"The World Will Go Vegan Without Realising It"

"The World Will Go Vegan Without Realising It"

nahým a bosým posléze a oblečeným v cárech zlosti ve chvíli čiré beztesknosti zasteskne se nám po něze

then, dressed only in our anger naked, barefoot, penniless in moments of pure longinglessness we will long for something tender

Jan Skácel in Naděje s bukovými křídly (1983)

Lubomír Typlt: Studna | Well Nadějné vyhlídky | Great Expectations: exhibition at DOX, Prague (10. 11. 2021 – 24. 4. 2022)

Intro

To be very honest, the main reason I created this blog is to be able to communicate with my boyfriend (who has no social media other than tumblr) in another way than via email.

But I also want to take this as an opportunity to create an online storage of my favourite art, music, literature and other such things (as well as my own art) - to have them in one place for myself, and for others who may be interested.

I used to have a tumblr as a teenager and I did not think I would ever return to this platform, but I am feeling quite excited and nostalgic about it. I look forward to this experience.

Interesting etymologies: part 2

Some words in different languages beginning with al- which are borrowings from Arabic (e.g. alcohol, algebra, alchemy, algorithm) are actually the result of reanalysis.

In this case, al is originally an article in Arabic, preceding the word itself (so e.g.  al  + kuḥl → alcohol,  al + jabr → algebra), but it was reanalysed as one word in the process of borrowing.

The word algorithm comes from al Ḵwārizmī, a name of a Persian mathematician.

In the case of admiral, the original boundary was between the word and the article following it, i.e.  amīr + al, because it was a military title often followed by another noun (‘commander of + noun’). The reanalysis was also influenced by the Latin suffix -alis. (This is, however, only a theory “not borne out by the textual evidence in either Arabic or the Western languages”, according to the OED.)