עזרא

This is really exciting, linguistically speaking.

Because it’s not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:

ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff

Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.

In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one I’m ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style. 

Here’s what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speech–that is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate “this speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.” Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so we’re talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.

A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of “language.” Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin. 

The tags are absolutely a factor. You want someone to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, you start a new tag. You want to have, as seen here, this removable piece between commas (does it have a name?) - you have 5 tags in this sentence alone. And sometimes you just

pause in the middle of a sentence…

and let your voice

language is this constantly evolving thing tbh, it doesn’t remain the same unless it’s dead and the people who used it gone so seeing the evolution of the language used on tumblr is literally so fucking amazing i want to cry with joy at it

because we also add in words from other languages, or make entirely new words up as additional terms to denote something (see ‘tol’ and ‘smol’ in relation to ‘tall’ and ‘small’) and this is constant. we are doing this daily without any sort of breathing space because there’s millions of us on this hellsite and we are constantly talking and so the language changes day-by-day until we have general, universal rules for what to do in a post, what to add in our tags, how to add it, why we add it, what we mean by it

we’ve created a language in the same way our ancestors all did: by building on the ones that came before and changing them to suit our needs and our system

and that’s fucking awesome okay

What?

What.

No, they are antisemitic for decades of ignoring attacks on Israeli civilians , being extremely biased and literally supporting terrorists . And i think you know that… do a google search or I don’t know, listen to Jews.

Anyways, Here are a few reasons:

-calling out Israel more than any other country, while there are countries in their board that are actual dictatorships with apartheid & genocide .

They’re fixated on Israel.

-only holding Israel for agreements made while ignoring the fact that other parties have been violating the terms (aka harming Israeli civilians, amassing an army& weapons , moving past certain borders, etc).

*Aka what’s happening with Hezbollah& Hamas over the last 20 years ,,,

-ignoring the events of October 7th for almost a year: kidnapping of civilians, mass murder and torture , women being raped as a weapon of war , etc.

The UN has a long history of being antisemitic and anti- Israel.

—

Instead of actually helping Palestinian refugees, the UN donated money and resources to literal terrorists. It perpetuates the narrative that they are refugees instead of actually resolving the issue.

Hell they let a terrorist organisation control the Gaza Strip for years. Said terrorists are higher ups in UNWRA…

Some reading:

For every other refugee population, the priority is finding them a stable place to live, not sending them back to the place they fled from or were driven out of.

And instead of trying to get these people citizenship and the right to vote and engage with their governments, the UN instead says that they're refugees and should eventually be returned.

The hero of China, welcomed home. Here's my Afro-Chinese version of Mulan!

When looking for the perfect photo set for the @creatingblackcharacters Melanin Beam Challenge, this scene stopped me in my tracks. There's so much love in this moment, and I wanted to capture as much of her father's adoration as I could.

My favorite detail is the waves in her father's hair, where the texture shows from being smoothed and pulled into his bun.

Please listen to this baby tapir CHEEP and maybe all your sorrows will go away for a precious moment 🩷🩷🩷

if i shouldn’t use my cane because i can sometimes technically walk without it, it would just hurt like a motherfucker then abled people should no longer be allowed to use potholders to take things out of the oven because i mean