ukfrislandembassy

[ukfrislandembassy]

so the thing about english is that people think it's so divorced from other germanic languages based on like. words. I've even heard people try to insist that english is a romance language. because of that whole messy business in 1066 with out-of-wedlock willy and his band of naughty normans. and now a good chunk of the vocabulary is french or whatever and they're prestigious so not using them makes you sound like a rube and this and that and the other

and yes william the conqueror will never be safe from me. I will have my revenge on him. he fucked up a perfectly good germanic language is what he did. this will be me in hell

but the thing is that most words in, say, german do have a one to one english equivalent. not all hope is lost, for those who still dare to see it. it's just that you 1066pilled normancels aren't looking in the right place

dog (en) ≠ der Hund (de) but der Hund (de) -> hound (en)

look with your special eyes. that one was easier. not all of them are this intuitive because of semantic narrowing and broadening and waltzing and hokey-pokeying and whatever else. I'll give you a few more

animal (en) ≠ das Tier (de)

aha! you think. I've got him on the ropes now.

but then

das Tier (de) -> deer (en)

nooooo!! you whine and cry in gay baby jail. the consonants are different!!! listen to me. listen, I say, putting both my hands on your shoulder. /t/and /d/ are the same sound. you just put your voice behind one of them.

nooooooooo!! you wail. deer are animals but not all animals are deer!!! listen to me. LISTEN. they used to be. animals used to be deer. that's just what we called them. it was a long time ago. it was a weird time in all our lives. it's okay.

let's try for a verb this time

to die (en) ≠ sterben (de) but sterben (de) -> to starve

same principle with the consonants, we're just changing a stop (where we completely stop the airflow and then let it through) for a fricative (where we still let some air go through. idk where it's going. maybe to its job or something.)

to starve used to mean generally to die, not just to die of malnourishment. we do that a lot. we take one word for a lot of things and make it mean one thing. or take one word for one thing and make it mean a lot of things. this is common and normal.

"okay but roland," you say, suddenly coming up with an argument. "what about tree? trees are super common. I don't think we'd fuck around too much with that. the german word is baum! what about THAT?"

"when did you learn german?" I ask, but then decide it isn't relevant right at this very moment. but fine.

tree (en) ≠ der Baum (de) but der Baum (de) -> beam (en)

beam??? you ask incredulously. beam???? BEAM?????? you continue with the same tone and cadence of captain holt from brooklyn 99.

yes. beam. like the evil beams from my eye I'm going to hit you with if you don't stop shouting.

but the vowels!!! you howl.

listen. listen to me. the vowels mean nothing. absolutely nothing. they're fluid like water. it got raised in english.

"WHAT DOES RAISED MEAN"

it doesn't matter right now. they were raised better than you, at least. stop shouting. open your eyes and see what god has given you. they're the same word.

"they're NOT the same word. they mean different things!"

we've been over this. they didn't used to. a beam was (and is) a long solid piece of wood. much like the long solid piece of wood I showed your mother last night.

FAQ:

Q: could english be some kind of germanic-romance hybrid?

A: do you become a sexy thing from the black lagoon just because you dressed up as one for halloween? english may have gotten a lot of vocabulary from norman french, but its history and syntax are distinctly germanic. that's what we base these things on.

Q: okay but what does it matter? this doesn't actually affect my day to day life

A: you come into my house? you come into my house, the house of an autistic man living in vienna austria and studying english linguistics and you ask me what does it matter? sit back down. I was going to let you go but now I have powerpoints to show you

Q: you're stupid and wrong and gay and a bad person

A: I know it's you, Willy

#aye #historical linguistics #also tree and die are inherited #and maybe dog to #the only actual loanword there is animal

[ukfrislandembassy]

#aye #j r r tolkien #silly

[ukfrislandembassy]

#silly #meta

[ukfrislandembassy]

It pisses me the fuck off that yoga is actually ancient and really good for you. Part of me still feels like it was invented to extract wealth from white socal moms.

#aye #silly

[ukfrislandembassy]

Augury side of tumblr what do these omens mean

#silly #uk stuff

[ukfrislandembassy]

Fanfic tiktok is wild... I see so many people saying shit like "I could never read anything below 60k!!", or "What story can you even tell in under 5k words?" or "A oneshot below 10k isn't even a story!" or "I always filter completed fics by 100k< only!"

And I'm like...

A) which fandoms are you reading fics for where you have this kind of offerings on the regular?

B) have you heard of short stories? If you truly think every story NEEDS to be longform to connect with people, I sincerely feel sorry for you.

C) Average novel length is between 50k to 100k. I'm sorry, but CONSISTENTLY demanding fic writers to push out fics of that length is insane. Just think about it: YOU DEMAND AUTHORS TO PUT OUT FICS THAT COMPARE TO COMMERCIAL NOVELS IN LENGTH (AND QUALITY) AS A BASELINE.

Yall are wilding.

#aye #bloody hell #some of us want to have time spare to read other things

[ukfrislandembassy]

Rupert Bear is not only monarchist but probably a blackshirt too (as with all creations of the Daily Express).

Also non-Brits I'm glad you now have more of a sense of the array of anthropomorphic animals in British childrens lit.

I don't know what paddington is doing on that list, but it made me think of the time someone drew a picture of the queen with paddington after she died, and we had scores of people losing their minds at the idea that paddington bear wasn't the same kind of communist as them

#silly #literature

[ukfrislandembassy]

See also anthropologists' use of 'emic' and 'etic' vs. linguists (in my experience it doesn'tquite line up, plus linguists doesn't really use those terms by themselves anyway).

Hey tsnidaria anemone, can you teach me more philosophy words? I don't mean crazy ones from an ancient wizard, I mean regular type ones that I might use to say stuff in an annoyingly pedantic way to people in real life. I somehow didn't know "truth-apt" before you said it to me on here (I knew some other words for the same type of thing, like "proposition", but that's at least a little ambiguous because some people use "proposition" for "truth-apt thing" and some people use it for "function from possible worlds to truth values").

Anyway, can you please tell me more words that a stuffy tweed-wearing anglo-american might say in his post 1945 office?

i think you probably have most of it if you're a linguist. you just have to forget that you actually know what it all means and start pretending you do

but actually i think non-philosophers are confused by the way we use the word "normativity"

#linguistics

[ukfrislandembassy]

#silly #linguistics

[ukfrislandembassy]

surely no one in academia cares at this point

You must understand that historians are not allowed to cum unless they're calling someone a crackpot fraud.

#aye #indeed #academia #me and linguistics all the bloody time

[ukfrislandembassy]

struggling to comprehend the scale of the mistake I almost just made

#silly

[ukfrislandembassy]

I’m noticing an increase in new fic writers on AO3 who…uh…mayy not know how to format their fics correctly..so here is a quick and VERY important tip

Using a random fic of mine as example..

The left example: ✅✅✅

The right example: ❌❌❌

Idk how many times I’ve read a good fic summary and been so excited to read before clicking on it and being met with an ugly wall of text. When I see a huge text brick with zero full line breaks my eyes blur and I just siiiigh bc either I click out immediately or I grin and bear it…it’s insufferable!

If a new character speaks, you need a line break. If you notice a paragraph is becoming too large, go ahead and make a line break and/or maybe reconfigure the paragraph to flow better. I’m not a pro writer or even a huge fic writer but…please…ty…

#aye #things they teach badly at school

[ukfrislandembassy]

#stephen fry #silly

[ukfrislandembassy]

Watership Down traumatic flashbacks triggered

#I'm sorry

[ukfrislandembassy]

people: you’re in xkcd!!!

me: no I don’t think you understand, I’m inside the stomach of the Eldritch Spirit of the Brown One (it’s very cozy in here and the wifi is surprisingly good)

#historical linguistics #silly

[ukfrislandembassy]

Tumblr engaging is come classic superstition again

#but whatever #sure #make a wish I guess

[ukfrislandembassy]

#bloody hell #trans issues #uk politics