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wonn-sann.bsky.social
Former linguist and language nerd | 元言語学者で言語オタク
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The Book of Han says of the ruler of the Xiongnu: "His nation called him '撐犁孤塗單于'. The Xiongnu word for 'heaven' was '撐犁' and for 'son', '孤塗'." Reconstructed Old Chinese pronunciation for 撐犁 is <*tʰaːŋ rˤij>, clearly the same as "Tengri".

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

"One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own, and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism." Freya Stark

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

New paper (should be #OpenAccess, something went wrong)! I argue that the plural features of the #Hebrew word for 'god' are inherited from an older stage of #Semitic. Archaic Biblical Hebrew still reflects a paradigm in between Standard Biblical Hebrew and the reconstructed Semitic one. 🐦🐦

submitted 10 days ago • 5 comments

It turns out that @typst.app is absolute perfection for writing dictionaries - you can keep your dictionary data in a yaml file or whatever, and just import and manipulate the data directly in your typst file. None of the faffing around with concatenating LaTeX commands in Python I used to do

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

One of the things that was awesome about Moana was the how it told a secret history of the Polynesian Long Pause. And also the Samoan song writing of Opetaia Foaʻi (esp. the bilingual pun Aue/Away in "We Know the Way") I'm going to see what Moana 2 has for a historical linguist! Live watch 🧵

submitted 17 days ago • 2 comments

薫る花は凛と咲く、、、めっちゃ良過ぎ、、、、

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

Wow, this is a fair sight better than when I last paid attention to Eurovision in like 2013 - IIRC all of four songs weren't in English

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

submitted 25 days ago • 7 comments

Finding myself really annoyed with text as a conversation medium - it works great for quick exchanges of information, but when you're in an active conversation, it's too slow to hold your attention and too fast to do anything else at the same time. It just leaves you distracted and inattentive

submitted 28 days ago • 1 comment

The last Leo, Leo XIII, was born in 1810. In 1896 he was persuaded to allow a film camera into the Vatican. He is the oldest (or, the earliest born) human being ever caught on film.

submitted 31 days ago • 94 comments

Here's a most excellent article by @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social about this week's 80th Anniversary of VE Day, its importance and its significance. And soon, the last people to have taken part in that great liberation and ultimate victory will be lost to us. drfrancisyoung.substack.com/p/ultimate-v...

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

I don't 'refuse to use' AI, I just don't use AI; in the same way that I don't shoplift, or plagiarise other people's books - it requires no effort of will, it's just not something I would think of doing

submitted 34 days ago • 155 comments

The Epic of Gilgamesh (Gen Z edition)

submitted 34 days ago • 3 comments

prevent all communications

submitted 43 days ago • 3 comments

I love the register incongruity that this has in modern English

submitted 51 days ago • 1 comment

I am really curious how this bot automatically delimits constituents so well

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

For Titanic Day, please read this post about the RMS Carpathia www.tumblr.com/wonn-sann/78...

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

Today is Holy Monday, traditionally the day that Jesus went and drove the moneychangers and merchants from the courtyard of the Temple in Jerusalem. Go celebrate at your local megachurch or something and be Christlike.

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

I wrote this yesterday because I watched a video "You're Being Lied To About Ocean Plastic". I feel that scientific communication (myself included) is frequently framed as polarized, but this inadvertently decreases public trust in experts.

submitted 63 days ago • 1 comment

I know that historians largely don’t think that Caligula actually made his horse consul and that that idea is slander on behalf of his senatorial detractors but you have to admit that something about that reeks of hippocracy.

submitted 64 days ago • 1 comment