I'm thinking it comes from "How comes it?"

Close to Swedish as well: Hur kommer det sig att ..., word by word, is 'How comes it itself that ...'.

I don't believe in the guard theory. In Latin as well as in Swedish, there are more complete phrases, like (in old Swedish) "(I am) your most humble servant".

the rule is simple: If the material following the colon is a complete sentence, it begins with a capital letter. The Swedish rules are a bit more wordy, but in essence the same: If what follows is a direct quote or quotation, or an exhortation, exclamation or a question, or when more than one sente...

For Swedish, I use godartad vs. malign.

BD, thanks for the explanation that I hoped that I would trigger.

As always, I cant add very much to BD's comments on Germanic languages. What about the Romance set? For Slavic, Russian has for being able to, знать and уметь, and for being allowed to, мочь. Chinese has in the former case, hui or neng, and for the latter, keyi. I suppose the degree of fuzziness bet...

Philip, don't feel too bad, my fingers are dyslexic. welcome to you, and (Psssssssst) there is an edit button on your own posts so you can quickly fix your spelling before others notice. Guess how I know this? Kt I agree, and in spades. Join the clubs! Any mispeligns of mine are to be blamed on my ...

When did the expression "as best as (I can)" or "as best (I can)" begin to take hold? It still strikes me as incorrect since "as well as (I can)" connotes a comparison while " the best I(I can)" indicates a superlative. Is anyone else noticing this change? Th...

Today's word is "ciao", brought to English by Ernest Hemmingway from Italian where it originally meant "slave." I never thought of it, but it's no surprise if it's true. A very common greeting in Germany-Austria-Hungary is Servus/Szervusz, and it's of course 'slave' (or maybe 's...

Admirable. A big welcome to you. Before I consider contacting you, I have a question, because I must confess that I get slightly suspicious from the combination Mandarin-Shanghai. Do you use the same vowel in for example fán and fáng, or is it clearly more closed (towards IPA [æ]) in fán compared to...

Not exactly vacation - he is together with a Czech professor busy on a project concerning Chinese dictionaries, funded from Taiwan.

For those of you who aren't chemists, it should be pointed out that arsole is a ring molecule. Have a look at it and other molecules!

If I were to mention a favourite cartoon, Mother Goose and Grim would top the list (unless Larson counts).

My first thought was that I would have no idea of TV celebrities, much less an American person. But I got curious after two days. 1-2-3-4-6 was enough to realize who was intended (the person is old enough to have been featured in Sweden in those days that I owned a TV set). Knowing the name, I just ...