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xkcd again, but now on linguists and their weird habits (mander.xyz)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I feel slightly offended. Because it's true.

(Alt text: "Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you're currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out.")

xkcd source

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think people who think that know more pedants than linguistics and either confuse the former for the latter, or when they meet a real linguist, the linguist's questions sound on first glance like the pedant's ones they are uses to. But I have no empirical data to prove my point

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I feel like the pedant would be instead bossing others around, with a "you mean that you «fell into» a hole". Or perhaps voicing useless trivia, like "fun fact: some people say «fell in a hole»! The more you know~".

In the meantime, the linguist doing this (from anecdotal evidence, I'd say that plenty do it) is motivated by curiosity, not trying to show off; in spirit he's the same as "that kid" who disassembles objects to understand how they work, it's just that the curiosity comes off in the wrong situation.