The Layman's Linguist

Linguistics is a great excuse to just look up fun facts all day

Yep. I was just noting another non-dog usage.

Ah yes the uptight Yanks and the easygoing Brits. That old chestnut lmao.

I don't know if a loud and proud Anglo-German should be gleefully mocking ANYONE for having to live under an ultra-right-wing leader rewriting the law to suit his own plans while our most vulnerable populations simply suffer and die without proper medical attention.

Or is that too on-the-nose?

"lol your kids get shot and your poor die needlessly" yeah ha ha what fun I hate people like this so much

Yeah we're dying in the streets. What a chuckle huh? Fuck you.

So true. Nefarious little masterminds.

The only animals I've ever heard literally say the word we've designated for it are cows. They really do just say "moo."

A *great* reference!

(Or, if not dogs specifically, a sharp vocalization in general.)

I would also argue that, because it's generic, you'll easily find "bark" in situations unrelated to dogs. Like I've heard people bark at others, but not really woof.
So woof is more dog specific I think

Oo that's a fun point. And what about when someone responds to an off-putting comment with an exasperated "ohh WOOF"?

I'd be surprised if it didn't come about as an approximation of how some dogs sound. After all, they don't literally say "woof" either.

Take the very similar sounding "arf" for example:
bsky.app/profile/lucy...

(screenshot of a tweet with the following text:) Andrew Nad... @TheAndrewNa... Please settle this debate: Are “bark” and “woof” supposed to signify different sounds or are they interchangeable? They sound nothing alike, but there’s only one dog sound, right? It’s like if we had 2 words for a cow’s sound and one was “moo” and the other was “snarf”. 8:32pm 24 Oct 25 1536 views

bark(v.1) "utter an abrupt, explosive cry" (especially of dogs), Middle English berken (c. 1200), bark (late 15c.), from Old English beorcan "to bark," from Proto-Germanic *berkan (source also of Old Norse berkja "to bark"), of echoic origin. Related: Barked; barking.

woof(n.2) low, gruff dog-bark noise, by 1839 (wuff is by 1824); as a verb by 1804, wouff; echoic. Related: Woofed; woofing.

Just one linguist's opinion:

<WOOF> is specifically a deep booming type of bark

<BARK> is the general term and thus includes woofs but also all other kinds of barks—not whines or yelps. It's also more likely to be the verb: eg, "the dog barks" > "the dog woofs"

See: their respective etymologies

So not only will these men not wrestle with potentially negative interactions, they'll even avoid positive ones in case they get difficult to navigate. I know several guys that have shallow, pleasant friendships with absolutely no risk involved. It's very nice and easy and I worry deeply for them.

He won't even give advice because what if it's the wrong advice and they get upset. That's bad enough but what if he handles THAT badly and loses a friend too! So he just gives generic platitudes instead of having deep convos even though he's really smart and insightful and cares deeply about them.

It makes me sad. Everyone besides me encouraged it all his life. Why WOULDN'T you encourage a boy who's already acting happy and charismatic all the time? He never causes trouble! What a gift!

Until he grows up, makes one mistake, & just disappears bc no one taught him healthy conflict resolution.

He's always sad and regretful about it but how does he just go back to before? What if he tries his best but it doesn't work?? Better to just walk away.

So now all his other long-term friends are other cishet guys he never shares stuff with. To them he's just a happy jokester with no depth at all.

My close friend is like this. I've seen him go thru all his other friendships and your point about "made it worse" is so insightful. It made him feel even guiltier.

All our lives, I've just fought thru it with him until we're on the other side but, understandably, no one else wants to do all that.

Yes, very same page there!

I would love the part of that I understood (transcripts) and probably the other part too

That's definitely a better outcome than most of my rock bottoms!

Well at least you got something out of it...? Silver... lining...? 😬

Okay well my dad just had a bunch of Michael Crichton books so that's not even fair

Hmm yeah I see your point. I didn't realize until I came over here that apparently a LOT of people didn't even know it had a use outside of SEO which is wild to me. I didn't even know it affected SEO and here a bunch of people were just putting clickbait in there!!

Okay I remember stumbling my way through this when I made my website.

I "learned" all my coding knowledge from those "try it yourself" websites while my students were on winter break for a couple weeks when I was 30 years old. It's all a blur.

Okay yeah so that's where I entered the picture. I had no idea what it was even for at first but figured it could be helpful for people with partial blindness or other vision impairment/conditions. I think that was before Twitter alt text was compatible with most screen readers.

It's so sweet that you thought we both understood the very first sentence there 💚 thanks for the confidence. No lol "we" did not.

This is awesome. I've always been jelly of the phonologists. It just seems SO fun and interesting but one of the specialties that require a natural affinity that I simply cannot manage to over-study my way into gaining.

But this is just so fkn cool.

Fair enough. People ask why I spend my time and energy with linguistics public outreach for free (more notably back in the heyday of 🐦) and, yeah, same answer. So I get it.

You're still the goat though. Thanks for it all 💚