When I was learning English, I had a bad habit of learning two separate words that sounded similar, but had different meanings, and then, when speaking them, not remembering which was which. My solution to this was to make a… Read more…
Tag Archive for Linguistics
I’ll Take A Regular, Please
As dangerous as it is to blame something on someone else, or declare innocence for a bad act, lest your words be taken out of context, it could be worse. At their core, these ratty behaviors are almost always used… Read more…
Spring Cleaning for the Dictionary
Disambiguate- media:medic::____________:medical My gut instinct is “media-related”, but that seems overly complex. “Medium” is for “aether”, or “the size between small and large”. “Medial” is for “in the middle”. “Mediary” is possible, but probably conflicts as a result of relation… Read more…
Everything’s Gonna Be O.K. PSYCHE!
Look at all this confusion! How in the world are people supposed to understand simple statements with a language this full of misconception. I know for a fact that people will simplify their statements before they make an effort to… Read more…
The Eponymous Cusses
Some folks don’t really like it when people cuss. Cussing, cursing, rude language, slang, expletives – call them what you want, but you should probably learn a little about the linguistic rules that govern developing language learners before you start… Read more…
The Walls’ Ears Have Ears ‘_’;;
Teaching English to half the planet has created an environment in which people who do not have your best interests in mind, people who still care about race, religion, geography, community, history, and nationality and want to use it against… Read more…
The Yearning of the Wind
In search of alphabetical (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, …), chronological (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, …), rhyming (Apples bait. Cattles debate. Eagles fantambulate…. Read more…
Phonetic Language Homophyse Diminishment Script
In seeking to be a good communicator of modern language, there are four primary areas in which a listener, speaker, writer, and thinker might encounter trouble. If the speech produces a sound identical to a sound that the listener has… Read more…
For Christmas, Dear Santa: A Codex of Unimaginable Sounds
In your library studies, I suggest you make semantic idealogues the foundation of your dictionary, with all possible phonetic dictations the subset of a single semantic idea, instead of making the semantic idea a subset of the spelling. Phonemes in… Read more…
Goodbye Moto
[Autonomous] is the root word resulting in the commonly used construction [Automated]. The ( (antonym) / (synonym) ) of [Automated] is: (([Manufactured] – [Auto construction]), ([Manufactured] – [Reproducible], [Reproducible]-[Manufactured], [Reproducible]-[Auto Construction], [Auto Construction]-[Reproducible]) / ([Machine] + [Repetetive] + [Construction]). I… Read more…
The Grass on the Other Side
The Arabic language has signifier grammer for number. That means you can tell from the affix whether a word is representing ONE, TWO, or MANY objects. There is even affix grammar to describe whether an object is male or female,… Read more…
Anti-Contrarian
My suggestion to English speakers, the world over: Stop using “in” as a prefix to mean “non-” and “not”. Stop using “im” as a prefix to mean “non-” and “not”. Stop using “un” as a prefix to mean “non-” and “not”…. Read more…
I Found A Shady Place to Sit
When talking about how we are doing, more commonly than not, a busily worn out person will report that they are “depressed”. This perpetuates a linguistic indistinction between depression (a lack of overt external pressure, leading to despondence) and oppression… Read more…
Fine, We Will Do it the Hard Way
Can you write an infinitely descriptive language using only the number one? The answer is 1. 11, I don’t want to try it. Did you think I was saying 1? 11, I meant 11. Oh, 111 it.
Better Things to Do
An excerpt from the early revisional days of the English language: Prepositions? You want 50 of them? We’d better stop while we’re behind; my cousin just turned 18.
…And One More Thing!
If people aren’t supposed to use homosexual slurs, they also shouldn’t use heterosexual ones. How then do we denounce people for wasting too much time on sex, which is, in itself, a taboo topic worthy of discussion and balance of opinion?… Read more…
Patriotic Pedantry
Requesting advice on dealing with the inability to differentiate between a state, a State, a country, a Country, a Nation, a National, a person, a Person, people, a People, culture, and a Culture. There’s a difference between “800 miles across, both ways,… Read more…
Infixed It!
Infixing is the term for the insertion of semantic morphemes within words, with, “Fanfuckingtastic,” “Absofuckinglutely,” and, “Unfuckingbelievable,” being three of the only instances of this rare phenomenon that have been documented in the English language. When dealing with multiple versions of a story, as being related… Read more…
Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me
Recommending usage of the standard placeholder word “zerp” for when there’s a word on the tip of your tongue that you can’t remember and are unwilling to slow the conversation to await the recollection of, in order to avoid long-winded… Read more…