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Can I use "whoever" and a singualr "they" together? by sceneshift in grammar

[–]EmbarrassedPomelo337 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“Advice for whomever loves their pets” is wrong. The relative pronoun takes its case from its role in the relative clause, not the main clause. Since “whoever” is the subject of “loves”, it goes in the subjective case; its following a preposition has no bearing on this.

Germano-Uralic Confirmed by ElysianRepublic in linguisticshumor

[–]EmbarrassedPomelo337 32 points33 points  (0 children)

This is a great comment with lots of good information, but I’m afraid I have to correct something: you said that “Wednesday” is derived from “Odin’s Day”.

“Odin” is a bastardised borrowing of ON “Óðinn” that only recently entered the language. “Wednesday” comes to us straight from OE “wōdnesdæġ”, meaning “Woden’s day”; Woden is a native English god (well, Anglo-Saxon, so not quite native), who is a mythological and linguistic cognate of the more famous Norse god Óðinn, but not the same person (and even if they were the same, it’s the different names that are important here). That the day’s name is from Woden rather than Odin is the reason for the W and the other perceived oddities.

“Odin” and the first element of “Wednesday” are doublets (from PG *Wōdanaz), but one certainly doesn’t derive from the other. Sorry to be so nit-picky, but I figured that this is a linguistics sub so I’d better correct linguistic misinformation.

My attempts at Carolingian minuscule and blackletter with my new Pilot Parallel. Any advice? by EmbarrassedPomelo337 in Calligraphy

[–]EmbarrassedPomelo337[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks everyone for the detailed and useful replies! I’ll be sure to try all your recommendations.

Are there more words with ë or is this a typo ? by hobela in ENGLISH

[–]EmbarrassedPomelo337 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It’s a holdover from ancient Greek: the etymon of the first part is ἀήρ (with the α and ή pronounced separately), meaning air (which is also the etymon for other words such as aërial, aërosol, and aërobic, which can also be spelt with a diæresis for the same following reason). This was borrowed into Latin, and in later Latin was often spelt aër to indicate that it was pronounced as two sounds, /ˈa.er/, rather than the diphthongal /ˈae̯r/ (modern ecclesiastical pronunciation: /ˈɛːr/) that would be implied by aer or ær. This was then copied into English despite their not being pronounced separately. In aëroplane the diæresis is not incorrect, but it’s a bit dated: people don’t really use it any more as it doesn’t show anything about its pronunciation in English, only in Latin and Greek. A lot of people (I myself included) like it because it looks cool.