Jirka Hanika‭

Wikipedia gives me the impression that Appalachian English is a member of the Southern U.S. English dialect collection and can be subdivided into a southern variety called Smoky Mountain English an...

posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  edited 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

The oldest known usage of "nifty" is in an American poem from 1868. If you read the poem at this link, you'll find that that author found it useful to comment on the meaning of the word inside the...

posted 1y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

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...

posted 3y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

It is tempting for a foreigner, but perhaps not accurate to identify "Sie" as the polite (respectful) pronoun and to identify "du" as the impolite (less respectful) one, and it could be more accura...

posted 3y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  edited 3y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

Deciphering a language which has left behind only a limited number of very short texts is hard. There are lots of undeciphered ancient languages; for additional distraction, some of those scripts ...

posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  edited 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

This site is young and asking some questions and seeing how they end up received is a good way to judge what kind of coverage can be found here. That said, questions entirely disconnected from a m...

posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  edited 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

This is not a proper answer as I cannot verify this etymology beyond Old Swedish "ohýris" meaning something like "immense". I'm rather inclined to think that the word could be related to even olde...

posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

Some interesting experiments have been reported by Yanyun Zhou and Chi-Shing Tse (The Taste of Emotion: Metaphoric Association Between Taste Words and Emotion/Emotion-Laden Words). They were condi...

posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  edited 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

This is a frame challenge answer. There is no objective measure of "language complexity" known to me, not even attempts to define one. Bigger tasks require more complexity, but just very little ...

posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

This article explains a shift from 19th century usage of the 3rd person[1] "heeft" to current day 2nd person "hebt". Both forms currently have the same meaning, both are correct. However, some so...

posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  edited 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

Any online dictionaries I can find agree on a /ʃ/ across any standard dialects they cover. I don't remember encountering the other pronunciation myself. I suspect that you are looking at an examp...

posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  edited 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

An answer was recently posted and its edit history strongly suggests that it was AI-generated in entirety; that apparently attracted some flagging. The answer happens to be of poor quality, but th...

0 answers  ·  posted 8mo ago by Jirka Hanika‭

Like any language change, it can be a bit confusing to current speakers while it is happening, but once the resulting verb is established, nobody will blink anymore. Latin was especially fond of v...

posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  edited 3y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

It is not accurate to say that the Greek alphabet developed from the Hebrew alphabet as we know it. Instead, the two have a common predecessor in the Phoenician alphabet. In this sense you could ...

posted 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭  ·  edited 4y ago by Jirka Hanika‭

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...

posted 3y ago by Jirka Hanika‭