the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” is actually not the full phrase it actually is “curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back” so don’t let anyone tell you not to be a curious little baby okay go and be interested in the world uwu
See also:
Blood is thicker than water The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
Meaning that relationships formed by choice are stronger than those formed by birth.
Let’s not forget that “Jack of all trades, master of none” ends with “But better than a master of one.”
It means that being equally good/average at everything is much better than being perfect at one thing and sucking at everything else. So don’t worry if you’re not perfect at something you do! Being okay is better!
It goes to show that conformity isn’t always a good thing. And that just because more than one person has the same idea, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.
what the fuck why haven’t i heard the full version to any of these
“Birds of a feather flock together” ends with “until the cat comes.”
It’s actually a warning about fair-weather friends, not an assessment of how complementary people are.
I’ve always felt like these were cut down on purpose.
I really like these phrases and plan on spreading this knowledge.
The early bird catches the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I want to make designs out of these.
Funny how all the half-finished ones encourage uniformity and upholding the status-quo, while the complete proverbs encourage like…living exciting, eclectic lives driven by choice and personal passion.
NICE
The legendary thread is back
I’m going to repeat this every time this post crosses my dash. The earliest version of the cat proverb was even better (and more true) than “but satisfaction brought him back”
The earliest version was:
Care [as in: worry/sorrow] will kill a cat.
And it goes back to a line in a play written by Ben Jonson (Every Man in his Humour), dated to 1601:
Helterskelter, hang sorrow,* care’ll kill a cat, up-tails all, and a louse for the hangman
(And the character who said this was a fishmonger – he’d know cats best of all).
Personally, I love ‘up-tails all,’ because that is so cat.
*Today, instead of ‘hang’ sorrow, we’d probably say ‘f–k sorrow.’
Yeah, that’s right (though I thought the play was from 1598?).
The other versions of the sayings aren’t entirely accurate, either: the earliest known version of “blood is thicker than water” was from the fable of Reynard the Fox, and went “I also hear it said, kin-blood is not spoiled by water” (it probably referred to the waters of the oceans and the distance they create not dimming familial ties); “jack of all trades and master of none” was originally just “jack of all trades” (and meant what people usually interpret it to mean – the “but better than a master of one” additionwas just tacked on later); “great minds think alike” and “birds of a feather flock together” also mean what they
are
traditionally thought to mean. I wrote up a longer analysis of all this a few days ago, with a lot more detail; basically, people are trying to change the sayings to mean what THEY want them to mean – but then again, the most well-known versions sometimes change the original meanings, too.
“(though I thought the play was from 1598?)”
Could be. I just pulled the date off an e-text of the play online. Very possible that the play was first performed in 1598, and first printed in octavo in 1601 (and the e-text was citing that printing as the source.
“…
basically, people are trying to change the sayings to mean what THEY
want them to mean – but then again, the most well-known versions
sometimes change the original meanings, too.”
Indeed. Evolution and adaptation is a key feature of language.
And sometimes (maybe even often) antiquity makes for poor authority. Just because a belief is ancient doesn’t make it right – just look at the ancient beliefs that disease is caused by demons, or could be cured by drinking mercury, or the belief that “spare the rod and spoil the child” is sound parenting advice. If people are changing proverbs today, it’s because the proverbs need changing.
We just need to be bolder about acknowledging that in the present, and not attributing our own beliefs to ghosts of the past.
support autistic people who can talk “"normally”“ 💞
support autistic people who can technically speak but have a lot of trouble with wording 💞
support selectively nonverbal autistic people 💞
support autistic people who are nonverbal sometimes 💞
support autistic people 💞💞
Support hyperverbal nonverbal autistic people.
Support “verbal” autistic people who have way more trouble with language than many “nonverbal” autistic people (who may excel at language but just be unable to use speech).
Support complex understandings of autistic and other neurodivergent people’s connections to language. Avoid oversimplifying. Avoid assuming that if something’s counterintuitive or you’ve never seen it before or don’t understand, then it can’t be real.
If you don’t love languages, hear me out: my telugu friend had been affectionately calling me, a hindi speaker, “gundi” for 7 months. We didn’t realize until recently that the word has two completely different meanings in Telugu and Hindi, and that we both had completely different interpretations of her affection.
In Telugu, “gundi” means “smol/button/round/cute”.
if youre a writer and you want to know what multilingual ppl are really like, today I was giving directions to a Chinese couple but they were having trouble understanding me, so I turned to my gf for help and she explained it very slowly to them in English and sent them on their way. when they were gone I said “babe… you’re Chinese. Why did you give them the directions in English?” and she looked at me with utter horror, and that’s the story of how my gf forgot she spoke her own native language
I was watching a movie once, and it took like fifteen minutes to dawn upon me that I was watching it in my native language and not in English.
Silim Rachel! This is an easy one — sheep were one of, if not the, most common domesticated animals in Sumer. There are a couple of words for “ewe”: ganam, which refers to any female sheep, and u (yes, just the letter u), which is more common but is used exclusively for female sheep which are old enough to have lambs. Confusingly, both words are written with the same cuneiform sign, 𒇇.
autistic people using big words and “clinical” sounding language because they feel it to be the most effective means of communication is so often perceived by allistics as pretension. autistics are then made fun of for this use of language which can be incredibly damaging and often causes autistics to retreat further into themselves as any attempts they make to communicate with allistics cause them to be punished
so in general if you don’t like the way someone speaks (especially if you know for a fact that they’re autistic) maybe don’t make fun of them and instead do your best to understand and communicate with them in a way that’s beneficial to you both
Allistics take note. I speak formally because doing it otherwise feels fake and absurd to me.
i speak very eloquently out loud, or when i’m typing a post most of the time, however, when i’m talking to friends, i speak very informally because i adapt to them.
i’m pretty bad at code switching, which is absurd considering my life and my job. so when i finally learned to be casual, i rarely manage to switch back to “proper” even for professional contexts.
i guess students like it, though, because i seem like a regular person… so there is that…
The Navajo language was chosen to
code U.S. military operations because
it has no written form and is almost
impossible for non-native speakers to
learn. After the operation was
declassified in 1968, the Japanese Chief
of Intelligence admitted that though
his army had been able to decipher
many U.S. codes, they were never
able to crack the Navajo code. SourceSource 2
If you wanna try some Navajo words, check out the NavajoWOTD (Word of the Day) archive 🙂
Here’s an example of one of the verbs. There’s also a huge archive of Navajo words at the NavajoWOTD SoundCloud! (https://soundcloud.com/navajowotd)
things linguistics has taught me: do not fuck with the welsh
Seriously though do not. This is welsh nationalism in a nutshell.
So like, 150 or so years ago, nobody cared about Welsh. Not even the welsh. But then, one day, some folks got sick of paying the tolls at toll gates. Citing bizarre biblical precedent, they dressed up as women and started seizing toll gates, at which point the (also welsh) gate owners went “WTF?” and called in (english) magistrates to resolve the dispute.
The English Magistrates looked at the situation and went “WTF?” and commissioned an inquiry loosely titled “WTF is wrong with Wales??”
Well this commission did a ton of work and looked at schools and politics and people on hillsides raising sheep and all that jazz and came to the thrilling conclusion: What’s Wrong with Wales is that Ridiculous Backwards Language they all speak there.
There was a moment of dead silence, broken only by the loud scrape as Wales, collectively, as a nation, in a fit of unity not seen since the castles came to subjugate the native tribes, pushed back its chair, stood up slowly, and said “what you just say bout me?”
And folks who’d never heard it spoken started teaching their children Welsh, and the old sheep herder on the hill became a cultural icon, and the rioters and the gate owners high fived each other and said “suck it, England!” (only in Welsh this time).
And now Welsh is a protected language, there’s a strong Welsh nationalist movement, with its own flag and spelling conventions, and there’s a Welsh channel on television (which is doubly impressive when you remember that Britain only has like three channels).
And that is how the Welsh saved their language from extinction by sheer force of spite
Just gotta add those toll booth riots were called the Rebecca Riots, the rioters were known as Rebeccas and I am named after them. It’s the one consolation to an otherwise boring name.
Also my great grandad lived to the age of 101 and never spoke a word of English that wasn’t forced out of him through threat of unemployment. Despite being fluent and having 5 great grandchildren who have the Welsh vocabulary of toddlers.
let me tell you some of the ways the English tried to kill our language
Welcome to language where all the words are made up, that’s right every word you’ve ever used or will use was made up at some point in time whether it was hundreds of years ago or last week, and they somehow came to represent a thing, person, or idea, communicated and understood by entire civilizations
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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