Tag: language update
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From an extremely same/different era
After finding the origin of ringers in this 1927 volume of Vanity Fair I started reading the rest of the magazine. 1927 was the peak of a Share Value boom, so it was like 2017 as measured by aristocrats. The two booms are drastically different as measured by peasants. 1927 was overgrown from a REAL…
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Ringers
I shouldn’t even try to think about politics. My record of mistakes is unbroken. Nevertheless, here’s one random thought after dipping a toe into media for a moment. It’s clear that both parties want to prevent DeSantis from rising to the top. He’s the only major politician who SOLVES PROBLEMS. All other politicians MANUFACTURE PROBLEMS…
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Missing a difference
Via MindMatters as usual, a new study on the linguistics of cussing. The authors find that most cuss words lack ‘soft’ consonants and emphasize plosives. In a following study, the authors also looked at minced oaths – which are variations of swear words deemed less offensive, for example “darn” instead of “damn”. The authors found…
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Eirx
We often signal our orthodoxy by using the “native” spelling of a country or tribe we’re supposedly defending. The signalers don’t worry about actual “nativity” when they invent lunacies like Latinx or Womxn. They’re trying a bit harder with Ukraine, but the result is still absurd because the Ukrainian “language” is a dialect of Russian.…
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More Kirn Kibble
Since I’m quibbling with Kirn today, here’s another. You went to college and want to learn to write well? Here’s a tip. Vanquish from your mind the entire slate of terms you heard only in classes & used only in papers. Ditch “hegemony.” Forget “problematic.” Scuttle “instantiate.” Excellent and very old advice. Most of the…
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Language doesn’t create culture, as usual.
On a random impulse I got curious about the grammar of Polynesian languages like Hawaiian. Their phonology is extremely simple. Is their grammar equally simple, or bizarrely complex? I expected the latter, but the answer is in between. Hawaiian grammar is in the median range of complexity. It has NGDA for nouns, singular/dual/plural for pronouns,…
Polistra's Mill 