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[#] Tue Sep 20 2016 12:20:59 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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I love this one.

"So if you’re going to get ostracized for having un-PC views no matter how you present them, why not be an asshole about it?"

-- Milo Yiannopoulos

[#] Fri Oct 14 2016 17:03:35 UTC from fleeb

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So cleave to the Germanic wordhoard, lest your swearing grow romantic.

-- http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/swear-words-etymology-and-the-history-of-english/

[#] Thu Oct 20 2016 17:58:07 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."

   -- Isaiah 5:20 (NIV)



[#] Fri Oct 21 2016 12:48:24 UTC from LoanShark

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Yeah fleeb, they just added "masshole" to the OED. I approve this.

[#] Fri Oct 21 2016 13:19:03 UTC from fleeb

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Gads.

[#] Mon Oct 24 2016 15:21:14 UTC from the_mgt

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Fri Oct 14 2016 13:03:35 EDTfrom fleeb

So cleave to the Germanic wordhoard, lest your swearing grow romantic.

-- http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/06/swear-words-etymology-and-the-history-of-english/

Hm, this is a rather odd article in the sense, that it seems to introduce an ad-hoc hypothesis "vulgar is germanic" and then goes to great length in order to find examples. Especially two claims strike me as odd:

to scatological and sexual verbs (doubtless you can spot what scheissen and ficken mean, but might have been more stumped by chier and baiser)

Ok, ficken and fuck are easy to guess, but both are only one instance of this word. In french, baiser is just one and originally meant to kiss, iirc. There is also niquer, wich probably comes from forniquer. I guess you have no problem recognizing that one.

Now, shit and scheissen are a bit more difficult, yet also easy to guess. But I think chier can easily be recognized, especially when used in swearing. Especially when you spot the common root of the word, which is an old proto-indo-germanic root. It is the same in the german word Scheidung (divorce) and Schisma (shism) and also in your word science. It means to part or separate things. So in this case, french, english, german, normanic, latin and germanic have the same ancient root.

See:

Scheiße: From Middle High German schīze, from Proto-Germanic *skītaz, from Proto-Indo-European *skei-d- ‎(to part). http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Scheiße

Scire: From Proto-Italic *skijō, from Proto-Indo-European *skey- ‎(to distinguish, to dissect). http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scio#Etymology 


And whilst the German family looks familiar, with its VaterMutterBruder, and Schwester, the French one, with père, mère, frère, and sœur looks distinctly foreign.

This is a constructed example as well, especially since here you english readers probably have a small advantage. The latin root pater- is known in german, which is like an union of Vater and père, I guess your word parents could give a hint in the right directon.  Fraternity and fraternitas might also be known, but you americans have the word sorority, we have nothing like that in german.

In general, I can say that with a lot of knowledge in english, a bit in french and still less in latin, I am able to understand a lot of the western european languages, as long as they have romanic and germanic roots. But I am often not able to understand bavarian or austrian words. For example, you might understand the german word pissen, but the austrian popular word for that is brunzen. Similar to that, the austrian pudern for sexual intercourse is hard to guess.


I'll leave you with this ode to germanic language by some sensitive australian guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVkNmve0cLw (partly NSFW for some images and noise)



[#] Tue Oct 25 2016 16:29:52 UTC from fleeb

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Sorority derives from Latin's 'soror', meaning sister. Which kinda makes sense, since 'Frater' is 'brother' in Latin (e.g. fraternize, a verb where you spend time with people with whom you feel chummy), so since those two terms "sorority" and "fraternity" are rather similar in meaning, they would be similar in construction.

[#] Tue Oct 25 2016 19:03:35 UTC from the_mgt

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Yep, and I can't think of any common words in german, which use these roots. I mean in history, we learn the "egalité, fraternité et jenesaisquoi" of the french revolution. Maybe from religious context, there might enter a word coming from frater- enter your life. But in general we'd have a harder time recognizing french influences.

Btw, ever heard the French swear? My experience is that they are much more likely to use swearwords and they escalate drastically into a territory which would be considered really rude in germany. And probably in america, too.



[#] Tue Nov 15 2016 01:53:13 UTC from zooer

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"Close but no cigar!"
-Bill Clinton to Hillary.



[#] Sat Feb 04 2017 19:58:41 UTC from zooer

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Persuasion is often divorced from facts.
-Scott Adams



[#] Sun Feb 05 2017 14:34:39 UTC from the_mgt

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I no longer have freedom of expression in the way that most of you still do because the social media platforms throttle my ideas.

- Scott Adams


I really love his Dilbert comics, but he seems to earn so much money, that his cocaine consumption inflated his ego to planet size. He is smart, he writes good, but what he writes is utter cowcrap. Whining in a blog that some people are too stupid to read his tweets is exactly the opposite of diminished freedom of expression. As Randall Munroe says:

Free speech

Twitter has every right to do what it wants with its service and the more I read from his blog, the more I am able to understand the company.



[#] Thu Mar 09 2017 17:47:55 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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"Give me a Sandwich and a Douchebag, and there is nothing I cannot do."

-- The King

[#] Tue May 23 2017 22:50:42 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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“In a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.”

  -- Louis Brandeis, counselor to President Wilson, pointing out the obvious fact that some 100 years hence, Amazon would become a threat to the universe and should be broken up



[#] Wed Jun 21 2017 01:47:31 UTC from zooer

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"Proof that these jihadists don't go to heaven but they go to hell and burn for all of eternity. "
-some comment from the internet.

 boom.jpg

(picture from this tweet:https://twitter.com/remybonnaffe/status/877237732963209217/photo/1)



[#] Wed Jun 21 2017 20:49:45 UTC from Ladyhawke

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Wonder if this matador would agree with that poster...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/18/world/spanish-matador-gored-to-death/index.html



[#] Thu Aug 10 2017 02:41:25 UTC from zooer

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"OWWWWW!  I think I hurt my ankle!"



[#] Mon Aug 14 2017 22:30:29 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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If that was a reference to me, I assure you I said nothing that coherent.

[#] Wed Aug 16 2017 16:42:01 UTC from nonservator

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"Aaah! My liver! My liver!"

[#] Thu Aug 17 2017 17:43:34 UTC from kc5tja

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"Aaaah! Sssshhhhhhh! Aaaaaahh! Ssssshhhhhhhh! Aaaaaaaahhh! Ssssssshhhhhhh!
Aaaaahhhhh! Sssshhhhhh!"

[#] Mon Aug 21 2017 16:34:25 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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"Aaah! My liver! My liver!"

Actually, I'm told I said something resembling "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"

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