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March 29, 2024, 05:31:00 pm

Author Topic: General language awesomeness  (Read 4933 times)  Share 

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Joseph41

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General language awesomeness
« on: February 06, 2017, 03:00:54 pm »
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A thread to share interesting facts about language in general and the English language more specifically.

I'll start us off: a pangram is a sentence containing each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. The best known pangram is probably "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"...



but you can find a bunch of other nifty examples here.

Over to you! :D

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Joseph41

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2017, 11:44:22 am »
+6
"The only languages that don't evolve in this way are dead; we should be grateful for these changes."
- Kate Burridge
« Last Edit: March 11, 2017, 11:47:24 am by Joseph41 »

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Joseph41

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #2 on: March 18, 2017, 11:37:08 am »
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Oxford comma helps drivers win dispute about overtime pay
An overtime case that will delight language nerds everywhere hinges on the absence of an Oxford comma

One of my favourite stories ever.

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Joseph41

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2017, 07:42:02 am »
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English has 11 "base" colour terms: black, white, grey, brown, red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple and pink.

Some languages have many more than this; others many fewer. I find it absolutely fascinating that, ultimately, the ways in which we perceive the world are fundamentally constricted by our available language(s).

For example, Italian (please correct me if I'm wrong, here) has a clear distinction between blu and azzurro, both of which we'd consider "blue". Other languages have no distinction between what we'd consider blue and green at all.

Fascinating!

P.S. In general, languages also tend to acquire colours (or types of colours) in a consistent order. You can read more about it here. :)

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Joseph41

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #4 on: August 15, 2017, 06:43:18 pm »
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What is the strangest change in a word's meaning?

To summarise this article:
* A pedant used to be a schoolmaster
* Nervous used to mean strong and vigorous
* Promiscuous used to mean confused
* A punk used to be a prostitute

Nice
* Foolish > wanton > cowardly > shy > respectable > pleasant

Bully
* Good fellow > show off > tyrant of the weak

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EulerFan102

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #5 on: August 15, 2017, 07:00:14 pm »
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Stumbled upon this great pic during the week
Some quality linguistic work  ;D ;D ;D



(source, including some other great charts: here)

Joseph41

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #6 on: September 01, 2017, 10:52:10 pm »
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undoable

Such a weird word. Two very different meanings.

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Sconey

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #7 on: September 01, 2017, 10:59:05 pm »
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What a wild thread, can barely keep up.

Joseph41

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #8 on: September 04, 2017, 05:24:39 pm »
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What a wild thread, can barely keep up.

I'm choosing to not take this sarcastically, so, thank you very much! :D

Feel free to join in with your own language awesomeness. ;)

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Sconey

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #9 on: September 04, 2017, 05:57:42 pm »
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I'm choosing to not take this sarcastically, so, thank you very much! :D

Feel free to join in with your own language awesomeness. ;)
Your positivity never fails to put a smile on my face :)

Joseph41

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #10 on: March 08, 2018, 11:46:26 am »
+3
http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/conversations-david-astle-2017/8999134

This is a really interesting podcast with David Astle. I recommend listening to it.

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EulerFan102

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #11 on: April 16, 2018, 03:35:48 pm »
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I recently stumbled on fumblerules, language rules that break their own rule. Some favourites:
"Never use no double negatives."
"The passive voice should never be employed."
"Prepositions are not words to end a sentence with."
"Avoid clichés like the plague."

Also liked this language-slash-art pic circulating this morning:

Joseph41

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #12 on: April 20, 2018, 03:30:10 pm »
+1
https://twitter.com/NYT_first_said

This bot Twitter account automatically tweets (Tweets?) words when first used by The New York Times. I love it, and am finding it super interesting.

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Joseph41

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #13 on: May 27, 2019, 04:09:37 pm »
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#English

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anna.comet

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Re: General language awesomeness
« Reply #14 on: June 18, 2019, 05:25:00 pm »
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/17/language-wars-18-greatest-linguistic-spats

A fun and interesting lil article posted in The Guardian just this morning! 'The 19 Greatest Linguistic Spats of all Time'  ;D