Random language thread 6

[linguoboy]

So is it possible to know whether they just merged by sheer phonological similarity or whether it was also a semantic thing? Metaphorically, each season could be seen as a different "station" of the year.

I don't think phonetic similarity had ought to do with it. In Catalan, saó and estació don't sound much alike at all. (In many dialects, in fact, saó is misconstrued as *saor, leading to derivatives like saoreta instead of expected/standard saoneta.)

[Bubulus]

Yeah, I think this is just an extension (among many others) of statiōnem borrowed one way or another, relegating the inherited satiōnem (Portuguese sazão, Catalan saó) to the background or non-use. It is pretty interesting that in Latin the two words have a similar sound though (you only need to remove a -t- from statiōnem). Dunno if that's relevant.

Also, whoa, I didn't know Catalan completely deleted the initial consonant of -tiōnem in inherited words: ratiōnem also becomes raó.

Romanian nowadays uses sezon, the form of borrowed French saison. In the past, the word in common use was anotimp, lit. year-time, a surprising un-Romanian-like straightforward compound that apparently calques German Jahreszeit (Jahr[-es] 'year' + Zeit 'time'). All the more surprising because the surrounding Slavic languages prefer to render "year" as the adjective "yearly, annual": Czech roční období, Serbian godišnje doba, both "yearly time". Russian uses a genitive: время года "time of-year".

[Antea]

Please, where is the Turkish word-association game? I am looking for it like for half an hour in the Turkish sub forum and because it’s all in Turkish I cannot find it

[voron]

Please, where is the Turkish word-association game? I am looking for it like for half an hour in the Turkish sub forum and because it’s all in Turkish I cannot find it

Here:
https://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=51902

[Antea]

Please, where is the Turkish word-association game? I am looking for it like for half an hour in the Turkish sub forum and because it’s all in Turkish I cannot find it

Here:
https://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=51902

Thanks! Teşekkürler!

[voron]

Thanks! Teşekkür!

Rica ederim.

It's either teşekkürler or teşekkür ederim, cannot be just teşekkür.

[linguoboy]

I'm not used to reading all this Welsh and it's messing up my brain. I messaged an Ecuadorean friend last night to tell him I wanted to see him and came very close to typing "Me gustaría ti weld", an inexplicable munging of "Me gustaría verte" and "Fe fyddai'n dda gyda fi dy weld di".

[Ciarán12]

My pronunciation of the word "Portuguese" seems to have changed. My brother noticed it before I did and pointed it out, I'm now saying it with the stress on the first syllable whereas he says it with secondary stress on the first syllable and primary stress on the final syllable (which, upon reflection, is how I used to say it too). This new pronunciation is not coming from Portuguese itself, as I stress "Português" on the final syllable, but more likely from how my wife and other Brazilians tend to pronounce "Portuguese" in English.

[Osias]

[linguoboy]

I took a Lyft yesterday with a driver named “Baker”. One look at him and I knew it was a pseudonym. We chatted and I waited for him to ask where I was from before I asked him. When he said “Jordan”, I replied, “So ‘Baker’ is a translation or you name? Is your real name Khabbāz?” He was surprised. His next question surprised me. He asked, “Are you Jewish?” (I think he meant “Israeli”.)

[Antea]

I took a Lyft yesterday with a driver named “Baker”. One look at him and I knew it was a pseudonym. We chatted and I waited for him to ask where I was from before I asked him. When he said “Jordan”, I replied, “So ‘Baker’ is a translation or you name? Is your real name Khabbāz?” He was surprised. His next question surprised me. He asked, “Are you Jewish?” (I think he meant “Israeli”.)

It could also come from the Arabic surname بكر , or from the name أبو بكر. There’s also a Hebrew version of the name בכור.

[md0]

Random language complaint thread:

There's an advert playing for a long time on radio in Cyprus that says something like "the joyous spark in the eyes of those around us" (it's selling eyeglasses). The problem is, the voice actor adds an extra /n/ by mistake, and as a result I can't stop hearing "the joyous spark in the eyes of our döner".

What he says: i xarmósini spítha sta mátja ton jíron mas
What he should have said: i xarmósini spítha sta mátja ton jíro mas

[Synalepha]

I'm not a prescriptivist but I think it's a pity some grammatical features of Italian are almost dead, such as:

1) inclusive / generic "we" (noi) vs exclusive "we" (noialtri)

2) codesto/a: a demonstrative pronoun or adjective used when something is far from the speaker and near to the person who's spoken to.

3) costì / costà: two adverbs used when the place is far from the speaker and near to the one who's spoken to. Basically they mean "there" for the speaker and "here" for the one spoken to.

4) colui / colei / coloro; costui / costei / costoro - I know it's not grammatical in English but the best way I can translate those is "that/this he", "that/this she", "those/these they" or even "the abovementioned he/she/they".

P.S: 2) and 3) are very Tuscan but even over here, they'll probably die out with my parents' generation.

[Synalepha]

What's the status of Javanese in Indonesia nowadays? Is it a literary language, or is there a diglossic situation where Javanese in the spoken language and Indonesian the literary language and the language of the media at large?

[linguoboy]

In the Hong Kong classic New Dragon Gate Inn (新龍門客棧), travellers are murdered and their flesh made into the filling for meat buns. When guests ask what kind of meat is in the buns, they are told "spicy meat". I never caught what the name was in Cantonese so today on a whim I looked it up and found out it's "十香肉", literally "ten fragrance meat". So not "spicy" as in "spicy hot" but "spicy" as in "well-spiced".

[linguoboy]

In other news, here's a nasty pair of heteronyms I just came across:

underage /ˌʌndəɹˈeɪdʒ/ below the legal age for an activity
underage /ˈʌndəɹɪdʒ/ shortfall, deficit

I'm familiar with both words and I've never confused them (since the latter only occurs in specialised financial contexts), but this has got to make L2 speakers' heads hurt.

[Luís]

Just 700 Speak This Language (50 in the Same Brooklyn Building)

[Vlürch]

I just mistook 性格 (seikaku; "personality") for 性欲 (seiyoku; "sexual desire") and was confused because the context was about people born on a certain date, which... well, you know, doesn't really make sense... not that any kind of predictions based on birthdays and stuff really make sense, but ones about sexuality make even less sense than ones about overall personality or whatever. I had to copypaste it and check on Wiktionary to realise my mistake, and the kanji aren't even similar...

[Osias]

I think they do, if mirror flipped.

[Synalepha]

I've recently gone back to watching some videos from the YT polyglot community (after many years of voluntary abstinence) and some of them such as Luca Lampariello and Lýdia Machová have morphed into self-defined "language coaches/mentors" that is someone who is supposed to teach you how to learn languages.

Do you have any opinion about this concept? Or has anyone tried them out?

My cynical self is always skeptic of people who want to tell you how to do things (of course there are exceptions) but maybe they can be helpful?