I finally managed to get hold of a copy of my dissertation! You can read it on Google Docs HERE. Please feel free to download and cite the work if it helps you with your own studies. 🙂
You guys, this is 70 pages of analysis of tumblr language and you should probably read it. I know I’m going to.
I’m sold on the strength of the table of contents alone
a bop is something light or something you casually enjoy. you don’t mind it/it’s cute in the moment.
a banger is something goes hard (some times unnecessarily) can invoke deep emotions. can fizzle out after some time has passed.
a jam is something that can be considered as nostalgic. it is a song that is a personal anthem, no matter what you are going through you just respond to it. it is immortal.
The phonetic alphabet was developed as a way to spell things out over radio communications that may be less then ideal, I.E. a lot of static or weak signal. All the words were chosen because they have a distinct sound that is easy to pick out. Military and police communications use the phonetic alphabet heavily and can be helpful to know for talking over CB’s or FRS (walky talky) radios.
I’m sorry guys, i had to
I cannot fucking believe it is the yEAR 2017 GOD DAMMIT
No. Just no. The NATO phonetic alphabet should not be used like this.
This young girl uses “los,” “las” and the gender-neutral “les” — watch her explain why. —from REMEZCLA on twitter.
to all the cowards who whine “how will i explain it to my kids??” i say: how about you shut up and let your kids explain it to you.
Guys, you don’t understand, this isn’t the same thing as people complaining about “they” in English! This is a huge deal in Spanish. Spanish-speakers are much less forgiving of new colloquialisms or loan words from other languages (god forbid you say “slide” for a slideshow instead of “diapositiva”; you’ll get burned at the stake). To explain, I have to give a bit of background:
There is a very old organisation called LaReal Academia Española (the Spanish Royal Academy or RAE) whose sole job has been to maintain strict grammar and language rules for the entire Spanish-speaking world. Whenever someone is unsure of a word or rule, it is very common to consult la RAE, but it’s a much bigger deal than just Googling something on Dictionary.com or Webster’s in English-speaking countries. You know those old-people minion Facebook memes people like making fun of? There are some for RAE-approved grammar and language. I’m completely serious. I’ve had Spanish literature professors fucking email RAE officials when teaching some obscure grammar rule to make sure they’re up to date with RAE standards. I’ve had them scold students or dropping points for using a new or loan word in class because “it’s not RAE-recognised”. It’s the biggest deal.
Even if a word is widely understood and used, there are people who refuse to recognise it because “La RAE” doesn’t either. La RAE’s word is law for many Spanish-speakers, and it very rarely adds or changes words. They would never dream of adding “selfie” or “muggle” to the dictionary the way it has happened in English.
Spanish is a gendered language, so it’s hard to make things gender neutral without drastically changing centuries-old language rules. For example, the Spanish word for child is “niño” for masculine and “niña” for feminine. The correct gender-neutral way according to la RAE is “niño”, but lots of people use the “@“ symbol in the place of the gendered vowel to make it more inclusive, giving you “niñ@“. And RAE-thumpers get pissed about it. It’s impossible to make something widely recognised without RAE approval, which sucks because the people who manage RAE are a bunch of stubborn and elitist old people. To be fair, using “@“ is a bit cumbersome and only good for written works, and it’s always been a struggle to find a spoken gender-neutral equivalent. That’s where this sweet girl’s solution comes in.
Using a neutral vowel “e” instead of the gendered vowels “a” and “o” is an incredibly elegant solution to this problem! It’s easy to say and it’s easy to write. But for the average Spanish-speaker to accept “les” instead of “los” or “las” is a huge feat we’re undertaking. Standing up to her teacher, who most likely adheres to RAE rules and regulations, is a huge deal. These rules are centuries old and haven’t changed that much this whole time. What she’s suggesting is making a lot of people irrationally mad.
It’s not like in English where people whine about “they”, and yet you can pull up hundreds of examples of it in older literature. This has never been done in Spanish before. And it’s gonna take a lot more work to make this a thing in such a tightly-regulated language as Spanish.
Everyone’s like “those Germans have a word for everything” but English has a word for tricking someone into watching the music video for Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.
Mr. Rogers had an intentional manner of speaking to children, which his writers called “Freddish”. There were nine steps for translating into Freddish:
“State the idea you wish to express as clearly as possible, and in terms preschoolers can understand.” Example: It is dangerous to play in the street.
“Rephrase in a positive manner,” as in It is good to play where it is safe.
“Rephrase the idea, bearing in mind that preschoolers cannot yet make subtle distinctions and need to be redirected to authorities they trust.” As in, “Ask your parents where it is safe to play.”
“Rephrase your idea to eliminate all elements that could be considered prescriptive, directive, or instructive.” In the example, that’d mean getting rid of “ask”: Your parents will tell you where it is safe to play.
“Rephrase any element that suggests certainty.” That’d be “will”: Your parents can tell you where it is safe to play.
“Rephrase your idea to eliminate any element that may not apply to all children.” Not all children know their parents, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play.
“Add a simple motivational idea that gives preschoolers a reason to follow your advice.” Perhaps: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is good to listen to them.
“Rephrase your new statement, repeating the first step.” “Good” represents a value judgment, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them.
“Rephrase your idea a final time, relating it to some phase of development a preschooler can understand.” Maybe: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them, and listening is an important part of growing.
Rogers brought this level of care and attention not just to granular
details and phrasings, but the bigger messages his show would send.
Hedda Sharapan, one of the staff members at Fred Rogers’s production
company, Family Communications, Inc., recalls Rogers once halted taping
of a show when a cast member told the puppet Henrietta Pussycat not to
cry; he interrupted shooting to make it clear that his show would never
suggest to children that they not cry.
In working on the show,
Rogers interacted extensively with academic researchers. Daniel R.
Anderson, a psychologist formerly at the University of Massachusetts who
worked as an advisor for the show, remembered a speaking trip to
Germany at which some members of an academic audience raised questions
about Rogers’s direct approach on television. They were concerned that
it could lead to false expectations from children of personal support
from a televised figure. Anderson was impressed with the depth of
Rogers’s reaction, and with the fact that he went back to production
carefully screening scripts for any hint of language that could confuse
children in that way.
In fact, Freddish and Rogers’s philosophy of
child development is actually derived from some of the leading
20th-century scholars of the subject. In the 1950s, Rogers, already well
known for a previous children’s TV program, was pursuing a graduate
degree at The Pittsburgh Theological Seminary when a teacher there
recommended he also study under the child-development expert Margaret
McFarland at the University of Pittsburgh. There he was exposed to the
theories of legendary faculty, including McFarland, Benjamin Spock, Erik
Erikson, and T. Berry Brazelton. Rogers learned the highest standards
in this emerging academic field, and he applied them to his program for
almost half a century.
This is one of the reasons Rogers was so
particular about the writing on his show. “I spent hours talking with
Fred and taking notes,” says Greenwald, “then hours talking with
Margaret McFarland before I went off and wrote the scripts. Then Fred
made them better.” As simple as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood looked and sounded, every detail in it was the product of a tremendously careful, academically-informed process.
That idea is REALLY worth learning to talk to the kiddos. Mr. Rogers still has a lot to teach us–especially for our own kids.
I started Hebrew, which is why I’ve been dead on this blog, but I don’t think I can ever properly convey to you guys the sheer cultural whiplash of spending years learning Japanese from Japanese teachers and then trying to learn Hebrew from an Israeli
Japanese: you walk into class already apologizing for being alive Hebrew: you walk into class, the teacher insults you and you are expected to insult her back
Japanese: conjugates every single verb based on degree of intended politeness, nevermind keigo and honorifics Hebrew: Someone asked my teacher how to say “excuse me” and she laughed for several seconds before saying we shouldn’t worry about remembering that since we’ll never need to say it
Japanese: if you get one stroke wrong the entire kanji is incomprehensible Hebrew: cursive? script? fuck it do whatever you want, you don’t even have to write the vowels out unless you feel like it
Japanese: the closest thing there is to ‘bastard’ is an excessively direct ‘you’ pronoun Hebrew: ‘bitch’ translates directly
2018 is þe year of using þe þorn again instead of þe letters “T” and “H” in succession
gotta keep it smooþ
þank you
Who let Feanor have a tumblr??
Are you protesting þis?
We are not starting another riot over this. This is not going to end with someone making three jewels, swearing an oath and murdering people over some boats. I’m warning you.
“Tears unnumbered ye shall shed…” Remember that little bit?
I’m fucking warning you.
– Mod Eönwë
PS. Seriously, no more mass murders with poetic names, or I’ll go full “Captain of the Host of the West” on your asses and you won’t be happy about it…
I wanna make some pretty jewels!
– Mod Manwë
Guyþ if Feanor haþ a Tumblr it lookþ þomething like thiþ.
please, please, someone help me out here because i’m broke as shit and can’t afford a copy of peoples of middle-earth to look up the actual shibboleth story – was the linguistic shift addressed by the shibboleth only applied to the unvoiced dental fricative (thulë)? the tengwar suggests that the shibboleth would only come into play when the root of a word was spelled with a thulë, and that any words spelled with a silmë would retain the voiced alveolar fricative (s-sound).
tl;dr: in fëanárian quenya, do all s-sounds become thorns? or just those whose roots contain a thulë? the consonant morphology available on tolkiengateway suggests the latter but literally everyone on tumblr seems to be saying it’s all s’s, whether thulë or silmë. pls help @verymaedhros@alia-andreth@incorrect-middleearth-quotes y’all seem like you know what you’re doing
It’s just those whose roots contain a thulë, or rather, just those that are spelled with a thulë when using tengwar. Unfortunately the English alphabet contains neither thulë nir silmë so if people obeyed those rules in their jokes it wouldn’t be funny anymore.
I love this post because it’s basically
OP: “hey guise let’s have a recreational fight about language”
Silmarillion fandom: *piles out of a clown-car ship with armfuls of miruvor, swords and diacritical marks* did sOMEONE SAY FIGHT ABOUT LANGUAGE
just moving along like everyone else 