first day of classes

[trochee]

and so begins a new academic year. I had my first class since the spring today. I did right by bringing a lab notebook to this class about experimental phonetics and phonology; halfway through class, the professor announces that he expects everybody to be using stitched quad-rule lab notebooks for the class, because "that's what a grant would insist on, and sometimes they audit. get used to it." I just had that idea last week.

and there were some interesting people in the class that I didn't already know, including an undergrad (another one, xaosenkosmos!) who's a math/linguistics double major. She seems pretty sharp.

This class is focused on improving our ability and comfort with the traditional experimental method (often lacking in much of linguistics), and started with the thought experiment:

how many times do you push the button at a crosswalk?
update: why?

Comments

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

It started out as typos by non-native English speakers. Apparently saying SUBJ BE DET ADJ is a superlative in their language, or something thereabouts.

Now we're all using "teh" to indicate superlatives. 'Cause we're evil and mean-spirited like that.

[ex-caracola454.livejournal.com]

so... would i be "correct" in saying 'Thaiphoon's bathing rama is teh shit'?

[xaosenkosmos.livejournal.com]

You had to go right for the tricky case, didn't you? That one's somewhat ambiguous. I interpret it as being "the highest degree of 'the shit'," while others may interpret it as "the highest degree of shit." To me, "shit" isn't an A, while "the shit" is. So "teh shit" is "the shit" with a superlative marker.

Being unfamiliar with the object in question, i have no idea whether it's correct or not. But it is grammatical =)

[ex-caracola454.livejournal.com]

Har.
:-)

[trochee.livejournal.com]

do you have any evidence for this or are you doing the thing I always do -- make something up and say it authoritatively?

What language is involved in this authoritative statement?

is that really teh answer?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dkg_/]

while i have absolutely nothing to back this up, i would offer a different origin (though i reckon i'm pretty out of touch with kids these days...):

i first started seeing teh used in the context where the author was mimicking a n00b in a rather excitable state. they are usually so excited that they don't sufficiently complete the end of sentences (leaving out things like "iest thing"). They also frequently overindulge in exclamation points, though they can't seem to hold down the shift key all the time. so you get statements like:

OMG WTF LOL GAT BAK IN TEH GM3!1!!!

given how easy it is to transpose consecutive letters typed by different hands (as h and e are on the standard qwerty configuration), i would argue that it's used most often to indicate extreme urgency, haste, or intensity of emotion, and the pursuant excitement.

but i might be spending too much time thinking about this too.