There are lots of "George Varghese"s out there today (Google has lots of hits). The latter is the patronymic, the former is the first name.
A lot of these traditional names are now old-fashioned and being replaced by their English equivalents. Today you'd find kids being named Thomas or George rather than Omman or Vargīs
Fun fact: there are a lot of Hebrew and Greek names (via Syriac) used by Malayāɭi Nasrāɳi Christians.
E.g., the name Gīvargīs (and its clipping Vargīs) is from Syriac Gēwargīs (e.g., Geṓrgios).
And the name of the former Chief Minister of Kerala is Omman Čāɳɖi, i.e., Thomas Alexander.
Eric Hamp broke JSTOR lmao
>No ginger in black tea
Instructions read and summarily dismissed
Just occurred to me that Καρχηδών is metathesized from *Καρθηγών. *karthāgōn > *karthēgōn > karkhēdōn. Seems kinda obvious now but I’ve never seen it mentioned anywhere.
Metathesising only the places of articulation but maintaining the phonation 🧐🧐
I teach classes on language evolution. Something interesting that I've noticed is that a lot of people seem to have a pretty strong idea that what makes language different from other species' communication, and a key part of what allows us to have language, is abstract concepts. 1/
We started an Austroasiatic Linguistics youtube channel! Most of the talks from the recent ICAAL conference are available to view, and I have some thoughts about it in a recent blog post: www.hiramring.com/blog/2026-02...
Something about self-referencing jokes like these makes me love them
Sands 2020
i have a Serious Linguistics Question that i will introduce with an anecdotal datum:
our toddler, when her auntie just now said (about a toy car on tv) "se parece al tuyo" [it looks like yours], responded "no it isn't."
personally (as a spanish learner and general language overthinker) ..
Not a character but close enough
I know of several for just so-called "brown" people lol
Bauer, A. & Gipper, S. & Herrmann, T.-A. & Hosemann, J.. 2026. Rethinking linguistic feedback: A modality-agnostic and holistic approach to multimodal addressee signals in spoken and signed dyadic interaction. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 11(1), 1–50.
DOI: doi.org/10.16995/glo...
new book! i wrote chapter 11
98% of the way through "Indo-European Language and Culture" and it continues to demonstrate why it's my first 5-star read of 2026 @thestorygraph.com #Reading #Booksky #linguistics
Some languages, like Sentinelese, ought best to remain unknown
My article in which I posit (based partly on Semitic transcriptions and partly on typology) a triad of unvoiced-but-long, preglott./creaky, and breathy for PIE. I argue an idea of "balance of length" for the three.
www.academia.edu/117830047/St...
Man, Dark Side of the Moon never ages. Amazing no matter how many times you listen to it
Executive dysfunction disorder is really the best term for it IMO. It was great learning of that term, everything boils down to that one thing.
But of course, these are used much broadly as well. E.g., Basava and Mahādēvi (Kannada Vīraśaiva saints) are often called Basavaṇṇa and Mahādēviyakka (or Akkamahādēvi).
Yeah, you're supposed to address your elder cousins with a suffixed aṇṇa (Tamil/Kannada) or anna (Telugu) 'elder brother', or akka (all three) 'elder sister'. Elder ones address younger ones with just the name.
The verb pɾeːmint͡su 'to love' in the first sentence is formed from the borrowed nominal pɾeːmam 'love' (< Skt prēma), plus the causativiser -int͡su.
Not a native telugu speaker but I think a more natural way is something like,
naː-ku nuʋːu t͡saːla iʃʈam
1SG-DAT 2SG very affection
or,
naː-ku nuʋːu t͡saːla natː͡s-æː-ʋu
1SG-DAT 2SG very be_liked-PST-2SG
(The "Past" in the 2nd is used in a stative perfect sense.)
GoogleTranslate will give you calquey translations for "I love you" into Telugu/Tamil/Kannada/Malayalam, like the one below in Telugu, but the more idiomatic way is to use a dative-subject attitude predicate.
neːnu nin-nu pɾeːm-is-t̪=unː-aːnu
1SG 2SG-ACC love.NOM-CAUS-NPST=COP.NFUT-1SG
'I love you.'
Yknow, when someone posits a really wild etymology that sounds unbelievable, it's worth keeping in mind that "lingcel" is a valid word in English and that etymologically, it is "linguistically celibate" or something.
I love how english keeps grammaticalising suffixes like -cel, tard, -oid, etc
Just saw on the other platform that Jonas Sibony has published his online dictionary of the Arabic Varieties of the Jews of Morocco
www.jonas-sibony.com/djm/
Huh, I thought "cousin brother/sister" was an Indian thing. I guess it's generally a thing when one's language/culture doesn't have a word for "cousin"? In Tamil/Telugu/Kannada/Hindi, it's just "son/daughter of mother/father's older/younger sibling".
