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 2y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 2y 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 5mo ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 4mo ago by Quasímodo‭

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 2y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 2y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

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 2y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by viäränlaenen‭

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, ...

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

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 6mo ago by tommi‭  ·  edited 6mo ago by Lundin‭

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 2y ago by tommi‭

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 2y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 2y 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 2y ago by tommi‭  ·  edited 2y 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 2y ago by tommi‭  ·  last activity 2y ago by Jordan‭