#TIL a new-to-me word:

VILIPEND.

Isn't it delightful?!

It means "to express scornfully one's low opinion of" someone or something.

Example sentence:

I experience a likely unhealthy amount of Schadenfreude anytime I read an article or hear a report vilipending the fascist regime of vile misogynist and racist Donald Trump and his sycophantic ilk.

And there's your #WordOfTheDay, y'all. Happy learning!

#vocabulary
#grammar
#linguistics
#language

I'd really like to meet Nelson Mandela the 800-year-old demi-god and dildo collector, he seems fun

@writers @writingcommunity @writing @humour @indieauthors @authorindiespeak

#WritingMemes #Memes
#Punctuation #Grammar #Oxford #Comma
#Author #Authors #IndieAuthor #IndieBooks #AmWriting #Writerdons #Writers #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity #Writinglife #WritersOfMastodon
#BoostingIsSharing

Even pre-ChatGPT, we saw an ever-increasing improvement in grammar and spell-checking tools. Think Grammarly or even the LibreOffice built-in tools. Thus, I'm not sure whether we should decry AI for everyone simply trying to make their writing more readable. Perhaps we should focus more on the author's expertise, content, and background, rather than relying too heavily on stochastic methods, especially since many authors may not be native speakers.
#AI #grammar
https://phys.org/news/2025-07-massive-ai-fingerprints-millions-scientific.html

I've come to the conclusion that the best thing I can do by way of learning languages other than English - is to learn English grammar. Because, once I got through things like Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Tenses, and Questions, they stopped teaching me grammar.

And language apps keep trying to shove declensions at me, and telling me how to say "nominative" in Latin. Um. What the hell is a nominative? (No, don't tell me - I looked it up. I can't remember what it is, but I did look it up.)

I compared notes with my family, and my Mother is the only one who could say that she'd been taught about things like that. And that was because she had to learn Latin.

So I've uninstalled the Latin language app, and installed a bug-ridden job from the British Council about English grammar, that started with the verb "to be."

I will return to Latin - but not until I've mastered a more advanced version of English grammar.

#languages
#Latin
#English
#grammar

At this years #LFG conference, I will talk about #TAG and what it shows us for the old phrasal vs. lexical discussion:

https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/009130

I think valence information has to be encoded lexically and lexical rules or empty heads or transformations should be used to derive resultative constructions or caused motion constructions. They can not be related to other constructions in inheritance networks.

Comments welcome!

I like to put U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE between numbers and units, such as:

2,345 mi
3.95 kg
25.7 °C

These diminutive slivers add just enough space between numbers and letters to make them easier to read, but still keep them together.

I also like to use the script ℓ for liters to keep it legible.

1.0 gal ≈ 3.79 ℓ

Spaces around en-dashes, or no?

From today's quiz. I now look forward to a SMH/Age story about a police car or an e-scooter fasting along the street.

We start a new month with a post, this time does have some code, and it's for my D&D campaign, maybe you want to learn about formal grammar and how name generation works. Enjoy the post!

https://jeferson.me/blog/2025/07/01/context-free-grammar/

The book "Grammar in Action" is out and I've received my physical one!!! #linguistics #grammar #emca

https://www.alojapan.com/1308687/why-the-month-of-may-feels-tough-and-how-language-can-help/ Why the month of May feels tough and how language can help #depression #grammar #Japan #JapanNews #Japanese #JapaneseNews #JlptN1 #JlptN5 #MentalHealth #news #nihongo #vocabulary There’s an English proverb that goes, “April showers bring May flowers.” In Japan, however, the month of 5月 (gogatsu, May) also brings on something a little less positive: 五月病 (gogatsu-byo, May sickness). Another translation for 五月病 might be the “May blues,” as this…

#todotxr #ebnf #bnf #wsn #grammar #syntax

Are there any grammar/syntax folks here who've worked with (E)BNF/WSN/etc?

I'm doing some work on todotxt (http://todotxt.org) to define its formal grammar in EBNF. I'm having a terrible time being able to validate its syntax, etc. Every on-line validator I've found (or library via rust) seems to completely disagree on the proper syntax, for example:

foo ::= "1" | "2"' ;

Some don't like the "::", some want ":=", or "=", some don't like the terminator (";") at the end of the line, etc.

I've written EBNF before, although admittedly I just made my own judgement as to the validity of it -- and in this example, the point wasn't to then generate a parsing syntax from it.

But with todotxt, I do want to be able to do that, and I'm struggling with all these little discrepancies.

Any help/thoughts would be really useful.

TIA!

https://www.alojapan.com/1303242/master-this-double-negative-to-better-express-your-black-friday-urges/ Master this double negative to better express your Black Friday urges #grammar #Japan #JapanNews #Japanese #JapaneseNews #news #nihongo #vocabulary Attention shoppers, it’s ブラックフライデー (burakku furaidē, Black Friday) today. And with サイバーマンデー (saibā mandē, Cyber Monday) and クリスマス (kurisumasu, Christmas) just around the corner, this weekend and the weekends that follow are bound to be busy for 買い物 (kaimono, shopping). During the shopping spree, y…

Read the room, buddy.

Grammar Police win again!

Honestly, the most offensive part of this spam email is the missing Oxford comma. It’s like, c’mon, get your act together.

Rain, rain, go away? That’s not likely during Japan’s rainy season. Learn how the language of the season goes beyond weather forecasts and into disasters. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2025/06/12/language/rainy-season-japanese-downpour/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #life #language #nihongo #vocabulary #grammar #jlptn2 #jlptn3 #rainyseason

#Grammar question for fedi editors: what's correct?

find out if any of them IS aware
find out if any of them ARE aware

I thought the tense would depend on"any" but someone else thinks it depends on "them."