2 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2025
    1. But they didn’t impose their language. Instead, they married local women and switched to English. However, they were adults and, as a rule, adults don’t pick up new languages easily, especially not in oral societies

      I find it interesting that the Germanic speakers didn't try to force a language upon new people but the act of marriage actually brought them together. They wanted to switch to English, and I wonder what would've happened if they decided not to marry local women.

    2. There is exactly one language on Earth whose present tense requires a special ending only in the third‑person singular. I’m writing in it

      It's interesting to me that there is only one language on Earth with that special ending in third person. I feel like I've studied languages in the past and never realized It makes me wonder how that could even happen, especially with so many languages?