Hi everyone,

I'm an MA student in Linguistics doing a survey on attitudes towards the construction (zo)(iets) van in Dutch. A few studies have been done on this construction (syntax, pragmatics, development), but to my knowledge no one has looked at speakers' attitudes towards it. I'm looking for both L1 and L2 (in fact I'm especially interested ( Read more... )

Okay, I'm having fun with a fantasy story of mine. So much fun I started getting ahead of myself and had to stop to think about this. XD This isn't a terribly urgent question or set of questions rather, but it's been bugging me for a while and I'm kind of overwhelmed by the possibilities now that it finally hit me what a massive undertaking I was ( Read more... )

In a recent IRC discussion, someone mentioned that Japanese first-person pronouns could be gendered in some contexts. That got my attention, because I remembered this as an uncommon language feature, and I found that according to WALS, Japanese doesn't have it. So I'm wondering whether WALS is wrong on that point, whether I'm looking at the wrong ( Read more... )

How do you explain reappropriation of offensive terms within a certain country to non-native speakers?

I have a Scandinavian friend with a strong interest in American hip hop culture and especially music. Some time ago, I realized that she was using and misspelling a reappropriation of the N word in informal contexts. While our conversations are ( Read more... )

Do any English dialects outside the US use the word “help” to mean “servant” (as in, well, the novel and movie The Help)?

The Online Etymology Dictionary says this is an American usage, and according to the source it quotes, in the 19th century the word specifically referred to white servants ( Read more... )

Last semester, I took a socioling course at my Uni (low level, easy credits and GPA booster, as well as being my field of interest) and ended up doing a presentation on swearing. As a point of interest, and just for flavour, I'd done an informal online survey of as many people as I could find. One of the questions was "What's the worst swear word ( Read more... )

Hullo, I'm Jai (pronounced like the letter) and just wanted to say how obscenely excited I am to have found this community - I'm a linguistics major in my sort of third-fourth-fifth year, and am always interested to see/hear what others have to say about language(s). My primary interest is in socioling and specifically swearing, so if anyone ever ( Read more... )

( Discusses infanticide )

Hey everyone, I have a couple of Greek queries.

The first is cultural, rather than technical, as I already know possible correct words I can use.

I am writing to my Greek grandmother and I'm wondering whether I ought to start with my letter with

Γεια σου, γιαγιἀ or Γεια σας, γιαγιἀAs I say, I know they're both correct possible forms of ( Read more... )

Not to beat a dead horse, but while r_blackcat's post on ableist language was mostly struck through, it's prompted me to make an inquiry about something I've wondered for years. It's arguably the kind of question that belongs on a community more directly centered around issues of privilege, discrimination, etc., but since we have a bunch of etymology- ( Read more... )