tommi‭

In English, at least in USA, people write $3 and mean three dollars (rather than dollars three), while other units are written after the number; no c99, h13, min22, '5, etc. to be seen. Why is it $...

1 answer  ·  posted 4y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

In many Germanic and Finno-ugric languages there are many compound words. One does not write "yhdys sana", but rather "yhdyssana". Learning to write these correctly is notoriously hard for people, ...

4 answers  ·  posted 3y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 5mo ago by Jirka Hanika‭

In Portuguese a male speaker thanks with an «obrigado», while a female with an «obrigada». I am reading a text (some thank you notice for buying some mass-produced industrial product with no obvio...

1 answer  ·  posted 2y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 2y ago by Quasímodo‭

When playing house with a child, they say things like "Nyt se meni nukkumaan." when they mean that I should have the toy I am playing with go to bed. Similar use of the simple past / imperfect tens...

2 answers  ·  posted 4y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by viäränlaenen‭

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 ...

1 answer  ·  posted 4y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

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...

2 answers  ·  posted 2y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Jirka Hanika‭

Having language tags capitalized and others not might increase their visibility or specialness. This would not be a bad thing. English likes to capitalize some strange things such as language n...

posted 4y ago by tommi‭

The English words «cup» and «bug» are pronounced as kʌp and bʌɡ. Many Finnish people pronounce them with the sound that corresponds to the letter «a» in Finnish and Norwegian alphabet: kap, bag (h...

1 answer  ·  posted 25d ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 24d ago by Jirka Hanika‭

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...

1 answer  ·  posted 4y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by Lundin‭

Quoting from https://svenska.se/tre/?sok=ohyra&pz=1: sedan första år­tiondet av 1500-talet (Helige mäns lefverne); fornsv. o­hyra ’o­djur; stor mängd’; urspr. ’ngt o­täckt, o­trevligt’ Se...

posted 4y ago by tommi‭  ·  edited 4y ago by tommi‭

In this quiz on Yle's website I met the nice word "murremestari": https://yle.fi/a/74-20058169 Obviously this means one who masters dialects, but in that meaning I pronounce it as "murremmestari"....

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by tommi‭  ·  edited 1y ago by tommi‭

For background, there exists a stereotypical Danish pronunciation of English. "Danglish" can also mean other things, but this is what I am referring to, here. I lived one year in Denmark and can r...

1 answer  ·  posted 4y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by Jordan‭