autisticexpression:

shitacademicswrite:

I’m going to sit on Torpenhow Hill, drinking my chai tea and reading a biology book about Eurasian brown bears (Ursus arctos arctos).

The geographic range of the bear bear bear once included the hill hill hill hill.

lyrslair:

gostaks:

my rule of thumb with gender-neutral body language is to try to make as few claims as possible about the people whose bodies you’re discussing. So “cancer screenings for women” < “cancer screenings for people with cervixes” < “cervical cancer screenings”.

This 1) helps prevent over-specifying as in “people with vaginas who can get pregnant” and 2) generally leaves you with the simplest, clearest, and most concise version of what you were trying to say. I’m sure I could also come up with a social justicey way to explain the preference but seriously don’t you just want your language to be efficient and precise?

Of course there are times when you need to make claims about a person (eg. “anyone who has a cervix can develop cervical cancer”) but you can still make things easier by asking yourself ‘am I specifying anything here that I don’t need to?’

There are other reasons why this kind of concise language is beneficial, and it benefits EVERYONE.

Okay so… cancer screenings for women. Cervical? Breast? Something else? There are very different screenings involved here, so “cervical cancer screenings” is also just plain a lot more clear about what you’re doing.

“anyone who has a cervix can develop cervical cancer” - the alternative gendered version would be, presumably, that “every woman can get cervical cancer” but I am a woman by most people’s assumptions irl, so misunderstandings about my gender aside I assume they are talking about me given my general anatomy, but I do not have a cervix anymore. So again, this is… a lot clearer. Something that may be obvious to me, but there is other advice that… often doesn’t specify beyond vague gendered expressions and it actually makes a difference to me whether the issue is anatomical, hormonal, or other because some of those components are more relevant to me than others.

By the same token, “people who menstruate” makes sense when we are talking specifically about menstrual products, “people who can get pregnant” is relevant when talking about pregnancy-related issues, but if you use that to, say, talk about something going on with the ovaries then that’s a problem. Because I cannot get pregnant nor can I menstruate, but I DO have ovaries so I need to know if the condition you are talking about relates to the having of ovaries or to one of those other things (incidentally, I have since found out that as most ovarian cancer starts in the fallopian tubes, now that I do not have those I am, in fact, at lower risk for ovarian cancer so many thanks to whoever it was that informed me of that!)

…idk how much sense my additions are making because I am sick right now but tldr this kind of clarity of language is good for both trans AND cis people so even if you don’t give a damn about trans folks (although if you don’t why are you on my blog?) using this kind of language is actually better.

logarto:

theinformationcollector:

TIL Prairie dog language is complex. They don’t just have a call for “danger”: their calls differentiate human, hawk, domesticated dog, coyote etc. and specify size & color. One study found that they can communicate “Here comes the short human in the yellow” (vs the tall human in blue) to each other

via reddit.com

how remarkable that these big squirrels have language complex enough to call that one researcher a manlet

animatedamerican:

benito-cereno:

Okay, so:

Latin has this word, sic. Or, if we want to be more diacritically accurate, sīc. That shows that the i is long, so it’s pronounced like “seek” and not like “sick.”

You might recognize this word from Latin sayings like “sic semper tyrannis” or “sic transit gloria mundi.” You might recognize it as what you put in parentheses when you want to be pass-agg about someone’s mistakes when you’re quoting them: “Then he texted me, ‘I want to touch you’re (sic) butt.’”

It means, “thus,” which sounds pretty hoity-toity in this modren era, so maybe think of it as meaning “in this way,” or “just like that.” As in, “just like that, to all tyrants, forever,” an allegedly cool thing to say after shooting a President and leaping off a balcony and shattering your leg. “Everyone should do it this way.”

Anyway, Classical Latin somewhat lacked an affirmative particle, though you might see the word ita, a synonym of sic, used in that way. By Medieval Times, however, sic was holding down this role. Which is to say, it came to mean yes.

Ego: Num edisti totam pitam?

Tu, pudendus: Sic.

Me: Did you eat all the pizza?

You, shameful: That’s the way it is./Yes.

This was pretty well established by the time Latin evolved into its various bastard children, the Romance languages, and you can see this by the words for yes in these languages.

In Spanish, Italian, Asturian, Catalan, Corsican, Galician, Friulian, and others, you say si for yes. In Portugese, you say sim. In French, you say si to mean yes when you’re contradicting a negative assertion (”You don’t like donkey sausage like all of us, the inhabitants of France, eat all the time?” “Yes, I do!”). In Romanian, you say da, but that’s because they’re on some Slavic shit. P.S. there are possibly more Romance languages than you’re aware of.

But:

There was still influence in some areas by the conquered Gaulish tribes on the language of their conquerors. We don’t really have anything of Gaulish language left, but we can reverse engineer some things from their descendants. You see, the Celts that we think of now as the people of the British Isles were Gaulish, originally (in the sense that anyone’s originally from anywhere, I guess) from central and western Europe. So we can look at, for example, Old Irish, where they said tó to mean yes, or Welsh, where they say do to mean yes or indeed, and we can see that they derive from the Proto-Indo-European (the big mother language at whose teat very many languages both modern and ancient did suckle) word *tod, meaning “this” or “that.” (The asterisk indicates that this is a reconstructed word and we don’t know exactly what it would have been but we have a pretty damn good idea.)

So if you were fucking Ambiorix or whoever and Quintus Titurius Sabinus was like, “Yo, did you eat all the pizza?” you would do that Drake smile and point thing under your big beefy Gaulish mustache and say, “This.” Then you would have him surrounded and killed.

Apparently Latin(ish) speakers in the area thought this was a very dope way of expressing themselves. “Why should I say ‘in that way’ like those idiots in Italy and Spain when I could say ‘this’ like all these cool mustache boys in Gaul?” So they started copying the expression, but in their own language. (That’s called a calque, by the way. When you borrow an expression from another language but translate it into your own. If you care about that kind of shit.)

The Latin word for “this” is “hoc,” so a bunch of people started saying “hoc” to mean yes. In the southern parts of what was once Gaul, “hoc” makes the relatively minor adjustment to òc, while in the more northerly areas they think, “Hmm, just saying ‘this’ isn’t cool enough. What if we said ‘this that’ to mean ‘yes.’” (This is not exactly what happened but it is basically what happened, please just fucking roll with it, this shit is long enough already.)

So they combined hoc with ille, which means “that” (but also comes to just mean “he”: compare Spanish el, Italian il, French le, and so on) to make o-il, which becomes oïl. This difference between the north and south (i.e. saying oc or oil) comes to be so emblematic of the differences between the two languages/dialects that the languages from the north are called langues d’oil and the ones from the south are called langues d’oc. In fact, the latter language is now officially called “Occitan,” which is a made-up word (to a slightly greater degree than that to which all words are made-up words) that basically means “Oc-ish.” They speak Occitan in southern France and Catalonia and Monaco and some other places.

The oil languages include a pretty beefy number of languages and dialects with some pretty amazing names like Walloon, and also one with a much more basic name: French. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, n'est-ce pas?

Yeah, eventually Francophones drop the -l from oil and start saying it as oui. If you’ve ever wondered why French yes is different from other Romance yeses, well, now you know.

I guess what I’m getting at is that when you reblog a post you like and tag it with “this,” or affirm a thing a friend said by nodding and saying “Yeah, that”: you’re not new

this is all amazing, but I’m now waiting for people to start reblogging posts with the additional comment “SIC”.

max1461:

fnord888:

It would be funny if nuclear waste warning messages become an attraction for future historical linguists.

I mean look at this thing:

A parallel text in 7 languages, with 4 different scripts between them! And pictograms! All designed to be preserved intact!

maybe nothing of value to you is here

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

farretpotter:

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses:

hello tiny friends i keep in my pocket. tell me something I will find humorous but vaguely annoying

In several Eastern European languages there exists a second blue. One is to represent the blue of water while the other is the blue if the sky, however water blue can be brighter shades than sky blue and vice versa. People will try to explain the difference to your English-adjusted eyes, but no matter how many languages you speak you will always look at either one of those and say “blue.”

In lithuanian the “water blue” is “mėlynas” and the “sky blue” is “žydras.” I make a point to ask my friends at least once a day “Tas mėlynas ar žydras?” In the hope that I will one day learn to see the difference.

this enchants me

prismatic-bell:

ekjohnston:

kyraneko:

kittyknowsthings:

wodneswynn:

recklessravager:

esser-z:

sainatsukino:

linguisticparadox:

audreycritter:

whetstonefires:

whetstonefires:

tiny-smol-beastie:

reformedkingsmanagent:

wizard-guff:

storywonker:

penny-anna:

penny-anna:

penny-anna:

Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?

Then about a week into their journey like

Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying

Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst

Legolas:

~*~earlier~*~

Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits

Merry: Frodo what’d he say

Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish

Merry: I mean you could do that but consider

Merry: you can only tell him ONCE

Frodo: Merry. You’re absolutely right. I’ll wait.

#legolas’ hick accent vs #frodo’s ‘i learned it out of a book’ accent #FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

Legolas: umm well your accent is horrible

Aragorn: *hollering from a distance* HIS ACCENT IS BETTER THAN YOURS LEGOLAS YOU SILVAN HICK

Frodo: :)

Frodo: Hello. My name is Frodo. I am a Hobbit. How are you?

Legolas: y’alld’ve’ff’ve

Frodo, crying: please I can’t understand what you’r saying

Ok, but Frodo didn’t just learn out of a book. He learned like… Chaucerian Elvish. So actually:

Frodo: Good morrow to thee, frend. I hope we twain shalle bee moste excellente companions.

Legolas: Wots that mate? ‘Ere, you avin’ a giggle? Fookin’ ‘obbits, I sware.

Aragorn: *laughing too hard to walk*

@ghostriderofthearagon

dYinGggGggg…

i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.

english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.

they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max. frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.

so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.

plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.

so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.

to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.

so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!

considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.

…it’s also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.

which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.

this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!

Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.

Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*

Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now

Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?

Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?

Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.

Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.

Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y'all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.

Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man

Boromir, from beyond the grave: j e s u s

Tolkien would be SO PROUD of this post

@words-writ-in-starlight

If I remember correctly, in the “tree of tongues” material from The Lost Road, Tolkien goes into some detail about how the reason elves have so many dialects is that elves view language as a form of collaborative art, which they delight in, so a newly-coined word or grammatical construct gets spread around just like a new song would.

Elves may be immortal, but they’re also immortal nerd OCs and we must never forget this

Thank you for this addition which is both lovely and educational

So what you’re saying is, they’re us. They’re the internet. Sending “yeet” and “smol” and “I lik the bred” all over creation until two elves who’ve never met in their lives and be like “beans, amirite?” and “yeah I love kitter feets too.”

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS BEAUTIFUL

Somewhere in the Grey Havens, Tolkien is reading this post.

He is simultaneously laughing with delight, and utterly PISSED that he can’t reblog with a whole nerdy essay to build on what you’ve all said.

fthgurdy:

alex51324:

guerrillamydreams:

silly-jellyghoty:

why-cant-i-have-a-good-username:

charlesoberonn:

memewhore:

Archeologist 20,000 years after horses go extinct: *cries* I don’t

That comment is one of the most accurate things in studying history.

I can feel the pain already

Sometimes when I’m high I like to imagine arguments in the far future about what kind of milk or eggs were in our recipes. I hope the main opposing factions would be divided over whether the milk was from dogs or cats because “what other mammals were in the vast majority of households back then?”

One of the details that has stuck with me from Bill Bryson’s book about domestic history is how, in early salt-and-pepper shaker sets–from around the time Europeans first started putting salt and pepper on the table–there is a third container, and nobody is entirely sure what it was for.  

There are some highly plausible guesses–sugar is one of them; I forget the others–but the extant textual references to these items just say, “salt, pepper, etc.” 

Back to the original post, in Poland we still say ‘Everyone can plainly see what a horse looks like’, and it means 'there’s nothing to discuss here, everything is clear and obvious’.

Benedykt Chmielowski, the venerable priest who wrote the compendium of knowledge, also provided this very brief definition of a dragon:

“It is difficult to defeat a dragon, but one must try.”

jewishicequeen:

thatlittleegyptologist:

wodneswynn:

into-the-valley-of-unrest:

mens-rights-activia:

polygamouscaterpillar:

jenroses:

properrussian:

thegayestpolyglot:

kingdeino:

useless-polandfacts:

useless-czechrepfacts:

wednesdaythunder:

geritashipper:

you-tit:

mikaisyuu:

natsui:

zhanaform:

somalang:

lingumaniac:

polyglottica:

perilegs:

tobdog:

sprachtraeume:

languageoclock:

af-hverju:

littlenerdygirlwithwings:

af-hverju:

me: why are you destroying earth!!!

aliens: because theres people who think that english is the only language they need to speak

me: thats fair i understand

For some reason I find this all the more amusing because it’s written in English

moi: pourquoi vous détruisez le monde!!!
l'extraterrestre: parce que il y a des gens qui pensent que l'anglais est le seule langue pour parler
moi: ah ça c'est bien

ich: warum zerstört ihr die erde!!!

aliens: weil es leute gibt die glauben dass englisch die einzige sprache ist die sie sprechen müssen

ich: das ist fair ich verstehe

ég: af hverju eyðileggið þið jörðina!!!
aliens: af því að það er fólk sem finnst að enska sé sú eina tungumál sem þau þurfa að tala
ég: oh, það er vit í þessu. ég skil.

ik: waarom vernietig je de aarde!!!

aliens: omdat er mensen zijn die denken dat engels de enige taal is die ze hoeven te spreken

ik: oh zo, ik snap het

minä: miks te tuhootte maapalloo?

alienit: koska tääl on ihmisiä joitten mielestä englanti on ainoo kieli jota niitten täytyy puhua

minä: toi on reilua, ymmärrän

私: どうして地球を滅ぼしているんですか？

宇宙人: 英語しか喋る必要がないと思う人がいるからです

私: なるほど、わかりました

me: Wosück maakt ji de Welt twei!!!

aliens: wieldat dat Lüüd gifft, de dinkt dat Engelsch de allenige Spraak weer, de een snacken mütt

me: jo, daar seggst wat. Nu versta ik’t

aniga: dhulka maxaad u burburinaya !!!

shisheeyaha: dadka intiisa badani u malaynayaan in Ingiriisidu tahay afka oo kaliya ay u baahan yihiin inay la hadlaan

aniga: waxaan fahamsanahay. waa wax cadaalad

我：你们为什么在毁灭地球?！！

外星人：因为有人以为他们只会英语就可以了

我：懂了，说得有道理

ako: bakit niyo sinisira ang mundo!!!

taga-ibang planeta: kasi merong mga taong akala nila Ingles lang ang kailangan nilang matutunang lenggwahe

ako: ah, sige naiintindihan ko

Aku : kenapa kau hancurkan bumi!!!
Alien : karena masih banyak orang berpikir hanya bahasa inggris satu-satunya bahasa yang terpenting
Aku : oh, oke lah..

tôi: tại sao các người hủy diệt trái đất!!! người ngoài hành tinh: bởi vì có người nghĩ rằng tiếng Anh là thứ tiếng duy nhất mà họ cần biết tôi: ồ thế thì tôi hiểu

Eu: Por que vocês estão destruindo a Terra?!
Aliens: Porque há pessoas que pensam que o inglês é a única língua que eles precisam falar.
Eu: Isso é justo, eu entendo.

jag: varför förintar ni jorden!!!

utomjordingar: för det finns folk som tror att engelska är det ända språket de behöver kunna

jag: rimligt, jag förstår

Já: Proč ničíte Zemi?

Mimozemšťani: Protože tu jsou lidé, kteří si myslí, že angličtina je jediný jazyk, který potřebují znát

Já: To je fér, to chápu.

ja: dlaczego niszczycie Ziemię?

kosmici: ponieważ są ludzie, którzy myślą, że angielski to jedyny język, którego potrzebuję

ja: rozumiem, w porządku

io: perchè state distruggendo la terra!!!

alieni: perchè ci sono delle persone che credono che l’inglese sia l’unica lingua di cui hanno bisogno

io: capisco, mi sembra giusto

Yo: porqué estás destruyendo la tierra!?!?

Extraterrestre: porque hay personas quienes creen que inglés es la única lengua que se tiene que hablar.

Yo: te entiendo, es justo.

Я: Почему вы уничтожаете Землю?!?!
Инопланетяне: Потому что есть люди, которые считают, что им нужно говорить только по-английски.
Я: А, ну понятно, тогда ладно!

A modern Rosetta stone.

Onipa: ad3n ti na woo se3 ewuasi

3wiamu nii: efri s3 nk⊃fu⊃ bi w⊃ ho a ⊃mo fri s3 br⊃fo ne kasa p3 a ehyia ⊃mo

Onipa: a, ma te ase

Yessssssss I love the sign language addition! @polygamouscaterpillar

This is like the side-by-side plates of the Lord’s Prayer in the historical linguistics textbook except so much better

This is the most educational shitpost I’ve ever seen

אני: למה אתם משמידים את כדור הארץ??

חייזר: כי יש אנשים שחושבים שאנגלית היא השפה היחידה שצריך לדבר בה

אני: הבנתי, הוגן