The fact that boomer English people would consider "comfy" legit (and, for that matter, "legit"), but "totes" not is another example of people generally believing everything invented before they were an adult is normal and everything after is weird and strange.

@fariesz6786

5 ай бұрын

and of course the last big change (in spelling, speech habits, whatever) _before_ them was bc people before them were also idiots - everyone believes they themselves are peak humanity.

okay i love this bc my friends and I in high school would truncate EVERYTHING as a joke but we would call it “abbreving”

@KaiHenningsen

8 ай бұрын

The abbr. for abbr. is abbr.

@jakeaurod

8 ай бұрын

When I was in school, we made everything longer to sound Russian, or German, or Latin.

This is comparable to expletive infixation (“abso-freakin’-lutely”): two very productive processes with complex rules that most native speakers know unconsciously but would not be able to explain.

@leemiller1837

8 ай бұрын

Yeah that's a whole nother topic

@AmyThePuddytat

7 ай бұрын

@@leemiller1837 I love tme-fucking-sis.

I can't believe you actually said "figure-outable." Made my day!

@razzle_dazzle

8 ай бұрын

My favorite new word like that is "unputdownable" (to describe a book). Once you're aware of it, you wonder what other adjective could possibly be used in its place.

@theprinceofinadequatelighting

8 ай бұрын

out-figurable?

@galoomba5559

8 ай бұрын

@@theprinceofinadequatelighting german be like

@Lawfair

8 ай бұрын

@@theprinceofinadequatelighting deducible

@HyTricksyy

8 ай бұрын

I saw with my own eyes children playing minecraft organically referring to an item you can pick up and put in your inventory as "pickupable". They all just totes started using it no prob.

I am always amazed at your ability to instantly code-switch between your topic language form, US academic English, and colloquial American English.

@languagejones6784

8 ай бұрын

Thank you! It’s practiced. For some reason a lot of academics don’t like explaining the jargon

@wafelsen

8 ай бұрын

Is it happening on the fly or is this sort of thing in the script?

@brianhawthorne7603

8 ай бұрын

@@wafelsen It must be scripted! Right? Please tell me it is scripted.

@brianhawthorne7603

8 ай бұрын

@@wafelsen It must be scripted! Right? Please tell me it is scripted.

@NewtNotNoot

8 ай бұрын

It's impressive but also MANY minority folks in the US code switch in a similar way

Yes please to a Kiki/buba video. I'd write it as casj.

@melody3741

8 ай бұрын

Like soc’s. I think it should either be standard phonetic or spelling. Cazh (leaving the c to leave a better connection) or cas

@kayleighgroenendal8473

7 ай бұрын

"Garage" ends with the -age sound but "casual" can't be shortened to cage 😂😂😂 I love that our language is Germanic but like 70% of our vocab is Latin

@fariesz6786

5 ай бұрын

i like ‹casj› it did cross my mind but i figured i'd settle with ‹cazh› eventch

I was surprised you didn't even mention some of the abbreviations that follow _exactly the same rules_ but have been in common use (even by curmudgeonly old men) for a long time, such as "fridge" (refrigerator), "loony" (lunatic), "Hi-Fi" (high fidelity), "kitty" (kitten / cat), etc.

@languagejones6784

8 ай бұрын

Those follow different rules! The output of this game would be refridge, loonz, highfs, and kittsh (blocked by the existing word)

@adrianblake8876

8 ай бұрын

@@languagejones6784 "fridge" follows the rule, but is a truncation of "Frigidaire"...

@CharleneCTX

8 ай бұрын

@@adrianblake8876 I'm almost 60. My grandmother used "Frigidaire" as a generic term for that kitchen appliance.

My favorite sub-stratum of KZread genres is "why do we hate everything girls like?" It's fascinating and I have been guilty of it as well.

@cacogenicist

8 ай бұрын

I think it should be noted that _plenty_ of young women also can't stand these truncations.

@rinnachi

7 ай бұрын

@@cacogenicist yes, and often it’s coupled with a desire to “remove” themselves from the derogatory feminine connotation of the practice, as with many other phenomena incorrectly attributed to “young women ruining things”. doesn’t matter one way or another whether a woman *engages* in it, but if she’s actively critical of it, it’s often paired with degradation of the “type” of femininity she disapproves of, while affirming her own.

in Norwegian, one of the more modern truncs is shortening "seriøst" (seriously) to just "serr". At first to just express incredulity (as in "seriously??" or "for real??"), but it soon evolved to be used in the affirmative as well, as in if someone says something and in English one might reply "yeah, for real", a Norwegian youngster might reply with simply "serr". (I say youngster, but even the demographic most associated with it is getting into their late 20s now, but for someone like me who is even older, it is still a pretty grating expression). And yeah it's definitely associated more with women than men as well (and probably at least somewhat regional too)

I started using "welkies" instead of "You're Welcome" and people generally know what I mean, even when I slip up and say it to people outside my circle.

Something interesting that i've noticed with "new" slang especially on stuff like twitter and memes (short text based formats) is that the pattern of the language itself, known subconsciously and intuitively but not really explicitly, IS the joke often time. Part of the joke is that they know how your head will read something and interpret it, even thought its a new, made up word or term of slang. Often i think this "totes adorbs" was used first ironically in this way, as parody in-joke of people who landed upon a linguistic funny way of shortening something that was still understandable as the full word. current example might be "im eepy" and it's used ironically, but to the outside observer who never see's the original joke it's riffing on etc. it's viewed earnestly, and when the meme is used enough times (or just once by someone "cringe" and old enough) the ironic use mostly dies, while the "earnest" use is all that remains.

@XGD5layer

8 ай бұрын

It's a type of code switching and it can serve many purposes. Unexpectedly "switching your code of choice" is indeed how "it gets to people" as a joke. Of course, code switching can serve many other purposes.

@kaitlyn__L

7 ай бұрын

Sleeby and eeby and espy are totally valid and I've been doing them for over a decade. It was honestly kind of funny to suddenly see a whole host of other people saying things that for years I'd been saying to give friends a little word game.

On spelling: just last night I saw an episode of Our Flag Means Death where "usual" got trunc'd, and the subtitles went with "uszh"

In my phonology class we had to derive the rules for truncating course / major names at university (in the US): anthro, ling, sosh, trig, calc, phys ed, (etc) but no truncation for history or English (etc). Bottom line: truncation is really common in university settings and tots defs serves as an in-group marker. Side note: one Canadian student explained that it had to be 'maths' and not 'math'.

Fantastic explanation, and I really appreciated the multiple times and ways you rephrased "it's linguistically neutral, people hate it because of misogyny." I'd love to see a kiki/bouba video, and even more so if you could throw in the queer English meaning of kiki

“Low open vowels like a are based” is easily the best thing I’ve heard in the second half of today.

Most of the viewers probably already know it, but for those who haven't yet dived deeper into phonetics-tube, Geoff Lindsey made a great video about vocal fry/creaky voice a few weeks ago. Worth a watch.

@languagejones6784

8 ай бұрын

That’s a great video!

Thank you for defending this kind of speech! I know growing up I was always discouraged from "sounding like a baby" to the point where I almost did it as a way to rebel, or at least get my parents to cringe. Nowadays I'll truncate words just to get a giggle out of people. It probably sounds dumb to some, but oh well 🙃

"Grokked" - thanks for the Heinlein reference!

This is on a whole nother level

Japanese uses truncations all the time for words of foreign origin (I hesitate to call them loan words, because a lot of the time they've been transformed so much they're barely recognisable). Famicon - family computer, wapuro - word processor, conbini - convenience store, sutaba - starbucks, digicam - digital camera, and of course anime. This also happens for Japanese origin words (less frequently) like Kyodai and Tōdai - Kyoto/Tokyo Daigaku (Kyoto/Tokyo University), or keitai - keitaidenwa (lit. portable telephone).

@cacogenicist

8 ай бұрын

Hmm. Not sure if it makes any difference that those alterations are driven by the rather extreme difference in phonotactics between those languages.

@owenbennett1708

8 ай бұрын

@@cacogenicist I think it's certainly a part of it, but I also think there is a cultural component, since it also occurs with Japanese words, and words that are almost the same in Japanese as English (for example camera). Whether the driver is anything similar to totes adorbs truncs, I could not say however!

@stevenglowacki8576

8 ай бұрын

You missed my favorite "rimokon". I remember reading that a Japanese person used this with someone that spoke only English and assumed that it was an English word because it came from English. But no one contracts "remote control" in that way in English.

@dynamicworlds1

7 ай бұрын

Japan uses truncations often where English would use acronyms because even their simplest alphabet codes for whole syllables, not parts of syllables like the one we use. (Not sure if alphabet is the right word, technically, but my meaning is clear enough I hope)

My favroite lunch is sandos with a side of taters in mater sauce with nanners for dessert. The creaky voice thing being stigmatized is interesting to me. In Vietnamese (the Northern/Ha Noi dialect), it's a feature of two of the tones "nga" and "nang". It's how we tell them apart from the tones "sac" and "huyen" For truncated "casual" I would spell it "cazh". For "jealous" I would spell it "jell" instead of "jeal"

A fun one from outside of English: the suffix -oosh that appears nowadays in Israeli Hebrew "girl-speech." It can be used to add cuteness to any word, even non-nouns eg "Hi-oosh", meaning a cute hello. I have to say, this video reminded me why I fell in love with linguistics as a teenager: It's a well placed Well Actually to the face of the stuffy prescriptivists. Good one!

I listened to a grad student's presentation about an experiment with children of different ages to see if they would identify the same things as kiki or bouba. It's fun hearing some of the linguistic things I heard in developmental psychology talks on here. 😊

@LucTaylor

8 ай бұрын

Maybe it's cuz I'm autistic or in QA, but I struggle with the kiki bouba thing... I guess "bouba" sounds fatter, but it's not as 'obvious' to me as it is to other people.

@KaiHenningsen

8 ай бұрын

@@LucTaylorOh, is that what it is? I'd probably identify China as kiki for purely linguistic reasons, and be like 'I've no idea' otherwise. I don't "feel" any implied meaning there.

@KaiHenningsen

8 ай бұрын

Also, I have an aversion to answering questions to which I don't see a meaningful answer, like "what is your favorite color" (don't have one).

@LilitheAmara

8 ай бұрын

@@LucTaylor Yeah, that makes total sense! It's almost like a sinesthetic quality that is being used for this experiment. K is a sharper sound which people tend to assign to things that are sharp/ pointy or thin like "Kite". B sounds more rounded which tends to make people think of round things like "bubble". At least this is how my brain assessed these things. 😅

4:14 That rickroll was totes legit.

@Muhahahahaz

8 ай бұрын

He got me too 💀

I have huge amounts of respect for you. Love what you do here, keep making great content!

I definitely want a video on kiki/bouba. This sounds supes cray-cray. I'm sure it'll totes splode muh brain.

I'm surprised that you didn't mention how universal truncation is in French and how it tends to even be perceived as a bit masculine.

My comments rarely contain insight of any use, but the algorithm registers them as "engagement" ... my work here is done!

This is common in medical jargon (subcu for subcutaneous). People are especially tempted to abbreviate those super long drug names but it’s discouraged as it can lead to medication errors

Mirage, montage, collage Might be a pattern there

@languagejones6784

8 ай бұрын

Good point. Loan words from French with the -age morpheme. Bricolage. While we’re at it, Italian Solfège!

quite an interesting one! 🤩my mother tongue is czech, and in it, truncations are more part of the childlang, kind of a slang to differ from adults. it has different forms over time (when i was a kid it was definitely different from the today's version) and mostly dies after 18. some words do survive, like "večeře" > "véča", "pyžamo" > "pýžo", some do not (cos 😉they have no actual role later in life) like "přírodopis" > "příraz", "český jazyk" > "čenina", "anglický jazyk" > "anglina". young women (i won't say girls, but really young mums) do more tend to use diminutives (special slavonic obsession in word formation, we have tons of suffices to create diminutives, even from verbs "děťátečko plačínkalo na polštáříčku" (have fun to translate it in english), more fun, these suffices are additive! "dítě" (kid) > "děťátko" or "dítko" > "děťátečko" or "dítečko" > "děťulínko" ad infinitum naseamque). translator of "mechanical orange" used this tool to translate specifically british (?) expressions like "itsy witsy bitsy bit of baby" to "roztomiloučký pičičánkový chytroušenký miminko". and yes, i would like to see a vid about kiki/bouba effect, sound symbolism and phonaesthetics/phonaesthemics! it is my long-term linguistic interest, i even tried to do some experimental work in the field.

First line of the ad I got with this: "Fancy something delish?". I laughed; it's like the algorithm knew!

Responding to 5:56 - massage, barrage, visage, mirage, homage, camouflage, collage, sabotage, montage, entourage

I would spell cazh with the ʒ sound spelled with a zh as a logical extension of how the unvoiced equivalent is typically spelled sh, and z makes the voiced equivalent of s. Of course, this isn't how any previously accepted spellings of English words withe the ʒ sound write it, but putting a g, j, or s there isn't going to convey to a reader as cleanly what sound it is. Wiktionary seems to agree, with alternate spellings caszh, cas, kasj, and kazh listed.

@tim1724

8 ай бұрын

Agreed. It's probably the most unambiguous spelling despite not being used in any actual words.

As to Baby Talk, it's something everybody wants to use. It's used for Babies, Pets, Plants, pretty much anything that won't tell you to use "Grown-up" words.

@ItsAsparageese

8 ай бұрын

My adorbs puppos agree with this and send snugs

I'd love a video on the Kiki-Bouba effect, especially how it's applied to things outside the original experiment graphics. The linguistic knowledge that is built into our brains is always a fascinating topic. Cool to see what we can all do with language features that come stock with the human brain. Great videos, keep them coming :D

So I’m a middle aged English speaking white dude, and I just stumbled on your channel and found this one really thought provoking. Made me think about my likes and dislikes of what I’d call “slang” used in certain circles/age groups and I never realised the gender bias going on. Makes perfect sense to me, thanks. I’ll be more mindful about how I react to it for sure (I’m pretty relaxed about it general, but “totes” was defo a word that gave me the igits) Speaking of defo and igits, now I’m going to see if you’ve done any videos on Australian slang and where the hell igit (so) came from (I’m from NZ originally and I think I picked that up from my mum).

@MeppyMan

5 ай бұрын

Oh and I’m often arguing with my mum about language and grammar being dynamic, and that it’s always been that way. She’s in her 80s and gets upset when people are either lazy with their grammar (which in all fairness in some cases can cause confusion) or just using modern terms and language that she didn’t grow up using.

This video immediately reminds me of the argument on Dear Hank and John about how to spell the truncated version of 'as per usual' (my vote is for youzh). I'm glad that it vindicates it as a totes legit expresh, but we seem to be no closer to a consensus on how to spell it!

I find it linguistically interesting how much it bothered me that you said "kiki-bouba" instead of "bouba-kiki" lol. Not just because my expectation being subverted caused dissonance, but more significantly, since i was a kid and had friends who were siblings, ive found it interesting that paired names (or any paired words for that matter) often seem to have an intrisic auditorily pleasant and correct order. The fact that i just experienced that with "bouba-kiki" which is itself the most famous experiment about whether words have intrisic phonetic vibes felt significant to me

i am not very comfortable with the implication that being misogynistic is the only reason you'd find this annoying, even though its totes a common reason.

Hi Dr. Jones! Really love your content. Could you make a video about using singular vs plural verbs for collective nouns? In my experience, something like "my family is" vs "my family are" seems to vary depending on region. I (SE USA) say the former but I've heard people from England say the latter.

@SlimThrull

8 ай бұрын

I'm very curious about this, too. Incidentally, I use "is" and am in NY.

@Starkiller935

8 ай бұрын

I'm pretty sure we learned in school that British English uses plural like "the team are", or "the police are" and American English uses singular. I'm not a native speaker but I use the singular, that's how it is my language so it makes sense.

@emilyrln

8 ай бұрын

@@Starkiller935interesting! I (an Oregonian) would say "the team is" but "the police are," and I have no idea why except that it sounds right 😂

@ansatsusha8660

7 ай бұрын

​@@emilyrlnI think thats because the plural of police is still police, maybe?

@emilyrln

7 ай бұрын

@@ansatsusha8660that could very well be! Honestly, I don't really ever think of singular police XD just "a police officer," where "police" acts as an adjective. It's never "a police" or "one police" in my head lol

LJ, this is such a great video. Loved every second of it. I took IPA and linguistics at Carnegie Mellon, and I'm now learning German, so your channel is especially fun for me to watch. Please keep doing these!

One of my favourite videos so far!

P. G. Wodehouse has Bertie Wooster using lots of adorbs truncations in the Jeeves and Wooster stories and novels.

Loved this. Thank you.

@languagejones6784

8 ай бұрын

You are so welcome!

These videos have become my new sanctuary. I miss studding linguistics so much, and I cannot wait to go back to get a PhD in it as well (though I will admit i am really interested in morphology and syntax, especially its evolution). So, thank you for these videos. They're fantasticly entertaining and informative, and make me miss being around linguists so much. Especially when my FIL (boomer) tries to "talk" to me about such things involving language (specifically zoomer language).

language daddy

Interesting! I'm australian and I've been curious about whether there are patterns to our slang that shortens words and adds -o -a or -ie/-y. Servo, mozzie, arvo, sanga, bikkie, maccas, footy etc. E.g. how does the vowel at the end get chosen and why do we change the 'stem' sometimes too?

@Carl-md8pc

2 ай бұрын

it seems there is a lot of vowel harmony (think of Magyar or Finnish). Not end with, u, er, eh vowel sounds so these become o (e.g., servo, rego) or ie (e.g., mozzie, breakkie. Compare with 'Gazza' and 'yakka').

I'd love to see what you have to say about what I'll call "meme spellings". Smol instead of small when something is both small and cute (eg a puppy), wat instead of what when one is nonplussed, etc. (Apologies if this is something you have covered and I just haven't found it yet.)

@languagejones6784

8 ай бұрын

Haven’t covered it - great idea!

@kaitlyn__L

7 ай бұрын

I'm also reminded of how a lot of versions of Scots will have "wit" (it's basically "what" with a schwa instead of an a, so spelt with an i so it's not just wat). IE "Wit'd'ja dae that fr?"

So many layers to this video; amazing

I am so happy that the algorithm showed me your videos last month! Fantastic video.

God I love this channel

An entire video devoted to bouba-kiki with an addendum vid with just you listing out your personal bouba-Kiki’s (no intro, outro, or other content) would be much appreciated. Also, it’s spelt “cazh” or “caszh”, no further explanation needed

@DawnDavidson

8 ай бұрын

Yes, I’d probably go with cazh, though nothing really looks right. Caszh? Casjh? Cazs, after Zsa Zsa Gabor, maybe? English doesn’t really have a simple way to represent that sound as a terminal. It’s kinda weird when I think about it! When I think of “totes adorbs” I think of my stepdaughter, who was the first one to say it in my hearing that I remember. She was probably in her late teens at the time, so, prior to 2004.

@ClementinesmWTF

8 ай бұрын

@@DawnDavidson that’s the only part that’s awkward for me, but it does word well with other languages and transliterations. “Zh” already works as the English transliteration for the sound, so might as well officially adopting in at least one word. If we really push it to be integrated with the “s” that’s used in the spelling, then “szh” is fine as well, which is why I accept either.

In the context of video games, I see it spelled cas. Out of that context, I'd probably spell it caʒ, because everything else looks wrong. I read casj as [kæzdʒ], cas as [kæz] and cazh as [käz].

@razzle_dazzle

8 ай бұрын

"Caʒ" would only be understood in linguistics circles though, no?

@pozatat

8 ай бұрын

@@razzle_dazzle and looking up the unicode is decidedly not ca3.

This channel is so awesome!

I don't know what to call a tweet these days, but everyone is X-ing that question.

spelling “cas” (that’s how i’ve seen it written) is really difficult. i’ve been having similar issues with “unfort” because adding the contextual ch to the end looks weird

@Starkiller935

8 ай бұрын

cazh? 😅

You could do a vid on the Australian particularly high propensity to shorten words and put -o, -ie, -y and -a at the end. Arvo, servo, devo, ambo, postie, pokies, rellie, mozzie, chippy, sparky, Bazza, Gazza, Shazza, etc.

There are lots of -zh French loan words in English! Beyond your garage and rouge, we have barrage, camouflage, arbitrage, sabotage, decoupage, etc.

I'm a fan of the "zh" for "as per uzh", "unuzh but cazh about it", et cetera. Also another example word, a "zhuzzh" (the "u" sound here is roughly like the one in "push") is when you, like, take your hair out of a towel or out of a bun and give it a not-quite-shaking-not-quite-combing-it's-only-describable-as-a-zhuzzh with your hands (most people who've watched anything about hair care and especially curly hair care will know what I mean lol) or, like, you zhuzzh the kitchen when you don't exactly do specific named-chores in such a complete/deliberate way that it merits naming them, but rather you like condense a few things and neaten up a few things and lightly wipe the convenient parts of the surface, stuff like that.

@Raveler1

8 ай бұрын

I also like the zh, but I think the vowel problem in "unuzh" (that u is being used twice for two different phonemes) would suggest a spelling of "unyuzh". Cazh makes perfect sense. As for the other word, I've mentally spelt it "zuhzh," but it's definitely one I hear more than see written.

@ItsAsparageese

8 ай бұрын

@@Raveler1 I can see the argument for "unyuzh" but, like, we don't have that problem with the original word "unusual" or loads of other words where vowels have different character from syllable to syllable, so to me it doesn't stand out in this case. :P That said, something in me also wants to argue for consonant consistency in the "zhuzzh/zuhzh" example, because to me a "z" ain't a "zh" without the "h" lol. So I guess I have two completely conflicting opinions about this when it comes to vowels vs consonants and I have to question the logical consistency of my entire life now XD

@Raveler1

8 ай бұрын

@@ItsAsparageeseIt occurs to me that there's probably a bit of pronunciation differences with zhuzzh vs zuhzh - I've heard both, but prefer to say it with a difference in the consonant, which I represented in the text. As for unusual - yeah, we're used to pronouncing that word that way, since "usual" is a word with a first-letter vowel, and "un-" is a prefix attached to it, that also is a first-letter vowel, yet is pronounced differently. Darn you English! You've reminded me of a good joke, though - "How do you tell the difference between a school teacher and a chemist? Ask them to pronounce "unionized""

@ItsAsparageese

8 ай бұрын

@@Raveler1 Haaaaa that's fabulous, stealing XD And how funny, I've never heard the "zuhzh" pronunciation variant! Makes sense you'd want the spelling to match it, then, lol

To add on to Garage and Rouge, I'd like to introduce "Pleasure" and "Measure".

@languagejones6784

8 ай бұрын

Yes! But only word finally when truncated like this

@4thwatch370

8 ай бұрын

Treasure is also in that vein, but more similar to garage and rouge are lavage, barrage, triage, and massage.

The וש suffix in Hebrew is indeed quite new when you connected to regular every day words such as היוש, ביוש, and other words which coincidentally are not really Hebrew. But using this suffix at the end of given names in order to express affection is not new at all relatively speaking. People were doing that 40 or 50 years ago, and perhaps even earlier, and it wasn't just young women. Of course there are names that naturally fitness pattern And names that do not. But I remember even decades to go, my sister תמי being called תמוש. Again, this was the case for both male and female names and was used by both males and females.

5:40 Other examples (#NormanConquest) are beige, triage, arbitrage, dressage, liege, and the Frenchier pronunciation of "homage". If we jump outside the dictionary, a recent addition would be the Kia Sportage.

Great video! In Dutch there's a similar thing, mostly done by college students. Abbreviations, or Afkorting in Dutch is used a lot, from vriendinnen - dinnies, korte bon - kabo which is literally the short receipt at a self check out, and sentences to say something is great with already a made up word, heerlijk de peerlijk- heerlie de peerlie or even ' h de p'. Even Abbreviations have become abbreviated, afkorting becomes afko

Awesome video. I love topics like this since they're pretty relevant for me. I LOVE little word games like this. Me and my girlfriends speak to each almost entirely in a sort of "baby talk" and my close friend group have a sort of social game of coming up with on the fly shortenings or alterations of words.

Terrific! This is a presentation where an accurate written transcription of your presentation would actually provide significant value, I think. I know that I’d read it closely to find examples which illustrate your transformation rules, and examples which seemed to stretch or violate them. Modern French is also full of these, and I find it very interesting how they’re formed, and how they obey orthographic norms even when they don’t modify the pronunciation of the word, like “les ados.” I’m not sure that they follow the same transformation rules you’ve sketched out; I’ve never thought about it before. I don’t believe that there’s the same stink of misogyny in the French case; it’s more a matter of generational identity, I think, and of the potency associated with currency and modernity.

I think about kiki/bouba often. It's fun. I used to truncate words ironically and now I find truncating v amuse :)

The auto-generated captions are so confused so often in this video XD I hope you're adding regular captioning soon!

@languagejones6784

8 ай бұрын

Good call. I can add my script. Totally forgot to do it on this video!

@ItsAsparageese

8 ай бұрын

@@languagejones6784 It happens haha, I figured it was just some understandable delay since you usually have great captions and I think this is the soonest I've caught one of your videos after upload :) Glad to have reminded you! Thanks always for your fantastic work!

You mention congrats for congratulations having become is own word, and I would agree based on that, in my own speech, I tend to reduce it even further to simply grats. I realize it's not the same process as described (more so just an unstressed syllable in a common word becoming so unstressed that it ceases to be pronounced at all) but I find it accomplishes a similar effect.

I have to admit that I internally winced when you said “high rising terminal” at 1:44 since it had a hint of valley girl cadence to it. Perhaps I’m overthinking it based on the subject matter. Thanks for another entertaining video!

@languagejones6784

8 ай бұрын

That was me applying high rising terminal TO “high rising terminal”

My favorite one recently uses the final sound of "ch" instead of "sh"/"zh": "gender neutral" -> "gendy nooch"

Eye cream took me out oh my god. 🤣🤣🤣 I am coming to this video from the perspective of a non-native speaker and totes adorbs is my jam. 😅 That one in particular is the one i use unironically but I'm highly unfamiliar with many of the others. This was an absolutely amazing video, insightful and entertaining in equal measure. Thank you.

@Chocomint_Queen

8 ай бұрын

I'm pretty sure he said egg cream! It's an American drink made of sparkling water, milk, chocolate syrup, and maybe sprinkles. (And notably, no cream, and no eggs.)

The default suffix for these in Icelandic is -ó, just like lotto for lottery. So your 'gagnfræðaskóli' becomes 'gaggó', 'saumaklúbbur' becomes 'saumó', and 'róluvöllur' becomes 'róló'. As a child I assumed all words ending with -ó were truncations, and I could never work out what 'bingo' was short for.

Totes absorb

I'll be honest, I think the animosity against the phrase "totes legit" or "totes adorbs" comes less from truncation and more from the animosity of the kind of speech where people use "totally" and "adorable" unpalatably often

I was trying to think how truncations work in Italian, but I simply can’t think of any one used in common speech. So I guess we don’t have them, and I wonder if that’s because of the syllabic isometry (I don’t know if that’s how you say it in English…) that would make them sound bad. In fact, we do abbreviate names to show affection, but the abbreviations almost always end in a vowel. Instead, affective palatalization works the same!

"Congrats" threw me for a loop at the end, because the primarily stressed syllable (-LATIons) is chopped off. Might another explanation for where to truncate the word be: at which point it becomes clear which word you mean (or at least within the same lexical field)? Like congrat- can only be congratulation/-ulatory/-ulate etc, so that's where the coda comes? Seems similar to me for "adorb-". My gut reaction for incontrovertible would be "incontro"...

@Muhahahahaz

8 ай бұрын

There’s also emphasis on “grat”, if you say the “full” word (pre that 1982 thingy he was talking about, I forget the term he used… Like how we don’t fully say “comfortable”) Probably “lat” is/was the secondary emphasis

Where do I go to learn the IPA? The symbols are mostly meaningless to me and the text descriptions contain too many technical words for me to gain a proper understanding.

@languagejones6784

8 ай бұрын

I have an explainer coming very soon. This is probably the most common question. Planning on having it out in a short series over the next couple of months.

@oscarfernandes4364

8 ай бұрын

I wish they'd add it to duolingo

@parabolicisometry

8 ай бұрын

two apps I use are ipa tts and av phonetics

@soranuareane

8 ай бұрын

@@languagejones6784 Thank you!!

@oscarfernandes4364

7 ай бұрын

@@parabolicisometry I downloaded av phonetics, its great!

In Australia, everyone does rising termination and we turn so many words into a sort of diminutive of a truncation

@xurtis

8 ай бұрын

The suffix defaults to a stressed e or y and maybe made plural. Costume -> cozzies, barbecue -> barbie. If it had originated here, I’d expect toties rather than totes.

1. Yes on kiki/buba. 2. Would like a followup video discussing how this kind of truncation is thought about in British English. While "Ab Fab" might be reasonably (mis)attributed to "young" women's speech, the use of "mod cons" doesn't seem to be limited to a gender or age group, though that example might have crossed over into jargon territory. 3. I spent some years living in Europe in the 2000s. They were, and had been, texting a lot more than Americans. Part of that was because kids got cell phones in lieu of having regular access to landlines at home, or having a dedicated landline. This was especially true in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in rural areas where there hadn't been widespread installation of wired telephonic infrastructure, and it was competitive to put up cell towers. Given the same text length limitation, the earlier adoption of cell service meant a longer time with texting.

I absolutely loved this video. 👍👍👍👍👍👍

I love that these truncation just take a dump on the alphabet in a lot of cases. Some are very hard to read unless you know what it was truncated from

Great vid!

"Salient young woman."

The casual one is difficult. I once had to add a voice note to a snap just because I had no idea how to type it

I oscillate between using Truncations and not liking them, although I tend to find to many Truncations too close together increase the amount of irritation

An interesting followup might be a comparison with the rules for forming Australian diminutives, such as servo, smoko, ute, chockie, meths, kero, ambo, garbo, freshie, Newie, Melbs, Maccas, Salvos, etc. (Some have of course become common worldwide, e.g., selfie.)

Thanks for posting this! My one bit of feedback: please leave the text overlays on for a bit longer!

HOW DID I END UP HERE, SUBSCRIBED AND WITH NOTIFICATIONS ON 😂😂😂

Just curious about cycles. It seems like the 1910s/1920s had a bunch of truncations and then it slowed down a bit and then picked up again this century. Having them popular again now is part of my "we're replaying the first half of the 20th century" theory / night terror inducing fear. But at least this one is adorbs so...

@KevinLyda

8 ай бұрын

This is also a weird part of getting older where "the kids today" do things like your grandparents which is disconcerting on several levels. Do I act like my grandma's grandparents? Am I not even OG old person cool? Is that 9 year old going to take out her dentures and give me an update on her BMs? Augh!

@KevinLyda

8 ай бұрын

@@WhimsicalOneiricMoth lots of signs we might which is depressing.

Looking forward to when you add accurate captions for this video. (Auto-generated CC isn't cutting it.)

Shout out to Penny from "Happy Endings": EVERYONE LOVES MY ABBREVES!

Interesting, informative, and fun!

i genuinely think we'd be happier as a culture if more people let themselves talk like this more often

i like to spell the shortening of casual as 'caж', using the cyrillic letter for that particular consonant sound

Could you make a video on case and how it's probably mainly a IE-specific way of analysing grammar that gets applied by many non-linguists incorrectly to non-IE languages?

I think that some people pronounce Mod-Podge (a craft glue type thing name brand) with the same ending as garage and rouge.

"Productive" shortens to "preduc-duc" obvi

I'd spell it "cazh", as it is the voiced version of "cash". Looks weird in English, but maybe no less weird than the convention of transcribing the "Ach-Laut" from cyrillic as "kh". It is also the digraph that Albanian uses for that sound.

@Starkiller935

8 ай бұрын

That's how I'd write too. Seems like this way the largest amount of people would be able to pronounce it based on just the spelling. Isn't Chinese also transcribed with zh for this sound? Of course, everyone should actually be using our superior Czech "ž" 😂

Do you have any tips for asking native speakers more about which of truncations work in their language and organizing that information later? i'm specifically looking at different forms of bekimon, but i'm trying to think about where and when i should or should extrapolate these tips to my target languages bc im trying to understand which forms of change and truncation are allowed in different philippine languages and its still hard for me to read youtube comments in these languages (it will come in time im just a beginner)