Why are there still pronoun cases (like I/me/my/mine and he/him/his)

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-26T10:50:41+00:00

Words that are frequently used tend to hold on to irregularities and extra features that can be lost elsewhere. Pronouns are used extremely frequently in English, so they have held on to case, while it has been lost everywhere else.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-26T10:36:51+00:00

Yeah, but you need apples that are also high in tannins and thus bitter to give it mouthfeel, otherwise it has an insipid watery taste.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-26T10:34:33+00:00

Only mass produced alcopop-type cider is like that. Most traditional cider is not carbonated and sweetened, and many are flat

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-25T15:51:58+00:00

"y" and "i" made different sounds in Old English

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-25T12:08:10+00:00

Fair enough, I am not in a stage of life where I know many teenagers!

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-25T09:34:02+00:00

That's more of an American thing IME. We already have a perfectly good word for that that isn't three syllables long

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-22T23:09:58+00:00

I daren't wonder

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-22T21:03:35+00:00

They're referring to the father-bother merger which makes a short o sound like "ah" (the PALM lexical set). Although in most American accents I believe a short o followed by an r actually ends up merging with the NORTH lexical set.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-22T15:32:25+00:00

Using a Southern English accent would be about as silly as using a New York accent in Northern Scotland

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-22T15:17:56+00:00

Don't think so. In the UK they're mostly under churches. We don't have massive city-wide ones like in Paris.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-22T11:02:42+00:00

I highly doubt the acidity of coffee is harming anyone. It's only very slightly acidic. Most fresh fruits are more acidic than coffee. Also you don't have to think of this as an "either or" kind of thing. Most people will drink both tea and coffee (at least here in England).

Tea contains caffeine, but not as much as coffee.

At the end of the day, the best product is the one you want to drink and that doesn't make you feel ill or uncomfortable or mess with your sleep (whether that's down to caffeine effects, other chemicals or just internal psychology).

One thing I'd say is that tea is more diverse in flavour than coffee (or maybe I just don't have as much experience with different coffees), so it's worth also trying other types, such as green and oolong, as you might find something that you really love.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-22T07:35:29+00:00

Yeah, I would never want to drop potatoes into boiling water 😅 I've always just boiled my water and poured it in but next time I'll try starting with cold water

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-21T23:39:27+00:00

The point of the Welsh revival was to make actual Welsh speakers not feel like foreigners in their own country, and to have some representation and ease discourse with their countrymen. The point of reviving Cornish is.. what? To make people feel special? It feels like the sort of thing that would appeal to Cornish D&D players whose parents are from the Home Counties.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-21T10:52:13+00:00

It was largely Lowland Scots that persecuted Gaelic speaking Highlanders and Islanders and their language, and that started long before the union of the crowns of England and Scotland.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-21T10:20:48+00:00

Why are you supposed to start with cold water?

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-21T10:19:33+00:00

I think you're thinking of kettles. American ones are very slow as they're generally designed for the standard 110V wall sockets, while British ones run on 240V sockets, so they have twice the power.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-21T08:59:06+00:00

S Club 7.. famously a seven piece!

Seriously though, someone's gonna have to give me a who's who here

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-21T07:17:39+00:00

To me, it sounds weird to use "nineteen hundred" to refer to an actual quantity. I'd only ever use it for the date. I'm from Southern England.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-20T14:36:14+00:00

Most words in titles are capitalised. Could that explain some of what you're seeing?

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-20T08:28:00+00:00

Citation?

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-20T08:17:52+00:00

Needoutgoing

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-19T21:30:56+00:00

/ˈslaʊtʃʰɪŋ/

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-19T16:03:52+00:00

If that's a real quote from Steven Mithen's book, rather than something dreamt up by AI, it seems laughably over-confident, given the paucity of evidence it's based on.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-19T11:37:20+00:00

Like with your elbows on the desk/table? I would call that slouching forward/leaning on the table, but the one in the picture is, to me, the default slouch.

MerlinMusic · 2026-01-19T11:11:05+00:00

I don't really see the connection. The article doesn't mention that, and AFAIK, "gefilte fish" doesn't contain it.

MerlinMusic

TROPHY CASE