The vast majority of the 100 most common words in English are still inherited Germanic words.

English shares a common Germanic ancestor with German. German and English are sisters.

A tactic used when the person speaking has been recognized to speak according to the rules of the legislature. I don’t really see why that’s relevant here though?

No, see, it should be allowed when we agree with the people making the disruption. Otherwise absolutely not!

True, but as usual, that’s offset elsewhere in the grammar (and a binary or ternary noun class system doesn’t really introduce that much complexity).

English still has number distinctions with multiple irregular patterns (and plural/collective distinctions like “fish/fish/fishes”), and even lesser recognized animacy distinctions that must take up some space in the grammar too (“my face” is fine, but “the face of mine” is odd, while “the clock’s face” and “the face of the clock” are both fine).

One example of such a process is subregular patterns getting extended instead of always levelling toward the most productive constructions.

In many southern dialects, for example, even though the productive past tense is the “-ed” past (just like it is in all modern varieties of English), and so we normally would expect to get regularization like “cleave/clove/cloven” > “cleave/cleaved/cleaved”, we instead in these dialects get irregular examples like “bring/brought/brought” being regularized not to expected productive “bring/bringed/bringed”, but rather “bring/brang/brung” on the pattern of “sing/sang/sung”, “drink/drank/drunk”, etc.

Extending subregularities like this can cause irregular patterns to persist and grow stronger over time.

I suppose that technically this isn’t introducing a new irregularity so much as it is helping an older one persist, but it’s a similar process.

Other recent innovations include things like Canadian and northern US English “I’m done my homework”, northern positive anymore (“Anymore, I go to the store on Fridays”), and prepositional “because” (“I can’t come tonight, because homework”).

Again, this isn’t exactly the development of new irregular morphology (word-building rules) specifically, but these are analogous processes elsewhere in the grammar.

It’s also worth mentioning that English is becoming more and more of an isolating language over time (a language with less morphology/word-building processes), and so we’d expect irregular morphology specifically to become less common in these systems over time.

That was kinda rambly, and way more than you asked for - I hope it made some sort of sense.

It isn’t though.

It may seem like it is, but English is actually becoming more regular over time in many dialects.

Dialects dropping the 3rd person singular -s, dropping irregular (and even regular!) plurals, dialects eliminating the subjunctive, and past tense/participle distinctions. In the phonology you have marked features like English’s interdental fricatives going away as well. All of these processes are producing less marked and more regular structures across the English-speaking world.

As always, there are processes countering these and introducing more irregularity, but as cattywampas mentioned, these are the sorts of processes that all languages are always undergoing. English really isn’t special - it’s just a natural language like any other.

“Open sounds” (which, I assume, refers to continuants) and bilabial sounds aren’t mutually exclusive.

When you pronounce the /w/ at the beginning of “one”, your lips round (purse) and touch each other at the corners, but they don’t form a full closure. So, the oral tract is still open, but the articulators (moving mouth parts) are still touching.

This could be reworded as “the middle of your lips don’t touch each other”, but multiple commenters are correct in that your lips absolutely do touch each other when you say “one” in English.

Sorry, but I still just do not see how stating the obvious fact that “if you come here illegally you will be arrested and deported” can in any way be seen as “propaganda”.

Thanks for the good-faith discussion. :)

So, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like in that case the “Visit Mexico!” ads I saw when I was growing up in the US would be Mexican propaganda then, correct? Since they’re advancing a specific political cause, namely increasing tourist revenue and the government’s share of that revenue.

In that case, an ad saying “hey, don’t try to get into our country illegally because we’ll arrest and deport you” feels much less like propaganda to me than “hey, come visit our country so we can get your money!” does.

Edit: So, (aside from the comment that mentioned that this may be a mistranslation), if what you say about the situation is correct, to me it’s starting to sound like this might just be the Mexican government being intentionally incendiary and a bit hyperbolic in their language because they’re pissy about the US government going over their head and speaking directly to their people, which may be due to the (accurate or not) perception that the Mexican government isn’t doing enough to prevent illegal immigration. In that case, it seems like my original comment implying that this isn’t really propaganda is still mostly accurate.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense, thanks for the explanation. It definitely feels discriminatory. That’s a terrible translation if this is the case.

You’ll have to explain who you’re talking about, or how that’s relevant.

In any case, this may help. Let me rephrase: “TIL that if you’re American, buying an ad in Mexico saying ‘if you come to our country illegally, we will arrest and deport you’ is propaganda.”

TIL that saying “if you come to our country illegally, we will arrest and deport you” is propaganda.

Edit: oops, I seem to have accidentally posted a reasonable thought that goes against the circle-jerk. I’ll try to be a bit less objective and a bit more filled with myopic, conformist, unquestioned rage next time I comment here.

Don’t worry, I still believe that disappearing people to El Salvador is a terrible thing, and it makes me really angry, so I think I still pass the tribalist purity test.

Exactly.

“Games journalists”: blame gamers for everything

Gamers: stop consuming their content

“Games journalists”: shocked pikachu face

Nintendo is never getting another cent of my money.

This feels more like “10 guy thoughts” than shower thoughts

Why can’t I, hold all these eggs?

Men with vasectomies can still inseminate - it’s just that the semen doesn’t contain any sperm.

They’re not gone though? My wife plays Sims 2 all the time.

I’ll still be playing 4 for the foreseeable future.