🦑.fun -

Linguistics

Language

Interesting Languages

The US Government's opinion regarding, for a native English speaker, how much time it will take to "learn" a specific foreign language (¿to what extent? Presumptively to the extent required to be an effective US Diplomat).

Language Concepts

  • NATO phonetic alphabet (e.g. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, etc.)
  • International Phonetic Alphabet: an internationally standardized written representation of speech sounds. For example, when you look up the dictionary entry for mouse, and either at the top or in the section "Pronunciation", you see "/maʊs/", this is the International phonetic representation for how to pronounce said word. If you understand this alphabet, then if you lookup any word, you'll be able read exactly how it it pronounced, even if it is in a different language.
  • Smart quotes (e.g. curly and straight) vs dumb quotes: “” vs ""
  • World Language, Universal Language, International auxiliary language, International English
  • Language planning
  • Language death, & Language revival
  • Irony punctuation: "⸮" (unofficial)
  • Interrobang: "‽" (often represented by any of ?!, !?, ?!?, !?!). Punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (AKA interrogative point), and the exclamation point (AKA a bang).
  • Inverted marks: Spanish language feature where question marks and exclamation marks are also put at the beginning of the sentence, but inverted. E.g. ¿Where is it? ¡Here it is!
  • Internet slang
  • Verbs transitivity
    • transitive: A verb that takes a direct object; One does this to something (e.g. destroy, create, lift; because one can "lift something", one can say "I lift the box")
    • intransitive: A verb that cannot take a direct object; This verb isn't done to something (e.g. fall, sneeze, sleep; because one cannot "sleep something", one cannot say "I sleep the box")
  • Eachother (2) vs one another (3+)
  • In (static) vs into (movement/change)
  • Who (subject) vs Whom (object)
  • Assume (little to no evidence) vs Presume (reasonable evidence)
  • Biannual (2 per 1 year) vs biyearly (1 per 2 years)
  • May (permission) vs can (capability)
  • Boat (small, often recreational) vs ship (large, often commercial)
  • Than (comparison, e.g. "more than him") vs Then (time, e.g. "I run then I jump", "if this then that")
  • Weather (e.g. snow, tornado) vs Whether (mutually exclusive possibilities) vs Wether (a castrated ram/goat)
  • Commission (action) vs Omission (inaction)
  • Majority (>50%) vs Plurality (larger than each alternative, but not necessarily >50% (e.g. 40% is the plurality in "40% vs 30% vs 30%""))
  • Esperanto's future tense vs English's lack
  • "E.g." = example. "I.e." = in other words
  • Capital (uppercase letters, accumulated wealth, or a city that serves as the seat of a government) vs Capitol (a building in which the legislative body of government meets)
  • Morals (internal) vs Ethics (externally imposed, e.g. by laws, an industry, or review board, etc)
  • The word import should be spelled "inport" (with an "n"). It comes from latin, in which there were two different forms, "inporto" and "importo" (both meaning "I bring, carry or convey into; bring in from abroad, import"), both of which were a combination of latin "in-" and latin "portō".
  • Faux Cyrillic: the use of Cyrillic letters in Latin text, usually to evoke Russia or the Soviet Union
  • Cryptophasia: ("crypto-" = secret, "-phasia" = speech) A language developed by twins that only they understand.
  • Portmanteau: A new word is made from parts of multiple words. E.g. motel = motor + hotel, spork = spoon + fork, smog = smoke + fog, Interpol = international + police.
  • Pleonasm: (pleon meaning 'to be in excess'). A redundancy in linguistic expression, such as "black darkness" or "burning fire", often used for emphasis.
  • Neologism: "neo" (new) + "logism" (speech, utterance). A new word, term, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but is not yet mainstream.
  • Euphemism: A word or phrase to replace another with one that is considered less offensive, blunt, or vulgar than the word or phrase which it replaces
  • Diphthong
  • Abbreviations
    • initialism: (e.g. USA, OMG, FYI, CIA, DNA) Each letter is individually pronounced.
    • acronym: (e.g. SCUBA, NATO, NASA, OPEC, CERN) All of the resulting letters are combined to pronounce one new word.
    • contraction: (e.g. Dr., y'all, Mr., I'm, Ltd., Jr., Asst., yr.) Some letters (from the middle) are omitted. Pronounced as the original word.
    • shortening: (e.g. Inc., Pres., Gen., Corp., sec., min., etc., et al.) In written form, retains only either the 1st syllable, or 1st few letters. Pronounced as the original word.
  • metonym: A word, name, or expression used as a substitute for something else with which it is closely associated.
    • Examples of metonyms:
      • In politics, the name of a county's capital city is often used as a metonym for said country's government.
        For example, "Washington", and "D.C." are each metonyms for the US Federal Government;
        Likewise "Berlin", "Moscow", "New Dehli", and "Bejing" are metonyms for the national governments of Germany, Russia, India, and China, respectively.
      • "Dish" is a metonym for the an entire plate of food.
      • "Houston" is a metonym for NASA's Johnson Space Center, its Mission Control Center within, or NASA in general.
      • "The Pentagon" is a metonym for the US Department of Defence and/or the US armed forces.
      • "The Hague" is a metonym for the International Criminal Court and/or the International Court of Justice.
  • Indication of questions
    • Indication at the start of a sentence
      • Spanish begins questions with "¿" (an example of "inverted marks")
      • Esperanto always begins questions with an interrogative (either "ĉu", or one of the "ki-" correlatives)
    • Word order
      • German moves the verb from the 2nd position (SVO), to the 1st (VSO)
    • ¿Hybrid?
      • English: ending tone, question word at the start (but these words often have other uses too (e.g. had, have, do))
        • Have a drink? (question, ending has a rising tone)
        • Have a drink. (command, consistent flat tone)
        • That's what he wants? (question, ending has a rising tone)
        • That's what he wants. (command, consistent flat tone)
  • English oddities
    • "drempt"
    • future tense verbs require an extra word beforehand (e.g. "will")
    • irregular verb conjugation
      • regular:
        • "jump" to "jumped"
      • irregular
        • "run" to "ran" (unexpectedly not "runed")
        • "sing" to "sung" (unexpectedly not "singed")
        • "knee" to "knelt" (unexpectedly neither "kneld", "kneed", nor "kneled")
  • A concept for a spectrum, where on one end is Mandarin (no alphabet), in the center is English (with an alphabet), & on the other end is Esperanto where each letter has exactly one sound, & each sound has exactly one letter, & there is no irregular conjugation.
  • The superiority of unambiguous "Y'all" over ambiguous plural "You" as a second-person plural pronoun. Because the latter can be confused with the 2nd-person singular pronoun "You".
  • Korean languages differences between DPRK (North) & ROC (South)
  • French puts adjectives after the noun, compared to English which puts them before. (Seems more logical to put them afterwards)