I’m so fucking pissed off I just realized they’re called pancakes because they’re cakes you make in a frying pan fuck english.
Waterfall
Oh my fucking god I’m furious.
…did you think they were called pancakes because they’re pansexual? what the fuck lmfao
Ok so in linguistics when you study morphology, you study the smallest and largest components if what it might mean to be a word; because theres actually no real definition of a ‘word’ (or even a ‘language’ but thats another story). There are two main theories about the way that we store words in our brain. One is by every potential combination of morpheme <lexicon based> and another is by smallest morpheme (unit of meaning).
Lexicon Theory (1) is that we memorize/store ever word that has a complete unbounded meaning to it. This is how the lay person thinks about language. Knowing more words means knowing more if the language and we think we teach children language by teaching them words (talk about controversy there lemme tell you). So you separate “intelligence” from “intellect” from “intellectual” all distinct words, right? But couldn’t we make this system a little smoother by cheating a bit?
Morpheme Theory (2) says that every root, suffix, prefix, infix is stored separately and every time you go to retrieve a word you create the entire word, so every time you say ‘unintelligence’ your brain is processing ‘un + intell(ect)+ (ig)ence" to create “unintelligence”. Now this theory would account for the least amount of overall storage space in your brain. Kinda like carrying around a keyboard to type on instead of a dictionary to point words in to communicate.
Now, this is a great theory but in many experiments (and im sorry to be a terrible scientist but i cant source rn so you’ll have to trust with me) the results we get are not strictly in line with theory 2 but also not theory 1. So like many things in life ~its complicated~. What happens is (theoretical ofc but so is the explanation for gravity, kids) that every person has a slightly different configuration of what their lexical entries/“words” (morphemes) stored in the brain/. And this depends on how you acquired your language. And im not talking about second language or non native speakers although those are of course where the most drastic variations are seen.
No, if you used the word “butter” a lot in your childhood for some reason and also the word “ball” and those two words were very separate for you and strictly meant “food item” and “shape”, respectively. Then when you hear the word “butterball” the first thing that you picture in your head is…. a ball of butter.
BUT if you are someone who, like me, grew up knowing both “butter” and “ball” as separate BUT ALSO knew that the turkey we made on every thanksgiving was a Butterball turkey and that the brand name was Butterball. Then when you say to me “butterball” my lexicon will jump first to those two morphemes put together as that word and I’ll think– turkey! And never come close to picturing anything to do with butter or a ball even though to someone else it might be obvious that thats a compound word. I didnt have to recreate that word, it was already complete with its specific meaning.
Now. Children dont learn language, they acquire it. And one process that happens on acquiring it is that they build a lexicon (a mental dictionary). At the very beginning, a childs brain is not going to start doing the hard linguistic analysis that leads to Morpheme Theory 2. They store new “words” like a list and then at a certain point say ‘hey how about we simplify this list so its a lot shorter’ (remember: dictionary v. Keyboard). Now, this list of “words” gets simplified in different ways based on the individual.
A. So some people might keep “because” as one ‘word’.
“Because” = reason for an occurrence or expl.
“Waterfall” = that cascade of water from height
“Pancake” = this specific food item
“Closeknit” = intimate
B. While others might store such words by their parts
“Cause + be(ing)” =reason for something existing
“water + fall(ing)” = liquid moving in certain manner
“Pan + cake” = edible item x relating to an object ‘pan’
“Close(ly) + knit” = specific configuration of yarn
And the amazing thing is that because when we retrieve a word like “closeknit” by route A, we are going directly to an adjective which is used to describe perhaps the bond of friend ship and nothing to do with knitting, then the brain doesnt even go near the second potential storing of the word. You never think of knitting if you’ve only ever used that word as an adjective for emotional intimacy. Someone who DOES knit quite a lot and uses that as an adjective for the actual stitch of a knitting needle will almost certainly have the word stored in the manner B.
SO TO FINALLY COME TO A CONCLUSION. I AM SO SORRY FOR THE INTRO TO LINGUISTICS LESSON YALL DIDNT READ:
Someone thinking of a pancake has no reason to think of a “pan” and “cake” separately and so for whatever reason this was brought to their attention, the lack of previous consideration for this fact is what seems mind blowing when suddenly a new morpheme based meaning is given to the word. Language works in mysterious ways, and yall need the space in the brain to like breathe, remember and see shit; so language takes up as little space as necessary in the mind.
TL;DR People arent stupid for not “realizing” this, even if this language is their first language. Languages work without you understanding them, they are like the bumblebee. Our ideas about how language works are usually based in prejudiced social shit that should stay away from linguistics.
WHY ARE PEOPLE NOT MAKING THEIR PANCAKES ON GRIDDLES
I’ve read pancakes referred to as ‘griddlecakes’ before
it’s ‘flapjacks’ that’s making me wonder what it’s cooked on
1. What the hell is a griddle
2. THAT’S WHAT A FUCKING BUTTERBALL IS??? FRESH PRINCE OF BEL-AIR HAS HAUNTED ME FOR YEARS WITH THAT
3. Yeah this happens to me with words really frequently ngl
What the–who the hell just HAS a griddle to cook on then if it’s a restaurant thing??
you can buy them. some are electric and you just plug it in and go, others go on the stovetop, my parents have one for when they go camping
We had a cast-iron griddle when I was a kid. It was used not just for pancakes but for grilled cheese sammidges, too. Then Mom got the Farberware electric one and stopped using the cast-iron one. No idea what happened to it.
My mind is blown by the revelation that somebody old enough to be on Tumblr doesn’t know what a griddle is.
I grew up with a frying pan-like sorta square shaped pan, big enough to fry four grilled cheese sandwiches on simultaneously, which was also used to make pancakes. Incidentally, that was literally the only things we used that pan for. There are also griddles made of cast iron that are intended to go across two stove burners at once, although the cast iron griddles can also be used for cooking over a fire and are so used in car camping.
Griddles with integral heating elements are also common, from non-commercial griddles for home use being pretty common and cheap small appliances that can sub in for a stove top in a pinch (6-8 sandwich sized usually, also frequently seen at charity pancake breakfasts and car camping) to enormous commercial griddles up to almost the size of a twin mattress found in almost every commercial kitchen, frequently visible to customers in dinners, where, depending on the menu, up to almost all the cooking is done.
I was dumbfounded when I realized “recognize” is LITERALLY “cognize again” (That is, “realize you’ve encountered this thing before”) and “cooperate” is literally “operate together” (“work with another person to do a thing”)
THEY LOOK LIKE BIG WORDS BUT THEY ACTUALLY LITERALLY MEAN WHAT THEY SAY.
I’ve been informed that the family is still in need of donations after this awful injustice that was brought upon them. If you have anything to spare, please help this family who lost one of their own.
I love animals that are, like, the opposite of cryptids: we know for a fact they exist and have a clear idea of what they look like because we have photographs and individual specimens, but we haven’t the faintest idea where they’re coming from – they just keep showing up out of nowhere, and the locations of their actual population centres are a complete mystery.
I so want examples. anyone who knows of any should post them in notes
You know, like giant squid and such. We know the bastards exist, we have credible first-hand accounts stretching back thousands of years and dead specimens washed up on shore and such, but in centuries of searching we’ve managed exactly one well-documented encounter with a giant squid in its natural habitat. We have no idea what their native range is or what their life-cycle looks like, let alone how many of them are out there.
Are there any reverse-cryptids that /aren’t/ at the bottom of the ocean?
The red-crested tree rat, for one. There have been only three well-documented encounters since 1898, and they just plain disappeared from the zoological record for over a century. The only reason we know they’re not extinct is that one walked right up to a couple of wildlife research interns at a Columbian nature reserve back in 2011, apparently out of pure curiosity, and allowed itself to be photographed and observed for several minutes before disappearing again.
That’s genuinely pretty cool and all, but I absolutely need to talk about how the picture in that Wikipedia article looks like a tiny eldritch horror disguising itself as a peach.
To be fair, based on the actual photos from the 2011 encounter, they really do look like that:
Let’s say your matrilineal line is fairly consistent and everyone has their daughter at 25. So four women in your matrilineal line are born every hundred years. In a thousand years, that’s only 40 women. Like the math is so simple and yet ? You don’t think about it. So in 2000 years, 80 women. So basically, 0 AD started roughly about 80 mothers ago. That’s it.
I’m……… i’m a little drunk n cannot deal with this right now
Yep
The advent of agriculture around 9500BC was about 450 mothers ago
you can’t just say shit like that without a warning
Many, many mothers ago, when the world was new….
Many of the notes here are saying “But women used to have kids earlier”
Okay. So, assume every woman had her daughter at 20 instead.
That’s five mothers in a century.
Fifty mothers in a thousand years.
One hundred mothers in two thousand years.
That is five hundred and seventy five mothers since the dawn of agriculture.
Less than six hundred women, between you and the dawn of civilization.
You are never so far from your ancestors as you think.
The recently reconstructed Cheddar Man – the one with dark skin and curly black hair who is the oldest known modern Briton – has also had science done comparing his genome to living people.
They found descendants. Ten thousand years later, Cheddar Man’s many-times-great-grandson lives a mile away, teaches history at the local school, and still has the family nose.
That’s like four hundred generations. Same valley in Somerset. Same face. Ten thousand years.
“Men going their own way” sounds like it’d be some kinda cool warrior male type shit where they buy a large swath of land in Montana and live off the grid instead of unemployed losers talking about how their ex wives are whores on reddit
They think their warriors living off the grid. Let them live the lie. Less competition for me.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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