The Old English word for 'not' was 'ne'. This went directly before the verb and it was sometimes even glued to the front of the verb stem - 'ellided' in linguistic. terms. This created an unusual class of negative verbs in the language - for example /1
The German word 'Arbeit', work, descends from Porto-Germanic *arbaidiz, which meant hardship or suffering. Going a couple of thousand years further back in time, the ancestor of arbaidiz was Porto-Indo-European *h₃órbʰos, which mean orphan or slave. 'Orphan' has the same root…
@aragon1500
@marionumber4
Only if they know and trust you. It's a powerful way to communicate if you're non verbal I suppose. A lot of animals have mutual grooming rituals as a way to strengthen social bonds
If you've ever studied German, you will (probably) know that the usual intensifier in that language is 'sehr', very. "Sie sind sehr glücklich" = they are very happy. Of course, 'sehr' resembles the old-fashioned English intensifier 'sore' (he was sore afraid). A common sense [1]
@MKBHD
Deepfake technology only brings bad things into the world (well, alright, plus a few mildly amusing memes): there should be hard legal limits on its use for the good of society
@JRehling
Yes, I noticed that little spin. The idea that the epitome of 20th Century fascism was somehow left wing is just so laughable. An "alternative fact" if ever there was one
@ask_aubry
I imagine this dude would have more success finding a girlfriend if he learned some basic body language. It's pretty clear that someone with headphones clamped to her ears does not want be approached, at least at that point in time. Common sense is underrated
@Rainmaker1973
You can tell by h the pleased expression on her face when she hops up on the bike at the end: she's having a great time, not just doing a job
The Proto-Indo-European language was probably spoken north of the Black and Caspian Seas around 3,000BC. Linguists have reconstructed it via deduction and comparison of its many daughter languages. Curiously, the language appears to have had two separate words for [1]
The first word of Old English epic poem 'Beowulf' is, famously, 'hwæt' (what). This may be most debated word in the whole work: what does 'what' mean in that sentence, that context. Conventional wisdom has been that it is a standalone interjection, meaning something like [1]
One for the Indo-Europeanists out there: the reconstructed face of a Yamnaya man, based on a skeleton uncovered on the steppes of Southern Russia from c3000BCE- i.e. the Bronze Age. As his remains were found in a kurgan (burial mound) he would most likely have been a chieftain...
@cal50
@StephanieLahey
Yep. Similarly with landline vs mobile (cell) phones. When you rang the former, you were calling a place, when you ring the latter you are calling a person. Perhaps it's a subtle distinction but it's still significant
...Iċ hæbbe miċel hūs = I have a big house
Iċ næbbe miċel hūs = I don't have a big house
Iċ wille cempa weorþan = I want to be a soldier
Iċ nylle cempa weorþan = I don't wanna be a soldier (mama) /2
Have you ever wondered why 'withstand' means the exact opposite of 'stand with'? It's because, rather weirdly, 'with' used to mean 'against'. In Old English, the word for 'with' in the modern sense was 'mid', just like German 'mit'
In Gaelic, to ask 'what is your name?', you say "dè an t-ainm a th' ort?" - what is the name that is on you? I quite like the suggestion of impermanence, the possibility that an entirely different name might end up on you at some point in the future 🏴
Funerary statue of a little girl from Bordeaux, early 2nd Century AD. One of the earliest surviving depictions of a cat as a family pet rather than just a mouser or street/ farm cat 🐈 /1
Question for Americans: does ‘y’all’ sound natural to you? Do you use it in everyday speech? If so, where are you from? I associate it with the southern states but I don’t know how correct that perception is
@Morbidful
I don’t see how this story is remotely morbid or spooky. Oscar was using his sensitive feline nose to console patients close to the end of their lives. Good for him
@alittleleader
It’s good to read on Wikipedia that even as long ago as the 1950s the decision to send her up was criticised as cruel. Even the Russians themselves eventually honoured the sacrifice she hadn’t chosen to make with statues, plaques and memorials
@ladbible
Everyone responding to this story with variations of "phwoarr! hot teacher! where was she when I was 13? eh? eh? I can't believe his Dad reported it what a nonce" etc etc: you do realise you're endorsing the sexual abuse of children? You might want to think carefully about that
@asymmetric63
@MKBHD
We've already banned murder and robbery, friend. Yes, legal prohibitions don't stop people doing those things but it does mean they come with penalties. We can't just roll over and be defeatist about these things
@RFuchs19
@wars
Fwiw, the photo was apparently taken in January. The term 'aerial bombing' probably isn't to be taken too literally - a V2 bombing is still a bombing
I've heard people in the past confidently proclaiming that English is a "Latin-based language". It's an understandable misunderstanding because so much of our lexicon has indeed been imported wholesale from post-classical Latin: about one third. This obscures the fact that [1]
....both fire and water. For fire there was *h₁n̥gʷnis (ancestor of Latin 'ignis') and *péh₂wr̥ (> English 'fire') and for water, *h₂ékʷeh (>Latin aqua) and *wódr̥ (> English 'water'). Perhaps these words reflected different dialects but there is an interesting theory [2]
...Footnote: 'Very' did replace an Old English - but it wasn't sore. It was swīþe: se ierþling wæs swīþe cræftiġa mann = the farmer was a very crafty person
...that they referred to different aspects of fire and water: *h₁n̥gʷnis to fire as something active and alive, *péh₂wr̥ to fire when it is under control (eg campfire flames). Similarly, *h₂ékʷeh may have meant water when it is free flowing and fast (as in a river) [3]
@michaelmiraflor
@Mq2Oco
Maybe send that screenshot to Apple/ Tim Cook. They seem to be interested in real world examples of these features saving lives
...But no! It was a revelation to me to discover that German 'sehr' is in fact cognate with (related to) English 'sore' in its usual medical sense and originally meant much the same thing. At some point German speakers began to use the word to intensify negative adjectives [3]
My top tip for studying historical languages: don't treat the process as a passive reading exercise: write in it, think in it, speak it - nothing will make the grammar & vocabulary stick in your mind more quickly. Tweet in Latin, write email in Ancient Greek - confuse people! :D
Excellent free translation. ISTI MIRANT STELLA is, literally, they wonder at the star. But hmmm 🤔Shouldn't it be STELLAM, accusative? Latinists please advise
Love how the Bayeux Tapestry is mostly an intricate political drama about succession and invasion except for that one scene where the characters are like "BLOODY HELL A COMET" and it's never mentioned again
...while *wódr̥ referred to water just as a substance (eg the contents of the water bag carried by the horse-riding animal herders who spoke the language) [4]
@gybeom8008
'Ne' survives in fossilised form in a few modern words - eg 'nought', from nāwiht (not a thing), and willy-nilly, from iċ wylle iċ nylle (I want I don't want)
@roxasstrifehart
@oldenoughtosay
It’s not just a few owners being irresponsible though: that kind of shift would change the entirety of British cat culture
...with the sense of 'to the extent of injury' - and clearly the same happened in English. While the metaphor eventually became old-fashioned over here, in German the negative connotations were eventually lost and 'sehr' (originally 'sēr') was extended to all adjectives [4]
@ohtumblroh
Bizarrely, it seems 'guy' in this sense comes, via 19th American English, from the earlier Brit sense of effigy of Guy Fawkes, which could also meant 'grotesquely dressed person'
@kneadtobe
@lancaster_johng
@PulpKetchup
Native Americans too, as you say. Men from the Mohawk people had a particular reputation for high rise construction work apparently. The hands that built America as someone once sang
In Old English, the usual word for 🐦 was a 'fugol'. This survives in New English as 'fowl', making it one of multiple words that shifted from a general to a specific meaning in Middle English (see also, for example, meat, hound and deer). By contrast, modern 'bird' comes from…
A few etymologies:
Woman > Old English wifmann, 'woman person' or 'wife person'
Femme > Latin femina, woman
Mujer > Latin mulier, married woman
Frau > Old High German frouwa, lady
Kvinne/ kvinna/ kvinda > Old Norse kván, wife (cognate with English 'queen')
Kona > Old Norse…
The word 'cancer' is just the ordinary Latin word for crab 🦀 Yes, the pinchy seaside crustaceans. The name is related to 'carcer', Latin for prison, because both involved enclosures, whether walls or shells. So how did this unpleasant illness acquire such an odd name? [1]
...assumption might then be that 'sore' was the older Germanic term and that 'very' (obviously from French 'verai', true) had simply replaced the English word during the hundreds of years in which we had a French-speaking aristocracy, as so many other French imports did [2]
@ruskin147
Now, even though she'll still be scared the next time you take her, she'll remember that home, garden and dinner are waiting for her at the end of all the stressful stuff
@feederofcats
A rare design flaw in the cat blueprint: 8 months old is far too young for a feline to be having kittens. Kittens should not have kittens - and especially not outside
...'Listen! We have heard of the spear Danes in days gone by, of the glory of the great kings' but more along the lines of "How we have heard of the spear Danes in days gone by, of the glory of the great kings" Sorry, Seamus
@_B___S
I guess it must be the low temperature 🧊 Cats don't like any food below room temperature - and if it can be warmed up a little, so much the better
@katrosenfield
In general, I have very little patience with complaints about cultural appropriation. They are, not to put too fine a point on it, historically illiterate: cultures have always taken things from other cultures. Throughout history
TIL that that the Armenian language shares with its geographical neighbour Farsi a trait rare amongst other Indo-European languages: the absence of grammatical gender
@historyinmemes
I remember this photo of young Ernest in a hospital bed attracting some 'isn't he cute?' commentary here on Twitter a couple of years ago
@IonaItalia
@blobbynfriends
It depends what you mean by 'odd' here. This cartoon certainly reflects reality, in that there are plenty of women out there who will say such things. Not all women of course, but enough for men to tread cautiously
@matthaig1
It used to be commonly understood by journos that you didn't report on the specifics of a suicide because of contagion risks. If that's now been throw out the window for clicks modern media really is in serious decay
@NiallHarbison
I suspect animals live in the moment to a much greater degree than we humans, so perhaps he does not. Even if he still does, it may slip from his memory soon, once he grows used to being comfortable
@seanjetravers
Ha :) My first thought on seeing the trailer was "have they just revealed the twist?!" But that can't be it: there must be something more
...'listen!', 'lo!', or as Seamus Heaney rendered it, 'so!' But this still seems odd for a word that, really, just means 'what'. If it is an interjection, it's hard not to wonder if it is actually an abbreviation of some longer phrase like "hwæt stǣres sċeal iċ singan?" [2]
@RevDaniel
A commendably charitable and patient response. Clearly *she cares that you're gay or she would not be making homophobic remarks of that nature