Posts by Matthew Ortiz

feralmaker7 said:I’m stepping up as the "intruder" here, using the post above to help clarify my point.
It doesn't bother me at all when people write with their local slang—like when folks from the South write exactly how they talk in real life—because I don't see that as a flaw. BUT, what really gets under my skin are posts like the one mentioned, where people try to write in formal, academic English but can't even spell basic words correctly. Honestly, I just can't wrap my head around how someone misses something so fundamental—it's a word used constantly, you see it everywhere, and I truly don't get how it can be unknown (and I'm sure this isn't just a typo from typing too fast). I've seen people write "receve" instead of "receive," or "definatly" instead of "definitely," and every single time, it makes my skin crawl to see how much literacy is slipping lately (speaking generally, of course). I'm not trying to insult anyone—I make mistakes too—and I'm not going around the internet correcting everyone because there's just too much of it. But if someone corrects me when I slip up, I don't mind it at all; in fact, I appreciate it because I actually care about communicating properly. It's especially grating when I see these kinds of errors in the newspapers or when highly educated professionals butcher the language. I don't get why people take offense—to me, it's perfectly logical that people would want to fix their mistakes (and stop repeating them) and learn something new (unless they're just boring). If they want to be wrong on purpose just because they can, fine. Just as some people hate being corrected, I hate it when people refuse to be corrected. Of course, I don't support insults like calling someone an "uneducated hillbilly"—because what good is knowing how to spell if you lack the decency to tell someone they're wrong in a polite way? (If you're going to say it, at least be civil).
P.S. The only thing that bugs me about regional dialects is when they add extra letters to verbs and turn them into something weird. Ugh!
So, that's my take. Try to see where I'm coming from.🙂

Either way works, depending on how you spell it. Just watch your hair. 😉

feralmaker7 said:I notice typos because—honestly, when I'm reading, things like a missing letter just jump out at me. If you want to call that "keeping tabs," fine, be my guest. On the flip side, I don't really care if someone forgets a space after a period, a comma, or a parenthesis. I'll never nitpick that—mostly because I make the same mistake myself since I rarely write on a desktop and I'm just not used to hitting those extra spacebar strokes. I don't see it as a spelling error or anything major, but hey, if you want to frame it as my own failing and lecture me about it, go ahead. Like I said, I'm not going around the forum calling people out on their typos, but the truth is, it does bug me when I see them. Why? I don't know—that's just how I am. When I'm typing, I'm not always thinking about perfect spelling (usually), but I *do* have to think about spacing, and I just don't have the bandwidth for it right now, as you can tell.
Btw, I don't mind the question, but I really don't like the tone you used.

It really bugs me when people just don't realize that... Does this bother you? It’s all about the dative case. (I don't even know where to start with this. Just one more thing to deal with....instead of using the accusative case.meAnd man, it really gets under my skin when someone just doesn't know that... Notice. It’s a long haul. I end up writing a whole damn essay just because of one thing he said. The solution.Then you're just gonna screw up the exact same thing again... It's a little inconsistent, honestly. 😁

There’s zero point in trying to correct someone else when you don't even know what you're talking about. It honestly drives my blood pressure through the roof—and that's coming from me, a linguist, an editor, and a total bitch. 😍Suddenly everyone thinks they’re an expert capable of correcting everyone else. I only step in when steelskipper5 points something out; otherwise, I just watch. Why would I waste my time and energy on people? It makes zero sense. If they were paying me, maybe, but otherwise... not happening. 😁

ruggedfox28 said:Honestly, that was mostly just a little jab at the people who think they’re absolute experts on American grammar... 😉

Man, you explained that so beautifully... such a gentle and friendly way to put it. I seriously owe you one...

So... you're actually suggesting I dodge a massive headache by telling my professor that the aorist tense just doesn't work for those specific verbs? Hmm...

Man, whatever... my grammar isn't exactly top-tier for some American guy—but thank God I've got other things going for me... 😉

A killer ass—thick thighs and rock-solid calves—friendly vibes, green eyes... and a shaved junk...

👍

Yeah, unfortunately. 😁

Since the aorist marks a completed action, you can't pull it from imperfective verbs that describe ongoing processes. For example, there's no aorist for fuck (the original form was fucked up 😍, much like how grabbed eventually became grabbing as it leveled out with present tense forms...)—you just get the imperfect was fucking. But for to fuck up, there is no imperfect, only the aorist fucked up. 😁 They look similar, but the difference lies in the suffixes: fucked up, fucked, fucked, we fucked, you all fucked, they fucked versus was fucking, was fucking, was fucking, we were fucking, you all were fucking, they were fucking.

Or maybe your professor was just clueless. That happens; sometimes even people who claim to be experts in the American language think they actually know what they're talking about. 😁

Ethan Martinez11 said:We seem to be on the same page here; what we're seeing is clearly a provocation.

I have nothing against dialects, quite the contrary. However, if someone chooses to write in a regional vernacular, they should be consistent about it. You shouldn't have chang'n in one sentence and then use standard English like milk in the next. That kind of linguistic hybridity is just grotesque.

The same applies to those with a Midwestern drawl. I don't know if you ever read Brankov's blog, but it was brilliant from start to finish, despite being occasionally incomprehensible. 😁

Dialects are part of our heritage and should be cherished. 🙂

And what if the speaker uses some regional American dialect and just can't live up to Mayer-Jakubinskijev's rules? 😲😍

ruggedfox28 said:I’m asking this specifically for the guys who love to "flex" how much they know about the American language 😉

Because of stuff like this, I ended up losing a dozen A's back in high school; now I’ve graduated with an economics degree and I still have no clue (and probably never will...)

So, we’ve got these verbs: bugariti and dujiti

How do you conjugate these in the aorist and imperfect tense across all three singular and plural persons?

(Honestly, I don't even know what these words mean, which is why I tanked a few grades...)

😉

Bugariti means to speak or sing sadly; that's one of the etymologies for certain folk songs. Since it's an imperfective verb, there is no aorist. Because it's a fourth-type verb, the imperfect is formed with the original suffix plus a jotation, though there's no need here because of the existing palatal (even if r is depalatalized in American, it wasn't like that in Proto-Slavic). So, bugarah, bugaraše, bugaraše, bugarasmo, bugaraste, bugarahu.

Dujiti is strictly a dialectal verb and doesn't exist in the standard language at all. Depending on the region, it can mean anything from blowing to milking to being still, but most often it refers to being quiet. It’s derived from the noun spirit, but you can tell this happened in the southern regions due to the shift of h > j (which isn't rare; it changes to either j or v), hence duvati (< duhati), dunuti, and so on. The imperfect is dujah based on that principle, and there is no aorist since it's imperfective.

Got anything harder? 😉

I don't even know what to say anymore. Just total nonsense. Matthew Ortiz says:
Some hits just leave you scarred for life. 😉

Exactly. We’re all obsessed with this idea of being "natural," yet we try to force ourselves into this perpetual state of spring—always happy, always perfect, always "good." Our culture loves to publicly crucify anyone who makes a mistake or acts out, but let's be real: most people aren't actually good; they're just terrified of being canceled by society. If you've never messed up, you're probably just an idiot who hasn't learned anything yet.

Althusser, is that you? 😁

Basically, yeah, some guy once said that ideology works by... Subjectivity through subjugation. The whole concept is about how you're simultaneously being subjugated and turned into a subject. Ideology is basically the glue holding an entire culture together, but ideas aren't actually where it starts—they're the end goal. You have these ideological apparatuses, like a church, that use specific rituals and practices to shape people into certain roles, like "believers," which then eventually produces the ideas themselves, like "faith." As Pascal once said: Get on your knees, fold your hands, and just have some faith! Practice and ritual are what actually turn an idea into reality. It's like Brecht said—people don't cry because someone died; they cry because they're at the funeral. 😉

The whole point of Althusser’s theory is that we aren't "made" into subjects—we're born as them. We don't become; we just are. Even before you've taken your first breath, the role is already set: they've already picked out the pink or blue blankets and decided on a name. You can't wiggle out of this kind of subjectification; it's baked into the system. Ideology basically tricks us into mistaking a total illusion for reality, which brings us right back to that Freudian idea of culture being one big delusion. Or, if you want to get Picasso with it, it's that perfect illusion of order within pure chaos. 😉).

Name and identity are tied to this whole concept of interpellation—basically, being called into existence. It’s how a subject gets summoned. Take that classic example where a cop on a street corner yells, "Hey, you!" As soon as we spin around, we become the subject (we're the "you"), but we also immediately submit to the ideology behind it (since he has the authority to call us out). subjectivity and subjugation. Exactly. It’s the same deal when someone knocks on your door and says, "It's me." We immediately give them our name and let them in, basically handing over our identity. There are two well-known mechanisms at play there too.

Is the term "performative" actually valid if we look at it through a linguistic lens? In an Althusserian sense, sure. And then you've got Austin's take on it... Speech act theory. Statements fall into two camps: constatives, which just state facts that are either true or false, and performatives. Performatives actually carry out an action just by being said. Think about a priest baptizing a baby, or someone saying "I do" at a wedding, or even a starter yelling "Go!" to kick off a race. But you can't just anyone shout whatever they want and expect it to work; there are four specific conditions that have to be met. First off, there’s the one-time nature of it—you can't start the same race five different times (unless we're talking about false starts). 😁To pull off a performative, you need seriousness, the right context—like a formal agreement or a competition—and the right authority. You can't just have anyone officiating a wedding or calling a race to start. Then you have implicit performatives, like promises, requests, oaths, or threats. In those cases, one of those four pillars is missing, usually the seriousness or the official authority, which makes them more about targeting the listener rather than actually changing reality.

So, now Judith Butler takes this idea of performativity and argues that naming is basically an act of identity construction. We’re constantly surrounded by others who leave traces on our bodies—traces that the body remembers. They steer our behavior without us even realizing it (kind of like how identifying with someone else in a Freudian topographical model involves transference; you identify with a higher instance like a father or God, which subconsciously dictates your actions—that higher instance being the Other). Because of this naming and these external traces (which overlap and repeat, calling out to and identifying the subject), the subject is never truly sovereign. External forces strip us of that sovereignty by labeling you as a girl or a boy, effectively stripping the subject of control over both biological sex and social gender. This ties back to Lacan, too, since that mentioned "name of the father" drives a child to enter language in an attempt to become an object of maternal desire. We only really become human once we adopt language, which brings us back to that Heideggerian idea of language being the "house of being." If we master speech as an articulation of understanding, we move closer to the laws of language, which are directly linked to the laws of being (everyone has their own struggle, moving from I am being beinged to I am being; shifting from subject to object requires grasping the false density of anonymous existence and our determination within the World).

You could also bring in Foucault's regimes here—specifically those so-called heterotopias, where society isolates whatever is "different." That difference has to be quarantined, much like a biological body isolates a pathogen via the immune system. Similarly, the social body isolates the "other" and triggers its defense mechanisms: those who don't fit in or pose a threat to the culture get tucked away in mental hospitals, prisons, and the like. The reaction from the "cultured" is a mix of disgust and fear of that otherness. But language is essentially a system of differences; as Saussure noted, something is what it is because of what it is *not*. It's all metaphysical oppositions and structuralist binaries. Derrida defines it such that one part of an opposition only gains identity through the absent "other" that defines it in its presence. Nature exists because it isn't culture; language exists because it isn't speech—and the weaker member of an asymmetrical opposition is just the stronger member's shadow on the path to itself.

Butler builds on this systematization, arguing that the norms distinguishing humans from non-humans (think of Said's concept of Orientalism—where Westerners could only define themselves as human by casting the East as slaves, monsters, or subhuman) are just constructs. These boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable, or right and wrong, aren't fixed or self-evident axioms; they shift over time. We need to push them so those outside the lines can finally be seen as human and avoid being destroyed. But there's a catch: by shifting the norms, we risk pushing ourselves outside the boundaries and threatening the lives of those whose existence relies on those very rules. (If we fight for gay equality and shift the boundary, maybe tomorrow, I don't know, blue-eyed people 😁 will be cast out—and what if I'm blue-eyed? Just my luck.)

It would all be great and wonderful if Althusser hadn't screwed everything up by killing his wife. 😁

Culture is, in a Freudian sense, just our way of defending ourselves against the raw forces of nature. It’s built on two pillars: repressing our instincts (otherwise, even the most hardcore totalitarian would have to accept repression just to survive) and coercion (because let's face it, people don't just wake up excited to go to work). This mental toolkit includes all those tools of force and prohibition that are baked into being human. Most of the time, culture doesn't need external muscle to stop us from acting on basic impulses like murder or cannibalism, but when someone does break those internal rules, we lean on social hierarchies to separate "civilized" humans from animals, turning culture into a forced way of living together. That’s why we have compensatory mechanisms, most notably religion. Religion acts as a psychological inventory and a universal neurotic compulsion, fueled by instinctual repression and fear, all aimed at shielding us from nature. We basically anthropomorphized nature by giving it a Freudian paternal character—since religion functions through a father-son dynamic via the entry and performance of le nom du père. So, religion becomes this weird mix of longing and dread, dogma and reflection, serving as a payoff for cultural coexistence. The real kicker is: if religion is a subset of culture and also an illusion (and I don't mean "illusion" as in something impossible, just something fabricated), then is culture itself just one big illusion?

When it comes to language, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that language actually shapes the structure of a culture. If Westerners categorize the world using nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on, what does that say about our cultural makeup compared to a system that classifies everything by edible fruits, moving creatures, elements like water and fire, or dangerous things like violence and women? 😉

Ever since that Psammetichian experiment where they tried to find the oldest culture by isolating twins from birth (which resulted in them first saying bekkos, a Phrygian word for bread, leading to some quick deductions), language and culture have been linked. But there's this endless philosophical and linguistic debate over which one is the parent and which is the subset. From that historical anecdote told by Herodotus in History all the way to Derridean deconstruction of metaphysical oppositions, it’s clear that language, thought, and lifestyle are all tangled up. Ultimately, it feels like everything boils down to sociological interactionism or behaviorism reacting to linguistic signs. Does Derrida need to deconstruct the nature-culture opposition too? Probably. Especially following the Heideggerian idea that a metaphysician tries to philosophize about nature to rise above it, while actually being entirely defined by it. In the end, the subject just becomes an object, and we basically need a Peirce to bridge logic and philosophy with sociology and psychology to turn this mess of differences into a coherent structure. Or a system. Not a "system."

wiredbison60 said:Props to the guys for pulling this one off.

👍

2001: A Space Odyssey. If that isn't pure genius, especially with that unbeatable Also Sprach Zarathustra track playing in the background, I don't know what is. Total cliché, sure, but still...

After that, my lineup usually goes Blade Runner (with that Vangelis score), Terminator 2 (Williams) Apocalypse Now, Once Upon a Time in the Wild West, Citizen Kane and my personal favorite, The Godfather. I also love how they worked Mozart's Requiem (Dies irae) into X-Men 2 during that chase through the White House.

Does The Lion King count too? 😳 😁

I just sat through Alchemy for the millionth time—it’s basically my Monday morning ritual. 🙏

The Straits are the only band I can listen to without getting bored. Seriously, never.
As I get older, I’m finally tracking down every single track they've ever recorded. Knopfler is basically a god to me.

Telegraph Road lyrics
From out of this darkness and into the day
From these rivers of headlights, these rivers of rain
From the anger that lives on the streets with these names
'Cause I've run every red light on memory lane
I've seen desperation explode into flames
And I don't want to see it again...

Telegraph Road.
That song absolutely destroys me.