Today I Learned

[Alex]

TIL a lot of the English vocabulary was borrowed straight from Dutch

I had always assumed the similarities were due to their common Germanic origin but nope, there's more to the story!!

So if Frisian is half-way between Dutch and English that means it's actually half-way between Dutch and Dutch? @Alex?

Yeah, that's basically accurate.

Turns out I don't "speak three languages," I just speak one language three very different ways. (No wonder it's all Frutchlish in my head.)

[LilFluff]

I wouldn't mind one of those faucet units that lets you just turn the tap and get sparkling water. But near as I can tell CO2 is only readily available in the US in either the tiny cartridges you put in a seltzer bottle or the big pressure bottles sold for restaurants and commercial chemical usage (also recently learned that there is apparently no such thing in the US as food grade or food service CO2, the same bottle returned by a restaurant might after refilling go to a welding shop or vice versa). From what I recall when looking them up a while back those under counter sink units use a smaller bottle more like a propane bottle you might get for a backyard gas fired grill. So from time to time I'll burn an hour looking up Soda Stream and seltzer bottle prices. But so far I've never actually bought one.

[InspectorCaracal]

I wouldn't mind one of those faucet units that lets you just turn the tap and get sparkling water. But near as I can tell CO2 is only readily available in the US in either the tiny cartridges you put in a seltzer bottle or the big pressure bottles sold for restaurants and commercial chemical usage (also recently learned that there is apparently no such thing in the US as food grade or food service CO2, the same bottle returned by a restaurant might after refilling go to a welding shop or vice versa). From what I recall when looking them up a while back those under counter sink units use a smaller bottle more like a propane bottle you might get for a backyard gas fired grill. So from time to time I'll burn an hour looking up Soda Stream and seltzer bottle prices. But so far I've never actually bought one.

lol

originally was replying to post about sodastream but then noticed you mention it at the bottom

so far we've been finding it more economical than buying sparkling water and it's not too hard to find places to exchange the canisters and save money on refills

[thiskurt]

If I had a sodastream I could finally make sparkling milk.

[LilFluff]

If I had a sodastream I could finally make sparkling milk.

Is have to hunt down the video again, but iirc Barry Lewis and Ashens tried that in one of their Will It Soda videos with the result being either disaster or just nasty.

[thiskurt]

If I had a sodastream I could finally make sparkling milk.

Is have to hunt down the video again, but iirc Barry Lewis and Ashens tried that in one of their Will It Soda videos with the result being either disaster or just nasty.

I saw that one, I think they said it tasted like it had gone sour, I still wanna try it though. Coca Cola once even made a carbonated milk drink, I think it was also flavoured, but it didn't take off. (unrelated: I'm surprised Rhett and Link don't seem to have done a 'will it soda' yet)

[Anke]

When I first got my SodaStream, exchanging a cylinder was about 9 euros. More brands sprang up and spread to more shops and they're down to less than 6 euros now. (It's a standardised cylinder, so brand doesn't matter.)
Not sure if I'm actually saving money, because I always bought the cheapest store brand bottled water and I like a lot of bubbles, but still, not having to collect bottles is great!

[Bee]

TIL a lot of the English vocabulary was borrowed straight from Dutch

I had always assumed the similarities were due to their common Germanic origin but nope, there's more to the story!!

So if Frisian is half-way between Dutch and English that means it's actually half-way between Dutch and Dutch? @Alex?

Frisian is the most closely related language to English still used by the way.

https://www.europelanguagejobs.com/blog ... et-brother

Another interesting thing is that there's also a bunch of Dutch loanwords in Japanese that people usually assume come from either English or German, but come from Dutch because for a long time they were the only foreigners the Japanese would trade/interact with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_ ... tch_origin
https://www.the-low-countries.com/artic ... understand

Oh dangit I thought I had replied to this but apparently you can't post telepathically?? @InspectorCaracal please fix this

ANYWAY yeah, I knew Frisian is the closest language to English, but to be honest the only reason I know Frisian exists is because of Daily, so yeah.

I didn't really know about the influence on Japanese, though, so a lot of things make more sense now (so many words feel like a bit stretch pronunciation-wise if you presume they come from English. oof)

[Bee]

I feel very left out from the carbonated water conversation

I had no idea it was so popular???

[thiskurt]

TIL that the original natural lemons, citrons, were massive, but it was mostly a massive rind with very little 'meat' and then we bred it through hybridization with other citrus species to get to the lemons we have today.

This is what a citron looks like: