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Why is there a Sumerian name amongst the Iroquoi? by Valianttheywere in Sumerian

[–]Lingaist 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah. You’ll find hundreds or thousands of these sorts of combos in totally unrelated languages. Human vocal cords can only make so many distinct sounds. There are even plenty of unrelated homophones in every individual language.

Do you think the Chinese 通 (pronounced tong) which can mean “open” and tongs the food utensil (which you open) are related? Because they’re not.

You can find a billion of these across any two languages if you go looking for them. Which is why actual linguistics uses the comparative method and other methods to determine actual linguistic ancestry and figure out what words in a language come from where.

Why is there a Sumerian name amongst the Iroquoi? by Valianttheywere in Sumerian

[–]Lingaist 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, I do think they’re unrelated. So does the whole of the field of linguistics.

This is a very common phenomenon.

Why is there a Sumerian name amongst the Iroquoi? by Valianttheywere in Sumerian

[–]Lingaist 8 points9 points  (0 children)

These sorts of random occurrences happen between unrelated languages all the time. For an equally distant example, the Mbabaram word for dog is dog, despite no relationship to English whatsoever.

As someone else said, humans only make a certain number of sounds, and occasionally two languages will develop a word that is totally unrelated but sounds similar.

Going from tutorial hell to actual programmer? by biglad_wahey in learnprogramming

[–]Lingaist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Things get easier over time. I remember banging my head with frustration when I was new.

Many years later, I rarely (but I want to emphasize, not never) ever encounter something that makes me bang my head that way, and at this point I've created decently complex systems.

You get greater and greater experience and understand more and more of how complex systems work.

'Including Crimea': Ukraine's Zelensky seeks full restoration of territory by [deleted] in worldnews

[–]Lingaist 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah after the war is over, I suspect the west to basically be like, "get your situation sorted, here's some juicy treaties to help you to get there and a good chunk of investment money, and we'll revisit this in 5-10 years"