feel like posting something here to acknowledge the fact that i’ve logged in here for the first time in 2 years

when you're a bit drunk and send embarrassing snapchats where you accidentally use the word fauna when you meant flora.

While procrastinating I decided to try to aussify the opening sonnet of romeo and juliet.

Two lots of folk, both of ‘em doin’ well, In bloody woop-woop where this shit took place,  From bubbling tensions, rises some fresh hell, As there erupts a violent new disgrace. Coz both these rival fams have had a kid, The poor kids fool around which costs their lives At least their sorry time does help get rid Of bloody yonks of rage and so derives A peace. Exactly what events ensued And how the ‘rents just kept on stirring shit, How only death could end the familes’ feud, We’ll tell yez in two hours (plus a bit) If anything’s unclear in th’yarn above We’ll ‘splain it in more detail, alright, love? 

It is hardly possible to overrate the value… of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar… . Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of progress.

John Stuart Mill

(via

stoweboyd

)

*fækt

Abstract

In this brief note, we propose a Proto-Unitedstatesian lexeme, *fækt, based on linguistic evidence, and discuss some of the implications of this term to reconstructions of Proto-US society and culture.

Introduction

Words in a variety of ancient and modern Unitedstatesian languages from across the American continent, including Californian vaxdo, “matter, thing,” Ohioan βak, “experience,” and Old New England fɛqt, “real,” all point to a common origin.  All these and others point to a Proto-US *fækt, the meaning of which might have been “proposition,” “premise,” “law,” or “evidence.”

The wide variety of possible meanings points to significant ambiguity in what *fækt was used for in the everyday lives of the Proto-Unitedstatesians.  It appears to have had some pertinence to the speaker-hearer relationship, a mutual exchange of information highly important to ancient US-ian society. An information exchange was a bond of trust between two people that was accompanied by a ritualized assertion and argument exchange and created an obligation of mutual truth-telling that, once established, could continue in perpetuity and be renewed years later by the same parties or their descendants.

Reconstruction

Californian /v/, Ohio-Midwestern /β/ and New England /f/ all regularly derive from Proto-US /f/.  Calif. /x/, Midwest /k/ and Old NE /q/ reflect Proto-US /k/, which is continued intact in most descendants of the American protolanguage in the central zone. Old NE languages continue Proto-US /t/, which was dropped from final consonant clusters in Midwestern languages, and voiced prevocalically in Californian languages, where it became dental, perhaps under influence from Proto-Mexican.

The vowel is difficult to reconstruct, and may have had any value in the range /a~e/ but on the basis of the open-mid unrounded front vowel in the conservative Old NE reflex, we posit a value of /æ/, resulting in the countable noun *fækt.

Discussion

A curious system of thought seems to be reflected in this word.  Very likely, to call something a *fækt seems to have been to assert that thing as true, independent of the evidence provided.  This is consistent with an interpretation that a *fækt was a matter of opinion to the speaker or the hearer.  On the basis of this, we might reconstruct a possible stock phrase, “*altərnətɪv fækts.”

*fækt may have had one initial meaning that frayed over time, perhaps in response to competing sets of opinions that arose between rival USian tribes or factions in the early period, leading to kind of pandemonium of clashing assertions.  Whatever the reason, an actual word corresponding the *fækt concept appears to be absent from the historical record, and the concept is evident only through the comparative method.

Conclusion

The semantic shift and degradation of *fækt might be related to proposed turbulent events that took place across the continent in what was the early twenty-first century under the calendar in use at that time.  The exact nature of these events is a matter of debate among archeologists, but soil samples and the many gaps in our knowledge of the period point to some highly disruptive, chaotic event or series of events.

In the Washingtonian language, spoken by only a few itinerant tribes in the swamps of the eastern American seaboard, *fækt has no surviving descendants.  The closest equivalent is probably trump, meaning an “assertion” or “official proclamation.”  While it certainly denoted an important cultural concept, the exact significance of the *fækt remains uncertain.

Any comparison to Early Germanish gefuckt, abgefuckt is regarded as purely coincidental.

there was a disastrous performance of Macbeth at the Old Vic by Peter O’Toole and apparently there was this one part in the play one night where a Servant comes in and should say “Your wife, my lord, is dead” but what ACTUALLY happened was

Servant: …My wife, my lord, is dead.

Macbeth: Well, what about my wife?

Servant: Oh yeah. She’s dead too.

Macbeth: 

Servant: There’s a lot of it about.

Introducing Philby passives

It is common knowledge that passive sentences only optionally need to express an agent. For example the agent, John, of an active sentence like John patted the cat is only optionally appears in a by-phrase of an equivalent passive sentence The cat was patted (by John). 

An interesting construction that I have come across is where two agentive by-phrases appear. This double-agent construction I have decided to name after the famous English double agent Kim Philby.

It is possible with certain verbs, like hit, where the subject can either be an animate intentional agent, or where the subject can be inanimate serving a more instrumental semantic role. E.g. A certain hypothetical event could be described in either of the following ways: He hit me (with a rock) or A rock hit me. 

*He a rock hit me is not grammatical, they can’t both be subjects of hit, but curiously it seems that at least for some speakers they can both appear as agentive by-phrases in a passive sentences. E.g. I was hit by a rock by him. 

My impression from some quick googling is that it is particularly prominent in Indian English. The following are some examples that I turned up googling:

Troye Sivan reveals he was hit by a car by his dad when he was two (Nova 96.9)

I’m the guy that got hit by a car by an inattentive driver. (Reddit)

A CMO staff was hit by a hammer by a visitor who had come to meet chief minister Mamata Banerjee (Times of India)

Then I got hit by a stick by someone (Chicago Tribune)

I was stabbed by a knife by a boy (Street Children in Kenya)

a 37 year-old female from Brampton, was a passenger in a vehicle when she was struck by a bullet by unknown suspect(s) (Peel Regional Police)

I have not made a joke for many weeks! Guess me. 1879.

yessss

An edit of Uptown Funk where every time they say “girls hit your hallelujah” it breaks into all 7 minutes of Jeff Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah before the song can continue

War is what happens when language fails.

Margaret Atwood (via linguisten)

Irish language in Belfast

Some great accents in this video. Especially the bloke at 5.30ish

A well-executed accent can be the sharpest tool in an actor’s toolbox. But when an accent is off, everyone notices. Everyone. (Remember Tom Cruise in Far and Away? Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves? Of course you do, because you winced through their awfulness.) Sometimes bad actors can do good accents. Sometimes great actors do terrible ones. In the video here, dialect coach Erik Singer analyzes the accents of 32 different actors to see who aces the accent test. Turns out, Idris Elba is one of greatest around. From his performance as Nelson Mandela in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom to his mastery of the Baltimore accent in The Wire, he’s amazing. But he’s rare. Actors ranging from Brad Pitt to Will Smith have struggled with their ability to sound like they’re from somewhere else. Watch Singer analyze the best (and worst) in the biz above.

Source: A Lot of Actors Suck at Accents. Not Idris Elba!

It’s an amazing to describe around the world accents of English.

Actors/Actresses are hard working people on their accents and very talented. Many of us who don’t need to change our accents/dialects couldn’t think of working on it.

How amazing the job is!

#477

Construct a fictional Aleut dialect. Include over 1000 different words for “basketball”. Call this condialect “Aleup”.

if Natalie Portman and Justin Trudeau hooked up would their celebrity supercouple name be Portmandeau

i googled “why do cats run around and meow at night” and one of the results listed this as a cause: