I've been trying to come up with good names for days of the week in my conlang, and as part of that I've been looking into etymologies of days of the week in natural languages. A lot of languages have very similar etymologies for days of the week that aren't too interesting, and normally calling every day just "nth day" would be a boring etymology, but Greenlandic makes up for it by using the exact same words for days of the week as hours of the day. It never would've occurred to me that "it's two" could mean either "it's two o'clock" or "it's two s'day".

I'm also very fond of the idea of using "become a person" to mean "be born". Forced-birthers in shambles!

Here's a table of the Greenlandic days of the week:

| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |

|

|

|

|

|

|

| | ataasinngorneq | marlunngorneq | pingasunngorneq | sisamanngorneq | tallimanngorneq | arfininngorneq | sapaat |

You can probably infer the etymology of sapaat.

Another word that uses -nngor featured under "quotations" on the screencapped Wiktionary page: arnaqatiminoortartunngorsimalluni ("and she became a lesbian") — {arnaq|woman}{-qatï|fellow}{-minut|to-her}{-Vr|go}{-tar|habitually}{-toq|-er}{-nngor|become}{-sima|PERFECT}{-llu|and}{-ni|herself}, more literally "and she became someone who habitually goes to fellow women"

As for "mikudagur" being Faroese for "Wednesday": the "miku" is cognate with English "midweek". So, regrettably, the Faroese didn't actually name a day of the week after

Sure, I don't have the best hearing nor the perfectest vocalization of even my own language either but

FUCKING HELL

(We have plenty of "sh" sounds in spanish, I'm not an italian trying the spanish j )

Not owned btw

I saw this image in a comment the other day, and wanted to take my own crack at it.

I came up with:

你好，我正在美国的百年国耻潜逃。哪儿能买一盒白魔爪無糖运动能量飲料？

I felt like 潜逃 was more appropriate for a fugitive of the Hitlerite kkkrakkker state, and it just seems sensible to ask where to find 一盒 so I don't have to make a bunch of trips.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7985434

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7985432

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7985431

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7979520

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7975174

I just hope to reach my goal; you are my only hope. https://chuffed.org/project/150674-support-umm-mohammeds-family-to-rebuild-their-future-and-to-survive-amidst-the-genocide https://chuffed.org/project/150674-support-umm-mohammeds-family-to-rebuild-their-future-and-to-survive-amidst-the-genocide

So I am learning Spanish at school. In the class I'm in, several people put "go to the movies" as "ir a las películas", which is the direct translation. Usually, I hear "ir al cine", which is what I put. The consensus when I asked on a different platform was that it's a dead giveaway you're not a native Spanish speaker and that it's a literal, direct translation.

However, is it common where there are areas with more English influence or Spanglish involved?

I am really really enjoying this book lol Terrible shame it's literally written for the US Department of War

The book is ALL THE ARABIC YOU NEVER LEARNED THE FIRST TIME AROUND

https://gulfarabicresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/All-The-Arabic-You-Never-Learned-The-First-Time-Around-by-James-Price.pdf

A properly OCR'd version is available on Annas Archive

Alt text didn't fit so here it is

How Should You Use This Book?

I know that students never read the preface to a book so I am including the material below in this section instead. Yes, I know that you know everything in the world about how to study Arabic and even more about how to work through a self-study guide. That is why your Arabic is weak and your I grammatical knowledge embarrasses you. So take a minute and read the following.

C. The Idaafa

The idaafa is an extremely important construction in Arabic. It is very easy, basic, and bold and uppercase ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for any student of the language who wants ever to be able to do anythmg at all in Arabic. I am upset about the number of students who have had several years of Arabic and do not know the difference between an idaafa and a noun-adjective phrase. In fact, many students do not seem to know the difference between an idaafa and a French horn. The noun-adjective phrase will be taught in the next chapter. The French horn will not.

Now look at the second idaafa. The first term is مدرس. It does not have nunation because the first term of an idaafa bold and uppercase NEVER has nunation. The second term of this idaafa المكتب is in the genitive case because the second term of every idaafa in the entire length and breadth of the history of this great language is always genitive.

But we have a difference between this second idaafa and the first idaafa. The second term of the second idaafa المكتب is definite. Because it is definite, it will not have nunation. But there is something even more important. Because the second term is definite, bold and uppercase THE ENTIRE IDAAFA IS DEFINITE. Thus, this idaafa means, literally, "the director of the office". This means that the first term of this idaafa is definite even though it does not itself have the definite article. Now hear this: bold uppercase and underlined THE FIRST TERM OF AN IDAAFA NEVER HAS THE DEFINITE ARTICLE. This means that the first term of an idaafa never has the definite article.

I know that this explanation may seem repetitive. But you must know these things. If you do not understand what an idaafa is, or do not understand the relationship of the words in an idaafa to each other, you will never understand Arabic above the level of a two year old, or of an American journalist.

Here are some examples of these things that you should be aware of

1.The director of this office is a moron. 2.The study of Arabic grammar is enjoyable. 3. Her office is a large office.

In both sentences, هذا has been changed to هذه. I hope I do not have to explain this. Now, in both sentences you see that the adjective is now feminine and that all else remains the same with respect to agreement between the noun and the adjective. The message should be sinking in about now. Just in case, here are the rules of agreement between nouns and adjectives.

Loading... https://archive.ph/wip/nMRZs

First 15 seconds of clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PZuFnGuDLY

Stop جing the camera!

Hi Everyone 👋

I’ve created an Italian-English language exchange XMPP room, and I am trying to get the community growing. If you’re a speaker of English or Italian and want to practice your skills in the other language, feel free to join 😎:

xmpp:italian-language-exchange@chat.disroot.org

I also created an experimental Mumble room that you can join here:

mumble://disroot.org/Italian%20%7C%20English%20Language%20Exchange

قط

دجاجة chicken

سمكة

الطاووس peacock

بجعة pelican

حرباء

More in the comments.

And this is something similar.

Article is from last year I realize but podcast looks interesting. Gonna check it out and maybe report back.

In Arabic, the word أسطوانة originally means cylinder (etymology), so how come it can also mean disc?!

So the reason the word أسطوانة 'cylinder' came to mean disc as well is because of the evolution of phonographs. A phonograph cylinder was called أسطوانة, and when the phonograph record came out people kept calling it أسطوانة as well.

Obviously Arabic has a word for disk, it's قُرص. And formal/standard Arabic is not so keen on the idea that أسطوانة should be used as 'disk', but the cat has been out of the bag for too many decades, and now a CD is "أسطوانة cd" and the disc in a disc cutter or angle grinder is also "أسطوانة".

But a hard disk is not, because the rotating disk is not visible and so no one called it أسطوانة. Instead in colloquial it's called هارد hard and in standard Arabic and some dialects it's called "قُرص صَلب".

Has anyone encountered a similar case before?

How to use:

Step 1: Install a script manager if you don't have one already. I use TamperMonkey, the most popular script manager on Firefox. I will be assuming you're using that script manager, too. You may want to give it permission to run in private windows.

Step 2: Click on TamperMonkey in your list of browser extensions, make sure it's enabled, then click "create a new script".

Step 3: Copy-paste the following script.

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Wikipedia Language Redirector
// @version      v3
// @match        https://en.wikipedia.org/*
// @description  Redirects wikipedia pages to alternate language pages in order of predefined preference
// @author       Enjoyer_of_Games
// @author       Edie
// @run-at       document-idle
// @license      AGPL 3+
// ==/UserScript==

const langBtn = document.querySelector('#p-lang-btn');

if (langBtn) {
    let LanguageList = ['nb', 'nn', 'da', 'sv', 'eo', 'tok', 'ru', 'ja', 'zh'];
    for (const langCode of LanguageList) {
        let linktarget = document.querySelector(`a.interlanguage-link-target[lang="${langCode}"]`);
        if(linktarget){
            let langLink = linktarget.href;
            if (langLink){
              console.log(window.location);
              console.log(`Navigating to language: ${langCode}`);
              window.location.href = langLink;
              break;
            }
            else {
               console.warn(`Could not find language link for "${langCode}"`);
            }
        }
    }
}
else {
    console.log('Could not find the #p-lang-btn element');
}

Step 4: Modify the script at the following points:

Point 1:

// @match        https://en.wikipedia.org/*

Replace the "en" in https://en.wikipedia.org/* with the Wikipedia language code of whatever your first language is.

Point 2:

    let LanguageList = ['nb', 'nn', 'da', 'sv', 'eo', 'tok', 'ru', 'ja', 'zh'];

Replace 'nb', 'nn', 'da', 'sv', 'eo', 'tok', 'ru', 'ja', 'zh' with the Wikipedia language codes of your target languages in order of priority, using the same syntax. Note that you need to use "nb" as the language code for Norwegian Bokmål, not "no". Edie says to use ISO 639 codes instead of Wikipedia language codes, because of the nb/no issue, but I'm not sure if this is accurate.

Step 5: Click "file" → "save", then under TamperMonkey's "installed userscripts" tab make sure that the Wikipedia Language Redirector script is enabled.

Step 6: Test it out and see if it works!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7441367

I knew for a long time that there was an independent website called Wikipesija serving as an unofficial Toki Pona Wikipedia, but yeah, apparently as of November 26, 2025, Wikipesija has shut down as an independent website and now redirects to a brand new official edition of Wikipedia at tok.wikipedia.org.

It's kinda surreal to see an actual, honest to God Toki Pona Wikipedia. I think it's great that this move can improve the prestige and awareness of the Toki Pona language; at the same time this move serves to centralize Toki Pona content onto a website that we all know is very politically biased and in the pockets of "AI".

Reminder as always that ibis.wiki exists. It's giving me a "bad gateway" as I'm typing this but I'm assuming it'll fix itself by the time you're reading this.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7329625

New Post: What happens when a majority group responds to systemic struggle with the word "too"? This post explores the idea of "derailing"—how universalising experiences can inadvertently silence the specific realities of immigrants in Germany.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7211534

Wrote this series first of all to vent about it, but also to preserve a trace of what was said and how it was answered. End of the #HamidStory series: from classroom → publisher ("Textbooks aren’t sociological analyses") → school ("We’ll forward this" / "do it yourself") → Outcome: responsibility dissolved.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7127371

New Post: After a discrimination complaint about a German coursebook hit a dead end with the school and publisher, I asked NGOs and academics for guidance — and got neither answers nor meaningful responses

#HamidsStory #GermanCourseBook #ImmigrationNarratives #Germany #Immigration