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So. The bat-lady-goddess in Moana 2 is "Matangi": "wind". (as seen in my historical linguist live watch of Moana 2) But researching the SEA areal word *m-taʔ: "eye", I found some new levels to that name! 🧵 1/8

I checked, and I am so delighted that Persian uses ققنوس سرخ <qaqnus sorx> for the Vermillion Bird of the South. Those two Persian words are cognate! One native and one borrowed from Greek through Arabic 😁

I checked, and I am so delighted that Persian uses ققنوس سرخ <qaqnus sorx> for the Vermillion Bird of the South. Those two Persian words are cognate! One native and one borrowed from Greek through Arabic 😁

On the one hand, Friday (Frījā dag); and on the other, Vendredi (diēs Veneris) 😄

In which a "courtyard garden" is etymological redundant

Hats and curtains? etymological stories of Milano and Cortina (Just catching up with where even the Winter Olympics are currently happening.)

Last night I mentioned only 8% of hearing parents learn enough sign to have a 2-way conversation with their deaf child. Many reasons, but a lot of stems from misinfo. Here's a letter of mine where I busted some of the biggest ASL/ language acquisition myths: buttondown.com/signs+wonder...

μαχανά _might_ be from *megʰ- (but "might" certainly is! 🙃) It's very attractive to derive it from *megʰ- + the ανη suffix for instrument nouns, but it's a little problematic.

"quantity" and "quality" are equivalent to English constructions "whomth" (or possibly "howingth") and "howoldth" 😆 It's also fun how the Latin "qu-", the English "wh-" and Greek "p-" are all the same (the calques are from posótēs and poiótēs)

#WorldHippoDay 🦛😀 "hippopotamus", "equestrian", "zebra", and "alfalfa" from Proto-Indo-European *h₁éḱwos: "horse" www.aidanem.com/word-family-...

It was absolutely 100% intentional that I posted this on a Friday that was only one day off from the anniversary of James Cook's death. (It wasn't intentional)

And then *paʀih in general, and then *bintaŋ parih: "the Star Ray", i.e. the Southern Cross constellation. And I realized I didn't have a family page for *bituqən/*bintaŋ/hōkū. So now I do www.aidanem.com/word-family-...

Word Family: Hōkū It was past time to give Hōkū a full word family page www.aidanem.com/word-family-...

Trying to get a word family out this morning, but there's a cat sleeping on my lap...

psst, wanna see a weird connection between some words?

I've been seeing this ad that starts "If AI could help you accomplish one goal [...]" Which makes me say "αἴκα" every time

"hazel" and "nut" appear to be traces of a lost ancient language of Europe, or of two different ones. These words exist in Celtic, Germanic, Italic but not other branches of Indo-European*.

I've been doing some technical work on the backend the last few days. With the size of the database increasing the it had gotten up to to taking 12-13 minutes to run the script that translates my human-readable (or at least, me-readable) markup files into the database that other scripts draw on.

Five classes you took at university: Linear Algebra Phonetic Analysis Language Change Humanistic Psychology Quantitative Ecology of Conservation

Speaking of Dales. Is there an explanation for where some of those sounds come from in "Dalecarlian"? My understanding is that's somehow supposed to be a Latinization of "Dalarna" ("Dales"), but I don't understand where someone got all extra those sounds.

Wait, Neandertal ("Newman Dale", where the first Neanderthal specimen was found) was named after Joachim Neander(/Neumann)? Joachimsthal (aka Jáchymov, where the silver for the first thalers/dollars was mined) isn't named for the same guy is it?? … Okay, no that's St. Joachim. Different Joachim.

Still trying to figure it out 🙃 Not sure if there's a good enough system of how vowels change to determine what's going on with Tuvaluan "tufuga"/"tofuga" and whether or not that disproves a derivation of N.Pn. *tafuŋa from *tafu

English still had the equivalent word as late as 1200 😁 "Giet ic habbe muchel misdon ðurh ane oðre senne þe is ȝecleped inobediencia, þat is, unhersumnesse." "Yet I have much misdone through another sin which is clept 𝑖𝑛𝑜𝑏𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑎, that is, unhersomeness." Vices and Virtues c. 1200 East Midlands

Actually, I think I'm wrong here. I thought Hawaiʻian "kahu" was from *tausi: "Look after, take care of, maintain", but it's probably actually *tafu: "light a fire"; given one of the meanings of "kahu" as "light a cooking fire, tend/watch over an oven" and that may indeed be related to "kahuna"

In Hawaiʻian this is etymologized as "maintainer of hidden (knowledge)", but that only works in languages like Hawaiʻian which merge Polynesian <*n> and <*ŋ>. e.g. Tahitian (Hawaiʻian's closest living relative): tahuʼa: "healer" vs huna: "secret" Māori tohunga: "expert, priest" vs huna: "secret"

Random shuffle just brought up Ed Miller's "At Home with the Exiles" from _Border Background: Songs of Scotland, Old and New_ Seemed relevant on a few levels tonight

Rabbie Burns, Jason Bourne, Bourbon whiskey, Diet of Worms, Barrow River, Furrinalia Most or all of these from *bʰréh₁wr̥/*bʰr̥h₁wéns: "well, spring, source" #BurnsNight

Hard to think about anything else

It sure is amazing how many hours of debugging are involved in making a tiny change to a schema.

Literally in my active notes of problems right now it says 'merger of *pr̥h₂i and *upér as "ar"' 😆

Oh hey, it's "this language": Occitan From Latin "hoc": "this", which becomes the word for "yes" in some varieties of Romance. (compare someone replying "this" on a thread to agree with it.)

Friday Afternoon Teas has a clearance sale going of geeky tea blends! (actually, truly my RL first cousin—I guess that makes us the Friday Family?)

I hadn't thought about it before just now, but CHAMPION—which is a common interjection, like "brilliant!"—usually gets the CHA mouth morpheme in my experience. Raises the question of whether that is the origin of the CHA mm

Nearest book—page 42—second sentence "An older variation of this sign used in Indiana shows a closer etymological relationship to its French origin: the right claw hand is placed near the temple of the signer’s head, again, representing the crown of laurels"

Pterodactyls imply the existence of pterospondees.

Ooh, Latin "sēcula": "sickle" (mentioned as a synonym of "falx" in Varro) borrowed and re-worked in West Germanic as *sikulu (→sicol→sickle) Then! borrowed into Zulu (from either of the West Germanic languages in South Africa) as "(i)sikela", re-interpreted as a class 7 object noun with (i)si-

Yoïn inspired me to do another bout of work on this ridiculously big word family. But as usual, it's so big that before I even make any significant (<- hah!) progress, I've wandered off following connections in all kinds of directions, like towards "entomon", "gŵr", and "sequī"

MLK = King www.aidanem.com/word-family-... #MLKDay

It's the 25th birthday of Wikipedia! 23.5 years ago, I edited the page en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiia..., and my phrase (and link) "member of the Austronesian language family" survives to this day. How's that for brand consistency 😄

It's the 25th birthday of Wikipedia! 23.5 years ago, I edited the page en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiia..., and my phrase (and link) "member of the Austronesian language family" survives to this day. How's that for brand consistency 😄

My son finished (re) watching Ed Barnhart's "Ancient Civilizations of North America" on Great Courses and was looking for something new to watch. Found a series on Norse Mythology that looked interesting ... wait, I know that guy! That's @norsebysw.bsky.social!

I'm the guest in that episode! 😊 You can listen here: pod.link/1703401848/e...

Also Pangur Bán ("White Pangur") Adding an extra level to the scene in Secret of Kells where Pangur Ban becomes a phantom 😆

Nice little Zipf monster of the top 100 languages by word count in my database

Minneapolis

😮 Unexpected that "era" is from *h₂éyos: "copper/bronze", not from a hypothetical homophonous *h₂éyos, an action noun from the root of "age" and "eternal"! Or—in "aetas aënea": "bronze age", it's the "ae" of "aënea": "bronze", not the "ae" of "aetas": "age" that is the same as the "ae" of "aera"!

A word English used to have that I miss sometimes is "thedelock": "arch-traitor, betrayer of a nation, liar-in-chief"

It's the Twelfth Day of Christmas, aka Epiphany, aka Three Kings Day In the European tradition, the Three Kings are named "Melchior", "Caspar", and "Balthazar". "Melchior" is apparently Hebrew `מלכיאור` <melk-ī-ʾōr>: "King of Light". (continuing migrating post from the other place)

#HappyBirthdayTolkien According to Ryszard Derdziński, the surname "Tolkien" is probably Low Prussian meaning "son of Tolk", ultimately from Slavic *tъlkъ Slavic *tъlkъ from PIE *tlkʷ-: "talk". The form *tlokʷ- also survives in Latin "loquor", as in "loquacious", "eloquent", "locution", etc.