Today is a big day on the Spanish internet. Valentine’s day in Spanish is “día de San Valentín”, which sounds almost the same as “Sam va lentín”, which is how, in some parts of Spain , you would say “Sam goes slowly”.
Hence, since a few years ago, every February 14th, the Spanish internet is full of “wait for me mr. Frodo” style memes. One of our holiest days of the year.
oh and the post would probably make more sense if I actually shared any meme right?
You can’t even picture how many variations of the meme people post today. It’s all very silly and I love it.
when i was a child i asked my grandad (who has a thick yorkshire accent) why he sometimes misses letters out of words and words out of sentences and he told me its because they had to ration letters during the war
A book with a first person narrator what describes everything with oddly specific clarifications and denials, coming completely unprompted.
“I poured myself a bowl of cereal that had no cockroaches in it.”
“Her hair - which was real human hair, growing naturally from her own scalp - was brown.”
“I walked to my car which I legally owned and whose rightful ownership had never been under question or dispute.”
“Their dog was barking in a way that is entirely normal for a regular, full-blooded dog, and could not be mistaken for the vocalisations of a half-wolf, a jackal, or perhaps a hyena.”
“My mother - who has never been convicted or imprisoned for manslaughter - emerged from the kitchen.”
Episode 79: Tone and Intonation? Tone and Intonation!
Spoken languages can change the pitch or melody of words to convey
several different kinds of information. When the pitch affects the
meaning of the whole phrase, such as rising to indicate a question in
English, linguists call it intonation. When the pitch affects the
meaning of an individual word, such as the difference between mother
(high mā) and horse (low rising mǎ) in Mandarin, linguists call it
tone.
In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren
Gawne get enthusiastic about tone, intonation, and the combination of
the two. We talk about various meanings of intonation, such as question,
list, floor-holding, emphasis, enthusiasm, and sarcasm, and how
different languages use different shapes of intonation contours for
functions like these. We also talk about things languages do with tones,
from changing meanings of individual words to indicating grammatical
information like negation. Finally, we talk about the many, many options
for writing tone and intonation (from highly technical proposals to fun
internet creations), how tone interacts with lyrics/melody in songs,
and how “high” versus “low” tone is actually a culturally-specific
metaphor – could we start calling tones “thin” and “thick” or “big”
and “small” instead?
Announcements: In this month’s bonus episode, originally
recorded as a liveshow on the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server, your
host Gretchen gets enthusiastic about how languages do gender with
special guest Dr. Kirby Conrod. We answer your questions about lots of
things related to language and gender, including: gender-neutral
versions of sir/ma'am and dude/bro, why linguistic gender even exists,
how people are doing gender-neutral and nonbinary things across related
languages, and how neopronouns are often made by recycling bits from a
language’s canonical pronouns.
Zhao Yuanren/Yuen Ren Chao, such a cool Chinese linguist (he also translated Jabberwocky! and gave his daughter the name Lensey,
which contains the only two syllables that are possible in the Chinese
language but not actually present in any no Chinese words, thus making
her name impossible to write properly in Chinese. Just like, please go
read his Wikipedia article.)
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, and our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).
We’re finally doing a tone and intonation episode of @lingthusiasm so of course I’m using it as an excuse to mention my favourite tumblr post from @pervocracy
My newsletter for December 2022: New Zealand and “Uzhe” in The Atlantic
This month, I wrote a piece for The Atlantic for the first time! It’s about when the connection between spelling and pronunciation breaks down.
You walk into your favorite coffee shop. You greet the familiar barista, who knows your daily order. You say “Hi, I’ll have the”—wait, I can’t figure out how to write the next word. You know, “the usual,” but shorter. Hip! Casual! I’ll have the … uzhe. I…
My newsletter for November 2022: Melbourne and Mastodon
I spent November in Melbourne, Australia, where I gave a talk about linguistics communication at La Trobe University, did lots of hanging out and behind the scenes work with my Lingthusiasm cohost, Lauren Gawne, and met up with various other delightful linguists, including attending the annual meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society at Melbourne University. All of which were extremely good,…
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“Arboretum Owner Denied Standing in Garden Path Suit on Grounds Grounds Appealing Appealing
Garden Path Sentence [Explained]
”](https://64.media.tumblr.com/0cfbcca43fc879edf7dd55645b153614/197e170635ffc084-c8/s1280x1920/62bd27a0634e87f605b07776d9f233932c98e9dd.png)
