I speak German natively as well as Spanish and English. I understand why English isn’t and why Spanish is, but what I always learned is that languages tend to simplify and German also has verb conjugations that would make the subject clear like Spanish. So why isn’t German a pro drop language like Spanish?
The Wiktionary tells me uulpes comes from another source, which we can reconstruct. But the whole descent from wlkwos to lupus is pretty convoluted, with metathesis and borrowing from another language which had the PIE *kw to p shift. How well established is *h₂wl̥p-i-s ? How likely would be a doublet with a semantic shift ?
Basically, I can't find enough information for my liking on both these words
When I think about many of the common insults in English across time (both in general and the ones aimed at men), I notice a common thread in the insult being some reference to femininity in a pejorative way, or to being in an "effeminate" position as if in some derogatory sense. Even the homophobic ones seem, at their core, rooted in misogyny.
For example, terms like: pussy, cunt, beta, cuckold, bastard, little bitch, soy boy, pretty boy, bastard, Pussywhipped, "gay" and the f slur as an insult, etc
Also phrases like: "get fucked", "Son of a bitch", making X "your bitch", "quit bitching", "grow a pair"
"don't get your panties in a twist", saying who
"wears the pants" in one's relationship, etc
Edit: perhaps I should have said rooted in sexism more broadly
i want to know every single word from paleo-european languages (except modern basque, i would learn some of it but not all because it would be almost impossible) known to modern science so i would be able to try to group them into families and things like that
i appreciate every source about them especially the lesser known ones and substrates
i'm also intrested in proto languages to find out how the families are related (because they all almost certainly are related)
Is there a standard set of attributes/features that can be used to describe a person's accent? I'm trying to avoid using things like where a person is from or a predefined list of accents to categorise a person's accent and to instead treat it as a continuum, so something like a list of numbers that tells you what a person sounds like when talking.
haiii so basically the title; what I mean by 'naturally uses AAVE' is like being integrated with black people long enough that they adopted AAVE as a way of speaking.
I understand that most black people can just sort of tell if someone isn't using AAVE right with the grammer but is there any more depth to that?
(pls dont hate me im just new and trying to learn more about aave)
Hi, sorry if my terms are inaccurate, Im not a linguist. Question in title.
I’m working on distinguishing the sets in spelling, and am alrædy familiar with American English. Generally my guide has been this very helpful book on lexical sets published by eCampusOntario, but for this set specifically they basically say you’re on your own in terms of regionality, since it’s so varied.
J. C. Well’s original sets specify examples, but so far it’s been hard for me to find a reliable database to distinguish between the American standards I alrædy know, and the Brittish ones- if all else fails, I can rely on the Cambridge Dictionary, it’s just tedious to go through it for every individual wo̊rd for a database.
I constantly search up definitions and it's frustrating me. The words I've been using my entire life, I can't explain what they are. So I search them up, read the sentence and go "wait but what does that word mean" again and again which leads to a rabbit hole. it takes up a huge amount of time of my day. Even as a native speaker I'm confused on what I'm even saying. Words go in one ear and out the other. I genuinely don't know what to do
EDIT: I should note that this is specifically in American comedy.
The most famous examples that I can think of are either the Nancy comic where Sluggo says that the bait shop pays him in "woims" or Bugs Bunny pronouncing "Albuquerque" as "Alba-koi-kee". I've also seen it pop up a few times in Futurama ("this isn't a war, it's a moida" comes to mind). It only seems to appear in the middle of words (the Futurama clip above said "moida," not "moidoi," for instance). It's virtually always played for comic effect, and generally seems to be associated with characters who are some combination of lower-class and witty (though not always both). I don't think I've ever heard any modern speaker talk like this unless they're specifically referencing this kind of humor.
Given the comic angle, and the general age of the media where I've seen it used (early 20th century stuff, or later series that reference early 20th century stuff), I'm broadly assuming that it comes from vaudeville and somewhere in the New York area. Given what (admittedly little) I know about vaudeville and turn-of-the-century New York, that leads me to suspect that the origin is some combination of Yiddish and Italian. That being said, I don't actually know, and I'd imagine that Italian and Yiddish are not lacking in words that have an "er" somewhere in the middle. Is this generally the correct origin, and if so, can the sound-change be traced back any further?
On a similar angle, there's some characters (generally blue-collar Southerners, such as Scruffy the Janitor, also from Futurama) who do the opposite, by pronouncing "toilet" as "terlet". I'd be very curious to learn about that switch's origins as well.
Something I’ve been noticing and that has also been kind of bothering me is people’s, i think, increasing tendency to move stress to the beginning of certain words/phrases, but specifically two word phrases describing objects.
to me it seems like just an attempt to sound cool? idk if that’s the right way to put it
for example, these are two phrases that i have always heard with stress on the last syllable:
cream CHEESE
hash BROWNS
i think this is the obvious stress pattern because it’s a descriptive word followed by the noun it’s describing
and it honestly really irks me when people increasingly say them like
CREAM cheese
or
HASH browns
because it comes off like they’re trying to be nonchalant or something.
have any of y’all noticed this?
there are also some single words that this applies to, like crouTON, or, as some people would say, CROUton
This is my first post here, so i don’t now if this exactly fits the subreddit. what flair would this be?
edit: since so many people seem to be so incredulous at these pronounciations for things, i found a cool website that has a bunch of pronounciations on youtube to look at so you can believe me lol: https://youglish.com/pronounce/hash_browns/english/us
ive found my pronounciations for cream cheese, hash browns, and tofu on here, but not crouton for some reason (and if you want some more information on where they might come from, i assume i acquired english in florida)
I'm not sure this even exists, and I'm having a hard time googling the answer.
Consider the following sentence: "I will start going on walks as soon as my neighbour moves away, otherwise I shall never leave my house again."
If I wanted to refer to only the first part of the sentence (everything before the first comma), how would I do so?
I'm asking because I need to clearly communicate the issue with a similarly structured sentence in a contract (I'm a law clerk). I think "clause" is the best answer here, but unfortunately, it refers to something different in law (a paragraph, basically).
If there is no better answer, that's fine. May just end up just saying "part"
Im applying to study psychology and linguistics at university, and am currently writing my personal statement. At my counselor’s advice, I’ve tried to demonstrate understanding of several psycholinguistic or cognitive linguistic theories, but I’m worried I’ve confused myself.
I’ve read The Articulate Mammal, and per my understanding Aitchison proposes a process-based LAD, which allows us to process and puzzle out the rules of language rather than Chomsky’s UG claiming that we have this knowledge ingrained within us? (Also, would I be right to compare his UG to Descartes innate knowledge?)
For construction grammar, I believe that it proposes language as learned pairing between a concept and a word/phrase/structure, and these pairing are influenced by culture and society?
For privacy reasons I won’t go too in depth into the argument I made within my personal statement, but if anyone is willing to help me look it over a DM would be much appreciated 🫡🙏🏻🙏🏻
(Also the community rules seem to allow homework help but if this is too vague/otherwise not allowed my apologies to the mods)
We're currently doing a semiotic analysis on textual graffiti. However we need a research tool to identify its denotation and connotation, is there a book that you could reco for this?
