Dry Observings

Please, for the love of god, please stop calling similar-looking words with different meanings “false cognates”, especially those of you who know there’s another term - false friend - available for that! E.g. Spanish acta and English act, which I just saw described as “false cognates”, are literally cognates! They are, however, false friends!

cognate = two words that share a common etymological origin

false cognate = two words which appear to share a common etymological origin because they look or sound the same, but don’t

false friend = two words which appear to have the same meaning because they look or sound the same, but don’t

Now, why should you listen to this prescriptivist proscription? Well, using “false cognate” to mean “false friend” quickly becomes a problem if any of your students ever ask about the history of the language you’re teaching! Like, it’s kind of confusing if your teacher tells you that acta and act are false cognates because they don’t mean the same thing, but then explain the next day that they are cognates! Or if your teacher tells you that día and day are false cognates, but wait that doesn’t make sense, because they mean the same thing, right? Or if you crack open a dictionary and it includes etymological notes, but they just cause confusion because it’s using the technical definition of “cognate”, not the one your teacher’s been using in class.

So please, when you want to talk about two words that look alike but have different meanings, use the term false friend. Cognate and false cognate refer to etymology.

They say Hungarian has 18 cases. You don’t know what they are or how they work. Only that they exist and there are 18 of them. You are scared.

“Fluent in 3 months” Benny Lewis proudly proclaims. “Fluent in 3 months” he repeats, in an assertive tone. “Fluent in 3 months” he demands, “Or else.”

The website asks for your target language. You do not know what it has done to become a target, nor do you want to know.

Course progress: 100% Due date: yesterday You still cannot learn Ukrainian.

“How many languages are you fluent in?” asks the innocent onlooker. You forget what the question means. What is fluency? Have you ever known?

The Russian speakers say they speak the hardest language. So do the Finns. So do the Chinese. They are all wrong.

You look at the verb table. “I am. You are. He/She/it is.” What am I? Where are you? Who is he/she/it?

You cannot pronounce the Czech ř. You cannot begin to fathom it. You hear it when you close your eyes. It is the fabric of your nightmares.

Odysseus’s player: I say, “Who me? I’m nobody.”

Homer: Roll for deception.

Odysseus’s player: I got a natural 20.

Homer: The cyclops now completely believes that your name is Nobody. He shouts for help from the other cyclops but they ignore him because he’s telling them that “Nobody hurt him.”

Call me Maybe preformed with bottles

Do you know why? 

Do you want to know why?

Cute little boys in their boy dresses!

And dresses and skirts look fine on men:

In different cultures around the world different items of clothing are worn that in many countries would be seen as feminine: 

And they all look fabulous as fuck, like wow!

The only reason you think so now is because you are socialised differently. Which is ok, that happens, but when you assert things as facts and don’t look at any of the culture behind them you looking like an anal fissure. 

Extremely tight quarters, with a central supporting pillar that is very, very thoroughly in the way of your right arm.

Pre-Columbian towns near the Mississippi and on the East coast did this too. They usually surrounded their towns with palisades, and they would build the entrance to the palisade wall in a zigzag – always with the wall to the right as you entered, to hinder attackers and give an advantage to the defender. Here’s some gates with some examples of what I’m talking about:

Use of sword and shield is a classic demonstration of how right-handedness predominated. There’s historical mention of left-handed swordsmen (gladiators and Vikings), and what a problem they were for their opponents, but that only applies to single combat.

A left-handed hoplite or housecarl simply couldn’t fight as part of a phalanx or shield wall, since the shields were a mutual defence (the right side of the shield covered its owner’s left side, its left side covered the right side of his neighbour to the left, and so on down the line) and wearing one on the wrong arm threw the whole tactic out of whack.

Jousting, whether with or without an Italian-style tilt barrier, was run shield-side to shield-side with the lance at a slant (except for the Scharfrennen, a highly specialised style that’s AFAIK unique.) Consequently left-handed knights were physically unable to joust.

There’s a creditable theory (I first read it in “A Knight and His Horse”, © Ewart Oakeshott 1962, 1998 and many other places since) that a knight’s “destrier” horse - from dexter, “right” - was trained to lead with his right forefoot so that any instinctive swerve would be to the right, away from collision while letting the rider keep his shield between him and harm. (In flying, if a pilot hears “break!” with no other details, the default evasive direction is right.)

The construction of plate armour, whether specialised tournament kit or less elaborate battle gear, is noticeably “right-handed“ - so even if a wealthy knight had his built “left-handed” it would be a waste of time and money; he would still be a square peg in a world of round holes and none of the other kids would play with him.

Even after shields and full armour were no longer an essential part of military equipment, right-hand use was still enforced until quite recently, and to important people as well as ordinary ones - it happened to George VI, father of the present Queen of England. Most swords with complex hilts, such as swept-hilt rapiers and some styles of basket-hilt broadsword, are assymetrical and constructed for right handers. Here’s my schiavona…

It can be held left-handed, but using it with the proper thumb-ring grip, and getting maximum protection from the basket, is right-handed only. (More here.) Some historical examples of left-hand hilts do exist, but they’re rare, and fencing masters had the same “learn to use your right hand” bias as tourney organisers, teachers and almost everyone else. Right-handers were dextrous, but left-handers were sinister, etc., etc.

However, several predominantly left-handed families did turn their handedness into advantage, among them the Kerrs / Carrs, a notorious Reiver family along the England-Scotland Borders, by building their fortress staircases with a spiral the other way to the OP image.

This would seem to be a bad idea, since the attackers (coming upstairs) no longer have their right arms cramped against the centre pillar - however it worked in the Kerrs’ favour because they were used to this mirror-image of reality while nobody else was, and the defender retreating up the spiral had that pillar guarding his right side, while the attacker had to reach out around it…

For the most part Reiver swords weren’t elaborate swept-hilt rapiers but workmanlike basket-hilts. Some from Continental Europe have the handedness of my schiavona with thumb-rings and assymmetrical baskets, but the native “British Baskethilt” is a variant of the Highland claymore* and like it seems completely symmetrical, without even a thumb-ring, which gives equal protection to whichever hand is using it.

*I’m aware there are those who insist “claymore” refers only to two-handers, however the Gaelic term claidheamh-mòr - “big sword” - just refers to size, not to a specific type of sword in the way “schiavona” or “karabela” or even “katana” does.

While the two-hander was the biggest sword in common use it was the claidheamh-mòr; after it dropped out of fashion and the basket-hilt became the biggest sword in common use, that became the claidheamh-mòr.

Пара примеров карт “в начале” и “в конце” процесса рисования от #MonkeyBloodDesign

Ничего сложного - базовые контуры в начале, декорации и финтифлюшки уже потом.