i'm so pretentious

Fricatives are a category of speech sound. They are distinctive in that they are made by producing a turbulent airflow. That means that you let some air keep flowing out from your lungs and through your vocal tract (then out of your mouth), but you do so by pushing that air through a very narrow opening.

[x] (This is an [s] production)

When the constriction (narrow opening) is very close to the end of the vocal tract, like when the lower lip touches the upper teeth, the sound produced is either [v] as in “very” or [f] as in “ferry”.

When the constriction is slightly further back, and the tongue is touching the teeth, the sound produced is either [ð] as in “the” or [θ] “think”. These sounds are written with “th” in English. Since they’re so similar to [v]/[f] and pretty close to [d]/[t], too, lots of dialects of English shift the pronunciation of [ð]\[θ] to one of those other sounds.

When the constriction is at the alveolar ridge, the sound is [z] as in “zoo” or [s] as in “sue”.

And when the constriction is slightly further back, the sound is [ʒ] as in “genre”/“measure”/“beige” or [ʃ] as in “shipping”.

What’s really awesome about fricatives, though, is how they look on a spectrogram. They’re all aperiodic sound (especially the voiceless ones below), but they don’t all look alike:

From left to right: [s] – [ʃ] – [θ] – [f]

[s] - Very high energy in the highest frequencies

[ʃ] - High energy, but in much lower frequencies than [s]

[θ] - So similar to [f], but slightly higher energy in the higher frequencies

[f] - Lowest energy (quietest) with lower frequencies overall

Oh man. I’ll see how many I can think of.

Keep in mind that many of these are more common for Latin America. Official Spain is like “let’s use 8 words to describe this thing” and informal Spain is like “Dad it’s just email” and O.S. is like “I THINK YOU MEAN CORREO ELECTRÓNICO YOUNG MAN”

Anyway.

googlear = to google[official: buscar en Google]

facebookear / feisbukear = to go on facebook[official: utilizar Facebook]

photoshopear = to photoshop[official: utilizar Photoshop]

chequear = to check[official: averiguar / revisar, repasar]

cachar = to catch[official: pillar or agarrar… in Spain coger but never coger in Latin America]

bloguear = to blog

rebloguear = to reblog

surfear = to surf [sometimes hacer surf is the sport, but surfear can be “to surf the web”]

hackear = to hack

faxear = to fax

jogguear = to jog [usually they say caminar or something like dar paseos, jogguear doesn’t show up that often in my experience]

chatear = to chat[official: charlar]

wachar = to watch[official: mirar / ver; wachar is uncommon in my experience, as is watchear by itself]

linkear = to link[official: enlazar or maybe vincular]

emailear = to email[official: mandar un email / mandar correo electrónico]

There’s also like esquiar “to ski”, or sometimes you get older words that gain a new meaning.

The word “leche”, apart from its more traditional meaning (“milk”) is a very versatile slang term that can be used in many situations with various meanings (some of them even contradictory). I’m going to show the expressions with some examples:

¡Ronaldio es la leche! (Ronaldo is amazing)

¡Y una leche! (no way) 

Tu novia está de mala leche (your girlfriend in a bad mood)

Su padre conduce a toda leche (his father drives really fast)

A mi hijo le dieron tres leches en el colegio (my son took a beating in school)

¡Me cago en la leche! (bloody hell!) This one literally is “I shit on the milk”.

Ella tiene la leche de dinero (She has a lot of money)

Der Tee                                                               Tea

Der Teebeutel – Die Teebeutel                           Tea bag

Lose Teeblätter                                                   Loose-leaf tea                          

Die Teesorte                                                   Type of tea

Chaitee                                                           Chai tea

Minztee                                                          Mint tea

Pfefferminztee                                                Peppermint tea

Schwarzer Tee                                               Black tea

Grüner Tee                                                     Green tea

Früchtetee                                                      Fruit tea

Salbeitee                                                        Salvia tea

Brennesseltee                                                Nettle tea

Kamillentee                                                     Chamomile tea

Kräutertee                                                      Herbal tea

Rooibos                                                          Redbush tea

Eistee                                                             Ice tea

Ingwertee                                                       Ginger tea

Ich hätte gern einen Tee mit …           I would like tea with ….

Zucker                                                 Sugar

Rohrzucker                                          Cane sugar

Brauner Zucker                                   Brown Sugar  

Milch                                                    Milk

Zitrone                                                 Lemon

Sahne                                                  Cream

Süßgebäck                                          Sweets

Schuss                                                 Liquor (lit. With a shot)

Kandis                                                  Rock candy sugar

Das Zubehör                                       Accessories

Die Teetasse                                       Teacup

Das Teeglas                                        Tea glass

Der Samowar                                       Samovar

Der Wasserkocher                              Electric kettle (lit. Water boiler)

Der Teelöffel                                       Teaspoon

Der Untersetzer                                  Coaster (also saucer)

Die Teekanne                                     Teapot

Das Teesieb                                       Tea strainer

…or what any of the linguistics jargon means

This is how I personally phrase my resume:

Multilingual

Highly Proficient: Spanish, French

Intermediate: German

With Spanish I say “highly proficient to fluent, willing to provide written evidence of translation/interpreting skill and/or perform an oral evaluation upon request”.

List of Shibboleths

List of English Words with Dual French and Anglo-Saxon Variations

List of Tautological Place Names

List of English Terms of Venery by Animal

List of Linguistic Siamese Twins

List of English Homographs

List of Country Name Etymologies

List of English Heteronyms (with IPA!)

List of English Words with Disputed Usage

List of Proposed Etymologies of OK

This time of year often involves leaving the cozy sanctuary of your linguistics department where everyone knows what a wug is and spending quality time with your non-linguist friends and family. Who, bless ‘em, are often a little bit confused about linguistics. So I’ve compiled a list of common questions and some resources to help you answer them. And if you end up needing a break, check out the linguistmas tag and my extensive archive of linguist humour. 

What is linguistics exactly? 

Explaining what linguistics is using geology and biology analogies Brain surgeon analogy Car analogy Botany analogy Subfields of linguistics explained using toy metaphors

So, you’re a linguist? How many languages do you know? 

Why linguists hate being asked how many languages they know

Wow, linguistics, I guess I’d better watch my grammar around you, right?

8 myths about language and linguistics On the interplay between copyediting and descriptivism We each have an idiolect, and they’re all okay How to have a conversation about language differences without being a prescriptivist

That’s not even in the dictionary! So many people are degrading language these days! 

Anne Curzan on what makes a word “real” xkcd on kids and text abbreviations Erin McKean, actual lexicographer, on what it means when a word isn’t in the dictionary The kilogram model of language and what’s wrong with the America’s ugliest accent challenge Language is open source

Don’t you just hate it when people say…?

In defence of “unnecessary” words Every argument you’ll ever need for singular “they” (plus the Canadian government’s support of it, why do we even have gendered pronouns, and a comparison with singular “you”) In defence of hyperbolic “literally” Vocal fry and can we stop hating on how young women talk? When it comes to Rachel Jeantel, who’s really on trial here?  Can we just, like, get over the way women talk? Move over Shakespeare, teen girls are the real language disruptors The problem with talking about “sounding gay”

____ isn’t a real language! 

Indigenous languages, literacy, and the myth of the “unwritten language” What if we talked about monolingual White children the way we talk about low-income children of color? Myth-busting about sign languages

A linguistics degree? What are you going to do with that?

A variety of options in the linguistics jobs series.

Tell me something interesting about linguistics!