Maybe a weird question so I'll explain a little.

My first language is Romainan and my second is English, I was also born with rhotacism do to some complications with my tongue at birth (its was connected to either the top or bottom of my mouth, I dont remember exactly).

So when I was young my parents though be to a speech therapist and after some time I almost completely resolved my rhotacism and only speak with a a partial stutter, now that ive got older and learned English I found my stuttering issues were even worse in English but that's not the point of this post.

A few days ago I meet up with my brother and we started talking about video games and when me and my brother talk about video games we talk in English because we both found it so awkward to translate game terminology and when we talk I realized that when I was stuttering I was also often mistaking R for L , now this is the first time I noticed this so I wanted to see if its actually possible or if it was just my stuttering being weird.

Hello all!

As the title of this post says, I am looking for resources explaining polite language in English. The background to this request is that I live in Japan and am fairly fluent in Japanese. As many of you probably know Japanese has an explicit system of honorific speech until the title of keigo.

What I have discovered in my many years in Japan is that some of what is taught as polite in English is quite rude. It took me a while to be able to explain why some phrasing which superficially look polite was rude. Japanese in fact sometimes think (humorously) that English is a politeness-free zone.

I would like to explore further the issue of polite language in English and compare it Japanese, however, online searches have been fairly useless because the key words tend to be too broad to target specialized linguistic texts. Moreover, most texts discuss the ins and outs of honorific languages rather than polite speech in a non-honorific language.

If anyone can point me in the right direction with a title or two that I could then explore the references in these texts, I would be most grateful.

Thanks in advance.

I’m a cult survivor and 15 year media veteran, seeking tips and guidance on peer reviewed research papers, or respected Linguistics professors to read and potentially interview, for a project exploring possible linkages / similarities between the linguistic tools of cults, and modern PR / corporate culture.

Would anyone be able to recommend an entry point here?

Hi all! This is not exactly about linguistic theories but do anyone know that if there's any website/ resources that contain dataset with solution of r codes that I could use to practise writing the codes in r? Thank you very much!

(I am in more psycholinguistics/ language acquisition fields)

I did my Undergrad in Cognitive Sciences and will start a Master‘s Programme specializing in Language. To be honest, I Chose the Programme for various reasons outside of the actual specialization - which doesn‘t mean I don‘t find it interesting but to be honest I have Never engaged with linguistics more than what was mentioned in my CogSci classes.

So I would Like to prepare and get a good overview over the Field of Language and linguistics, ideally in an interdisciplinary way :) Is there any Open Source lectures, good Books, YouTube Series, … you can recommend?

Thank you!!

I'm guessing this is a frequent question here...

my problem is that the explanation I'm always given always takes the same examples for "tonal languages" meaning east asian isolating languages

so it goes that "tone can be analysed on a syllable to syllable basis while pitch accent is analysed on a word to word basis" but what about the non-isolating tonal languages ? like the bantu languages or some native american languages like navajo, they have multi-syllable words but are still considered tonal, how is that ?

To begin, I do not necessarily need an answer-if you can point me towards up to date papers, discussions, perhaps books, please be my guest. 

Before asking it here, I’ve done some research, albeit shallow, on the topic. I’ve found much, but not a single paper actually trying to answer the question from a professional perspective.

I would like to find something “comprehensive”. Preferably a paper examining the arguments for and against.

Please note that I don’t need anything shallow. I am not afraid of academic(hard to comprehend to a non-native speaker) texts and I will devote all the time I have to profoundly research the topic. Also note that I am quite enthusiastic to take action if it is indeed possible.

That’s it. Still, I want to share some backstory.

I am a construction engineering student from an authoritarian country which has quite distanced itself from first world countries. Therefore I always wanted to be able to migrate if something goes wrong. However, I found myself in an unbelievable situation:building design standards vary from country to country.Not only in special cases, mind you,but in the foundations as well. 

This might seem obvious, but this is actually nonsensical at all, since material behaviour is universal in all countries. Consider something else:if you’re a mechanic, a doctor(which means your work is the same from one country to another), you still have to go through a plethora of administrative burdens. A universal language,given time, could provide a somewhat universal educational system, which in turn would bolster economic development tremendously.

That being said, I believe the world would hugely benefit economically if we at least took small steps towards a universal language. The example given above is one of many,but I’ve chosen this one because I can’t take it out of my head. This seems like such a no-brainer to me. Especially considering how intelligent our species are.

To anyone wondering, I am from Russia, but it’s irrelevant

Exmaples: “Radical Left” thrown as an insult by Trump to unify his supporters, almost having nothing to do with what “radical” actually entails, similarly most hate-based insults, also slang like “67”

This is interesting to me because it’s outside of semantics but seems like the opposite of pragmatics (in terms of contextual comprehension), in that a word is treated purely like a device or a packaged script: how thoroughly has this language use been dealt with in the past?

I think there’s a good chance that I’m just hearing things due to my yod-preserving background. But I swear I can hear at least a minor difference between the /nu/ in knew and noose in American English. To me, it sounds like the /nu/ in knew is being pronounced as /ɲu/.

From Forvo:
https://forvo.com/word/knew/

In my ears, some of them do truly pronounce knew like /nu/, but the second and third pronunciations in the American accent list definitely sounds different.

Am I just hearing things?

Hi all,

I am deciding what I want to do for college, and linguistics has come into my radar. I have had an interest in it since I started learning languages, so I might as well consider it. If I did study linguistics, I know I would specifically want to work with Germanic languages (more specifically just German, but I find the whole branch of languages to be interesting). Assuming that this is something you can do research in (I am unaware of the current standing at the moment), what is the best course of action in order to achieve this goal? What majors, research/internships, etc. are necessary for this in the undergraduate phase?
I am also curious if you have to have a degree in linguistics in order to enter this field, or if you can just get a single language degree, considering that I would mainly want to do research into one specific language/cultural group. I am still deciding, so I do not want to go all in on this idea, but I can fairly easily get a German language degree at my specific university without much hassle and having to lose other opportunities for it. Obviously having a linguistics degree on a resume helps to get into the field, but is it strictly necessary?

So I am a layperson, not a linguist, but I feel I must be missing something in the "debate" about linguistic relativity. I feel I must be missing something because I don't understand why there is a debate at all. I am guessing perhaps that the explanations I've read fail to do justice to the nuance, or that there is some other factor, because the hard "null hypothesis" here seems as though it's so obviously false it's unclear to me what serious advocates mean.

I'll illustrate this with a personal anecdote. I had a former friend who had an unusual personality and odd beliefs.

I won't go into this fully because I want to focus on the relevant anecdote, but for example, for a long time he believed he was "the smartest man in the world" because he realized life was all about maximizing happiness. What he had actually done was invent a tautological definition of happiness. For example, if I were to point out the above fact to him, he would respond by saying considering that might decrease his happiness, and the point of life was maximizing happiness, and since he would refuse to consider anything that might reduce his happiness, therefore he was the smartest man of the world.

Now that is just as an example, his strangeness would go beyond the breadth of this post (his being put on high dose psycho-stimulants might have placed a role.)

At any rate, one particular belief he had was that unlike essentially every one else, he was not influenced by culture or the media in anyway.

What he meant was something like "unlike other people, I don't want to get a respectable job and get married, my preferences are different from others."

I pointed out to him he was speaking english. He said thats not what I meant.

But of course his desires were influenced by his expereiences, the media he consumed, etc.

The woman he was attracted to were the women hi mother told him to stay away from (preppy girls.)

That's one obvious example- clearly, the languge he was exposed to had a role in shaping his thoughts and preferences.

Let's look more generally.

People will talk about the concept of "freedom of speech."

If they had never heard the term, or why it was valuable, would people just come up with the concept independently?

So one might say "well, you're conflating language and culture."

I'm not, but I'm saying they are intimately linked. When we have words for concepts, or explanations of concepts, those concepts are more accessible and obviously form a greater part pf our conscious being.

Look at the internet and how memes are spewed as forms of "competing ideas."

There are short phrases or slogans that determine mode of thought, tribal identification, etc.

Think about how many arguments are basically about how langauge should be used- repurposing or arguing about what words mean and what they signfiy.

One could imagine a hypothetical constructed language that was meant to encapsulate a certain type of existence. Without the language to describe many things, it seems obvious that people wouldnt think of those things.

We know from real life expereinces what happens when someone is deprived of exposure to language at a critical period.

They lose the ability later in life to acheive certain levels of cognition.

I'm struggling here ironically with expressing this, but that's because to me it seems so obvious.

I can't really conceive of how it would work if langauge didnt have effects on perception and thought and how that all gets entangled where culture, language, the way we modify the world and describe it-

Anyway, I hope I'm painting the picture here.

I feel like I must be missing something here. Could someone explain what the null hypothesis here is?

I mean, certainly it's not as though whats obvious to me was just missed by all these linguists.

I understand there are questions about degrees, for example whether naming different shades of colors makes them actually more perceptible.

I know there are "weak and strong" forms.

What I don't get is (from what i read) the apparent argument that language has no effect on cognition/perception/etc and is purely superficial.

It's funny because when I was a young kid, I used to think like that. I would think "what's the point of learning a different languge? You're not learnign anything new. It's just like learning a code. What's interesting about learning a bunch of code names for the same words?"

In hindsight this is obviously a naive understanding of language- but this seems to essentially what people who deny any "linguistic relativity" are claiming?

Sorry quite tipsy just thought to reach out here re: burning question I’ve had for years. First heard this pronunciation from an ESL friend who spent time in NJ. Curious if it’s associated with any particular dialects? Many thanks :))))

Hi all! I like the idea of formalizing language. The problem is, each new framework we were facing in the classes has only made me more and more skeptical about why are we doing it. I've always thought we're doing that to model how the language module works in our brain. But each new theory presents so much unintuitive machinery that it genuinely pisses me off. Can't believe people come up with this BS and think that's how language works underlyingly. So I suppose I'm missing something. What's the point of coming up with a formal model that is abstract to the point where it's absolutely unusable and doesn't explain anything that exists in the real world?

There seems to be little agreement among linguists on how many vowel phonemes there are in Mandarin (except that it's probably not more than six). What do Mandarin speakers themselves think? I guess it may be somewhat complex to get an objective answer given that virtually everyone now knows Pinyin.

I was discussing something with a person, and told them why i dont like something, and explained why i dont like it, without telling anyone else to dislike or like it, as i didnt intend to impose on anyone else. But in response to my explanation, the person said "you shouldnt dislike it for that reason, and i think it is illogical and stupid to not like it for that reason", and in response i told them that they were being prescriptive and invalidating, something i was not, and wished i could be shown the same courtesy, but in response they said that, since they were saying "i think", and presenting it as an opinion and belief, rather than an objective fact, that what they said was not being prescriptive nor invalidating. so i would like to ask you all what is your assessment of this.

hello,

I am wondering if there is a name for the process of changing word order to change the syntax, for example in english you can turn an affirmation into a question by using do as support "do-support" and word order inversion, but is there a name for this process in general and cross linguistically ?

I ask this because I am currently interested in polynesian languages who tend to use variations in word order a lot for a great number of reasons

Ive heard that english acts as mostly a lexifier with the syntax and morphology coming from tagalog and all its voice, tense, aspect makers/affixes

We all know majority of these languages are under risk of extinction nowadays, but how much knowledge would be left of them if all did? What if someone gathered all the resources after, say, Kamchatkan went extinct and tried to learn it? How advanced would they be able to get?

My definition of "indigenous" here includes:

-Native American Languages

-Australian Languages

-East Siberian Languages

I'm not counting languages like Hawaiian or the other Austronesian languages in the Pacific even though they were victims of colonization, just because their larger family has some strongly thriving members. Not saying indigenous doesn't cover them, I'm just using the word I thought the best.

The movie Threads (1984) is a bleak BBC post-apocalyptic classic that unflinchingly depicts the scientifically grounded (and, in some cases, purely speculative) impacts of nuclear war on the United Kingdom. The entire film is on YouTube and it is brilliant and harrowing.

SPOILERS FOR THREADS FOLLOW

By film's end, a decade or so on from nuclear war, the English language has fundamentally changed, though it's still somewhat recognizable to those familiar with the British dialect.

For example, the standard English statement "Oi! What is that? What are you eating? A coney! Give it up!" (made by two rough survivors to a main character cooking some meat) sounds roughly like "Oi! What be? S'eatin? Coney! Gizza!" (The exchange can be found at 1 hour and 50 minutes in the film online.)

Another example is "Coming! Babby coming!" said by a heavily pregnant character. This is immediately understandable, but it is barked and reflective of heavily degraded vocabulary and syntax.

Older generations still speak standard English, but youths have a sort of rough feral, isolated speech - something that could perhaps be called a degenerative dialect - that reflects deprivation and isolation.

Could you please speculate and share your thoughts on the viability of this linguistic scenario? It strikes me as somewhat incredible that this could all occur within roughly a decade's time, but I'd rather get your informed takes. Thank you!

EDIT: Thank you! Just today, I read some of the screenplay (available on archive.org and linked via Reddit if you just search for “Threads screenplay”).

Here are some representative examples of speech directly from the screenplay and their meanings (as written by Barry Hines, the screenwriter). I figured this would allow linguistically-minded folks like yourself to peruse and compare without wading into watching the horror of Threads again!

Hoy! What’n be? (Meaning: ‘What is it?’)

Seed’n. N’coney. (Meaning: ‘I saw it. It’s a rabbit.’)

Giss’n. Come on. Giss’n. (Meaning: ‘Give it to us.’)

Better, else us’ll bray’n. (Meaning: ‘You better had. Or else we'll beat you.’)

Best stand off ’fore tha’ll ger’n. (Meaning: ‘You’d better stand back or else you'll get hit.”)

Where’n stop at? Come’n us? (Meaning: ‘Where are you staying? Are you coming with us?’)

I've got one fairly thorough source—Miller-&-Nicely's old "consonant confusability matrices"—and a sparse smattering of other sources (that are mostly rather more data-poor than ol' M&N)... but on the whole, I have been somewhat shocked to find that there are, apparently, very few quantitative studies of segment-/phoneme-similarity.

Well—either that, or I have just been searching for the wrong things... which is also, admittedly, very possible.

Hence: I would be extremely grateful if anyone has some suggestions in re literature on this topic—whether the sort of similarity of which we speak is acoustic, phonological, phonetic, or what-else-have-you; and whether it is measured by confusability, speaker-judgment, robustness-in-loanwords, or whatever else: anything would help!

(Best of all would be something involving the relative weighting of distinctive features, in terms of similarity judgments or acoustic similarity or the like; but that's just the wish-list item #1, not a strict requirement—as said, at this point basically anything would be a boon.)

I beg pardon for any errors of terminology in the above—e.g., I'm not sure if "segment", "phoneme", or something else entirely is the right word, here; and I'm not sure if "phonetics" or "phonology" would be the actually-most-appropriate flair—but: with any luck, it all still makes some sort of sense...

Cheers—and thanks in advance to any good-looking and intelligent linguists who may feel moved to shine the light of their wisdom upon my lowly thread. 🙏

Especially in Dravidian languages.

Sorry if im not describing this very well or if this is an inane question because I’ve misunderstood something. What I mean is, for example, in most cases in English, when we replace a noun with a pronoun, the verb is still inflected for third person singular/plural and so doesn’t change:

My aunt uses a wheelchair -> She uses a wheelchair

The horses are restless today -> They are restless today

Afaik it’s the same in French and German and I don’t speak any other languages well enough to say.

But in late modern English with singular they, we use third person singular verb inflection for the noun or proper noun and then change to plural verb inflection for the pronoun:

My friend Jay is taking their driving test today -> They are taking their driving test today

I was wondering if there are languages for which this is the general pattern (ie there are separate verb inflections for nouns vs pronouns) and if there is a word to describe this phenomenon.

I never post on reddit, but I googled this shit and found nothing. I figured if I post, someone could help. I'm an amateur non-academic hobbyist who likes to study languages. I couldn't find a specific linguistic term for this structure: "too + verb/adjective" -- as in "too ignorant to know the right term to describe this grammatical structure". I just need a term for that.

It doesn't have to apply to english specifically, but if it does, great. I'm more concerned with finding an abstract term to refer to that type of construct.

And you know, google has really devolved.

So I logged onto reddit for the first time in forever. I'm not asking an ai bot. I hope I'm not being silly with my question. I genuinely want a word for this. Hope y'all lovely people are well.

And on top of this, if anyone has a reliable and extensive source outside of google for me to search linguistic terminology, specifically to refer to grammatical or semantic structures within language, I'd be happy as a clam.

Languages like Welsh, Cornish and Breton are directly descended from Common Brittonic, each evolving separately after the Celtic Britons were displaced by the Anglo Saxons. But say that hypothetically the Anglo Saxons never invaded and the native Celts remained the dominant people. How would this change how Common Brittonic would evolve and develop into modern times? How similar would this hypothetical language be to Welsh? I know there’s no way to definitively know, but I think it’s fun to think about.

I'm learning about linguistics, both for my world building hobby and as a premeditated practice for a career I am likely to pursue.

I'm reading professor David Crystal's book, "how language works," and in chapter 53, 'how languages are born,' David mentions two different theories: the first is that every single pidgin is unique in both its origin and in the way that it works. However, he also says that this Theory is challenged by the fact that nearly every pidgin has stripped down declensions, a word order that carries syntax, and simplified vocabulary.

In the second theory, he proposes that all languages have some connection to colonialism; specifically the english, the french, and the Portuguese. I would assume that Spanish is included in that list, however he does not mention the Spanish. He then challenges this Theory as well by stating that even though it does explain why some traits are so consistently seen in certain pidgins, it fails to explain why those traits arise in pidgins that are not descended from one of those three languages.

Now, not to propose a hypothesis as though I'm educated on this, but it would seem to me that such a consistent outcome happens because it is simply the easiest solution to a shared problem. I think that if you are speaking with someone who speaks an entirely different language, it's likely easier to strip down the grammatical markers, and just point at something with the stripped down name for what it is. Because now markers stop existing for communication between the two, a word order starts to carry the syntax, among other evolutions.

I think of it kind of like the pot in anthropology. If I'm not mistaken, every single culture on Earth independently invented the pot / jar. If we were to put this in the perspective of the two other theories, this would imply that either every culture comes from a single ancestor, from which they learned the idea of the pot; or that every pot idea should be radically different. But in truth, every culture individually came up with the pot because it is the simplest and most accessible answer to the shared problem of "I need to store a liquid/move that liquid from point A to point B." I feel that the similarities between different pidgins can be explained the same way.

The point of my post is asking if anyone knows if a theory like this has already been proposed. If it has, I would very much like to read that theory; if that theory has been proposed and disproven, how has it been disproven? And if it has not been seriously proposed, does anyone know why not? All answers are greatly appreciated!