Old Chinese 烏弋山離 ‘Alexandria’ looks hella Slavic. Han dynasty people be like “Olekszánlyja”

Russian and Portuguese sound the same because they’re both next to Galicia

Mariupol Greek is easily my favorite modern dialect

Quechua q'aytu ‘thread, string, cord’ : Arabic ḫayṭu ‘id.’ Stay woke.

One thing about Elamite is they write /ni/ with the 𒉡 nu sign. Not sure what that’s about.

It’s true that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Yves Saint Laurent are some of the coolest names ever. But people are forgetting about Ptolemy V Epiphanes.

Sevastopol sounds like the name of a Hellenistic city but apparently it was founded in 1783.

reminder to myself to read this

olmecs were so chinese coded

when are we getting the helicopter and spaceship hieroglyphs in unicode

ⲡⲓⲭⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ ⲁϥⲧⲱⲛϥ!

ngl I don’t like how wiktionary puts breves on α/ι/υ in the headword. If it doesn’t have a macron we know it’s short!

Akkadians be like “south”

If people want to call Egypt by its native name I wish they would use the proper received form Chemia (Χημία) rather than the Egyptological “Kemet”

ⲡⲓⲭⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ ⲁϥⲧⲱⲛϥ!

Is it just me or does the Graeco-Babyloniaca look extremely Palmyrene

Wonder if there’s a connection between Old Persian Pirāva ‘Nile’ and Mandaic Piriawis, name of the "great river" (yardna rba) of heaven.

Quoc ngu completed the Latin alphabet by adding ư and ơ.

Middle English were getting kinda Egyptian with it

It’s basically a universal law that things from Iberia end up in Ireland and things from France end up in Britain, hence I choose to believe Goidelic shares a branch with Celtiberian and Brittonic with Gaulish

how it feels to read demotic

i hate when they add those little dots to old english text. let me interpret in peace

the loss of gutturals and p > f in punic give it quite a charming feel. canaanite with maltese characteristics

getting a bronze age burger at MaquiDubnowali

Just occurred to me that Καρχηδών is metathesized from *Καρθηγών. *karthāgōn > *karthēgōn > karkhēdōn. Seems kinda obvious now but I’ve never seen it mentioned anywhere.

So what sound is High Valyrian ⟨vh⟩, as in ‘Vhagar,’ supposed to make?

Afaik there are 3 surviving testimonies regarding the first vowel in the name of the god Thoth (ḏḥw.tj).

ⲡⲓⲭⲣⲓⲥⲧⲟⲥ ⲁⲩⲙⲁⲥϥ!

a neat pun we found in Coptic reading group: ⲡⲁⲓ ϩⲱⲱϥ ⲟⲛ ϥⲛⲁⲁⲁⲩ ⲁⲩⲱ ϥⲛⲁⲣⲛⲉⲧⲛⲁⲁⲁⲩ ⲉⲣⲟⲟⲩ. "he himself will do them too" (ⲛⲁ-ⲁⲁ-ⲩ "will do them" [great works]) ".. and he will do [things] which are greater than they" (ⲛⲁⲁⲁ-ⲩ "they are great")

>open up pre-Columbian codex >first page is a giant Cross pattée with a Cross of Burgundy inside

came across this gem in Coptic reading group today: ⲟⲩⲗⲁⲥ ⲛⲥⲁⲣⲝⲡⲉ ⲡⲁⲗⲁⲥ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲟⲩϩⲏⲧ ⲛⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲡⲉⲧⲙⲙⲟⲓ "my tongue is a tongue of flesh, and mine is a human heart" (referring to the author's own human limitations in writing adequate praises of a saint)

Late Latin drictus 🤝 Middle Chinese 直 drik

when i was growing up in socal the standard pronunciation of j in foreign words was [h], as in spanish, so we’d be saying stuff like falluhah and rohava

old japanese be like “woman”

Certain epichoric Greek alphabets wrote ξ (x) as 𐌇𐌔 (hs). Pinyin vs. Wades-Giles has been going on far longer than anyone could’ve imagined.

What we really need is a good Indological transcription system for Middle Chinese. Hill’s proposal is a step in the right direction, but still not quite right. Every government in the world should have agencies working round the clock on this.

New video series by yours truly on Biblical and Semiticist stuff – "banal [within the field], yet awesome" facts and opinions. First episode out now, on whether Greek or Hebrew is harder for beginners: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4726...

just got nasal ʿayin jumpscared by a 17th century dictionary of Vietnamese

anyone ever point out that Αἰθίοπες appears to be a translation of 𒊕𒈪𒂵/ṣalmāt-qaqqadim (Sumerian autonym)?

Anyone know what’s up with with the aleph in Phoenician pʾl ‘(Egyptian) beans’ in KAI 51 Vs. 4? No parallel in the Semitic cognates (Heb. פּוֹל, Aram. פּוֹלָא, Ar. فُول, Ge. ፉል, etc.), but it does look suspiciously like Bohairic ⲫⲉⲗ ‘bean’, which would go back to Proto-Coptic *pʰɛʔl.

was finally able to complete this etymology tree