Lost in Thought

Three new features for posting from the mobile app

First, you can add images to reblogs. You asked for it, you got it.

Second, new text styles for your new text posts. Headers, lists, serifs, fancy cursive, serious typewriter. Look:

Lastly, intriguingly, you can drag paragraphs and images around to reorder them. Witness it:

No, I don’t mean holding multiple conversations with different people at the same time. I mean holding two or more completely separate conversations with the same person, via the same medium, at the same time.

Like when you’re texting, and the person on the other end asks you a question, then mentally eight-tracks and asks a different, unrelated question before you’ve finished keying in your response to the first one. So you answer the first question, and a conversation based on that answer ensues; then you answer the second question, and a totally different conversation based on that answer ensues, and now you’re having two separate conversations with the same person at the same time, and have to keep track of which responses pertain to which conversation purely from context.

I know I shouldn’t get in debates with strangers on Facebook (you know how dramatic these conversations can get). But, whenever I see public comments demonstrate harmful sociolinguistic notions, I always feel prompted to hop in. Letting our society continue to judge people for ill because of our backwards knowledge about language bothers me so much… and it hurts all of you, too, in how people will falsely judge you. From the perspective of linguistics as the real deal science, there is no reason why people should judge you for saying something like “adulting.”

If anyone starts speaking ill of your speech because you’re using words like “adulting” - congratulations, you are not doing anything that the English language hasn’t been doing for hundreds of years. You are not doing anything that many other languages haven’t been doing for thousands of years. What is happening with the word “adulting” is a very common, natural, beautiful, and legitimate process of the English language. 

The word “adult” is becoming a denominal verb. What this means is that the word started historically as a noun in the English language, but over time has transitioned to being accepted as a verb, too. I give plenty of examples above of what other denominal verbs are in this language, older denominal verbs that no one would deride you on if you used it as a verb in your daily language.

People should not bulldoze you for using language in new and awesome ways. Linguistic evolution is a natural process and it’s always happening. Linguistic evolution is nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to ridicule. Linguistic evolution is not a sign that the English language (or any language) is “falling apart” and becoming “worse.” There is nothing agrammatical or illegitimate about saying words like “adulting.”