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@phonaesthemes
Person in the year 5012: What is that program you're using?
Immortal: It's called Duolingo, it's a language-learning app. I gotta maintain my streak.
Duolingo: Gefeliciteerd!
Person: Why are you teaching yourself a dead language?
Immortal: *looks at their 1,093,835 days streak* It wasn't dead when I started.
@demilypyro
there is this really specific thing that very Online women of a certain age (mostly older millennials and younger gen x in my experience) who are married to a man will do where they will refer to their husbands as "Mr. (Part of My Username)"
so like if the username is something like "dancingwithbears" they'll refer to their husband as "Mr. Bears"
i think it is extremely charming
language where you inflect nouns by their flavor
we don't really translate names anymore, not even of monarchs, but during the medieval and renaissance it was common for people to be known by Latinised or Greekified (Hellenised) names, like Confucius (< Kong Fu Zi) or the rabbi Maïmonides (< Moyshe ben Maymon) or the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (< Jeroen, from the city Den Bosch)
in a similar vein, a bit of "worldbuilding" I like to include for stories set well in the future where geopolitics and the use of language internationally have continued to shift, is trisyllabic names : composed of a monosyllabic surname and a two-syllable given name. for example, some historical figures include :
Politics : XI Jin-ping, BAN Ki-moon, KIM Jong-un, LEE Jae-myung, TRUMP Do-nald, MERZ Fried-rich, WONG Law-rence, GAULLE Char-le, KHAN Ching-gis (TE Mü-jin), HO Chi-minh, PARKS Ro-sa, d'ARC Je-anne
Philosophy : KONG Fu-zi, SO Cra-tes, DI̯O Ge-nes, HY Pa-ti̯a, RAV Moy-she (RAB Mo-ses), CHRIST Je-sus, MARX Ka-rel, RUSHD Wa-lid
The arts: BACH Jo-hann, SPEARS Britt-ney, KITT Ear-tha, LÔ Is-mae̯l, SWIFT Tay-lor, HO Me-ros, SO Pho-cles, SHAW Ber-nard, PROUST Mar-cel, LORDE Au-dre, SARTRE Jean-paul, GOGH Vin-cent, BOSCH Je-roen, RUYSCH Ra-chel, KLINT Hil-ma, STERN Ir-ma, SEARLE Ber-nie, KEEFFE Geor-gia, YEOH Mi-chelle, CHAN Ja-ckie, WHITE Be-tty
Fiction : HOOD Ro-bin, POOH Wi-ni, SUN Wu-kong, CLAUS San-ta
different languages have different thresholds for what can go into a single syllable, but it's an amusing exercise nonetheless. And some names only work if you imagine them preserved and fossilised as a whole unit, not as a Surname + Given name specifically :
MAN De-la, BILL Shake-spear, JANE Aus-ten, ABE Lin-coln
Phonation contrasts in stops reworked (not simply augmented by lexical borrowing) in contact (maybe)
Dutch & Breton losing aspiration from contact with Romance (French)
Scottish Gaelic getting pre-aspiration probably from Norse, which itself potentially got it from Saamic
Nguni maybe acquiring its system of ejective, aspirsated and depressor consonants from Khoisan influence reworking the Bantu voicing contrast along new lines
Proto-Oceanic shifting away from voicing to prenasalisation (I reckon this is probably a Papuan contact effect; not all Papuan languages have prenasalisation as the primary contrast in stops, but the ones in the north(east) of New Guinea do)
Possibly Andean Quechua from Aymara?
Maybe Ossetian partly counts; loanwords with ejectives have been borrowed, but it also seems like the system of contrasts has shifted so that ejectives are equivalent to unaspirated voiced stops eleswhere (being used e.g. to stand for the voiceless stops of Russian in loanwords) which suggests the system having shifted to the Caucasian type with voiced-ejective-aspirated as the three-way contrast.
how do we feel about the word twelfths
lets put a bigger consonant cluster in it. biggest one youve seen. steven universe sized. you understand
plenty have adverbed, yet none have been brave enough to subtractverb
i multiply verbed once (fucked a verb)
Formant is a portmanteau of “For (the beautiful Soul) Mantis”, named in honor of Gregor H. Mantis, the creator of the Vowel
is gregor just like a very popular name in bug culture
In the final round, they pelt you with eggcorns.
Check out the bonus panel on the site.
Upcoming book signings this summer.
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Buy this comic as a print.
they need to come up with more words like necrosis and miasma and mausoleum and cadaver and morose and decrepit and stuff like that just so metal bands can expand their vocabulary
A Nova Scotia charity focused on making legal information more accessible has launched a digital library that offers resources and videos translated into nine languages.
The word for bear in ukrainian is ведмідь(vedmid').
The modern form is likely a result of multiple e-i shifts, but the two roots of the word mean "know" and "honey".
The russian word медведь(miedvied') uses the same roots, but in the opposite order.
Point being, slavs call bears the honeyknower.
wait really, knower? i had always interpreted it as honeyleader! as in they lead us to honey. like the verb вести which means to lead in russian.
So this is a little bit of a mess. The Ukrainian word is unique, because in all other Slavic languages it's some form of Proto-Slavic *medvědǐ, but the second part is not *vědǐ, it's *ědǐ. The word for "honey" is *medǔ and the /ǔ/ turns into a /v/ before a vowel, so *medǔ-ědǐ becomes *medv-ědǐ and it means "honey-eater", because *ědǐ is a participle of *ěsti which means "to eat".
The Ukrainian word went through a metathesis driven by false folk etymology that the second part means "know" instead of "eat", and the part *věd was thrown to the front while preserving /ǐ/ at the end, resulting in ведмідь. So the whole "honey-knower" thing is just made up etymology caused by the ignorance of Proto-Slavic phonology.
To complete the point 'honey' is otherwise мід/мед (without palatalisiation marked by ь) in Ukranian, as is expected historically (ŭ-stems don't tend to spontaneously acquire palatalisation loke that), so the 'honey-knower' theory has otherwise no explanation for the palatalisation at the end of ведмідь.
Thanks for correcting me, folx.
fun fact about languages: a linguist who was studying aboriginal languages of Australia finally managed to track down a native speaker of the Mbabaram language in the 60s for his research. they talked a bit and he started by asking for the Mbabaram word for basic nouns. They went back and forth before he asked for the word for “dog” The man replied “dog” They had a bit of a “who’s on first” moment before realizing that, by complete coincidence, Mbabaram and English both have the exact same word for dog.
on a similar note, a traditional Ojibwe greeting is “Nanaboozhoo” so when the French first landed in southern Canada they thought that they were saying “Bonjour!” Which is fucking wild to think about. Imagine crossing the ocean and the first people you meet in months somehow speak French.
my favorite Accessory Fact to this is that we know more about the etymological history of the Mbabaram “dog” than the English “dog”
The etymology for Mbabaram “dog” has been reconstructed back to Proto-Pama-Nyungan, which was spoken “as recently as about 5,000 years ago”:
From *dwog(a) < *udwoga < *gudwaga < Proto-Pama-Nyungan *gudaga. Related to Dyirbal guda, Yidiny gudaga.
While the etymology for English “dog” has been reconstructed confidently only back to Olde English, which was spoken from about the 5th to the 12th centuries:
Inherited from Middle English dogge (akin to Scots dug), from Old English dogga, docga, of uncertain origin.
'minion' -too closely associated with those yellow things
'goon' -linguistic drift gave her a new meaning. i hope her new life is good for her. i miss her.
'henchman' -too gendered. can be shortened to 'hench' in a pinch, but lacks punch.
'servant' -too domestic to apply to all those who serve evil.
'underling, subordinate' -this one only works if they get off on being beneath you and/or you don't properly pay your workers.
'associate' -this one's good for grizzled mercenaries or lone agents but doesn't work good for broad swathes of an organization.
'slave' -same as underling but more intense. really fun for some of the group. unsavory for others in a way that limits the scope of the thing.
'thrall' -only really applies if you're brainwashing them and that's not something i've learned how to do en masse yet
'flunky, toady, stooge, lackey' -these are just insulting, and that isn't conducive to a healthy work environment. imagine going to work and your job title is 'stooge'.
'acolyte' -works for those that worship you, but again. lacks the scope.
'supporter, follower' -unspecific and vague
'assistant, helper, aide' -not sinister at all. just means you're doing things for me. swagless in this manner. could be good if used to describe someone who's so clearly more that as a way to emphasize their obedience via understatement, but that's only useful for a few members of the organization. and even then, 'associate' works better.
'cohort' -untested in the field. suggests an equal footing in the affair, ideal for post-structuralist evil organizations with a bottom-up power structure that's held in the hands of the evil workers themselves. perhaps we'll explore it together?
may I suggest: 'grunt' – time-tested by crime bosses with a variety of goals and organizational mandates. implies a subservient position with none of the innate baggage of lackey et al.
GRUNT IS PRETTY GOOD
vintage preposition reseller on ebay
