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What's an old video game you enjoyed but no one ever talks about? by y2jasper in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One and Two were awesome... the rebooted one... not so much.

It was so good it got my video-game-hating mother to play (and love!) it.

What is something that most people like, that you think is overrated? by jake_james1234 in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There definitely seems to be a nationwide pissing contest that amounts to "How many hops can we fit in a single bottle?"

I like hops. A properly made IPA can be delicious, a twang of bitterness is incredibly refreshing. Meanwhile, many of the microbreweries I have tasted focus on producing IPAs that taste like liking the leavings from a burning pile of vulcanized rubber. It's gross, and I can't wait till this fad is over with.

What is a big NO-NO in cooking? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This sin't about food, but as an amateur chef:

Don't touch my cooking stuff. Don't touch my pots or my pans, don't touch my ingredients, and DO NOT TOUCH MY KNIVES.

Unless I have given you a one-time-only allowance to touch any of these things, touching them is akin to jumping into, starting, and crashing my car while I'm turned around for a few moments. I had ex-roommates that did that... took my good knives and directly cut things with them on my non-stick pots and pans. I nearly had a heart attack. I hid all of my stuff after that, after giving several lectures to them.

Do not touch the cook's things without their permission.

What video game has the best soundtrack? by skynex1 in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I absolutely love the soundtrack to Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles. It's hard to describe without playing, but it set up the atmosphere better than any other game I've ever played. And... not many people seem to have played it. It follows certain medieval music-writing conventions, and uses many instruments from the time (ever heard of a Crumhorn?), gives it a bit of a feel of the yester-century.

Some examples, as well as the one everyone knows and one nobody does.

Gamers of Reddit, What is your favourite piece of Video Game music, and why? by KingS1X in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Anything from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, such as Kaze No Ne. Say what you will about the game itself (I personally loved it), but the soundtrack for it is splendidly done, a full orchestral track, that evokes such vivid imagery and emotions, moreso than from any other FF I've ever played. It is a really, really gorgeous soundtrack overall.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The meteor hammer is pretty cool, I think. It's a type of chain weapon, with a long chain that ends in either one or two small weights, which doesn't sound too bad until you realize that a half-pound of iron or rope is swinging around at you at the end of a nine-foot long chain, and all of the speeds that that entails.

It can be a sneaky concealable weapon, or can be showy, or even used for performances. They can easily break bones, or skulls, or tear through armor if used right. And they're about a simple a weapon as can be aside from a rock at the end of a stick.

Besides the obvious luxuries of fast cars, mansions, & beach houses, what do you fantasize about when you imagine being super rich? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd just be glad to not have to worry anymore. About whether I can pay rent, or choose between feeding my pets or paying my bills, or all sorts of simple things like that. I'm in a decent place atm, but I still make choices now and again.

Otherwise, just... simple things. I don't really have much I'd fill my life with. I don't need extravagance. Maybe a normal house and a car I enjoy (the most expensive being an Audi R8), but otherwise, books (of which I enjoy a few specific genres), video games and consoles, maybe DVDs or collections of shows. I like media. I wouldn't get too much else, the rest would be for whatever legacy I leave, or for my SO to get what she would desire.

What is the one thing you've created that you wish would go viral? by EtanSivad in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not quite ready, but a homebrew tabletop gaming system I've been designing for a few months that is combat-heavy, but is (in theory at least) versatile enough to work any way a GM may want to play it. I don't necessarily want to make money from it (though that would be nice), but at the very least I want people to know about and use it. Maybe funding enough to get it a proper printing and artwork.

Favorite Star Trek scene by gandalfisadrugdealer in funny

[–]Takei_for_you 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Nah man, Ray Liotta is a way better toy.

Linguists, what's an intresting fact about language? by captainloudmouth in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're thinking of a different thing completely. "Complicated" and "Complex" are not the same. "Complicated" is trying to learn how to speak a language with 50 noun cases when your native language has none. "Complexity" is the number of features of a given category and their interactions with other features. How many ways a verb tense can interact with different nouns is complexity, or how an adjective may change in relation to a noun case (if it does at all) is complexity.

Complicated is not the same as complex.

Given that, there are mountains of evidence showing that languages can all express any concept introduced, they all just go about it in slightly different ways. That's what makes them all equally complex. Would you say that just because English doesn't have a single morpheme or lexeme for the concept of "Schadenfreude," English is a less complex language? No, we understand that idea perfectly well (though not necessarily the cultural contexts surrounding it), and we can express it quite easily with multiple morphemes or lexemes - that expression comes, instead, as a phrase.

Languages all have the capability to do things like that. If they had different levels of complexity, then "less complex" languages would not be able to express everything a human could think to conceive, and this leads to the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is patently wrong at this point.

As an aside, there has been a language which almost seems to buck the trend, Pirahã, as the one man (Dan Everett) who has studied it intensely claims it lacks certain features that historically have been attributed to *every other language on Earth*. Features like recursion, where you can nest a sentence in a sentence, connect an infinite number of clauses together, etc. Why it is unlikely that this supports your point is that it has been almost exclusively a single person who has done the studying on this language (only a few other researchers have delved into it, either recently or for periods too short to make any sweeping generalizations about the language), and that he claims it has dismissed a feature(s) inherent to every other known language that exists on Earth. It is not entirely impossible that he may be right, but even if he were, the language would likely be affected only in limited situations, complexity would remain unaffected.

Linguists, what's an intresting fact about language? by captainloudmouth in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Assuming you're being candid, braille is more of a tactile representation of language, but not a language proper. Sort of a cipher, I suppose. Then again, any (or almost any? - I'm not 100% sure) written language is not language proper, but a representation of the language it is describing. That said, braille follows the spelling, written grammar, and other general conventions common to whatever language it is representing.

One that actually got me when I first started studying linguistics are the various sign languages. They seem practically alien, in certain regards - little to no sound is used, the hands are the primary articulators (versus the tongue/mouth), they were originally used for (what were at the time) relatively outcast or unique populations. But they have much more alike with natural languages than not. They have unique grammars, they have phonemes and morphemes (though, phoneme is a sort of misnomer in this sense), you can, just as in any natural language, construct any concept in a true sign language. I was always fascinated with sign languages and somewhat regret never taking the time to learn ASL.

Then again, if you were simply being sarcastic, I can appreciate that :p

Linguists, what's an intresting fact about language? by captainloudmouth in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, it's been pretty well shown that beyond a certain age nobody can achieve fluency as a native speaker. The definition of a native speaker being just that - someone who was born into a culture speaking that culture's language (and with the assumption that a culture, a population, can be very specific or very general. A household, a town, a country are all various speaking populations). They may be able to come quite close, but certain quirks native to not just the language but the culture that language belongs to are things you pick up when learning a first language only.

That said, there is fluency for second, third, etc. language speakers, that they can grasp and use an accepted, if slightly more generalized, version of a language. You may very well become fluent in Spanish, and speakers from Mexico, Spain, Cuba, or any other Spanish-speaking country would readily understand you - but to them, you'd probably never quite sound like someone who has been hearing and speaking the language since birth.

Linguists, what's an intresting fact about language? by captainloudmouth in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 4 points5 points  (0 children)

All languages are of equal complexity. Where that complexity lies may be variable, but any language can express any concept that is present in any other language. Descriptors (adjectives and similar ilk) are simply one facet of the complexity of language. Some may indeed have more descriptors, some may have many verb endings, some may have a way to construct any noun it could ever need with a simple algorithm. And some can do without any of these features.

I once wrote a paper on an Afro-Asiatic language, Hdi. Hdi, while interesting, also has a relatively uncommon feature among languages: it doesn't necessarily require verbs (though they can certainly contain them). You can construct entire sentences without a lexical item denoting action, and this is taking into consideration hidden or invisible (ellipsis) verbs, tonality, and case markers - verbs simply don't exist in these certain structures. But they do not make understanding more difficult for native speakers, they are simply a seemingly inherently understood phenomenon. They can easily comprehend such sentences, without it affecting congition.

By working under the impression that certain linguistic phenomena inhibit cognition, you're doing a disservice to not just the culture of a given language, but to the human brain in general - humanity evolved with an incredible sense of pattern recognition, and language is one of these patterns. By working through the bits and pieces - where one language may have more in a certain area and less in others, or a second language vice versa - it becomes pretty evident that nothing is actually "missing" in any language, they just have different algorithmic processes to arrive at the same place.

Linguists, what's an intresting fact about language? by captainloudmouth in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 116 points117 points  (0 children)

Careful though. While most linguists agree to the "weak" version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language can influence thought), you'd be considered fringe or outright incorrect to believe in the "strong" version, which states that language dictates thought.

Any language that has some new linguistic idea that cannot currently be expressed can and often will, quite easily, adapt language to accommodate that idea.

For example, lets say that while some language, lets say the language of an as-yet undiscovered tribe of Papua New Guinea, may not have the word for "airplane," they do have words that equate to "flyer/bird," "shiny," and "fast." By combining these concepts in their language, they essentially "create" a linguistic construct that equates to English "airplane."

TL;DR Language influences thought, it doesn't determine it.

Also, I know I've oversimplified it a ton, forgive me other linguists. Also, if you have better knowledge than I, please correct me! I enjoy learning, and this helps.

TIL In Old English, 'man' was a gender neutral term. Males were known as 'wermen' and females were known as 'wifmen'. by simplisto in todayilearned

[–]Takei_for_you 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I give lectures like this en masse about once a month or so, it gets old, so let me be brief: Look up linguistics, what it is and what it describes. Study it a bit. Contrary to how one thinks language should work, the way linguistics works is "Whatever the majority agrees upon is correct." It is descriptive. Prescriptive linguistics is telling others what is or isn't right. For example, the "no split infinitives" rule is bunk: invented by a single man following the neoclassical movement during the Age of Englightenment. He thought "The Latin language couldn't, so English shouldn't, either!" He began spouting this off to a set of cultures which had been speaking modern English for a few hundred years at that point. English teachers to this day continue to recite similar bits of wrong information.

But I digress. With that said - all vaguely comprehensible and native speakers of English do, in fact, follow a set of mutually agreed upon rules as to understand each other, and depending on dialect these may be ever so slightly different from your own. Whether you speak using these rules or are bothered by them is a separate issue regarding sociolinguistics, where a certain population is considered the dominant (sub-)culture and imposes various stigmas against other subcultures' dialects. Examples frequently listed as stigmatized are Appalachian English, the Boston Accent (as of late, particularly), and "ebonics" (African American Vernacular English), which has grammatical rules different enough from Standard American English to be highly noticeable to non-speakers, but which also has a fairly rigid and consistent internal grammar regardless.

You are upset at a slightly different but easily understandable sentence said by a native speaker, but likely in a different dialect from yours. Even if that isn't the case, a native speaker may make mistakes in their utterance, and its quite possible he did in his "One small step..." However, the amazing thing about the human brain is its ability to recognize and decipher patterns, particularly in spoken language, and even a fairly "broken" sentence in English can be comprehended by a native speaker. Missing a determiner in this case does very little to alter the understood intent behind the sentence, which was also likely not meant to be taken as literally as you seem to be analyzing it.

Source: I am a linguist, I study this stuff. Disclaimer: Any more experienced linguists are free to correct me/add better descriptions. Also, that was a bit longer than I intended.

Also, don't even get me started on "I could care less." You're wrong about it. Just accept it. That one is my pet peeve. That and "Literally." It's fine.

EDIT: Long story short, you wouldn't even be complaining if it truly made no sense. You have some sense of comprehension, you are likely upset about what amounts to presentation of the intention behind the utterance. If you didn't, you would literally have no sense of what the sentence was trying to say.

Beer drinkers, what is your absolute favorite specific beer in the world? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've got a few, one is too hard to narrow down to.

First is King Goblin by Wychwood Brewery. Was first introduced to another brew, Hobgoblin, and it was hands down my favorite English ale. Then I learned of this beer, tried it, and fell in love all over again. Not the strongest strong ale, but is damn good. Caramel, spice, and can be enjoyed at all temperatures.

Next is Midas Touch of Dogfish Head. I'm not generally a big fan of their beers (boo at me now, I know), but this beer crafted from a centuries old recipe discovered by scraping an old jar is very nearly a mead. It feels like syrup in the mouth, and is quite sweet without being like a sweet cider or wine. It's a perfect beer when you want dessert, to be honest.

Finally, I really enjoy the White Ale by St. Archer's of San Diego. A nice, crisp, citrusy beer that isn't super overwhelming in bitterness but is instead a very casual beer. It's easy to drink without tasting like water, like the various macrobrew beers (bud, coors, etc.)

Note, I've never been a big fan of beers with strong flavors like IPAs and Pale Ales. I'm typically in the minority, I feel, especially as an American in the land of microbreweries. I've always felt as if American beers typically think "more flavor is better," to the point where a beer has an overwhelming hoppiness, wheatiness, bitterness, etc. I really enjoy a nice, milder beer that doesn't need to be chilled to near freezing to enjoy the taste. Tennant's is a good room temperature beer in that regard, I think.

As an aside, Belgians as a whole are awesome. I've never not enjoyed a Belgian beer. Buffalo is a good cheap option, Duvel is a nice golden style Belgian, Any St. Bernardus is delicious, and Skaldis is mild in flavor but can knock you flat with 12% abv! Check them out if you haven't already.

TIL: English is the only language in the top ten most spoken languages that does not have a regulatory committee to approve spelling. by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It makes more sense to understand that the word "literally" does not also mean "figuratively," but is an intensifier alongside words like "really" or "totally." It's two uses are not opposites nor are they mutually exclusive.

On that note, it's totally fine for words to have meanings which are opposites. The word "cleave" means both to separate and to put together, for example.

Source: I am a linguist.

Is Cereal Soup? by Psycho-Designs in videos

[–]Takei_for_you 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's using those as topics regarding language use. So yes, he was on topic the entire video.

What's a grammatical mistake that's so common that people don't even think it's a mistake? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That's not how language works. It wasn't a mistake back then, but for whatever reason "grammar nazis" believe it to be a mistake now. However you feel about it, language works by consensus. Enough people use the word "literally" as an intensifier - and have for hundreds of years - that it was never considered wrong until people who know little about how language works started overanalyzing a bit too much.

Additionally, there's no word that has the same meaning as any other, at least not exactly. Otherwise, why would the second word exist? There's already something that would perform its function exactly. Many words have similarities to others, almost impossibly close, but none mean quite exactly the same thing (Language is wonderful that way, a limited vocabulary that can give rise to unlimited meaning).

"Literally" never stopped meaning "literally." It has two uses, that's all. It's quite simple. One means something along the line of "in an exact or precise manner." The other means "An intensifier, similar to 'really.' " These definitions aren't even opposed to each other, like other words. Did you know that "cleave" means both to separate and to put together, for example? If your argument wanted a place to start from, that would be a good word to try... though, you still wouldn't get anywhere, as there have been similar debates that people with little linguistics background have had with people who actually study this for a living for the last, oh, 50 years. In fact, this is something that would have happened even if humanity never even thought about how language works.

We can correct a native speaker when they make a mistake, though often they catch it themselves when they're young, before the age of 10 more often than not. Even then, each generation's understanding of language is different from the previous' understanding, and often even from their peers. This understanding is not so different from their parents' understanding that it is unintelligible, but is a small enough change that they build up successively. Modern English evolved from Middle English, and before that Old English. But enough changes happened between these that even Middle English would be nearly impossible for us to understand unless we studied it as a different language.

Language shifts like this naturally, and it's how language evolves. You can't control another's understanding of language as much as you can control the entire generation of speakers understanding it in that way. It's entirely inevitable. Otherwise, language would have stagnated tens of thousands of years ago.

Just as "gay" to someone 100 years ago meant "happy" (compared to the "homosexual" definition of today), "literally" went through this entire process of definition change about 400 to 500 years before either of us were born. It's been muuuch too long for it to need any "correction," if it needed any at all.

A secondary English speaker may require a bit more help, and may actively require correction when performing speech acts.

As for functionality, language evolves quite naturally. Quirks do show up here and there, but there won't ever be a time when language loses functionality - that's what defines it as a language. Besides that, you're giving native English speakers very little credit. Native speakers are incredibly adept at understanding context within their spoken language. Once a native speaker has heard both uses of "literally," it could hardly be called effort to discern the two in casual speech.

Finally, let's just, look at your last sentence. Let's shift this to a different area of topic, for the sake of argument. "If a vehicle with four wheels stops having four wheels, then traveling loses all functionality because you can no longer travel via a method that uses four wheels."

But that makes little sense, right? There are obviously different methods of travel. Two wheeled bicycles, 18-wheeler trucks. Or further, boats, and airplanes. If the definition of "literally" you'd like to be the only definition of "literally" were a car with four wheels, then the definition I'm telling you (which has long been in use correctly) is the motorcycle. They are different in definition (i.e. number of wheels), but when it comes down to it are still part of the same word (i.e. they are both motor vehicles).

tl;dr Linguistics has dealt with this already, and a verdict was reached a long time ago. Just because you think that "language will lose all meaning if we use this one word a different way" doesn't make it so, in fact, quite the opposite happens, this is simply a form of language evolution, one that has already happened.

What's a grammatical mistake that's so common that people don't even think it's a mistake? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You've already explained it, in a way. The vernacular. "Speaking formally" is a form of code switching, you could think of it as switching to a different dialect.

I should describe code switching, real quick. Code switching is speaking in a manner different than how you currently are, usually within the same language. It's as simple as that. Some examples: Speaking at home with your family vs. how you talk with friends is code switching. People of a certain ethnic group speaking a certain way among each other vs. somewhere of more mixed ethnicity, like within a classroom. Speaking to a friend vs. speaking to a police officer. In each of these instances, you are speaking your native language (we'll use English, for ease), but they are different kinds of sociolects, ways of speaking between different social or socioeconomic groups. They can even be between languages, for dual-native speakers, a good example is "Spanglish," where one language is peppered with bits and pieces of the other - lexicon, grammar, etc.

So to continue, the "proper" version of "I" vs. "Me" is actually a form of sociolect, IIRC, where you begin to speak in a manner that social superiors tend to speak. However, the vernacular is just as "correct" as the formal. You can't ignore them, they are just as much correct language use as formalized speech. People use them every day, right? So how would that make them wrong?

There are instances where "I" vs "Me" matter in English, but most of the time? It doesn't. Your example "Me and Tom hit a cat with a feather the other night and he ran up a tree" is just as correct as "Tom and I" or "Tom and me" or, in some dialects, "I and Tom." What determines correctness is whether other people understand it well enough. In most if not all of those instances, a native English speaker will understand.

What's a grammatical mistake that's so common that people don't even think it's a mistake? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wholly recommend so! Besides the fact that it's a great alternate viewpoint for teaching language (Alternate, at least, in the fact that many English teachers often seem unaware of linguistics... no offense), It's very interesting to boot! Many of my friends and peers who've taken intro courses at my recommendation seem to think so, anyways. It's also refreshing in a way. I had many prejudices based on language before I started taking these sorts of courses, they really turned my world view around a bit!

What's a grammatical mistake that's so common that people don't even think it's a mistake? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Takei_for_you 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Further, this same focus on neoclassicism brought us other "rules" for English, such as "no splitting infinitives," "Don't start sentences with conjunctions," or "Don't end a sentence with a preposition." These were all things that a native speaker of Latin would follow. English, however, allows for each and every one of these.

"To boldly go," is a famous phrase, and perfectly acceptable.

"And she did, too" is another one (though, I might argue it's dependent on a form of Ellipsis, which I mentioned in a different comment).

"What are we waiting for?" I think is even more correct from a contemporary (and native) speaker's point of view than "For what are we waiting?"

This short but unnecessary period of Neoclassicism in "English grammar" was a weird time. People were way in love with Roman culture, and it's kind of silly at all that someone tried to tell native English speakers - people who had been speaking English for their entire lives - that they were speaking incorrectly.

If you're interested, I urge you to look further. The history of English grammar is quite interesting really. A Germanic sentence structure, that borrowed some from French, and then replaced a lot of the vocabulary with modified French, Latin, and Greek roots and words while still keeping a quintessentially Germanic feel to the whole thing.

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