/r/linguisticshumor

Photograph via snooOG

Linguistics Humor: a sub for humor relating to linguistics


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Welcome to /r/linguisticshumor! This is the home for jokes about linguistics, i.e., the study of human language.

Linguistics memes, funny textbook illustrations, crackpot theories, rude drawings made up of IPA symbols, and other linguological ludicrousness goes here. If you've got something that you'd like to share with the class that isn't scientifically rigorous enough for /r/linguistics, post it in this sub.

For more serious linguistics, check out /r/linguistics and /r/asklinguistics.

For humor and discussion about modern foreign languages, check out /r/languagelearning.

For examples of bad linguistics, check out /r/badlinguistics.

For linguistics shit-posting, check out /r/shittylinguistics.

For goofy linguistics thoughts, check out /r/showerlinguistics.

/r/linguisticshumor

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1

A cool guide for unique words

3 Comments
2024/12/01
23:56 UTC

84

Best point for a prescriptivist.

2 Comments
2024/12/01
23:32 UTC

58

I need some help with this meme

What does this guy say?? Specifically the Arabic text

7 Comments
2024/12/01
22:43 UTC

0

For fun, I spell it antix now. as an part of the antix increase program

singular is removed. like deer or fish, antix covers

3 Comments
2024/12/01
21:03 UTC

78

Prescriptivists be like

9 Comments
2024/12/01
20:29 UTC

1

Purism be like

2 Comments
2024/12/01
20:01 UTC

179

0.5% of linguists pass the BABA TEST

43 Comments
2024/12/01
16:44 UTC

78

Do Asian languages in America (chiefly Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino,...) have their own terms for the ABG ABB Kevin Nguyens Vivian Tran lifestyle?

19 Comments
2024/12/01
16:07 UTC

15

Fellas, is this the end of new language?

Spicy inquiry

I feel like the rate of emergence of new languages is becoming incredibly slow because of writing and increasing literacy rates

Could the natural sound changes of a given language get a threshold as soon as they get a script (assuming they stick to it for a while)? And I know that “English” has been using the Latin alphabet since like the 7th century and still has undergone hella changes in phonology and lexicon, but I assume a lot fewer than before the Latin script and Anglo-Frisian runes.

As access to media and long distance transportation become more available (along with increasing literacy rates), certain popular dialects are probably impacting and standardizing others.

This could all be nonsense ☝️🤓 but idk does anyone have any thoughts about this? I don’t have any doctoral background in anthropological linguistics, which I’m sure all of you do

Despite time having shown the opposite, I think languages might be converging. That is my dissertation thank you if you disagree with me you will be forsaken

11 Comments
2024/12/01
13:18 UTC

142

You just know you are in for a banger when a paper uses Trans-Himalayan instead of Sino-Tibetan in its title.

11 Comments
2024/12/01
12:46 UTC

822

Vietnamese has weird words for "right"

47 Comments
2024/12/01
11:34 UTC

996

The biggest semantic misunderstanding

79 Comments
2024/12/01
00:35 UTC

15

My super serious English Spelling Reform

This writes most distinctions made in different English dialects. It only takes into account the 24 standard lexical sets, but I've added suggested local spelling in parentheses. It uses no diacritics or new letters. It merges LOT/CLOTH and BATH/TRAP as they are usually (not always) predictable based on following consonants. If there are within-set contrasts I'm not aware of, please let me know.

I plan on calling Mrs Starmer, Trump, and Albanese tomorrow and getting this enforced by the New Year. I see no issues with my plan

Vowels: Short lax monophthongs: i KIT,

e DRESS,

a TRAP/BATH,

o LOT/CLOTH,

u FOOT,

q STRUT,

x COMMA,

(for bad-lad split, write bad <ah>, lad <a>)

Long Monophthongs:

aa - PALM

oo - THOUGHT

rr - NURSE

(for dialects without vein-vane merger, write /e:/ as <ee>)

(for dialects without toe-tow merger, write /o:/ as <ou>)

(for dialects with fir-fur-fern merger, write them as <iir, qrr, eer>

j and w-linking diphthongs:

iy - FLEECE

ey - FACE

ay - PRICE

oy - CHOICE

uw - GOOSE without /j/

yuw - GOOSE with /j/

(iw - GOOSE from EME /ɪw/)

ow - GOAT

aw - MOUTH

/Vr/ sequences before intervocalic /r/, write the vowel as usual. Use doubled <rr> for when one of the following precedes another vowel (so nirrxr for <nearer>, mirxr for <mirror>)

ir - NEAR

er - SQUARE

ar - START

or - NORTH (owr - FORCE)

ur - CURE without /j/

yur - CURE with /j/

xr - LETTER

Consonants: <b p m f v w> for /b p m f v w/,

<th dh> for /θ ð/,

<t d n s z l> for /t d n s z l/,

<sh zh c j r> for /ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ r/,

<k g nh y h> for /k g ŋ j h/

Sample text:

Al hyuwmxn biyinhz ar born friy and iykwxl in dignitiy and raits. They ar endawd with riysxn and konshins and shud akt txwordz wqn qdhxr in x spirit qv brqdhxrhud

Awxr faadhxr hwuw art in hevin, blesid biy dhai neym. Dhai kinhdxm kqm. Dhai wil biy dqn on rrth as it iz in hevin. Giv qs dhis dey awxr deyliy bred, and frrgiv qs awxr trespasiz, as wiy frrgiv dhowz hwuw trespas xgenst qs, and liyd qs not intuw tempteyshxn, bqt delivxr qs frqm iyvil. For dhain iz dhx kinhdxm and thx pawxr, and the gloriy, frrevxr and evxr.

Biggest downside is that now in Scrabble, <X Q Z> go down from being worth 10 points to being worth 1 each

10 Comments
2024/11/30
23:22 UTC

13

Which one is kouka and which one is bibi

"Bouba" is the circular figure, "Kiki" is the pointy figure

View Poll

6 Comments
2024/11/30
22:44 UTC

385

KAUKA?

19 Comments
2024/11/30
22:30 UTC

514

The syntax bros

20 Comments
2024/11/30
22:18 UTC

12

LittleDhole's Egyptological pronunciation (a proposal)

As we know, the standard Egyptological pronunciation is rather arbitrary, treating the signs for the glottal stop and voiced pharyngeal fricative as /a/, and the signs for /j/ and /w/ as /i/ and /u/ respectively, with an /ɛ/ inserted between consonants pretty much whenever one feels like it. The choice of /ɛ/ was arbitrary.

I propose this alternative: alternate between the vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ between all the signs, treating every sign as a consonant, until you reach the last consonant, and start over when you get to the next word in a compound word/phrase. (Pronounce the pharyngeal fricative as a glottal stop.)

(Of course, since Egyptian used and w as matres lectionis, this might lead to some absurdly long/silly-sounding pronunciations, but at least it's less silly than inserting /ɛ/ between every consonant.)

7 Comments
2024/11/30
22:00 UTC

11

Inspired by the recent meme about Arapaho

This one

Let's compile a list of spoken languages which lack phonemes/phonotactics found in their English names, in native vocabulary (or in "naturalised" loanwords).

I'll start: Vietnamese has no syllable-final /s/ or /z/, and no lexical stress.

EDIT: IDK why the text below the link got deleted when I first posted this.

11 Comments
2024/11/30
21:47 UTC

0

You wouldn’t understand though -I literally copied it all from three different books 🤫-

1 Comment
2024/11/30
18:26 UTC

90

Eskimo-Uralic my beloved

23 Comments
2024/11/30
18:04 UTC

177

For unto us a child is þorn

11 Comments
2024/11/30
17:26 UTC

658

How did Latin remain so complex for so long?

65 Comments
2024/11/30
17:10 UTC

41

I wanted to ask this in the r/linguistics subreddit, but I figured that it would break the rules.

What if humans, assuming that they still communicated with sound, had really no limit to the sounds they produce and their hearing?

Hear me out bro. I am a music theorist and this is very interesting to me.

What if humans were capable to produce singular and multiple sine waves with frequencies from 0 to infinity (negative infinity to infinity, depending on your definition of frequency), amplitudes from 0 to infinity, and were able to hear them all, and immediately recognize every single frequency and its amplitude within a fraction of a second, sort of like a super, SUPER perfect pitch?

What if humans were also able to control sound's location in space, and had MASTERED sound localisation?

Obviously, I'm not asking what would happen to the society, the environment or whatever. I'm asking only linguistically and musically.

What would happen to human language, if they could control the sound to its fullest potential and had no pre-existing ideas of a language? How would language evolve in this case?

19 Comments
2024/11/30
15:28 UTC

452

someone in my city really loves diacritics

50 Comments
2024/11/30
10:02 UTC

343

Thai language: Not your Asian languages™

56 Comments
2024/11/30
07:06 UTC

31

Yoo can anyone recognize the language in this vid? Made a bet with a friend 😎🙏

24 Comments
2024/11/30
06:50 UTC

108

When they tell you to learn French, but you're a chill guy so you learn maya

7 Comments
2024/11/29
22:36 UTC

838

Tragedeighs be like

58 Comments
2024/11/29
17:35 UTC

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