#like its an actual word with actual pronunciation

[gemsofgreece]

So I was looking up words for wine in various languages, noticed Ancient and Modern Greek have different names, looked up where the modern one came from, and immediately got flashbacks to your νερό/ύδωρ post haha. Has Greek done that with any other words or is it just the drinks? (Also the ancients sure loved their diluted wine, is that still practiced?)

[For context, Anon refers to the Aquatic etymologies post.]

And yeah, for some weird reason the etymological thing that happened with water also happened with wine! For those who don't know, in short Ancient and Modern Greek have different words for water and the explanation for this is that the ancients would say a certain phrase to mean "fresh water" and as time passed when Greeks would ask for water they would say "fresh" for short, instead of just saying...uhhh... you know, "water". So eventually the ancient word for "fresh" became the word meaning water and the actual water gradually fell out of use (except for its derivatives).

As if this was not funny enough once, it happened again with wine, like Anon points out. The ancient Greek word for wine is οἶνος, a very ancient word with direct PIE roots (From Proto-Hellenic *wóinos compare Mycenaean Greek wo-no, from Proto-Indo-European *wéyh₁ō; related to English wine, Latin vīnum etc). In modern pronunciation, it is ínos.

However by the Byzantine period the word for wine had changed from οίνος to κρασί (krasí). So what happened there? Was this a foreign loanword? Was it a Medieval Greek neologism? Well, nope! Krasi etymologically comes from the Ancient Greek noun κρᾶσις (krásis) which means mixture, referring to the beloved habit of Ancient Greeks to dilute their wine with water. In fact, the ancients themselves would often say "οἶνος κεκραμένος" (ínos kekraménos) which means "mixed wine".

So somehow it seems the Byzantine Greeks were saying "the mixture" referring to wine so much that it overshadowed the actual word for wine at some point and it became the standard word for wine! This makes me assume that in the Byzantine Empire they kept diluting their wine for the most part, perhaps because getting drunk must have not been viewed very positively in a medieval Christian society.

What's certain is that Greeks after the Fall of Constantinople and during their existence in the Ottoman Empire and then the modern state of Greece absolutely have NOT been diluting their wine. Which means that calling our modern wine "krasí" is technically wrong. The funny thing is that the pure non-diluted wine we drink today is also called άκρατος οίνος (ákratos ínos) which means precisely "non-mixed wine" and it is literally the exact opposite of its "synonym" κρασί (krasí)! So these two are simultaneously synonyms and antonyms... welcome to Greek.

I should say however that οίνος, the ancient word for wine, is not obsolete by any means. Οίνος is absolutely a very much existing, used word in modern Greek, it's just not as regularly used as κρασί. For example, in your everyday speech you will probably say krasí, but in written form or in a more formal context you will likely say ínos instead. I don´t know where you found the words but it just gave you the most common, standard everyday one. Comparatively, the ancient word for water ύδωρ is way, way less used than the word οίνος.

Also, a lot of wine derivatives used in modern Greek come from οίνος. Some examples:

οινεμπόριο (inembório) = wine trade οινοπαραγωγή (inoparaghoyí) = wine production οινοποιείο (inopiío) = winery οινοπωλείο (inopolío) = wine shop οινοποσία (inoposía) = wine drinking οιναποθήκη (inapothíki) = wine store room οινώδης (inóðis) = wine-like, relating to wine

Unlike in the water's case though, some derivatives in modern Greek also come from κρασί. Some examples:

κρασοπότηρο (krasopótiro) = wine glass κρασοκανάτα (krasokanáta) = jug for wine, more often used sarcastically for a drunkard κρασοκατάνυξη (krasokatányxi) = "wine devoutness", sarcastically the implied as excessive consumption of wine in a group κρασάτο (krasáto) = used for a dish with wine as an important ingredient

Did you notice that the derivatives coming from krasí seem less formal and often more caustic than the ones from inos? That's not random at all. It shows you right there which word has more formal and which has more informal connotations.

Back to your question about whether Greeks still dilute their wine, the reason Ancient Greeks did that is because they did not have good enough ways to prevent their wine from turning to vinegar so in order to preserve the wine they used very mature grapes that had more carbohydrates and gave a higher alcoholic degree to their wine. Their wine was stronger than ours nowadays. So they diluted it with water to not get easily drunk and then speak nonsense in the sympósia XD

As to whether there are other such cases of funny etymology in Greek, you know what, I am POSITIVE there is a lot but I can´t think of something on the top of my head. Well, one I have written about before is the case of the mouse. There were mice on the ships which the ancients called ποντικός μῦς (pontikós mys) meaning something like "of the sea / coastal mouse" and then again after time the first word overshadowed the second so now we call the mouse "pontikós", therefore we literally call the mouse "coastal" instead of, you know... mouse.

[majorshatterandhare]

Okay, accent/pronunciation post.

In Hereward the Wake, Tim pronounces “duty” with a /j/ (yod) which creates a pronunciation something like /ˈdjuː.ti/ in the IPA or “dyoo-tee” in English phonetic spelling. From what I can tell, this is one of two common pronunciations in English accents, the other being /ˈdʒuː.ti/ in the IPA or “djoo-tee” in English phonetic spelling. This second pronunciation features coalescence of the d and yod to create a dj sound. This can be contrasted by Rachel’s pronunciation of “duty” in Alice, which features yod dropping, and can be written as /ˈduː.ti/ in the IPA or “doo-tee” in English phonetic spelling. Although Tim is doing a very odd accent in Hereward, it doesn’t really matter in this case. In Riddle of the Sphinx he pronounces “introduced” with a coalescence of the d and yod (/ˌɪn. trə ˈdʒuːst/ or “in-truh-djoost”) and regardless of whether it is coalesced or not, as long as it’s not *dropped* it works for our purposes.

Okay, now we get into why this is funny to me. The yod-close back rounded vowel pair (/ju/ or “yoo”) comes to English from French. The French close front rounded vowel sound (/y/, I have no idea how I’d write this in English phonetic spelling, but make the inside of your mouth like you’re gonna say “ee” and your lips like your gonna say “oo” and that’s how you make it) came into English and was separated into /i/ and /u/ (or “ee” and “oo”) but then the /i/ was replaced with yod. This was not only applied to words that came from French, but also some pre-existing English words as well (and is now applied to foreign words once they’ve been in English long enough, like “Cuba”).

Now, when did the yod-close back rounded vowel pair enter English? Well, when was English heavily influenced by French? That’s right, when the Normans took over. And who fought the Normans? Hereward!

This lead me to the idea of an Anglish translation of Hereward the Wake. Has anyone done that yet?

[Note: information on the yod-close back rounded vowel pair came from this video by Dr. Geoff Lindsey; IPA representations were taken from the online Cambridge Dictionary and Wikictionary and adjusted where necessary (such as making “introduce” into “introduced”). Also I’m not actually positive that Tim doesn’t coalesce the d and yod in “duty”, it sounds kinda like both to me, but either way it comes from the French which is the important part for this post.]

[danandphilplay]

OK LOGICALLY GRAMMATICALLY LINGUISTICALLY its F. but my brain always reads it as P House and i need to know if it’s only me that does this i Know it’s the ph from phil but i can’t it’s just always P House to me

[bmpmp3]

for the past couple years ive been slowly. slowly learning beginners japanese and its very fun and im enjoying it a lot but also it has made me painfully aware in ways i wasnt before of how much my specific vaguely ontario accent makes me make out sloppy style with my vowels. i am going at those vowel's tonsils. i am doing things to diphthongs you wouldnt even believe.

[iwakuraz]

everytime I think even just a little bit that I'm starting to sort of get better at speaking aloud, somebody will say something horrible to me about my voice and ruin everything

[voidimp]

maybe now that i have adhd meds i can attempt Language again

[whilomm]

i need a fucking linguist to gve me a list of acceptable pronunciations of this literal nonsense word that was primarily type based rather than spoken based on accepted english rules bc my god there see to be quite a few

[moderatetoaboveaverage]

.

[synthbug]

I have a question about Singapore: when learning how to write, do they teach you the phonetic spelling, and then move on to Chinese characters, or do they start with Chinese characters? Or something else?

OOH THATS A VERY COOL QUESTION !! :3 if we are learning actual words, they must teach both at the same time!! Since chinese characters are not entirely phonetics based, you need to know both the pronunciation and written character to read it ! that's why for younger kids they print worksheets with the phonetics above the characters, but once you get older they just give you the characters and expect you to know how to pronounce them </3

However for like absolute beginners the first thing they usually teach is the tones using the vowel sounds so u can properly use and differentiate the tones later on, so if you wanna be technical it would be some sort of phonetics first, but after that any new words are usually taught with both at the same time :3

[cartoonrival]

dub obito sounds like neil degrasse tyson

[tibli]

Julien Miquel my beloved where would we be without your pronunciation videos

[majorshatterandhare]

Okay, so, speaking of Jessica Law: you ever think about the fact that she says the word “law” in both Trial by Song and Gunfight at the Dolorous Guard? Like I’m sure it’s nothing but I think about it every time I hear it.

I also think about her accent a lot. I *really* enjoy /g/ on the end of /ŋ/ words.

[rigelmejo]

Fun small bit of progress! I'm reading 撒野 using this free app called Smart Books because it has TTS and parallel sentence translation and click word translation if I want it (although Readibu, Pleco, Zhongwen chrome extension, and the built in mobile web browser and various Reader app click translation tools also work fine for any reader who'd like translations when needed).

And as expected, I know most words in this novel since it's roughly around my reading level. The sentence translation tool I've used a bit to help clarify when I'm not sure how to interpret the use of a particular word or some long sentence I couldn't clearly figure out.

Anyway the progress: I've been reading aloud to myself. What's surprising is I took a few months off of studying Chinese (although I'm sure I see at least a tiny bit of Chinese at least weekly but that's not a big dense amount of input it just may help me not forget what I've learned), and I'm still able to read to myself aloud. I knew I could get myself to recall word meanings of words I'd learned if I just read for a few hours. Word meanings come back even if they're "rusty" given enough time to get used to Chinese again. But being able to pronounce the words I'm seeing? I was surprised, because I've been doing more japanese the past few months and feared as I learned Kanji pronunciations and words that used similar characters to Chinese, I'd start accidentally seeing Chinese and only having Japanese Kanji pronunciations come to mind. But thankfully that hasn't happened!

I'm also happy I must've learned common words better than the last time I took a break from Chinese. Because last break I took, I did forget a fee hundred hanzi pronunciations (out of 2000). Now that I'm getting back into it, the 2500-3000ish hanzi I know, I'm recalling the pronunciations of easily (except for a few very specific ones I always confuse for a particular other pronunciation which I mess up even when I haven't taken a break).

So yeah! I'm very hype about it!

I'm a little worried this means my japanese reading To Recognizing pronunciation of Kanji is still very weak. But hey, I expected less strong remembering for that at least.

[shoehorseconstant]

omg girl i'm reading youtube comment discourse about the standardization of the french language and it is JUICY

(link to remember. genevieve and hugo both slay hard)

[caramelmochacrow]

schoool..... spanish man.

[crunchycrystals]

i got bored of the endless loop of opening up tumblr closing it and opening it again to find nothing bc my brain is starved for dopamine while i listen to music so i started doing some language studies and oh my god. i forgot how good this is