Matthew Scarborough of Consulting Philologist says “An idea for a tweet came to me in a dream, and that tweet ended up going a little bit viral”:
There really needs to be a linguistics clickbaity website that publishes articles like “We’ve found the 10 best usages of the subjunctive in Old Phrygian. Number 7 will blow your mind!!!”. I’d write for that website.
11:42 AM – Jul 24, 2018
He got a lot of responses:
Doctors hate this one future optative.
He Found One Simple Trick to Trace Word Origins. Now Proto-Indo-Europeanists Hate Him!
We’ll tell you how synthetic or analytic a language you are based on which Disney princesses you identify with!
See the link for more, and thanks for a good laugh, Matthew!
Use this one simple trick for PURE vowels!
(Presumably the trick is to assign them to several other vowel classes, and a few of them to vowel-glide-vowel combinations like tour.)
Linguists warn “English has no future.”
Coalition to strengthen English verbs warns “too many English verbs are weak.”
Unlock the ancient secret of Gematria!
(Or the number system, anyway, which is more useful than the numerology.)
Did ALL EARTH’s LANGUAGES originate at the North Pole?
(No. There was a suggestion about Indo-European, apparently based on the astronomy of the Rig Veda. Indo-European didn’t either. Unfortunately non-linguists often confuse the origin of one family with the origin of all languages.)
The ten most common grammatical errors (number seven will really annoy you!)
MIT genius will teach you not to learn a foreign language ever again!
I have in all seriousness seen the clickbait headline “Linguists hate him!” It was (supposedly) advertising some kind of language-learning program. As if linguists are people who make their boatloads of cash by cornering the market on teaching languages.
“What to do if imperfective is the only aspect in your life”
“As if linguists are people who make their boatloads of cash by cornering the market on teaching languages.”
No, linguists are people who carefully explain to you what a linguist is, with special attention to ruling out any idea of being a polyglot, language teacher or interpreter.
Do spam ads count? “From a past imperfect to a future tense. These feminine singulars are waiting for a copula near you.”
@ Bathrobe: that’s deep, man!
@Trond: And that’s naughty!
The first rule of Linguist Club is you explain who belongs to Linguist Club.
(The first rule of Fish Club is that whales are not fish.)
whales are not fish
Fake news.
The first rule of Linguist Club is that you talk about talking.
@Trond: And that’s naughty!
Perhaps. But it would have been better if it made sense as an actual linguistic article. Maybe something like “These Russian feminine singulars have never been the object of a copula. Some of them are indeclinable.”
The First Rule of Tautology Club
Remember transformational grammar? You won’t believe what it looks like today!
One morning Noam Chomsky awoke to find himself transformed into a Bare Phrase Structure.
“These Russian feminine singulars have never been the object of a copula. Some of them are indeclinable.”
“This man showed local singles how to master bilabial trills. His talk left them speechless.”
You thought -path and -logy were the only things that went with ‘socio’ and ‘psycho’. Think again.
Ten ways to turn unergatives into ergatives without using an agent.
This woman in has discovered a radical new way to change passive into active without a single transformation. Linguists scramble to catch up!
Never suffer from asymmetric Object-sharing again! What the ancient wisdom of the Kusaal can teach us.
(From David Eddyshaw’s grammar)
The previous one was supposed to read:
This woman in (the town where you live) has discovered a radical new way to change passive into active without a single transformation. Linguists scramble to catch up!