Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Moose-tache]

Air con to me is an East Asian English thing, like remo con for remote control. I've never heard a native speaker say it.

[akam chinjir]

I say "aircon." Granted I've lived the bulk of my adult life in East Asia, and had very limited experience with air conditioning earlier in life. (But I feel as if "AC" is the expression I had to learn when I first moved overseas.)

[mèþru]

I never shorten the phrase at all. Only air conditioning or "the cooling" for me

[Pabappa]

I'm curious where the line is drawn between animals that have genders and those that do not.. e g in Russian all rabbits are a male and all mice are females,

What is a крольчиха then? Or a мышонок?

If you deliberately misread what I said, sure, it looks like a dumb question. You do this a lot. But that's not what I asked... I want to know if there are languages where gender is distinguished on animals to a lower (less humanlike) level than in spanish, which has the most that i know. But even Spanish does not do e.g. *rano "male frog".

[Linguoboy]

I'm curious where the line is drawn between animals that have genders and those that do not.. e g in Russian all rabbits are a male and all mice are females,

What is a крольчиха then? Or a мышонок?

If you deliberately misread what I said, sure, it looks like a dumb question. You do this a lot.

That wasn't a response to your question but to your easily-disproved false claim. I'm sorry if that was confusing.

But that's not what I asked... I want to know if there are languages where gender is distinguished on animals to a lower (less humanlike) level than in spanish, which has the most that i know. But even Spanish does not do e.g. *rano "male frog".

However it does have zángano "male bee". That's because humans raise bees and therefore their sex is relevant to us. That's how I knew that Russian would have a lexicalised form for "female rabbit" even before I checked, because Russian-speakers raise rabbits and have done so for centuries.

So I doubt you'll find a definite cutoff point for most natural languages. It will depend on how the speakers of these languages have interacted with various species of animals over time.

To give another example, I'm originally from Maryland. The dialect of English spoken there has distinct words for "male blue crab" ("jimmy") and "mature female blue crab" ("sook"). That's because crabbing is a big industry there and these distinctions are salient to a lot of people. (Some people think the taste is different and there are restrictions on the catching of female crabs in order to preserve healthy population levels.)

[Pabappa]

Ok thanks that's more helpful but why must you still mix in more deliberate misreading? I already know how Russian works, and it'd be nice if you'd assume that instead of trying to embarrass me.

The familiarity system makes sense.

Still curious if any natlang has a straightforward gender distinction for all animals known in premodern times, predictable & symmetrical rather than suppletive. I don't know of any that go beyond Spanish, except possibly other related romance langs I don't know of.

[Salmoneus]

Aircon is the standard word in the UK. I and my family sometimes use 'air conditioning', because we're formal. Although I would use it for the process/effect - the machine itself is an air conditioner or air conditioning unit.

That's for cars. I'm given to understand some Americans actually have aircon in their houses - I might use a different word for that, but since it's never come up, I don't know what I'd say in practice. [Aircon in my house is called 'the window'. Or, in extremely circumstances, 'the fan'.]


Actually, come to think of it, do people still say aircon? Carmakers want us to say "climate control" instead. I just use 'aircon', though. Don't know how archaic that makes me.

"air", to me, would just be passive cooling through the vents.

[Linguoboy]

Still curious if any natlang has a straightforward gender distinction for all animals known in premodern times, predictable & symmetrical rather than suppletive.

As I said, I would be very surprised if such a thing existed. That's just not how natlangs do things.

I don't know of any that go beyond Spanish, except possibly other related romance langs I don't know of.

German has the suffix -rich for deriving masculine forms from feminine base nouns. Some derivations (e.g. Enterich "drake") go back to Middle High German but others (e.g. Täuberich/Tauberich "male dove") are of more recent vintage. I've come across in Fliegerich "male fly" and Spinnerich "male spider" in contemporary usage.

[alynnidalar]

I'm given to understand some Americans actually have aircon in their houses - I might use a different word for that, but since it's never come up, I don't know what I'd say in practice. [Aircon in my house is called 'the window'. Or, in extremely circumstances, 'the fan'.]

Fun fact I just discovered--according to the American Housing Survey, just over 90% of American homes in 2017 had air conditioning. 69% of those had central air, while 21% had "room air conditioning" (which I assume includes both window units and portable air conditioners). (11% have both) So I would certainly say some Americans actually have aircon in their houses.

(I'm actually pretty surprised the numbers are so high for central air. I grew up in an area where a lot of people just had window units, but apparently that's not that widespread, in the grand scheme of things.)

EDIT: oh weird, I'm looking through the survey questions and swamp coolers are considered central air?? That is not what I think of when I think of central air.

[dɮ the phoneme]

Fun fact I just discovered--according to the American Housing Survey, just over 90% of American homes in 2017 had air conditioning. 69% of those had central air, while 21% had "room air conditioning" (which I assume includes both window units and portable air conditioners). (11% have both) So I would certainly say some Americans actually have aircon in their houses.

This doesn't surprise me at all, basically everyone I know here uses some form of air conditioning in their home. And I've only ever heard it called 'air conditioning', never 'aircon'. The only context in which I've seen 'aircon' is as a loanword エアコン in Japanese.

[Linguoboy]

"air", to me, would just be passive cooling through the vents.

Here we'd call that "vent" because "air" would likely be understood as "air conditioning". Depends on the phrasing though. "Can you turn on the air?" would be understood as "Turn on the air conditioning." But "I need some air" could be understood as "Open the vents", "Turn on the air conditioning", or (if the AC i already on) "Angle the vents or increase the fan strength so that cool air blows on me/reaches the back".

[Richard W]

"air", to me, would just be passive cooling through the vents.

If I used it in the context of a car, it would just be fresh air, regardless of cooling.

However, I also recognise it as the usual Thai word for 'air conditioning', so if I used it in that sense amongst the family, I would put it down to code-switching.

[Zaarin]

A friend recently asked me if Pashto was a direct descendant of Avestan, and I told him it was my understanding that Avestan wasn't believed to have any direct descendants. I now see that Pashto's Wikipedia page, however, cites two linguists, one 19th century and one modern, as claiming that Pashto is a direct descendant of Avestan. It's certainly in the right place to be a direct descendant, but I'm still quite certain I've read that Avestan is generally believed to have no direct descendants--but the literature I've read may be out of date. Can anyone shed some illumination on the general consensus regarding a genetic relationship between Avestan and Pashto (or any other Eastern Iranian language)?

[mae]

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[Zaarin]

Yes, that was my impression. It wouldn't be the first time that Wikipedia gave undue credence to someone's pet theory...

[mae]

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[Linguoboy]

Do you perceive a distinction between "homemade" and "housemade" and, if so, what is it?

[alynnidalar]

The only context that comes to mind for me for "housemade" is food in a restaurant--e.g. a "housemade" salad dressing would be mixed up in-house, or "housemade" bread would be baked at the restaurant. Meanwhile, "homemade" couldn't be used for a commercial product and implies it was produced by a non-professional on a small scale. (e.g. "housemade salad dressing" would be what I get in a local restaurant; "homemade salad dressing" is what my friend's mom made)

[Zaarin]

I've never heard the term "housemade," but I might equate it with "made in house"--i.e., something made from fresh ingredients in a restaurant rather than something pre-packaged/institutionalized distributed to the restaurant. For me, "homemade" means made from fresh ingredients at home, but for many people it seems to simply mean "made at home," even if it's just warming up a TV dinner...

[Vijay]

I've never heard the term "housemade"

Same.