Stream of conscious explaining how my brain works.

For months I had this article’s title in my head. I need to publish it so that hopefully this bad joke escapes me. I still don’t know what this article is about, but I’ll just write and hope it turns into something.

If you didn’t get the title, that’s normal. A circumflex is “a mark (^) placed over a vowel in some languages to indicate contraction, length, or pitch or tone.” There is also a saying, “Weird flex but OK.”

I thought I was being original with this joke. Turns out XKCD already did it. I’ll never be 1% as prolific as Randall.

PS Here’s a better XKCD-language comic (Etomylogy Man).
PPS Here’s a Google Doc listing linguistic/language related XKCD comics.

This post will be short and quick, for the nerds who complain that my nerd site has too many words.

My girlfriend is a linguist. We argue about language all the time, though she speaks six languages and I struggle with one. Her understanding of language is pedantic while mine is anecdotal and humor based. Here’s my girlfriend’s favorite “linguist joke”:

On a linguistics/language forum someone pointed out that Homestar Runner deserves credit for the joke:

“I guess I like board games more than most people. And by that I mean I like to play board games more than most people do. But by that I also mean I like board games more than I like most people.”

Is the joke the same if the subject is “board games” instead of “linguistics?” I’d say so. Just like Randall’s joke and mine were about the same. A linguist might parse the differences in the jokes. I’m no linguist.

It’s been only a few sentences and I already mentioned XKCD, nerdy internet forums and Homestar Runner. Classic. That’s enough nostalgia mentions for a Live Journal or similar site. It’s also too many characters for social media, but not Guy enough for GuySpace. So I’ll continue a little longer with appropriated jokes.

Here’s some more linguistic jokes all stolen from the same Reddit thread:

• [-Roman]-->[+Roman] / [+Rome] ___ [+Rome]

• "I asked her to conjugate, but she declined."

• Q: How many descriptivists does it take to change a lightbulb?

  A: It doesn't need to be changed. Dark rooms and light rooms are equally well-formed; one isn't 'better' than the other.

• Asking a linguist how many languages they speak is like asking a doctor how many diseases they have.

That thread drew me to Tumblr, specifically a page dedicated to the forgotten Linguist Llama meme predating hawk tuah and whatever is happening today:

After you look at a few language and linguistic jokes, you might note that they’re really just written jokes. They are just puns, spoonerisms, morphology, ambiguity and idioms. Here’s a short breakdown if you don’t understand what I just wrote.

All written and verbal jokes are linguistic jokes. Mimes get a pass. Some jokes are just more linguistics-y than others because of the topic. My favorite linguistic joke is still:

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language where in a double positive can form a negative.”

A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

The best jokes are the ones you need to explain! [/s]

Again, this post will likely get edited 3 times til it’s coherent, then submitted to Grammar Girl.