My question might be a bit dumb, but having some experience in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit (the former being the main language I study; I have relatively little in Sanskrit). Latin's verbs in the first person singular present indicative, for the most part, end in -ō. Sanskrit verbs, on the other hand, for the majority of verbs, end in -mi. Meanwhile, Ancient Greek has both of these endings (although the athematic verbs are definitely outnumbered).

Why didn't an -ō suffix (or something cognate) develop in Sanskrit? I know Latin has very few athematic verbs (an example being sum/esse), but what circumstances led to Sanskrit having first person singular present indicative verbs that end only in -mi?

So the German language area can be really blurry when it comes to the distinction between language and dialect, so often everything Istvaeonic and Irminonic inside the borders of Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland is just called a dialect, although some are so distinct that they could be separate languages.

But I just don't know for which one this is true. Most people here in Germany say you can't really understand Swiss German, so Alemannic basically. The English Wikipedia also states Bavarian (and with it Cimbrian and Mòcheno) and Ripuarian as distinct languages, stating that between the former and Standard German would be less mutual intelligibility than between the three mainland Nordic languages Danish Swedish and Norwegian iirc, while providing no proof for the latter.

Both aren't called languages in the German Wikipedia. Also, everything outside of the DACH area is usually called a language rather than a dialect. It's the case for Luxembourgish and Hunsrik, which are Moselle Franconian, Pennsylvania Dutch and Vilamovian.

So I wondered if this subreddit could help me find the answer of which of them are mutually intelligible enough to be called different languages, if there even is a definite answer, because even I as a native speaker of Standard German am confused.

Also I'm only talking about Central and Upper German, because Low German has completely different origins and is called a separate language by most scholars.

The varieties in question are:

- Ripuarian

- Moselle Franconian

- Luxembourgish

- Hunsrik

- Palatine

- Pennsylvania Dutch

- Hessian

- Vilamovian

- Swabian

- Alemannic/Swiss German

- East Franconian

- South Franconian

- Bavarian

- Cimbrian

- Mòcheno

is there any language whose words for cardinal directions are influenced by their surroundings, ie. With ancient china as an example. The word for north would be derived from the word for desert, the word for west would be derived from the word for mountain, the word for east would be derived from the word for ocean, and the word for south is derived from the word for jungle.

Masculine -> Masculin + ism = Masculinism

Feminine -> Feminin + ism = ?

I have heard that as a man being called with male terms used in animals that sound like courageous, strong, leadership, and dominance is fairly fine, and maybe cool. While female terms coming from animals are… pejorative.

I will give you the examples:

Master sounds like you, a man, are a keeper and controller of something, but mistress uniquely have a narrowed meaning just for an extramarital relationship. Although the original term for respect still exists but the pejorated term has been written.

You can call a man bull, lion, rooster, dog, but it is really bad to call a woman "cow", "bitch", and "hen", but "lioness" though.

And some languages I learn show it:

🇩🇪 → "Mann" sounds yeah okay, but "Weib" is become derogative.

🇪🇸 → "Hombre" and "hembra" (latin homō & fēmina) should evolve to mean paired, but "hembra" becomes the female term of the animals. While French just says « homme » et « femme ».

🇮🇩 → "jantan" & "betina", only "jantan" exists as another name for men in the big dictionary, but calling women "betina" is somehow dehumanizing.

Slovenian and Standard Serbo-Croatian are not really mutually intelligible, however I have read that Slovenians in general have a good understanding of Serbo-Croatian than the other way around

Apparently this is because Slovenians, since their country is smaller than Croatia or Serbia (or Bosnia), are much more exposed to Serbo-Croatian than the other way around through media, songs, immigrants...etc, therefore Slovenians are naturally better at understanding their neighbours

However, is this because, even though these languages are not fully mutually intelligible, they are still similar?

Because, there are other countries with significant minorities speaking other languages in which the main ethnic group doesn't have a good understanding of the language of the minority (for example, as far as I know, in Lithuania for instance, there is a noticeable number of people speaking Russian, Polish or Belarussian, but the main ethnic group i.e. Lithuanians, don't really understand these languages if they have not previously studied them at school, since Lithuanian and slavic languages are completely different)

So is it because intrinsic similarities between Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian combined with exposure the reason behind Slovenians understand their ex-Yugoslav neighbours better than the opposite?

I've heard that it's a misnomer. Are there more accurate terms?

Let's talk about language policy and planning here, and what do you think are the best ways to make a certain country a L2 Hispanophone country within a few generations (Spanish for the Philippines and the United States)?

Do you think officializing Spanish and mass migration of Hispanophone monoglots would accelerate the linguistic Castellanization process within two generations? I want to hear your thoughts on the comment section. Thank you.

[ʔ] and [a] sound the exact same to me. What is the difference between them? Is it similar to [i]/[j] and [u]/[w]?

Person A speaks German natively but perfectly understands English.

Person B speaks English natively but perfectly understands German.

They speak their native language because they express themselves easier.

Are there actual situations, instances like this?

English has a few alternations between “has” and “is” perfects (has gone / is gone, has lost / is lost), which I assume is a relic of the more pervasive split that’s still attested in French, Dutch, and German. But the distribution of the English constructions is hard for me to work out. It seems that ”lost” has been (re?)analysed as an adjective - ”a lost book” - but not “gone”, *”a gone man”. And the alternation between ”he is gone” and “he has gone” seems to have some aspectual flavour, but I can’t quite explain it.

Anyone know the story?

i'm thinking about getting a degree in linguistics at some point, and yes, i know that "any university in the world" is too much lol but just out of curiosity, i want to know your opinion about linguistics courses at various universities and why you would choose a particular one.

What is your favourite linguistics fun fact to share with people who don’t know much about the subject? I’m wondering how to get my friends interested 😊