i saw it got censored in one of those videos where biden trump and obama play minecraft

lothar wrote:
i saw it got censored in one of those videos where biden trump and obama play minecraft

That was part of the skit. They'll censor non profane insults because it can be funny. Usually because the audience substitutes profanity for the non profanity in their head. So “idiot” will be censored and the audience autofills “f**kt*rd” and giggles.
A late night show did similar with random *bleeps* in sound bites.
That way you haven't actually presented anything dirty, it's the audience who is putting it in.
Of course some won't get the joke, but can't please i***ts.

The most recent harmless word I called someone out on was “Sus”.

I heard it spoken, turned around and said, “Do not say ‘sus’, say the complete word, say ‘suspicious’.”

Upholding the proper use of language and grammar is my contribution to society.

I actually felt a guilty twinge when I wrote it XD

When I was in Turkey a few years ago “idot” and other related benign words like “fool”, “moron” etc were all censored on TV. Unironically.
NOT words like “s**t” “F**k” etc. though.

It's because they have a weird ultra conservative religious fascist government with strange dictator in charge. It's what you'd have in the USA if Trumplebumskin had managed to stay in power for a second or *infinite terms :)

*(more that two terms being against the constitution wouldn't have mattered to him)

We have like four words you literally can't take a bus ride without hearing (in the capital). These would translate in English to “fuck / fuck it”, “dick”, “slut” and “sperm”. No matter if it's day or night, no matter what bus you take out of a hundred different ones, no matter if it's a teenager or a 50 years old, you just hear at least one of these in an angry rant or in a casual conversation, thrown around. It's the slang of the masses. I'm not saying kids need to be sheltered from reality and all, but these times I feel lucky I'm not a parent, because I can't help but loath random strangers for spewing this trash everywhere non-stop.

There are a few essays in works on English speaking culture in World War 2 and after that say such about that word that can be every part of speech from exclamation, verb, adverb, noun, preposition and probably soon to be someone's preferred pronoun. Fuck.
See Wartime by Paul Fussel and Helmet for my Pillow by Robert Leckie among other works. It is every where and seemingly to some EVERYTHING and if only I could un-hear it and never hear it again.

Fuck is the English equivalent of the word “Smurf”




Smurf you you Smurfin' Smurf !

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
The most recent harmless word I called someone out on was “Sus”.

I heard it spoken, turned around and said, “Do not say ‘sus’, say the complete word, say ‘suspicious’.”

Upholding the proper use of language and grammar is my contribution to society.

Sus is in the dictionary, and language evolves. According to Merriam-Webster, “Sus” has been around since the ‘20s, but resurfaced in 2018 with the game Among Us. That’s like getting on someone's case for saying “OK” instead the full phrase of “oll korrect”.

I quite enjoy the vibrant growth and evolution of the lexicon, and don't gel with the idea we need to rigidly appeal to tradition and castigate those who deviate or abbreviate.

Also, sus is not just short for suspicious, it's also short for suspect.
“Sus” is a perfectly cromulent word, and one should always look to embiggen their vocabulary!

Amelius wrote:
Sus is in the dictionary, and language evolves. According to Merriam-Webster, “Sus” has been around since the ‘20s, but resurfaced in 2018 with the game Among Us. That’s like getting on someone's case for saying “OK” instead the full phrase of “oll korrect”.

I quite enjoy the vibrant growth and evolution of the lexicon, and don't gel with the idea we need to rigidly appeal to tradition and castigate those who deviate or abbreviate.

Also, sus is not just short for suspicious, it's also short for suspect.
“Sus” is a perfectly cromulent word, and one should always look to embiggen their vocabulary!

Thanks for the tip, Amelius, I appreciate it. I know I should have let it slide, there is even an article on how swear words indicate a larger vocabulary for the person saying them. It was more a reflex to deflect inappropriate words being spoken in front of other pupils. I am so used to hearing cuss words spoken casually in learning environments these days, I am aware that it was an over reaction and I had a good laugh the absurdity of my overreaction later that day and when I wrote that post.

The emphasis of proper language in public is still a deep concern because it can make or break a stranger’s unconscious perception of an individual. I worry that casually allowing cuss words in learning environments will be a negative reflection of the community as a whole and one day they will be looked down in society (not necessarily for ‘sus’, definitely not) by individuals who discriminate against vulgar language. It can be the difference between getting arrested or getting praised for writing an eloquent speech. Language can open doors, but it can close many.

And the world wonders why English is the hardest language to learn.

I really tend to doubt English is that hard to learn XD
I think it's more a factor that it's probably the most learned second language out of all the others so people can bond over that and the fact that native English speakers can pat themselves on the back ironically and non-ironically that they speak the “hardest” to learn language XD

I'm all for being a bit restrictive and policing stuff because that's as valid as stuff changing really.
I mean resistance to change is also a totally natural process and there are good reasons for it. Things change, change back, changes hang up and then go through anyway and even disappear and no one even remembers them. XD


There are aspects of Australian English that I don't like.
Many people say “Ay” at the end of every sentence: “It's pretty hot today, ay.” “That's right ay.” “I work on the mines ay.” etc.
It comes from that trait people have in many different countries of including a question at the end of a sentence where often there shouldn't be one, so it can sound very awkward and unnecessary.

Another Australian tendency is is shorten things (for no reason) and put a vowel on the end. Often it's not to make things quicker to write or say, they're just trying to make them sound more “Australian”, as if they're so insecure about their Australianess they have to change language to create a new fake Aussie patois. XD
Examples:
Fishermen == Fishoes (this is modern, from the last few years)
Service station == Servo
Tradesmen == tradies
Ambulance driver or EMT == Ambo (recent)
People like to force these changes so if you tell them an occupation they'll try and think of a shortened version - so it sounds wrong because of that.

Some Aussie slang here:
https://www.studiesinaustralia.com/Blog/about-australia/the-modern-guide-to-aussie-slang
That's mostly an OK guide but they got “bogan” wrong. That does NOT refer to a “redneck”.
A “bogan” in today's Australian language is now what we used to call a “derro” or a “dag”. It means a lower class person from the city, usually white, often violent, lacks education, often racist, dresses badly, looks rough and dangerous.

“Bogan” used to refer only to members of a specific metal-head subculture back in the 1980s, they had to look and dress a certain way to be a part of it, but since then it's expanded to be used as a general term. I think it's a bit sad that it's lost its original meaning.

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
The emphasis of proper language in public is still a deep concern because it can make or break a stranger’s unconscious perception of an individual. I worry that casually allowing cuss words in learning environments will be a negative reflection of the community as a whole and one day they will be looked down in society (not necessarily for ‘sus’, definitely not) by individuals who discriminate against vulgar language. It can be the difference between getting arrested or getting praised for writing an eloquent speech. Language can open doors, but it can close many.

Oh definitely! Though there are perils on the other side as well, my husband has been informed on multiple occasions at his job that his vocabulary is “intimidating” and comes off as “hostile” because some people don't understand some of the words he uses, and I've heard him talk, he just has good grammar but doesn't particularly use fancy ten-dollar words. He's been told he needs to simplify a lot of his phrasing (which was a weird whiplash because he'd often be praised for finding just the right words for the situation) and since a good portion of his job is communication, he has to take these things to heart. A good portion of the disconnect though is many of his coworkers come from different cultural backgrounds, and though they know English very well, some of the idioms fly over their head and it's kind of ingrained in them not to tell people they don't understand. It's situational/contextual though, slang can often be disarming and put people at ease in a tense situation, while eloquence can sometimes come off as cold and clinical… and worse, highfalutin!

Though going back a bit, I think everyone has that one new word they can't stand, to be honest! We all get one. :) (Mine is “judgey”)

As someone who constantly interacts with people whose first language is not English, it is very important to speak clearly and avoid all idiom, analogy and metaphor. A class in business writing said that, but it really didn't hit home until I started constantly interacting with foreign language speakers.
Some had been in the country for decades but didn't get something as simple as “raining cats and dogs”.
So stick to simple grammar and vocabulary. Of course speakers aware of Latin roots will get the bigger words but not everyone is a student of language.
Like is so many other places effective communication is best described with the KISS principle. Its really Keep It Short and Simple. Keep It Simple, Stupid is for those who are so fond of sounding smarter than everyone else and need to be reminded of how intimidating they sound to others because unless they can explain everything on the fly, going over people's heads isn't effective communication. You may not like it. You may want to debate the topic or find fault, but it works and that's what matters.
I have an extensive vocabulary and I use lots of profanity. I actually have to work hard not to use it at times. But it has its uses.

By the way, a lot of what makes English hard is all the exceptions to everything because it's such a bastard language. You have German, overlaid with Norse and then the French/Latin vocabulary laid on top of that. The grammar is easy and relatively straightforward. It's all the synonyms and homonyms. To many words mean the same or similar and too many sound the same to the ear. It's a lot to swallow. (That idiom may not translate well. A foreign speaker might think you're suddenly talking about eating) It is a lot to understand all at once. (Use “simultaneously” and watch the eyes glaze over) I used to have long conversations on language with foreign speakers. It's one of the thing insomniac seniors will discuss with security guards when they can't sleep. I've also run into some real language scholars who were fascinated with English.

I lived in a major midwestern-US city before moving to the suburbs for middle school and I brought a lot of big city words in my vocabulary that gave me a mouth like a trucker before sixth grade. Coupled with one of my favorite films being Stand By Me (1986), those characters made swear words seem like the norm for someone in my age group.

I nearly eradicated the usage of all swear words from spoken conversations after a concerned parent of a friend commented that my usage of the word “Freak” (that I self-censored in place of the “F-word”) was a bad influence on his progeny.

Fast forward to University when the use of contractions in academic papers were heavily frowned upon and publicly shamed/berated by British-English speaking professors. That was when I started using “couldn’t”, “shouldn’t”, “wouldn’t”, “ain’t”, “it’s”, and “isn’t” very sparingly (even though I wrote them ALL the TIME in a midwestern public elementary school).

Several sources of South Asian academics have shared that they were encouraged to practice English elocution from watching British broadcasting.

The Sheriff of Nottingham from the animated Robin Hood (with the foxes) was highly offensive to a coworker from one of the Southern states because the more righteous characters spoke with British accents.

Language biases start so early because our formation of language stems from the shows we watch and the books we read. They vary based on regions and the types of circles one choses to interact. It is a deeply personal set of identity markers that evolve over time, widening a language network. Testing a linguistics major on identifying regional accents should be a carnival guessing game—-it is fascinating when they are spot-on.

Yup, English is almost completely just German + French. And Latin is just from French, as you say.
The separate latin stuff is like the Greek, Japanese and other bits- mostly limited obvious borrowed words.

The “Norse” is basically all just part of the Germanic melange… from the Angles, Saxon, Jute, Danes, Norwegians, and even the Normans who were half French and half Norwegian.

There's almost no Celtic in the mix.


I love learning the history of it…
Some sort sort of “indigenous” people settled the British Isles and Ireland (the ones who built stone henge).

Then the Celts started to come over and invade, take everything over. They completely replaced the culture but not the people, who they just combined with but dominated.

Then the Romans came over and Romacised some of the Celts but had little lasting influence on the culture and language.

Then the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came and repeated what the Celts did: replacing the culture and dominating the people.
-It's funny that Scots today see themselves as “Celt” but in reality they're closer to the Anglo Saxons before the Normans came and tried to change everything.

Danes and Norse Vikings came but never really had much lasting influence and didn't really dominate that much… Those people tend to get absorbed into whatever culture that connect with.

Then the Normans came along and did what all the other groups did before them: a small group dominates and transforms the culture to their own wishes but doesn't replace the people.
The thing was though that the Normans were only half successful in that. They were probably the weakest of the cultures to come along and invade. XD

Which is why English is mainly French and German!
French accounts for more words (the origins), but German accounts for more of the BASIC use words we use all the time so it accounts for much more of people's daily vocabularies.

Scots don't realize just how much immigration there has been between Ireland and Scotland the past two thousand years. Though through genetics they're finally narrowing down exactly what Picts were. It's also amazing that through genetics they are finding the Norse place names really do correspond with pockets of people with more Scandinavian DNA. They're also finding there was a much greater peaceful mixing of populations than earlier readings of Chronicles had indicated. There's an excellent new history of Anglo-Saxon and Norman England out now reflecting the shifts in scholarship.

“Ay” reminds me a lot of “aina ” in certain populations in Pennsylvania and other places in the Midwest mostly coal country. My grandmother's family used it with all questions. Its a colloquialism of “ain't that so” I've read it somehow comes from the Irish miners of the 19th century and rubbed off on the other immigrants who came after much as most differences in American English has origins in the large influx of German immigrants in the 18th century.

One thing I like about some foreign languages is the constant use of “friend” in conversation. It adds a sense of community that many modern native English speakers lack because I've come to appreciate saying “bro” every other word. But that's me.

Why are decks of playing cards now $13? Why?

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Why are decks of playing cards now $13? Why?

Because Vegas needs to earn moolah pronto.

The Picts were once thought of as the “original” people in the British Isles before the Celts came but we now know they were just another Celtic group, not the people who were there before.

————-

This is a perfect illustration of why “reboots” are usually (but not always) bad…
I was looking up Senses Working Overtime by XTC. It's a weird and brilliant song about knowledge based on empiricism (your senses), VS what you're told.
This is expressed not just through the lyrics but through the music and singing style: the verses are sung and played as a mediaeval dirge VS the modern happy pop-song style of the chorus, there's a battle between them and the happy style wins.
Original:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrcemZpOmpI&pp=ygUodGhlIHN0b3J5IGJlaGluZCBzZW5zZXMgd29ya2luZyBvdmVydGltZQ%3D%3D


This version by two modern young pop-singers completely disregards that though and sings the whole thing as a flat pop-song with no style change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEvECS94Lzc&pp=ygUodGhlIHN0b3J5IGJlaGluZCBzZW5zZXMgd29ya2luZyBvdmVydGltZQ%3D%3D
It's awful. It's like a beauty pageant with toddlers :(
All the context and meaning of the thing is lost.

And you can clearly see why one is XTC and the other some easily forgotten cover band in a bar somewhere. 🤣
Was a great song to dance to back in the day before bursitis made such things near impossible. Getting over an attack. Couldn't barely walk for over a week. It subsided eventually but I know a hip replacement waits for me in the future.

The Picts are one of those “history mystery” groups they like to bring out because “they just disappeared!!!!” No, they were probably so severely depleted by their constant fighting that they were subsumed into other groups.

Interesting stuff about Scots and Celts and Picts etc.!
Anglo-Saxon must have had a really good lobby 1500 years ago. To me as a Plattdütsch speaker (which is basically a descendant of Old Saxon, mingled with some other West German languages like Frisian and some French since the late Middle Ages) the connections are very apparent: some Scots pronunciations sound strangely familiar, which doesn't mean I don't have trouble understanding them like everyone else who's not from there, but listening to someone reciting Robert Burns started me to think a lot about it. Old English vocabulary, before the Norman-French replaced words is often spookily close, too, and sometimes strangely different, always at the precise moment when a false sense of familiarity began to establish itself.

But, yes, why is English so much made up of German and French?
I wouldn't claim I knew, but…
My linguistics professor back in the day said that when two ethnic groups met, there had always been a tendency for people to adapt to the language of the more technologically advanced group, and cited that as the main reason why English kept so few Celtic words. Apparently, she told us, the agriculturally-minded Angles and Saxons were more advanced than the Celts who were mainly subsistence shepherds and people thought of adopting Anglo-Saxon ways as more desirable, including the language. Same with the later Norman-French conquest, which put the Anglo-Saxons in the place of the low-level culture that would adapt, as should be expected from peasants ruled by a French-speaking nobility.
The last part makes sense, but I still find anything before that that a bit hard to believe in places. Why aren't there more Danish and Norse words in English, then? Those Vikings were clearly much more advanced than both, constantly mopping the floor with everyone else, including Anglo-Saxons, everywhere in Northern Europe. Also, it is hard to think of Anglo-Saxons, whose lifestyle tended to be really primitive (living in damp, chilly mud houses while Celts had Roman ruins and stone huts), as that much more technologically advanced than Celts, but that may be modern perspective messing with me.

Saxons more likely lives in nice wooden buildings- those aren't preserved well in the archeological record so traditionally we don't really include those when thinking about how people lived but it's likely there was extensive building with it since they've even discovered the remains of wooden buildings from our non-human ancestors. (preserved by chance)

The Germanic invaders/immigrants also had better armour and weapons. With the roman Empire contracted as it was at that stage there was no longer a reliable supply of the materials that made up things like bronze, especially all the way over in the British Isles. While the Saxons would have had a lot more of the newer iron/steel gear as well as bronze I imagine.

The Vikings never really took over anywhere much for some reason. I think it was probably cultural and economic- Once they invaded somewhere they just didn't have the support to make it long term, they were mostly left on their own because Scandinavia had very limited supplies.
That's probably why they succeeded so often too, not because they were better than anyone else so much as because they just had to go “all in” each time because they were alone and the stakes were greater
But as pirate forces that went on frequent raids all over the lace they would have developed a LOT of experience so that WOULD actually have made the individuals and their commanders better at fighting.
-not batter as a “race” as some believe or better culturally, it's just because they did it so often. Inexperienced Vikings would still be the same as any one else who were inexperienced.

I have a very fragile, paper thin theory that Vikings raided Britain so much because those peoples had a related culture and spoke a similar language.

Well, apparently today is Lucy Loud's birthday, so here's a look back on that time Levana was hired to be Lucy's babysitter in a crossover nobody asked for:

Really should read The Anglo-Saxons by Marc Morris. There was a substantial Danish population in England and just the same there are a lot of Old Norse loan words. The study of place names really bears this out and shows up the subtle differences in Old English and Old Norse. That's why some place names sound so much alike but aren't. At the height of the Danelaw as much as a quarter of the population of England was Dane. There were a lot of them and eventually ended up as kings of England before Edward the Confessor.

As for why the Norse loved England so much? It was really easy to sail to from Norway and Denmark. Same way it was easy to glide down the rivers to Kiyv from Sweden. But of course since we've mostly studied English history tend to overlook the persistent Viking raids on France. They practically burned down Paris every few years. Just gave them time enough to recover and burn it again. Then it was almost like they got sick of rebuilding and the French just gave them money. Eventually they gave them a big slice of France that would be renamed after the Norse; Normandy.
A great documentary on the whole world of this time is 1066: The War for Middle Earth narrated by Ian Holm. You see Anglo-Saxon villages and people, the Norse and Danes and eventually the Normans.
Marc Morris also did a great book on the Norman Conquest and King John.

bravo1102 wrote:
Really should read The Anglo-Saxons

No I know all that stuff man XD
The population of Danes wasn't quite THAT much and it was only in a few specific places in the south. But they WERE generally isolated compared to the previous immigration waves, and that ties into every other place Scandinavians went apart from Iceland. They just never dominated. Even in Normandy they just dissolved into the native population.

-And we have to make a distinction between Danes and Norse, if we want to group them we can say Scandinavians.

The Danes really DID have a thing for England, that's been documented. It wasn't just a case of whatever port is near. They wanted to set down roots there seriously. Like you say, they even managed to get some kings there in the south for a few generations.

We have to remember that despite modern myth that the cultures were NOT dissimilar. We focus heavily on Saxons- but the Angles were closer to Danes, while the Jutes WERE Danes themselves.

I know that stuff versus actual historians? Right. That's what I thought. After all I have a degree in history and two solid semesters on English Medieval history.
The old idea of a handful of Danes ruling over lots of English has changed in light of new evidence. They discovered a lot more burials and DNA traces in the population than there should have been under the previous model of elite replacement.
As for the sea voyage model, that was also proven by studies of the ships, tides and climate. The field has evolved. They found that the prevailing tides and winds take a ship right to England. They also found that Scandinavia had traded with the entire area some centuries before they suddenly became Vikings.

And the Normans didn't disappear so much as willingly assimilated adopting French language and culture very quickly. A lot of times that is what happens. A handful of cultural distinctions remain but a culture will adopt and adapt various portions of the other and become one population.

Archeology usually marks it through pottery and burials. There are lots of examples. Old Europe is pretty interesting as the languages did die out but not so much the material culture. It was once thought the goddess worshippers were ruthlessly conquered by pastoralists and now it's plain the two blended together more extensively than just a new ruling elite.

There's also a whole dimension to something as recent as the world wars. There's been a big shift as new evidence comes to light, or someone actually bothers to reread the old evidence. A lot of older works still matter, but they got a lot of the details wrong and some of those substantially change the conclusions. I don't know what I thought I did.

As for Angles and Saxons being more advanced than Celts, I remember now that on one of my last visits in the UK I saw some of the Sutton Hoo cemetery finds on display in a museum, and I feel a bit stupid for not having remembered earlier. These guys could produce some really awesome craftsmanship when they had a mind to, even if much of it had apparently been imported. However, whoever was buried there, they were clearly members of the highest elite, so it's probably all on a much higher level than what was commonly available to them.
It's quite in contrast to what else I read about them. One-room huts of wattle and daub (and some wood) were not as nice and cozy as they look at first glance. They were warm, yes, but because so much family, cattle and goats together in a confined space can't be anything else.
On the face of this I have to conclude that all I know is that Dark Ages history is all kinds of fascinating and a good playground for educated guesses, too.
For instance, I'm now left with the impression that these Germanic tribes, no matter how advanced they actually were, must have overrun Great Britain in huge numbers and purposefully enforced extreme segregation if so few Celtic words have made it into Old and by extension current English. A bit like what 19th century Europeans tried to do in parts of Africa, but more successfully so.

Btw. I heard that other French speakers made fun of the Norman-French because they thought they talked funny. No idea if it's true, but I like imagining it that way.

A þrymsa for your thoughts, bravo.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Well, apparently today is Lucy Loud's birthday, so here's a look back on that time Levana was hired to be Lucy's babysitter in a crossover nobody asked for:

I don't really know The Loud House, except for what I pick up from my students, but I recognised her.

Made me smile. Thanks for sharing!

The Anglo-Saxons probably did something more along the lines of what Russians have historically done. Forced integration . The Anglo-Saxons renamed everything, were everywhere, outnumbered the Celts and forced them to be Anglo-Saxons or leave. So Celts disappeared as Britain became England.
Lots of those Britons went to Wales and a great many more to France. Brittany was even named for them. Some of them would even remember being forced out and help the Normans in 1066.
Some now believe that the heroic tales of Arthur fighting the AS may be a bit of a romantic exaggeration as the Britons invited in AS mercenaries to fight AS invaders and ended up swamped by AS everywhere. Though reading Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth you kind of get that picture with Vortigern. I really have to update my Arthurian reading because some has changed there too.

And yes Paris French speakers make fun of provincial accents. They really detest the fact that there's a whole Medieval literature in Provencal that outshines contemporary French literature. Not just those Provencal folks either, they went so far as to be their own language. But All the people not in Paris butcher French. That's why there's an academy to protect proper French. In Paris.

bravo1102 wrote:
I know that stuff versus actual historians? Right.

Man I love you but I feel you have a bit of an inbuilt superiority complex about things. XD
I say I know that stuff, when you suggested I should read this or that, because I do. I've learned it too. I feel you naturally assume that we disagree more than we do and sort of establish separate camps and assume conflict when in reality we only disagree on subtle things and I mainly have a different way of looking at the same info and you assume that I just don't know the info or that there's only one way to look at it.

It's like when I say I see the sun as white- That's how it looks to my eyes in the sky and that's 100% valid. Sure we know that without atmosphere that it's “yellow” and that's how we classify it compared to other stars, but that's a different context.

As humans we have insight, inspiration can make novel conclusions as well as judge things contextually which is fun and interesting as well as a great way to help us learn new things. The denial of that is something stodgy AI programs like Chat GPT do. Don't be a chat GPT. ^_^