Came here to mention Pirates of Dark Water. So much better than it had any right to be for the era it came out, and with the amazing talent of Judy Benson and Tim Curry too. It’s a real shame it never got finished.

I was a linguistics professor for almost a decade, and many of my comments here on Lemmy provide in-depth explanations from an informed theoretical linguistic perspective. See here and here, for example.

In my opinion, the phonetic (acoustic) resemblances are superficial, and nowhere in their paper do they identify the sorts of systematic patterns of alternations that constitute the phonology of human languages. It’s not just about seeing patterns in the sounds of the whales - it’s about showing that these patterns are specifically organized in a similar way to human phonologies, and that they also distinguish meaning in the same structured ways that human phonologies do.

But beyond just phonetics and phonology, and more importantly, the researchers haven’t provided any evidence that whale communication in any way resembles the systems of communication that we call “language”. Human language is characterized by specific features that aren’t found anywhere else in the animal kingdom in the same combination. To an extent the selection of these features is arbitrary, but the sum total of them makes a compelling argument for a categorical distinction between what we call human language and animal communication.

It’s possible, of course, that whale communication does in fact include all of these features, but the articles in question are a far cry from demonstrating it, and so using the word “language” is at best premature and at worst disingenuous.

This just seems like one of those sensationalist pop articles that come out every few months, driven largely by researchers without a significant background in theoretical linguistics, that do more to confuse people about the nature of language than to educate them. Language is much more than just “patterns of sounds that convey meaning”.

(And, for some reason, like 70% of these articles are related to whales. The two most common responses I get to telling people I’m a linguist are: 1) “How many languages do you speak?” and 2) “You know, I read this article recently on how whale language is really just like human language”. I have yet to understand the obsession with whales.)

en séduisant

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Whales having similar vocalizations (I think using the term “phonology” is quite a stretch) to humans is a far cry from saying that whale communication is at all similar to human language.

Edit: Anyone want to explain their downvotes? Or are you all just that desperate to anthropomorphize whales for some reason?

Edit2: I shouldn’t have to flash my linguist credentials to express doubt about a sensationalist pop science article (no shade to OP - it’s an interesting article with some good info, so thanks for posting!). When it’s about something like new battery technology, for example, skepticism seems to be the default in the comments. Why should linguistics be any different?

Yum!

You’re getting downvoted (in shitpost of all places, too), so I thought I’d take a second to say that I thought this was funny.

Edit: For context, the comment above was at 1/6 when I first responded to it.

How so? Wikipedia and most sources near the top of DuckDuckGo seem to think that the idea is generally well-received, with a few minor quibbles.

Wait, we don’t like The Selfish Gene? Seems to be a good idea, at least from the evolutionary perspective if not the sociological one.

They’re not “just” misandrist; that is to say, they definitely have good reasons for existing outside of misandry, and I’m glad that they can provide that space for the people who need it. It’s also certainly not inherently misandrist to be queer or woman oriented.

In the case of Lemmy, though, yes, all of the queer and women oriented instances are very clearly also misandrist. Openly and proudly so, in fact. Your comments here are an excellent, though comparatively mild, example of that.

I knew someone from one of the misandry instances would chime in to prove my point, so thanks! ^_^

Bravo! Spoken like a true feminist, the last bastion of gender equality!

You could have listened to me, sympathized, and told me my misandrist experience is valid, but, then again, that’s a privilege reserved for women experiencing misogyny, isn’t it? Wouldn’t be very feminist of you to acknowledge just how widespread misandry is among feminists, eh?

Of course, but with some more equal than others, as my outspoken feminist boss demonstrated earlier this week. She insisted that feminist research into matriarchal societies had proven beyond a doubt that women govern better than men can, and that if we would just replace all men in power with women the US’s problems would practically solve themselves. This was one day after complaining to me about how unreliable her male coworkers were, and how you can really only rely on women when you want something taken care of.

Feminists truly are beacons of equality.

The raging misandry that commonly accompanies it, for one.

Came here to say Civ IV

I could not stand The Stand. It was an absolute slog from start to finish.

Being psychologically manipulated into continuing to play a game that I wouldn’t otherwise certainly doesn’t sound very enjoyable and rewarding, but that may just be me.

I avoid achievements specifically because video games are supposed to be enjoyable and rewarding. A game should succeed or fail on its merit alone, not how well it plays the manipulative achievement metagame.

Imo this mindset is everything wrong with video games today.

This is (one of the many reasons) why I disable achievements on all of my games.