Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 1d

huh😮

The current form with t- /t/ rather than etymologically-expected th- /θ/ arose in Middle English under the influence of the etymologically-unrelated verbs tighten and tight, which come from a different Proto-Indo-European root (starting with *d- and thus regularly having t-).

Etymology

Synchronically equivalent to tight +‎ -en, but actually derived from Middle English tighten, from Old English tyhtan, thus originally unrelated to tight (Old English *þiht).

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *tuhtijan (“to tow, pull, discipline”), from Proto-Germanic *tuhtiz (“pulling, discipline”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dewk- (“to lead, draw”), equivalent to tyht +‎ -an. Cognate with Old High German zuhten (“to raise, bring up”).

Pronunciation

IPA: /ˈtyx.tɑn/, [ˈtyç.tɑn]

Verb

tyhtan
1. to draw, stretch, pull
2. (transitive) to invite, incite, instigate, provoke; to talk over, discuss, persuade, solicit, urge; to attract, lead astray, seduce
2.1. taking accusative object followed by preposition on or tō and its object, towards something
2.2. preceding a dependent clause, the condition being urged
3. to suggest, bring to mind; to teach, train
4. to accuse

1 7

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 9d

Sounds like you’re thinking of the one by Lermontov, not Pushkin

1 1

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 16d

Didn’t realize that Italian also used the word “Hebrews” for modern Jews, like Russian (though unlike in Russian, this doesn’t seem to be explained by their cognate of “Jew” having been turned into a slur)

2

Reposted by Vadim

C.A. Petrified 🎃 @capetrov.bsky.social · 18d

Along with everything else that's wrong here, I'm SUPER upset this is going to be a lot of people's first exposure to Bukharian jomahs. Which are actually pretty fab when they're worn where it's appropriate, and have a cool, but possibly apocryphal, origin.

Lux "Nightmare" Alptraum @luxalptraum.com · 18d

You guys do yourself a favor and look at what Eric Adams wore to Rosh Hashanah services at the Sephardic Lebanese Congregation

Eric Adams surrounded by members of the Sephardic Lebanese Congregation. He is wearing a blue velvet jacket that is embroidered with gold Magen David’s and other Jewish seeming patterns, including multiple menorahs. Everyone else is just in button down shirts or normal suits. He is not blending in.

11 110 410

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 20d

Marked the Kyrgyz “zoo” as Mongolia, but the best I could find is attestations of the root in other Turkic, Mongolic and Iranian languages. Also apparently the root *beŋgü (“eternal”) is speculated to have Sinitic or Mongolic origins.

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 20d

Spent this Sunday compiling weird data: Turkic states’ national anthems’s lyrics sorted by language of origin. No big surprises other than the contrast between the 2 verses of the Turkish one

The availability of etymological data on the web decreases from west to east so there might be inaccuracies

1 1

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 25d

Back when I was trying to learn Hmong a couple of years ago, my appreciation for RPA increased considerably when I took a look at Pahawh Hmong, ïchwħ őuldŵ êelғ õreм ǐkeļ īsťh en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahawh_...

Pahawh Hmong - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

1

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 25d

Also reminded of this story from Gagarin’s landing

Excerpt from an article about Yuri Gagarin’s landing: “Anikhayat (Anna) Takhtarova, wife of a local forest ranger, and her five-year-old grandaughter Rumiya (Rita) Nurskanova, who were planting potatoes near by at a collective farm field of the Podgornoye village, some 35 kilometers from Saratov, were initially scared when they saw a man wearing a bright-orange suit and a helmet walking toward them across the field.”

Tweet translated from Russian:
“— what is your name? Asks Gagarin.
“Rumia,” the girl replies.
What is Rumia? Rita! Grandma interrupts. - For school, the name Rita was given to you.
From that moment on, Rumia will forever remain Rita. She believes that Gagarin dubbed her that way.”

1

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 25d

For many people in Russia it’s sort of become the opposite, in that their legal name more or less reflects their heritage, in the spirit of early Soviet pro-diversity policies, but the name they go by among their friends and coworkers is a Russianized one that’s “easier to pronounce”.

1 1

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 26d

Yeah, not arguing that it was a good thing, just that it was an actual innovation of his that ended up being replicated by others later (whether directly inspired by his example or simply submitting to the fait accompli of it no longer being “practical” to raise children with other languages).

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · 26d

Weren’t he and his wife also the first ones to raise a child as a monolingual native speaker? Or had that also been tried before him?

1

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Sep 12

Baden-Württemberg’s “wir können alles außer Hochdeutsch” campaign has always rubbed me the wrong way because of this. “Not quite as high as the Swiss, maybe, but come on…”

5

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Sep 11

“Banderite” in this framing just means “any Ukrainian political faction that isn’t sufficiently pro-Russian”

4

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Sep 1

Feel like this is at least the second time I’ve been surprised to see that he’s still alive and wondered how my brain Mandela effect’d his death only to realize I just confused him for his younger son.

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Sep 1

The only reason I have any idea is because I happen to be following an ex-corpo vtuber and an ex-idol from there, neither of whom is tied by the corpo “no politics” rules anymore.

1

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Aug 25

For Europeans it could be the influence of the equivalent in their first language, especially in French and languages that got the word by way of French (idée, Idee, idé, etc.)

5

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Aug 25

*translator’s note: “druzhba” means “friendship”

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Aug 23

a woman is wearing a scarf and a jacket and says two weeks .

ALT: a woman is wearing a scarf and a jacket and says two weeks .

media.tenor.com

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Aug 20

Took me a minute to realize that “Bilat” wasn’t some idiosyncratic respelling of either блат or блять

1

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Aug 20

Likely unrelated, but I’ve heard from my Korean relatives that Krasnodar Krai had a small Korean community in the Soviet days because Koreans who came there as seasonal laborers ended up de facto running some kolkhozes. they tried to make it official in the 90s but got locked out by the authorities.

1

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Aug 15

Including the World Youth Festival (with the wrong year) is curious. While it certainly did introduce lots of people in the USSR to US pop culture for the first time, I legit wonder if there was any significant number of actual US citizens who participated in it.

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Aug 14

Can’t speak for UZ, but I feel like more Koreans from KZ have moved to Russia or the West than to Korea (and even then not that many, their total number has actually increased since the 90s). ROK isn’t exactly accommodating to immigrants who don’t speak the language, which most Koreans in KZ don’t.

1 2

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Aug 9

lowkey wonder if Putin is a “Catherine misspelled” guy or a “ship with the gold sank” guy when it comes to Russian Alaska conspiracy theories…

1

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Jul 28

Did always strike me as weird how Japanese dialectology treated Kyoto as the epicenter of innovation in everything but accent. Just stumbled upon both a theory of how it’s not an exception after all and some explanations of why said theory isn’t more widely accepted www.academia.edu/43529998/The...

The Ramsey hypothesis

Chapter for the Handbook of Historical Japanese Linguistics Research into the history of the Japanese tone system has reached an impasse because it is hard to make the standard reconstruction of the M...

www.academia.edu

2

Vadim @vonpeterhof.bsky.social · Jul 27

I take it “Caucasian plains” is their way of saying “Khazar” without actually saying “Khazar”..

5