Someone (may have been Lehmann) proposed such a comparison but I cant seem to find the exact reference. I have a different theory (tho unlike most folks, incl. on here) I do NOT propose to pretend that mine MUST be right and to insult in particular those who think IE is related to other languages. I plan to offer an alternative. Who is right seems very difficult to establish at this stage. But anyway I need that reference. Pretty please with a cherry on top.

Years ago probably around 1980 or 1990 I read in some philosophy journal the following allegory about the importance of notation.  On some island the natives had invented mathematics specifically addition and multiplication but they wrote formulae on coconut shells (or maybe seashells, anyway something round), with the terms around the edge of the shell, and the answer in the middle, and  so they took symmetry for granted and did not realize it was a thing.  Then one day one of them invented subtraction and was burned at the stake for maintaining that somehow 2 – 4 is not the same as 4 – 2 (which both looked the same to them).  I have tried repeatedly to find this article since then by Googling and so-called AI but have failed.

Years ago probably around 1980 or 1990 I read in some philosophy journal the following allegory about the importance of notation.  On some island the natives had invented mathematics specifically addition and multiplication but they wrote formulae on coconut shells (or maybe seashells, anyway something round), with the terms around the edge of the shell, and the answer in the middle, and  so they took symmetry for granted and did not realize it was a thing.  Then one day one of them invented subtraction and was burned at the stake for maintaining that somehow 2 – 4 is not the same as 4 – 2 (which both looked the same to them).  I have tried repeatedly to find this article since then by Googling and so-called AI but have failed.

Need a Polish Book

Would anyone have:

„Język polski na co dzień. Samouczek i słownik poprawnej polszczyzny” autorstwa Ewy i Feliksa Przyłubskich

and be willing to scan a page or two for me?

Suppose you want to check all existing interpretations of a particular passage (as I do, spec. 756-757 of Sophocles' Antigone) to see whether anyone has anticipated some new (if it IS new) idea of yours. Is there a way to do this given the vast number of translations out there?

In English and some other Modern languages it is common to say such things, describing a person (or animal too) by an abstract noun rather than an agent one (so help instead of helper, salvation instead of savior, and love instead of lover/loved one, etc. etc.). I can't seem to find similar examples in Greek. Can anyone either confirm that they dont exist or give me some examples (if they do). Many thanks in advance.

τι is attested as euphemism for something bad that can happen, esp. death. My question is whether this is ever attested with the verb λέγω. Could this mean 'to order someone's death' or the like. λέγω τι is attested in a different sense (to speak to the point) so maybe not? Any help would be much appreciated.

This is how I pronounce the first, https://forvo.com/word/poci%C4%85gn%C4%85%C5%82/#pl. This is not me, It is some woman I of course never met, For context. I grew up in central warsaw in a university-educated family (which by definition is who speak so-called "correct" Polish), but on the other hand clearly MOST Polish people do not speak this way, and Polish grammars and other publications (themselves of course written by university-educated folks) at least since c. 1900 insist on saying ął and ęł as = oł and eł. So I am just trying to find any other Polish speakers who'd be willing to give me a little of their time so I can record and publish some data about the other pronunciation (mine!) where ął = ą and ęł = ę, and I might add therefore ęła = ęłła. I suspect that this is uncommon but clearly we have at least two such people, so there must be more. Thank you.

Some other subreddits even require recipes with pics. For those of us trying to learn, that would be a huge boon.

I am told that there is/are one or more linguists in Taiwan (not many but with some degree of power) claiming (absurdly) that MODERN Taiwanese itself is the ancient language (from which all other varieties of Chinese would have to derive) so there is no need or possibility for reconstructing Old Chinese (the work that for over a century has slowly been getting done starting with a couple of fellows whose names escape me, then Maspero and mostly Karlgren, then some others I dont recall, then Haudricourt, Li Fang-kuei, Pulleyblank, a few others I dont remember, Jerry Norman, and of course Bodman, Starostin, and lately Baxter and Sagart. I don't however have any references to whose these Taiwanese guys are. If anyone has any of the literature or at least references or just the names, plz tell me.

Hello, does anyone pronounce the nasal in these combinations so that f.ex. wziął sounds like wzią and not like wzioł?

Could someone very kindly verify that 珊蛮 is the older spelling and that it occurs in the oldest source (which I believe is Sanchao beimeng huibian 三朝北盟会编 by Xu Mengxin of the Song Dynasty)? And does anyone know how it changed to 萨满, which as far as I can see would not have sounded the same? And when and where this 萨满 first appears (which I have not found mentioned anywhere)?

I think some people would just say Seizer like the Roman Caesar, but those of us who respect foreign languages I think would say Sessar in the US and Thessar in the UK, but maybe not. Maybe some would say Sayssar/Thayssar? Any input from people who actually have personally run into this name would be appreciated. Is there someone famous (real or a fictional character) that many people would have heard of on TV in the movies maybe? I have a feeling Ive run into this but can't recall. Many thanks.

Would it by any chance be the case that two men who had the same feudal (over)lord and esp if they entered his service on the same day would call each other brother and have any kind of special relationship?

I hope this is OK to ask here, it is a technical question but no specialist (I am one but there are of course many much better than me) has been able to answer it but quite often I get great answers on Reddit. So in 1739 Gottlieb Bayer says that Thomas Hyde (who was once extremely famous in Europe for publishing a detailed account, much of it wrong, of Zoroastranism. Bayer claims that Hyde mentions the Persian word شمان "sighing, sobbing" and says that this is how Zoroastrian priests pray, which then believe it or not was widely accepted as an etymology (wholly wrong) of the word shaman referring to Siberian native religions. The thing is I cannot find anything of the sort in Hyde's writings.

I am familiar with the literature on Egyptian pronunciation (apparently one is supposed to say this), which here and there refers to Greek transcriptions, but I have yet to see a systematic treatment of the subject in general much less in particular in the works of Herodotus. Perhaps I have missed some study and would like to hear of it. The reason this is relevant to various things is that there are words and names about which assumptions are made throughout the literature about what Herodotus was transcribing that are inconsistent with his actual practices. F.ex. it is practically universally asserted that the name Pherōs (or Pherōn) is the word pharaon (our pharaoh), forgetting that that is a borrowing into Greek from Aramaic not Egyptian, and that the Egyptian source word would have represented with initial p- or even more likely b- and not ph-. Consider here that pyramid is not *phyramid.

But since this is universally repeated, it follows that the repeaters (who are many of the top scholars in the field) have never thought about how a given Egyptian sound (here p-) is represented in Herodotus' transcriptions. That's why it is not clear where to even look for such a study if it exists. If all the top experts have missed it, it either doesn't exist or is obscure. The problem actually is more general than Herodotus. There are similar issues for the (different) transcriptions in Manetho. And there are numerous points of Egyptian phonology beyond that too, some that one finds treated in passing in old articles by Maspero and such but then apparently forgotten. So I am not asking for an intro to the literature on Egyptian pronunciation but some specific studies (which may not exist) on this specific topic.

Thank you in advance.

Has anyone studied (which I am doing now but maybe I am wasting my time?) the transcription of Egyptian words and names that we find in Herodotus?

There were times it was largely buried--and then dug up. Do we know if it was ever completely buried, or maybe even forgotten?

The earliest source for this idea I have found is Heyne's observations on Apollodorus (1803). If there is an earlier source, I'd be grateful to learn of it.