Saim wrote:In Hebrew, the word "אפל" (Afel) means "dark" or "tainted". The English adjective "fell" means "cruel" or "savage"[1]. The word "fel" can also mean "bile", and according to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition (2000), it is related to a number of words of Indo-European origin: yellow, gold, gall, cholera, and felon, to mention a few. The same source indicates that the Indo-European root from which it is derived, ghel, meant "to shine". It may also find it's origin in the Old-English word "fūl" which means "foul" and is the origin of the word "defile". Fel also is a Swedish word for "Wrong" or "Incorrect", it is however pronounced differently (the E is pronounced as the first E of "Error" which make the word sound like "fEl").
Erm, what? What pronunciation is this supposed to represent?
linguoboy wrote:[e:]?
Saim wrote:But what does that have to do with the pronunciation of error?
It's tha TAYUXN way o' pernounsn' ayerrr. Or th' Southern Yew Ayuss [wəj].
(I'm kind of kidding, of course. But I'm pretty sure some Southerners would use [eː] or [e] there).
Vlürch wrote:Is there any site with "comprehensive" lists of given names and surnames from various languages/countries with etymologies that isn't a baby-naming site?
Wikipedia?
linguoboy wrote:I get confused between rutabagas and kohlrabi because both can be referred to in German as Kohlrübe and there are variant names for the rutabaga which incorporate "Kohlrabi", e.g. Erdkohlrabi ("earth-kohlrabi"), Unterkohlrabi ("under-kohlrabi"), and Bodenkohlrabi ("ground-kohlrabi"). Plus we never had either growing up, so they're both still slightly exotic vegetables to me.
I don't think I've ever seen either kind of vegetable in my life.
OldBoring wrote:How dare you not mention the main ideology of the People's Republic of China?
社会主义好!社会主义好!
Aren't you so glad I taught you that song?
IpseDixit wrote:Also, I'm appalled by the way many dictionaries define destra (right) as the hand on the same side as the liver and sinistra (left) as the hand on the same side as the heart. Dafuq guys, never heard of situs inversus?
...no...?
Vlürch wrote:Imagine if someone didn't know which direction is which for some reason and just saw that in a dictionary, then decided to cut their own torso open to determine which side is right and which is left?
Then they'd die.
Saim wrote:In Spanish on the other hand it's torpe.
Every time I see the word
torpe now, I think of this Paraguayan comedy clip in Jopará (Guarani + Spanish) where the host uses it.
Antea wrote:But where is Sindhi?
Sindhi is spoken by the Sindhi diaspora in various parts of India, not in any one part. (That being said, of course, it's also indigenous to Sindh in Pakistan).
Saim wrote:Hindi isn't one of the languages mentioned for Sikkim, and English is given a higher (in practice probably meaning real official status rather than a symbolic one) official status than Nepali, Bhutia, Limbu or Lepcha.
Sikkim is also a popular tourist destination in a way that no other Indian state is especially because of
Kangchenjunga, though, so maybe Hindi is more widely spoken in Sikkim (non-natively) than the census figures show.
I guess they wanted to show the most widely spoken language in each state, and just took a very wide definition of Hindi so that it would include all Bihari (Bhojpuri, Maithili), Rajasthani (Marwari), Western Hindi (Hindi proper, Haryanvi), Eastern Hindi (Awadhi, Chhattisgarhi) and Central/Western Pahari (Kumaoni, Garhwali, Kangri) languages.
That is generally how most people define "Hindi." Awadhi even used to be the literary standard for Hindi.
Salajane wrote:Is anybody interested in a Thai study group?
Of course!
linguoboy wrote:It is bizarre to me how people's prejudices about languages can warp their perception of reality. A friend posted the word áilleánach on his wall and someone replied to say that he knew it was "Gaelic" because of the "ridiculous number of consonants".
Áilleánach has five vowels and five consonants. That's not at all unusual for an English word. Consonant itself has three vowels and six consonants.
I think what he's trying to say it "I could tell by looking at the word that it was Irish" but he doesn't know how to analyse what gives him that impression.
Maybe he meant the number of consonants in a row?
Luís wrote:Next step: replace io by me
That's pretty much the same process that gave most of the modern Indo-Aryan languages their first person subject (or nominative case) pronouns.
linguoboy wrote:Luís wrote:Prowler wrote: Referring to Mexicans, Guatemalas and Cubans as "Spanish people".
Are you sure they're using "Spanish" and not "Hispanic"?
It's an older usage in US English, but I still hear it.
I do, too. It confuses the hell out of a lot of immigrants who don't understand as a result that "Spanish, "Mexican," etc. are all very different from each other.
Vlürch wrote:Since I mentioned the Finnish cringiness when it comes to language-related stuff in another thread, here's a perfect example that's even more outrageous than the demystification of ancient languages and language isolates:
this guy claims that nasal consonants can only be voiced.
It's like he's never heard of Welsh, Burmese, etc. Even at least one of the Sami languages has them! Makes me kinda ashamed to be Finnish, but thankfully I have no education beyond primary school so at least I don't have to live with the shame of being lumped together with proudly ignorant academics and whatnot.
Well, to be fair, they are still far less common than voiced nasal consonants. Maybe he uses another term for voiceless nasals.
razlem wrote:I'm not sure I agree. Everywhere I've been (the South and Pacific Coast), "She's Swedish" means that she was born in Sweden.
I'm from the South, too, and I have heard this sort of usage to refer to someone who was not actually born there. I even use it myself. I've said many times that I'm Indian even though I've never even been in India for as long as three weeks at a time and the last time I visited was almost fifteen years ago.