Linguistics Humor

1546 readers

1 users here now

Do you like languages and linguistics ? Here is for having fun about it

For serious linguistics content: !linguistics@mander.xyz

Rules:

1- Stay on Topic
Post about linguistics or language humor & memes
2- No Racism/Violence
3- No Public Shaming No shaming someone that could be identifiable or recognizable
4- Avoid spam and duplicates

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Jakylla@sh.itjust.works

lvxferre@mander.xyz

The English features I hate so much that I actually learned their true names. (startrek.website)

submitted 5 days ago by MalikMuaddibSoong@startrek.website to c/linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_e

Cognitive dissonance on the more accurate name of “Ignored e”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_(linguistics)

Record a record? Convict a convict? What an annoying concept.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_leveling

At least irregular verbs are drifting away, that’s a pleasant surprise.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisyllabic_laxing

fotograffy > fuhtawgruhfee I’ll die on this hill

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 16 points 5 days ago (6 children)

You know what bugs me the most?

island - with a fake etymological "s" that was never pronounced. Compare it with German "Eiland".
people - you got to borrow French "peuple", then change that "u" into "o" for cosmetic purposes.
chaos - because you got to plop an etymological "h", except conventionally the way to transcribe Greek /kʰ/→/χ/ is "kh" instead. But no, you need to disguise that /k/ as /tʃ/.
spamming a diacritic (apostrophe) to highlight elided sounds, but not using it to solve small orthographical quirks. It would solve the first two issues you're complaining about - compare "mate" (bro) with "yerba matë", "I record it" vs. "the recórd".

[/old man screams at the clouds rant]

[–] Shihali@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago (4 children)

You're about twenty centuries too late on the χ thing. You're gonna need to go back and talk to the Romans.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 points 4 days ago (3 children)

[kʰ] or [χ], both end as /k/ [kʰ] in English anyway. But it feels weird that people insist on that etymological ⟨ch⟩ as if "English got it from Latin" was more important than "it's ultimately from Greek".

[–] Shihali@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

On thinking it over, "proper" spelling of foreign words has done its own share of damage to English spelling. We don't just have to learn our own spelling conventions, we also have to learn foreign ones. Or not (sent to you from Cairo, Illinois, locally pronounced "care-oh")

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 points 4 days ago

Frankly, I agree. I'm perhaps biased because of Italian, but I think etymology doesn't belong to the spelling; a consistent and dialect-agnostic set of rules that allows you to predict how to spell and pronounce a word is far more important.

In special I never understood why English obtusely sticks to the double spelling standard, native (as in /gɪf/) vs. Romance+Classical (as in /dʒɪf/).

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (2 replies)