Linguistic pet peeves

A forum for discussing linguistics or just languages in general.
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k1234567890y
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by k1234567890y »

I don't really like people to divide languages according to their usefulness or "expressivrness" in general. Every language is equally complex and expressive; also, I really hate it when people are being told to learn mainstreamand more "useful" languages like Spanish instead when they want to learn less "useful" languages like Manchu.

All claims that Chinese is superior than English, or English is superior than Chinese, or anything similar, are nonsenses, without a single exception.
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by gestaltist »

I just got a new pet-peeve from browsing reddit. The world "guttural" used by linguistically clueless people to describe a language. It usually doesn't really mean anything and isn't reflected in the phonology of the words they present. So annoying.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by k1234567890y »

gestaltist wrote:I just got a new pet-peeve from browsing reddit. The world "guttural" used by linguistically clueless people to describe a language. It usually doesn't really mean anything and isn't reflected in the phonology of the words they present. So annoying.
ok...

btw, although this is not my pet peeve, my good friend Tay Ayase has a great distaste towards the correction of English because of a very unpleasant experience related to grammar Nazis which happened to her friend, so you can correct people for their language use in CBB, at least in the language practice thread, but don't do it outside of CBB.
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by gach »

When speaking English, I find that a pretty decent description of "guttural" is any velar or further back consonant that doesn't occur in the speaker's speech variant.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Qxentio »

gach wrote:a pretty decent description of "guttural" is any velar or further back consonant
This is true, and it is usually a sign of cluelessness or insensitivity towards different languages. I once read Gary Gygax' extraordinary book on names or however it was called, in which he claimed that /x/ in German is a "throat clearing sound". Needless to say, both of my eyeballs popped out and I closed the book right then and there.
Spoiler:
Yeah I might have mentioned that before ITT, but it really grinds my gears.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Frislander »

Qxentio wrote:
gach wrote:a pretty decent description of "guttural" is any velar or further back consonant
This is true, and it is usually a sign of cluelessness or insensitivity towards different languages. I once read Gary Gygax' extraordinary book on names or however it was called, in which he claimed that /x/ in German is a "throat clearing sound". Needless to say, both of my eyeballs popped out and I closed the book right then and there.
Spoiler:
Yeah I might have mentioned that before ITT, but it really grinds my gears.
If any sound has the right to be described as "throat clearing" it is of course /ħ/, which is actually produced in the throat.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by gestaltist »

k1234567890y wrote:my good friend Tay Ayase has a great distaste towards the correction of English because of a very unpleasant experience related to grammar Nazis which happened to her friend, so you can correct people for their language use in CBB, at least in the language practice thread, but don't do it outside of CBB.
What does that have to do with this thread? Reading this in response to my post, I felt like you were chastizing me for something some random person did to your friend whom I don't even know.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Isfendil »

On grammar nazism, generally I only correct people if they asked to be corrected (active learners, people who want proofreading, etc.). Otherwise I am fairly (though not personally) acquainted with the insecurity and anxiety one can cause to someone by aggressively correcting their english.

As for my pet peeve? My own, personal, irrational resistance to language change, but in my conlangs (no, no buggery about pronominal changes in modern english that already happened and that people only get angry about when their attention's are drawn to it).
Ideas I have or sound changes/morphemes that are no longer valid and must be removed or revised but I just want to keep the word like it is. Especially if I've made an example phrase. In edyssian, I used "c" instead of k (before I knew any linguistics) and I actually very quickly revised this accept for the damnable first person pronoun. It's "ko" now, but it used to be "ico" and it was the last one to go. It persisted, even after I reformed the orthography and actually drafted the true phonology and applied it to every other word (granted it was still *technically* phonologically valid). This dropping of the initial "i" and writing velar stops with one letter I resisted because I'd already made still-completely-private and unexposed example phrases that I felt uncomfortable about changing.

Even now, though I am 100% fine with leaving vestiges, I still would rather reform a language from the ground up rather than raze it and rewrite it afresh. I don't think that this resistance is a bad thing but some of these languages are pages and pages long.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by clawgrip »

I'm tired of people posting images on Facebook that are like "Through and cough and thorough! English is so crazy!"

Get over it already.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Lao Kou »

clawgrip wrote:I'm tired of people posting images on Facebook that are like "Through and cough and thorough! English is so crazy!"
Get over it already.
I guess I'll chock that up to an advantage of not getting Facebook here. Ricky and Lucy covered "-ough" words in a sketch years ago. I agree: as with schtick about airline peanuts and automated service calls (please listen carefully as our options have changed (WHY~~? more efficient? I think not)), it's time to move on. The "-ough" boat done sailed.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Sumelic »

Lao Kou wrote:
clawgrip wrote:I'm tired of people posting images on Facebook that are like "Through and cough and thorough! English is so crazy!"
Get over it already.
I guess I'll chock that up to an advantage of not getting Facebook here. Ricky and Lucy covered "-ough" words in a sketch years ago. I agree: as with schtick about airline peanuts and automated service calls (please listen carefully as our options have changed (WHY~~? more efficient? I think not)), it's time to move on. The "-ough" boat done sailed.
Yeah, when Ricky and Lucy did it, it was actually funny.

I''ve mentioned this earlier in this thread, but I'm even more annoyed by ghoti, which as a serious argument for spelling reform is either appallingly ignorant or appallingly dishonest. (As a joke, it's just kind of dumb.) At least through, cough and thorough are actual examples of ambiguity in the English spelling system as it exists.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Lao Kou wrote:
I''ve mentioned this earlier in this thread, but I'm even more annoyed by ghoti, which as a serious argument for spelling reform is either appallingly ignorant or appallingly dishonest. (As a joke, it's just kind of dumb.) At least through, cough and thorough are actual examples of ambiguity in the English spelling system as it exists.
I thought it was kind of funny as a joke; it kind of bugged me when people took it so seriously (both people who thought it was a serious issue of spelling reform and those who posted a ten-page linguistic essay to "debunk" it).

Actually it's influenced my conlang. The word ghos means "fish" and the verb ghomi means "I fish", thus 3rd singular ghoti: "he/she/it fishes". :mrgreen:
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Axiem »

Seems suspicious to me.





One might even say...fishy.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Qxentio »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote:I thought it was kind of funny as a joke; it kind of bugged me when people took it so seriously (both people who thought it was a serious issue of spelling reform and those who posted a ten-page linguistic essay to "debunk" it).

Actually it's influenced my conlang. The word ghos means "fish" and the verb ghomi means "I fish", thus 3rd singular ghoti: "he/she/it fishes". :mrgreen:
Ghoti already made it into Klingon meaning fish. I think it's spelled ghotI and pronounced /ɣotɪ/ or something along those lines.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Qxentio wrote: Ghoti already made it into Klingon meaning fish. I think it's spelled ghotI and pronounced /ɣotɪ/ or something along those lines.
Aww man, well I didn't know that when I created mine, so I'm keeping it :D Mine is pronounced /'ɣoti/.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Ahzoh »

I have the word ghot-/ghut- mean "ignoramus" or "layperson" in Vrkhazhian.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by Qxentio »

Ahzoh wrote:I have the word ghot-/ghut- mean "ignoramus" or "layperson" in Vrkhazhian.
How cheeky of you. [:D]
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by HinGambleGoth »

One thing that I cant stand is that you simply can not bring up historical linguistics without encountering strong skepticism or downright hostility (often from native speakers of the modern language/dialect) when you talk about how languages such as Latin or early modern english can fairly accuratley be reconstructed.

Every single thread or video on the internet dealing with old languages are clogged with this, comparative linguistics and Stammbaum has to be thoroughly explained every time. The it is often mixed with posts blending in nationalism and pseudo-science into stuff like Classical greek vowels.
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by GrandPiano »

HinGambleGoth wrote:One thing that I cant stand is that you simply can not bring up historical linguistics without encountering strong skepticism or downright hostility (often from native speakers of the modern language/dialect) when you talk about how languages such as Latin or early modern english can fairly accuratley be reconstructed.
How do we know how accurate our current reconstructions are without going back in time and hearing the language?
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Re: Linguistic pet peeves

Post by HinGambleGoth »

GrandPiano wrote: How do we know how accurate our current reconstructions are without going back in time and hearing the language?
But our language never changed, only our neighbours who corrupted our language with foregin intermingling and lazy pronounciation! They used to talk so you could understand, like us!

This gets unbearable whenever you discuss big language families like germanic or romance.

"I wish danes could go back to speaking like swedish", or "Portuguese is slurred spanish".
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