Mighty Morpheme Power Rangers

I really have no plan for this blog post past the title, but I'm going to try to write something that lives up to it and relates Power Rangers and linguistics, so here we go.

D'you remember in the beginning of each of the Power Rangers series, how the Rangers were always regular kids until they got their powers? Well, that was like all of us before we entered Linguistics. We could beat up the occasional bully, but could nothing against alien invaders. Our powersuits, Linguistics, give us the ability to fight like never before, and use Language in ways we wouldn't have believed possible. But we cannot go on and use our powers all willy nilly--we need guidance. We need knowledge. We need to know things, like morphemes.

Morphemes, also like the power suits, can be used to transform the meanings of words. And much like the colors of the rangers always corresponded with their personalities, no matter the generation, so too do morphemes always correspond with their transformation, no matter the word. Adding an -s (or an -es after an s) makes a word plural, no matter the word. The red ranger will always be the cocky one.

Learning these tropes, like learning the rules of linguistics, can help you more easily predict what is about to happen. You already know that there will come a time where the Power Rangers will be without their suits for an episode, and prove that they are still strong without them. Like you can predict paths of motion judging from the syntax of a sentence. So when I tell you that the Pink Ranger jumped out from behind the crate, kicked the nearest bad guy in the head, did a flip, posed, and then hopped in her zord, you know exactly the order that those events happened in.  But that seems obvious, right?

Much like the power rangers had to learn obvious lessons and complex lessons, like to never go in alone and how to control your awesome ninja powers, we too have to learn obvious lessons and more complicated ones. We learn about how intonation can change meaning, but we also learn the IPA.

And lastly, but certainly not leastly, the principles of Linguistics carry across languages, like the principles of Power Rangers carry across generations. Whether it's English or Greek, Power Rangers Ninja Storm or Power Rangers Jungle Fury, you can apply the same learnings across both.

Thanks for bearing with me through this lame pun of a blog post. I hope you found the content to be insightful and enjoyable.