personally I'm annoyed by the socioeconomic conditions that made words like "unalive" necessary but simultaneously impressed by the linguistic adaptations young people have made to continue talking about important things while subject to those conditions and I think if you can't hold both of those thoughts in your head you might just be old man yelling at cloud
Two of my niblings (10 and 7) self-censor like this in real life during actual conversations. I tried briefly to explain to the 10-year-old that they didn't have to do that in real life after they said "unalive" out loud in casual conversation, and they just said they preferred to. On the one hand, I'm sad to see them unconsciously and fully without awareness succumbing to the panopticon. On the other... this post.
it's not unprecedented in the evolution of languages to see euphemisms adopted as synonyms or even supplanting earlier terms. lots of people say "passed away" even in situations where there would be no particular social cost to saying "died".
for a particularly strong version of this kind of replacement: the word "bear" comes from a proto-Germanic word meaning "brown one" because there was a taboo against saying the animal's actual name. the taboo is gone but it was so strong in the past that we have no record of what the proto-Germanic word for "bear" even was.
maybe in 300 years the word "die" will be archaic and kids will dig it out of an etymology textbook and start using it because "unalive" is getting censored.
die has actually already undergone this process. die originally meant "flow" (i guess it's like you're flowing out of life or something? or maybe your life is flowing out of you idk). it was (probably) loaned from old norse to displace the now obsolete "swelt". and yes, that is the root word of "sweltering"
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Because itās not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:
ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know theyāre not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff
Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know theyāre not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.
In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one Iām ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style.Ā
Hereās what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speechāthat is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate āthis speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.ā Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so weāre talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.
A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of ālanguage.ā Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin.Ā
Tumblr English should literally be treated as its own language, because it does not follow the rules of any form of formal written English, and yet it does have its own consistent internal rules. If you donāt think thatās cool as fuck then I donāt even know what to tell you.
This is super cool!
Also idk if this has any relevance whatsoever but if you wanna have an argument inside one tag you cannot have commas in it so thatās a real existing constraint that has forced tumblrites to construct commaless sentences and perhaps this has helped in adopting the custom into posts as well ok I have no idea if this is whatās happened just I think itās a reasonable assumption there might be a connection
The tags are absolutely a factor. You want someone to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, you start a new tag. You want to have, as seen here, this removable piece between commas (does it have a name?) - you have 5 tags in this sentence alone. And sometimes you just
look at all you precious brilliant nerds nerding about language you make me so fucking happy omg
language is this constantly evolving thing tbh, it doesnāt remain the same unless itās dead and the people who used it gone so seeing the evolution of the language used on tumblr is literally so fucking amazing i want to cry with joy at it
because we also add in words from other languages, or make entirely new words up as additional terms to denote something (see ātolā and āsmolā in relation toĀ ātallā andĀ āsmallā) and this is constant. we are doing this daily without any sort of breathing space because thereās millions of us on this hellsite and we are constantly talkingĀ and so the language changes day-by-day until we have general, universal rules for what to do in a post, what to add in our tags, how to add it, why we add it, what we mean by it
weāve created a language in the same way our ancestors all did: by building on the ones that came before and changing them to suit our needs and our system
I love this so much and language is so great and Iāve noticed the lack of punctuation thing recently, even on twitter, and used it for like a specific kind of rhetorical effect. idk itās so fun I fucking love linguistics and the evolution of language
I went a little off the rails for a power-point-party, so I thought I'd share. Don't come at me about canonicity. Also yes, I spent hours using illustrator to make pose-able vector mando'ade.
Review from my friend: "I feel like I actually learned something?"
Robert Fulgum tells a story about when he lived in Greece and would jog every morning past this group of old men, who would basically cat call him. He didn't know enough Greek to know exactly what they were saying, just that it was clearly teasingly insulting.
So he asked a friend to teach him the kind of insult that you would only say to your best friend or worst enemy, something like "I'll fuck your mother" but in Greek. And the next time, when the old men see him and yell, he yells back.
The old men nearly piss themselves laughing, and invite him over for drinks and teach him more Greek insults and they became friends from that day forth.
While discussing clone things with @daitoshiā, they offhandedly mentioned the weirdness of the number of clones in a batch (and incidentally the general structure of the GAR). Apparently this was all the inspiration I needed to decide I was going to create base-4 counting system for the Kaminoans. 32 clones per batch seems pretty random, but it is just 2 x 16 (2 x 4^2), so in a base-4 system, itās no more random than say 200 (2 x 10^2) is in base-10. Base-4 also ties in thematically with DNA irl, so thatās fun for a bunch of cloners!
Iāve put together a guide to my process and rules for the enjoyment of all. And by enjoyment, I mean frustration because this counting systems it incredibly upsetting.
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In a college language class I took, we talked about the Jabberwocky poem and the professor had us try to explain every word in it. When we got to āoutgrabeā she asked why it was past tense and my response was āCause the present tense is outgribeā. Her response was āThat doesnāt answer the question but that brings up a better one. Why do you know that?ā
So I've been learning French for a while and 'faire' is actually an incredible word. Like what a fucking breakthrough in economy of language.
Faire is a verb that is usually translated into English as "to do/to make," but it covers way more actions than that, which is very confusing for new speakers. because (I have realized) that's not really what faire means.
Faire is actually a word that just gestures vaguely in the direction of the object of the sentence and goes "you know." "Je fais du velo." "Je fais du courses." "Je fais mes valises." I'm biking. I go grocery shopping. I'm packing my bags. You're just sort of pointing at a bike and going "you know, the obvious thing you'd do with it."
English: "You mean RIDE it??"
French: "Sure whatever."
Like idk I just really enjoy the concept of a catch-all verb that you can just slap onto almost anything because who fucking gives a shit, you get the idea. There's a bike. what do you think I'm going to do with it.
jahaal'got - healthy food, nutritious, good for you
yai'yai - richly nourishing. Dense, high-calorie food, of great importance to people dependent on highly portable field rations
kaihaast/kaihaaste(p) - dry ration
behot/behote(p) - citrusy Mandalorian herb used in beverages, mildly antiseptic and stimulating. "He stopped at each tapcaf along the Chortav Meshurkaane and had a mug of hot shig, then ambled along the market stalls that lined the alley." (501st) "Mereel made her a pot of shigāa tisane made from a plant called behotābefore getting on with examining the data." (True Colors)
gi/gise(p) - fish
gihaal/gihaale(p) - dried fish-meal (like pemmican - lasts for years but very pungent smell). "She opened the metal container, letting the pungent aroma of dried smoked fish escape into the kitchen. Gihaal kept for years without refrigeration, one of the staples of Mandalorian ration packs" (501st)
shatual/shatuale(p) - commonly eaten Mandalorian livestock animal. "Thatās the shatual, by the way, roasted and sliced." (True Colors) "I say we get started on butchering that shatual if Rav hasn't already prepared it, Mer'ika. Perfect celebratory meal, if we had the whole clan here." (501st)
loras/lorase(p) - meat/flesh
warra/warra'se(p) - warra nuts. "Ooh, you got us some warra nuts! Hot ānā spicy, and salt ānā sour! Kandosii!" (501st)
papurgaat/papurgaate(p) - fruit
uj'alayi/uj'alayise(p) - dense, very sweet flat cake made of ground nuts, syrup, pureed dried fruit, and spice. "Sometimes Ordo felt just as he did when he was a small child and Skirata first towered above him: part of him was competent far beyond his years, and the rest was hollow terror because the kaminiise were going to kill him, but Skirata had snatched him and his brothers to safety and fed them all on ujāalayi, a sticky-sweet Mandalorian cake." (True Colors)
haarshun/haarshune(p) - thin bread/parchment bread - a thin sheet of bread dried to preserve it, and reconstituted in liquid. Mando ration-pack staple. Made properly, it's so thin you can read through it, hence the name; 'see-bread'.
epar - to eat
eparavur - to feast, devour
isirir - to taste
kai'goran/kai'gorane(p) - chef, someone who prepares food for eating
nadir - to cook/boil
ru'nadi - cooked (in the past)
ven nadi - will cook(future)
ke'nadi - cook (command)
hokaanir - cut/slice
ru'hokaani - cut/slice (past)
ven hokaani - will cut/slice
ke'hokaani - cut/slice (command)
hoshap/hoshape(p) - spoon
gaid/gaide(p) - plate- for armor or food use; armor was often used to heat food over open fires in the field
haili cetare! - "Tuck in! Enjoy! Lit. 'Fill your boots. āThe others will show up when they smell the food. Haili cetare. Fill your boots." (501st)
Kaysh guur' skraan - "They love their food.ā(Used affectionately)
skraan/skraane(p) - generic slang for a meal or food. āYou wonāt be fit for much without some decent skraan inside you.ā (Order 66)
ori'skraan/ori'skraane(p) - a delicacy, a real treat in terms of food; a blow-out meal, a feast (slang), "big eats"
skraanāikase/skraan'ikasese(p) - assorted small snacks like meze or tapas - "small eats" - a celebratory meal for Mandos because it can take hours to eat, and the dishes are often fiddly, a contrast to the easy-to-eat, quick meals necessary in the field. "Inside the house, the veshok table was laid with an impressive spread of skraanāikase, an assortment of small fancy snacks that could be lingered over for hours." (501st)
epar'yaim/epar'yaime(p) - restaurant, canteen
shaākajir - to have a mealtime conversation/to discuss over the dinner table/sitting down for a meal, like the French "Ć table" - the word for table comes from the word for level, flat, so the implication is one of equals breaking bread together
shig/shige(p) - tea- any infusion of whatever's available, but usually a mildly stimulant herb with a citrus flavor called behot. "He stopped at each tapcaf along the Chortav Meshurkaane and had a mug of hot shig, then ambled along the market stalls that lined the alley." (501st); "Mereel made her a pot of shigāa tisane made from a plant called behotābefore getting on with examining the data." (True Colors)
tihaar/tihaare(p) - alcoholic drink - strong clear spirit made from fruit, like eau de vie. "Every tihaar was different, made from whatever local fruit was available" (501st)
ne'tra gal/ne'tra gale(p) - black ale/ sweet, almost spicy black beer similar to milk stout. "Ordo, sweat-streaked and visibly pleased with himself, halted the game to hand out mugs of neātra gal." (501st)
buy'ce gal/buy'ce gale(p) - pint of ale. "The chieftains and neighbors who drank here had become Fettās cabinet, and if there was any serious attempt at government going onāMandoāade regarded that as a deeply unhealthy and aruetyc thingāthen it would only be tolerated over a buyāce gal in the tapcaf."
papuur'gal/papuur'gale(p) - wine
pirun/pirune - water
galāgala - invitation to drink/Let me buy you a drink/Have a drink. āGalāgala?ā (Bloodlines)
galar - pour
Ni copaani buy'ce gal - "Iād like a pint of ale"
Ni copaani buyc'ika cin papuur'gal - "Iād like a glass of white wine, please"
jatisyc - delicious
draluram - vivid - used only of food, to indicate strong, distinct flavor, lit. "bright mouth" - one of the four essentials of Mandalorian cooking
heturam - mouth-burn spicy-"mouthburn" - a sought-after state of intense burning in the mouth brought about by very spicy food
hetikles - nasal-burn spicy-burning sensation in the sinuses brought about by specific spices - Mandalorians prize this. "It was a blisteringly spicy meat-and-vegetable casserole, which had the prized characteristic of hetikles, pungent enough to burn the nasal passages, one of the four qualities in Mando cooking." (Order 66)
hetikleyc - spicy, as in makes the sinuses burn (a sensation like eating horseradish or wasabi)
janad - spicy
paak - salt
pirpaak/pirpaake(p) - broth, soup. "salted water"
epan/epane(p) - stomach
lalat/lalate(p) - tongue
ni n'epa - "I don't eat it"
emuurir - like, enjoy (food, activities, etc)
haryc bāaalyc - "tired and emotional" - i.e. drunk. "Shysa went quiet and poured a third tihaar for himself. He tilted the bottle at Skirata in a mute offer of a top-up, but Skirata shook his head. If he wanted to get completely haryc bāaalycātired and emotional, as Mandoāade called itāthen heād wait until he got home." (501st)
lararyc - drunk (noisy, lively, and fun version)
batnor - blackout drunk
ruik - bittersweet root (chewed on). "Skirata, chewing vigorously on that bittersweet ruik root that heād recently taken a liking to, stood with his fists in his jacket pockets, watching Jusik stepping delicately between chunks of debris." (Triple Zero) "Skirata was still chewing the ruik. She could smell it on his breath, sweet and floral." (Triple Zero)
neral/nerale(p) - grain, grains
shuk'la gett'se - rushed or ground nuts (topping or ingredient for uj)
uj'ayl/uj syrup - thick & sweet scented syrup used in cooking
pirur - to drink; ru'piru - drank; ven piru - will drink; ke'piru - drink (command)
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I remember in my Arabic class we were going over the alphabet and the teacher was like thereās no āPā etc and this white girl was like wait what but my names Paige and my teacher was like lol then weād pronounce it as beige and she was so offended Iām crying thinking about it
lol when I lived in France my host family had a friend names Hugh. We saw him and his family a lot.
They pronounced it āoogā and I didnāt know until the day before I left France that his name was Hugh. I just thought he had some weird caveman nickname š
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The thai forĀ ā5ā³ is pronounced roughly āHaā, and so where english internets would generally putĀ ālolā or something, they putĀ ā555555555ā³.
every language is awesome (yes including english) And I think that it should be celebrated that across the entire world there are so many diverse languages and itās making me so happy
My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word ātheā used in phrases like: āthe more I look at this, the stranger it seems, or āthe bigger they come, the harder they fallā. This ātheā is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English āĆ¾Äā, pronounced āthaā which means either āwhenā or āthenā. Back in early Middle English the structure āif - thenā had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if - then relationship you said āĆ¾Ä whatever, Ć¾Ä whateverā, meaning āwhen such-and- such, then such-and-suchā. āĆ¾Äā sounds almost the same as ātheā and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. āthe more, the merrierā literally means āwhen more, then merrierā or āif more, then merrierā; same as centuries ago.
