I prefer eleventyleven

лишишь

Fun fact: the s was added to island in the 16th century as a mistake because grammarians added an s to isle to make it look more like the Latin insula, even though there was no s sound in either island or isle.

So in Slavonic linguistics, there’s a sound change known as the Slavic liquid metathesis, which is what gives us South Slavic forms like grad (town) as in Belgrad, as opposed to East Slavic forms, like gorod, as in Belgorod.

The reconstructed ancestor of gorod and grad is *gord (in historical linguistics, an asterisk indicates a reconstructed form). Due to changes in syllable boundary rules in the Slavic language of the day (roughly 8th/9th century AD), you could no longer have two consonants at the end of a syllable, so *gord had to change. In East Slavic, this was solved by adding an extra vowel to break up the consonant cluster, giving us gorod. In South and West Slavic, this was done by moving the /r/ sound to the onset (start) of the syllable (and the vowel was also changed), giving us grad. The “liquid” part of the name refers to “liquid” sounds, /r/ and /l/, since this particular process applied to them.

It almost looks like this is what’s going on here, although not quite. It would have to be gulgulg > gluglug to count as liquid metathesis, but the l and u switched around, which is good enough for me. Plus there’s the pun with liquid and water.

Hopefully that at least somewhat explains the joke. I don’t know if it’s very clear.

Slavic liquid metathesis moment

I miss the good old days of surreal memes. Meme man and orang fighting against each other across an arbitrary and unpredictable universe, questioning the fabric of reality, surreality and irreality, all while striving to avoid eternal yamnation.

6 months up front

Typical Jerry, just trying to get Tom in trouble

And making the game less enjoyable for everyone else at the same time :(

They won’t be if Putin keeps sending them to die in Ukraine

I don’t think that’s exclusive to Americans, not even close

The o-grade is alive and well

Oh, so you mean the whole of the contemporary field of linguistics?

However, real grammar and prescribed textbook grammar are two different things.

Last March (of the Ents)

Waters tastes gross

For the record, I'm a committed hydro-homie and do not endorse this message.

Perfect post to pee to

It’s the toast that makes you happy

Tja

I’m gonna have to go for Linux once my current laptop dies. Now way I’m putting up with Windows 11.