I started texting my partner to ask if he could “pick up some stuff,” but autocomplete assumed that the word stuff was supposed to be “snakes.”
What I find disturbing about this is that Google utilizes user data to make predictive text more accurate, and that there is apparently enough recorded user behavior to make “snakes” seem like a viable completion for that sentence.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-bilingual/201108/emotions-in-more-one-language
This article discusses the myth of bilingual people reverting to their native language when expressing strong emotions. From what I’ve read, it’s not necessarily untrue that this happens, but there’s more nuance than automatically reverting to one’s earliest language, and more variables than time.
A couple quotes I found interesting:
When a childhood in one language lacked affection or was marked by distressing events, then bilinguals may prefer to express emotion in their second language.
When bilinguals are angry, excited, tired or stressed, their accent in a language can reappear or increase in strength. In addition, they often revert to the language(s) in which they express their emotions, be it their first or their second language, or both.
I read the article as part of my research for Stars Fall Out, and it’s not totally applicable in my case, since I’m writing a multi-lingual character who starts slipping out of an assumed accent. But this is still useful information to have it mind.
While editing an upcoming post, I learned “curriculum” can be pluralized as either “curriculums” or “curricula.”
I chose to use “curricula” because
A. It makes me sound smarter.
B. It brings to mind an eight-legged monster with a pile of textbooks for a thorax.
Yeah. Mostly the last one.
This shouldn’t need saying, but not everyone has an office job.
I can’t count how many articles concerning unrelated topics casually reference how we all spend too much time sitting at desks, how we all spend too much money picking up our lattes on the way to the office, and how our inboxes are too cluttered.
If that’s the writer’s personal experience, fine. Use first person pronouns instead of acting as though we all have the same job, or assuming that people who make less money aren’t your audience.
Censorship breeds amusing substitutes for the common profanities we all know and love. While “fuckity fuck fuck fuck” is absolutely a phrase I over-use, I have a special place in my heart for the fill-in …