunny. they/them, he/him, or she/her; elle/le/-e o él/lo/-o; ele/o. I do linguisticky things. These days I largely just port my ling-related tweets to tumblr bc the tumblinguistics community is sorta dead. For now? I think it might be helpful to know that this blog is now much more of a shitposting/vaguely funny things hub and just like cool things or whatever. I tag most of my stuff with #tumblinguists in reference to what once was a pretty strong community before the death of Tumblr. i continue using the tag in silly hopes that it might get used again, even if by couple people, since the #linguistics tag is full of a lot of...not linguistics lol(there's a lot of poetry and language learning stuff for some reason, which, fair enough I guess? misleading but not harmful lol, but #tumblinguists is still available :) )
i genuinely have no idea, i thought there would be like 5 people here. it was entirely unintentional.
Literally same happened here (but now this blog is largely silent)
I feel like for me, even tho it was in the heyday of tumblinguists, it had to do with the fact that I was also doing language stuff too, and had a bunch of resources to share? You have neither the thriving tumblinguists community nor the gimmick of having downloaded gigs and gigs of language+linguistics PDFs (well actually maybe you do, but from what I’ve seen that’s not a chief purpose) so mad props lol
I do wish we could have what you’re doing again, I miss it! There’s still a few linguists on here from the good ol days but I’m v curious where they are now and who would want to resurrect the community even more teehee
Edit: I said mad props but not in a way that is meant to imply that high N of followers a marker of “success” or doing “well”, just that it’s impressive!
Level 1: I didn’t assume that these two words with similar spellings and related meanings share a common origin because I don’t think about things like that.
Level 2: I’m completely certain these two words with similar spellings and related meanings share a common origin because it’s fucking obvious just from looking at them, you absolute simpleton.
Level 3: I didn’t assume that these two words with similar spellings and related meanings share a common origin because I know what a false cognate is.
Level 4: I know all the common patterns of historical sound shifts, which means I can spot non-obvious cognates, and I’m completely certain that these two words share an origin. It’s hard being a genius.
Level 5: I’ve learned the actual sound shifts that historicallyoccurred in this specific language family, and it turns out those two words weren’t related after all. Whoops.
Level 6: I mean… if you think about it… all words share a common origi*deafening gunshot originating from the anthropology department*
Level 7: I don’t know shit fuck about Linguistics as a science but I use words all the time and keep mixing these two words up because they’re shaped too similar so I’m going to start using new terms that sound both different enough and right and by accident, the arbitrarily chosen new terms ARE true cognates .
Why did you include neopronouns in your linguistic course? If you did, I hope you specified that neopronouns are neologisms (at least in English) and that pronouns are a pretty closed class category of words in English.
i really hope you didn’t intend this to seem as condescending as it turned out <3
to address some of the comments i’ve seen:
pronouns generally are a closed lexical category in english. that’s part of why i talked about neopronouns, because they’re attempting to innovate in a space that doesn’t typically accept new forms and facing barriers because of both that fact and social pushback. anon’s tone does not make the information incorrect.
“closed class” is a descriptive property, not a mandate.
i’ve only been on this blog for a few months, but i’ve had a lot of people anxious about starting college as a linguistics major. i want to reassure all of you that you don’t have to be ahead of the curve going in. i started with zero actual knowledge about linguistics, just the sense that language was cool and i wanted to know more about how it worked. my plans for study changed like four different times between first year and applying for grad school as i learned about the field.
basically: take a deep breath. the degree is meant to train you, not to catch you unprepared.
Could someone clarify for me the motivation for keeping footnotes at the end of a chapter—or, worse, end of a book? I just haven’t ever not been annoyed by it but I also haven’t been involved with academic publishing very much
hmm, im not sure i really have a favorite theorem. i feel like i much prefer….interesting structures to theorems themselves. like the objects of study rather than the results
Interesting, I feel the same way but have never heard this viewpoint expressed by anyone else.
tbh this is how I feel about language a lot of the time. More interested in the gamut of expensive possibilities than universals
Don’t tell The Institution tho, they thrive off those good good “theoretical contributions”
Highlights from the conference room where they nominated contenders for Word of the Year 2023:
• They put Skibidi Toilet on the projector to explain what “skibidi” means.
• Baby Gronk was mentioned.
• We discussed the Rizzler.
• “Cunty” was nominated.
• “Enshittification” was suggested for EVERY category.
• “Blue Check” (like from Twitter) was briefly defined as “Someone who will not Shut The Fuck Up”
• The person writing notes briefly defined babygirl as “referencing [The Speaker]”. He is now being called babygirl in the linguist groupchats.
• MULTIPLE people raised their hand to say “I cannot stress this enough: ‘Babygirl’ refers to a GROWN MAN”
When technical issues occurred while voting on “kenaissance”, everyone had to reassure the speaker, Ben Zimmer, that he was “benough”
In a stunning upset, the last-minute nomination “(derogatory)” DEFEATS “cunty” as the most useful/most likely to succeed word of 2023.
Someone renominates “babygirl” for word of the year, saying that they have spent the past year trying to figure out if people are “little meow meows, blorbos, or babygirls”. This is in front of a room of hundreds of people.
ENSHITTIFICATION WINS WORD OF THE YEAR 2023
While verifying this was true (it is) I discovered that there is a wikipedia article on enshittification
連濁（れんだく; en: rendaku）is a phonological rule in japanese that makes the first voiceless consonant of a word change into a voiced consonant when used in a compound word. For example, おり ＋ かみ → おりがみ (ori + kami → origami) (“fold” + “paper” → “paperfolding”) - the /k/ sound in かみ becomes a /g/ sound (which is the voiced version of a /k/ sound) by adding a voicing mark -> が.
What’s interesting about 連濁 is that native speakers can use it subconsciously as a sort of “order of operations” system for unfamiliar words, like PEMDAS or BIDMAS in maths. A classic example of this is the にせたぬきじる problem[1]. Native speakers can immediately and with confidence tell the difference in meaning between two compound words they have never heard before, despite the only difference being the voicing of a single consonant. Take the three words 偽 (にせ, meaning “fake” or “imitation”), たぬき (tanuki, the Japanese racoon dog), and 汁 (しる, meaning “soup” or “broth”). They can be combined into the following compound words: にせたぬきじる and にせだぬきじる (note the voicing mark, or dakuten, on the latter). Keep in mind, these two words do not exist in ordinary japanese - they’ve been created as part of a linguistics experiment.
You might think the meaning would be ambiguous in those compound words: is it (imitation tanuki)+soup or imitation+(tanuki soup)? Let’s imagine we’re referring to the former. First, we combine にせ＋たぬき. There’s a rule that rendaku can’t occur if there’s already a voicing mark in the second component of the compound, but we’re safe here - たぬき has no voicing mark. Therefore, it becomes にせだぬき. Then, we combine にせだぬき＋しる. Again, しる has no voicing mark in it, so we’re safe to add it in, and we get にせだぬきじる.
Conversely, let’s say we were referring to fake “tanuki-soup”. First we combine たぬき＋しる. This combines safely to たぬきじる. Then we combine にせ＋たぬきじる. But wait, the second component does already have a voicing mark, on じ! So we can’t add one to た. Therefore we end up with にせたぬきじる.
That’s a lot of thinking and linguistic hoops to jump through to make up 2 words, but here’s the thing: Japanese native speakers who have never heard these words before can instinctively deduce the difference in meaning with startling accuracy. They correctly determine the meaning of にせだぬきじる as “a broth made from imitation tanuki” and にせたぬきじる as “a fake version of a dish called ‘tanuki soup’”. Even more surprising is the research findings of Shigeto Kawahara, which show that children as young as 9 years old can consistently deduce the difference as well[2]. I think this shows how incredibly powerful the subconscious mind is at learning linguistic rules, and how bad the conscious mind is at learning them!
The relevant rule here is actually that the first element must be modifying the immediately following morpheme. In the second example, where it’s “fake (tanuki soup)” the word “fake” is modifying “soup”, not tankui, so it can’t induce voicing in tanuki. This applies whether or not the there’s voicing in the rightmost element. An example is naga (long) + hashi (chopsticks) + ire (case). If the compound is intended to mean “a long case for chopsticks” you’ll find nagahashiire, but if it’s “a case for long chopsticks” then it becomes nagabashiire. In the first case, despite hashiire “chopstick case” not having any voiced obstruents, rendaku is still blocked because naga is modifying ire rather than hashi
For the same reason, compounds which have the meaning of “X and Y” are not subject to rendaku, e.g., yamakawa “mountains and rivers” from yama (mountain) + kawa (river), but yamagawa “mountain river” - an interesting minimal pair
Of course, all this is complicated by the fact that rendaku is not completely predictable. While there are rules which state when it cannot occur, there are no cases where it must occur, so there’s a certain extent to which redaku is probabilistic, and there are some compounds which can be pronounced with or without rendaku
Another interesting aspect of rendaku is that it applies mostly to words of native origin, less often to words of Chinese origin, and almost never to words of other foreign origin. The few exceptions to the no-foreign origin rule being words that were borrowed several centuries ago, long enough to have become nativized
In Cádiz (Andalusia), Carnival festivities are a very popular cultural event every year because, besides costumes and dressing up, lots of people compete at the championships of chirigotas, cultural associations that play and sing, very often, songs with social and political messages.
This is the kids chirigota “Las hijas de Neptuno” [Neptune’s duaghters], singing about our languages. A simple message that this future generation seems to get but that it’s still controversial in Spain. Eskerrik asko to these little singers for the extra effort they made to learn their verses in our language!!
Vivo en un planeta que habla las lenguas de nuestras abuelas I live in a planet that speaks our grandmas’ languages
lenguas ancestrales, lenguas diferentes con su identidad ancestral languages, different languages with their own identity
que son un tesoro súper importante me han dicho en la escuela I’ve been told at school that they’re a super important treasure
y que nadie tiene derecho a imponer su manera de hablar and that nobody has the right to impose their way of speaking
borrando el mensaje de la libertad. erasing the message of freedom.
Euskal Herrian, Euskal Herrian kantu hau entzuten da In Euskal Herria, in Euskal herria this song is heard
en galego sa una mariñeira cantiga in a healthy Galician, a sailors’ song
i las paraules que en català parlen de llibertat i de amor i de vida and the words that in Catalan speak of freedom, and of love, and of life
lenguas de muchas generaciones languages of many generations
que en mi planeta la gente se entiende si sabe escuchar los corazones, los corazones, los corazones. ‘cause in my planet people understand each other if they can listen to their hearts, their hearts, their hearts.
(image description: a tweet with the following text:
A child is polite: wow! such a good kid
A child is polite (China): the Chinese are taught from a young age that any individuality will be punished.
A child is polite (Japan): This can be explained by the Shinto concept of ゲイのセクシ, a word untranslateable into English,
end description)
For the record, 1. “ゲイのセクシ” (gei no sekushi) is Google Translate screwing up “gay sex” apparently (and the author of the tweet was very sleep-deprived when they made this)
and 2. that was in response to this:
(Image description: a tweet by Wirelessly__ with the text “thing I keep seeing” and two other images: one, a frowning face next to the word “thing” and a cheerful smiling face with a heart next to the text “thing, japan”; the other, the previous face smiling at the word “thing”, and the frowning face with “thing, china”)
FREE downloadable guide to nonbinary language in Spanish - spread the word! 💛🤍💜🖤
How do we take a traditionally gendered language like Spanish and adapt it to be more gender inclusive?
Language is a powerful tool - this new EduGuide is amplifying non-binary voices, dismantling stigmas, and teaching us how to take a traditionally gendered language and adapt it to be more inclusive.
Education like this helps create a space where every identity is seen and celebrated!
———
El lenguaje es una herramienta poderosa - esta nueva EduGuide amplifica las voces no binaries, desmantela los estigmas y nos enseña cómo tomar un lenguaje tradicionalmente basado en género y adaptarlo para que sea más inclusivo.
Nuestres amigis de It Gets Better México colaboraron con Homosensual para abordar este tema crucial dentro del idioma — descarga tú guía GRATIS y compártala con amigues, familiares, tú escuela y tú comunidad para participar en estas importantes conversations: itgetsbetter.org/blog/spanish-eduguide-for-the-inclusion-of-nonbinary-people
¡Una educación como esta ayuda a crear un espacio donde se ve y se celebra cada identidad!
Las imágenes no funcionan como guía de uso; les faltan ejemplos. Lo que puedo proveer es como usar el lenguaje no-binario que pretendo usar yo:
Pronombre para hablar de personas cuyos géneros no se saben, o cuyo géneros saben ser no binarios: elle, pronunciado como parece. El uso es equivalente al él y ella
El clítico equivalente al lo o la es le. Se pronuncia como se esperaría pronunciar. Sí, se ve como la palabra usada para objetos indirectos, y puede parecer un poco raro cuando se usa para objetos directos. Pero es más neutro, y con eso no se supone el género
Concordancia de género: el sufijo -e, en vez de -o o -a. Esto se aplica también cuando una palabra usada -∅ (nada/silencio) para marcar género masculino. Osea, una palabra como ningún/ninguna aparecería como ningune. Así también con une y algune. Une se ve como otra palabra, un forma del verbo unir, pero casi no hay ningún caso de ambigüedad.
También, una parte de lenguaje no-binarie más difícil incorporar es usar -es cuando se habla de un grupo de personas de varios géneros—con esto se puede remover ese uso de concordancia masculina por defecto. Por ejemplo, si hablo de mi amiga Laura, mi amigo Rodrigo y mi amigo Daniel, podría decir elles son mis amigues, en vez de ellos son mis amigos.
Recuerden que esto se trata de concordia gramatical, que no siempre es igual al género de la persona de que se habla: por ejemplo, no se usaría para concordancia con la palabra persona, aunque no signifique el género de tal persona. Por ejemplo: elle es una persona muy simpática. Elle es muy simpátique
Esto es por la misma razón por qué se dice él es una persona muy simpática, y él es muy simpático
Hasta ahora, no sé lo que se diría para algunos casos—alguien que tiene profesión de actuar: es un actor? Actriz? Ya pues, aunque es una pena, yo sigo el modelo de inglés y uso el forma masculino en general, sin importar el género de la persona: elle es une actor
Por lo menos el pronombre (elle) y artículo (une) quieren decir que estoy hablando o de alguien cuyo género no sé, o de alguien cuyo género es no-binario.
Si alguien les dice que prefiere el uso de otro forma de lenguaje no-binario, usen eso para elle. Puede ser difícil, pero vale la pena respetar a la gente.
Por ejemplo, uso la concordancia gramatical de género elle/le/-e o él/lo/-o para mí misme, y pongo esto en mis correos y dios de perfiles.
