In French, when you say pas terrible “not terrible”, it actually means “really bad”. Which was counterintuitive to me, because it sounds like “not bad”.
Something I don’t understand in English is the use of “all but”. When the Great Panda is “all but extinct”, does is mean “almost extinct, and they will be if you just sneeze in their general direction” or “almost extinct, but the remaining population is stable” or does it mean “anything but extinct”?
Similarly, in Greek, there is one phrase that I use as an example constantly about the non-determinism of actual languages, versus the determinism of programming languages. The phrase is coming up regularly in real life when friends randomly meet on the street and say: “πάμε καμια μέρα πουθενά να φάμε τίποτα;” which means , “shall we go some day, somewhere and eat something?” , but the LITERAL translation is “shall we go no day, nowhere and eat nothing?” 
I honestly do not know of any other phrase that is so skewed out of its literal translation.
When the Great Panda is “all but extinct”, does is mean “almost extinct, and they will be if you just sneeze in their general direction”
Yes.
Try expanding the phrase to all but (a fraction) extinct. Now it makes clear sense.
(Are you) not hungry?
Yes no.
Sounds like Australian yeah nah, in which the yeah presumably only indicates that you acknowledge the statement made, whereas the nah (no) is the real answer.
Thank you! Together with @Atorrante’s link I construct a donkey-bridge for me like “it is extinct in all but in name”.
I was thinking today about the consonant ð, called the eth.
Take the word with, for instance.
I would pronounce it /wið/, as is most standard in England. However, around the world one can also hear:
ð and, for that matter, θ seem to be quite difficult consonants to learn if one hasn’t grown up using them.
The words for yes/no are an interesting topic across languages.
German and French too have a different “yes” to give affirmative answers to negative questions (“aren’t you hungry?”): doch and si.
I read somewhere that yes and no used to be english answers to neagative questions and the corresponding answers to positive questions were yea and nay.
Henceforþe, I shall þus use yea ande nay.
I saw a video some time ago, either by Luke or Jackson Crawford, revealing that the word for and in many languages derives from the word for yes, from an idiom “yes (and) …”
I have never heard þat, and I love it.
Other interesting þings I can think of right now is þat the German nicht ‘not’ is derived from ne wicht ‘no bit’. Þis reminds me of colloquial French, where þe ne is almost optional and þe words þat are actually used to convey negation, pas, point, and þe like, used to be intensifiers: “I don’t like you one step/one point!”
That’s a general phenomenon that Jespersen discussed in the early twentieth century. It’s also true of English not and Latin non. It’s sometimes called Jespersen’s cycle (Jespersen's Cycle - Wikipedia). The simple negation is felt to be to weak and reinforcement is added. Then the reinforced form comes to be regarded as expressing the simple negation.
As a non linguist I found Jespersen’s essay on negation very readable (as well as Wackernagel’s chapters on the subject). I particularly liked the idea that the nasal sounds that are found in negation in so many languages arise from the sounds of infants closing their mouths so that their parents can’t feed them something they don’t want. I don’t know if that’s still regarded as plausible, but it’s interestingly similar to Darwin’s suggestion that the gestures for “no” in many cultures are derived from infants turning their faces away from the food that someone’s trying to feed them.
I have been catching up on my my Japanese. I caught up on Nihongonomori videos. I liked this one video.
Here they do the problems where you need to pick appropriate kanji out of similar-looking selection. Makes you think “does it have drops on the left or doesn’t it”, “does it have this squiggly hat or that one”. If you don’t write kanji like me, these questions can trip you up. Though it’s only N3, it’s not that hard since N3 doesn’t have that many kanji yet. Probably the question I liked best is this one:
Because whoever pays attention to the hats?
Additionally I like these ones.
Here you make up a sentence from parts. And this is always fun because it’s almost like you’re making your own sentences.
Incipient signs of a further step may be seen in sentences like “I didn’t say a word” or “I don’t know shit”, in which the final word does not specify the object of the verb, but mainly serves to reinforce the negative.
I can’t wait to see “shit” becoming the standard negation participle in English
Wait, is ‘not’ and ‘naught’ actually the same word?
Wiktionary suggests that naught derives from no wiht.
wiht is an Old English word it defines as creature, person, thing.
So naught = no wiht = no thing = nothing, and naught does indeed mean nothing.
wiht became wight in Middle English, meaning creature, person, monster.
In Modern English it’s mainly known from The Lord of the Rings. The bearers of the Rings, though are wraiths, a Middle Scots term of uncertain origin, which is apparently first attested in a 1513 translation of the Aeneid, a book called Eneados of interest in its own right.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_pronunciation
enPR / AHD symbols, a phonetic alphabet for English that doesn’t mandate the same level of detail as IPA.
I should really use this system more.
[English orthography] I can’t wait to see “shit” becoming the standard negation participle in English.
[IPA (Southern British English)] aɪ kɑ:nt weɪt tu: si: “ʃɪt” bi:kʌmɪŋ ðʌ stændəd nɛɡeɪʃən pa:tɪkəl ɪn ɪŋgliʃ.
[enPR] ī känt wāt tōō sē “ʃĭt” bĭkŭmĭŋ ðŭ stăndəd nĕgāʃən pätĭkəl ĭn ĭŋglĭʃ.
More or less. The OED says " Reduced form of NOUGHT adv.". What I read in Wackernagel II 253 (717 in Langslow’s translation, Lectures on Syntax) was “The same [as German nicht originally meaning “nothing”] applies to English not, which has the same etymological basis as nicht (Gothic ni waiht).”
On the same page on non: “In Old Latin there is also noenum … which means lit. “not one thing”, oinos being the earlier form of unus.”
Please don’t, IPA’s fine and the only thing worse than two different standards is a third standard trying to unify both.
Although, EnPR makes quite sense.
Something I find really cool about English linguists is how meticulately they record English phonology.
Meanwhile, German grammarians can’t explain when to use the preterite and when the perfect tense.
Youtube recommendation