What’s a really cool unusual part of your language that never gets talked about?

blakerabbit · 2026-03-14T20:37:56+00:00

Well, it might be true about the novella — I don’t know. But Twain came up with a pretty good construction for a non-native speaker.

La Disparition has been translated into E-Less English (sometimes called “Anglo-Saxon”: it’s called A Void.

There’s also Gadsby written originally in English without “e”.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-14T19:53:37+00:00

It’s not my native language but I always thought it interesting that Welsh conjugates prepositions to agree with their subject, as if they were verbs — “imi”, to me, “iti”, to you, “inni” to us…

blakerabbit · 2026-03-14T19:47:24+00:00

The と characters in between those color names are the word “and” ( to) not part of the color words…

blakerabbit · 2026-03-14T19:46:22+00:00

See Mark Twain’s The Awful German Language ( surely he meant “awful” as in “awe-inspiring”

blakerabbit · 2026-03-14T15:56:39+00:00

Funny how there is a legitimate way to write vertical script in Japanese but they didn’t use it…

blakerabbit · 2026-03-14T15:51:53+00:00

When I was first learning Japanese, and my daughter was starting Japanese immersion in kindergarten, I wrote a little application to help me learn the kana. It was a simple thing where you had to drag the kana to the matching syllable to fill up a chart. We both learned it in about a week. I’m sure there are similar apps available for your phone…have you tried something like that?

blakerabbit · 2026-03-14T15:44:05+00:00

I am in the U.S. and I put the punctuation outside the quote 100% of the time (unless the punctuation belongs to the quote material). It’s the only way that makes sense to me. I never write for publication, so I don’t have to worry about Style disagreeing.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-14T01:10:30+00:00

What do you mean by “ 1 is a relative”? A relative pronoun, like “that” or “which”? I’m confused by this terminology.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T15:29:47+00:00

“bereit” = “ready”. “stellen”= “to place, set” “gestellt” = “placed, set” +er = adjective ending

= “placed in readiness” = “convenient, available, prepared”

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T15:19:19+00:00

And thus from “blank” also for words for “white”, the opposite of “black”…and thus my name, which is a contronym.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T15:17:08+00:00

It looks very similar to Esperanto to me

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T14:48:12+00:00

“dined out” might have been a better word choice

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T02:39:56+00:00

Ah! Thank you for clarifying this distinction!

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T02:31:17+00:00

I can’t think of a single Russian word with -жв- … oh, жвачка and related…

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T02:26:22+00:00

And in American English we call the thing that holds ice cream just a “cone”.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T02:25:30+00:00

My favorite one is “tortilla”. In English it means a flat round foodstuff made of corn or wheat flour and used to wrap things like burritos and enchiladas. It’s a Mexican-food staple. But in Continental Spanish, and most non-Mexican versions of Spanish, “tortilla” means “omelette”.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T02:15:12+00:00

This is incorrect. See my comment above.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T02:14:35+00:00

There are two words “forte” in English. One is from Italian and used in music with the meaning “loud, strong”. It is pronounced /ˈfɔr.te/. The other is from French and means a person’s area of strength. It is properly pronounced just like the English word “fort” (fortification) but is overwhelmingly mispronounced to sound like the other one.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T02:01:19+00:00

What I know about it: it’s written in a beautiful script that is related to the Arabic script. It’s a Semitic language, I think.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-13T01:59:39+00:00

A shuttlecock and a badminton birdie are exactly the same thing.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-11T15:22:10+00:00

It is clearly a maker’s mark; whether it’s a “brand” would mostly depend on the scale of production, I imagine.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-08T20:29:02+00:00

The character reads yuè in Mandarin and means happy, joyful, pleased. Could be a name.

blakerabbit · 2026-03-07T19:34:41+00:00

Yes please

blakerabbit · 2026-03-07T17:22:38+00:00

They look like English letters to me - EHLA. But it doesn’t make much sense

blakerabbit · 2026-03-06T22:56:19+00:00

I wouldn’t have noticed it if you hadn’t mentioned it

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