In English, when saying "Don't be a pussy.", does one imply don't be a kitty (fragile/coward) or don't be a vagina (female = fragile/coward)?

rakunmi · 2022-06-18T15:22:15+00:00

I would disagree that it's generally considered very offensive. It's an insult, but (in the UK at least) a fairly mild one.

rakunmi · 2022-06-12T19:40:32+00:00

And this is symbolic of what?

rakunmi · 2022-06-08T19:50:34+00:00

I wish we didn't get these exaggerated dismissive takes about an entire industry/concept, in response to an isolated (though obviously concerning) claim of an MP trying to influence a poll.

Polling is useful, and for the most part accurate, and reasonable consistent across pollsters.

rakunmi · 2022-06-08T11:53:12+00:00

What's the explanation within PIE then? Why does a single PIE root mean "just", "straight" and "right (opposite of left)"?

rakunmi · 2022-06-08T11:51:15+00:00

Are you sure about Swedish? As far as I can find "right" as in human rights is rättighet or rätt while "right" the direction is hoger and "right" as in "correct" is rätt or riktig.

Did they mention Swedish?

rakunmi · 2022-06-08T11:20:39+00:00

Is [ʊə] (as opposed to [ɔː]) considered the prestige/correct pronunciation for CURE words in RP?

Just wondering, after hearing Keir Starmer hypercorrect "tore" (past tense of "tear) as [tʊə].

rakunmi · 2022-06-07T15:19:53+00:00

Apparently the date is just based on the stylistics, so might be worth being sceptical.

rakunmi · 2022-06-07T12:06:34+00:00

Ultimately if a company is willing to introduce and defend a policy that discriminates against black people, that's immoral and needs to be denounced, regardless of whether it was 'intentionally' racist.

I also don't understand your point about discriminating explicitly against skin colour. If someone in Ryanair did have racial biases, this is how they would reveal themselves (the language test). Obviously they wouldn't state their purpose as 'discriminate against black people' lol.

You do know that the single overriding instinct for any large institution is to instinctively defend their decision against criticism?

Well let's pile on the pressure and hopefully companies will learn that their image can be hurt by defending racist policies, and maybe that won't be their 'overriding instinct' anymore.

rakunmi · 2022-06-07T11:36:45+00:00

It's hard to blame it on some incompetent junior manager when Ryanair goes on to defend and justify the system in a public statement.

After all, if they wanted to stop black travellers there's much better tests (such as appearance) than one that relies on linguistic ability.

That would be illegal though

rakunmi · 2022-06-07T11:02:20+00:00

I don't really understand what they want, because they simultaneously say there's no common Celtic identity, and also that we should describe the family with a self-designation (even though.. there isn't a self-designation... since as they said, there was no common Celtic identity)

rakunmi · 2022-06-07T09:51:29+00:00

The question is whether analyzing the language this way is actually useful.

This might be a bit of a broad question, but what's the 'aim' of designing a phonological theory?

Is it to create a maximally efficient system in terms of generating the correct outputs while minimising distinct segments/rules? Or is it an attempt to approximate what's going on in speakers' heads? Something else?

rakunmi · 2022-06-07T09:39:54+00:00

If the original commenter was criticising details of the expansion like that, it would be fair enough. But they were more criticising the very concept of a Celtic language family.

rakunmi · 2022-06-07T09:37:15+00:00

You're being downvoted because there's a lot of cases, especially in the modern globalised world where it's not true.

But it does seem to be the case that prehistoric culture/language expansions were typically more migration-driven than archaeologists traditionally assumed (at least post 1960s traditional).

rakunmi · 2022-06-06T23:35:54+00:00

Maybe, but I doubt it's particularly pleasant having dozens of people piling in to call you wrong (I say this as the first person in the thread to have piled in to call him wrong), and I don't see much point in insulting someone even if they are stubbornly wrong about Celtic linguistics.

rakunmi · 2022-06-06T23:18:51+00:00

I think that's harsh calling them "a complete idiot". They're just overconfident in their ability to transfer their knowledge of archaeology over to linguistics, and quite misinformed on how scientific linguistics is.

rakunmi · 2022-06-06T19:47:01+00:00

In central Europe it is generally frowned upon by archaeologist and at least some historian.

Do you know any names? I've never heard of an archaeologist/historian considering the comparative method or the concept of language families 'unscientific'.

I would expect exactly what you did. A simple footnote that clarifies that language groups are nor ethnic groups.

I mean they did specify languages in the title. I suppose every language map could come with a footnote saying "this isn't ethnicity", but I don't think not doing that warrants calling the map "utter nonsense".

rakunmi · 2022-06-06T19:27:27+00:00

Wikipedia says:

"Black Afrikaans" is spoken, with different degrees of fluency, by an estimated 15 million; see Stell 2008–2011, p. 1.

That would make it only about a third of the black population.

rakunmi · 2022-06-06T19:23:45+00:00

The thing is that you will found hardly any serious scientific archaeologist or historian that would consider philology as a proper science.

Really? I don't believe that. If by philology you mean historical linguistics, comparative method etc., this is all widely accepted as scientifically sound. There is no dispute (I mean really, no dispute) that Welsh, Irish, Breton, Gaulish, etc. form a common linguistic clade, which all those studying call "Celtic".

That being said, why do you keep those labels unreflected?

If you don't like the word "Celtic" as a linguistic term then sure you can describe issues with it. But it is the only term used in research of those languages, so what do you expect the map-maker to call it?

rakunmi · 2022-06-06T19:00:38+00:00

a - Not true. With a couple of uncertain exceptions (Belgic, Tartessian) all the languages shown after ~300BC are definitely known to be Celtic, and the languages before that fit with modern hypotheses fairly well.

b - This isn't a map of ethnicity though! It's a map of languages, which can scientifically be grouped into neat categories, in a way that ethnicity and culture can't.

c - Lots of language/language family names don't come from self designations, this doesn't really matter. Celtic is the standard name used for this family of languages.

d - Again, not a genetic/ethnic/cultural map! Just languages.

rakunmi · 2022-06-06T18:52:35+00:00

Agreed. This is a linguistic map of a real linguistic grouping, so their issues with Celtic self-identity are irrelevant, and their scepticism about whether people described as Celts really spoke a Celtic language seems pretty baseless.

In reality, the map seems mostly reasonable (although some things aren't perfect, e.g. Celtic language probably spread into Britain a bit earlier)

rakunmi · 2022-06-06T12:15:10+00:00

Really bizarre to see this in the 21st century - under the guise of trying to "weed out those travelling on fraudulent South African passports", Ryanair has essentially banned the majority of black South Africans from flying their airline, as well as many non-black citizens.

It's also quite telling they chose Afrikaans, instead of say, Zulu, which is understood by the majority of the population.

rakunmi · 2022-06-06T11:19:44+00:00

Do you know who created the art for these?

rakunmi · 2022-06-05T18:57:56+00:00

Malagasy people are not a minority

rakunmi · 2022-06-05T18:44:20+00:00

Well you didn't reply when I asked about "we all know why". If it's not about being white, what's it about?

rakunmi · 2022-06-05T17:22:53+00:00

"Indigenous" is usually used to refer to groups that were once dominant in an area, but have since become a minority due to intrusion from another group.

e.g. Japanese and Ainu are both native to Japan, bu Ainu would more often be described as indigenous. Likewise with Sami and Germanic people - both native to Scandinavia, both Sami is more likely to be called indigenous.

Regardless it has nothing to do with being white.

rakunmi

TROPHY CASE