In today's linguistics class we talked about metaphors, and we really want two of the ones we talked about to become conventionalised.
So first of all this one girl told us about a newer metaphor in Russian, "I have paws", which is something you say when you don't really want to do something, so you say you're incapable of doing it since you have paws instead of hands. Like, "hey, finish that report" "aw but I have paws :(" and I think that's adorable. It has "I'm just a girl" energy without the misogyny.
We also had the task to invent a novel metaphor and have the others guess what it means, and the teacher really liked my "she's such a capybara" = "everyone loves her". Capybara energy is like golden retriever energy except you're chill about it. You're just vibing and everyone digs that.
Anyway I think these deserve to become more common in English
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you know what fuck it, I love you historical spelling. I love you weird fossilised preservations of obsolete alphabets, grasping for something that exists now like mist, like liquid, its true pronunciation lost to time but not quite forgotten, not yet. a ghost remains, a friendly one, comfortable in this old house. I love you repurposed letters for phonemes that neither the old language nor the variety they were borrowed into has any need for anymore. I love you sensible vowel pairings that have grown - improbably - centuries later, into unwieldy diphthongs, quietly thriving in an ever-shifting environment like weeds nestled cosily beneath the shade of grander plants that have long since turned to mulch. I love the word 'diphthong' (the little thicket of consonants in the middle of it, sprouting up from nowhere to trouble tongue and penmanship alike). I love how Phoenician fingerprints remain in a Norman revision of an Anglo-Saxon reworking of a Roman borrowing of a Greek repurposing, all these shapes and signs moulded again and again like clay, like mud, spun like flax to carry all those lovely glides and nasals and obstruents which come and go and come and go over time as the sounds mutate and grow apart, and the people grow and age and die, leaving behind nothing except (sometimes) a page. a poem. a piece of themselves, their voice, rendered in imperfect beautiful scratchings whose contours match the ceaseless flow of time, heavy with all that history and somehow also light with the sheer urgency of being written. look at it, isn't it wonderful? this moment in time that holds within it yet other moments? other echoes calling down through the centuries? this is how we spoke, this is what we sounded like, once. this is how we thought our ancestors would have said it. I love the inconvenience. English is so hard to learn. the spelling is so illogical. so cumbersome. it's frustrating. it makes no sense. it's inconvenient. yes and yes and yes, and yet you too are inconvenient, you too are inchoate and too much and you fail to resolve into a neat and comprehensible order. but look at you. how lovely you are. I treasure you. why should the words you speak be any less lovely.
Wanting a break from the world, four men start a book club. Distraction is unfortunately not so easy to escape as they and those closest to them find the allure of social media far too absorbing.
Six TFs for the price of one! Nerds to jocks, jock to twink, and Japanese and Latino TF’s to top it off. Had some fun with this one and hope you enjoy! -Occam
The crew was assembled in Nate’s living room, their little bookclub’s agreement had been the only thing keeping their little coterie from doomscrolling every day away. And even then, the task of reading the Portrait of Dorian Gray hasn’t kept all of them hooked. At present, Arjun and Michael were fresh into an argument that is perhaps the only thing stopping Tommy from checking out all together.
“I just thought it would be gayer?”
Well used to scrounging together queer subtext wherever he can find it, usually in manga, Arjun will not stand for this. “It’s from the fucking eighteen hund- He was sentenced to jail for- Are you just ragebaiting me?” Arjun crosses his arms while the uninvolved parties hide their grins as he stares daggers at Michael’s smirk. Hesitant to have a spat break out over the coffee table before his roommate returns, Nate tries to broker peace.
“Girls girls~ Clearly one of the most talented authors in all of Ireland knew what he was doing. He had to keep it as subtext so less- discerning, readers like Mike wouldn’t catch it.” Quite unable to help himself but toss a lob at Michael, the now-trio now have at it. Giggling as the other three half debate the book, half go for each other’s throats, Tommy gets a text and briefly checks his phone.
At least, he intended to just check but jeez it’s already out and all? Might as well scroll until the session’s back to the book right? Eyes flickering down to his phone he realizes he’s not on a social media app that he recognizes. Abandoning any pretext of sneaking a peak he raises it to the table to see if anyone recognizes it.
As soon as all eyes fall upon the screen it flashes and there's a high pitched droning buzz. Conversation immediately halts as all four men are absolutely rapt, staring at the spiraling colors and flashing lights that seem to take up their whole being despite only flaring out from a phone.
Returning home sweaty and panting from running up the few flights of stairs to their place, Jackson tries to not intrude on his roommate’s book club. Turning to find them silent and staring, seemingly absorbed by whatever’s on the screen, the bodybuilder strides closer to see what’s up.
“Yo, uhh Nate? Arjun? Y’all good?” Not sure if this is a joke or something serious he doesn’t understand, Jackson edges closer to the table. When his heavy footsteps seemingly break through Tommy’s trance, eyes still glazed over he turns the screen towards the approaching behemoth and ushers Nate’s roommate into the group’s stupor.
Doing so, propelled by some force outside of his own mind, Tommy in the process removes the screen from Nate’s line of sight who after a moment to recover now sees his hunk of a roommate half-drooling at Tommy’s phone. “J-Jackson?” Seeing the rest of his group slowly coming to as Jackson is drawn deeper in, the host takes initiative and bats at the phone, knocking it face down on the table.
Looking around in shock, Nate waits for someone else to break the silence. In the back of his head is a single impulse ‘try not to scroll’ at first he hears it as a challenge, but after another beat he can’t help but feel the words are warning of an inevitability. Tossing it over, trying to understand what happened, his already waylaid train of thought is derailed by Jackson.
“Uhh sorry for interrupting guys, how’s Dorian Gray going?”
Clearly all on some supernatural edge, the normalcy invited by happy-go-lucky Jackson is welcome. “Girl, you won’t believe the nonsense Mike’s bitching about today.” And just like that it’s business as usual. As if nothing untoward spewed from a cell phone directly into their minds. As if the very same phone wasn’t lying face down in between all of them.
“Same time next week?” All mumble their agreement, sheepishly looking as Tommy reaches to upturn his cell. Whatever happened has been decidedly memory-holed but the unpleasant psychic reverberations clearly left a bad taste in their frontal lobes. “And let’s try harder not to goon mid-book club, right Tom?”
Rolling his eyes, he can’t quite bring himself to act as tricksy as he usually likes. Everything just feels a little heavier, like some impossible load is weighing upon him, waiting for him to misstep. The same is true for all parties, the phones in their pockets far more distracting than usual. Nevertheless, for now they stay strong, Arvan and Michael head off to the bus stop while Tommy begins his brisk walk home.
Stepping back out from his room, Jackson shoots them all a see ya later before telling Nate he’s going to hit the shower. There’s a sense of dread within Nate as he watches his roommate grab his cell from a charging dock, but he pushes it down. He’s being irrational, he just needs to chill out. To this end he sits on the couch and throws some much needed distraction on the TV.
Michael’s bus is already here! Bidding farewell to Arjun whose nose is already buried in some manga he had apparently had all along, Mike hops on and stares out the fogged up windows. Worked up from squabbling about something he can’t quite remember, Michael bounces his leg anxiously enough that his phone falls from the pocket.
Watching it clatter to the sticky floor of the bus he frowns and stills his leg, “Fuck it.” It’s not like they’ve been banned from social media, it’s just a cleanse, a break, a do what you can. And after that heated session, Mike just needs some kind of distraction.
Opening Instagram though, he finds the strangest thing, he’s somehow already posted a story? Pit growing in his stomach, his twitchy finger reaches to tap and find out what it is. Somehow he already knows it isn’t some accidental black screen, and then he taps on it and finds a body like he’s never seen before.
Every bulging, bouncing pound of flesh demands his attention. From the hunk’s veiny arms, to his thick distended abs, to the bubble butt ass that’s both soft and firm at once. Already, having been pent up from avoiding porn for some time as part of the social media purge, Mike feels his cock struggling for room in his pants.
And then he looks down and realizes he’s not even wearing pants. He’s not on the bus. He’s in the bathroom wearing only a towel, looking in the mirror. And he is not nearly as big as he should be.
Slightly unkempt hair on his face starts to thicken into proper stubble as the few chest hairs that stretched above his neckline are joined by a rapidly amassing coat of trimmed curls. Turning to the side, Michael’s mouth is agog as he sees a built silhouette begin to carve itself into existence.
Veins usually hidden by his slightly pudgy arms start bulging out of his skin, throbbing as his arms fill with blood before expanding into biceps thicker than he can rightly handle. In between, underneath the still spreading jungle of chest hair, two ponderous pecs surge larger with every heaving beat of his heart.
The hairy mitts that his hands are becoming twitch and reach back to play with an ass that’s quickly straining the shoddy knot holding the towel up. Taking shaky breaths as some small part of him tries to resist, Michael feels abs push out from his diaphragm as the whole front of his body becomes this beyond powerful figure.
His eyes twitch as he stares into his reflection, and then his face drops into the placid stoic face of a man appreciating his form. He looks fucking good. No longer holding onto whoever he was, his fingers reach under his ass to bounce it for the perfect shot. Yeah, they’re gonna love this.
Michael sits on his toilet as needy twinks immediately begin pouring into his DMs in response. Another day, another post, another dozen holes to potentially fill. Time for him to find his favorite and have his way.
Elsewhere, in another bathroom, Jack’s drying off from his quick post-gym shower. Never personally a part of the book club’s little attempt at paring back their time online, the jock has no initial reservations as he reaches for his phone for a brief distraction as he towels himself off.
Cell in hand, there’s an itch in the back of his mind. A warning he barely caught that’s just as soon washed away by the rising impulse to scroll. To go next, to fill each and every waking moment with bright colors and sounds cultivated to keep him watching.
And what could he open it to find besides some waifish nude model. Usually he’d move on immediately, twinks aren’t his thing yeah? Jackson’s confident enough in his masculinity to just acknowledge the dude’s hot, sure if he was into men he’d tap that, probably. But then, why can’t he stop looking at his arched back and smooth ass.
Only at this point does he look to the man’s hat-covered cherubic curls to see that this soft-core smut was posted to his own account. Immediately he starts frantically scrolling to delete it, he hesitates, why shouldn’t he post this? He took it. He wants it, he wants himself to be seen.
Jackson’s towel drops. His perpetually overgrown eyebrows thin as he furrows them, struggling to understand. Recently pumped arms fall to his side as hairy biceps glisten before smoothing and growing lither. Bulky muscle he’s been packing on for years suddenly evaporates before his very eyes.
Pupils twitch as Jackson’s stare shifts to his heavy cock seemingly shrinking away. Watching as his bush trims into a perfectly alluring landing strip, memories of his skincare routine and the countless hours spent waxing, trimming, and lasering away any imperfections fills his mind.
Speaking up, “N-Nate?”, he hears his voice echo higher against the wet tile. He feels his muscular ass softening as his thunder thighs diminish, losing the strength he has long slaved to produce. He smells the bathroom air fill with rosy perfume and fruity exfoliants to replace his usual Axe 5-in-1.
His chest tightens as his usual wide, triangle figure shrinks into a body that’s instead built to be manhandled. Eying his reflection, the twink-to-be tilts his head and wonders what he was ever confused about? He’s only ever stepped into the gym to attain this pert, perfect body.
Lips effortlessly pout as he stares at his boyish face in the mirror, curls spilling from the out of place cowboy hat he didn’t remember throwing on. Must be a photo shoot or something. Dragging his fingers across his thin waist, seeing the soft, supple skin redden, Jack can’t quite remember what he was going to call his roommate about.
No matter. He’s perfectly content to lounge in the mirror for some time yet. Phone erupting with men more than eager to fill his whole, Jackson sees Mike slide into his DMs and grins. Who knows what else tonight might hold~
Trudging through the couple inches of snow towards home, Tommy is decidedly not on his phone. Clearly scared straight by being the one to cause whatever that bizarre derailment to bookclub was, his phone is completely off as he reflects.
Breath misting from his mouth, Tommy replays events in his head but any time the memories stretch past Mike and Arjun’s argument things get fuzzy and his head starts to hurt. “Girl, whatever…” he chides himself and shivers from the cold.
He just needs a break, to take it easy. His boyfriend Noah better not have anything big planned for tonight. Standing outside his door for a moment to collect himself, Tommy takes a deep breath and puts the strange morning behind him.
“Heyyy Noah, how’s it going babe~”
Lying on his back upside down, Noah turns with a smile “Hey sweetie~ Do you think this picture I just posted of us is hot?” Existential dread drills him as, before he can react, he sees his petite boyfriend raise the phone in hand for him to see.
Tommy stares mouth agog at his lover as Noah’s quilted sweater almost drips away off his thin arm. Spreading from the phone his skin underneath pales before the muscle underneath bulges thicker. Noah doesn’t react in the slightest as his forearm creaks longer, muscle throbbing thicker down its length.
Barely concealed by fraying threads, heavy biceps strain the fabric before tearing into the open air, causing him to grunt brusquely. Changes accelerate as they reach his shoulders before launching upward to give his pouty face the cocky stubbled sneer of a circuit gay, Noah tilts his head as his long hair curls shorter. “What’s the problem Tom? Look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
Tommy backs into the door as he sees, opposite the man’s hardening face, his chest widening into two titanic pecs. Clawing at the entrance to their apartment, Tommy feels his heart beating wild in his own chest causing him to look down to find his own top beginning to strain.
“Nonononono! I didn- I didn’t even get onnnugh!” His voice cracks as he struggles to cry, not to cry. He doesn’t even know which. On the couch Noah’s face shifts stoic, placid, as if there’s not a single complex thought in his head.
“Did you not want me to post it?”
Eye twitching, Tommy tries to contain himself, to fight against memories overwriting everything he knows. As he raises an arm he feels the straining green sleeves give way to a meaty bicep, one sun kissed rather than naturally tan.
Jaw clenched from stress as he tries to remember what book they were reading, Tommy feels it burn as his face so smooth that it’s never had even peach fuzz bursts into a chinstrap beard, disconnected from the mustache clinging to his upper lip. Feeling his slicked-back hair flop forward into a middle part, Tommy knows he’s a perfect copy of the face on that screen.
As soon as the realization hits him, as soon as the perma-shaved treasure trail thrusts onto his torso, he wonders why that would ever not be the case? That is a pic of him and Noah at Splash Fest and all. And why would he not want it posted, how else are he and Noah supposed to show off their bodies.
For some reason his blood runs still cold at the idea, but looking down and seeing his pump he shakes off the unease. Feeling his underwear tighten into a jock-strap, he figures it must be because of the cold. It’s just chilly outside, that makes sense. With one last sigh to release tension any memories of their book club and social media cleanses drift away.
“Yeah, yeah. Looks tight baby. Speaking of tight tho..?”
Having paid no attention at all to Tommy as he came to terms by crook, Noah looks up from his phone. “Huh? Oh did you wanna fuck?” Knocking the phone from his hands, Tommy decides how the rest of the night is to go, only pausing once at the start to decide if they’re to film it or not.
Pouting on his couch, Nate is hung up on how he handled the tiff at his book club. But for some reason, every time he recollects it the scene changes? He swore there were four of them. He swore they were all fairly standard looking. But the image in his mind keeps changing.
First Mike bloats into a titan that one would be surprised to learn is literate. Then Tommy, who's usually kind if not inattentive, turns into some vain raver. This is all before the whole thing is interrupted by his roommate, who Nate swears to god should be built! Surely he’d remember if he lived with an OF twink, right?
Memory issues have done little to help him get less worked up about whatever shit was going on with Tommy’s phone. Growing more tense by the moment, the host bites his lip and turns off the TV. He needs to mainline distraction, surely he’s earned a little cheat. Just one hit, right?
He deserves some mind-numbing content like everyone else. And he knows just where to find it. Opening YouTube in search of his favorite vlogger, Nate immediately freezes as he sees a video he apparently uploaded himself?
Clicking on the thumbnail without a thought, Nate sees sandy beaches and sunny skies accompanied by un hombre- uh, a man so hot he can hardly take his eyes off him. Mind instantly absolved of stress, Nate sinks into the couch and lets the man’s narration wash over him.
It’s not long until buttons start popping off his shirt. After laughing about the first couple he takes it off and wonders why he ever put on something so, uh, tan peqeña. Tanning skin slowly spreading up from his tightening waistband, Nate’s fingers happily scratch at the widening treasure trail lancing upwards from his pubes.
“Es, uh? Deseo que… wish I could go there…” as the newly dark hair on his stomach races to connect with his few blonde chest curls, they spread further afield and begin encircling his larger nipples. The dumb smile on his stubbled face twitches as in no time at all his light beard darkens a strand at a time before the whole thing is as dark as the hair in his head.
Feeling his ginger locks thickening, Nate scratches at his head and realizes something is happening. His arm is heavier, his fingers fatter. Instantly turning on the front camera, he gasps as he sees two bulging pecs below a face he doesn’t recognize. At least, not as his own.
Massaging it to inspect every feature closely, every scratch and pull brings it all that much closer to the one from the video. It’s almost as if he’s deliberately noticing things that look less like the man he’s becoming.
“My nariz- ugh. Mi nose.” Leaning in close he sees it grow. “My uh, mis ojos?” Icy blue gives way to rings of dark brown as he blinks. Atop them his nigh invisible brows darken into two dense caterpillars. Rigorous inspection confirms more and more that all es bien. That he is who he always has been and that is El Rey.
Looking down towards his lips he notices how much thicker they are before he realizes they’re still moving. Not only that, they’ve been mouthing along with the video still playing on his phone. “¡Que cara- What the fuck?!” He shouts in now accented English.
Tossing the thing across the room to hopefully end whatever spell must be affecting him, Nate finds himself face to face with a standing mirror that Jackson must have bought some time or another for content. Seeing his body grow to its final form, his mind goes almost totally blank as he sees his strong stomach and even stronger arms.
“Ay! Soy sexy, aren’t I?”
Despite the video being far from his eyes, he and the little Nate in the video flex at the exact same time. Biceps bulging higher and revealing his far hairier pits, Nate laughs as he hears a muffled joke play from his dropped phone. He’s real good at this isn’t he?
Needs to take a trip with Jackson sooner rather than later, he’d hate to disappoint his fanaticos. After all, se merecen el mundo.
Despite it all, the last bastion of their book club remains distracted from his phone. Reading the latest translated volume of Jojo’s, Arjun is so content that he isn’t even thinking about his argument with Michael, or whoever it was even with.
That is, until he turns the last page and closes it. Done with the chapter, he so intensely wants to hit up Tumblr, or Reddit. Or literally anywhere he can find someone to yap with. Scrolling through his contacts to find anyone who’d humor him, he quickly sighs as he sees no one but his fellow book club members online.
Finger twitching towards Tumblr, he figures that if no one else is taking the social media break all that seriously, why should he. By the time he clicks he realizes he doesn’t even know what book club he’s thinking about. Happy to find he’s already logged in, Arjun sees that in fact, he has somehow already made a post.
Some brawny Japanese wrestler he couldn’t begin to name, and yet his manga rotted mind tries nonetheless, “Kare wa? Uh, looks kinda like Baki?” Perhaps Jojo’s being on the mind has him thinking like a weeb cause obviously the man’s no Baki in form, or style.
Pride starts to pump in his chest as the bookish Arjun realizes he knows more about wrestling than he thought he did. Obviously the guy’s a heel, and his body’s built for strength rather than mass-appeal. Shit though I- uh he looks killer though.
Drinking in every inch of exposed skin, Arjun shivers as his Desi tan starts to fade. Skin shifting into a nigh porcelain shade, the muscle just beneath it tightens into anything but. Arjun’s thin, hairy arms immediately send tears through his sleeves as they smooth and bulge into biceps that intense grappling demands.
Rolling his shoulders as traps struggle not to tear apart his shirt’s seams, Arjun grunts as he suddenly sees the world from a vantage an inch higher. Then another, then another. Nervously looking around to see if anyone’s hearing him grunting, he sighs thankful that no one seems to have.
And then, after a beat, he smirks and laughs as realizes he’d far rather the opposite. To show off, to dominate. Blush burning on his face as the cock tightly buried between his legs pushes against his spandex, Arjun shakes his head and wonders what he’s thinking. His promo thirst trap can’t have gotten him that riled up, right?
His uh, his thirst trap? Promo!?
Arjun’s thighs immediately burst into two massive meaty trunks that absolutely do not befit his reedy upper body. Seeing the beyond muscular legs of a wrestler stretching off his seat Arjun, Arj no, Ritsu wonders how they’re so out of place before laughing.
“Hah! Suruhitsuyōgāru-“ he clicks his tongue, he’s been meaning to work on his English more, American audiences need to hear his taunts and all. “I uhh, need to flex off the shirt, yes!” As his upper body is certainly something he’s put more than enough work into.
To point, Ritsu launches into a flex and tears his shoddy top to shreds. Strands of grey fabric fall to the floor as his thin brown chest gives way to the powerful weighty pecs of a Japanese wrestler.
Eyeliner shades his lashes as his nondescript haircut falls into perfectly stylized coifs, almost dripping with sweat. Ritsu goes to put his phone in his pocket before realizing there’s obviously no room in his trunks. Standing with a stretch, the sound of his bones popping and muscles expanding fills the bus before he turns to the driver and winks. “Tanoshin- eh? Hope you enjoy the show, driversan.”
Making no effort to hide the hard bulge in his uniform, Ritsu strides past the driver and into the cold winter air. Not too pleased to be strutting around in his match attire, Ritsu starts sprinting back towards his host’s. Pretty sure that twunk’ll have a change of clothes. If not, mind flickering in between Nate and Jackson, Ritsu’s got a pretty good idea how to burn some time.
And so, across town six phones flicker as their owners become who they always have been. None the wiser as to who they may have once been nor how they became the beyond alluring Adonises they are now, the six men now live to show off. To distract. To dominate. Going about living as if they were designed to catch eyes, the book club-no-more are all the happier to do just that. Catching eyes, amassing click, and convincing their ever growing audiences to keep scrolling.
Do the grammatical and phonological complexity of languages impede their spread? I believe it was John McWhorter who controversially argued that more-spoken languages have unusual or marked features removed- certainly phonologically and morphologically complex languages like Circassian, Navajo and the extremely suppletive Yeli Dnye are spoken by relatively small numbers of people.
however ancient and midieval lingua Francas like Latin, the Prakrits of North India, Classical Arabic etc had significant phonological complexity (contrastive vowel length, gemination, emphatic consonants, retroflex and aspirated consonants) and morphological complexity (declensions, conjugations) — and Middle Chinese combined phonological complexity with tones
Something that's very useful to note about what McWhorter is saying is that it's relative. A creole, for example, will be less morphologically complex (for a while) compared to the languages it draws from, but it may be more morphologically complex than some other unrelated language. Basically, the relevant languages set up a benchmark. So, for example, a language with three noun classes is far less complex than a language with 18 noun classes, but the three noun classes is way more complex than English with none.
Ultimately, the complexity balances out. If there are fewer tense inflections, then they have to be reified with multiword expressions. If there are fewer of those, two, then guess what? Now the hearer has to figure it out based on context, which itself makes things more complex (not the language, but using it).
Anyway, I think your examples are actually proving the opposite of what you think. After all, if you take a snapshot of a language, it doesn't change. Latin as it was spoken in Rome will always have all those cases. You can use it that way if you like. But when happened when it became a lingua franca? Spanish, Romanian, Italian, French, Portuguese… Same with Arabic, but we call those "dialects" for non-scientific reasons.
But, of course, it's not like Spanish is less complex than Latin: it's differently complex. The complexity always switches from one area to another. New complexity replaces old complexity. Old complexity is difficult! But new complexity, that's what we create, so it's simple and logical! It's the farce that moves language ever forward.
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So language changes between generations, but it also changes within generations. Like, we have audio recordings of the late Elizabeth II spanning more 70 years, and thru spectrographic analysis and such we can show that the way she pronounced words had shifted in systematic ways over the decades of her life, matching subtle changes in the phonology of British English in general. And presumably she continued to pick up new vocabulary thru-out her life, while some words she stopped using when their use became obsolete or their connotation shifted to something undesirable in her social circle.
Which means that even if medical technology advanced to the point of allowing us to live for hundreds of years or even be functionally immortal, our language would still continue to evolve and transform.
Imagine listening to 800 years old recordings of yourself and you can't understand a word of what you're saying without subtitles.
