Unanswered Questions
151 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Is anything known about the origin of the hard "g" in "guénti" in Santiago, Cape Verdean Creole?
There is a word "guénti" /'gɛn ti/ in the Santiago dialect of Cape Verdean Creole, which is used to mean "people" or "you people/you all". It clearly comes from the ...
- 455
8
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220
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Historical pronunciation of Hindi यह and वह
The Hindi 3rd person singular proximal and distal pronouns यह and वह are commonly pronounced [jeː] and [ʋoː], in contrast to the [hyper-correct?] pronunciations [jəɦ(ə)] and [ʋəɦ(ə)] one might expect ...
- 3,132
7
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Why is the word "wherefore" not "whatfore" and the word "therefore" not "thatfore" and related anomalies
There is a pronominal adverb in many germanic languages that is a conjunction of the descendants of the proto-germanic words *hwar (where) + *furi (for/fore) which means something very similar to "for ...
- 1,391
7
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204
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Northumbrian pronunciation of ge-/gi- prefix and -g suffix
I'm working on a musical setting of Cædmon's Hymn, and I'd like to have the primary setting be in the Northumbrian dialect of its earliest written example (the 737 "Moore" Bede manuscript). I'm ...
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6
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595
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Comparative markers coming from low degree markers ("attenuatives")? (List such languages.)
Which languages have a marker of the comparative degree of adjectives that coincides with a marker of a low degree? ...or which has evolved from such a low degree marker?
(A message asking for the ...
6
votes
1
answer
127
views
Do Chinese's time words come from its writing systems?
Chinese was traditionally written top-to-bottom. The Chinese word for next (in phrases like next week, next time, next page, etc.) is 下 (xià) which also means under.
The Chinese word for previous/last ...
- 9,880
6
votes
1
answer
355
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Etymology of Persian city suffix +jand
City names in Iran and Central Asia, such as "Birjand" in Iran and "Khujand" in Tajikistan end with "jand" suffix.
The first idea that comes to my mind is that it might ...
- 106
5
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0
answers
152
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Etymology of initial "g-" in Sicilian "giurana" (frog)
Most Romance words for "frog" derive from Latin rana (e.g. es. rana, it. rana, pt. rã. See also va. renoc ("toad")).
However, an unexpected initial g- appears in the cognates of several Gallo-:
fr. ...
- 3,132
5
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0
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114
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History of Danish "nd" and "ld"
Danish orthography often has "nd" and "ld" instead of "nn" and "ll", often in cases where it is not etymologically justified. Does anybody know more about this, like when this kind of spelling started ...
5
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160
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Are L. arvix and L. aries cognates?
arvix
sacrificial ram
aries
From a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "jump, spring," cognate with Old High German irah (“ram”), Old Irish heirp (“kid”), Ancient Greek ἔριφος, Armienian ...
CommunityBot
- 1
5
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0
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448
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Cellar door and Indo-European languages
Where I grew up (UK) there was a pub called The Drysalters. I always liked this name without having any idea what a drysalter was, or having any association or emotional connection to the pub itself.
...
- 31.1k
5
votes
1
answer
2k
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What is the origin of the Latin suffix -alis/-alia?
What is the origin of the Latin suffix -alis/-alia? Can it be an Etruscan borrowing? Is Russian adjectival suffix -аль- a borrowing from Latin?
CommunityBot
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4
votes
0
answers
62
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What is the origin of the short future tense of imperfective verbs in Ukrainian (e.g. "читатиму" instead of "буду читати")?
The other Slavic languages I know of require a construction of "<future form of "be"> + verb" (which is also permitted in Ukrainian), so I suspect it is a new evolution and ...
- 31.1k
4
votes
0
answers
294
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Origin of Italian plurals
Some sources say that italian plurals come from the nominative case, so "italiano" has the plural "italiani", and "italiana" has the plural "italiane".
However ...
- 31.1k
4
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0
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253
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Why does "also" in German and in English denote different things?
There are some words in the German language that may seem to be familiar to a native English speaker, but in the end, it turns out that they are so-called "false friends" and have different meanings.
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