General Q&A about specific languages, language in general, and linguistics.
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There were two recent questions (here and here) about historical pronunications. I know that languages evolve in sound over time, but how do linguists determine what the original phonology was seve...
Japanese has what is known as the "polite form"/"masu form" and the "plain form". Notably, the two forms have completely different conjugations despite having the same meaning, differing only in po...
So, I have a Chinese name. (Specifically, Mandarin, if that makes a difference). What are the common ways to give this name in Japanese? Should I approximate the Chinese reading, use the on'yomi re...
There's this famous story about al-Asma'i الأصمعي challenging the caliph abu Ja'afar al-Mansur أبو جعفر المنصور by composing a poem that is difficult to memorize, as the caliph himself used to memo...
I know that in Thai language, if someone asks a numeric question and expects an answer which is plurally numerical (two or more objects), it is common to add some special word to the question. I wo...
I have read somewhere that Swedish is more conservative than the other continental North Germanic languages, Norwegian and Danish. Clearly Icelandic is more conservative then these all. But is the ...
Often when I search for the origins and meanings of certain words in Tanach, I'll come across something like Strong's saying that it's from or probably from an "unused root". For example: What e...
Looking at English, its complexity seems to have been in constant decrease. For example, in the past, there were conjugations and a separate informal form of “you” (”thou”); all in all, the languag...
I'm wondering about the origin of the Swedish word ohyra (vermin). Someone humorously suggested that this would be because vermin are unwanted guests not paying rent (hyra), though they had no sour...
In an examination in my country (India) I had a multiple choice question on the order of pronouns. Q: Please try to remember when I, you and my wife were talking there. Options: A. you, I and ...
I know some people pronounce caution with an /ʃ/ and others with a /ʒ/, and the same is true of cautious. I wonder if anyone can provide information on who says each (by region, time, etc.).
Is it true to say that Lao script is a simplified version of the Thai script? A criteria might be: Fewer letters Fewer diacritics Fewer tone markers More reforms over the years (possibly due...
In normed Finnish language hän (he/she) refers to people, while se (it) refers to non-people. However, in spoken language, at least in many dialects, se is used also for people. (Both hän and se ar...
Replying to the last edit (#4)... Since it language related site hence I am asking the question by creating new Q rather than commenting there. The earlier title was Is using plural form for sin...
The Tironian et was a scribal abbreviation for the Latin word et; it was used for centuries across Europe, but finally died out and was replaced with & in almost all languages. The exception wa...
When I first moved to Israel, one of the first things I was warned about was using the word "maniac". As an American, this is considered a very minor insult - minor enough for little kids to use wi...
While learning a language, there are a surprising (to me at least) number of people who say that you should never output until fluent - that is, as long as you get enough input, you will eventually...
English speakers from certain areas, in particular British, seem to add an extra r sound after vowels. For example: Idea -> idea-r Drawing -> draw-r-ing China -> China-r What is th...
It seems like a lot of humor has an element of surprise. Sudden meanings, unexpected turns of the plot, language unexpected given the context (impolite language in polite context, technical in a no...
The original meaning of humor of course refers to the obsolete theory of the four humors and their effect on human temperament. I'm not asking about that. It appears that initially, the meaning sh...
When an observed verbal habit has more than one potential source, and that source is likely to be a different language or dialect, how do linguists determine the most likely origin? For example, i...
I have seen the phrase sommaren är kommen. What grammatical form is this and how is it correct? I thought it should rather be sommaren har kommit, for summer has arrived (literally: summer has co...
One thing that’s always bothered me about the musical term timbre is its pronunciation. The word begs to be pronounced “timber,” yet it’s widely pronounced “tamber” instead. I understand the etymol...
When conjugating 'hebben' I can see both forms, are they the same, or is only one of them correct? Is there a regional difference between the two?
The noun ar-Rahmaan and its adjective rahmaan are pronounced with a prolongation of the letter alif between the last two letters meem and noon, nevertheless it is common that people with the name '...
Five Hebrew letters -- כ, מ, נ, צ, and פ -- have different forms when at the end of a word. I have heard that this is true for certain letters in Arabic too, though I don't know if they're th...
If I understand correctly both Vietnamese lệnh ("ley") and Thai เลย ("l'ey") are vague in both languages in the sense that they can have various meanings which depend on context but generally used ...
as. Do not use the conjunction as when you mean “since,” “because,” “when,” or “while.” Its broad and vague meanings can create confusion. For example, As a potential work stoppage threatened to ...
Why do most Asian, Middle Eastern and European languages greet with words anent health or peace? I know that "salutation" itself meant "health". salute [14] Salute goes back ultimately to ...
What is the most dominant Arabic dialect in Horn of Africa region? Egyptian Arabic dialect? Sudanic Arabic dialect? Somali Arabic dialect? Some other Arabic dialect?
I never understood a bit of Yiddish until I started to understand a bit of German. In my understanding Yiddish is a German language seasoned with words and sentences in Hebrew, Aramaic and possibl...
There are 14 অ বর্গীয় (O borgiyo) letters in Bengali. But couldn't find out in book what they are. I know that there are 11 vowel letters in Bengali. But while looking for অ বর্গীয়, I just found th...
Why is the -an in "شُكْرًا" (shukran) pronounced? I've heard it pronounced this way in Modern Standard Arabic and in colloquial. In both, I'd usually expect the -an to not be pronounced, especiall...
If you're around tomorrow, stop by. I'll eat when I'm hungry. She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes. You're around tomorrow, I'm hungry, and she comes are describing fu...
I sing in a choir that performs medieval and renaissance music in several languages I don't otherwise speak. When we are unclear about pronunciation, we look for recordings from reputable performe...
I have mostly self-learned Norwegian without much emphasis on grammar. Occasionally I see expressions like "skulle gjort", sometimes with "gjort" replaced by another verb. I would expect to see the...
I sometimes find myself writing sentences with subordinate clauses where there is number mismatch between the primary and subordinate clauses. For example: The oath he swore, those words about se...
I find the pronunciation of Icelandic highly regular and predictable on the whole, but male patronymics continue to puzzle me. The suffix "-son" is consistently pronounced with an initial /ʃ/ rath...
According to Chappell & McGregor (1996: 4) there are four typical types of inalienably possessed nouns: spatial relationships such as the ’top’ or ’front’ of something physical parts, espec...
What's the origin of the expression "son of a gun"? This comic explains a possible origin: British Navy used to allow women on naval ships, and any child born on board who had uncertain paternity ...
I am reading some texts about routes for running. They explain interesting routes and allow getting the GPS track. Also, there is the option to modify the GPS track by adding waypoints. Now I wan...
quibble [17] _Quibble _probably originated as a rather ponderous learned joke-word. It is derived from an earlier and now obsolete _quib _‘pun’, which appears to have been based on quibus...
I am interested in exploring a series of prompts for a large language model which move from instructions which have a clear-cut "correct result", such as the instruction to capitalize every letter ...
What is ทำดีได้อย่าเด่นจะเป็นภัย in Thai? I find the structure of this sentence a bit odd. If I break it down: ทำ ดี ได้ This means "Doing good order" (the action of doing good in some contex...
What is the difference between a guild and a lodge? The context to this question is pretty much Freemasonry terminology but please feel free to answer with a general English context.
I fail to understand this etymology for bail (n.1), particularly the first paragraph. [3.] "bond money, security given to obtain the release of a prisoner," late 15c., a sense that apparently de...
Some people use they/them if they can't identity gender/sex (gender and sex isn't same). But when mentioning a single person should we use plural pronoun? We know that "they/them" is plural form. ...
A recent post on Language Log includes this sample of an unidentified language: The article says this about the source: This is from RG 84, General Correspondence of the American consulate in...
I think that in most languages, when people define sets of data in general and when people create taxonomy for website webpages in particular (webpage categorization), they would mostly name catego...
Malay languages or Indonesian languages --- which is more close to Philippine languages? I don't know much about any so I would not make any assumptions.
