Well this is interesting

5 Likes
9 Likes

Diners, cafeterias, automatsā€¦and delis!

4 Likes
3 Likes
5 Likes
11 Likes
11 Likes

Itā€™s a messy mix of german, french, academic latin, spanish, arabic, celtic, greek, hindi, and a dozen other sources of loanwords and grammars. Itā€™s absolutely a creole.

9 Likes

Yep, thatā€™s the conclusion of the video.

8 Likes

ā€œThe problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse {lady of negotiable virtues}. We donā€™t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.ā€

ā€• James D. Nicoll (maybe, also attributed in various forms to many others)

16 Likes

FYI: The Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution will not be televised!

ā€¦nor will that of the Angiosperms, apparently.

And this sort of thing is the best of humans + tech. Using it to find out the past so we can figure out how we got to the present, and how all this can help us plan for, perhaps, a better future.

I donā€™t often, but at times I so wish Iā€™d been encouraged from the age of 5 or 6 to pursue my dream of being an archeologist or a paleontologist. ok, time to not think about it again for a decade or so.)

9 Likes

I often say if I had it to do over again, I would go into paleontology. But thatā€™s only in retrospect. I guess weā€™ll see if there is a second time around!

8 Likes

There are creoles and creoles.

Germanic in general had started using auxiliary verbs where other Indo-European languages used different endings. Thatā€™s why Germanic verbs donā€™t have future forms, and donā€™t usually have passive forms. Creoles also tend to use more auxiliary verbs.

English and Gullah-Geechee have kept most of the Germanic verb system.

Tok Pisin has made its own verb system.

9 Likes

Definitely James Davis Nichol. Heā€™s on Dreamwidth, and has posted about it, noting the exact date and location of the Usenet post, and apologizing because he originally spelled it ā€˜riffledā€™.

The general sentiment was not new even then, of course, and other ways of saying basically the same thing have been going around for a while. But heā€™s the guy who said that one.

8 Likes

It also sounds like something Sir Terry Pratchett might have written.

7 Likes

I have a t-shirt:

14 Likes

Yeah, itā€™s definitely from James Nicoll.

Heā€™s also the person who first proposed the Nicoll-Dyson beam, or using a Dyson swarmā€™s elements as emitters in a phased-array laser you can use to burn planets into cinders across interstellar distances!

5 Likes

Thatā€™s funny, the section I found it under was ā€œQuotes misattributed to Terry Pratchett!ā€

10 Likes
6 Likes

Itā€™s the tea.

towers

10 Likes