Savirius 1y ago • 100%
See also the Christmas carol "Joy to the world, the Lord is come."
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
"Think of it like a dice roll: You either roll or 6, or you don't, so basically it's 50/50."
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
Brazilian Portuguese speakers change 't' and 'd' to 'ch' and 'j' respectively before 'i' and 'e' sounds. For example, the word 'de' meaning 'of/from' is pronounced more like 'juh'.
This happened in Japanese too, where the original "ti, tya, tyo" became "chi, cha, cho"! These are all types of palatalisation, which is one of the most common types of sound change across languages.
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
Fun fact: when the boroughs of West Ham and East Ham merged in 1965, some of the suggested names by the public included Hamstrung, Hamsandwich, Smoked Ham and Hamsweetham.
They settled on the new name Newham, which, y'know, is elegant and all, but it's disappointing once you know they could've been a sandwich.
The similarity of "envious" and "oblivious" is coincidental: - *envious* is just *envy* + *-ous*, where envy is from Latin *invidia* "envy". - *oblivious* is from Latin *obliviosus*, from *oblivium* "forgetfulness" + *-osus* "-ous".
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
Which raises the question: if the point is to raise the number of active users for July, what do they plan on doing for August? Like, a slow descent from June to July to August wouldn't look great to a potential investor, but surely a steady increase to July followed by a sheer cliffface down to August would look even worse right??
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
The important takeaway here is that it took a long time before it was actually good. They had to try a bunch of different sorting algorithms before they found one that really worked and let you see your small subs just as much as your big ones.
It might take a while here too unfortunately.
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
Find a text-to-speech program that supports Australian English and get it say "queso" and "care-sore". Then compare each of those to a Spanish speaker saying "queso". Decide for yourself which one sounds more like the original.
If anyone's wondering how this "magic e" nonsense happened in the first place: In the Middle English period, short vowels in open syllables were lengthened, so /ha.tə/ became /haː.tə/. Then, the schwa was lost, thus /haːt/. Now, the only audible distinction between *hat* and *hate* was the vowel length, and so the <e> on the end was reanalyzed as a length marker; words that never ended with an /ə/ like *whit* /hwiːt/ were respelled as *white* to show the vowel length. With the Great Vowel Shift, *hate* shifted from /haːt/ to /heːt/, and in the last couple of centuries to /heɪt/. Now, final <e> shows a *mostly*-consistent transformation of the preceding vowel, perfect for flummoxing second-language learners!
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
Hmm, maybe if an app's creator hosted their own instance just for accounts (i.e. with no posts of its own). That way, a new user can download an app, set up an account on that app's dedicated accounts server, and start browsing all the other instances from there.
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
Yep!
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
Huh, maybe your instance is defederated from kbin.social? Maybe??
I still don't fully get how it works.
Yep! Surprising but true! *Alone* is first attested as Middle English *allone*, and earlier as two words, *all oon*. *Lone* comes from a later shortening of *alone* (*[Apheresis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apheresis_(linguistics))* is the technical term). *Alone* and *one* don't rhyme anymore because of the irregular change from /oːn/ to /wʊn/ in Late Middle to Early Modern English. See also *only*, which comes from *one* + *-ly*.
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
The word "alone" comes from a compound of "all" + "one".
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
About 85% of my reddit browsing had been on pretty niche subs, so I'm still using reddit to engage in those communities (of those that haven't shut down). I'm trying to contribute to the equivalents here too, but the engagement is still on reddit for now.
The other 15% was just the occasional trip to /r/all to see if there was anything interesting going on there, to which the answer was usually... no. That's pretty much been replaced by here now.
Savirius 1y ago • 100%
To explain: /eː/ and /oː/ exist in Australian English, but they're the vowels in SQUARE and NORTH respectively, so Australians don't naturally associate them with foreign /e/ and /o/. If you can force an Australian to say "care-sore", it sounds remarkably like Spanish "queso"!
- *rage* comes from Old French *rage*, from Late Latin *rabia*, a regularization of Classical Latin *rabies*. - *lobby* and *lodge* are both from Late Latin *laubia*, a loanword from Frankish *laubija*, meaning "arbour" or "shelter". - *sage* (the plant) comes directly from its Latin name *salvia*. (As a sidenote, the psychedelic salvia is one of many salvia/sage species and is native to Mexico). - *rouge* is from Latin *rubeus* ("red"), while *ruby* is from Latin *rubinus*. This means that while *ruby* and *rouge* are closely related, they're not a neat doublet like the others. - The latter half of *(sub)servient* and *sergeant* are both from Latin *servientem* meaning "serving". Other pairs include *sapient*/*sage* (meaning wisdom, as in *sage advice*) and *cavity*/*cage* (the latter from Latin *cavea* > \**cavia*).