SILLY LINGUISTICS THE MAGAZINE FOR LANGUAGE LOVERS

THE ROLE OF WORKING MEMORY IN

LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE

NOTICING PEECHES
LANGUAGE R SELL!
CHANGE FE
THE MAGAZINE FOR LANGUAGE LOVERS : ISSUE #27 : AUGUST 2020
CONTENTS
3 S is for …  Scribing

6
By Chris Davy

Diary of a Student Teacher

8
By Giulia Raus

The Role of Working Memory in Learning a New Language

11
By Inés de la Vina

Noticing Language Change

14
By Gil Cohen

How Languages Evolve Over Time

17
By Dewni Pathegama

Cases of Funny Translations

22
By Valentin Pradelou

Peeches Fer Sell

25
By Tiffany Marcum

The Etymologicon: A Review

By Holly Gustafson

Cover page photo by Teaching With Creativity on Teachers Pay Teachers; Content page photo by Bret Kavanaugh on Unsplash
This week's page numbers are in Korean (their pronunciations are bracketed)!

May 2020, Issue #24 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 3 |  셋 [saet]

S is for...
Scribing
By Chris Davy
@CHRISDAVY1985

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
4 |  넷 [naet]

S cribing. Writing. Etching. Carving. Marking.

Something like that.

It’s slowly becoming a lost art form to some; because of technology. The act of holding and using
a tool to create every single detail of a symbol by hand, from ‘scratch’ is simply non-existent in
some people’s lives. In fact, for some people it’s NEVER existed in their lives in the first place!

I mean, even as I’m writing this article today, I’m sat on my sofa using my phone. Because of
convenience and ease as much as anything else. But I write using a pen or pencil and piece of
paper pretty much EVERY DAY!
 
I love writing. When I hold a pen or a pencil though, I don’t really hold it ‘properly’. I remember
being at school and my one teacher basically having a go at me because I was holding my pencil
‘wrong’. My Mum found out about it and she basically went in and sorted it out. Nice one Mum! I
was 17 years old at the time. Hahahaha! Joking! I wasn’t 17, I was more like 9/10. All that said
though, by holding a pen in the way I do I do tend to get hard skin on one part of my ring finger
which is really annoying. I do try to use a different technique but old habits die hard and all that.
So, maybe he knew that would happen, and that’s why he knew it was ‘wrong’. Who knows?

But on a serious note, the whole age joke thing, is not funny. Some 37 year olds can’t hold and
use a pen well, let alone 17 or 7 year olds. I mean, I’m not being harsh, you’ve been to the doctors,
right? It’s a serious issue. How is anyone supposed to communicate with each other when what’s
being communicated simply isn’t clear? And that’s just being able to identify the symbols we use
for a start. We haven’t even touched on whether or not they are in order to make what we believe
are actual words, or sentences that make sense. We are just talking about being able to read the
symbols! GIVE US A CHANCE!!!

My point is, when you are learning language, practising handwriting or even cursive is well
worth the effort. Like, you know when kids used to get given ‘lines’ to do at school, as a
punishment? Like Bart Simpson at the beginning of each episode of The Simpson’s? Well, what
he’s doing there is actually becoming an absolute boss at handwriting. He’s improving his
vocabulary, he’s improving his hand writing. With respect to his punishment, well the issue the
punishment is related to probably isn’t being addressed very well. He’s probably more likely just
to build up resentment towards his teacher for having to do lines. But that’s a different matter
entirely. He is on the other hand gaining a better understanding of language, improving his
handwriting, and developing his vocabulary. Because of definition and repetition.

But think about it, when you are writing with a pen it requires a lot more of you. It requires much

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 5 |  다섯 [ d a s e o t ]

more of your body and mind. Lines, curves, curls, dots, crosses, swoops, bends, flicks. ALL SORTS
OF COOL INTRICATE DETAILS. Every symbol requires its own unique attention and detail. But
when you are typing on your phone or on a keyboard it’s more like,
 
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
 
Plonk. Plonk. Plonk. Plonk. Plonk. Plonk.
 
Nowhere near as much articulation and detail is required. Every symbol is associated with the
same movement.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Plonk. Plonk. Plonk.

 
But writing. Line. Dot. Helps creating a much more detailed picture in the mind. We all know
‘Line. Dot’ is probably a lower case ‘i’.
 
Circle. ‘O’
Circle. Flick. ‘Q’
Big Cross. ‘X’
Little Cross. ‘x’
Line, curl to the left. Dot. ‘j’

Don’t get me wrong, typing is great for speed. But I’m not convinced it’s great for quality. It’s like
playing a guitar. If you play an electric guitar with distortion no one really knows how good you
are. The distortion hides any ‘imperfections’ that might be occurring. But playing an acoustic, well
you can’t really hide your mistakes in the same way. You are exposed for what you are. As far as
I’m concerned the same thing kind of goes for writing vs. typing. And don’t get me started on
predictive text, spell, rubbers and correction fluid. Hahaha. We all know I mean Tippex.
 
There are primitive techniques out there to be learned, understood, and appreciated. If you can get
to grips with those, then I think the more sophisticated forms of communication, the luxuries if
you like, are much easier to come to terms with, manipulate, and utilise.

Besides, we all know your phone is going to run out of battery, break, or get lost at some point.
Then what are you going to do?!
 
Oh yeah, and to the die-hards out there who question what had this got to do with linguistics?
Read between the lines a little bit. There’s concepts and theories being discussed and explored
here. It’s about breaking things down and building them back up again.
 
That’s is what we are trying to do, right? Build more things, but build them better?

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
6 |  여섯 [ y e o s e o t ]

Diary of a
Stud e n t T e a c h e r
By Giulia Raus

To become what I am now, a French teacher in the UK I, had to study

languages of course, but I am sure that many of you will understand

what I am going to introduce in this article, namely the struggle of

preparing a language certification exam.

Do not get me wrong, I love languages and I love working with them,

but please allow me to say how horrible these certifications are.

For every language the exam structure is the same consisting of four

parts: listening, reading, writing and speaking. Each part gets harder

according to the level you want to get. The levels are established by

the European Union and they are called “Common European

framework of Reference for languages” which is divided into A1-A2

(basic levels) B1-B2 (intermediate) C1-C2 (proficiency).

To get to the level I am now I had to attend these exams five times

during my student life, the first time I was 13 and I sat the French Delf

exam to get the level A2, in the following years I have attended the

Dalf (French certification) to get the C1 level and the other three times I

sat the well-known IELTS, which is the English certification to get your

level. The funny thing about this exam is that you never fail you just

get a level which most of the time is not the one you actually need. I

personally needed the C2, the highest level, and I had to sit it three

times before getting to the level I needed.

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 7 |  일곱 [ i l g o b ]

The main problem of these certifications is that I was not enough, that I was not as

that the invigilators and the teachers follow good as I believed destroyed me, but it also

a strict protocol that does not accept delays made me stronger and more skilled.

or silly mistakes and they do not forgive any

distraction! Anxiety is not accepted, and you After taking these exams I thought about

cannot get tired. The first time I sat the the ways you need to prepare for these and

IELTS the exam started at 9.30 in the how sometimes unfair they could be. You

morning for the written part and then, I had need to learn tricks to gain time in the

to wait in the same afternoon to do the oral written part, they push you to be quick and

part, I was shattered! Moreover, your abilities try to answer all the questions, for the

are tested in a short amount of time, reading for example the “skim reading” trick

especially when you are dealing with a is suggested where you read the first

language that is not your first. Ten minutes sentences of the paragraph as well as the

of speaking for instance sometimes is not last ones just to get the general meaning

enough because you would like to and get faster to the questions, is that fair

demonstrate your abilities and the way you though? After years spent on learning the

can use the language and its structure but grammar, the different meaning of words

they have to stop you and what’s done is the structures, they do not even ask us to

done, there is no going back. On the read properly but just be fast and see if you

contrary, sometimes ten minutes are an get lucky enough to get all the answers

endless time, for instance during my French right.

exam I run out of things to say after five

minutes and after that I had to improvise I believe that these certifications might have

and keep talking nonsense for as long as a wrong influence on teenagers and young

was left. adults that want to receive a proper

certification as sometimes they will be

These kind of language exams, most of the evaluated according to a test that does not

time want to test your ability in using a represent them.

language under pressure to see how much

you actually know, and can you actually To be sure of what I am saying, I gave one

understand in different contexts. of my mock tests to English native speakers

Nevertheless, they are as severe as they and three out of three did not finish the

may seem and unfortunately, they are easy exam in the time established and most of

to fail since the mental conditions are not the time they did not understand the

the best (isn’t that the same for every exam question asked.

though?!).

I have then another question this month for

During the process of preparing my IELTS you, readers. Do you think that tests like

exam I got frustrated and angry then sad these are fair enough to evaluate the

and frustrated again. I had to re-sit the fluency of a person and is it right to

exam three times and reading every time introduce young students to this system?

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
8 |  여덟 [ y e o d e o l ]

THE ROLE OF
WORKING MEMORY

IN LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE

By Inés de la Vina

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 9 |  아홉 [ a h h o b ]

L earning is nothing but the process of acquiring new information, the outcome of which
is memory. The ability to learn a new language and to retain it over time defines language
learning and memory, respectively. Memory is one of the most important aspects of
language learning, and is considered the key to acquiring words and getting used to
grammatical patterns in a new language. If you have experience learning a second
language, you have probably already discovered that your memory capacity plays a role in
how well and fast you learn the language, or, at least, some aspects of it.

The role of memory in language learning has long been of interest to researchers in first
and second language acquisition. Models of memory include distinctions among very
short-lived memories like sensory memory, which has a lifetime measured in milliseconds
to seconds; short- to medium-lived memories like working memory, which persist for
seconds to minutes; and memories that may persist for decades, which we call long-term
memory.
 
The construct of working memory (WM) has a great influence on many aspects of learning
a second language. Findings from second language acquisition studies looking into the
impact of WM have shown effects at the level of vocabulary learning, reading
comprehension, language understanding, and language performance. Some scholars even
suggest that WM may be the most relevant factor in predicting language learning success.
Indeed, effective language processing and learning largely depends on how well our WM
performs.

Our WM span is limited, but precisely how much information a healthy person can retain
varies among individuals. Research indicates that WM capacity is affected by genetic
factors (some individuals’ WM is bigger than others) and by motivation. We also know that
WM in a second language is more limited than in one’s first language. For example, the
amount of words our WM can hold at any given time is phonologically determined. Chinese
speakers can thus hold more words in their WM than English speakers because in
Mandarin each word is a syllable.

The ability to learn new words is greatly affected by our WM span, that is, specifically, by
how much information we can hold in that part of working memory called phonological
short-term memory. The phonological short-term memory plays thus a major role as it
stores unfamiliar combinations of sounds while long-term representations are built. This
means that, if you are a novice language learner, you will be able to hold fewer words in
your WM than in your mother tongue as you will pronounce the words more slowly. The
more rapidly you can utter a word or phrase, the less space in your WM it will take.

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
10 |  열 [yeol]

Successful language learning entails both phonological sequence learning and

phonological WM. Previous studies reveal that learners with better skills to segment
linguistic items in their phonological short-term memory are more successful in
learning vocabulary and grammar. A strong phonological short-term memory has also
been linked to other aspects of language use such as speech fluency in a second
language, writing ability and vocabulary usage, and lexical diversity and syntactic
complexity in oral discourse.

The limited capacity feature of our WM has many implications for second language
learning and processing. Data from young and adult learners indicates that WM
impacts on vocabulary learning, speech production, reading development, skilled
reading, and language comprehension. Learners with a larger WM capacity appear to
have some kind of advantage in a variety of second language-related abilities: reading
skills, syntactic comprehension, form noticing, vocabulary learning. It is thus believed
that learners with a greater WM capacity are better equipped to attend to and
process language input.
 
Individuals with a smaller WM capacity can use different resources for improving their
memory span and learning. For example, a poor WM can be enhanced by using
mnemonics such as the key word technique (i.e., highlighting new words) or other
associative memory techniques. Another strategy to increase your WM capacity is
chunking the target information. Chunking is a term referring to the process dividing
large pieces of information into smaller units (chunks) that are easier to retain in WM.
Imagine learning the Spanish compound sacacorchos (corkscrew) – a complex phrase
for a novice’s phonological loop to cope with. By chunking it into “sa/ca/cor/chos” a
novice learner could cope with pronouncing and memorizing it.

Finally, it is important to note that memory is context-dependent, in other words, the

environment in which we learn a given language item will enhance the chances of
recalling that item later on. Learning the Spanish compound sacacorchos on a summer
trip in Spain is different from learning it by reading it in a linguistics magazine.

In conclusion, it is of great importance to raise awareness of how WM works as it can

be very useful in enhancing language learning. Ultimately, learning a language is a skill
that we acquire, and the more we know about how our mind works, the more we will
feel in control of our own learning.

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 11 |  열하나 [ y e o l h a n a ]

Noticing
Language
Change
BY GIL COHEN

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
12 |  열둘 [ y e o l d u l ]

H ow and when do we notice that our language has changed? Just like I wrote in
my last piece, about the naturalization of words in languages, is there a specific point in
which we can declare that our language has changed? Obviously, change is gradual
and never-ending, but let’s explore it!

I started thinking about this subject when I heard my roommate saying something that
caught my attention: she said hem hayu behitlonenut khatsi sha’a which literally means
“they were in complaining for half an hour” and actually means “they were complaining
for half an hour”. Why is this interesting? Well, in Modern Hebrew, we (technically) have
only one verbal form for indicating each tense (past, present, future and imperative),
regardless of its aspect, whether it’s habitual or continuous. English, on the other hand,
does differentiate between the aforementioned aspects: simple (like present simple),
progressive (like present progressive) and perfect (like present perfect).

I wrote “technically” because that’s not actually true: the form my roommate said in the
above sentence is an up and coming form used to indicate the continuous aspect of
verbs, i.e. the form she used corresponds to English’s past progressive. It consists of an
inflected form of Hebrew’s version of “to be”, lihiyot, Hebrew’s preposition for “in”, be,
and a noun. It’s not the first time I’ve heard of this pattern, and Iunconsciously use it (a
very common usage is ani benehiga, literally “I am in driving”, which means “I’m
driving”), but that was the first time I’ve heard (or at least noticed) it being used to
indicate an action that occurred in the past. That spiked my interest and made me think
of this subject.

This phenomenon of suddenly realizing that this new grammatical construct has made
its way to the core of our language and feels so natural, is similar to suddenly realizing
that you’ve made a new friend: it is so difficult, at least for me, to demarcate my
relationship with this person into two (or more) parts, being acquaintances and being
friends.

I believe these phenomena are similar: meeting a new person is often something you
don’t write home about. Similarly, when you hear a new word or construct, you probably
don’t put much thought into it. You might even disregard it as slang and forget about it
after a minute or two. Little by little, you see this person more and more, maybe start
chatting online from time to time, until suddenly, you realize this person is your friend! In
the same manner, you hear this construct more and more, maybe you even use it

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 13 |  열셋 [ y e o l s a e t ]

yourself without really thinking about it, until suddenly, you stop for a minute to think, and
realize this construct is an integral part of your language! Sometimes, I don’t even
remember when I’ve met this person, just like I usually don’t even remember when I’ve
heard this new construct or word for the first time.

Nonetheless, sometimes you make a new friend and you know exactly how and when
you’ve met them, even if you don’t know exactly when you’ve actually passed the border
between acquaintances and friends. Does it only happen with friends you’re very close
to? Similarly, do you sometimes know how and when you’ve heard of a new word or
construct? What’s the necessary criteria for that to happen? Does it have to be a word or
construct that is useful? Funny? Special? Not long ago, I’ve heard of a new word (well,
new for me, at least) for “saverette” (A tube in which you can keep a joint for later use) in
Hebrew, shmarpaf, which is comprised of two parts: shmar, which is related to the
Hebrew root of “keeping, saving” and paf, which is just like “puff” in English.

This word, shmarpaf, alludes to another word in Hebrew, shmardaf, which the Academy
of the Hebrew Language made up as the Hebrew version for a “sheet protector”, the
slim plastic bag you use to keep paper documents. shmardaf hasn’t really caught on in
Hebrew, like many words the Academy invents (you’re more than welcome to read my
thoughts regarding this body in my earlier piece, “Language Purism”, from the 25th
issue). Regardless, hearing the word shmarpaf made me laugh so hard, because I
thought, and still do, that it’s absolutely ingenious! Therefore, it’s made its mark on me
and that’s why I know the exact place and time in which I’ve heard it for the first time, just
like hearing my roommate use the aforementioned construct in a new and different way
made its mark on me and I know when and where I’ve realized that this construct is an
integral part of Hebrew.

How can we be so oblivious to the changes in our own language? It’s literally a tool that
we use every single day, all day long, and yet, we usually don’t notice the changes that
occur in it nonstop. Perhaps we, as language enthusiasts, are more attuned and pay
more attention to the way the language is used, and consequently, notice the changes a
tad more than the average lay speaker? Even so, many changes go about our
languages stealthily and covertly, changing them little by little and gradually, right under
our tongues.

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
14 |  열넷 [ y e o l n a e t ]

HOW LANGUAGES
EVOLVE OVER TIME
By Dewni Pathegama

Languages, every one of them, are fluid and ever-changing. They constantly evolve

across time and space, add new, and often more confusing, grammar rules, add new

words to their already extensive vocabulary, and sometimes change the meanings of

the existing words altogether. Often times these changes don’t follow a set rule but

are completely dependent on social and cultural phenomena. However, these changes

are not necessarily a terrible thing to happen to a language and we rarely realize it

except when ever so often the older generations quibble about the poor language

used by the younger generation.

Languages, like everything else, will not survive if they do not adapt to the times. If the

English language did not change at all since the 1950s, we wouldn't have words to

describe smart-phones, modems, or air conditioners. And if it hadn’t evolved since the

2000s, you definitely wouldn’t be able to caption your Instagram post with

#selfiewithbae #ThrowbackThursday. Because the words Selfie, bae, and the phrase

Throwback Thursday (and any other day really) including most, if not all words and

phrases commonly used in social media were coined sometime in the 2000s. Often,

these changes also include borrowing words and phrases from other languages. For

example, German has borrowed quite a lot of words from English in the past few years

so that a new language has erupted among young Germans called “Denglish”

(Deutsch + English), much to the dismay of older generations, and to the utter joy of

German learners everywhere. Some of the words of Denglish include ‘Chillen’ (to chill),

‘surfen’ (to surf the internet), and ‘Brainstorming’ (well…to brainstorm).

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 15 |  열다섯 [ y e o l d a s e o t ]

As for the changes in grammar rules, the most geographical differences occur mostly in areas

noteworthy one in English is the change of the where several groups speaking different

normal past tense verb of Dive from Dived to languages live in close proximity to each other.

Dove. It’s interesting because this change was The languages borrow linguistic features from

first recorded in the 1800s, around the same each other and often modify them to match the

time as cars became popular in the English already existing features. A good example is

speaking world, bringing with it the verb Drive India, where 122 major languages are spoken

and its past tense Drove. The relationship according to the Census of India of 2001. Most

between these two is not confirmed, but it’s of these languages belong to language

highly probable that there was some effect. families like Indo-European, Dravidian, Sino-

Another example is the who/whom rule which Tibetan, Austroasiatic, and Tibeto-Burman.

is hardly used in spoken English now. And Regardless of this diversity, it is observed that

remind me, when was the last time you used all these languages have a certain Indian-ness

ought in a sentence? to them, nodding at the fact that the borrowed

  linguistic features are bent and shaped

But these changes and evolution do not according to the speakers of the language. In

happen overnight. It can take decades for a the words of modern Indian linguist Bhadriraju

word to completely shed one meaning, and Krishnamurti:

different meanings can co-exist throughout this

time. The best example of this is the once “He thus provided scholarly substance for the

incredibly misused word in English, Literally. In underlying Indian-ness of our apparently

recent years, the Oxford dictionary has divergent cultural and linguistic patterns.

adapted a second meaning to the word, ‘Used Consequently, South Asia is now recognized

to emphasize a word or phrase, even if it is not not only as a 'linguistic area', but also as a

literally true.’ So now you don’t have to roll your 'sociolinguistic area…’”

eyes at that person who literally jumped out of  

their skin! It is widely accepted that language evolution

follows natural selection, much like Darwinism

"Literally," you see, in its development from in biology. Darwin’s writing about the evolution

knock-kneed, single-purpose utterance, to of languages says:

swan-like dual-purpose term, has reached that

awkward stage. It is neither one nor the other, “The better, the shorter, the easier forms are

and it can't do anything right."  - Martha Gill, in constantly gaining the upper hand, and they

her article ‘Have we literally broken the English owe their success to their own inherent virtue.”

language’, in The Guardian (UK).

But the University of Pennsylvania Biology

While more striking differences in the same professor Joshua Plotkin has done a study to

language can be seen across time, like show that languages, like genes, can also

Shakespearean English, Chaucer’s English, and change at random. In his paper ‘Detecting

Anglo-Saxon English, more subtle differences evolutionary forces in language change’, he

can be seen in a language across space. These mentions that like gene mutation in Biology,

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
16 |  열여섯 [ y e o l y e o s e o t ]

languages also go through a transformation, stood. In the meantime, embrace the fact that

however small, when passing from one languages will keep on changing and evolving

generation to another, and from one and do your best to keep up. After all, what is

geographical location to another. life if not constant change?

“For the most part, linguists today have a strict

Darwinian outlook. When they see a change,

they think there must be a directional force

behind it. But I propose that language change,

maybe lots of it is driven by random chance—by

drift.”

To test this theory, Plotkin and his colleagues

developed several statistical tests to find cases

where drift influenced the language change

rather than natural selection. They applied

these to some online repositories like the

Corpus of Historical American English and

found a few cases where natural selection did

play a part. For example, where verbs became

regularized, like Wove became Weaved, and

Spilt became Spilled. But more interestingly,

they also found as many cases where the

change was towards irregularity. For example,

when lighted became lit, dived became dove,

and Sneaked became Snuck. As mentioned

before, some of these changes may be

credited to the fact that we simply preferred to

categorize similar sounding words together and

some to the fact that they were easier to learn,

like Darwin said.

Salikoko Mufwene, from the University of

Chicago, says, “It gets you to think harder

about the motivation for change. The general

claim is that there has been an evolution

toward regularization, and they’re showing that

this hasn’t always been the case. Now we need

to think harder about when irregular forms are

favored over regular variants.”

This is an incredibly intriguing area of linguistics

that still needs more research to be fully under-

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 17 |  열일곱 [ y e o l i l g o b ]

CASES OF FUNNY
TRANSLATIONS
By Valentin Pradelou

In another article, in issue #23 entitled “cases of funny code-switching", I introduced

some examples of humoristic uses about the phenomenon of code-switching. It was
based on a Facebook group called “Boys don’t meme, but men do”.
 
In this article, the purpose will be kind of close and related, but it’ll be based on
another linguistic phenomenon, which happens to be even more common:
translation.
 
There are tons of Facebook groups and pages looking to make people laugh.
Among them, I happen to belong a particular page called Groupe traduit en
français sans aucun crédit, which we could literally translate as “Group translated
into French without any credit”.

This group uses memes originally made in English and translated into French, in
order to create humor. But why are these memes considered funny? What are the
linguistic elements making people laugh when they read these memes? That is
what we will try to explore in this article.

For that, I have selected 6 memes in which captions could be understood without
the image. The meme is made out of the relation between the image and its
caption. Taking into account the difficulties in including the images here, I have
tried to select some captions that are perfectly clear without their image, and show
the linguistic structures of humor through translation.

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
18 |  열여덟 [ y e o l y e o d e o l ]

These memes can be found on the Facebook group called Groupe traduit en
français sans aucun crédit, and I have included the memes I'll use in the analysis.
 
Reading these you’ll have an idea of how absurd and funny these memes are (you’ll
find my comments and translations in square brackets in order to fully understand
these captions).

1 Factures Portes [translation for Bill Gates]

 
2 je suis à propos de finir cet homme complète carrière [I’m about to end
this man whole carreer]
 
3 quand le voleur poignardes tu mais tu être dans le vivant chambre [When
the thief stabs you but you’re in the living room]
 
4 Si tu etaient à triangle, tu'd être aigu un [If you were a triangle, you’d be a
sharp one]
 
5 Je'm faire toi miner / Oh ma dieu oui [Imma make you mine / Oh my god
yes]
 
6 Poilu Pottier et la roche des philosophes / JK Canotage/ porcverrues
exprès [as a translation of the first Harry Potter Book's cover with “Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” (known in the USA as “Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone”), the author and the Hogwarts express]

Elements of syntax:

Let’s start with something really clear when we read the memes. This element is
syntax mixing between French and English. As I said before, the memes use an
original English utterance in order to funnily translate it into French.

First of all, let’s look at examples 4 and 5. In both of them, the French speaking
sentence is composed of English elements, not really existing in French: Tu’d être
aigu/ Je’m faire toi miner. The apostrophe followed by a letter (here “d” and “m”) are
clear examples of English syntax kept in French, even though it doesn’t exist in
French.

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 19 |  열아홉 [ y e o l a h h o b ]

Then, there is another interesting element: by reading them as a French speaker, it

sounds obvious that these are “literally” translated, only meaning each word is
translated alone in order to cut the words relations. It is clear in examples 2 and 3:
cet homme complète carrière/quand le voleur poignardes tu mais tu être dans le
vivant chambre. In the first example, we see complète carrière which sounds very
weird in this context, as noun and adjective should be inverted in the strict context
of the syntagma. In the second sample, it is the same with poignardes tu and vivant
chambre as each should be switched and really translated (te poignarde/pièce à
vivre) to be understandable in French.
 
Translating the non-translatable:

This group and its memes also use what I call the translation of the non-translatable,
as some samples will be translating names to a possible literal translation into
French, making it really (really!) weird, and funny. Let’s take a look at examples 1 and
6: Facture Portes/Poilu Pottier/JK Canotage Porcverrues exprès.

In the first example, Bill Gates is translated into the literal meaning of each word in
French: Facture for “Bill”, and Portes for Gates. Thus, it gets the name out of its
context and gives a bizarre translation to make it funny.
 
About Poilu Pottier, which is a translation of “Harry Potter”, it’s even more
interesting as Poilu is the translation of “hairy” and not “Harry”! The author has taken
a word phonologically close to “Harry” to make it funny to translate. Then Pottier is
indeed the French word for Potter, sounding weird as this character is always
translated as “Harry Potter” and not “Harry Pottier” in France. JK Canotage (for J.K.
Rowling) is (to me) much hazier, as Canotage is the French for “Canoeing”, and
“Rowling” seems to have no translation. We can spot a certain desire to remain
absurd here, and by this way, funny.

Finally, we have the translation of the famous train in Harry Potter’s universe (The
Hogwarts Express) giving Porcverrues exprès. Accurately, “hog” is indeed the
English for the French Porc and a “wart” is also a verrue.

There are then two elements: first, once again, it does not need to be translated as
there is an “official” translation with Poudlard for “Hogwarts”. And then, the author
has stuck into one word the two literal translations of each morpheme of the word,
giving a really absurd result. Absurdness is also targeted with exprès for “express”.
This last word, when used about a transport, is normally rendered express in French.

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20 |  스물 [ s e u m o o l ]

Orthographic/Grammar mistakes:

One last clear element is the orthographic/grammar mistakes in the French

translated sentence. These are, for sure, on purpose, and provide clues of the
sentences’ absurdness.
 
Let’s take a look at the examples 3, 4 and 5.
 
In example 3, it’s written tu être and it’s an example of a non-conjugated verb. The
literal translation in English would be “You be”, and the correct French utterance
should be tu es. It is the same idea in the fourth example, with tu étaient. Here,
étaient is the particular form of être (To be) for the third plural person in French. It is
then used for Tu (“You” when it targets an individual), which thus makes a mistake
and create a discrepancy between both words, which are supposed to be related.
 
In example 5, it is slightly different as it plays on the feminine/masculine paradigm.
It's written ma dieu, literally “my god”. In French, dieu is a masculine noun, and the
sentence ties ma (feminine possessive pronoun) and this masculine noun.

What is the purpose?

Having described these three main phenomena in these examples, what could be
the purpose of all that?
 
As we have seen, the sentences translated in French are sometimes using elements
of English syntax. By reading it, we just spot the complete absurdness, coming from
the irrelevancy of the sentences. To understand a sentence, words have to be linked
to each other in order to make sense. Here, it seems that it’s not the case at all. It is
even clearer with the orthographic or grammar mistakes, which are supposedly on
purpose. It utterly breaks the relation between words in utterances, and creates
some sort of absurdness tending to be funny.

In my other article about code-switching in Issue #23, I said that humor is created
throughout discrepancy from reality. It seems like this discrepancy is at the center
of these memes.
 
It is even clearer with the translations of names like Bill Gates, Harry Potter and
Hogwarts. These are not supposed to be translated at all, yet it is done in order to
follow the will of absurdness.

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 21 |  스물하나 [ s e u m o o l h a n a ]

All these memes are using different ways to be absurd and create humor. What we
have described here is just a restricted corpus and could not be described as an
exhaustive analysis of this phenomenon.

 
This Facebook group is very funny, and for those who can understand both English
and French, I really suggest that you join this group. You’ll have, for sure, a lot of fun.
 
I hope you guys enjoyed this article.
 
Thanks for reading!

Photo taken from Groupe traduit en français sans aucun crédit

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
22 |  스물둘 [ s e u m o o l d u l ]

PEECHES
FER SELL
BY TI FFANY MARCUM

Photo by The-Lore.com on Unsplash

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 23 |  스물셋 [ s e u m o o l s a e t ]

B eing a coal miner’s daughter brought some interesting experiences. Our

favorite time of year was a 2-week period dubbed “Miner’s Vacation”. Annually
we herded to the popular destination of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with
enthusiasm. From a town with long “A” sounds to a town with slightly omitted
“R”’s. My dad used to joke that the darker traces of sand were from the miner’s.
The 8 hour road trip gave us lots of memorable sight seeing.

We knew we were getting closer to the exciting destination when we started

seeing miles of tall pine trees that gave way to palm trees. In the mix were
several tourist stops. The rustic plywood and spray painted signs read:

“PEECHES FER SELL”

“STOP HERE- PICK YER OWN PEECHES AND BERRIES”

“Q-CUMBER AND POTADOES”

A bag of delicious she-crab soup mix had instructions and ingredients in its cloth
sack container, which was all in the regional Gullah language. In fact, the low
country region of Charleston, South Carolina, based company is called “Gullah
Gourmet” for its African American heritage.

To stop at one of these places meant that they would give you a genuine fruit
basket and pointed in the field's direction. It’s hot, noisy, and secluded feel was
made at ease by the family of slow speakers, much like ourselves. I saw that
they were using their southern stereotype to make a profit and gain some
positive notoriety. After that experience, I noticed other phonetic signs in my own
southern hometown. These didn’t gain profit, but social media amusement and
slight mockery.

In my sophomore English class, it confronted us with two unknown words. Which

we protested immediately. On the chalkboard:

“5 PAGE PAPER ON PHONETICS AND SYNTAX DUE TOMORROW!”

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24 |  스물넷 [ s e u m o o l n a e t ]

Wait, I’ve heard this before...I recalled hearing about “Hooked on Phonics”, a
program that taught young readers about words through sound association, as
a child. I already knew that homo-phones were words that sound the same, but
often had differing spellings and meanings. I was on the right track, but didn’t
quite finish, metaphorically.

Our usually sophisticated instructor doubled over in laughter at our shocked

faces. He erased the board. “Phonetics are sounding words out. Syntax is
sentence structure. We studied this in college as part of the education major.” 
He spared our blown minds from furthering into “semantics” (the study of
meaning regarding human language expression).

The internet is now ripe with the funniest phonetic misspellings. There are even
YouTube channels dedicated to roasting the “best of the best”. A favorite
phonetic misspelling of mine came from a comment section on the song
“Guantanamera”.

“Oh yeah, I heard the ONE DOLLA MILLA song too!”

Some popular memes have incorporated unique spelling as part of their humor.
For example, most dogs in memes are referred to as “Good Boi”, “Doggo” or
“Pupper”. The popular site, LOLCats, has its own “lolspeak” which is intentionally
head scratching grammar wise. A random cat photo could produce humor in an
instant, with a caption like “I’m in yer hed, stealin’ yer thotz”.    

Speech to text can be a nightmare to some. I never used it because of

surmounting frustration and mockery. It would never understand my hard “I” in
“Ice”. It comes out like a short “A” sound.

On a grocery store run (in the infamous Hatfield-McCoy territory) a few months
ago, something caught my eye. Sure enough, a homeowner must have had a
thief issue. His phonetic sign, also spray painted on wood, read: “LET ME CATCH
YOU STILLING AGAIN”. The numerous political signage around it only added to
the humor.

Little did I know, I had seen phonetics in action my whole life.

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 25 |  스물다섯 [ s e u m o o l d a s e o t ]

THE ETYMOLOGICON:
• A Review •

BY HOLLY GUSTAFSON the book feels a bit like attending a funny

and fascinating lecture on The History of the
English Language given by a knowledgeable
Did you know that… and enthusiastic professor, a bit like going to
a dinner party and being seated beside the
… the word avocado comes from the Aztec amusing etymologist who’s already a couple
word for testicle? of glasses in, and a bit like catching a
whimsical ride on the stream of
… pants were named for an early Christian consciousness of an eccentric historical
martyr (St. Pantaleon, of course)? linguist. Take your seat, grab a drink, and
hang on.
… the literal translation of the word botox is
“sausage poison” (coined by an early Throughout the book of short chapters, each
nineteenth-century German doctor who lost one expertly and organically linked to the
one too many patients to a debilitating next, you’ll learn about most of the major
disease caused by eating cheap meat)? processes that cause words and languages to
change – within themselves, and away from
You will, after reading Mark Forsyth’s book each other, like…
The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through
the Hidden Connections of the English … folk etymologies, which are speakers’
Language. And much, much more. misunderstanding, or reinterpretation, of the
morphological structure of a word, and
According to his bio, Forsyth was given a which gave us expressions like humble pie
copy of the Oxford English Dictionary as a (which originally had nothing to do with
christening present and has never looked humility, but was, in fact, made from the
back, and it shows. In The Etymologicon, he undesirable umbles, or innards, of a deer),
shares his vast knowledge of the history of
the English language, and indeed takes us on … clipping (like fan from fanatic, van from
a circular stroll through, in, and around it. caravan, and taxi from taximeter cabriolet),
Along the way, he explains and demonstrates
– in an always-engaging and sometimes … and Grimm’s Law, the fricitivization of
irreverent way – not only how words and consonants that created English words like
expressions are linked to their past, but also horn, father, and fish, from Latin cornu, pater,
how they are linked to each other. Reading  and piscis.

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
26 |  스물여섯 [ s e u m o o l y e o s e o t ]

You’ll even find a little Proto-Indo-European … and where the modern word Bluetooth
– the language from which English, and all came from (from Queen Gunhilda’s father-
her sister and cousin languages derived – for in-law, King Harald I, also known as Harald
good measure. And in the end, you’ll start out Bluetooth).
right where you began.
Even if you don’t manage to memorize the
Most of all, reading The Etymologicon will history of the word cappuccino (which in
arm you with a bunch of fascinating tidbits of Italian means ‘little hoods’, and was named
information with which to charm your for the Capuchin monks of Camaldoli
friends at your next dinner party, like… and their creamy brown robes), or remember
which English words came directly
… what Turkey has to do with turkey (the from the French revolution (namely
latter looks and tastes a lot like a similar bird aristocrat, capitalist, regime, disorganised,
imported from Madagascar to Europe by demoralised, terrorism, and, of course, we
Turkish traders), can’t forget guillotine) in time for your next
dinner party, The Etymologicon is exactly
… why alcohol has anything to do with kohl what it claims to be: a perfectly pleasant
eyeliner (they’re both pure essences), stroll through linguistic history.

… when you say “ciao,” you’re actually Forsyth, Mark. (2011) The Etymologicon: A
exclaiming “I am your slave!”, Circular Stroll Through the Hidden
Connections of the English Language. New
… the connection between text and textiles York: Berkley Books.
(making fresh sense of why we still “weave
stories together and embroider them and try
never to lose the thread of a story”),

… that the words feisty and partridge, as well

as the expressions fizzle out and peter out, all
come from words that mean ‘to fart’,

… that technically, or at least etymologically,

a woman can never truly be virtuous, since
the word virtue, coming from Latin vir,
meaning ‘man’, really suggests manliness,

… that guns were named for an eleventh

century Danish queen called Gunhilda,

August 2020, Issue #27 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
THANKS FOR READING SILLY

We hope you enjoyed it!

LINGUISTICS ISSUE #27

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