I'm sorry, I know I sound like some crusty old reactionary here. It's just that this is something that for some reason I find particularly irritating, and I wondered how others feel about it. I generally find things easier to accept if I understand the reasoning behind them, so my question is ( Read more... )

A couple of questions born of idle curiosity ( Read more... )

I have a question : Among the fans of the cartoon show "My little pony" started an argument about a pony named "Derpy" , some people said that "derp" or "derpy" was an insulting and discriminating US-American word against people with disabilities ( Read more... )

For all these questions, I'm mostly interested in standard Finnish and the Helsinki dialect since I'm going to be there in a couple months, but I'd gladly take answers specific to other dialects (especially Tampere).

ystävä vs. kaveriSo, I can tell that there's definitely a formal vs. informal divide between the two words. But what I don't know is ( Read more... )

Hello linguaphiles! This one is for all speakers of Russian.

There are a lot of nicknames/abbreviations for a lot of the most frequent Russian names.

I would like to know if there is a comparable thing for the name Нора (=Nora/h) - since it's not a particularly common name in Russian-language communities (it seems). So what I need help with is the following:

a) ( Read more... )

 Hi! I'm Janelle. (: I'm an eighteen-year-old Anglophone (native English speaker) from Newfoundland, Canada. I've also spoken French since the age of five although I by no means consider myself bilingual.

Question/discussion timeeeee!

At what point would you consider a dialect to become its own language? 
Mostly I'm interested in English, but French ( Read more... )

Quick nitpicky thing for a story. What is the most common way to address one's grandfather in the UK? If it's relevant, the person talking is in her early 20s and the grandfather is of Scottish heritage but was raised in the Yorkshire area.

ETA: Looks like 'grandad' it is! Thank you all for the help!

Not to beat a dead horse, but while r_blackcat's post on ableist language was mostly struck through, it's prompted me to make an inquiry about something I've wondered for years. It's arguably the kind of question that belongs on a community more directly centered around issues of privilege, discrimination, etc., but since we have a bunch of etymology- ( Read more... )

In ontario Canada at least we have several things that we speak of by a namebrand of a company. ie tissues = Kleenex and bandages = bandaids.

As well there are tv spots for a film called zombieland (I have a purpose i swear).  Part of the ad campaign is that the charatcers have rules for how to survive in a zombie filled wasteland. Anyways in one ( Read more... )