totes adorbs truncations

[@phyphor]

The fact that boomer English people would consider "comfy" legit (and, for that matter, "legit"), but "totes" not is another example of people generally believing everything invented before they were an adult is normal and everything after is weird and strange.

[@fariesz6786]

and of course the last big change (in spelling, speech habits, whatever) _before_ them was bc people before them were also idiots - everyone believes they themselves are peak humanity.

[@soundlyawake]

okay i love this bc my friends and I in high school would truncate EVERYTHING as a joke but we would call it “abbreving”

[@KaiHenningsen]

The abbr. for abbr. is abbr.

[@jakeaurod]

When I was in school, we made everything longer to sound Russian, or German, or Latin.

[@DonPaliPalacios]

This is comparable to expletive infixation (“abso-freakin’-lutely”): two very productive processes with complex rules that most native speakers know unconsciously but would not be able to explain.

[@leemiller1837]

Yeah that's a whole nother topic

[@AmyThePuddytat]

@@leemiller1837 I love tme-fucking-sis.

[@DeForestRanger]

I can't believe you actually said "figure-outable." Made my day!

[@razzle_dazzle]

My favorite new word like that is "unputdownable" (to describe a book). Once you're aware of it, you wonder what other adjective could possibly be used in its place.

[@theprinceofinadequatelighting]

out-figurable?

[@galoomba5559]

@@theprinceofinadequatelighting german be like

[@Lawfair]

@@theprinceofinadequatelighting deducible

[@HyTricksyy]

I saw with my own eyes children playing minecraft organically referring to an item you can pick up and put in your inventory as "pickupable". They all just totes started using it no prob.

[@brianhawthorne7603]

I am always amazed at your ability to instantly code-switch between your topic language form, US academic English, and colloquial American English.

[@languagejones6784]

Thank you! It’s practiced. For some reason a lot of academics don’t like explaining the jargon

[@wafelsen]

Is it happening on the fly or is this sort of thing in the script?

[@brianhawthorne7603]

@@wafelsen It must be scripted! Right? Please tell me it is scripted.

[@brianhawthorne7603]

@@wafelsen It must be scripted! Right? Please tell me it is scripted.

[@NewtNotNoot]

It's impressive but also MANY minority folks in the US code switch in a similar way

[@foogod4237]

I was surprised you didn't even mention some of the abbreviations that follow _exactly the same rules_ but have been in common use (even by curmudgeonly old men) for a long time, such as "fridge" (refrigerator), "loony" (lunatic), "Hi-Fi" (high fidelity), "kitty" (kitten / cat), etc.

[@languagejones6784]

Those follow different rules! The output of this game would be refridge, loonz, highfs, and kittsh (blocked by the existing word)

[@adrianblake8876]

@@languagejones6784 "fridge" follows the rule, but is a truncation of "Frigidaire"...

[@CharleneCTX]

@@adrianblake8876 I'm almost 60. My grandmother used "Frigidaire" as a generic term for that kitchen appliance.

[@richjamjam]

Yes please to a Kiki/buba video. I'd write it as casj.

[@melody3741]

Like soc’s. I think it should either be standard phonetic or spelling. Cazh (leaving the c to leave a better connection) or cas

[@Trump.is.a.nazzii]

"Garage" ends with the -age sound but "casual" can't be shortened to cage 😂😂😂 I love that our language is Germanic but like 70% of our vocab is Latin

[@fariesz6786]

i like ‹casj› it did cross my mind but i figured i'd settle with ‹cazh› eventch

[@alexhruzewicz]

Hear hear. We need to know more about Kiki/buba

[@alexhruzewicz]

Ok. So I think I get it. Kiki is skinny. Buba is round. This weirdly makes intuitive sense to me because the vowels. I is skinny. O/u are round. Somehow both in writing and speech. But I’m going out on a limb. I should read about this. Haha. Thank you!

[@LilitheAmara]

I started using "welkies" instead of "You're Welcome" and people generally know what I mean, even when I slip up and say it to people outside my circle.

[@GroovingPict]

in Norwegian, one of the more modern truncs is shortening "seriøst" (seriously) to just "serr". At first to just express incredulity (as in "seriously??" or "for real??"), but it soon evolved to be used in the affirmative as well, as in if someone says something and in English one might reply "yeah, for real", a Norwegian youngster might reply with simply "serr". (I say youngster, but even the demographic most associated with it is getting into their late 20s now, but for someone like me who is even older, it is still a pretty grating expression). And yeah it's definitely associated more with women than men as well (and probably at least somewhat regional too)

[@gillablecam]

Fantastic explanation, and I really appreciated the multiple times and ways you rephrased "it's linguistically neutral, people hate it because of misogyny." I'd love to see a kiki/bouba video, and even more so if you could throw in the queer English meaning of kiki

[@karlhenke91]

My favorite sub-stratum of KZbin genres is "why do we hate everything girls like?" It's fascinating and I have been guilty of it as well.

[@cacogenicist]

I think it should be noted that _plenty_ of young women also can't stand these truncations.

[@rinnachi]

@@cacogenicist yes, and often it’s coupled with a desire to “remove” themselves from the derogatory feminine connotation of the practice, as with many other phenomena incorrectly attributed to “young women ruining things”. doesn’t matter one way or another whether a woman *engages* in it, but if she’s actively critical of it, it’s often paired with degradation of the “type” of femininity she disapproves of, while affirming her own.

[@stevewood8914]

First line of the ad I got with this: "Fancy something delish?". I laughed; it's like the algorithm knew!

[@Riokaii]

Something interesting that i've noticed with "new" slang especially on stuff like twitter and memes (short text based formats) is that the pattern of the language itself, known subconsciously and intuitively but not really explicitly, IS the joke often time. Part of the joke is that they know how your head will read something and interpret it, even thought its a new, made up word or term of slang. Often i think this "totes adorbs" was used first ironically in this way, as parody in-joke of people who landed upon a linguistic funny way of shortening something that was still understandable as the full word. current example might be "im eepy" and it's used ironically, but to the outside observer who never see's the original joke it's riffing on etc. it's viewed earnestly, and when the meme is used enough times (or just once by someone "cringe" and old enough) the ironic use mostly dies, while the "earnest" use is all that remains.

[@XGD5layer]

It's a type of code switching and it can serve many purposes. Unexpectedly "switching your code of choice" is indeed how "it gets to people" as a joke. Of course, code switching can serve many other purposes.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Sleeby and eeby and espy are totally valid and I've been doing them for over a decade. It was honestly kind of funny to suddenly see a whole host of other people saying things that for years I'd been saying to give friends a little word game.

[@otsoko66]

In my phonology class we had to derive the rules for truncating course / major names at university (in the US): anthro, ling, sosh, trig, calc, phys ed, (etc) but no truncation for history or English (etc). Bottom line: truncation is really common in university settings and tots defs serves as an in-group marker. Side note: one Canadian student explained that it had to be 'maths' and not 'math'.

[@RobespierreThePoof]

Math versus maths is an old British vs. American English difference. (For unaware readers.)

[@jlljlj6991]

Most of the viewers probably already know it, but for those who haven't yet dived deeper into phonetics-tube, Geoff Lindsey made a great video about vocal fry/creaky voice a few weeks ago. Worth a watch.

[@languagejones6784]

That’s a great video!

[@cloaker2375]

I have huge amounts of respect for you. Love what you do here, keep making great content!

[@KyleWoodlock]

On spelling: just last night I saw an episode of Our Flag Means Death where "usual" got trunc'd, and the subtitles went with "uszh"

[@joshrotenberg5872]

“Low open vowels like a are based” is easily the best thing I’ve heard in the second half of today.

[@maicydownton7949]

Thank you for defending this kind of speech! I know growing up I was always discouraged from "sounding like a baby" to the point where I almost did it as a way to rebel, or at least get my parents to cringe. Nowadays I'll truncate words just to get a giggle out of people. It probably sounds dumb to some, but oh well 🙃

[@MeppyMan]

So I’m a middle aged English speaking white dude, and I just stumbled on your channel and found this one really thought provoking. Made me think about my likes and dislikes of what I’d call “slang” used in certain circles/age groups and I never realised the gender bias going on. Makes perfect sense to me, thanks. I’ll be more mindful about how I react to it for sure (I’m pretty relaxed about it general, but “totes” was defo a word that gave me the igits) Speaking of defo and igits, now I’m going to see if you’ve done any videos on Australian slang and where the hell igit (so) came from (I’m from NZ originally and I think I picked that up from my mum).

[@MeppyMan]

Oh and I’m often arguing with my mum about language and grammar being dynamic, and that it’s always been that way. She’s in her 80s and gets upset when people are either lazy with their grammar (which in all fairness in some cases can cause confusion) or just using modern terms and language that she didn’t grow up using.

[@patrickhodson8715]

"Productive" shortens to "preduc-duc" obvi

[@sbeveridge]

"Grokked" - thanks for the Heinlein reference!

[@owenbennett1708]

Japanese uses truncations all the time for words of foreign origin (I hesitate to call them loan words, because a lot of the time they've been transformed so much they're barely recognisable). Famicon - family computer, wapuro - word processor, conbini - convenience store, sutaba - starbucks, digicam - digital camera, and of course anime. This also happens for Japanese origin words (less frequently) like Kyodai and Tōdai - Kyoto/Tokyo Daigaku (Kyoto/Tokyo University), or keitai - keitaidenwa (lit. portable telephone).

[@cacogenicist]

Hmm. Not sure if it makes any difference that those alterations are driven by the rather extreme difference in phonotactics between those languages.

[@owenbennett1708]

@@cacogenicist I think it's certainly a part of it, but I also think there is a cultural component, since it also occurs with Japanese words, and words that are almost the same in Japanese as English (for example camera). Whether the driver is anything similar to totes adorbs truncs, I could not say however!

[@stevenglowacki8576]

You missed my favorite "rimokon". I remember reading that a Japanese person used this with someone that spoke only English and assumed that it was an English word because it came from English. But no one contracts "remote control" in that way in English.

[@dynamicworlds1]

Japan uses truncations often where English would use acronyms because even their simplest alphabet codes for whole syllables, not parts of syllables like the one we use. (Not sure if alphabet is the right word, technically, but my meaning is clear enough I hope)

[@leemiller1837]

A fun one from outside of English: the suffix -oosh that appears nowadays in Israeli Hebrew "girl-speech." It can be used to add cuteness to any word, even non-nouns eg "Hi-oosh", meaning a cute hello. I have to say, this video reminded me why I fell in love with linguistics as a teenager: It's a well placed Well Actually to the face of the stuffy prescriptivists. Good one!

[@Giraffinator]

Mirage, montage, collage Might be a pattern there

[@languagejones6784]

Good point. Loan words from French with the -age morpheme. Bricolage. While we’re at it, Italian Solfège!

[@janhavlis]

quite an interesting one! 🤩my mother tongue is czech, and in it, truncations are more part of the childlang, kind of a slang to differ from adults. it has different forms over time (when i was a kid it was definitely different from the today's version) and mostly dies after 18. some words do survive, like "večeře" > "véča", "pyžamo" > "pýžo", some do not (cos 😉they have no actual role later in life) like "přírodopis" > "příraz", "český jazyk" > "čenina", "anglický jazyk" > "anglina". young women (i won't say girls, but really young mums) do more tend to use diminutives (special slavonic obsession in word formation, we have tons of suffices to create diminutives, even from verbs "děťátečko plačínkalo na polštáříčku" (have fun to translate it in english), more fun, these suffices are additive! "dítě" (kid) > "děťátko" or "dítko" > "děťátečko" or "dítečko" > "děťulínko" ad infinitum naseamque). translator of "mechanical orange" used this tool to translate specifically british (?) expressions like "itsy witsy bitsy bit of baby" to "roztomiloučký pičičánkový chytroušenký miminko". and yes, i would like to see a vid about kiki/bouba effect, sound symbolism and phonaesthetics/phonaesthemics! it is my long-term linguistic interest, i even tried to do some experimental work in the field.

[@jackbeare9280]

I'd love a video on the Kiki-Bouba effect, especially how it's applied to things outside the original experiment graphics. The linguistic knowledge that is built into our brains is always a fascinating topic. Cool to see what we can all do with language features that come stock with the human brain. Great videos, keep them coming :D

[@shybard]

I definitely want a video on kiki/bouba. This sounds supes cray-cray. I'm sure it'll totes splode muh brain.

[@stevia99]

This is common in medical jargon (subcu for subcutaneous). People are especially tempted to abbreviate those super long drug names but it’s discouraged as it can lead to medication errors

[@haydenhudleston3738]

You will forever be doc tay-tay to me

[@LucTaylor]

This is on a whole nother level

[@LilitheAmara]

I listened to a grad student's presentation about an experiment with children of different ages to see if they would identify the same things as kiki or bouba. It's fun hearing some of the linguistic things I heard in developmental psychology talks on here. 😊

[@LucTaylor]

Maybe it's cuz I'm autistic or in QA, but I struggle with the kiki bouba thing... I guess "bouba" sounds fatter, but it's not as 'obvious' to me as it is to other people.

[@KaiHenningsen]

@@LucTaylorOh, is that what it is? I'd probably identify China as kiki for purely linguistic reasons, and be like 'I've no idea' otherwise. I don't "feel" any implied meaning there.

[@KaiHenningsen]

Also, I have an aversion to answering questions to which I don't see a meaningful answer, like "what is your favorite color" (don't have one).

[@LilitheAmara]

@@LucTaylor Yeah, that makes total sense! It's almost like a sinesthetic quality that is being used for this experiment. K is a sharper sound which people tend to assign to things that are sharp/ pointy or thin like "Kite". B sounds more rounded which tends to make people think of round things like "bubble". At least this is how my brain assessed these things. 😅

[@SkylerLinux]

As to Baby Talk, it's something everybody wants to use. It's used for Babies, Pets, Plants, pretty much anything that won't tell you to use "Grown-up" words.

[@ItsAsparageese]

My adorbs puppos agree with this and send snugs

[@zillyjay]

I've considered myself fluent in English for almost two decades but this video just murdered me in cold blood.

[@dyld921]

My favroite lunch is sandos with a side of taters in mater sauce with nanners for dessert. The creaky voice thing being stigmatized is interesting to me. In Vietnamese (the Northern/Ha Noi dialect), it's a feature of two of the tones "nga" and "nang". It's how we tell them apart from the tones "sac" and "huyen" For truncated "casual" I would spell it "cazh". For "jealous" I would spell it "jell" instead of "jeal"

[@poozlius]

My comments rarely contain insight of any use, but the algorithm registers them as "engagement" ... my work here is done!

[@mirallstrencats8018]

language daddy

[@kaiwangle5003]

This video immediately reminds me of the argument on Dear Hank and John about how to spell the truncated version of 'as per usual' (my vote is for youzh). I'm glad that it vindicates it as a totes legit expresh, but we seem to be no closer to a consensus on how to spell it!

[@CindyPlaysGames]

Responding to 5:56 - massage, barrage, visage, mirage, homage, camouflage, collage, sabotage, montage, entourage

[@olivianeugeboren602]

I find it linguistically interesting how much it bothered me that you said "kiki-bouba" instead of "bouba-kiki" lol. Not just because my expectation being subverted caused dissonance, but more significantly, since i was a kid and had friends who were siblings, ive found it interesting that paired names (or any paired words for that matter) often seem to have an intrisic auditorily pleasant and correct order. The fact that i just experienced that with "bouba-kiki" which is itself the most famous experiment about whether words have intrisic phonetic vibes felt significant to me

[@GeoffPlitt]

LJ, this is such a great video. Loved every second of it. I took IPA and linguistics at Carnegie Mellon, and I'm now learning German, so your channel is especially fun for me to watch. Please keep doing these!

[@LurkeyTurkey68]

These videos have become my new sanctuary. I miss studding linguistics so much, and I cannot wait to go back to get a PhD in it as well (though I will admit i am really interested in morphology and syntax, especially its evolution). So, thank you for these videos. They're fantasticly entertaining and informative, and make me miss being around linguists so much. Especially when my FIL (boomer) tries to "talk" to me about such things involving language (specifically zoomer language).

[@Qegixar]

I would spell cazh with the ʒ sound spelled with a zh as a logical extension of how the unvoiced equivalent is typically spelled sh, and z makes the voiced equivalent of s. Of course, this isn't how any previously accepted spellings of English words withe the ʒ sound write it, but putting a g, j, or s there isn't going to convey to a reader as cleanly what sound it is. Wiktionary seems to agree, with alternate spellings caszh, cas, kasj, and kazh listed.

[@tim1724]

Agreed. It's probably the most unambiguous spelling despite not being used in any actual words.

[@blacxthornE]

as someone who's good with grammar, i used to be a pedant before i learned what "descriptive" was. now i not only find language pedantry annoying and sad, but i find it counterintuitive for the so-called defenders of language. if you like your language so much, why not enjoy it, and let others enjoy it as well? having fun with language is a unique joy people deny themselves when they are pedants about it. as a millenial, i am getting older and with the speed of internet and the vast corners of it, now there's no way for me to keep up with the latest lingo, so i understand some of the frustration, but i don't think it's legit. i think a lot of it comes from the feeling of missing out, getting older, and feeling older as well. ah young kids, what are they even saying‽ also some of it is plain juvenoia. we made it so far by speaking one way, so that must be the one true way. why are they moving away from that? it's fine, older people. you've always said things they don't understand; it's only fair that they come up with stuff you don't either. it's part of the joy.

[@xurtis]

In Australia, everyone does rising termination and we turn so many words into a sort of diminutive of a truncation

[@xurtis]

The suffix defaults to a stressed e or y and maybe made plural. Costume -> cozzies, barbecue -> barbie. If it had originated here, I’d expect toties rather than totes.

[@artugert]

I never associated these kinds of word games with females at all, but rather with young people. It is usually young people who like to play more in general, including playing with words. For example, as for as I know, basically all slang is created by young people.

[@katethegoat7507]

I'll be honest, I think the animosity against the phrase "totes legit" or "totes adorbs" comes less from truncation and more from the animosity of the kind of speech where people use "totally" and "adorable" unpalatably often

[@SkorjOlafsen]

I don't know what to call a tweet these days, but everyone is X-ing that question.

[@ItsAsparageese]

I'm a fan of the "zh" for "as per uzh", "unuzh but cazh about it", et cetera. Also another example word, a "zhuzzh" (the "u" sound here is roughly like the one in "push") is when you, like, take your hair out of a towel or out of a bun and give it a not-quite-shaking-not-quite-combing-it's-only-describable-as-a-zhuzzh with your hands (most people who've watched anything about hair care and especially curly hair care will know what I mean lol) or, like, you zhuzzh the kitchen when you don't exactly do specific named-chores in such a complete/deliberate way that it merits naming them, but rather you like condense a few things and neaten up a few things and lightly wipe the convenient parts of the surface, stuff like that.

[@Raveler1]

I also like the zh, but I think the vowel problem in "unuzh" (that u is being used twice for two different phonemes) would suggest a spelling of "unyuzh". Cazh makes perfect sense. As for the other word, I've mentally spelt it "zuhzh," but it's definitely one I hear more than see written.

[@ItsAsparageese]

@@Raveler1 I can see the argument for "unyuzh" but, like, we don't have that problem with the original word "unusual" or loads of other words where vowels have different character from syllable to syllable, so to me it doesn't stand out in this case. :P That said, something in me also wants to argue for consonant consistency in the "zhuzzh/zuhzh" example, because to me a "z" ain't a "zh" without the "h" lol. So I guess I have two completely conflicting opinions about this when it comes to vowels vs consonants and I have to question the logical consistency of my entire life now XD

[@Raveler1]

@@ItsAsparageeseIt occurs to me that there's probably a bit of pronunciation differences with zhuzzh vs zuhzh - I've heard both, but prefer to say it with a difference in the consonant, which I represented in the text. As for unusual - yeah, we're used to pronouncing that word that way, since "usual" is a word with a first-letter vowel, and "un-" is a prefix attached to it, that also is a first-letter vowel, yet is pronounced differently. Darn you English! You've reminded me of a good joke, though - "How do you tell the difference between a school teacher and a chemist? Ask them to pronounce "unionized""

[@ItsAsparageese]

@@Raveler1 Haaaaa that's fabulous, stealing XD And how funny, I've never heard the "zuhzh" pronunciation variant! Makes sense you'd want the spelling to match it, then, lol

[@mrflipmrflip]

Would love to hear about the mechanics behind "who am I" or "I can't even"... («"The day before she dies she asked me for a cigarette; who am I? Then she told me a bunch of stories I'd never heard before, ..."»). There's several stock ways to finish each phrase (to judge/to tell her no/to complain/to give her advice // I can't even [deal/say more/...]) and it says all of them by saying none of them.

[@gageowens688]

Hi Dr. Jones! Really love your content. Could you make a video about using singular vs plural verbs for collective nouns? In my experience, something like "my family is" vs "my family are" seems to vary depending on region. I (SE USA) say the former but I've heard people from England say the latter.

[@SlimThrull]

I'm very curious about this, too. Incidentally, I use "is" and am in NY.

[@Starkiller935]

I'm pretty sure we learned in school that British English uses plural like "the team are", or "the police are" and American English uses singular. I'm not a native speaker but I use the singular, that's how it is my language so it makes sense.

[@emilyrln]

@@Starkiller935interesting! I (an Oregonian) would say "the team is" but "the police are," and I have no idea why except that it sounds right 😂

[@ansatsusha8660]

​@@emilyrlnI think thats because the plural of police is still police, maybe?

[@emilyrln]

@@ansatsusha8660that could very well be! Honestly, I don't really ever think of singular police XD just "a police officer," where "police" acts as an adjective. It's never "a police" or "one police" in my head lol

[@BlackTomorrowMusic]

4:14 That rickroll was totes legit.

[@Muhahahahaz]

He got me too 💀

[@aybiss]

One of my favourite videos so far!

[@jampharos]

i genuinely think we'd be happier as a culture if more people let themselves talk like this more often

[@sovietbear1917]

I am so happy that the algorithm showed me your videos last month! Fantastic video.

[@stuchly1]

Eye cream took me out oh my god. 🤣🤣🤣 I am coming to this video from the perspective of a non-native speaker and totes adorbs is my jam. 😅 That one in particular is the one i use unironically but I'm highly unfamiliar with many of the others. This was an absolutely amazing video, insightful and entertaining in equal measure. Thank you.

[@Chocomint_Queen]

I'm pretty sure he said egg cream! It's an American drink made of sparkling water, milk, chocolate syrup, and maybe sprinkles. (And notably, no cream, and no eggs.)

[@Yoeri22]

Great video! In Dutch there's a similar thing, mostly done by college students. Abbreviations, or Afkorting in Dutch is used a lot, from vriendinnen - dinnies, korte bon - kabo which is literally the short receipt at a self check out, and sentences to say something is great with already a made up word, heerlijk de peerlijk- heerlie de peerlie or even ' h de p'. Even Abbreviations have become abbreviated, afkorting becomes afko

[@tinnagigja3723]

The default suffix for these in Icelandic is -ó, just like lotto for lottery. So your 'gagnfræðaskóli' becomes 'gaggó', 'saumaklúbbur' becomes 'saumó', and 'róluvöllur' becomes 'róló'. As a child I assumed all words ending with -ó were truncations, and I could never work out what 'bingo' was short for.

[@maninalift]

Loved this. Thank you.

[@languagejones6784]

You are so welcome!

[@SanjayMerchant]

I'd love to see what you have to say about what I'll call "meme spellings". Smol instead of small when something is both small and cute (eg a puppy), wat instead of what when one is nonplussed, etc. (Apologies if this is something you have covered and I just haven't found it yet.)

[@languagejones6784]

Haven’t covered it - great idea!

[@kaitlyn__L]

I'm also reminded of how a lot of versions of Scots will have "wit" (it's basically "what" with a schwa instead of an a, so spelt with an i so it's not just wat). IE "Wit'd'ja dae that fr?"

[@jeroenwarner4834]

I have been teaching university students for 30 years now and i've never ever told a student that their paper was "dumb". That's just not on.

[@languagejones6784]

That was hands down the least bad bad interaction I had in grad school 🫠

[@ry3bee]

God I love this channel

[@baerlauchstal]

In the US, do you have that form we have here of y s? When her late Maj was celebrating 70 years as her Maj, it was "platty joobs". These inflation-marred days, you hear a lot of "cozzy livs".

[@meteorplum]

1. Yes on kiki/buba. 2. Would like a followup video discussing how this kind of truncation is thought about in British English. While "Ab Fab" might be reasonably (mis)attributed to "young" women's speech, the use of "mod cons" doesn't seem to be limited to a gender or age group, though that example might have crossed over into jargon territory. 3. I spent some years living in Europe in the 2000s. They were, and had been, texting a lot more than Americans. Part of that was because kids got cell phones in lieu of having regular access to landlines at home, or having a dedicated landline. This was especially true in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in rural areas where there hadn't been widespread installation of wired telephonic infrastructure, and it was competitive to put up cell towers. Given the same text length limitation, the earlier adoption of cell service meant a longer time with texting.

[@MarkJaroski]

I'm surprised that you didn't mention how universal truncation is in French and how it tends to even be perceived as a bit masculine.

[@madweenerdog8403]

Thank you for breaking down linguistically how the word "bevvy" (meaning a fun beverage) came about at my college lol

[@jaiseverson9024]

It is LangyJo is now and forever

[@dyrnwynski]

Awesome video. I love topics like this since they're pretty relevant for me. I LOVE little word games like this. Me and my girlfriends speak to each almost entirely in a sort of "baby talk" and my close friend group have a sort of social game of coming up with on the fly shortenings or alterations of words.

[@ForrestMcGill]

P. G. Wodehouse has Bertie Wooster using lots of adorbs truncations in the Jeeves and Wooster stories and novels.

[@martinbsmith3]

So many layers to this video; amazing

[@AJeziorski1967]

First heard these kind of truncations from a friend’s teenage daughter in Canada some 15 years ago. Coming from her, I thought they were totes adorbs. Would never dream of using them myself, any more than I would ever let the word “skibidi” pass my lips. I also very much doubt that my friend’s daughter would still be talking like that, 30-ish professional that she is now. Some things just belong to youth, and are just fine as long as they remain there. Damn, I just realized how old that makes me sound. Damn, I actually AM that old … Love your videos, though, Dr Jones.

[@shido534]

5:40 Other examples (#NormanConquest) are beige, triage, arbitrage, dressage, liege, and the Frenchier pronunciation of "homage". If we jump outside the dictionary, a recent addition would be the Kia Sportage.

[@VisualBRON]

A prog on 'kiki-bouba' would be totes kewl, to mix my styles of contraction.

[@paulweiss2720]

Terrific! This is a presentation where an accurate written transcription of your presentation would actually provide significant value, I think. I know that I’d read it closely to find examples which illustrate your transformation rules, and examples which seemed to stretch or violate them. Modern French is also full of these, and I find it very interesting how they’re formed, and how they obey orthographic norms even when they don’t modify the pronunciation of the word, like “les ados.” I’m not sure that they follow the same transformation rules you’ve sketched out; I’ve never thought about it before. I don’t believe that there’s the same stink of misogyny in the French case; it’s more a matter of generational identity, I think, and of the potency associated with currency and modernity.

[@user-bf8ud9vt5b]

You could do a vid on the Australian particularly high propensity to shorten words and put -o, -ie, -y and -a at the end. Arvo, servo, devo, ambo, postie, pokies, rellie, mozzie, chippy, sparky, Bazza, Gazza, Shazza, etc.

[@aspidoscelis]

It's not misogyny so long as you're bothered by both "totes" and "-maxxing".

[@aspidoscelis]

If anything, I think male-coded youth slang is more widely considered cringe-and less frequently makes it out into the wilds from its home in 4chan and gamer culture. The boomers might hate "adorbs" but they've probably heard it and know what it means, which can't be said for, say, "pwned"...

[@TheYambino]

I love that these truncation just take a dump on the alphabet in a lot of cases. Some are very hard to read unless you know what it was truncated from

[@KarenSDR]

I don't know why other boomers are so snotty about this stuff. I remember being in junior high in about 1970 and being surprised when one of my friends referred to what I called the "icebox" as the "fridge." I'd never heard that before, but after a while I was doing it too.

[@matteo-ciaramitaro]

It's super weird that native english speakers (at least in the US) aren't taught any way to notate the voiced version of sh (as in version). It seems that nonnative english speakers and their teachers are taught to use zh to represent this, which I guess makes sense, but since we don't spell that sound that way in any single word, it doesn't necessarily work if you were never taught. I had always used the letter J to represent the sound because it's the letter that represents this sound and the fewest other sounds. We also typically don't end words in this letter without converting it into the voiced sh. Example: raj or taj mahal which in english use the voiced sh but in the original language use the d͡ʒ sound. So "It'll be super casjjjj" or something is what I usje wrote.

[@naamashang5107]

The וש suffix in Hebrew is indeed quite new when you connected to regular every day words such as היוש, ביוש, and other words which coincidentally are not really Hebrew. But using this suffix at the end of given names in order to express affection is not new at all relatively speaking. People were doing that 40 or 50 years ago, and perhaps even earlier, and it wasn't just young women. Of course there are names that naturally fitness pattern And names that do not. But I remember even decades to go, my sister תמי being called תמוש. Again, this was the case for both male and female names and was used by both males and females.

[@mfuntanilla7476]

Totes absorb

[@milagrosrodriguezcaro6259]

Great vid!

[@ASB-is-AOK]

Shout out to Penny from "Happy Endings": EVERYONE LOVES MY ABBREVES!

[@talu001]

Interesting! I'm australian and I've been curious about whether there are patterns to our slang that shortens words and adds -o -a or -ie/-y. Servo, mozzie, arvo, sanga, bikkie, maccas, footy etc. E.g. how does the vowel at the end get chosen and why do we change the 'stem' sometimes too?

[@Carl-md8pc]

it seems there is a lot of vowel harmony (think of Magyar or Finnish). Not end with, u, er, eh vowel sounds so these become o (e.g., servo, rego) or ie (e.g., mozzie, breakkie. Compare with 'Gazza' and 'yakka').

[@burnblast2774]

You mention congrats for congratulations having become is own word, and I would agree based on that, in my own speech, I tend to reduce it even further to simply grats. I realize it's not the same process as described (more so just an unstressed syllable in a common word becoming so unstressed that it ceases to be pronounced at all) but I find it accomplishes a similar effect.

[@jonispatented]

To add on to Garage and Rouge, I'd like to introduce "Pleasure" and "Measure".

[@languagejones6784]

Yes! But only word finally when truncated like this

[@4thwatch370]

Treasure is also in that vein, but more similar to garage and rouge are lavage, barrage, triage, and massage.

[@tinnagigja3723]

I just think It showed enormous restraint to use 'kiki' instead of 'titi' as the counterpart to 'bouba'. I would not have been able to resist that.

[@travcollier]

Wholesome nerd content

[@rivques4516]

In the context of video games, I see it spelled cas. Out of that context, I'd probably spell it caʒ, because everything else looks wrong. I read casj as [kæzdʒ], cas as [kæz] and cazh as [käz].

[@razzle_dazzle]

"Caʒ" would only be understood in linguistics circles though, no?

[@asksyealer]

08:36 Ohhh on the "oosh" sound - in Levantine Arabic you can call a cute baby "كربووووج"!

[@thecanefromcitizenkane]

My favorite one recently uses the final sound of "ch" instead of "sh"/"zh": "gender neutral" -> "gendy nooch"

[@RainDownpours]

i use probsly and totesly for "probably" and "totally" sometimes

[@skatzy584]

This was awesome. I understood none of it and all of it at the same time. Congratch

[@Nixitur]

An interesting thing I've noticed is that some usages of even the same truncation sound more "correct" to me than others. For instance, I would have no problem saying "y'know, the uszh" for "the usual". But I don't think I'd say "as uszh" for "as usual", and I can't figure out why.

[@perrybarton]

4:14 - Rickroll as caption. Nice! I vote for hot fudge sundae, simply because I like them more than banana splits (which are not at all bad). Oh and… interesting video. (Totes intres vid? 🤔) BTW, Boomer male here, and I love me some slangz.

[@soranuareane]

Where do I go to learn the IPA? The symbols are mostly meaningless to me and the text descriptions contain too many technical words for me to gain a proper understanding.

[@languagejones6784]

I have an explainer coming very soon. This is probably the most common question. Planning on having it out in a short series over the next couple of months.

[@oscarfernandes4364]

I wish they'd add it to duolingo

[@vesthibitionist]

two apps I use are ipa tts and av phonetics

[@soranuareane]

@@languagejones6784 Thank you!!

[@oscarfernandes4364]

@@vesthibitionist I downloaded av phonetics, its great!

[@anidnmeno]

this really totes my goats

[@joshwinn3715]

I prefer a “toats” spelling so folks don’t think I’m carrying boxes.

[@jasoncollins5949]

The casual one is difficult. I once had to add a voice note to a snap just because I had no idea how to type it

[@Jackk225]

my friends and I frequently truncate "tragic" and in text we spell it "traj," "trajj," or "trajjy"