#steph talks

At least Martin Freeman acted like he was TRYING to put on an American accent this time.

(i haven’t been on this blog in a while because what is school wow but i’m back and thanks to everyone who followed me during my abrupt and unexplained hiatus??? wow)

does anyone have an explanation for why people often use “woman” when referring to plural women?  or why it bothers me so much?  

a friend and i have both listened to numerous presentations in school in which people have refused to use the plural form.  ?

Thanks for tagging me @frislander!!  I’m going to use your questions.  

Name:Steph
Nickname: Oh my nickname is Steph. My name is Stephanie but call me Steph.
Zodiac Sign:Cancer.
Height: I think I’m 5′8 maybe.
Orientation: Horizontal because I’m lying down but sometimes I stand up.  That’s definitely what this question means, right?
Nationality:Canadian.
Fav Fruit: Watermelon 100%
Fav Season: Not summer.
Fav Book: This is really hard.  For children’s books maybe Percy Jackson but otherwise I’d say A Little Book of Language by David Crystal. 
Fav Flower: Violets?  
Fav Scent: Vanilla?
Fav Colour: Purple?
Fav Animal: Dogs because I have a dog and I love her.
Coffee, Tea or Hot Cocoa: Tea or ice capps from tims. 
Average Hours of Sleep: Not many.
Cats or Dogs: Dogs!!
Fav Fictional Character: Tbh Steve Rogers I’m so sorry.  or Peggy Carter <3 
Number of Blankets You Sleep With: Always two.  Sometimes I add or take one away.  
Dream Trip: I just went on my dream trip a few weeks ago when I went to France.  I’ve always wanted to go because I’ve been learning french for so long and am somewhat fluent now and I definitely wanted to practice speaking it in public with native speakers and wow.  wow.  
Blog Created: Sometime after school started last year and before Arrival came out, so that would be sometime between September and October 2016.  

Alright I’ll tag @strugglingtofrench,@bilabialfricative,@bibliophile-in-love,@c3po-does-languages,@fremmedsprak,@historyandlanguages,@kahlil-themulattolinguist,@kelseythelinguist,@linguisticsyall,@maskedlinguist,@missalsfromiram,@nathanielthecurious,@overdevv,@polyglottalstop,@queerwug,@randomtinywords,@solinguistics,@wuglife,@xeno-linguist, and @yetanotherlanguage.  

bellafuga:

learninglinguist:

I was thinking of minoring in psychology because a lot of upper year linguistics students I know are doing that, but decided again on anthropology because there are so many more anthropology courses I want to take. my only problem is that a lot of anthro courses count for my ling major and my anthro minor and idk how to specify what courses count for which? because surely they can’t count for both? idk. i wish my academic counselling office would get back to me soon. not picking up the phone the day before course selection opens is annoying.

I can’t speak for all schools, but for most colleges in America you can “double dip” and have one class count for multiple degrees. It’s why it’s easier (and faster) to double major in two related subjects than in unrelated ones.

I go to school in Canada but I don’t know a lot about course stuff so it might be the same.  It would make sense that they would require 20 credits but allow you to double up.

I kind of have a similar situation because I am double majoring in two majors that overlap about eight classes, and the school has them count for both majors.

oh wow thats really convenient!!  I hope my school lets things overlap?  

I was thinking of minoring in psychology because a lot of upper year linguistics students I know are doing that, but decided again on anthropology because there are so many more anthropology courses I want to take. my only problem is that a lot of anthro courses count for my ling major and my anthro minor and idk how to specify what courses count for which? because surely they can’t count for both? idk. i wish my academic counselling office would get back to me soon. not picking up the phone the day before course selection opens is annoying.

I decided to make an arabic twitter account so follow me @ learningarabia !! I want to follow more funny accounts or pretentious quote accounts or study accounts so if you know of any hmu

Based on the rate at which our threshold for hearing high-pitched noises lowers, wouldn’t Yoda be unable to hear much at all, let alone Luke’s voice?

I have a ko-fi now so buy me a coffee if you want to help a student sustain her caffeine-dependent life force ☕ 

gravitywhatgravity:

learninglinguist:

@gravitywhatgravity replied to your post: English in Star Trek

“Honestly I haven’t thought much more about it then ‘this was TV show made in an English speaking country broadcast to various countries used to watching English speaking tv’… there’s lots of BS with the UT and stuff but ultimately its just an English show. It seems kind of silky to retcon it now because a) the idea of English as The Earth Language has been accepted in other sci-fi BECAUSE of Star Trek’s use, so changing it actually goes against what’s expected b) It’s 2018 and they’ve barely managed to admit that non straight people exist, or have more minority characters than the original show (which ya know, progressive for its time). It seems like a small point to try and change with such a deep and occasionally obsessive fanbase when there are bigger fish to fry. But yeah,  if it happened irl that would be kind of odd. Love the idea of a universally spoken language, but other languages make more sense”

I agree that to a degree, it’s difficult to discuss the languages used in a show that’s produced with biases and limits to how far they want to go to portray language diversity, but I don’t think it’s a useless conversation to have?  I was interested in the Federation’s Standard (and annoyed that it seemed to be English) and wanted to chat about it.  Talking about diversity (or lack thereof) in terms of LGBTQ characters and characters of colour and characters of different abilities is absolutely also important to me.  Just because those conversations need to happen, doesn’t mean I can’t also talk about the use of languages in the Star Trek universe.  

Basically, I think it would be SO COOL for a tv show to go all out in terms of linguistic realism.  For instance, if they have a Universal Translator, having it trip up occasionally on metaphorical speech, or letting the audience see the difference between what they’re hearing in the translation and what they’re seeing when the character’s mouth moves.  Or abling it translate almost in real time but not quite, because the two languages are syntactically different and words spoken at the end of the sentence of the language it’s translating from should appear at the beginning of the sentence in the language it’s translating to.  

Honestly you’re completely right. Saying it’s useless to discuss was a very sweeping statement and I’m sorry for saying that. It would be super cool to see language shown in that way, and I remember having this exact conversation with my mum about a decade ago when I was wee thing watching Doctor Who.

I’m sorry for acting so rashly. I think the point I was trying to make was that the decision made irl, and the decision to keep English as universal standard in the Star Trek universe, makes a lot of sense for an American company. But that really doesn’t stop any the cool language discussions feasibly happening in canon, and it certainly shouldn’t stop any discussion about it.

I absolutely agree that POC and LGBT characters are very important to discuss, I just kind of missed that subtext. I’m learning my grandmother’s native language rn, but being white and with that also being a language primarily spoken by white people makes me liable to forget that the people most likely to be effected by translaters aren’t white. That’s completely on me and my own (sheltered) world view and experiences, so sorry about that too!

No problem!  Sorry if I came off sounding annoyed - I just wanted to explain my point a little more.  And I totally understand that when explaining the extensive use of English, you have to consider the production of the media itself and how the surrounding culture affects it.  Good luck with learning your grandmother’s language!!  And don’t feel the need to apologize for not knowing something - especially if you’re doing your best to learn and adjust your actions accordingly.  

Can I just @ everyone who sends me posts they think I’ll like even if we don’t know each other and have never spoken before and say that I love you with all my heart

I’ve slacked off this summer so now I have a month to refresh my Arabic and advance it to a level high enough to be able to understand my prof in september, who is teaching the entire class in Arabic. So recommend your favourite music and tv shows!!

umm some popular fandom blog just reblogged my “i love academia because you can just call your headcanons “"theories”“ and suddenly you’re a scholar instead of a huge nerd” post

and now a bunch of people are reblogging it and adding embarrassing comments about actually writing academic stuff about fandoms and tv shows.

like. no. i was talking about stuff like headcanons about proto indo-european languages and achilles and patroclus in the illiad and stuff. academic headcanons. not about supernatural

umm this is literally me?? i was so obsessed w RP a couple years back

OP? and yep its just so cool how the london accent at the time was so heavily influenced by so many places