What's the Kyoto Protocol?

Oh, I asked Google

Hmm... I must have known that once.

Hmm... I know this is a silly thing to ask, but is the first half of 聞かんじゃろう a contraction of 聞かない or 聞かぬ?

I was thinking 聞かぬ because I think it usually is in verbs, and because of じゃ・・・

Well, I know だろう and じゃろう mean the same thing

and I know ぬ and ない mean the same thing

(There's another じゃ which is a contraction of では, but it's not relevant here)

I guess I'm just curious about the contractions ない→ん and ぬ→ん

Like, I think じゃん is a contraction of じゃない, not from じゃぬ, because I think ぬ has to be attached to a verb

but I think 知らん is contracted from 知らぬ

which I read is used widely in western dialects

So I think sometimes you can say ん is specifically ぬ or ない

I'm curious if you can say that it's specifically ぬ in 聞かんじゃろう

Well, I think ぬ is mostly reduced to ん

Because you can look at historical text and trace the development of ん

Umm, we talked about /r/ + vowel + /n/ → /rn/ → /nn/

I didn't eat yet today

I ate today!

@Chocolate Hehe! 今日はたべました〜

Eat can be transitive or intransitive. Since today isn't edible, it has to be intransitive in that sentence :-)

Is there a question about こそあど？

Oh I see

I'm interested in the 「ってんだ」 in 「ワシの名前はワッツってんだ！」

I think it's short for っていうのだ, meaning というのだ

A-ha! It's in the dictionary dic.yahoo.co.jp/…

Oh!! I'm sorry, I'm dumb :-)

I thought you might be kidding... :-)

I'm still working on my list of contractions

I am going to go eat some today

Oh, the dictionary says 〜みたい(だ) is derived from 見たよう(だ)

That makes sense! I would never have guessed, though

Ahh, I see

I can understand that point of view

I love learning about Japanese etymology. I know it won't necessarily make me better at Japanese, but sometimes it helps me make sense of things

And sometimes it helps me remember stuff :-)

I love learning about English etymology, too.

English etymology can be really counterintuitive, too. Like, "goodbye" is a contraction of "God be with ye"

Yeah, maybe it was just easier to say that way? Etymonline has an amusing entry: "With parasitic -n- inserted by c.1300 for no apparent reason except that people liked to say it that way (cf. passenger, harbinger, scavenger)."

The OED doesn't give an explanation either. It refer to the entry for passenger, which says: In late ME. n was phonetically inserted before -ger (-dʒər) as in some other words, including harbinger, messenger, ostringer, porringer, scavenger, wharfinger, etc.: cf. also popinjay.

harbinger, messenger, ostringer, passenger, porringer, scavenger, wharfinger

At my last job, we used Yahoo! Messenger all the time.

And we'd say "message", but sometimes we started saying "messenge" by accident

"I'll messenge you the list"

I guess because we said "messenger" so much?? :-)

urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=messenge

It's an Instant Message thingy. They call it chat when it has 3 or more people, I think...

...although I don't know how many people make that distinction

I don't use much Yahoo stuff anymore.

I didn't know about こえ部

I just googled it!

Oh, I see...

I have an account on Skype, which has voice chat. I don't use it very often, though.

Oh, Yahoo chat rooms are scary.

Or, they used to be years ago. I haven't looked in a long time...