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In some languages, the distinction between singular and plural of a noun isn't obligatorily marked at all. There are ways to be explicit about singular/plural but they are optional. (English adje...
Most reliable sources say that the Arabic-derived "djinni" is a singular word and its plural is "djinn." (Or "jinni" and "jinn," if you prefer.) The dropping of a final letter or syllable to plural...
I recently stumbled upon this wikipedia page and it got me thinking. Take a look at the following table (terms are lifted from the Wikipedia page) W (interrogative) H (proximal) T (medial)...
He/she may be used to refer to an object. The accepted practice in English is for boats and ships to be considered female; this is unusual enough to be remarked upon by non-sailors. All other uses...
The direct parallel of the example from Finnish does not exist in English dialects know to me. Which does not stand for much, I'm not even a native speaker. There are some basic uses of "it" whic...
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...
There isn't an established procedure, but I personally would ask either on Meta for visibility (asking for the creation of a post seems Meta-y) and/or create the resource post itself, even if empty.
This site has the category Resources which will grow over time with great posts. But what if I want to get some of these resources? I mean, how can I suggest one? Let me be specific: I want to im...
This has been implemented [Citation needed] As a more academically focused site, it might be useful to mark answers as lacking sufficient citations to back the answer up authoritatively. This g...
This usage seems to be common not only in English, but in Western cultures in general. (The two parties do not need to be on first name terms for this pattern to work: "Oh, Mister Bennet! Have som...
All languages have dialects and an answer on a specific topic can be true... or false, depending on the dialect. For this, I think we could add a reaction like: This matches with my dialect [a...
"You can find this information by Google" Can you though? Like the person who posted the answer, I just typed the question title in Google. After which I only get other Q&A sites like Stac...
I just stumbled upon this post, which was originally tagged "swedish" and someone recently added the "grammar" tag as well. Now the highly relevant "swedish" tag does not appear after the edit, ne...
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...
A certain question has twice now been hit by the dreaded "You can find this information by Google" I've noticed this has occurred quite frequently, especially link-only answers which I delete as a...
Here are some results from Google: Zeel's answer on StackExchange Using the word "in" means that the action takes place at the same time as something. However "by" is used to denote the manner ...
It depends on the context, but generally "in doing so" refers to something that happens along with or as part of the action, and "by doing so" refers to a result of the action. In many cases either...
In my English-speaking culture, when two people are in conversation, usually we don't bother addressing each other by name—or even by any substitutive term of address, like ‘sir’/‘ma'am’ (formal) o...
What semantic notions underlie Proto-Italic *moini-, *moinos- "duty, obligation, task," 🢂 with PIE root *mei- (1) "to change, go, move"? How do they semantically appertain each other? I quote from...
I grok that prae- + scribere ⟶ praescribere literally meant write before. But what semantic notions underlie write before with a title or right acquired through long use or uninterrupted possession...
Before Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, there was 16 letters in Bengali. Latter, Iswar Chandra said there's no use of ৡ and ৠ for long time. Even, every word could be pronounced without these letters অ০, ...
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...
I know that in Spanish, contengo is the first person singular conjugation of contener "to contain". I surmise that English transcribed the Spanish /e/ into an "a". Etymonline 1853, "charge made...
I quote the OED 's etymology for the adverb inasmuch. originally 3 words in as much (in northern Middle English in als mikel), subsequently sometimes written as 2 words, in asmuch, and now (espe...
