"Here, using an experimental paradigm able to separate variation within a language from variation between languages, we tested the use of spatial demonstratives—the most fundamental and frequent spatial terms across languages."
#Image attribution: naturalearthdata.com, offered to the Public Domain per Terms of Use, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_geographical_(drab).png
Friends in #linguistics, I’m looking for a way to cross reference more than two features in Grambank. I have tried a couple of R packages, but I’m struggling to get them working.
If anyone knows of a method of doing this, it would greatly help me in a current project.
Exclamation points are viewed with scorn by the literati — perceived, says author Florence Hazrat, as "the textual version of junk food. The selfie of grammar." She writes for The Millions about how for hundreds of years, writers have enjoyed the power of a well-placed !, and gives examples of how authors like Hemingway and Rushdie have used them to brilliant effect.
¿Why are there fu dogs but not fu cats? "fu" means lion, ¿right? ¿Why are there even fu dogs in the first place? ¡dogs are not cats! ¡cats are cats! #language@languagelovers
I experimented a lot & no pronouns felt best for the character!
(they're in "fantasy Chinese", which doesn't gender pronouns just as real Chinese doesn't...which doesn't stop misogyny btw. Anglophones sometimes seem to assume that'd correlate but ungendering pronouns doesn't magically heal sexism/transphobia, sadly 😭)
I never really saw the point in correcting someone's grammar, but if I can get called a fly sodomizing little dot shitting comma fucker then I'm going to start 😂
"We model the impact of the number of native speakers, the proportion of nonnative speakers, the number of linguistic neighbors, and the status of a language on grammatical complexity while controlling for spatial and phylogenetic autocorrelation."
One of the people in my dream last night was speaking Spanish and used the word "disposa" to mean "restroom." ("Donde esta la disposa" or perhaps, incorrectly, "Donde esta el disposa"). However, I just looked up "disposa" in Wiktionary and it isn't even a Spanish word, let alone one that means "restroom." Mi español es muy malo, and apparently even worse in my dreams. #Linguistics#Dreams#Spanish#Language@languagelovers
In the local #languages of the #Philippines, we can easily express which order in the siblings we are, but it has always been a challenge to express this in English.
Examples (Filipino - English):
“Ako ay ikatlo sa mga magkakapatid.”
EN: “I am third of the siblings” vs “I am third of four siblings.”
The problem with the latter translation is “of four” was not stated in the #Filipino#language. The first option is the closest but it sounds weird.
How about this: “Ako ay pangalawa sa mga babae at pang-apat sa mga magkakapatid.”
Literal translation: “I am second of the female siblings and fourth of siblings.”
Maybe a better one is: “I am second female and fourth among us siblings.”
How is it in your local language? And how would you express it in English?