This reminds me of how modern Korea "rice" is 쌀 "ssal" but when you add "year" 해 "hae" to get "new year's rice", you add an extra /b/ to get 햅쌀 "haeB.ssal. -- old Korean had rice as "bsal" but modern korean no longer allows /bs/ to start a syllable, so "ssal" lost its b, but "haebssal" still has it

haha, someone made this joke on my IG too!

We say /pt/ in helicopter but not in pterodactyl cuz English syllables can't start with certain consonant clusters such as /pt/. However, because copter is analyzed as cop.ter and not co.pter, it's ok since /pt/ no longer starts the syllable! #etymology

At a recent language exchange, I met another person who said he was from Hong Kong, but within the first sentence, I identified him as a mandarin speaker due to his accent in English. And with further prying I found that he’d moved to Hong Kong recently from the mainland

Very interesting finding but it makes sense. Places with increased tribalism and in-group/out-group distinction would be better at identifying people faking their accents

Teaching others to use their tongue and lips to make weird and enjoyable sounds 👄 👅 🗣️

Thanks for this article! I’ve been telling my students this but finally i have a nice article a can give them to read that covers the history

Then I immediately realized the same happens for “slay”, in the past tense it’s “slew” if you killed someone, but it’s “slayed” if you *killed it* 😜