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#language

67 posts60 participants10 posts today

In Hebrew, the word and name Dalit (דלית) has several related meanings, commonly linked to:
• “drawn out” or “drawn from the water”
• “poor” or “needy” (from the root “dal”)
• “hanging branch” (from the word “daliyyah”)
• It is also associated with being fragile or delicate.

Links between one Bronze Age endogenous ethnoculture to another.

Albanian for blueberry is "boronicë".

Albanian for cranberry is "boronicë e kuqe" (which so far as I can see means "red blueberry"... although the word 'boronicë'" is borrowed from Slavic languages, where "bor" in the root means "'pine"...so it's just <word for blueberry> + adjective saying it's red.

Albanian for lingonberry is "boronicë e hollë", which seems to be <word for blueberry> + adjective saying it's thin. #FruitToot #Language

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boronic

Wiktionaryboronicë - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

A deer hunter shoots a deer and shoots a rifle at the same time, but in two very different ways. I feel like English is designed to make people trying to learn it as a second language cry.

Heck, it's kind of confusing as a first language.

This looks like it's along the right lines, but I'm not certain I'd agree about these differences between us and #Neanderthals and #Denisovans. That may be more to do with demographics.

Sarah Hrdy, the originator of cooperative childcare/aka babysitting as the basis for mutual mind reading, would put it back to H erectus, and there are strong reasons for that constraint. So in itself that is not an account for #Hsapiens (as against Neanderthals). The idea that huge-brained Denisovans were not doing a lot of the same damn things -- looking after incredibly costly children -- is pretty questionable.

Our own Chris Knight and Jerome Lewis are shortly going to publish a book with a lot of answers to the puzzle of #language: 'The First Word was No'.

theguardian.com/books/2025/aug

The Guardian · The Origin of Language by Madeleine Beekman review – the surprising history of speechBy Laura Spinney

Why do I see more and more Swedish (or other Euorpean language?) words like gratis (free) and stark (strong) in posts that are in English? Anyone who knows the answer?

I don't complain, it is nice. But I can't help finding it... weird, somehow.

When you mix English words in Swedish it's called Swenglish. But for this... Engwish?

@beep follow.ethanmarcotte.com/@beep

beepin’Ethan Marcotte (@beep@follow.ethanmarcotte.com)man anxiously, desperately trying to sell snake oil insists that the people who refuse to drink snake oil are the real weirdos https://www.businessinsider.com/github-ceo-developers-embrace-ai-or-get-out-2025-8

I remembered this #poem (quoted in full below) which reminded me of a fun #language quirk in #Hungarian: "i repair <subject>" and "love (noun)" are both "szerelem".
Further proof that #repair / #mending / #maintenance is a love language. :neofox_uwu:

"Atlas

There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky."

Inflammable means combustible. It doesn’t mean non-flammable.

Infamous means famous for something bad, not famous.

Invisible means not visible. It does not mean visible, nor visible for something bad.

I swear, English is a linguistic mutt raised by wolves.