A galerna is expected for this afternoon, please come soon!
Oh, btw!
Some trivia about galerna- which is a sudden storm brought by a change to W/NW wind: it’s a loanword from French galerne, which is also a loanword from Breton gwalarn, a word for NW wind.
You’re right! More specifically, ar gwalarn is the north-west cardinal direction, and the wind was named after it
Now, with a bit of shame, I have to admit I had never heard of the French wind galerne before, but a quick research shows that’s because its use is localised mostly on western and south-western France (gasconha, vendée, poitou). Gwalarn is still widely used in Brittany and that’s the word my Breton family used, as well as the one I heard when I was living in Brittany
That quick research also showed the typical disdain of French intellectual elites, especially the Académie Française, towards France’s minority languages. Basically, they dispute the etymology of french galerne between a vulgar latin origin and the breton origin
I’m not sure if you or your followers are really interested in my rant and explanations, but I’ll still write them under a read more for those who are, because it’s a good exemple of which lengths France can go to erase its minority languages, which include Basque
This reminded us of word mochoin Spanish that means blunted, cut off, and that according to the Spanish Academy is “of unknown origin, maybe onomatopoeic”.
And then we have Basque verb moztuwhich means to cut, and Basque adjective motz/moch/ that means - get ready for this - blunted, cut off.
Ooookay, Spanish Academy, guess we’ll never solve the mochomystery!
Anyway, thanks A LOT for your response, it was super informative. Trugarez!
i get a lot of asks about the etymology and evolution of the word ‘dyke’!
here is a history essay by JR Roberts, published in sinister wisdom no. 9, 1979, that posits a few theories and provides some explanations. note that this does contain some offensive historical language and slurs. it is about six pages long, so i’m going to place it under the cut!
I have thoughts about the whole feminist anti-interrupting thing. Like I agree, men do talk over people and it is disrespectful, but I also think there are cultures, specifically Jews, where talking over each other is actually a sign of being engaged in the conversation. It’s something I really struggle with in the south, because up in New York, even non-Jews participated in this cooperative conversation style, but down here, whenever I do it by accident, the whole convo stops and it gets called out and it’s a whole thing. Idk idk I feel like there’s different types of interruptive like there’s constructive interrupting where you add on to whatever is being said - helpful interrupting, and then there’s like interrupting where you just start saying something unrelated because you were done listening. I have ADHD so I’ve def done the latter too by accident, but I’m talking about being more accepting of the former.
I think a lot of the social mores leftists enforce around communication tend to be very white. Like Jews are not the only group of people that have distinct communication styles. Like the enforcement of turn-based communication, not raising your voice (not just in anger but also in humor or excitement), etc. it’s always interesting that the most pushback I get about how I communicate come from white people (mostly women actually, white men just give me patronizing looks because they don’t feel like they can call me out in same way). Like I’ve been teaching these workshops, and a few of them have been primarily black people, and I’ve noticed black people will also engage in cooperative interrupting (and I love it!). This isn’t a developed thought and I welcome feedback. Idk I think there should be space in leftist organizing for more diverse communication styles.
As a linguist: overlapping talk is not the same thing as an interruption!
An interruption is specifically intended to stop another person from speaking so you can take over. Other reasons that talk might overlap:
close latching – how much time should I give between when you stop talking and when I start? Very close latching can feature a lot of overlaps.
participatory listening – how do I signal to you that I’m engaged with what you’re saying and paying attention? Do I make any noise at all, or do I limit myself to minimal “backchannel” noises (mm-hmm, ah, yeah), or do I fully verbalize my reactions as you’re going? Maybe even chime in along with you, if I anticipate what you’re about to say, to show how well we’re vibing?
support request – this can shade into interruption as a form of sealioning, but if someone interjects a request like “I didn’t catch that” or “What’s that mean?” it’s not really an interruption, because they’re not trying to end/take my turn away, they’re inviting me to keep going with clarification/adaptation.
asides – if there’s more than two people involved in a conversation, a certain amount of cross-talk is probably inevitable.
The norms around these kinds of overlaps vary – by context (we all use more audible backchannel on the phone; an interview is not a sermon is not a casual chat), by culture, and yes, by gender, which is why it’s a feminist issue. But gender doesn’t exist in a vaccuum! Some reasons overlaps might be mis-interpreted as interruptions when they’re not intended to be:
norms about turn latching: someone who’s not used to close-latching conversation might feel interrupted or stepped on when talking to someone who is. The converse is that someone who’s expecting close-latching might feel the absence of it as awkward silence, withdrawal, coldness, etc.
norms about backchannel: if you’re not expecting me to provide running commentary on your story or finish your sentences (or if I’m doing it wrong) then you might feel interrupted. But if you’re expecting that level of feedback you might feel ignored.
neurodivergence: If I have auditory processing problems, I might take longer to respond to you than you’re expecting. If I have impulse control problems, I might blurt something out as soon as I think of it, but I don’t necessarily want you to stop. If I have trouble with nonverbal or paralinguistic cues, I might not latch my turns the way you expect, or my backchannel might be timed in a way you don’t expect.
Non-native speakers of a language may need more time to process speech; may speak more slowly and with pauses in different places than native speakers; may not pick up the same cues about turn-latching and backchannel, resulting in a timing difference; may need to make more requests for support.
Norms around conversation tend to be super white/Western/male/NT; even among linguists, the way we talk about analyzing talk usually presupposes discrete turns, with one person who “has the floor” and everyone else listening. It even gets coded into our technology – I thing the account’s gone private, but someone recently tweeted, “For the sake of my wife’s family, Zoom needs to incorporate an ‘ashkenazi jewish’ checkbox” because the platform is programmed to try to identify a “main speaker” and auto-mute everyone else. Most of the progress on this front in linguistics has been pushed by Black women and Jewish women, or else we’d probably still be acting like Robert’s Rules represent the natural expression of human instincts.
And it’s very White Feminism to recognize how conversations styles have disparate impacts across gender lines without also recognizing other axes along which conversation styles vary, once that empower us as well as oppress us. Just because I feelinterrupted doesn’t mean I aminterrupted, and it definitely doesn’t mean I have the right to scream “EVERYBODY SHUT UP!!” until I’m the only one talking.
I don’t … have a great way to end this? Just that it’s good to recognize competing needs in communication, and have some humility and intentionality about whose needs gets prioritized and how.
Thinking about that time some woman tried to convince me that vests are masculine and are for men and she used “the Spanish word for vests is masculine” as “proof” and I came right back like “The Spanish word for dressis masculine” and the conversation ended
LET ME TELL EVERYONE ABOUT ACTUAL BROOKLYNITES – NAY, ACTUAL NEW YORKERS – STEVE ROGERS AND BUCKY BARNES
• Have you ever met a New Yorker outside of midtown who doesn’t talk with their mouth full? Me neither. Steve Rogers, garbled: “M’jus say’n s’bullshit,” he manages, and swallows. “Our team doesn’t belong in fuckin’ Cali. Listen. You hear that?” “Is it Jim Morita laughing at us from beyond the grave?“ “Hell yeah, it’s Jim Morita laughing at us from beyond the grave.”
• Steve Rogers getting splashed with water by a cab. “WHADDAYA DOIN, HUH? JESUS!”
• Steve Rogers, by turns incredibly polite and incredibly rude on the subway. “Is this guy bothering you? Because if he tries to grope you again, I’m kicking his ass, miss, pardon my French.”
• Food Trucks: The Autobiography of an American Hero
• Those dumb BKLYN ballcaps. Steve owns like minimum ten.
• Wary of visiting Barton in Bed-Stuy. “I think I liked it better when it was crooks,” he says to Buck, eyeing a hipster in confusion. That sweater has like fourteen different kinds of flowers embroidered on it; it looks like something his ma owned, only ironic.
• “How much is eighteen dollars in future money?” Bucky asks him inside the Balcony Lounge in the Met. Steve blanches, staring at the menu. “For a salad? Oh my God, we’re going to the cafeteria.”
• Haggling in the fish market. Listen to me, this is so important. “That fish is a fuckin’ tadpole, and you want how much for it?” Bucky demands. “Hell no, hell no, kid, I’m old enough to be your granddad. It’s fifteen for the bunch there or none.” “Sir, these are set prices.” Turning to Steve, incredulous: “Does nobody goddamn know how to do business anymore? I swear to Christ. Bleedin’ me dry. I’m moving to Hell’s Kitchen.” “Hell’s Kitchen is just as expensive, sir.” “Well, fuck a duck, Steve, you hear that?”
• Following along with a yoga class happening in Central from six feet away, hidden slightly behind a tree
• “Yeah, Carnegie got hit in the Chitauri attack.” “What?” “It’s fine! It’s fine! It’s still there!” Steve refers not to the hall, but the deli. Priorities.
• Searching for apartments. “I’m starting to get the feeling,” Steve says, “That it’s cheaper to live in Manhattan.” He reaches for the listings for the other borough. Bucky grabs his hand. “Do not,” he says, “If you don’t want to have an aneurysm.”
• Bucky holding a stare-off with the 11 y/o kid on the subway wearing a Yankees jersey. The kid staring-off right back. Little punk.
• “Remember when New York was normal?” Steve asks Bucky, after watching the lady who owns the little domesticated monkey walk down Fifth Avenue, all up in her mink coat &etc. “Pal,” Bucky says, and drops a dollar into the can of a street performer, “New York was never normal.”
I LIIIIIIIVE.
Haggling at the fish market!
Lookin’ for an apartment!
My favourite, though, the sweater with the embroidered flowers all over it.
The vast majority (around 80%) of Chinese characters are made up of a radical (the general meaning) and a phonetic.
Radical 女 nǚ (woman) and phonetic 馬 mǎ (horse) = 媽 mā, mother (your mum sounds like a horse).
But a small minority are pictograms, that is to say a picture of the thing they represent.
Pictograms are the earliest characters, thousands of years old, but many are still used every day.
If you look at the oracle bone script for rat, tiger and elephant you’ll see they are clearly pictures of the animal they signify.
But if you look at the modern versions, you’ll notice something odd, they’re all rotated 90 degrees onto their sides.
Why? Why are all these characters written with the animals balancing on their tails?
Well, it’s for a straight-forward, practical reason.
For a couple thousand years before paper was invented writing materials were limited. We had silk (expensive), bronze (expensive and impractical), and oracle bones (religious use only).
And one more…
That was cheap, plentiful, durable, and easy to erase and rewrite characters. The wonder that is…
Bamboo!
It was cut into strips, and tied into books. Long thin strips of bamboo contributed to the Chinese custom of writing vertically, from top to bottom (and right to left).
But it also meant that it’s much easier to write some characters length-ways so that they easily fit onto the strip.
So that’s it, mystery solved. That’s why a lot of Chinese picture characters are written at a right angle.
after months of anxiously waiting and overthinking, i finally got the grade for my BA thesis i submitted in september! and it’s much better than i expected, i almost can’t believe it… your girl is very happy now!
so, i finally got my dream job! i got an email the week before last and today i got one with more information and i’m so happy! i’m going to be working as a student research assistant with my favourite linguistics prof and i couldn’t be happier
Was checking an Ancient Greek dictionary (as you do), and had a horrified thought: is ‘crisco’ the oil related to the Ancient Greek χριστός/χριστά (khristos/khrista) for oil via Jesus Christ?
Went and checked, though, and it’s not:
After rejecting the names “Krispo” and “Cryst” (the latter for its obvious religious connotations), Procter & Gamble called the product Crisco, a modification of the phrase “crystallized cottonseed oil”.
(Also it’s hilarious that they’re like ‘can’t use cryst, it sounds too religious’ when Christ is directly derived from a word for oil.)
