Tell me/ us an interesting fact we might not know. I’ll start.

Chas and Dave play on “My Name is…” by Eminem

Nope, they played on Labbi Siffres “I got the” which was later sampled by Eminem.

To be fair they pop up on bloody hundreds of records as they were session musicians, Chas in particular has loads of recording for people like Jerry Lee Lewis as a member of the Outlaws. And Dave has plenty of credits too.

Matt Bellamy of Muse fame is the son of George Bellamy who, as a part of the Tornados scored the only US number 1 instrumental with Telstar.

Getting back to the etymology/linguistics stuff. I started the Swedish course in Duolingo (have a mate who’s a Swedish speaking Finn so just wanted to learn a bit of his language). In Irish, in common with some other languages, we have no indefinite article. So if you’re saying “I have a dog” you just say “I have dog” The definite articles are an (“on”) and na for singular and plural respectively. I’ve noticed that in Swedish singular nouns end in “an” and plurals end in “na” eg kvinnan and kvinna for the woman and the women. I wonder if there’s a connection somewhere. Anything similar in other Scandi languages (given that most Irish cities started out as Viking settlements)?

Yorkshire folk are really a lost tribe of Welsh folk.

Hmmm. There’s more in the mix, though one of the Dales 3 peaks is called Pen y Ghent ( hill of the border I think, tho wind was what folks used to say).

that in Swedish singular nouns end in “an” and plurals end in “na” eg kvinnan and kvinna

Similar in many v different Euro languages: criterion/criteria in Latin; dendron/dendra in Greek (trees). So I’d guess pointing to a common Indo European grammatical route some time after the last ice age. Not that I’ve a clue, I’d love to study this stuff, linguistic anthropology? Archeological linguistic anthropology? Ok not an interesting fact.

“D’you wanna go now?” in my accent over the noise of a club sounds just like the swedish.

our brains usually perceive colours that our eyes don’t have actual receptors for (i.e. colours other than red, green and blue).

Technically, and this is a quite interesting fact, most humans actually see blue, green and yellow. Our “long” cone receptors generally pick up light in the 565-580nm range, which is definitely yellow. They’re also the most numerous – and this is partly why “hi-viz” is so often yellow.

Isn’t there something about being able to see blue being evolutionary speaking a very recent thing for humans and this may be an explanation for why there are (were) no separate words for blue and green in Welsh (and some other languages I think)?

A mile is eight furlongs; a furlong is ten chains; a chain is 22 yards. So small handy numbers but yes the base changes weirdly.

Yes – the interesting fact was that the number base appears to change randomly with every increment of scale.

Metric = What is 10+10? 20
Imperial = What is 10 + 10? Well, that depends but probably something like three chains, a groat and 7/8ths

Graham Hill is the only person to win Le Mans, the Monaco Grand Prix, and the Indianapolis 500. He was also the first F1 World Champion father of an F1 World champion.

Hmmm. There’s more in the mix, though one of the Dales 3 peaks is called Pen y Ghent ( hill of the border I think, tho wind was what folks used to say).

I think Ghent as in the Belgian city means river confluence. Gwynt is Welsh for wind ( not sure if same in Cumbria/Elmet) so makes sense for an exposed hilltop, not hard to see it evolving to Ghent

Similar in many v different Euro languages: criterion/criteria in Latin; dendron/dendra in Greek (trees). So I’d guess pointing to a common Indo European grammatical route some time after the last ice age.

Ah, yes, of course. Now that you point it out, I see it. I was focusing too narrowly on the similarities between a language I can speak fairly fluently (or at least used to) and one I was learning anew. Fascinating stuff though. If that kind of thing interests you, I can highly recommend a podcast called Lexicon Valley. He covers stuff like this amongst loads of other quirky language stuff.

a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold

D’Arcy- is duolingo anything like berlingo?

a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold

What about a pound of golden feathers ?.

When there’s horse racing on the telly, around a lot of the track the horses are too far from the camera positions any to pick up sound – for decades horse racing has be broadcast with the same sound library recording of stampeding buffalo

The heated wing mirrors of a duolingo are much more reliable than the ones on a berlingo

D’Arcy- is duolingo anything like berlingo?

Eh? 😀

Some Turtles can (sort of) breathe through the bums when hibernating.
It’s called Cloacal respiration – because they don’t have ribs & a diaphragm they rely on muscles to squeeze & expand their lungs.
This uses too much energy when hibernating so they have little sacs by there bum hole that can absorb oxygen and expell CO.

Nope, they played on Labbi Siffres “I got the” which was later sampled by Eminem.

I know. But that’s not quite as fun now, is it?

this may be an explanation for why there are (were) no separate words for blue and green in Welsh (and some other languages I think)?

I don’t think so, evolution of physical human attributes takes way longer than evolution of languages. We haven’t changed much for many tens of thousands of years.

The words for blue/green are the same in quite a few languages. This sounds confusing but this means they consider green to be a shade of blue (or vice versa). This isn’t as weird as it sounds – for example, we would say cherry is a shade of red, as is strawberry But if you’d been brought up with cherry and strawberry as different colours (as most of us can clearly differentiate between the two) then you’d think us using one word was madness.

Isn’t there something about being able to see blue being evolutionary speaking a very recent thing for humans

No – the majority of primates (definitely all apes and most old-world monkeys) are trichromatic. So, being able to see blue wavelengths likely predates the split between apes and old-world monkeys and that was around 25Mya.

Interestingly, most other mammals are dichromatic, except marine mammals which are generally monochromats. Most fish, birds and reptiles are tetrachromats.

may be an explanation for why there are (were) no separate words for blue and green in Welsh (and some other languages I think)?

Not unless Welsh (and come other languages) predate our simian ancestors…

a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold

You’re gonna have to elaborate on that…!

Wm. Shakespeare was the first person to be banned from a pub (several, actually, in and around Stratford upon Avon)

a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold

You’re gonna have to elaborate on that…!

Tis the other way round.

A Troy ounce weighs 31g, regular ounce 28g

What we know as Bitter did not become the most popular beer in England until 1963.
Prior to that it was Mild.
Before that it was Porter.

Ordering a beer in Australia can get complicated. A pint in South Australia is only 425ml, and the names for different measures vary from state to state.

Think of it as like the breadcake, barm, bap, roll debacle.

Wm. Shakespeare’s birth is celebrated on 23rd April, which is also the date of his death in 1616. In fact this is a nice coincidence and probably untrue because birth records weren’t required during Elizabethan times, only church records, i.e. baptisms, marriages and deaths.
23rd April is also St. Georges Day

We call a collection of recorded songs an ‘Album’ because 78rpm records only could only hold 3 minutes of sound per side. Selling a recording longer than that meant packaging a collection of disks in an album

So when ‘Long Player’ records came along the name ‘Album’ stuck.

‘Long Players’ typically hold approx 22 minutes per side with the exception of two copies of ‘The Golden Record’ each travelling on the two Voyager space probes. They contain field sound recordings (waves, wind, thunder) spoken greetings from people all around the world in 55 languages, an hour of music from navaho chants , symphonies, and Chuck Berry, various analogue encoded photos of the earth and the things and people on it and an hour of the recorded brainwaves of Ann Duryan falling in love.

Due to a piece of text being engraved on the disks being of the wrong specification the decision was almost made to just put blank disks on the space probes instead.

Wm. Shakespeare’s birth is celebrated on 23rd April, which is also the date of his death in 1616. In fact this is a nice coincidence and probably untrue because birth records weren’t required during Elizabethan times, only church records, i.e. baptisms, marriages and deaths.
23rd April is also St. Georges Day

Dunno if it’s probably untrue, it’s just unknown – since baptisms were carried out pretty sharpish because infant mortality was so high, and he was baptised on the 26th, it’s as likely as the 22nd or 24th, etc.

Only six examples of his actual hand writing are known, all of them signatures on legal documents. He spelled his surname differently on all six, and none of them are spelled the way we spell it today.

Robert Burns is probably best known globally for the work ‘Auld Lang Sine’. But he didn’t write it.

Stallone never said “Don’t push me!” in Rambo
Bogart never said “Play it again Sam” in Casablanca

There are loads of ‘most famous quotes’ that were either never said or mis-attributed.

I used this as the theme for an amazingly dull presentation to the sixth form explaining that “Truth is in the Majority” meaning that if enough people believed something then it became true. I followed this the following week with “Truth is in the Individual” which argued the opposite. Somewhat confusingly I won both of those debates but lost “Truth is undefined” in the third week, possibly because the audience had died of boredom.

a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold

You’re gonna have to elaborate on that…!

Measurement of weight versus a measurement of value I imagine

In the Rambo book, he dies.

a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold

You’re gonna have to elaborate on that…!

Measurement of weight versus a measurement of value I imagine

I refer you to my earlier answer about the randomness of the non-metric system where they just randomly pick stuff and call it a measurement. “I want a 32 ounce pound” – fine but I am having a 28 ounce pound at the same time, just depends what substance you are weighing

In the Rambo book, he dies.

Probably explains why Rambo 2 – xxxxx were such poor films compared to the original 🙂

It was my wife’s birthday yesterday. It was also a colleague’s birthday. Most folk think that’s pretty unlikely what with there being 365 days to have a birthday on.

But in fact you only need a group of 23 people before it becomes more likely that there’s at least one shared birthday than everyone having discrete ones.

(Ignoring leap years and seasonality of sexy times and hence birthdays)

Another maths one. If you add up all the integers 1+2+3+4……up to infinity.

The sum adds up to -1/12

TBF the PO-2 dropped a bomb on it while it (an F86) was parked.

The version the story that I know is that F86 stalled whilst slowing down behind it

a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold

It’s cos the feathers are cheaper, obvs.

The version the story that I know is that F86 stalled whilst slowing down behind it

The story you know is made up, the event is pretty well recorded

Ka-boom

Another maths one

The contentious one? .999(to infinity) is exactly the same as 1

[runs away]

a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold

An ordinary pound is approx 454g. Gold is weighed in troy units, a troy pound is only about 373g.