#spoken language

Options are the 10 most spoken languages, listed with their number of total speakers for comparison to final results (Source)

It's really a sentiment I don't agree with because it strays far too easily to dialect/dialog policing, which strays real easy into class and racial bigotry.

Let me read a 'fantasy' with characters that sound like they live in West Bmore. Not really gonna be the decider of whether the story's rhetoric is properly fantasy or too real world for me.

It's okay for a d/Deaf/HoH person to prefer spoken language.

It's okay for a d/Deaf/HoH person to not want to learn sign language.

It's okay for a d/Deaf/HoH person to not want to learn spoken language.

It's okay for a d/Deaf/HoH person to not be able to learn sign language.*

It's okay for a d/Deaf/HoH person to not be able to learn spoken language.*

Language is language! Stop placing moral value on it!

Let's talk about on of my favourite spoken Danish grammar things, extraposition!

In short, extraposition is taking part of a sentence and then placing that part (most commonly a noun phrase) OUTSIDE of the regular structure of the sentence and replacing it with a pronoun.

An example of this could be hunden, den løber hurtigt 'the dog runs fast', where the subject of the sentence hunden is placed on the outskirts of the sentence, being replaced by the pronoun den 'it'.

Looking at this sentence structure as an outsider, it seems weird and unnecessary, but it's really, really common in spoken Danish to the point where I would almost consider it mandatory in informal speech.

Unfortunately there hasn't really been done much research on this specific phenomenon in Danish, but my study buddy and I will be writing our exam for Grammatical theory on it.

Anyway here's some more examples:

min studiekammerat, hen er taget hjem her i weekenden 'my study buddy has gone home for the weekend'

vores hund da jeg var barn, hun hed Freja 'our dog when i was a child was named Freja'

Jane og John, de er allerede taget afsted 'Jane and John have already left'

and so on and so forth :)

I originally wrote this for THIS POST when someone was talking about stuttering in fanfic.

Whether you're writing a character with a stutter, or are raising a kid a stutter, or you happen to have verbal language issues of your own... here's the post..

A Nervous Stutter results in what is called Mazing, or rewording the sentence. That is the classic “I, um… well I… look it’s just that… so we…” that @hellishhues is talking about. When someone is mazing their words you’re seeing a form of Speech Apraxia where the brain is having trouble forming verbal speech. This can be brought on by brain damage, memory loss, anxiety, nerves, and several other things. 

The root cause of a nervous stutter is a disconnect between the mouth and the brain. 

With this you will also sometimes see the classic “S-s-s-sorry…” especially if the person has been training to speak clearly and is now at a point of fatigue or stress where they are not mentally capable of forming the words.

The other kind of stutter is a Physical Stutter, sometimes referred to as slurring, and another facet of Speech Apraxia. This stutter is caused when the muscles of the mouth, tongue, and throat are physically unable to form certain sounds. This is most often seen in the very young and victims of brain trauma. 

Sounds are acquired at different ages, so a 2-year-old will probably not be able to clearly pronounce certain words (which is why toddler sound so off when they’re written with developed dialogue). These mispronunciations are sometimes referred to as lisping, but only if the sounds are run together. If the person starts and restarts the sound because they got it wrong, it can also sound like the classic sound stutter. 

But it all depends on why the character is stuttering!

Do they have Speech Apraxia, Audio Processing Disorder, muscle dysfunction, or another medical reason to stutter? (1)

Are they stuttering because of anxiety, stress, or fatigue? (2)

Does the stutter stem from intoxication or blood loss? (3)

All of those will sound different! 

1 - Will have mazing, repeated sound stutters, and be the classic stutter that annoys OP.

2 - This is where you’ll see the repetition stutter, mazing, rephrasing, and filler words.