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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3346 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 16, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is it possible to forget how to speak one language or is it possible to forget how to speak any language? There are lots of stories of immigrants who forgot how to speak their mother tongues after moving to a new country as children.

Seems to me like a phenomenon exclusive to children. I strongly doubt that a healthy person who knows a language fluently at the age of 18 will ever forget how to speak it entirely until they die or succumb to dementia.

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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."

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