• 0 Posts
  • 16 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
cake
Cake day: June 11th, 2025

help-circle
  • Interestingly, Latin ursus and Greek arktos are cognates. Both come from the Proto-Indo-European word for “bear”, h₂ŕ̥tḱos.

    This word is interesting in that it contains an example of what’s called (for various reasons) a “thorn cluster”. Certain words in PIE containing the cluster “tk”, for whatever reason, underwent metathesis (switching places) in most of the IE daughter languages. This is why the PIE word has a “tk”, but the Greek word has a “kt”.

    This is one of the many reasons for thinking that the Anatolian branch of Indo-European (Hittite, Luvian, etc.) branched off from PIE first - the Hittite word for “bear”, ḫar-tág-ga-aš, still shows the PIE order of “t” and “k” (the Hittite double-g was probably something similar to a “k” in this environment, and what appears to be an intervening “a” is a shortcoming of Hittite’s cuneiform writing system), meaning that this family of languages branched off before the rest of the family underwent this shared change of “tk” to “kt”.

    Another fun fact about the “bear” word is that all of Germanic has completely lost it. Instead, in prehistoric times they innovated a formation meaning “the brown one”, which is still reflected in Modern English bear.

    This is thought to have been due to taboo avoidance. When you’re hunting the bear (or maybe when the bear is hunting you), you don’t want to actually say the true name of the animal, because that would either scare it away or bring it to you, whichever is worse under the circumstances. So, you instead call it “the brown one” so as not to draw its attention, and so, over time, the true word for “bear” in Germanic was completely lost.

    A similar process may have happened with the source of one of the primary Slavic words for “bear”, medved <*medu-ed “honey-eater” (the first part cognate with English “mead”, and the second with “eat”).





  • hakase@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzIt's just loss.
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    16 days ago

    Blindly promoting the false dichotomy just like I mentioned, ignoring all of the research on the ways that technology and legislation can reduce the vast majority of the effects mentioned in the data you cite, while also clearly revealing your religious, dogmatic reasons for ignoring all of that research in the first sentence of your non sequitur screed.

    Just like my crazy aunt in her anti-abortion Facebook rants. But do you have the self-awareness to realize that?

    Nope.


  • hakase@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzIt's just loss.
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    17 days ago

    Exactly. Vegans promote a false dichotomy due to their religious fanaticism, intentionally ignoring all of the ways we can already mitigate the vast majority of the problems of meat production through legislation and existing technology.

    At the end of the day they’re functionally equivalent to anti-abortion activists, pushing an extremist, arbitrary view of which lives humans are or are not allowed to end.





  • "From Middle English mete, from Old English mete (“food”), from Proto-West Germanic *mati, from Proto-Germanic *matiz (“food”), from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂d- (“to drip, ooze; grease, fat”). Cognate with West Frisian mete, Old Saxon meti, Old High German maz (“food”), Icelandic matur, Swedish mat, Danish mad, Gothic 𐌼𐌰𐍄𐍃 (mats).

    A -ja- derivation from the same base is found in Middle Dutch and Middle Low German met (“lean pork”), from which Dutch met (“minced pork”) and German Mett (“minced meat”) derive, respectively. Compare also Old Irish mess (“animal feed”) and Welsh mes (“acorns”), English mast (“fodder for swine and other animals”), which are probably from the same root."

    From Wiktionary.