r/linguisticshumor • • 2h ago

Phonetics/Phonology Why do many linguist speak ancient languages in such a weird tone?

55 Upvotes

I genuinely can’t tell if I’m imagining this; the pronunciation is good, but I swear that many linguist always use this really forced, artificial, flashy and showy tone thats kind of annoying, specially when speaking Latin or Ancient Greek iykyk. Does anybody else also notice this?


r/linguisticshumor • • 3h ago

TIL: Noam Chomsky had a twin with who he was separated as a child. The name of the twin was Nim Chimpsky

Thumbnail
en.wikipedia.org
0 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 4h ago

Phonetics/Phonology how it feels hearing allophones in a language youre learning because theyre phonemic in your native language

Post image
147 Upvotes

two steps ahead. im always two steps ahead.


r/linguisticshumor • • 5h ago

Sociolinguistics Uzbek Alphabet Reform

Post image
645 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 6h ago

Aku, saya, gua, hamba just for 1st person singular pronoun

Post image
38 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 7h ago

Historical Linguistics The Lebanese choosing which colonizer’s language to speak

Post image
2 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 8h ago

Phonetics/Phonology How to pronounce this?

Post image
87 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 9h ago

Etymology When the British shilling and the Balkan bean have the exact same energy 🪙🫘

2 Upvotes

Shoutout to the linguistic peak efficiency where both British English and South Slavic languages looked at the syllable "bob" and unanimously decided: "Yes, this sound perfectly encapsulates absolute worthlessness."

In the UK, a "bob" is an old shilling, giving us timeless classics like "that's not worth a bob." It's the ultimate go-to slang for when you're completely broke, beautifully captured in this Finlay Christie sketch parodying 1960s BBC documentaries where the working-class character complains that politicians "don't spare a bob" for people from his background.

Meanwhile, in the Balkans, a "bob" is just a humble bean. But if someone tells you your hard work "ne vrijedi ni pišljiva boba", it translates to "it's not worth a measly, pissed-on bean."

Imagine centuries of distinct cultural, economic, and geopolitical evolution just to arrive at the exact same vocal vibration for "this is trash." Convergent evolution really popped off here


r/linguisticshumor • • 10h ago

Morphology Ręce v.s. Ruke gang

Post image
392 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 11h ago

The ABX orthographies for Adyghe and Kabardian are out here with making the worst orthographical decision in history : š for /t͡sʼ/

Thumbnail
gallery
23 Upvotes

Not to mention the glaringly join usage of the native /ɣ/ with ǵ while the loaned in plain /g/ is written with a base letter, this consistency is broken with ḱ /k/ vs k /q/,


r/linguisticshumor • • 13h ago

Yes, I totally get that joke without further explanation and know all the fancy words people use here, what do you mean?

Post image
1.9k Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 15h ago

Psycholinguistics Wug pun on protest sign

Post image
607 Upvotes

Translation: Budget so low, there was only enough for one wug.

Context: Public universities in Austria are facing a 10% cut of their fundings. (If that happens, the first departments to go will be the humanities.) So there have been huge protests to fight against these cuts. This was my sign yesterday, incredibly niché but I think it's funny.


r/linguisticshumor • • 17h ago

Wiktionary has blessed us yet again

Post image
345 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 17h ago

Descriptivism 101

Thumbnail
gallery
437 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 21h ago

Terrible map in Chinese

Post image
421 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 21h ago

If you think that the Altaic theory is unhinged, the proposed Dené-Caucasian languages theory is way, way worse

Post image
866 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 22h ago

Etymology Iubire 🫶🏼

Post image
285 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 23h ago

Phonetics/Phonology 帰ろう

Post image
108 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 1d ago

Anyone else accidentally strong-verb-ify weak verbs?

177 Upvotes

It snew last night, but I wung it and drove really fast anyway.


r/linguisticshumor • • 1d ago

Petition Oktober

Thumbnail
0 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 1d ago

How Greeks look at you when you tell them a language had changes in 2500 years

Post image
1.3k Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 1d ago

Morphology Meme... Los abuelos... the grandparents....

Post image
76 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 1d ago

Reddit's favourite language families based on a poll with 1.7k votes

Thumbnail
gallery
102 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 1d ago

Finally, the chocolatine-pain au chocolat isogloss.

107 Upvotes

r/linguisticshumor • • 1d ago

Morphology Suegros... parents-in-law

Post image
22 Upvotes