Brian BìnhIn an attempt to break up the constant doom scrolling, I'm going to post random little snippets of information I've picked up over the years. Stuff that is not at all topical because I need a little break from the present horrors.
If you buy a bottle of 3 year old Scotch and put it in your cupboard for twenty years until you bring it out for a special occasion, you don't have a bottle of 23 year old Scotch. You have a twenty year old bottle of 3 year old Scotch. Liquor ages in the barrel and picks up flavor from the wood. It doesn't pick up anything from the inert and nonporous glass bottle.
Wine ages in the bottle because it isn't distilled. It is more than just alcohol. It has sugars, tannins, & other stuff that continue to react chemically to change the flavor profile. This change isn't always for the better. Depending on a huge variety of factors (temperature, light, type of grapes, etc.) wine quality generally follows a bell curve: it improves, peaks, then degrades. Most wine peaks between 6 months & 5 years old. Very old wine is bad but costly because people think it's linear.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae & S. pastorianus are the two species of yeast used to make beer. S. pastorianus makes lager. S. cerevisiae makes ale, but also wine, liquor, mead, & bread. "Winemaking yeast", "champagne yeast", "baker's yeast", and "distiller's yeast" are all breeds of the same species: S. cerevisiae. S. pastorianus is a hybrid species that appeared when S. cerevisiae crossbred with another species of wild yeast in a brewery in Munich in the 1600s. There was no lager in the Middle Ages!
Speaking of the Middle Ages, you've probably heard that "ye" was actually "the" and was never pronounced with a Y sound because they used the Y to represent the letter thorn, Þ. You may wonder why they picked Y as a substitute for a letter that looked more like a b superimposed on a p. It's because in a lot of handwriting, it looked like a Y. The runic form was a stick with a triangle on the side. Later forms were rounder. Some miniscule forms were much curvier like a fancy Y.
Serifs were not extra bits added to letters as decoration. They were a natural consequence of writing with a quill. The tip of a quill has a little split through which ink flows by capillary action. When you press the quill to a page, the end spreads open on contact then narrows as you ease up on the pressure when you draw it across the page. That initial spread meant each stroke started with a serif "flare" (and sometimes ended with one if you pressed hard at the end, like in capital legs).
You've heard how "uppercase" & "lowercase" letters are called that because typesetters literally stored them in cases with the majuscules on top. Did you know that majuscule & miniscule letters are two different versions of the Latin alphabet? The ancients wrote in majuscule letters. That's right. THE ROMANS WROTE IN ALL CAPS LIKE AN ANGRY INTERNET COMMENT (when they weren't using Greek to look fancy and dignified). Miniscule letters came much later around the start of the Middle Ages.
When scribes started using miniscule, they only used miniscule. it was its own alphabet.they wrote completely in lowercase letters.they also didn't space out their sentences much.parchment was expensive so they didn't want to waste space.
It wasn't until Charlemagne's time that scribes invented "mixed case": using capital letters to start paragraphs and mark proper nouns while using miniscule for everything else. Capital letters helped break up the wall of text so it was easier to read.
Upper and lowercase letters were two different alphabets stuck together to give us capitalization. If they had chosen a different majuscule alphabet, we could have had sentences like this:
"Тhe Лord of the Рings" was a sequel to "Тhe Хobbit", both of which were written by Д'.Р.Р. Тolkien. Иt tells the story of the Оne Рing after Бilbo gives it to his nephew Фrodo and Гandalf tells him to destroy it.
Michael J. Fox's real middle name is Andrew, but he didn't like "Michael A. Fox" as a stage name. By SAG rules, he had to use a name other than "Michael Fox" because there was already an actor with that name, so he just stuck a J in the middle.
In his hit movie "Back to the Future", his character's father, George, says he has to get home so he doesn't miss his favorite TV program, "Science Fiction Theatre". "Science Fiction Theatre" had only 8 episodes. Four starred the original Michael Fox!
The Vietnamese language has *many* pronouns for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person. I can think of dozens off the top of my head and I suspect it's actually hundreds. They vary based on both relative and absolute age, social standing, incredibly complex family trees, profession, politeness, marital status, and more. Vietnamese people tend to ask a lot of personal questions when first meeting someone, which foreigners think is kind of rude, but they need that information to know how to refer to you.
Simon dē Gulielmō 🐧@BrianBinh It reminds me of my experience in Korea, when people would ask your age on meeting them (which seems very personal for a Westerner). In Korean the verb ending used changes according to your relationship to a person in a hierarchy - and a person's age plays an important role in that. Although they know that is not necessary to know when speaking English, it's hard to break a habit.
Misuse Case@simonwilliamson @BrianBinh As a fan of Korean dramas I’ve seen a lot of bits where people (mostly men) are trying to figure out their relative status and how to speak to each other. Relative age and things like history of military service factor in.
There’s a drama where the protagonist is middle-aged but has a younger boss, and has to speak formally to him as a superior: the boss does not handle this situation delicately and it’s a way of demonstrating that the boss is an asshole.