Paraneoptera
@Paraneoptera@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on Vesuvius 1 week ago:
“Anglicized” is probably not the best way to think about it. The Latin letter “v” was pronounced “w” through the classical period, but had shifted to β or v (fricative) by the third century, long before English existed. V was pronounced v (voiced labiodental fricative) for many centuries. And though we do tend to give the classical period a lot of prestige, it was just one phase for Latin.
- Comment on It's amazing so many people are able to use English as a second language. 5 weeks ago:
Perhaps the Giant London Flea Market will start a trend: queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk/…/giant-london-fl…
- Comment on It's amazing so many people are able to use English as a second language. 5 weeks ago:
A number of Slavic, Baltic, Norse, (and also Finnic languages like Finnish and Estonian) use some form of this word for market. It originated in Proto-slavic and passed through Old Norse into descendant languages.
- Comment on Why do Americans measure everything in cups? 2 months ago:
I think it goes back to Fannie Farmer in 1896, who wrote the first major and comprehensive cookbook in English that used any kind of standard measurements. European cookbooks mostly used vague instructions without any standardized weights or numbers before that. At this point in the industrialized world standardized cup measures were relatively cheap and available. Scales were relatively bulky, expensive, and inaccurate in 1896. So the whole tradition got started, and most of the major cookbooks owed something to Fannie Farmer. Cookbooks that used standardized weights probably got started in other countries much later, when scales were becoming commonplace.
- Comment on Handy temperature conversion scale. 3 months ago:
It’s debated. One source points to the lower end of the scale established as the freezing point of a brine made by dissolving ammonium chloride in water.