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I laughed thinking about British empire teaching english to indians who they inherited most the language from. etymonline.com is a nice way to rabbithole time

• doubleunplussed 5y ago
  Well, English and most indian languages share a common ancestor, but indic languages have drifted just as far as any other from proto Indo-European that you can't really say one branch inherited anything from the other . Indic languages are our cousins, not our grandparents.
  • yesbabyyes 5y ago
    Perhaps not just as far though? I don't know how true it is, but I've heard that Lithuanian is considered the living language that is closest to proto-Indo-European. English is interesting in that it has been mixed up with so many different branches of the tree, Saxon, Scandinavian, Latin, French, etc during different periods. Sometimes it has synonyms coming from eg Norse and French, where the PIE root is the same but the words are quite different, and carrying different connotations.
• mjochim 5y ago
  > to rabbithole time away with fun I absolutely love how you use rabbit hole as a verb here :D.
  • agumonkey 5y ago
    I think it was used in the "yak system design" article on the FP