it’s kinda cool how our generation has created actual tone in the way we write online. like whether we: write properly with perfect grammar, shrthnd everythin, use capitals to emphasise The Point, use extra letters or characters for emotion!!!!!, and much more – it means we can have casual conversations, effectively make jokes using things like sarcasm that’s usually hard to understand without context and much more. this “incorrect English” has really opened avenues of online conversation that isn’t accessible with “correct English” which is pretty interesting
My class and I literally taught some of the nuances of this to our english teacher, things such as the difference between “yes” and “yes.” or “..” and “…”. It makes perfect sense linguistically that we would create this complexity to ease communication in a medium without body language and tone, but what my teacher was really floored about was that none of this had ever “learned” it, we’re “native speakers” of a whole new type of english.
AU where ‘friend’ and ‘boyfriend’/‘girlfriend’ are the same word. imagine how confusing that would be! you would tell somebody about your ‘friend’ but they literally wouldn’t know what your relationship is because……..
oh wait sorry this isn’t an AU. German, I was talking about German. Imagine German.
Deliberate omission of grammar to show e.g. defeatedness, bewilderment, fury. As seen in Tumblr’s ‘what is this I don’t even’.
‘Because [noun]’. As in ‘we couldn’t have our picnic in the meadow because wasps.’
Use of kerning to indicate strong bewilderment, i.e. double-spaced letters usually denoting ‘what is happening?’ This one is really interesting because it doesn’t really translate well to speech. It’s something people have come up with that uses the medium of text over the internet as a new way of communicating instead of just a transcript of speech or a quicker way to send postal letters.
Just the general playing around with sentence structure and still being able to be understood. One of my favourites of these is the ‘subject: *verbs* / object: *is verb*’ couplet, as in:
Beekeeper: *keeps bees* Bees: *is keep*
or
Me: *holds puppy* Puppy: *is hold*
I just love how this all develops organically with no deciding body, and how we all understand and adapt to it.
These 3,000-year-old Egyptian
hieroglyphics may resemble planes,
helicopters, and UFOs, but experts
agree it’s just an effect caused by
erosion. The stone was once filled with
plaster and re-carved during the reign
of a new pharaoh. Over time, erosion
partly revealed both inscriptions, and
the overlapping hieroglyphs created
new shapes. SourceSource 2Source 3
It is in fact, super correct! Ramesses II was a notorious usurper of monuments, so what we see here is his deep re-carving of his father’s own temple. Ramesses II was a massive jerk who stole previous king’s stuff to make himself look like a master builder. What an asshole.
I think it’s better explained by this image:
The glyphs are a result of both erosion of the stone surface (evident elsewhere in the temple, because hey I’ve been and seen this for myself) and the process of filling in and re-carving the stone to replace some of the original hieroglyphics. The technical term for such a surface that has been written on more than once is a palimpsest. The inscription was modified at least once in antiquity, and perhaps twice. Some of the filling has fallen out in places where the older and the newer inscriptions overlap, and the result is unique and odd-looking.
The text is part of the titulary of Ramesses II and can be translated as “The one of the Two Ladies, who suppresses the nine foreign countries.” This replaces the royal titulary of Seti I that was originally carved into the stone. More technically, the actual “helicopter” seems to be a portion of the psDwt sign (pronounced peshdjewt and technically translated as “bows” referring to the weapons of foreigners, but also means ‘foreigners’) and the X3swt sign (pronounced ha-suit and translated as “lands”) on top of each other, with portions missing. An apparent change in scale also mucks things up.
This is my own photo of the glyphs, in situ. You can see the whole area is heavily damaged. This really isn’t unusual when it comes to carved hieroglyphs, as when a temple gets reused by an invading force, they tend to damage previous places of worship.
Here’s some deep recarving from Medinet Habu. How deep you ask?
Pigeons can fucking nest in them. That’s how deep.
Jewish nonbinary people are so strong and amazing and good for the world
Nonbinary Jews are ESPECIALLY strong in situations when there is a mechitza or other gender separator. Strong and beautiful.
Is it okay if I ask what a mechitza is please?
Hi @koiotchka,
A mechitza is a barrier that separates men from women in more traditional prayer spaces. Although many feminist Orthodox Jews feel that the mechitza empowers them, for many it is a symbol of the patriarchal system which lives in many more traditional forms of Judaism.
People are complaining about this headline. “Just call them Neo-Nazs” or whatever… But this is the best headline. It acknowledges there is a thing called the Alt-Right. This is something they identify with, this is something the readers will hear more as time goes on. It doesn’t try and hide that fact. But it makes it clear that they are neo-nazis. It puts it front and center. It scare quotes “alt-right”. It makes sure that when you, the reader, see Alt Right said by someone who doesn’t want you to think Nazi, you will still think Nazi.
You can’t stop horrible people from using this term. So if you try and act like Alt-Right is a term that doesn’t exist you just help conceal them.
I respectfully suggest that if you think calling enslaved people slaves denies their humanity it is you who has an ethics problem.
I DO think that referring to human beings as “slaves”, especially the way it’s done in most history writing, is dehumanizing and should be changed. When I’m writing, I don’t use that kind of language. They way that information is presented has a profound effect on the way it’s received. I agree with the person asking the question-that’s not even the question.
I’m talking about quoted text-changing someone else’s words when I post them here. And I’m not refusing to change it-I’m asking if anyone knows a way to do it without causing confusion and difficulty in finding the original source for the information.
Here’s an example. This painting’s title is “The Captive Slave”:
If I literally just google “The Captive Slave”, here’s what I get:
Look ^^ Now I know the artist, the year, the dimensions and where it was made before I’ve even clicked anything.
Googling “The Enslaved Man” does this:
The best part? This man is not enslaved. He’s Ira Aldridge, posing for an Abolitionist painting that would be shown along with this poem in The Royal Academy of Arts Salon in London in 1827:
I assume you mean this post? I noticed a few problems with it and it’s been sitting in my drafts for a while, but I posted it because I think it’s a story that people should be very interested in, but I haven’t had the time to go *really* digging on my own (and I’m posting in hopes someone else will).
The text you’re referring to aren’t my words; they are quoted text (from here: written by Donal Fallon), which I usually will not change except to censor slurs. This is an issue that is sort of constantly ambient in this work, and I try to engage with as responsibly as I can. I’d definitely like feedback from people affected by this kind of language, as always.
It’s also relevant when it comes to artwork information and titles as they’re organized by museums, because this language is a problem, but at the same time people need to be able to find the artwork and information about it they’re looking for. The same goes for quoting from sources; a lot of the time I’m citing racist works from the 1700s and 1800s, and try my best to deal with curating this information as responsibly as I can-which includes listening and learning.
If anyone has some tips as to a working solution for this problem, I’d love to know about it.
The way information is presented and the way words are attached to people and/or/versus objects is CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT.
This is my challenge: the find a way to express incredibly complex ideas in as brief and accessible a manner as I can manage, in a format that is quick to share with other people. Additionally, to find a way to do so that is as ethically responsible as I know how, and to reach out to as many people as possible in order to make that happen.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 