voiceless alveolar lateral fricative

I remember seeing many maaaany years ago like within my first years of Tumblr, a handy post/chart for learning the differences between shared (and unshared) symbols used in Chinese, Korean and Japanese, and so I wanted to throw something together quick to help people learn the differences between languages using the Arabic script– they’re not all Arabic!! These are just some of the more common ones you see online.

Many many languages use a modified Arabic script, and I couldn’t possibly detail each and every one, so here are links to some info about others as well! Including:

Azerbaijani

Sindhi

Balochi

Luri

Mandinka

Arabi Malayalam

Kyrgyz

Pegon script (Javanese, Madurese, Sundanese)

Anger? ‘Tis safe never. Bar it! Use love.

Spell that backward and you get:

Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!

Which is Latin for:

Kory Stamper has a snappy post up at Harmless Drudgery about lexicography and “real” words. Excerpt: 

I think [insert reviled word here] isn’t a real word.

Let’s back up. Why do you think it’s not a real word? Because by a linguist’s definition, if it communicates meaning to an audience, then it’s “a real word.” […]

But it’s illogical/ugly/stupid.

Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it somehow “not real.” This is one of the more absurd notions that people have about language: that the mere dislike of a word invalidates its very existence. […] I hate heat, for instance, and think temperatures above a very dry 80F can just nope right on out of here–but summer arrives every year, like clockwork, just to piss me off. Should my personal feelings about the power of the sun ruin everyone else’s beach vacation? […]

Okay, let’s try this: how do I know when a word isn’t real?

Not to get all ontological and shit, but if it is a signifier of meaning used in the course of communication between people, it’s real. Even if it’s unintelligible to you! I don’t speak Polish, but I’m not going to say that Polish words aren’t real just because I don’t understand them.

You’re making me sound like a massive prick.

What’s the point, really, of declaring that a word isn’t real? It’s ultimately a show of power or superiority over someone else, and so, in that sense, it is the marker of an absolute unit of shittiness. I’ve made my feelings about correcting people’s speech known before, and this is just another variant of it. It centers someone else’s language in your own experience, and it’s ridiculous to think that yours is the default experience for everyone. Language is bigger than just one person! That’s a feature, not a bug!

Read the whole post

Okay, if only for the reason that it’s a very absurd story.

You’re familiar with Khajiits if you’ve played the Elder Scrolls series. Cat people, so far so good. There’s a lot the Korean fandom has to say about the series, both in general and in terms of memes, but the meme I’m going to talk about probably has the most traction in the Korean internet.You see, we really like Khajiit merchants. Not just because they have wares if you have coin, but because they invite you to ‘take a look’. Ri’saad’s audio for this phrase is uniquely memetic among Koreans:

To a Korean, his ‘take a look’ sounds mesmerizing. It wasn’t long until people transcribed what that sounds like into Korean and spread it around: 떼껄룩, or ‘t’ekaaluk’. Korean is a very mimetic language; although I’m not enough of a linguist to explain why, the combination of sounds in 떼껄룩 is absolutely hilarious to us. It really sticks in your mind. I don’t know why, but it does.

It’s not surprising to us it gained traction, is what I’m saying.

For some time, 떼껄룩 was just a colloquial term for Khajiits on the Korean internet. But soon the term expanded to cover cat people in other games (e.g. the Miqo'te of FFXIV), and after that, the meaning extended to IRL cats - at which point the meme skyrocketed in popularity.

Not only is Korean very mimetic, we also like to make suffixes out of everything. Turns out the ~껄룩 part of 떼껄룩 (’~kaaluk’) makes a fantastic suffix for describing cats of all shapes and sizes:

Black cats are called 검은 고양이 (’geom-eun goyangi’) in Korean; using the above suffix, it’s 검껄룩 (’geomkaaluk’).

Orange tabby cats are often called ‘cheese[cake] tabbies’ (치즈태비/’chizu taebi’) in Korean; you can now call them 치껄룩 (’chikaaluk’).

The colloquial term for kittens is 아깽이 (’akkaengi’), but with the Khajiits’ blessing, they are now also called 아껄룩 (’akaaluk’).

Stray cats are called 길고양이/길냥이 (’gil goyangi/gilnyangi’) because they live on the ‘streets’ (길 in Korean). The same principle applies to 길껄룩 (’gilkkaluk’).

Tigers/lions/leopards etc. are big cats… hence 빅껄룩 (’bigkkaluk’).

It is very adaptable. It ties in with the first syllable of basically anything, general descriptors or colloquial, native or foreign. You’ll see 떼껄룩 being commonly used with bloggers, youtubers, on insta etc., either as it is or with the variation appropriate to the subject. If you can read any Korean, anyone who might be reading this… I suggest you take a look sometime.

jp sign gag from the beginning of book 5 that I’m tling now because I’m inordinately amused by it for some reason~

so no name is impossible to pronounce world-wide, but it is very easy to not have the linguistic archive necessary to pronounce a given name entirely correctly. it is a simple case of physically not knowing where to place your tongue, whether or not to vibrate your vocal chords, etc. the only one of the dictators of sound you could be shown is how to position your lips

AND SO in my years studying linguistics, there was one word that was nearly identical across so many regionally different languages (though there are outliers of course), from europe to most of asia to subsaharan africa to indigenous languages. across nearly all languages this is the first word people learn how to say and maybe the first word humans in general officially named and defined:

mamãe - portuguese 

妈妈 (māmā) - chinese

ਮੰਮੀ (mamī) - punjabi

mamah - mayan (yucatec)

мама - bulgarian, russian, ukrainian

ماں (mäm) - urdu

মা (mā) - bengali

mẹ (may) - vietnamese

ママ (mama) - japanese

అమ్మ (am'ma) - telugu

mama - quechua

મમ્મી (mam'mī) - gujarati

അമ്മ (am'ma) - malayalam

amá - navajo

엄마 (omma) - korean

eme - native hawaiian

onam - uzbek

aana - yupik

mema - tagish

μαμά (mamá) - greek

mama - swahili

أمي (umi) - arabic

mayi - chichewa

माँ (ma) - hindi

mam - dutch

ម៉ាក់ (ma) - khmer

แม่ (mæ̀) - thai

அம்மா (am'mā) - tamil

අම්මා (ammā) - sinhala

amai - zulu

ama - basque

आमा (āmā) - nepali

အမေ (amay) - myanmar (burmese)

mamá - spanish

mom/mum- english

this isn’t actually the first word because we teach babies this word (most likely), but because the “mama” or “ama” sounds are the easiest things for babies to say, and it’s nearly always the only thing they can say at first, and adults across all languages defined their language around that.

Humans are biologically programmed that during the acquisition of language if something is pointed at and a word is said, we assume that word is a NOUN. Every human in every culture and every language does this. But there’s nothing to say in an alien language their biology would be the same. That word could just as easily be an adjective or a verb or the objects location in space or a million other things.

Ball

Round

Red

Rolling

Fun

The answer tells you some essential things about the language–which details are considered most important, how they perceive the world, and so on.

An alien language might say any of those. Or it might say “floor” - look, kiddo, perceive the foundation on which things happen. Or it might say “grab” - here’s something you can grasp in your hands. Or it might say, “one” - there is one object here. Or something else.

Language families are important for this. Related languages will tend to use the same types of words in the same types of situations: in English, Spanish, and French, it’s most likely the parent is saying something that means “ball.” In Apache, it’s likely to be “rolling.”* 

We don’t know any nonhuman language families. We don’t know what they consider to be the core elements of communication.

See also: Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

Today, however, I learned one that maybe isn’t so well-known: apparently, the word “lewd” originally meant “not a priest”.

Ling & Lang Bingo sets — how to play:

Multiplayer version:

Each player gets a randomly selected piece of popular journalism dealing with language(s), linguistics, or linguists. Taking turns, you could read one paragraph each, everyone crossing off what they think they detected in the presented passages. The first one to complete a row (horizontal, vertical, diagonal) shouts “Bingo!” and wins.

Note: Of course one should rearrange the table cells, otherwise there’d be multiple winners. (Do some actual copying and pasting if necessary.)

Solitaire version:

Grab yourself a news article on ling & lang or listen to anyone from outside linguistics talk about ling & lang. Make sure you only yell “Bingo!” if that doesn’t get you expelled from a lecture.

Pro tip:

There are 3 main types, but from my research, this looks to be American Gregg Shorthand.

As you can see, there are set symbols for every letter.

Let’s break one of the words down:

Using the Gregg Alphabet as reference, we can see most of the letters in “atrophied” are present. But why no “o” vowel, and why is “ph” written as “f”?

Simple. In shorthand, you cut out all vowels in a word when writing it down, with the exception of words that BEGIN or END with a vowel (hence the “a” at the start being present), or like in the “i” in “atrophied”, to make it more readable when the sound could be harder to distinguish if it isn’t written. In “atrophied” if the the “i” isn’t written, it could be hard to tell if the writer meant a “fud”, “fad”, “fod” or “fid” sound, for example.

Also, since Shorthand is a phonetic writing system, you are encouraged to write down the phonetic sounds of words rather than the actual letter blends - in this case, write an “f” instead of a “ph”.

So in actuality, these aren’t just meaningless scribbles - it’s Gregg Shorthand, a writing system developed to take down notes more quickly than when written out in full, which is very useful in a medical or journalistic environment.

Some people can even write over 100 words in a minute! And, it’s been in use since John Robert Gregg invented it in 1888! Wow! So old!

No letter is pronunced the way it should.