firespeaker.org

KJ: "Why can't my roommate see he's annoying me and just move out?"

Joyce: "Some people get satisfaction from annoying other people."

KJ: "Well, he's still paying rent."

Jonathan: "Some people pay to annoy other people."

KJ: "But he's poor."

Joyce: "Yeah, it's a luxury to be able to annoy other people."

[English department turns off lights and opens door because it's hot out]

[Confused undergrads misconstrue this to mean they're closed, so English department puts up sign]

Sign reads: "We're open. Come on in!"

Jonathan: "Hey, you ended a sentence with a preposition! Two even!"

Secretary 1: "… Oh no!" [tears down sign]

Jonathan: "Yeah, what'll people think of the English department‽"

Secretary 1: "Yeah, we have to fix that!"

Jonathan: "How're you gonna fix it?"

Secretary 1: "… Uhm… We could maybe leave just one preposition? ‘We're open; come in.’ But no, I guess we need to get rid of both. ‘We're open; come!’"

Jonathan: "Yeah, that might work. Good thing we caught it!"

Secretary 2: "Yeah, they're going to shame me and fire me tomorrow when they find out about this!"

[Jonathan tells Joyce the story]

Joyce: "You shouldn't mess with people like that."

"I hate the 4th of July—I'm always afraid someone will burn down my apartment. I have terrible neighbours. Not in my building, but within bottle-rocket distance."

"I have a much harder time being mean to furry cute animals than to other living things."

Joyce: "Now I'm really sorry for referring that woman to the Tlingit wikipedia article. It makes it sound terrifying."

Jonathan: "Why's it terrifying?"

Amy: "Because she's not a linguist, and every ejective possible doesn't sound like a good thing."

Derek: "No, Joyce, what you should be saying is ‘[in effeminite voice] atashi.’"

Meghan: "Is that the female you?"

Derek: "No, that's the Hello Kitty me."

Jonathan: "Four languages: America never expects anything close to that."

Joyce: "Yeah, we don't even like dialects."

Jonathan: "I was just trying to figure out what comes between 4 and 6, and couldn't figure it out for a second."

Joyce: "A bus ride home..."

Jonathan: "My favourite translation tool on the internet is to look something up on wikipedia in the source language, and then click the link to the article in the destination language."

Joyce: "Oh yeah, I only ever did that to look up how Star Trek was written in katakana."

"Languages are big."