I don't know if it applies in this case (Iroquois), but often through the reconstruction method. Basically: if you find clearly related words across multiple languages you know to be related, you expect the ancestor of those words to be present in the ancestor of the languages.

This is actually fairly common, as older words get adapted into "writing". For example:

• Latin ⟨scribō⟩ I write ← PIE *(s)kreybʰ- "to scratch"
• English ⟨write⟩ ← PIE *wrey- "to rip"

They both backtrack to PIE… and as far as I know PIE did not have writing.

In addition to what @[email protected] said: it's probably a cognate of English ⟨beam⟩.

Note Latin didn't inherit *dóru either, at least not the form meaning "tree". It went with ⟨arbor⟩ instead, from PIE *h₃r̥dʰōs; roughly "the tall one".

What if people started editing this etymological tree, adding/removing things as they deem sensible, for their own variations? We could even map the edits into a tree of etymological trees for the word "tree"!

Serious now. Something I love about etymological trees for words instead of whole languages is how much it shows hidden details about the life of the languages. Like that Classical Persian ⟨دارو⟩ dārū "medicine, drug" showing that, in the past, people were making some medicine out of some local tree; or Greek ⟨δρυάς⟩ dryás, that ⟨-άς⟩ -ás suffix hints dryads were originally seen as some sort of wood critter (see *κέμος *kémos "hornless" → ⟨κεμάς⟩ kemás "young deer").

I just wish they tagged the language for each entry. I can't be the only one who thought ⟨𐎭𐎠𐎽𐎢𐎺⟩ was Hittite instead of Old Persian. (The /d/ gave it away.)

Latin ⟨dūrus⟩ hard, though, harsh

Personally I don't buy it.

The root form of this PIE word is probably *derw- ~ *drew-. You'd need to go with the first to explain why Latin has a vowel between the /d/ and /r/; and it would be the o-grade, so you'd end with *dóru, the basic form for the noun "tree".

However:

• PIE *o doesn't typically become Latin /u/, except through the humī rule (unaccented *o before *m) or if Latin would interpret it as the case suffix. Neither is the case here.
• vowel length popping up out of nowhere. It usually signals a coda consonant being deleted.

Instead I think it's easier to explain ⟨dūrus⟩ as coming from *duh₂-rós, the zero-grade of *dweh₂-rós "long, distant". I have no idea what that *-rós is supposed to mean, but it pops up a lot in adjectives, it's called a Caland suffix. But then you're changing the root from *derw- (tree, stiff) to *dweh₂- (far, distant).

I often heard something similar, in spirit. Roughly translated: "if you aren't a commie when you're 20, then you're heartless; but if you're still a commie when you're 40, then you're brainless."

I'm 40 this year. Still a communist. I guess that makes me brainless?

Shinji traería fanta. Todo un mar de fanta.

"I dun'r unrurrstand, this convicshun is baseless lol lmao" my fucking arse, Duduzinho Bostonaro. You're rallying support from a rogue state to intervene in our internal politics. The same rogue state who:

• used the local ruckus in Venezuela to invade it
• is actively backing Israel up in the genocide against the Palestinians, and publicly talks about expelling them Trails of Tears style
• promised to genocide the Iranian population in social media

You don't need to play 4D chess to know this is wrong on pragmatic, legal, and moral levels. It's worse than simply dishonesty, it's fucking idiocy, and this sort of idiot needs to get wrecked, because their idiocy harms every bloody body else dammit.

4°C, so… piping hot wine, my cat taking dibs on my bed, and a nice batch of preserved kumquat. Work is surprisingly reasonable, neither too much nor too little, so yay?

As I read his "essays", one question persistently pops into my head: is he one of those "truth is a matter of opinion" muppets? Because it would explain everything.

This map is the gift that keeps giving:

• Obodo Oyibo Belfast, Polar Obodo Oyibo — Obodo oyibo is "white man land" in Igbo. See RL Niger and Nigeria.
• Big Wota — colonisers often picked some random word/expression the locals mention and assumed it was the name of the place. See RL Yucatán, probably from Maya ma'anaatik ka t'ann (I don't understand you)
• Baris, Rom, Nedelan, Phrans, Deutshland, Doisrikondre, Caucasia — Paris, Rome, Netherlands, France, Germany [Deutschland], Germany (again) Caucasus. It's all somewhere there anyway.
• Cabo Cinza — geographical feature + adjective. See RL Cabo Verde (Green Cape).
• Duckstan — it's basically "place of the ducks"; most of the time you see -(i)stan being associated with a local people but that isn't obligatory, see Persian ⟨گلستان⟩ (gulistān "rose garden"). See RL Lagoa dos Patos (Ducks Lagoon).
• Lithium Coast, Cheese Coast — after some local resource. See RL Argentina, Brazil, Ivory Coast
• Qhadafia — after some random political big shot. (From the colonising side, of course.) See: RL Philippines, Victoria
• Kemetic Ocean — Kemet is the old name of Egypt, both the pre-Roman kingdom and the region around the Nile. I think it's being modelled after the RL Atlantic Ocean vs. Atlas.

Surprised to not see any place being called "Big River" or "Day of Arafah Island".

I think this doesn't have to do with the writing system, but with how heavily a culture relies on context to convey meaning. In general, East Asian cultures do it way more than the ones from Western Europe and the Americas, so Japanese/Mandarin/Korean/etc. speakers are way more likely to omit contextually clear words than German/English/French/etc. speakers. And if the translator is inexperienced they might try to translate the sentences word-by-word, or even get the context wrong, and in both cases you'll get issues.

EDIT: crafted a cute example based on… well, weeb knowledge. Consider the following situations.

1. Your friend stumbled and fell down, and you're worried they might have hurt themself.
2. You stumbled and fell down. You didn't hurt yourself, but a friend is worried you did.

Your typical English speaker would answer #1 with "are you alright?" and #2 with "I'm alright." Or similar. They might perhaps clip the verb from #1, or replace "alright" with "okay" from either, but the subject will be always there.

And yet that's exactly what Japanese does with "大丈夫" daijōbu. Sure, you could phrase it as a question in #1, like "大丈夫ですか。" daijōbu desu ka?, but for most part you don't need to; and you're certainly not including the pronoun, it's kind of obvious that the word refers to whoever fell down.

Now. Imagine you're translating that "大丈夫" into English. A noob translator might translate it with "alright"… and it gets hella confusing — what is supposed to be alright? Or they might pick the context wrong, and translate it as "I'm alright" when it's supposed to be "are you alright?" or vice versa.

Except Japanese won't do this just with the pronoun, or the "hey, this is a question!" mark. It'll do it pretty much all the time — why two words, one enough?

Nina, why don't you help your dad with his work? Alexander can come too!

>canned yerba mate

What the bloody hell.

See, there's stuff that's clearly wrong, like:

• Paraguayans drinking it too cold
• folks in northern Paraná drinking it too hot
• Argentinians roasting it too much, until it's brown
• Riograndenses milling it too thin

But canned yerba? That isn't just wrong, it's abomination! Refer to Dante's Inferno: the 8th circle is for the fraudsters who put cheese on garlic-and-oil pasta and ketchup on pizza, but the 9th one is for the ones who drink canned yerba! It's treason!!!1one

(I think it should be clear for anyone I'm joking with the fake outrage. Specially given I quite like tereré, i.e. Paraguayan style cold yerba. And unlike Che I'm not some boomer to tell others to stop enjoying what they enjoy. But seriously, I bet he'd be mad at the canned yerba. And most other things in the meme.)

Anyway, it isn't just about the caffeine content, it's all that nice ritual and the flavour and everything else.

Etymology is kind of bait for me. Doubly so with what-if scenarios.

Ongoing, will keep watching because I'm having a great time with all three:

• Mairimashita! Iruma-kun 4
• Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken 4
• Re:Zero 4

Watched / finishing, top of the list:

• Jishou Akuyaku Reijou / Bertia
• Dr. Stone: Science Future 3
• Hime Kishi wa Barbaroi no Yome / The Barbarian's Bride

Finishing, I don't regret watching it:

• Isekai Nonbiri Nouka 2
• Higeki no Genkyou 2 / Pryde 2
• Jidou Hanbaiki 3 / Boxxo 3

Deserved a better adaptation:

• Honzuki no Gekokujou: Ryoushu no Youjo / Ascendance of a Bookworm 4
• Saikyou no Ousama 2 / The Beginning of the End 2

Dropped:

• Reincarnation no Kaben

The suffix -(i)s(e)tan in Classical Persian and descendants means roughly "place of $noun". While you see it often being attached to human groups, that isn't the only way to use it. Like,

• flower garden: ⟨بستان⟩ bostân = place of fragrance[s]
• hospital: ⟨بیمارستان⟩ bimârestân = place of [the] ill
• summer: ⟨تابستان⟩ tâbestân = place of heat
• rural district: ⟨دهستان⟩ dehestân = place of village[s]
• etc.

So you could theoretically name some place after the local fauna with -stan.

It helps if you remember that suffix is cognate to "stand", "status" (see status quo), "stay".

For some time I used chatbots to give me ideas on how to translate specially tricky excerpts. It never reached the point of AI drafting stuff for me, but over time I relied on it more and more on it; I was rusting. And my translations were becoming rather bland, even ones supposed to have some emotional impact.

Glad I ditched it before it could become a problem.

It’s not just uncensored loli porn. It got censored in the LN from spy cam footage of his niece in the shower (the main reason why his brother gets so violent).

[Rudeus on Sylphy and Roxy]

The anime and WN are a bit more explicit on that, but even the LN is crystal clear on Rudeus being a paedophile. And I think the folks doing mental gymnastics to claim otherwise also lack basic media literacy, just like I criticised the "third way" ones.

In the meantime I find your "option 3.5" fairly reasonable. It's completely fine to criticise the work for not doing a good job of calling out shitty behaviour, specially in the light of its theme.

Rudeus does mention once that Paul (isekai father) is scum, and that's why they understand each other, but… that's it. In the meantime Paul cheats on Zenith (who's monogamous) with Lilia (who's employed by Paul, so Paul is in a position of power over her), and gets away with it.

I’ve also seen an interesting discussion about how much of the author’s personality is reflected in their works.

It's somewhat clear for me that Magonote doesn't really care too much about social causes, such as the role of women in society. And that he caves in to readers' pressure a bit too easily. But past that, I don't know, really.

It could be too. It depends if the Qhadaf in question was the one founding it (like Cecil Rhodes), or simply some noble the discoverer was trying to please, while fighting the local tribals who were "refusing to be civilised". Either way, it's some name that feels completely out-of-place from Europe, much like all three we mentioned.