firespeaker.org

"I feel like the Titanic has struck an iceberg, and the crew is being asked to put on a play while bailing water."

"What about the grammars that don't allow it at all? Like ours. ... Like mine."

Inari: "Wait..."

Fran: "Are we in Finnish?"

Jonathan: "No, we're in English with Finnish pronunciation."

Tommi: "That's the bestest!"

Brian: "Do you know why circular reasoning is so fun to make fun of?"

Jonathan: "Why?"

Brian: "Because it's fun to make fun of it."

Ed: "Man, I wish they put that stuff in ads now: ‘Look at how we built our product!’ Instead of—"

Damion: "‘Hey look at the pretty women!’"

Sam: "I'm going to sing a Mongolian song."

[Sam clears throat]

Niko: "That's actually the name of the song."

I was a homebody by Austin standards

which has made me social chair by ACES standards

"So Korean dramas are all the rage in lots of countries in Asia. And in China, when they imitate this recurring phrase from the Korean dramas—[Korean...], ‘I love you’—because that's what they do in Korean dramas, they love each other—they repeat it with an affricate."

JH: "Well, this was accepted to a major international conference, so it can't be useless."

RS: "Wrong."

"I wonder if they make almond-shaped marzipan candy."

Orgil: "...and I don't get as much of an Anthropology perspective from prof. Atwood and prof. Kara—my advisor, and the other great Mongolist in the—"

other student: "—world."

Java Class InternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonPainter

you remember what i am talking about? i thought that the song was about michael jackson, but they were just using the future tense ;)

[shows slide with poster]

"I don't have to say much about this poster. You can all see who's handing who the baby."

[чаң]

[...]

мин: "Бер генә булдымы? .. Юк, сәгать өч икән! Нигә бер генә ди?"

[чаң]

мин: "Аа, ике икән."

[... чаң]

мин: "Өч. Булды."

Ростәм: "Белмим, чиркәүдә дүрт тә булырга мөмкен."

мин: "Нигә?"

Ростәм: "Чиркәү булса, һәр ничек була"

Андрей: "А почему свинину не кушаешь?"

я: "Моя мама еврейка, и поэтому у нас такая семейная традиция есть."

Андрей: "А мой дед был Удмурт, и поэтому я все кушаю."

"Если человек не понимает слово, это не проблема перевода - это проблема человека."

я: "Здесь, когда хотим повернуться нет никакого светофора, а раньше, когда хотели просто побыстрее ехать, полно было. Вот закон подлости!"

Илшат: "Да, вот единственный закон который в России работает."

Bus driver: "No one's complimented me today on my bus driver costume."

Guy on bus: "It's very scary, sir."

Monolingual people are so paranoid!

Traci: "So yeah, you should submit to the Online Working Papers!"

Elijah: "You see, that has the word ‘work’ in it..."

Aaron A: "We should rename it ‘Relaxing Papers in Linguistics.’"

"In Azərbaycan when someone is stupid we call them a Mongol."

Тэмүүжин: "‘Дулаахан’ means ‘slow’, right?"

Everyone: "No."

Тэмүүжин: "‘Дулаан’ then?"

... [everyone pauses]

Тэмүүжин: "I'm getting colder, aren't I?"

Чулуун: "Okay, so the second group will just be two lines behind the entire song. Does that make sense?"

[everyone nods]

Чулуун: "Okay, so, first group? Second group?"

[pause while everyone looks around]

Багш: "Баатар!"

"So if you encountered a strange dialect of English on some island where they don't do flapping, ..."

"The letter ‹q› is just hanging around waiting for English to gain uvular stops."

"Journal of Germanic Linguistics uses a modified LSA style that requires full first names instead of initials. I mean, there's apparently more than one Suzuki out there writing on Linguistics. If there's more than one Suzuki, think about names like Smith!"

Jonathan: "Yeah, I remember being in the dark about stuff a lot when my Russian and Kazakh weren't very good: ‘Where are we? Why're we here?’"

Tekla: "‘Why's there a sheep boiling in the front yard?’"

anon: "So is this worse than the topic you didn't bring up?"

Liv: "Nah."

Jonathan: "Yeah, sex goes fine with food."

Lennea: "And sometimes it makes it better!"

"This is a reminder that all electronic devices must be turned off. This includes Blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, and lemon meringue pies."

[Чоң шамал келгенде]

"Казанды карма!"

Left-over master's thesis? Those things are like a surgeon's tool that gets left inside the body.

Тралик: "Түнкү канал эрте көрсөтүлүп калган экен."

мен: "Анткени азыр саат 12ден кийин эч кимде шам жок."

To celebrate passover, i tried to make bread. Guess what? It didn't rise.

me: "What's that called when you express things with sounds?"

Austin: "You mean speaking?"

мен: "Таңга чейин чай иче алам."

Тралик: "Давай спор!"

Тралик: "Чай ичесиңби?"

мен: "Уф, жок, болдум."

Тралик: "Давай, паслений стакан."

мен: "Макул. Элүү грам."

Жыкы: "Америкада ушундай свободность жок."

Jonathan: "Туура, биз көчөдө пиво ичсек, полиция көрсө, биз сразу качып кетиш керек эле."

Жыкы: "Быякта наоборот, милиция көрсөң, сразу "Ооо!" деген..."

Жыкы: "Орустарда, ‘семья-мемья’ деген бар."

Jonathan: "Сиздерчи? ‘Үй-бүлө—сүй-бүлө’?"

Elmira: "Oops, I think I did something to [i.e., spilled something on] your pants."

Soviet: "That's okay, you're the one who's going to wash them [by hand]."

[ўзбекча менен кыргызча билген Араб менен сүйлөшкөндө]

Гүлмира: "А казакча билесизби?"

Араб: "Жок."

Гүлмира: "Бирок казакча менен кыргызча почти бир тил."

Араб: "Разница бар!"

Гүлмира: "Ии, кечиресиз. Разница бар десеңиз, сизге ишенем."

"‘Stop hugging strange men and sit down.’ … Oh, that's actually what's happening."

"It's Friday night and you're writing quotes‽"

[band plays rock song]

Natalie: "It's really talking to my heart."

Katy: "The beer?"

Nick: "Actually [ˈgæɹəʤ] is a whole genre of music."

all: "You mean [gɻ̩ˈɑʒ]."

Nick: "It's quite different actually."

[телесынык карап жатканда]

Траллик: "Жакшынакай экен."

мен: "Ал ким?"

Траллик: "Билбейм."

мен: "Бирок аты ким?"

Траллик: "Билбейм."

[жазылып туруп койот]

Траллик: "Айтурган экен."

[MTVде уйду соосу көрсөтүлөт]

мен: "Неге саап жатат?"

Траллик: "Саабаса болбойт."

мен: "Жок, сааганын неге көрсөтөт?"

Траллик: "Просто, реклама, билбейм."

Назгүл: "Я хочу взяться за это дело."

мен: "Кандай?"

Назгүл: "Ошол ишти баштайын деп элем."

мен: "А ‘взяться’ деген не?"

Назгүл: "‘Алуу’ деген мааниси берет."

мен: "Бирок кыргызча котормосунда ‘алуу’ деген сөздү айткан жоксуң."

Назгүл: "Я не профессионал."

[Пирожки сатып алган киоскта турганда]

Эже: "Пирожки [что-то что-то орусча]?".

Мен: "Кетти, азыр келет."

Эже: "Нет, пирожки [что-то что-то орусча]?"

Мен: "Көрбөй турасызбы? Пирошки бар, ээси азыр келет."

Эже: "Нет, Вы меня не поняли. Пирожки [что-то что-то орусча]?"

Мен: [Жарайт, деп ойлоп атам.] "Түшүнбөдүм. Орус эмесмин."

Эже: "Почему?"

Мен: "Орус эмесмин го."

Эже: "Неге?"

Мен: [ийинимди көтөрөм]

Эже: "Чынында орус эмессизби? Анда сиз кимсиз?"

Мен: "Америкалыкмын."

Эже [өзүнө]: "Мм, орусча билбейт экен."

Мен: "Жок, орусча билем, сиздин айтканыңызды эле түшүнбөдүм."

Jonathan: "Суп жақсы екен."

Қали: "Суп емес—повор жақсы."

"I think when you hit a human being, that's sub-standard driving."

"I hope I'm not this crazy when I'm old."

Jonathan: "In the south, there are these people who stay at Walmart all day and get bored and when you go in they try to socialise with you."

Kimberly: "Wait, aren't those called ‘greeters’?"

Jonathan: "Well, I mean, if you own land, and the value goes down, that's something you worry about, and you look to the cause."

Mandy: "Yeah, 'cause black people themselves actually make property values go down, just by standing there. Why don't we just shoot them all."

Jonathan: "Well, I'm not disagreeing with you guys—"

everyone: [jaws drop]

Jonathan: "Nono, that's not what I mean!"

"Yeah, it's like a bonus—if you've got hair that's fuzzy or warm, you should get that haircut, you know?"

Я: "Алло?"

Телефон: "Пойдите на выбор!"

Я: "Но я не могу, я иностранец."

Телефон: "Хозяйка есть у вас? Ей можно сказать."

Я: "Нету хозяйки у меня."

Телефон: "Вообще нет? Тогда пожалуйста, всем скажите."

Я: "Ладно."

"It [the bottle of vodka] is not a microphone. Drink."

[a woman cuts ahead in line at store to get a dirty, brown, unappetising-looking root vegetable weighed]

guy at head of line to woman: "Это бесплатно, наверно."

Thatcher: "And her father was the largest contractor in Kenya—"

Colin: "He was huge!"

Thatcher: "Yeah, he was like 400lbs."

Colin: [buffs up, effects burly voice] "Want me to build you a shed!?"

"You don't know Central Asia if you think eating trumps toasts."

"There's something about mountain people and alcohol—you know, they're not strangers."

me: "Do you know any numbers for a taxi to Karakol?"

all: "Taxi? Take a marshrutka. They're cheap and fast."

me: "Aren't taxis faster?"

Leo: "Yeah, but do you really want to go that fast?"

Thatcher: "So what was that half-hour-long toast about?"

Tamunia: "It's about love; it doesn't translate into English."

"Кантип жаңгак ача албайсың? Таш бар го?"

"Well, he just came from America, where people have jobs and have to do stuff, but now he's in Central Asia, where people drink tea."

"You see, it's different for you: Kyrgyz and Kazakh girls are actually attractive."

Баха: "Ты исследователь?"

Jonathan: "Да."

Баха: "Или шпион?"

Jonathan: "Ладно, я шпион."

Баха: "Где ты учился тогда?"

Jonathan: "Назвается ‘Шпионский Институт Америки.’"

Баха: "А! Мы всегда знали!"

Jonathan: "Ты знаешь как сокращается называние этого института? C.I.A.—‘Шпионский Институт Америки.’"

[kid cries and points]

mother: "Ты трогал это, что-ли?"

[kid nods and continues to cry]

mother: "Зачем ты трогал это, зачем?!"

[kid cries louder]

my father: "Wait, why's it that much cheaper?"

employee at undisclosed fast-foodery: "I gave you the senior discount. ...Not sayin' there're any seniors around here—I just hooked y'all up."

[arrives on plane for connecting flight 5 minutes before scheduled take-off (40 minutes before actual take-off), and finds seat taken]

me: "You're in my seat."

other passenger: "Uh, well, we had to to, uhm—"

flight attendant: "Just sit anywhere."

[other passengers laugh]

[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."

Jonathan: "The Cuyahoga River Fire prompted the Clean Water Act of 1969. Wow, that's an important fire."

Gretchen: "Yeah, it's bad when water catches on fire. It's like ‘maybe we should stop letting our kids swim in the river now…’"

Michael: "‘Hey mommy, I float better over here.’"

"And you'll be in beautiful downtown Nepal, …"

"I apologise for the delays getting off the ground, but it looks like we'll have some head-winds to help us arrive on time."

"I'm going to be in the art building tomorrow at noon, with beer, rocks, and paint."

[oven beeps]

Gretchen: "Yay, food that isn't peanut butter and jelly!"

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."

"You're not married, and you haven't got a girlfriend—and you don't watch Star Trek? …Good lord."

on phone:

"What do you want me to get you in Montana? A cowboy? I need to get me one of those too."

HS: But how did [G] become [g]? I thought usually the trend is the other way round.

Tristan: There’s no accounting for tastes :)

"Hey, look at that red hair, like a Viking. Vikings don't cry, they… pillage."

Jurgen: "So I don't mess it up, how do you pronounce your name?"

Dan: "Dan."

"It was funny when Derek had a question, you could tell—it was like watching a puppy. ‘Got a morphology problem boy?’"

Jonathan: "Kazakh isn't that hard—I don't know why all the materials that teach it are so bad."

Ardak: "I think it's because the Soviet system made things unnecessarily complicated."

Anara: "There's naked girls in these music videos."

[everyone continues playing poker, but half watches for a while]

Jonathan W: "So she's not naked yet."

Anara: "It's Alsu."

Jonathan W: "Oh, she's Tatar. She'll never get naked."

Jonathan C: "That's my experience. Unless you start dropping the blue chips." [tosses in a blue chip, worth the highest value: 100]

"IE 6 is the Netscape 4 of today."

Girl at check-out: "You just want the bagel?"

Derek: "Yeah. But I want the stuff inside too. Is that okay?"

Girl at check-out: "Sure."

"Kazakh is sweet piece of cake comparing to Russian.. Russian is even more harder than English..."

me: "Huh, if you go to the Jackson School's page, they have this graphic at the top that's a picture of some stream that doesn't look like it's on the UW campus."

Graham [looks at picture]: "Oh yeah, I've seen that place, it's on the other side of Lake Union."

me [reloads page, blinks]: "Hey look, now they have a picture of the Taj Mahal."

Graham: "Yeah, you haven't seen that? It's behind the forestry building."

"His father's like ‘Don't fly too close to the sun Icharus.’ And he's like ‘This freakin' rocks! Woohoo!’"

Meghan: "People used to throw batteries at me because they thought I was gay."

Julia: "And they thought you needed the batteries why?"

"We don't just want you to think that we're software designers with no understanding of theoretical linguistics. Then you wouldn't sit next to us in the coffee shop, and that would be bad."

Ray: "Most of these people [taking intro to linguistics] won't become majors—"

Mark: "And shouldn't."

Ray: "Phonetics can be a turn off."

Mark: "Depends on how you teach it, Ray."

"And you're going to think, ‘Oh, the big thing is OT Pragmatics—I should do that.’"

"I myself am a theoretical phonologist, but in the late '80s, my eyes were beginning to glaze over and I was saying ‘I don't care where to hang [lateral].’"

"Linguistic theory is your friend."

"Why do we keep weird strong verbs around for thousands of years?"

"[In phonology,] you can't just say ‘Oh, that's PF.’"

"It's always unfair to the women! Especially in Central Asia.."

"I like that bus—they're all gettin' on him. Oh, rats, they found me!"

Derek: "Amy, you live in a boat."

Amy: "Yes, I do, and I was kept up last night because it was stormy."

Derek: "Oh, that'd be cool! Did you get sea-sick?"

"I tried to structure this talk so there's something for everyone, but that means there's also something that'll annoy everyone."

Rabbi Dan: "Turn to page 185. Someone once commented to me that these sidurim are like Choose Your Own Adventure books."

Gabe: "Yeah, open to a random page, and you get inscribed in the book of death."

kid in car: "Hey, I know you!"

Jonathan: "Do you?"

older girl in car: "He's 11."

Jonathan: "Oh, okay."

Sharon: "So now there's this book on Iraqi Arabic with MP3s."

Noah: "I'm sure the army's all over that."

Avram: "Yeah, it's hard to work on a paper when playing rugby."

Poppy: "Hard to work on a paper a few days after playing rugby too…"

Jurgen: "You know, some people say I'm hard—I don't think I'm that hard."

Jonathan: "Well, you're flexible."

classmate: "You're the xantham gum of professors."

Avram: "Flexible, but still with integrity."

"This guy could kick your ass—he's a muscle-bound semanticist."

"This tastes like melted lollipops."

Zoe: "Ребята, можно серьезно спросить?—Извини – ты говоришь по-русски?"

George: "Uh, … Меня зовут George."

Guy at checkout: "What is that?"

me: "That's a rutabaga."

Guy at checkout: "Uh, how do you spell that?" [fumbles through code guide]

me: "R-U-T-A-B-E-G-A"

Guy at checkout: [finds code and punches it in]

me: "What is this world coming to?"

Guy at checkout: "Well, sir, we have a lot of produce, and I don't know what it all is."

me: "Are people allowed to use cellphones in here?"

help-desk guy: "No, but I'm not going to do anything."

me: "Oh. Well, there's this really annoying girl on her phone at that computer over there."

help-desk guy: "In that case, I will do something."

"Phonology happens."

"I'm proudly in the last generation that knows what they said about the Irish. Two-hundred years ago."

"Speakers can't converge on a common rule because no one knows what anyone else is doing."

Nic: "Me & Kristin hung out and watched the movie Sideways. So we got to spend time together."

Jonathan: "Mm. … Sideways?"

Leslie: "[In Central Asia], at least as a girl they don't make you drink."

Chay: "Go to Kyrgyzstan."

"Now I can use the line later, `What, you've never used a whip on your RA?'"

"What you need is groupies who are willing to make out with you randomly, and you're set."

"You call it silly string, I call it semen."

"Here, I'll recite a Pushkin poem. Say one and I'll repeat it."

"Spaniards, they are son of the bitch."

"Everything is a euphamism; you can't really say it; you have to do it."

"Measuring an artlang by the number of speakers is like measuring the importance of a painting by the number of postcards sold with its picture on it."

"Don't swallow endings, Scott. Otherwise you'll be getting fat."

Jonathan: "Yeah, there's something about you that says Ohio."

Patrick: "Probably me, since I'm always talking about the place."

"I want my genie to come."

"What kind of listen do you guys music to?"

girl: "I'm gonna go downtown."

Shawn: "What's that, some kind of slang?"

"I had a dorky girlfriend once. We had a lot of sex, though–that wasn't so dorky."

Kevin: "As far as society is concerned, she's set."

Shawn: "Well, yeah, she's got tits and a vagina."

Kevin: "As do a lot of mammals."

"Worf, you're a Klingon. What's a little genocide in the name of self defense?"

"Vickie, what has Brandeis taught you? You have Jesus in your livingroom and Hitler in your heart."

"Oh, that's not a fur coat, that's an animal!"

"Human bonding rituals often involve a great deal of ... talking, and dancing, and crying."

"It's like a little thing in the breakfast nook that's in their way and blares at them at newstime."

"First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns and I speech nothing because I no verbs."

"I appreciate sound changes—I'm talking about duck lenition!"

"Hey, do you know how to use Windows?"

"Don't confuse your inability to learn the operating system with problems with the operating system itself."

Picard: "Everything is impossible until it isn't!"

Data: "Yes, sir."

"You know you're a classics major if you see a door labelled 'Attic Access' and you immediately think 'Dude! A secret portal to Greece!'"

"Apparently some people see the glass as half-full, and some see it as a dragon."

"I'm sorry, you can't buy that here, we don't sell those. You'll have to put it back."

"We have a problem with marijuana in this building, mostly down at that end, but if you know anything about it, please tell me. Even if you're doing it and I don't notice, but you know someone else who is, rat them out."

"Are you TAing any business yet?"

Aaron: "So how was Israel?"

Preston: "It was great. I mean, what can I say? I got disillusioned with some things, illusioned with others."

"I think they would fall down on their asses laughing if Jay-Z came out in traditional Kazakh garb and started keepin’ it real with his dombra."

Jonathan: "Это маленький мир."

Руслан: "Это большая деревня."

Jonathan: "Database."

Руслан: "Я это не понимаю. Derbes, это пиво."

"Nothing is imposible if you can imagine it. That's what being a scientist is all about."

"No, that's what being a magical elf is all about."

yolin(24): damn only fuck i talk and i get misunderstood!!

"Why on this night do we eat .. Shmats or Matzah ..."

Anne: "Doves are anything but holy."

Nicholas: "They poo on our windows."

"Why do people even sleep with each other? With woman it's like death; it's so scary."

Chef: "I don't even know what to put in these things [Calzones]. What veggies do we have?"

Manager: "Bacon."

"Why does the diet coke here [Usdan] taste different than at Sherman?"

Amy: "My grandmother had back surgery today."

Aaron: "Yay!"

Dan: "...because Becky's ticklish after sex."

Becky: "So are you."

Dan: "Shut up."

"Have you seen that guy—Matt Sachs? He's such a stud!"

oberon: "So what was in the box?"

Dan: "Goodies."

oberon: "Can I have some goodies?"

Dan: "They're my goodies!"

oberon: "Sharing means caring."

Dan: "But I don't like you."

"Jackendoff. That was the link between drinking and Flash in the Night."

Cinga: Ah. Now I get a java.net:UnknownHostException.

Cinga: There seems to be an Exception for every situation.

Rentantilus: it's like the English language!

Person behind register at Lowes: "I hear thunder."

My father, a minute later, sarcastically, and in jest: "Well, the rain has to come from somewhere."

"Captain, I'm reading bio signs on the planet. To quote Dr. Frankenstein, `It's alive!`"

[standing by an orange tree trying to get down a good orange]

me: "Ooh, try to get that one up there."

Mahesh: "I'm not a monkey, man."

"What if you lose? I'll have to ... socialise with him."

Archer: "So, how long was it?"

Malcolm: "I counted 10 seconds."

Archer: "Ten? It was more like 20."

Malcolm: "Respectfully, sir, it was 10."

Archer: "I'm not going to argue with you Malcolm. It was 20. That's an order."

T'pol: "I still don't believe in time travel."

Archer: "The hell you don't."

Nathan: "Take his keys."

Me: "He's walking home."

Nathan: "Take them anyway; he might drive his house into something."

"I just want something that's `I can't believe it doesn't taste like crap.'"

"The universe is a spheroid region 705 metres in diametre."

"You're only so good as your last sound byte."

"You don't mess with the boop."

"Mumbo, perhaps; jumbo, perhaps not!"

"I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe."

"Forget that 'all-for-one' shit. I'm a minority of a minority of a minority and no one supports my ass."

"An image is one thing; a human is another."

(2.5) extreme tabooing in Aboriginal languages (Trask 1996):

a) In 1975 tribe member named Djäyila died, verb djäl- "want" became taboo, was replaced with duktuk- (borrowed from a neighbouring language)

b) In 1950 tribe member named Ngayunya died, pronoun ngayu "I" was tabooed and replaced by nganku; a subsequent death made nganku taboo, and therefore ngayu was revived

"And if it says on the [box?], 'Banana from Iceland,' then they need to check it."

"So BWT means 'Big Weird Things' and if they work, they work tremendously."

"I just think that cutting taxes is being disengenuous."

"And he shouldn't just repudiate the words, but he should repudiate the man."

"I don't think someone who holds those beliefs should be listened to—I think he should be repudiated—and the American Jewish Committee agrees with me."

"Don't fight your own battle; let God fight it! When he does, it's clean, it's [complete?], it's total!"

"Have you ever fought an idea, Picard? It has no weapon to destroy, no body to kill!"