_Gandalf_the_Black_

@_Gandalf_the_Black_@feddit.de

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The numbers dont lie... and they spell disaster for you⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Feel like I’ve seen this in Tbilisi before. Where was this one?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sense⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fun fact: the s was added to island in the 16th century as a mistake because grammarians added an s to isle to make it look more like the Latin insula, even though there was no s sound in either island or isle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stomach fish tank⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So in Slavonic linguistics, there’s a sound change known as the Slavic liquid metathesis, which is what gives us South Slavic forms like grad (town) as in Belgrad, as opposed to East Slavic forms, like gorod, as in Belgorod.

  The reconstructed ancestor of gorod and grad is *gord (in historical linguistics, an asterisk indicates a reconstructed form). Due to changes in syllable boundary rules in the Slavic language of the day (roughly 8th/9th century AD), you could no longer have syllables at the end of a word, so *gord had to change. In East Slavic, this was solved by adding an extra vowel to break up the consonant cluster, giving us gorod. In South and West Slavic, this was done by moving the /r/ sound to the onset (start) of the syllable (and the vowel was also changed), giving us grad. The “liquid” part of the name refers to “liquid” sounds, /r/ and /l/, since this particular process applied to them.

  It almost looks like this is what’s going on here, although not quite. It would have to be gulgulg > gluglug to count as liquid metathesis, but the l and u switched around, which is good enough for me. Plus there’s the pun with liquid and water.

  Hopefully that at least somewhat explains the joke. I don’t know if it’s very clear.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stomach fish tank⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Slavic liquid metathesis moment

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨perhaps⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I miss the good old days of surreal memes. Meme man and orang fighting against each other across an arbitrary and unpredictable universe, questioning the fabric of reality, surreality and irreality, all while striving to avoid eternal yamnation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨F̵̞̻̜̻̰͔͊̈́͜Ę̵̫͍̟͉̦̜̹̯͚̜̗̈̾͒̚͝E̶̪͒͋́́́D̸͓̆͊́͋͋̾̇̋̈̿̕̚͠͠͝͝ ̶̧̛̛͓̒͋͒̃͆̎̓͠͠Į̵̞͚͓͈̬̰̩̜͉̇̉̿̊̓̿͆̈́͒͗̓̈́̕͜͠͠ͅT̸̢̨͍̦̫̯̗͓͑̊́̕ ̸̺͍͇̠̣̮͕̈́̉̅͝⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Never trunst orang

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Duality of Japan⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Deutsche: Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay, I looked it up, and it seems I was getting confused with the Australian weak vowel merger; the pin/pen merger is actually in some American accents

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What? How is that the conclusion you’re drawing here? As a side note, I have learnt and can speak German and have lived and studied in Germany. But more importantly, I feel like we’re having two entirely different conversations. My understanding of your argument is that it is invalid to put down potentially confusing pronunciation differences down to accents. Please correct me if I have misunderstood what you’re saying. My argument is that this is just a natural linguistic process and differing pronunciations even to the point of confusion between dialects is inevitable. If someone’s dialect/accent truly does cause communication problems, then a workaround needs to found, whether that’s rewording things so that confusion caused by pronunciation is averted, or by code-switching to a common dialect in more extreme cases. Neither of these invalidates either dialect or accent. People speak differently, and no matter how strange it might sound, it’s just something you have to get over.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So basically your argument is that an accent or dialect is only valid if it can be understood by people from outside that speech community? German and English both have the same linguistic origins, but they are not mutually intelligible. Does that make either or both invalid ways of speaking? Do you realise that phonological changes are a perfectly natural part of linguistic evolution and, given enough time, speakers of dialect X and dialect Y can stop being able to understand each other? Yes, you can code-switch to make yourself more understandable to speakers of another dialect, but that’s generally what you do when the differences between the two dialects are big enough that you feel the need to change the entire manner in which you speak.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Also accents are not people “choosing” to speak another way. It’s just a result of linguistic change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, in Australian accents, pen and pin are pronounced the same. That doesn’t make their accent invalid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  People when they find out different accents exist: >:(

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tradition⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They won’t be if Putin keeps sending them to die in Ukraine

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tradition⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think that’s exclusive to Americans, not even close

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OED update⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The o-grade is alive and well

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When someone corrects your code⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, so you mean the whole of the contemporary field of linguistics?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When someone corrects your code⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  However, real grammar and prescribed textbook grammar are two different things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sometimes you have to just "Let It Go"⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Perfect post to pee to

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unity will start charging developers each time their game is installed⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I was shocked until I read the username