"Address terms" — the words we used to address people — are becoming more inclusive. For @TheConversationUS, linguist Scott F. Kiesling analyzes the different terms that are emerging, their origins ("dude" comes from the "doodle" part of "Yankee Doodle Dandy"), and why we can say gentlemen, but not ladies. Which do you think is the most inclusive address term for a group?
Being a #German speaker in English speaking online spaces is weird bc you'll see people say "Did you know German has a word for XY" and it'll be some old-fashioned literary thing like Weltschmerz or Fernweh that most people never use, so you feel like the "German has a word for everything" is a strange exaggeration
But then you see somebody be like "Does anybody else experience detailed description of something" or "Why does nobody talk about a specific condition under specific circumstances"
and you realize not only does German have a word for that, but it's actually an active part of your vocabulary and comes up in conversations a lot?
Anyway I taught somebody the word Nachmittagstief (the drop in energy you experience at 3pm) yesterday
Cé chomh hálainn is atá an Bhreatain Bheag? / How beautiful is Wales?
#Language shouldn't frighten you. It is a beautiful expression of who you are and where you came from. It speaks to your past! The Video in this article is moving. It speaks to your soul.
https://jointhefediverse.net is now available "po slovensky"! More languages are coming. Huge thanks to everyone who reached out and offered to provide translation!
Language, Thought and Reality
Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf
The pioneering linguist Benjamin Whorf (1897–1941) grasped the relationship between human language and human thinking: how language can shape our innermost thoughts. His basic thesis is that our perception of the world and our ways of thinking about it are deeply influenced by the structure of the languages we speak.
Is there an #English#word that means "to make permanent?" Essentially, I need the word "permanentize" to exist, but evidently it does not. Surely another word exists in its stead?
Please #help! This problem has been vexing me for over three years (since I began tracking the way cities changed their street space during the pandemic and whether or not those changes were permanentized).
For more context, people in China have been assembling plain white bread sandwiches to try to understand how we live in this part of the world, and they are posting through it (the idea of eating anything cold or raw, especially a vegetable, is seen as especially disgusting in the Chinese world, with some exceptions)
Saw another list of "untranslatables" with the usual suspects (schadenfreude, hygge…). Couple of things:
—Funny how lists of untranslatable words always supply translations. The words usually just don't have precise, one-word translations—esp if they're culturally very specific
—Except sometimes they do. Schadenfreude has a little-known English equivalent, epicaricacy, borrowed from Greek & listed in some English dictionaries since the mid-18C
London-based student Sophie Maclean has developed a formula that she claims can create the ultimate swearword. Here's a look at the mathematics behind the method and why unleashing a curse or two can genuinely reduce pain if you stub your toe.
For Friday fun, which of these words does Maclean claim is a mathematically perfect swear? You can find the answer in the article, or we'll reveal it tomorrow.
Note that the training data heavily relies on the Bible and its translations. Lots of bias there.
Meta unveils open-source #AI models it says can identify 4,000+ spoken languages and produce speech for 1,000+ languages, an increase of 40x and 10x respectively.
I've seen "solution" verbed quite a bit, as in "Let's solution that", but until today I don't remember seeing its complement, the nouning of "solve": "What are the solves?"
Rule 1 of verbing and nouning: It's nearly always older than you think. OED's first citation for "solve" as a noun? 1780.
There are moments in our lives that unexpectedly become pivotal.
Like when Alessandra learned there is no word for privacy in #russian making her think about how each #language carries the different culture of its people...
Linguists have identified a new English dialect that's emerging in South Florida (phys.org)
"We got down from the car and went inside."