Primes and Squares

3:23 PM

reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/9wlu57/…

@flawr This reddit thread made me think of you and all of your fascinating English questions ^

Also, if you google define run there really are waaaay too many definitions. I tried to take a screenshot of them, but even at 25% zoom it wouldn't fit on one page

@DJMcMayhem Likely due to all the examples but yeah, 12 verb and 13 noun definitions is a lot.

@DJMcMayhem I quite like this. I often use "run a race", "nose running", and "run for president" as examples of English phrases with different ASL signs, and if I could remember that entire paragraph, that'd be an incredible example. I think I just did about 8-10 different signs for that.

Why China Is so Good at Building Railways

I don't know why, but for some reason I was surprised that you know ASL. Which really... I should definitely not be surprised by

Feeds

3:39 PM

@DJMcMayhem Haha yeah. :) I've been decently fluent in it since summer of 2011 and I've only kept my skill after graduating from RIT because I have a deaf wife.

4:02 PM

I thought this was a great example of time dilation using muons.

Impossible Muons

4:13 PM

@El'endiaStarman That's really cool

@El'endiaStarman aren't you also (somewhat) deaf?

or, better way to ask the question: Is it useful for communicating with you specifically?

@NathanMerrill I'm fully deaf but I have cochlear implants and I can hear very well for a deaf person.

@NathanMerrill English is my primary language (to the point that an interpreter would usually be harder to understand than the speaker), but I'm fairly fluent in PSE (Pidgin Signed English). Actual ASL with all the grammar and syntax it employs is hard for me to understand, but my wife has no problem with it.

She's actually worked as a deaf interpreter a few times now. That is, she interprets between the hearing interpreter and the deaf client, who may e.g. not have good language skills.

That's kinda bizarre to me. Like, I never really realized how much language proficiency can vary in deaf people because I had always assumed ASL is just English with your hands rather than a different language with it's own grammar and everything

I didn't even know PSE was a thing. I've only heard the term Pidgin apply to spoken languages

And it doesn't help that the only deaf person I know (El'endia) is obviously very proficient in written English

4:30 PM

@DJMcMayhem Yeah, very common assumption. ASL's history involves a French teacher of the deaf and a sign language that was developed in Martha's Vineyard, so it doesn't derive from English. And my wife told me recently that its grammar and syntax is actually quite close to Japanese, of all languages. (I had thought/learned it was French before.)

@DJMcMayhem That's where you're generally gonna see it used, yeah. PSE for me is ASL signs + English grammar and syntax.

@DJMcMayhem Haha yeah, I'm pretty sure that most people I meet don't know I'm deaf, and many don't even notice my cochlear implants.

@El'endiaStarman Wow. That's fascinating

@DJMcMayhem This might be even more fascinating:

Nicaraguan Sign Language

Nicaraguan Sign Language (ISN; Spanish: Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua) is a sign language that was largely spontaneously developed by deaf children in a number of schools in western Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. It is of particular interest to the linguists who study it, because it offers a unique opportunity to study what they believe to be the birth of a new language. == History == Before the 1970s, there was no deaf community in Nicaragua. Deaf people were largely isolated from each other and mostly used simple home sign systems and gesture ('mímicas') to communicate with their families and...

^ there was a great podcast about this

on Radiolab, I think

My wife knows some Japanese. It's sooo different from English, and it's really interesting to see how much culture shines through in a language. Like, I've picked up bits and pieces of Japanese from her and from the few animes we've watched, and there are elements of the language that purely exist because of the culture that are totally foreign to me

Tl;dr: previously-isolated deaf children in Nicaragua were brought together in a school for the deaf and they spontaneously created a language from scratch that is being refined to this day and acquiring more complex grammatical constructs.

Radiolab - Words [Charles Fernyhough, Susan Schaller, Ann Senghas, James Shapiro, Elizabeth Spelke]

4:34 PM

@El'endiaStarman This reminds me of a ruler from history who conducted "experiments" on babies by completely isolating them to find the "purest" human language

Like, I've always thought, if you're a native English speaker and you learn a different language, genders are kinda weird. It seems odd to me that inanimate objects can have genders. Something similar that's weird to me about Japanese is how much words vary depending on how much you respect the person you're talking to or who's in a position of authority over the other, or whatever

I think it was either from the Mughals or Ottomans.

@El'endiaStarman not just that: As they did intelligence tests on students, they found that as language has advanced, so did their ability to comprehend more advanced concepts

And also I is gendered. That's probably the weirdest part to me.

4:35 PM

My history is rather awful

@Quintec This is the linguist's dream and also an ethical horror. It's probably fun to bring up the idea to a linguist and watch them vacillate between "that would be so cool/instructive" and "that would be really really bad".

@Quintec Reminds me of a story I read about a Russian(?) orphanage where the babies were neglected and by the time they were toddlers, they invented a rudimentary language

@NathanMerrill I've heard of this in general, though not regarding those Nicaraguan ISN students.

I read that in this book which was a really fascinating look at how child trauma/neglect affects brain development

Although it was pretty hard to read at times

@El'endiaStarman Such a thing is obviously not possible today, but if we had a time machine, I wonder if some would travel back to make that choice a few hundred/thousand years ago...

4:38 PM

@El'endiaStarman yeah. This was one of the most convincing arguments I've heard of it, because you can actually watch their language progress

@DJMcMayhem I started reading this and though I haven't finished it yet, it's about how gendering of nouns disappeared from English, at least. the-toast.net/2014/06/02/a-linguist-gendered-pronouns

> and third-person pronouns like “she” and “he” and “they,” which stand for other people who aren’t participating in the conversation, like Bendandsnap Calldispatch

I like this article already XD

@DJMcMayhem I've read several of her articles already and I've liked them all. Linguistic studies of Internet language are interesting.

Oct 31 at 17:13, by El'endia Starman

Also, I can't believe I didn't share this in here earlier, but here's a bunch of linguistic articles about internet language: https://gretchenmcculloch.com/

10:18 PM

@DJMcMayhem this is a great thread, thanks for sharing!! I particulary enjoyed the one about the ough.

> English is my native and only language and I still to this day don't fully understand why I understand it.

:D

Augh is similar. It's not as common, but it's mind boggling that Daughter and Laughter are pronounced so ridiculously different.

Jazz Deconstructed: John Coltrane's "Giant Steps"

10:45 PM

@DJMcMayhem I'd really like the ability to differentiate between people that do or do not participate in the conversation.

@flawr Like new pronouns for people that are present or not?

Right

It actually just occurred to me... @flawr What is your native language? I thought it was German, but now I'm not sure

It's a swiss german dialect.

French is also really common in Switzerland, right?

Are 3rd person present/absent pronouns a thing in German?

10:52 PM

@DJMcMayhem unfortunately not:)

@DJMcMayhem yeah, swiss-french =P

but it is quite close to french-french

@DJMcMayhem you can basically look at a map and the part that looks like it should belong to france is the french speaking part

Switzerland borders Italy too, doesn't it?

yes

(also austria germany and liechtenstein, but that's it)

(Oh, and Austria.) So is there Swiss-Italian? :P

of course. it is called ticinese. it is not really italian, but that area uses the actual swiss-italian as its official language

@flawr Huh, I did not expect an actual answer for that. :P

11:02 PM

I'm sorry :D

@El'endiaStarman it even shares two borders with austria :)

@flawr Because of Liechtenstein?

right=)

Oh hey, Germany has an exclave in Switzerland.

I was just wondering about that, whether you would count that too as two borders :)

I wonder which country has the highest number of borders...

And also which country has the highest borders/border length ratio

11:11 PM

It just occured to me how strange the borders of the swiss states actually are:

@DJMcMayhem probably china or russia? it maybe also depens on what you do about those that "own" parts of the sea

@DJMcMayhem I'd guess one of those mini countries.

11:25 PM

@flawr I'm pretty sure a couple of those would be labeled as gerrymandered if they were in the USA. :P

Is there typically much political/cultural variation between states?

@El'endiaStarman hehe, true:)

@El'endiaStarman the main differences are the dialects, but there are also a lot of different local traditions. And it is usally relatively easy to predict how the relative outcomes of votes. (e.g. which cantons are more conservative than others etc)

something that is becoming less and less relevant is the distinction of faith, which cantons are mainly protestant or catholic

and obviously the prejudices =P

a very important cultural border is where you use swiss german vs french cards for the Jass. :)