þink again.
getting thorny in the linguistics fandom
þorny*
That also goes for using ß as an aesthetic B.
On my old server, there was a character named ßillyßadass.
This never failed to make me laugh, because that letter is not pronounced like B. It is a sharp S.
That guy named himself SsillySsadass.
Tag: linguistics
also guys i think it’s time to start spelling ‘small’ right again,, it’s been long enough
see the thing is, at this point, smol isn’t even a “mispelling” of small anymore; it has its own connotations. while small is a regular adjective, smol acts more like a diminutive marker, which English has been lacking
in essence, a smol dog will always be a small dog, but not all small dogs are smol.
what the fuck are you talking about
Linguistic evolution. Accept the smolness into your vocabulary and be cleansed.
@nentindo, assuming you’re asking in good faith & not just trying to dismiss a perfectly accurate analysis, here’s an elaboration of what @princeofdoomrps said:
small and smol mean different things, so they’re different words. smol means something like “small in a cute way” & not just like both small and cute but the two are related. This is what makes smol more like a diminutive marker (c.f. -tje in Dutch, or -let/-ling/-ie [like in kidlet/kidling/kiddie] in some forms of English*)
note that:
1. not all small things are smol. Microbes and electrons? Generally not considered smol.2. similar-sized things in the same category can be smol or not depending on cuteness. So, a tiny cottage may be a smol house, but an equally tiny tenement room that is an awful place to live? Not smol.
3. smol can refer to youth (e.g. the people I call my “smol frens” are mostly taller than I am but much younger)
4. It also can have implications of fondness/emotional attachment, especially, from what I’ve seen, in fandoms where people call characters things like “my smol son”, which doesn’t have to mean someone who’s actually young, short, or cute at all. Like, IDK if anyone uses that to refer to Hannibal but I wouldn’t be surprised?
So! There are contexts where you could call something/someone small but not smol, and contexts where you could call something/someone smol but not small. This is the textbook definition of “different words”. They are no longer the same word and op, you are very welcome to only use one of them! Anyone is!
Just be aware that pretty much every part of your vocabulary, someone at some point has decried as “wrong” usage and complained about people mangling the language this way, and when you do this thing you’re carrying on a long tradition of pompous silliness.
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English isn’t completely lacking in diminutive markers just kinda deficient.And some of those markers have become derisive or dismissive in usage, which i hope never happens to my smol word-child, smol.
[edited for clarity]
why do black people use you in the wrong context? such is “you ugly” instead of “you’re ugly” I know u guys can differentiate, it’s a nuisance
you a bitch
It’s called copula deletion, or zero copula. Many languages and dialects, including Ancient Greek and Russian, delete the copula (the verb to be) when the context is obvious.
So an utterance like “you a bitch” in AAVE is not an example of a misused you, but an example of a sentence that deletes the copular verb (are), which is a perfectly valid thing to do in that dialect, just as deleting an /r/ after a vowel is a perfectly valid thing to do in an upper-class British dialect.
What’s more, it’s been shown that copula deletion occurs in AAVE exactly in those contexts where copula contraction occurs in so-called “Standard American English.” That is, the basic sentence “You are great” can become “You’re great” in SAE and “You great” in AAVE, but “I know who you are” cannot become “I know who you’re” in SAE, and according to reports, neither can you get “I know who you” in AAVE.
In other words, AAVE is a set of grammatical rules just as complex and systematic as SAE, and the widespread belief that it is not is nothing more than yet another manifestation of deeply internalized racism.
This is the most intellectual drag I’ve ever read.
So you know what I don’t get? Why people repeat words. (x)
Grammar time: it’s called “contrastive reduplication,” and it’s a form of intensification that is relatively common. Finnish does a very similar thing, and others use near-reduplication (rhyme-based) to intensify, like Hungarian (pici ‘tiny’, ici-pici ‘very tiny’).
Even the typologically-distant group of Bantu languages utilize reduplication in a strikingly similar fashion with nouns: Kinande oku-gulu ‘leg’, oku-gulu-gulu ‘a REAL leg’ (Downing 2001, includes more with verbal reduplication as well).
I suppose the difficult aspect of English reduplication is not through this particular type, but the fact that it utilizes many other types of reduplication: baby talk (choo-choo, no-no), rhyming (teeny-weeny, super-duper), and the ever-famous “shm” reduplication: fancy-schmancy (a way of denying the claim that something is fancy).
screams my professor was trying to find an example of reduplication so the next class he came back and said “I FOUND REDUPLICATION IN ENGLISH” and then he said “Milk milk” and everyone was just “what?” and he said “you know when you go to a coffee shop and they ask if you want soy milk and you say ‘no i want milk milk’” and everyone just had this collective sigh of understanding.
Another name for this particular construction is contrastive focus reduplication, and there’s a famous linguistics paper about it which is commonly known as the Salad Salad Paper. You know, because if you want to make it clear that you’re not talking about pasta salad or potato salad, you might call it “salad salad”. The repetition indicates that you’re intending the most prototypical meaning of the word, like green salad or cow’s milk, even though other things can be considered types of salad or milk.
Can I make love to this post?… Is that a thing that’s possible?
Waiting for Winter 