#languagechange

If you’ve never wandered around the weird old section of google books, I recommend it forthwith. There, I found a book which I will not attempt to refer to by its excessively long title, and only as An Universal Etymological English Dictionary by Nathan Bailey. I found this word shrive, which means “to make a confession to a priest or to hear a confession.” There were actually a second and third definition as well, being “to meet or reveal,” and “to write lifted up in a Roll” (whatever that means? the book was published in 1775, haha), but I was only able to confirm the first. 

Shrive, according to Webster Dictionary, meaning “to either receive a confession of sins or to offer absolution and penance,” comes from the Old English scrifan through the Middle English shryven. The oldest variant, scrifan, is more removed from the religious connotation, and deals mostly with passing judgement and decrees. An interesting aside, apparently the phrase, short shrift, is from the noun form of scrifan, and referred to the time condemned individuals were given for confessions before their executions. 

Strangers on a train  

On a train ride from New  York to Connecticut last fall, my colleague Amanda Morris and her mother were  having a conversation in American Sign Language. A man sitting near them saw  them signing to each other and decided to join their conversation.

Like Amanda, he was a child  of deaf adults who grew up using ASL at home and speaking English elsewhere.  And he noticed a trait of Amanda’s: She signed like somebody who was much  older than she was. He began gently teasing her about it, saying she was  using signs that had fallen out of fashion.

He had gone through a  similar experience, he said, when he went through training to become an  interpreter. During that training, he learned that some of his signs — ones  he had learned from his parents — were out of date.

The experience inspired  Amanda, who is hard of hearing, to take an ASL class, and she noticed the  same pattern. “I saw a lot of differences between how my young Deaf teacher  signed and how my parents sign,” she told me. In those differences, Amanda  recognized that there was a story to tell, and The Times has just  published it.

The article documents the  changes sweeping across ASL. Many are the result of the spread of smartphones  and video, which have led to a flowering of ASL conversations, many of them  remote. “In the past, ASL was changing in a more face-to-face way,” Amanda  said. “Now a word can spread like wildfire on TikTok, and it never could have  happened before.”

From cross to boot

An old sign for computer,  to take one example, involved large circular motions to evoke the magnetic  tapes that once stored data; a new sign combines the letter C with a small  circular motion that’s a throwback to the old sign. As is often the case, the  new sign is more compact — and thus fully visible on a phone’s tight video  shot.

Other changes are attempts  to make ASL more inclusive and accurate. An old sign for Italy included a  cross, but many Italians are now secular; a new sign traces the squiggly  outline of Italy’s shape, the famous boot. An old sign for bisexual seemed to  imply polygamy; a new sign is simply the letters B and I. An old sign for  diversity included a zigzag that suggested inequality; a new sign conjures  colors, differences and a large group of people.

Change is obviously a part  of every language. Merriam-Webster has added hundreds of new entries to its English dictionary in recent years, including super-spreader, horchata, woke and dad bod. But ASL does have a couple of  qualities that can cause change to happen rapidly.

Most ASL users, unlike  Amanda, did not learn the language from their parents. (More than 90 percent  of deaf people have hearing parents.) People instead tend to learn the  language through classes and their peers. School curriculums and slang can  both change more quickly than language habits handed down from one generation  to the next.

The number of ASL speakers  is also relatively small, Amanda notes — with 500,000 being a common  estimate. This smallness can contribute to faster change.

As in other languages,  though, the changes are often matters of debate. MJ Bienvenu, a retired Deaf  studies professor in Austin, Texas, said that she found many of the new signs  nonsensical. “I feel like many people don’t realize that they bastardize ASL,  and it harms more than it helps,” Bienvenu told Amanda.

As for Amanda’s mother, she  is taking the changes on a case-by-case basis. When Amanda told her yesterday  that the article inspired by their train ride was about to be published, her  mother said that she planned to switch to some of the new signs, but not all  of them.

Read the article — and  learn about the changes to the signs for dog, phone, parents and privilege.

Strangers on a train  

On a train ride from New  York to Connecticut last fall, my colleague Amanda Morris and her mother were  having a conversation in American Sign Language. A man sitting near them saw  them signing to each other and decided to join their conversation.

Like Amanda, he was a child  of deaf adults who grew up using ASL at home and speaking English elsewhere.  And he noticed a trait of Amanda’s: She signed like somebody who was much  older than she was. He began gently teasing her about it, saying she was  using signs that had fallen out of fashion.

He had gone through a  similar experience, he said, when he went through training to become an  interpreter. During that training, he learned that some of his signs — ones  he had learned from his parents — were out of date.

The experience inspired  Amanda, who is hard of hearing, to take an ASL class, and she noticed the  same pattern. “I saw a lot of differences between how my young Deaf teacher  signed and how my parents sign,” she told me. In those differences, Amanda  recognized that there was a story to tell, and The Times has just  published it.

The article documents the  changes sweeping across ASL. Many are the result of the spread of smartphones  and video, which have led to a flowering of ASL conversations, many of them  remote. “In the past, ASL was changing in a more face-to-face way,” Amanda  said. “Now a word can spread like wildfire on TikTok, and it never could have  happened before.”

From cross to boot

An old sign for computer,  to take one example, involved large circular motions to evoke the magnetic  tapes that once stored data; a new sign combines the letter C with a small  circular motion that’s a throwback to the old sign. As is often the case, the  new sign is more compact — and thus fully visible on a phone’s tight video  shot.

Other changes are attempts  to make ASL more inclusive and accurate. An old sign for Italy included a  cross, but many Italians are now secular; a new sign traces the squiggly  outline of Italy’s shape, the famous boot. An old sign for bisexual seemed to  imply polygamy; a new sign is simply the letters B and I. An old sign for  diversity included a zigzag that suggested inequality; a new sign conjures  colors, differences and a large group of people.

Change is obviously a part  of every language. Merriam-Webster has added hundreds of new entries to its English dictionary in recent years, including super-spreader, horchata, woke and dad bod. But ASL does have a couple of  qualities that can cause change to happen rapidly.

Most ASL users, unlike  Amanda, did not learn the language from their parents. (More than 90 percent  of deaf people have hearing parents.) People instead tend to learn the  language through classes and their peers. School curriculums and slang can  both change more quickly than language habits handed down from one generation  to the next.

The number of ASL speakers  is also relatively small, Amanda notes — with 500,000 being a common  estimate. This smallness can contribute to faster change.

As in other languages,  though, the changes are often matters of debate. MJ Bienvenu, a retired Deaf  studies professor in Austin, Texas, said that she found many of the new signs  nonsensical. “I feel like many people don’t realize that they bastardize ASL,  and it harms more than it helps,” Bienvenu told Amanda.

As for Amanda’s mother, she  is taking the changes on a case-by-case basis. When Amanda told her yesterday  that the article inspired by their train ride was about to be published, her  mother said that she planned to switch to some of the new signs, but not all  of them.

Read the article — and  learn about the changes to the signs for dog, phone, parents and privilege.

Korean/Chinese Free Talking Class

Language courses with locals

i11 TWS Factory Reset Options & Language Change

How to reset the I11TWS Airpods clones and also change the language from English to Chinese and Chinese to English.

Disclaimer: There are many clones of the i11TWS airpods so this may not work for all models. These were supplied from The spinning deal and are as far as i can tell the OG version and generally work much better than the Ali Express and Wish versions of the same name.

Get them here affiliate Link: The Spinning Deal:    https://thespinningdeal.com/?rfsn=2780614.cd871 😘Use code MIKE5 to get 5% off any order! 👍

How Do I? Playlist:    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL39HCM-SRLM9tEFisffJDK7ITNnT3h5ki

Ear Pods & Bluetooth Audio Devices Playlist:    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL39HCM-SRLM8GvyYChBEePL7QSAFkgmYA

TWS AirPods Playlist:    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL39HCM-SRLM_MT5Bl7qYe0s9CSQ3RHaPn