I tweet mostly about Linguistics and Tolkien | PhDing at
@VUamsterdam
about historical linguistics & North Halmahera langs |
@SilmariaPodcast
| {female markers}
Here's my take on the claims in this unfortunately rather ill-informed thread.
Like every form of art, you can like or dislike conlangs but not based on the arguments in this thread please. 1/19
Two German women on the train are speculating about the origin of the river name "Amstel" and have somewhat concluded that it must be derived from the name "Amsterdam"
Your weekly reminder that folk etymology is almost always wrong
No day passes without me thinking about this guy who received his PhD in 191x for the edition of one Old (?) English poem: no glossary, no comments, just the poem - the thesis is 18 pages
My native language has polypersonal verbs, noun incorporation, a complex aspectual system and often uses topic-comment structures
...
yes, I'm talking about colloquial German
@TanjaSagt
Ich finds romantischer, wenn alle Mitglieder einer Familie den gleichen Namen tragen und männliche Nachnamen sind halt einfach hässlich, nur meine Meinung
"I am ... in many ways an opponent of Grammarian English, and a defender of Usage: mainly because the grammarians, being largely ignorant of the history of English, have so often introduced an artificial discrepancy between the rules and what is natural."
- J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)
Should you find yourself writing a fantasy book that has historical linguistics as an integral part of its magic system - please, please, please let a historical linguist check it before publication 🥺
(and no, English "night" is not "derived" from Latin "nox" 🫠)
Every time I encounter the word "gestalt" in an English text I have to look it up
Guess that's how English speaking people feel when they first hear "Handy" in German
1/ "A language is a dialect with an army and navy" is often quoted when it comes to linguistic debates about the distinction between languages and dialects. But where does it come from and what does it mean?
#LinguisticSunday
#NotStandardGerman
is full of modal particles (in German also Abtönungspartikel), small words which describe how the speaker feels about the content of a sentence. Today, we will look at 4 of them: “ja”, “halt”, “eben” and “mal”.
Something that fascinates me about English-speaking people: they are (apparently) able to tell how they actually pronounce things
If you ask a speaker of Standard German how they say "Arm" they will often claim they pronounce the <r> while actually saying [aːm] 1/2
Several varieties of Malay/Indonesian as well as some Papuan languages (e.g. Biak) have a word "dui(t)" for 'money'. This is a Dutch loanword. The "duit"/"doit" was a small copper coin. The etymology of the word is unclear... 1/
I really don't get the fuss about the question which one of the languages currently spoken on earth is the most difficult to learn
Because obviously the answer must be: North Sentinelese
I've tried to arrange some recent thoughts of mine into an alignment chart for the question "What is a conlang?"
Suggestions for rearrangements or additions are welcome 🤗
And Tag Yourselves!
Me, after explaining my PhD topic to a non-linguist, trying very hard to bring across all the complexities I'm dealing with, and then they ask "but do these languages actually have a grammar like real languages?"
Languages sometimes borrow words from other languages with a more specific meaning than the word has in the source language. For example, in my German family (and other families I know of), the English word "family" is used for 'extended family' only 1/2
Since it's Alfred Russel Wallace 200th birthday 🎉 I would like to tell you my favorite anecdote from his book "The Malay Archipelago" (1862)
In 1857, Wallace met a man on the Aru Islands who wouldn't belive him that he was from a place called "England"... 1/3
In both Celtic and Semitic the verb usually comes first in a sentence - fine
But today I learned that the verb in Celtic will be in the 3rd person singular even if the subject is a plural noun - just like in Arabic
😧
1/3
What do you call such diagrams that show the sound changes through the history of a language? Until 2 minutes ago I was convinced they are called "Lautwandelschema" in German but google yields only a few results...
According to wiktionary, Indonesian "sembahyang" 'prayer, worship" is a loan from Javanese and a compound of "sembah" 'worship' + "hyang" '(Hinduistic) mythological deity' (PWMP *qiaŋ).
Are modern speakers of Indonesian aware of this origin? Is a "hyang" still commonly known?
On this day, 170 years ago, German philologist August Schleicher submitted a two-page article titled "Die ersten Spaltungen des indogermanischen Urvolkes" ('The first splits of the Indo-European people')
It is commonly regarded as the beginning of the linguistic Tree Model 1/
The focus was rather on diversity of readings of Tolkien's works than on diversity within Tolkien's works, which I find a very pleasant addition to the discussion. We can't always know what Tolkien intended for his works to mean, but we can always be sure what they mean to us!
Linguists, is there a term for a tense/aspect that refers to an event that will happen between the time of speaking and a set point in the future but not later and the exact time is unknown?
E.g. She will wake up between now and 8AM but not later than that.
Here is how I did not publish a single paper during the first 3 years of my PhD*
- work on an underresearched topic
- most of previous research published in a language other than English
- data not available in an accessible format
- I like slow science
- I scienced even slower
How I published 13 first-author papers during my 2.5 year post-doc:
- All the data were already collected
- 5 papers were literature reviews
- I read incredibly fast
- I write even faster
The best part about being a historical linguist is being able to explain a quirky function of an element in one language based on evidence coming from a related language 😌
person: wow, your research must be so interesting!
me: yes! Yesterday I spent 2 hours researching to origin of 2 words for 'worm'
person: 😐
me: I failed 😊
Imagine your grandpa left so many papers, notes, boxes and scribbles that he is still publishing posthumously 50 years later. Tolkien is still king of fantasy.
The Nature of Middle-earth is out now at bookstores!
1/ Ursula K. Le Guin started publishing in the 1960s when the hype for
#Tolkien
’s
#TheLordOfTheRings
was at its peak. She is also the source of one of the most famous pseudo Tolkien quotes. Let’s have a look at Le Guin’s view on Tolkien.
#TolkienFriday
I spent today researching the history of the term "Papuan" and it's really disgusting to read what 18th to 20th century researchers thought okay to say about the culture and lives of other people
The letters of the Latin alphabet have different names in different languages (e.g. <k>: "kay" in English, "ka" in German/Dutch)
Today I realized that Indonesian and Malay continue two different "naming traditions". Malay uses the English names, Indonesian the Dutch 1/3
The Códice Casanatense contains Portuguese illustrations from the 16th century, showing peoples the Portuguese had contact with. Among them is this depiction of a man and a woman from the Moluccas
There's a special place in linguistics hell for people who tell speakers their language is "very old" because it has lots of onomatopoetics and monosyllabic words
what people believe is hard to grasp while studying a new language:
- writing systems
- big numbers
- case inflection
what is actually hard to grasp:
- referential systems *aaaaargh*
What are your favorite textbooks on historical linguistics and why?
I usually recommend Campbell because I like the way it's structured around terminology and definitions
In Standard German pronunciation "Rat" 'council' and "Rad" 'wheel' are homophones [ʁaːtʰ] but for many speakers the <a> in "Rat" is long while it's short in "Rad"
This distinction goes back to OHG & MHG: rāt vs rad/rat and is also found in Dutch: "raad" vs "rad"
1) most conlagers are extremely interested in natural languages (natlangs) and either use features they particulary like or try to come up with new ones. The latter can inform us about what language could possibly do but for some reason don't 2/19
1) Conlangs are boring. They usually only possess features from major languages because their creators don’t realize the vast diversity of different ways that languages work in the real world. 2/14
This little Silmarillion has accompanied me on all my travels over the past years and has always been a reliable cure against homesickness.
In remembrance of Professor J.R.R. Tolkien
3 January 1892 - 2 September 1973 ❤
Dutch "boom" 'tree' is cognate to German "Baum" 'tree' and English "beam".
The English word "tree" is derived from another Germanic root that meant 'tree, beam, wood'. Dutch has preserved this root in words like "appelte(e)r" 'apple tree'
#LessObviousDutchGermanCognates
If you need evidence that linguistic twitter is dead, here it is. I used to get at least some useful replies, especially when the question had a clear addressee. Now it's just people telling me that you can rephrase my example sentence as future perfect in English - congrats
Linguists, is there a term for a tense/aspect that refers to an event that will happen between the time of speaking and a set point in the future but not later and the exact time is unknown?
E.g. She will wake up between now and 8AM but not later than that.
There are some English loans in German which Germans pronounce neither as they are pronounced in English nor as they'd be pronounced following German spelling rules
One example is "router", pronounced ['ʁuːtɐ] by Germans
Another one is "paypal", pronounced [ˈpʰɛɪ̯ˌpʰɔːl]
Btw: Esperanto has about a 1000 native speakers, there are multi generational Esperanto speaking families but sure tell these people the language doesn't come "close to approaching the beauty and complexity of natural languages" 4/19
I’ve never seen a conlang designed to be spoken (or signed!) by humans which comes close to approaching the beauty and complexity of natural languages. 3/14
I'm always amazed when other linguists say that they can't/don't analyze language in everyday conversations because sometimes my brain is so involved in metalinguistic processing that I have a really hard time focusing on the actual content
I will never understand why language teachers for Germanic languages make their students remember endless lists of "irregular" verbs when all they had to do is explain a handful of ablaut classes
How do the languages you know express the difference between
(1) "we're reading books" (everybody reads a book on their own) and
(2) "we're reading a book [together]" (group of people shares one single book)
Is there a language that marks this distinction on the verb?
#31languages2021
special edition:
For 4 months I've been working on my phd project about the North Halmahera languages and it’s time to tell you more about them
Ladies, gentlemen & everyone else: the North Halmahera languages
#LinguisticSunday
map: Holton & Klamer 2018 1/
2) No, they don't. The philosophical languages of the 18th and 19th century tried to be as logical as possible but current conlangers often introduce irregularities in order to make their languages "more natural" 5/19
@arabic_bad
German has no word for German, we have to use the word for "Dutch" instead, that's why so many Germans believe the Netherlands is part of Germany ☝🏻
Modern linguist: I identify one phonemic vowel with 10 different realizations in this language, they are all spelled <a>
Early 20th century (Dutch) linguist: I use every possible diacritic ever used by a human being to differentiate 10 vowel qualities: å ā ă ą à á â ã ä ā`
For me as a diachronic linguist, synchronic explanations often seem unnecessarily complex and I really wonder if synchronic linguists think the same about diachronic explanations
(E.g. sound change vs underlying features which trigger irregular forms)
I really wonder whether "tweet" (noun & verb) is already established enough (like "xerox" and "google") to continue existing after the brand name change
What do you think?
Would be funny if the platform died but the name lived on on other platforms 😄
Proposal for future linguistics conferences:
Linguistics' Next Top Model!
Participants are confronted with example sentences and linguistic phenomena that they have to explain within their models. Afterwards the audience will vote on their favorite model
Thank me later 😇
As others have pointed out, many conlangers would love to engage with endangered languages more but, surprise, not everybody can be a linguist. Conlanging is a cheap and easily accessible hobby - doing language documentation is not. 11/19
I know people who spent *years* creating grammars for conlangs, or entire communities that have come together to produce a dictionary (like for the Na’vi language from Avatar). Imagine this same passion put towards documenting and revitalizing indigenous languages! 10/14
In the near future I will tweet one day in "Dutch" but using only the German cognates and you will all be confused and I will have the time of my life 🙃
Wieso fällt mir jetzt erst auf, dass
"Wir treffen uns um {8, 9, 10,...}" (ohne "Uhr")
völlig ok ist, aber
"Wir treffen uns um {13, 14, 15,...}"
komplett ungrammatisch
Oder kann das jemand von euch sagen? 😁
Dutch "stichten" 'to establish, found' is cognate to German "stiften" 'to endow, donate'. This is an example of the sound change /ft/ > /cht/ in Dutch.
The German equivalent of Dutch "stichting" is "Stiftung", both 'foundation (organization)'.
#LessObviousDutchGermanCognates
"Was ist denn deine Meinung zum Gendern, also als LINGUISTIN"
- jo, ist aus meiner Sicht Derivation statt Flektion und die innovativen inklusiven Formen beweisen einmal mehr, dass der Glottalstop ein Phonem des Deutschen ist...
I'd rather say that the "logical" thing is nowadays mostly found in language purism for large national languages. That's how they got rid of double negation etc. 6/19
English, Dutch and German all borrowed Latin "pulsus" 'pulse, beat' as "pulse", "pols" and "Puls", respectively.
But in Dutch, the meaning was extended to 'wrist', i.e. the place where you can feel the pulse 1/2
#LessObviousDutchGermanCognates
Dutch "achter" 'behind' is cognate to English "after" and German "After" 'anus'.
This word is an example for the Dutch sound change /ft/ > /xt/, also found in
"lucht"/"Luft" 'air' (English "loft")
"gekocht"/"gekauft" 'bought' (English "cheap")
#LessObviousDutchGermanCognates
1/ Yiddish is often said to consist of linguistic „components”, one of them being (Middle High) German. Why is that and what does it mean? We will now look at some phonological features that may (or may not) shed light on these questions.
#LinguisticSunday
@Donauschwalbe
@MKLtxt
Ich hab mal in der 11. eine 6 bekommen, weil ich mich geweigert habe mit einem Typen, 1,90m, mind. doppelt so schwer wie ich, zu ringen(!).