Linguistic tattoos?

[nothingsong]

Hey all. I've been reading this community for a while but only recently joined - I'm an undergrad linguistics major in Philadelphia, fluent in only English but interested in pretty much the whole gamut of languages and language science. Anyway, does anybody have any ideas for a good linguistics tattoo? I've come up with a few ideas:

- A Babel

Comments

[alirose]

The /wʊDər/ idea made me lol. My husband and maternal side of my family are all from Philly; I think that's a great one.

[nothingsong]

My roommates are all from central PA and they have a fit trying to decipher me sometimes, haha. Does your husband still have the accent?

[alirose]

No he doesn't. But almost all my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents are in Philly for life so they really, really do. ^_^

[corvus]

Seconded!

[star_cabaret]

What field do you like the best so far? There are several things you could get that are field- or theory-specific.

off the top of my head

[star_cabaret]

Historical and comparative linguistics: Cognate/sound correspondence sets

Syntactic theory markers, like sets of features (spec, head, complement, etc. features) or X' or something like that.

The only thing that pops into my head for phonology is distinctive features.

And of course there's always puns. Plus, for speech errors you could make your tattoo have a malapropism or reversal or spoonerism or something like that.

There's lots of options.

Re: off the top of my head

[star_cabaret]

And for pictures, we have various parts of the vocal tract

Re: off the top of my head

[nothingsong]

I'm leaning *mostly* toward cultural references to linguistics, nothing wildly esoteric (no Chomskian phrase structures, haha). But I have flirted with the idea of something phonetic or phonological.

[glemsydoodles]

I'm not a big fan of behind-the-ear tattoos I keep seeing, but I could definitely make an exception for that placement of a Babel fish. :)

[nothingsong]

That was literally my first thought, but I stumbled across a photo on BME of it and I don't want anyone to feel ripped off. But it's still in contention :)

a vowel trapezium adjusted for his idiolect?

[caprinus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:California_English_vowel_chart.svg

Re: a vowel trapezium adjusted for his idiolect?

[nothingsong]

Her idiolect :) . And that's a great idea - I considered coming up with some reference to my ridiculously tensed and diphthonged /æ/s (my 'mad' and 'bad' sound something like /meəd/ and /baəd/). It's usually the first thing people notice about my Philadelphia accent.

[nascent_dreams]

As another idea, I know that a few people in my program have talked about having shirts made featuring the catch phrase, "How many languages do you speak?" Heh.

I'm sure there are other linguistics-specific inside jokes, but I can't think of any at the moment.

[embryomystic]

I'm partial to 'UR MOMS A PRESCRIPTIVIST', but that's rather juvenile, I guess.

[nascent_dreams]

Heh, this made me chuckle.

[embryomystic]

I like it better as a t-shirt you can put on and take off, though. I'm not sure I'd want it as a tattoo, amuse me though it does.