site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   823 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 20, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Following your dream neighborhood link and a few other I found this post by @Southkraut from 1 year ago:

My wife... WORKED AS A KINDERGARDENER (emphasis hers) FOR LESS THAN HALF A YEAR

I just wanted to highlight that to the German brain "kindergardener" is literally someone who "gardens children" and is the teacher of the class, but to my American brain a "kindergardener" is someone who is enrolled in kindergarten and is the student.

I have 3 thoughts about this:

  • I'm going to have kids in kindergarten for the next 3 years. They and their "gardeners" are going to suffer through so many dad jokes along these lines.
  • I'm curious when this semantic shift happened. I assume it happened during the time of mandatory public schooling in the early 1900s, but don't know how to prove it. Google ngrams doesn't give me any meaningful insights here. (If anyone knows of any tools for studying this semantic shift, I would love to hear about them! I'm familiar with using word2vec to study semantic shifts, but I suspect this shift is too subtle for word2vec to pick up, and I don't know of any easy-to-use website for doing this analysis.)
    • Somewhat relatedly, take a look at the google ngrams of "kindergarten teacher" vs "Kindergarten Teacher". There are two clear spikes when kindergarten teacher was almost always capitalized as Kindergarten Teacher:
      • in the early 1900s (this is probably because it came from german and germans capitalize all nouns, not just proper nouns.
      • in the year 2000; this is very curious to me. I hypothesize that this capitalization is due to wanting to emphasize the importance of the Kindergarten Teacher role, but it's not 100% clear to me why. I can create all sorts of just-so stories about the rise of feminism/helicopter parenting/credentialism/etc.
  • It's curious to me that a German wrote the eggcorn "kindergarden" based on the American pronunciation of the word, when in both German and English the correct version is kindergarten (with a t instead of a d).

It's curious to me that a German wrote the eggcorn "kindergarden" based on the American pronunciation of the word, when in both German and English the correct version is kindergarten (with a t instead of a d).

Look, I'm only a grammar/spelling Nazi when other people make mistakes, OK?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats