iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Johan Schalin

Søren Sandager Sørensen @sorensorensen.bsky.social · 6h

Turns out the book was already available, in a much better digitalization (where coloring is not sometimes lost) from this German website (but you know, the more open, the better, and Google should not be allowed to hide stuff like that): schriftgut.sh/viewer/image...

schriftgut.sh

title_page

Kort over de danske Folkemål

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Reposted by Johan Schalin

Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

They make room for thematically-based, "strange" articles, cross-polination of ideas and fields, and are often quite fun to read as books. Long live the Festschrift!

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I’d cheer for your older option. Ludic and Veps has an extra medial syllable habuk- (also attested as Karelian havukka), so the last opportunity to borrow *habuk- was before whenever North Germanic got rid of β- in *haβuk(a)-

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Good you remined. We have to remember taking down the flag before sunset…

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Well, if one of then “is” a (member of thw class of) rhotic(s), then it will behave accordingly, even if phoneticians declare it a “fricative”

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I’m confused, aren’t the Syriacs Nestorians, like the Armenians?

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

With all due respect sir: this book-savvy amateur reads the resources he quotes. I can tell, since I benefited from hin ever since I was interviewed on his channel. And he quotes you by name so, how does he ”feed” on others’ research. If I may suggest, rather speak up if he misquotes you instead.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Compare compounding of native ”villa” ’error’: villfarelse ’heresy’. Villa ’villa’: villaområde ’area of villas’

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Already ”villa” follows the pizza-pattern, first attestation 1842.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

In Swedish we adapt the plural to the native morphemics: pizzor. But in compounds we don’t nativise: we say pizzabotten, pizzabud etc. not *pizzbud or *pizzobud, which would be the alternatives for a native word.

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Jackson Crawford @norsebysw.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Not my most perfect recitation of the Lord's Prayer in Gothic from memory, but the one with the best backdrop. From a video on Youtube where I introduce the language of the Goths (as in Ostrogoths or Visigoths), the oldest language closely related to English for which we have long written records.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Finnish maailma is an original compound earth/ground/land+air/weather/atmosphere, still quite transparent even if the hiatus nas become a trimoric diphthong, the only one of its kind in the language.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Is it a coincidence that one of the rare šiph’el verbs in Hebrew is šiħrer, with a similar meaning? If they had wanted to calque the verb ša’azeb had been available?

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Proto-Semitic couldn’t have broken up before the birth of Shem’s children. So your number must be too high?

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Jackson Crawford @norsebysw.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The distinction between long and short vowels (as in literally made for more or less time) is one we never notice in English but important in other languages (Norwegian, Finnish…). And while English-speakers are often resistant to doing it, it made a difference in Old Norse in distinguishing words.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

This is how the Glottolog becomes deeply entangled in this confusion bsky.app/profile/scha...

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

On this intriguing subject a paper of mine states: "Old Norse cannot at the same time be both a thirteenth century descendant of a Viking Age Old West Nordic and the ancestor of Classic Old Swedish and Early Middle Danish, which are contemporaneous with it." www.researchgate.net/publication/...

researchgate.net

(PDF) On the periodisation of early North Germanic (Article Postprint/AAM)

PDF | This postprint/AAM of an article in NOWELE welcomes the recent proposal of Michael Schulte (2024) for a periodisation of early North Germanic,... | Find, read and cite all the research you need ...

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

It results in unfortuitous consequences for historical taxonomies, as behind this authoritative link where ”Old Norse” is the descendant of ”West Scandinavian” and the ancestor of ”Old East Norse”, which by implication becomes classified as a West Scandinavian language. glottolog.org/resource/lan...

glottolog.org

Glottolog 5.3 - Old Norse

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Among thousands of Swedish names for islets an etymological favourite: 1200 compounds in ”-bådan”. This is the PIE ”buddha-word” with meanings of inviting and (fore)boding in Germanic. Here the seafarer sees waves breaking, which bode of land and dangerous rocks kaino.kotus.fi/svenska/ledl...

kaino.kotus.fi

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Another favourite: 550 compounds in ”-haru(n)” (with two short syllables), or hä(:)r(r)a; for low bare skerry by the open sea. Similar to ”-har” ’(rocky) reef’ in the inner archipelago. Etymology obscure but compare to Old Norse hǫrgr ’cairn’. kaino.kotus.fi/svenska/ledl...

kaino.kotus.fi

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

And again, here, both vowels are short, unlike mainland Scandinavian and unlike Icelandic, but similar to Old Nordic.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

kaino.kotus.fi

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Finland har över 100.000 öar, holmar, skär, kobbar och grund, och de flesta som ligger i havet finns i det svenska språkområdet. Därför finns det t.ex. ca. 4000 namn som slutar på ”-skär” (’skerry’). sprakinstitutet.fi/kobbar-grynn...

sprakinstitutet.fi

Kobbar, grynnor, skär

Svenskan har tiotals ord för landområden som omgärdas av vatten. Orden står sällan ensamma, de är efterleder i namn som Långskär, Algrund och Granholm. Några av namnen har sitt ursprung i finskan, som...

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Reposted by Johan Schalin

Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Also, even with something like a tap, not all taps are made equal. E.g., I heard an Indian guy speaking Georgian in a video once, and his Hindi (or whatever was the native language) stuck out to my ears, very different from a native Georgian tap. But could I tell you what the difference is? No!

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Reposted by Johan Schalin

Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Researching the phonology and phonetics of rhotics is like quantum physics. They are in a superposition until someone introduces MRI, PRAAT or what not to observe them. Then they decide whether they are detrilled, devoiced, fricated affricated [ɾ͡ʒ] and/or ”degraded” [ɾ͡ɹ]. #langsky

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

The point here is that we are well tuned to hear whether a sound is rhotic or not, but we hardly hear the specifics. And versatile variation between rhotic sounds are commonplace, but this easily goes under our radar. Commonly we believe we pronounce a trill but in reality the trill fails half-way.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

A German person used to be called "garp" in Scandinavian, although this may have been limited to "Low" Germans, not sure.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Two dialects of Swedish in Finland used/uses ”et” of the nominative dual. The very much levelled one around Helsinki used to have it as a polite singular variant, whereas the traditional Närpes dialect on the west coast still uses it as a plain singular as an enclitic after the verb.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Det må väl stämma ganska bra om hen menar de egentliga skånska dialekterna. Det man hör i media är ju centralsvenskt språk med skånska substituerade vokalkvaliteter och intonation.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

”ei” looks as a Finnish negation, ”minipi” starts of a a first person object pronoun ”minua”. capi looks like ”kaapia” ’scrape/scratch/dig’. Thus: ”Don’t scratch me”? (How not to do etymology)

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

There were probably some non-IE/non-Uralic in the Nordics that outlived Etruscan too.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

The thread splitted up… See parallel skeet.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

And this is a prehistoric meaning making a bridge to the meaning of the loanwords. Note that Saami -uo- predates the Proto-Saami vowel shift, so we are talking more than two millennia of age here. Also Finnic has made old looking adaptions.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

There is the idea of a ”back water”, a protrusion of a river with a counter current or no current.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

This was a bit of a compromise spelling. Sort of elder common Nordic with a star. My source gives Old West Norse efja ’river arm/bay’, Sw ävja ’(dial.) bay, side arm of river’. In addition to ’mud’.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

ævja is also a river arm or side branch of a river, and abjōn is borrowed into Proto-Finnic as apaja and into Saami (mod. vuop’pe).

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Old Finnish: ”koneh” ’(wonder-making) machine’ (via Palaeo-Germanic); Swedish=Finnish Helsinki slang: ”snaju” ’sharpness, savvy’ (via Russian).

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

And the second ẹ is epenthetic, so, Finnish borrowed the stem without epenthesis. Cf. determined form in Swedish tighLe(ð).

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Finnish Tiili, with palatal lenition > elision of the g. In Fenno-Swedish dialect the word is tigẹl/tigẹL (with short vowel), but the -g- was fricative upon borrowing.

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I bet it could be. But the town Lovisa in Finland is not. It goes back to Louise which goes back to Ludvig/Hlodovic etc.

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Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Remember, both the Iliad and the Odyssey were originally audiobooks.

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Because Language (becauselangpod) @becauselanguage.com · 17/07/2026

Our spelling mistakes are *fixing* English. New episode with Danny Bate, author of "Why Q Needs U" Get it in all the podcast places. becauselanguage.com/141-why-q-ne... @dannybate.com @blinkbooks.bsky.social

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Johan Schalin @schaljoh.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

If the naming basis was indeed Fi. kerA/Ä- 'assembly, counsel' it could perhaps explain why half a dozen of Kerava-names in Finland are located in border regions, where negotiations may have been held on different issues. There are however other suggestions as well, such as the anthroponym Kervinen.

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