Search found 887 matches

by Xonen
09 Oct 2021 22:31
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences
Replies: 881
Views: 275260

Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Our tales begins, long, long ago... I hate to interrupt, but the Finnish word siemen would seem to contradict any possibility of *nimi being derived from *hnomn. FWIW, LSS Ánte says this: Another possibility is to assume that Proto-Indo-European words were not borrowed directly into Uralic, but med...
by Xonen
08 Oct 2021 13:44
Forum: Teach & Share
Topic: A note on urban population thresholds
Replies: 18
Views: 18334

Re: A note on urban population thresholds

Seems I missed this thread earlier, so first of all: thanks for making it! Highly interesting and informative. I was a bit curious about this, though: Mostly, of course, people starved to death. Good years where the ones where you lived long enough to have babies before starving to death. My underst...
by Xonen
30 Aug 2021 00:14
Forum: Teach & Share
Topic: Curiosities in Finnish
Replies: 42
Views: 28537

Re: Curiosities in Finnish

earlier vaimo also meant just ‘woman’ As far as I'm aware, it was never the standard word for 'woman', though; pretty much all Finnic languages seem to use a descendant of Proto-Finnic *nainen . By contrast, Proto-Finnic *vaimo meant 'spirit' or 'soul', and this meaning is still retained by Estonia...
by Xonen
29 Aug 2021 20:52
Forum: Teach & Share
Topic: Curiosities in Finnish
Replies: 42
Views: 28537

Re: Curiosities in Finnish

The following four terms are very outdated. I remember, in subtitles of Keeping up Appearances, Hyacinth calls Onslow her lanko , but I had to google käly and nato to see which one is which. Huh. I've certainly heard lanko and käly in use - not especially frequently, perhaps, but not solely on tele...
by Xonen
28 Aug 2021 22:58
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: False cognates
Replies: 902
Views: 325435

Re: False cognates

Randomly stumbled upon this: Hawaiian pū 'tree' Livonian pū 'tree' (and likewise in other Finnic languages, but spelled puu ) Another obvious Finno-Polynesian cognate is of course: Māori mana 'mana' Finnish mana 'the hereafter', 'underworld', 'death'; 'mana' Finnish manata 'to conjure'; 'to exorcize...
by Xonen
18 Jun 2021 21:37
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1110
Views: 282608

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

[fwiw, I don't know if I've ever heard 'Mickey D' - I don't tend to spend much time with McDonalds enthusiasts - but it would make no sense to me as a phonemic reduction - 'Mc' has /@/, not /I/, at least in modern SSBE (I don't know about RP). That said, it could still occur as a nickname simply be...
by Xonen
22 May 2021 14:18
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Languages with interesting phonotactics
Replies: 60
Views: 25234

Re: Languages with interesting phonotactics

Never heard. Same. It's hard to say at which point those clusters appear in Finnic, but I think they first appear through loan words and then also in native vocabulary by elision of vowels. A distinction between /rt/ and /rtt/ existed already in Proto-Uralic according to at least Starostin's and Sa...
by Xonen
07 May 2021 21:28
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: English Orthography Reform
Replies: 402
Views: 197153

Re: English Orthography Reform

But if you don't mark schwas, then you can't have a meaningful spelling reform. Schwa-mispellings are one of the two most common forms of spelling mistake in English, and are connected to the other big problem (whether a consonant should be single or double after schwa - though I guess it doesn't a...
by Xonen
04 May 2021 16:47
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Danish vowel allophony
Replies: 8
Views: 2176

Re: Danish vowel allophony

Which is why I was somewhat bemused by Danish getting dubbed a minor language with few speakers; compared to the vast majority, it's positively gigantic. Yes; but the vast majority of languages are absolutely tiny, even collectively make up a tiny percentage of the world's speakers, and are going t...
by Xonen
30 Apr 2021 21:21
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Danish vowel allophony
Replies: 8
Views: 2176

Re: Danish vowel allophony

Well, on the one hand: yes, absolutely, the great majority of languages on Earth are highly endangered. To quote Wikipedia: "the general consensus is that there are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages currently spoken and that between 50% and 90% of them will have become extinct by the year 2100...
by Xonen
29 Apr 2021 17:00
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: Danish vowel allophony
Replies: 8
Views: 2176

Re: Danish vowel allophony

I wonder how the dialects will diverge in the coming centuries. Some may develop an 8-way contrast in high vowels /i i: y y: ʉ ʉ: u u: ɪ ɪ: ʏ ʏ: ɵ ɵ: ʊ ʊ:/ from Norwegian/Swedish influence, while others may reduce it to the German system /ɪ i: ʏ y: ʊ u: ɛ e: ɛ: œ ø: ɔ o: a a:/. I'd say a bigger con...
by Xonen
03 Apr 2021 16:33
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1110
Views: 282608

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

What is the history of Hungarian /ɟ/ <gy>? I know egy 'one' is related to Finnish yksi . With this one word, I infer it derives from PU *kt, but does anybody have more information? According to LSS Ánte (forthcoming) , it's a medial reflex of PU *ď (whatever sound that actually was). That's clearly...
by Xonen
01 Apr 2021 13:55
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences
Replies: 881
Views: 275260

Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

Sanskrit आर्य (ārya) /ˈɑːɾ.jɐ/ “noble, noble one” v.s. Proto-Finnic orja /ˈorjɑ/ "slave" At least commonly the Finnish term (also found in other Uralic languages) is considered a loanword from Proto-Indo-Iranian, because speakers of Proto-Uralic enslaved speakers of Proto-Indo-Iranian. We...
by Xonen
24 Mar 2021 22:27
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences
Replies: 881
Views: 275260

Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

And it's quite certainly not a coincidence: the sense 'world' appears to be fairly transparently derived from 'light', and the Proto-Slavic *světъ already had both of these senses. I've always understood this thread that it's about false friends and OTHER unfortunate coincidences, i.e. it doesn't n...
by Xonen
26 Feb 2021 21:33
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences
Replies: 881
Views: 275260

Re: False friends and other unfortunate coincidences

:pol: świat (world) :rus: свет (light) I'm not sure if this one really counts as a false friend... The Russian word also means 'world', even if мир is more common for that sense these days. And it's quite certainly not a coincidence: the sense 'world' appears to be fairly transparently derived from...
by Xonen
26 Feb 2021 21:20
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: False cognates
Replies: 902
Views: 325435

Re: False cognates

:eng: thou (formerly þou) :eng: you Given that thou was formerly written as þou and thus could also look like you (like þe/ye) it's easy to think that you was originally just a spelling pronunciation of þou when þ resembled y. Better yet, it appears that the spelling <you> could in fact be used for...
by Xonen
14 Feb 2021 12:32
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Replies: 1110
Views: 282608

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

I recently heard two European looking men speaking a language and was very surprised that I couldn't even guess which one it was. The intonation sounded quite similar to French but at times I thought it could be German. I couldn't understand a word they were saying which is what made it particularl...
by Xonen
07 Feb 2021 13:11
Forum: Everything Else
Topic: The Sixth Conversation Thread
Replies: 762
Views: 193940

Re: The Sixth Conversation Thread

There seem to have been several linguistics-related xkcd strips lately. I approve of this development. 👍
by Xonen
09 Jan 2021 19:40
Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
Topic: False cognates
Replies: 902
Views: 325435

Re: False cognates

:ara: أستاذ ʾustāḏ "professor, teacher, title of courtesy for an individual of higher education or learning" :esp: usted "you (respectful)" Maybe a bit of a stretch, but it stood out to me. Not at all a stretch! In fact, I'm quite sure I've seen the possibility of a connection b...
by Xonen
05 Jan 2021 00:14
Forum: Everything Else
Topic: Metal Thread
Replies: 335
Views: 151585

Re: Metal Thread

So, I'm guessing most of the metal-listening world has heard the news by now, but in case you hadn't: Alexi Laiho is dead. While I never became a huge fan of their music, Children of Bodom was still one of the first bands my more metal-oriented friends introduced me to back in about 2000 (I think it...