me: language lover, MI USA, lesbian, happily married. 20. she/her pronouns. stuff you can expect to find here: linguistics stuff, language stuff, queer stuff, stuff that makes me happy. call me Bethany and talk to me in English, Spanish, French, or ASL :)
Colonel Weber: You’re at the top of everyone’s list when it comes to translation.
Louise: Sure but I actually examine cross-linguistic morphosyntax, particularly, what ergativity in endangered Mayan languages ca–
CW: haha what how many languages do you speak
L: That’s a common misconception actually, linguists scientifically study lang–
CW: haha ok just translate this alien shit u fuckin nerd
Linguist Twitter had a lot of fun with #SpookyTalesForLinguists. Go check them all out, or read last year’s Linguistics Gothic.
“It’s easy to forget now, when we’ve come so far, where now marriage is equal under the law—just how much courage was required for Ellen to come out on the most public of stages almost 20 years ago. Just how important it was not just to the LGBT community, but for all of us to see somebody so full of kindness and light, somebody we liked so much, somebody who could be our neighbor or our colleague or our sister challenge our own assumptions, remind us that we have more in common than we realize, push our country in the direction of justice.
What an incredible burden that was to bear. To risk your career like that. People don’t do that very often. And then to have the hopes of millions on your shoulders. But it’s like Ellen says: We all want a tortilla chip that can support the weight of guacamole. Which really makes no sense to me, but I thought would brighten the mood, because I was getting kind of choked up. And she did pay a price—we don’t remember this. I hadn’t remembered it. She did, for a pretty long stretch of time—even in Hollywood. And yet, today, every day, in every way, Ellen counters what too often divides us with the countless things that bind us together—inspires us to be better, one joke, one dance at a time.” —President Obama awarding the Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor, to Ellen DeGeneres yesterday, along with 20 other Americans who have contributed to their fields.
you: intellectuals think the same as everyone else, they just talk differently.
me, an intellectual: Although academic English is well-adapted to the low-context culture in which it is used, its inherent qualities are not sufficient to justify its relative inaccessibility; its use can only be explained as an expression of social status.
Here are some tips on how to further use your voices about the election results and hopefully make a change.
In the Netherlands, abortion is freely available on demand. Yet the Netherlands boasts the lowest abortion rate in the world, about 6 abortions per 1000 women per year, and the complication and death rates for abortion are miniscule. How do they do it? First of all, contraception is widely available and free — it’s covered by the national health insurance plan. Holland also carries out extensive public education on contraception, family planning, and sexuality. An ethic of personal responsibility for one’s sexual activity is strongly promoted. Of course, some people say that teaching kids about sex and contraception will only encourage them to have lots of sex. But Dutch teenagers tend to have less frequent sex, starting at an older age, than American teenagers, and the Dutch teenage pregnancy rate is 9 times lower than in the U.S.
I endorse evidence-based medicine, and evidence-based activism.
