gloomiedyke

[gloomiedyke]

One of my favorite linguistic phenomena is rebracketing, which is when a word or words is/are redivided differently, either two words becoming one, one word heard as two, or part of one word interpreted as part of the other.  This frequently happens with articles, for example:

apron was originally napron, but “a napron” was interpreted as “an apron”

newt comes from ewt by the same process

In the opposite direction, nickname comes from Middle English nekename which in turn came from ekename (an ekename -> a nekename) where “eke” was an old word meaning “also” or “additional” (so basically “an additional name”)

ammunition comes from an obsolete dialectal French amunition, which came from munition, the phrase la munition being heard as l’amunition.

the nickname Ned comes from Ed, via “mine Ed” being heard as “my Ned” (in archaic English, “my” and “mine” had the same relationship as “a” and “an”), same with several other nicknames like Nell

The word “orange” ulimately derives from the Arabic nāranj, via French “orange”, the n being lost via a similar process involving the indefinite article, e.g., something like French “une norange” becoming “une orange” (it’s unclear which specific Romance language it first happened in)

in the Southern US at least (not sure about elsewhere), “another” is often analyzed as “a nother”, hence the phrase “a whole nother”

omelet has a whole series of interesting changes; it comes from French omelette, earlier alemette (swapping around the /l/ and /m/), from alemelle from an earlier lemelle (la lemelle -> l’alemelle)

Related to this, sometimes two words, especially when borrowed into another language, will be taken as one.  Numerous words were borrowed from Arabic with the definite article al- attached to them.  Spanish el lagarto became English alligator.  An interesting twist is admiral, earlier amiral (the d probably got in there from the influence of words like “administer”) from Arabic amir al- (lord of the ___), particularly the phrase amir al-bahr, literally “lord of the sea”.

Sometimes the opposite happens.  A foreign word will look like two words, or like a word with an affix.  For example, the Arabic kitaab (book) was borrowed into Swahili as kitabu.  ki- happens to be the singular form of one of the Swahili genders, and so it was interpreted as ki-tabu.  To form the plural of that gender, you replace ki- with vi-, thus, “books” in Swahili is vitabu.  The Greek name Alexander became, in Arabic, Iskander, with the initial al- heard as the article al-.

Similarly, the English word Cherry came from Old Norman French cherise, with the s on the end interpreted as the plural -s.  Interestingly enough, that word came from Vulgar Latin ceresia, a feminine singular noun, but originally the plural of the neuter noun ceresium!  So a Latin plural was reinterpreted as a singular in Vulgar Latin, which in turn was interpreted as a plural when borrowed into English!

The English suffix -burger used with various foods (e.g., cheeseburger, or more informally chickenburger, etc.) was misanlyzed from Hamburger as Ham-burger, itself from the city of Hamburg

This can happen even with native words.  Modern French once is used for the snow leopard, but originally meant “lynx”.  In Old French, it was lonce (ultimately from the same source as lynx), which was reinterpreted as l’once!  In English, the word “pea” was originally “pease”, but that looked like it had the plural -s on it, and so the word “pea” was created from it.  Likewise, the adjective lone came from alone, heard as “a lone”, but alone itself came originally from all one.

[gloomiedyke]

[gloomiedyke]

Okay, this is SUPER interesting actually!

So, my family is goyim white, but we're also working class and more white trash then white bread (meant affectionately, we're all intelligent and successful people, just ones with broke childhoods and rougher backgrounds)

And we communicate as a family with a lot of overlap, close-latching, running commentary/finishing sentences together/backchannel, getting louder the more into it we are (be that via anger, excitement, amusement, whatever)

And this has actually caused problems for me as someone surrounded mostly by suburban white folk! The people around my family don't talk like that! Especially when they're from higher class brackets, even if only marginally!

It can be really frustrating and get us labelled as "uncouth" or "annoying" or "wild", and when I'm meeting new people I always feel like I have to way over correct and get really overly quiet/polite/etc. But then the person I'm talking to doesn't actually get to know me, they essentially just know my customer service persona, so then I don't actually end up making new friends

I didn't know these things had linguistic terms and that I could have found people who communicated with me better if I'd just had access to more cultures growing up 😭 I thought we were just white trash

I have thoughts about the whole feminist anti-interrupting thing. Like I agree, men do talk over people and it is disrespectful, but I also think there are cultures, specifically Jews, where talking over each other is actually a sign of being engaged in the conversation. It’s something I really struggle with in the south, because up in New York, even non-Jews participated in this cooperative conversation style, but down here, whenever I do it by accident, the whole convo stops and it gets called out and it’s a whole thing. Idk idk I feel like there’s different types of interruptive like there’s constructive interrupting where you add on to whatever is being said - helpful interrupting, and then there’s like interrupting where you just start saying something unrelated because you were done listening. I have ADHD so I’ve def done the latter too by accident, but I’m talking about being more accepting of the former.

[gloomiedyke]

I have thoughts about the whole feminist anti-interrupting thing. Like I agree, men do talk over people and it is disrespectful, but I also think there are cultures, specifically Jews, where talking over each other is actually a sign of being engaged in the conversation. It’s something I really struggle with in the south, because up in New York, even non-Jews participated in this cooperative conversation style, but down here, whenever I do it by accident, the whole convo stops and it gets called out and it’s a whole thing. Idk idk I feel like there’s different types of interruptive like there’s constructive interrupting where you add on to whatever is being said - helpful interrupting, and then there’s like interrupting where you just start saying something unrelated because you were done listening. I have ADHD so I’ve def done the latter too by accident, but I’m talking about being more accepting of the former.

#linguistics

[gloomiedyke]

do you ever hear people talking about something and you’re like. fuck. let me be real for a second. i’m too much of a commie to have this conversation

[gloomiedyke]

I love this so much, I’m gonna start saying “nuts” we need to bring it back

[gloomiedyke]

Dead Boy Detectives | 1x06. The Case of the Creeping Forest

#dead boy detectives

[gloomiedyke]

I have been listening to the Hobbit audiobook while working. Bad idea. I didn't work, I drew Bilbo and his fancy home ♥

#lotr

[gloomiedyke]

#gaypanic

#dead boy detectives

[gloomiedyke]

DEAD BOY DETECTIVES | 1.08

#dead boy detectives

[gloomiedyke]

#old married couple

#dead boy detectives

[gloomiedyke]

BRIANA CUOCO as JENNY GREEN in DEAD BOY DETECTIVES (2024-)

#dead boy detectives #jenny the butcher #jenny green

[gloomiedyke]

re: shuro dungeon meshi

[gloomiedyke]

learning that apparently several hundred people have been pronouncing 'miette' as 'mighty' has actively worsened my day

[gloomiedyke]

public libraries are so sick. there are five books I want to read and they're all relatively new so they're only available in hardback which is so expensive but it just cost me $0 to place holds on them. five books for zero dollars. it requires nothing but clicking a button and then going to the library to pick them up when they're ready. zero dollars. that's crazy

[gloomiedyke]

[gloomiedyke]

Carmy + the fridge guy

#the bear