iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

puno - "full" in Tagalog puno - "full" in Serbo-Croatian Yugonesian confirmed

Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

making some solid progress in my Tamil studies for once and I keep getting surprised by how not purist spoken Tamil actually is in practice... like the usual word for "answer" is an Arabic loan?? (and not the same one that's used in the north, jawāb)

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

me trying to remember the Swahili word 𝑚𝑡𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑖 ("pot"): haha wouldn't it be funny if it was related to Chinese 桶? but wait it actually is

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

thinking about how Polish created this brand new word just using French parts, which doesn't exist in French

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

got Claude Code to write me a browser extension that adds IPA annotations to Danish websites, let's see if it really helps (this specific website also has built-in text-to-speech which improves the experience too)

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

things I learned thanks to my socialist Swahili textbook: 1. the Swahili word for "capitalist" comes from Hindustani 2. the Swahili word for "imperialist" might be Hindustani too, and in any case also means "billy goat" 🐐

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

didn't realize until Lesson 12 that my German Swahili textbook was from East Germany ☭

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Swahili is full of Arabic words of course, but this would be the only case I know of where the vulgar Arabic word for "shit" got borrowed into another language

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

non-cognates of the day: хайр/xayr in Tajik - "good", "kindness" (from Arabic) хайр/xayr in Mongolian - "love", "mercy" (from Proto-Mongolic)

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

cognates of the day: дёргать/djórgatʹ - Russian for "to pull, to tug" дркати/drkati - Serbo-Croatian for "to jack off" dziergać - Polish for "to crochet, to embroider"

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Chinese Tamil JP/KR/VN Malayalam 🤝 word meaning "name" used as counter for people 名 (míng) めい (mei)/명 (myeong)/danh பெயர்/பேரு (peyar/pēru) പേര് (pērŭ)

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

language learning tip: "if you want to speak English well, you have to smoke a pipe"

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

simu - "telephone" in Swahili, from Persian sīm ("wire, cord") sími - "telephone" in Icelandic, from Old Norse síma ("string, cord")

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

ሙሉ/mulu - "full, whole, complete" in Amharic முழு/muḻu - "full, whole, complete" in Tamil proto-Lemurian confirmed???

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

quite obvious in retrospect but I never considered that Swahili asante ("thank you") could be an Arabic borrowing 👀

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

went to the weekly Seattle German meetup yesterday and somehow ended up practicing some Danish with a German guy from Schleswig-Holstein

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

in Polish you use the word "temu" to talk about the past, because recollections of the past are merely cheap knockoffs of our experience in the moment

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 do you 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧 the Swahili word for "silence, quiet" comes from "chemistry"??? ⚗️

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

always found it kind of amusing how this Thai word for "center", as in "city center", "shopping center" etc. just comes from the Sanskrit word for "zero" or "nothingness" I guess a shopping center is sort of a ground zero of shopping ⭕️

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ศูนย์#Thai

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Hungarian verb prefix meaning "to death" literally means "on the brain" 🧠💀

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

finally signed up for the Polyglot Gathering in Brno 🇨🇿

Screenshot from my registration for the Polyglot Gathering

**Languages**
English (United States): Native
Chinese (Mandarin): Native
Russian: Advanced (C1-C2)
German (Germany): Advanced (C1-C2)
French (France): Intermediate (B1-B2)
Spanish (Mexico): Intermediate (B1-B2)
Levantine Arabic (Palestine): Intermediate (B1-B2)
Serbian: Intermediate (B1-B2)
Wu: Advanced (C1-C2)
Korean: Intermediate (B1-B2)
Turkish: Intermediate (B1-B2)
Japanese: Intermediate (B1-B2)
Hindi: Intermediate (B1-B2)
Polish: Intermediate (B1-B2)
Ukrainian: Intermediate (B1-B2)
Czech: Basic (A1-A2)
Hebrew: Intermediate (B1-B2)
Amharic: Basic (A1-A2)
Telugu: Basic (A1-A2)
Thai: Basic (A1-A2)
Tunisian Arabic: Basic (A1-A2)
Maltese: Basic (A1-A2)
Hungarian: Basic (A1-A2)

**I will arrive at the Polyglot Gathering on**
Wednesday, 28th May 2025

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

spotted today at Seattle's Museum of History & Industry - a land acknowledgement 𝐢𝐧 𝐋𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐝

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

formal Hungarian word for "to wish, to desire" is just derived from the interjection "oh"??? 😭

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Turanic false friends of all time: öl - "to die" in Turkish öl - "to kill" in Hungarian

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

learned a useful new Gulf Arabic word today - and its etymology is related to camels, of course 🐪

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

travel plans for 2025 are starting to come together: strongly considering TUNISIA in May/June, before or after the Polyglot Gathering in Brno then hoping to spend three weeks in Asia in the fall, around the time of the Polyglot Conference in Taipei. (maybe Central Asia finally?)

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Seattle language meetup update: checked out a weekly Japanese group on Monday and a biweekly Arabic group on Thursday, and found out about Portuguese, Korean and Russian groups to check out soon too 👀

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

Tigrinya spotted in Beacon Hill: "Jesus Christ is Our Savior"

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

iroda - "office" in Hungarian (from ír, "to write") idora - "office" in Uzbek & Tajik (from Arabic idāra, "administration")

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

German meetup week #2: met a Georgian(/Austrian) and got to practice some Georgian 🇬🇪 🍻 (completely butchered the verb conjugation though)

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Hungarian Georgian 🤝 using one preposition for spring/autumn 🌺🍂 and a different one for summer/winter 🌞❄️

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

two Hungarian words for "work": 1) 𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠 comes from Slavic *dъlgъ - "debt" 2) 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐤𝐚 comes from Slavic *mǫka - "torture" what did they mean by this

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

first Elliot Bay Book Company book haul of many: Arabic poetry and Lushootseed folktales 📚

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

night #4: went to a French meetup and met a Scotsman who spoke Arabic (no meetup tomorrow, gotta catch the new Severance episode anyway)

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

night #3: BlaBla language exchange where I got to speak a bunch of Lebanese Arabic, plus Spanish, Italian and a little Farsi

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

new city, new indigenous language to learn 📚 #langsky

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

first night in Seattle: went to a Spanish language meetup and ended up getting some Polish practice too

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

"since he has reached the age of twelve, it would be good if he started Ge'ez" — gotta start 'em young!

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

every time in #Severance when they mention MDR (MacroData Refinement), I remember that MDR is French for LOL (mort de rire = dying of laughter)

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "pardon my French"

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

bałwan in Old Polish: an idol, an object of idolatry🗿 bałwan in modern Polish: a snowman ☃️

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

needlessly complicated mnemonics of the day: 🌙 Georgian მთვარე/mtvare ("moon") sounds like Rwanda-Rundi umutware ("chief, leader") ☀️ Georgian მზე/mze ("sun") sounds like Swahili mzee ("elder") and the sun and the moon are the leaders/elders of the sky

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

funny thing in the DeepSeek paper - the initial version of the model, DeepSeek-R1-Zero, had a tendency to *mix languages* in its thought process. to improve readability, the researchers forced the model to only think in one language... and this made it (slightly) dumber 😭💀

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

languages overheard in Death Valley this weekend: English, Mandarin, Spanish, Norwegian, Cantonese, Korean, Hindi, German, Telugu, Shanghainese, Russian, French, Japanese...

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

big fan of how the Finnish word for "poem" is related to English "rune" and also Irish rún ("mystery, secret")

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Kevin Fei Sun 孙愷文 @kebuhcah.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

illu - "house" in Greenlandic, related to "igloo" illu - "house" in Telugu, from proto-Dravidian *il

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