• gedaliyah@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    This is apparently why some modern words like love or come are spelled with an o instead of a u. The o is much easier to read when followed by a v, n, or m, so the scribes changed it sometimes and the spelling stuck.

  • hope@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    My goodness, I love how for the M N and Us they just barely connect to neighbors to unambiguously form the correct letter. Diabolical.

    • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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      6 hours ago

      Shit, I hadn’t even noticed that. I just assumed those were identical.

  • tal@olio.cafe
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    11 hours ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

    “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct sentence in English that is often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann’s Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den

    “Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den” is a short narrative poem written in Literary Chinese, composed of around 92 to 94 characters (depending on the specific version) in which every word is pronounced shi ([ʂɻ̩]) when read in modern Standard Chinese, with only the tones differing.[1]

    “Shī Shì shí shī shǐ”
    Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
    Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
    Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
    Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
    Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
    Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
    Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
    Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
    Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
    Shì shì shì shì.

    “Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den”
    In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
    He often went to the market to look for lions.
    At ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
    At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
    He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
    He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
    The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
    After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
    When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
    Try to explain this matter.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
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      5 hours ago

      Police police police police. Police police police police police police.

      (The people who monitor and ensure the good behaviour of (i.e. “police” as a verb) law enforcement (the police) are called the “police police”. The people who do the same for the police police must therefore be the police police police. The original phrasing structure is “2 verb 1. 3 verb 2.”)

    • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      corporate needs you to tell the difference between these two pictures :
      arabic.jpg
      cyrillicCursive.jpg

      They’re the same picture