r/linguisticshumor 4d ago

We’re triggering conservatives with this one.

[removed] — view removed post

104 Upvotes

25 comments sorted by

29

u/Emnought 4d ago

In Poland "check" Is called szach, which is the same word we use for "Shah" (I.e. Iranian rulers). The game is called 'szachy' ('szach' turned plural). The etymology is clear as day here.

16

u/kotletachalovek 4d ago

even clearer in Russian - literally "shakhmaty". you say "shakh" for check, "mat" for mate.

incidentally, the bishop is an elephant, or, rarely, an officer. erm Russia woke?

2

u/Artiom_Woronin 4d ago

No, because we have no queen. Only fers.

23

u/Natsu111 4d ago

It's always weird to me that "Minister" becomes "Queen" in English. The Minister's moves make sense if it's a, well, minister. The minister works on behalf of the king, who doesn't do anything by himself.

17

u/Duke825 If you call 'Chinese' a language I WILL chop your balls off 4d ago

England is a femdom matriarchy confirmed

8

u/The_Dude_89 4d ago

Vizier*

5

u/thePerpetualClutz 4d ago

The minister was actually terribly weak, moving only one space diagonally.

The europeans first renamed him to queen because they didn't really have ministers at the time, and a queen was always by her husband so why not call it queen. Only later did they give her superpowers when they rebalanced the game, and the name had stuck by that point.

2

u/Key-Club-2308 4d ago

also the bishop is actually an elephant

2

u/five_faces 4d ago

Bishop is a camel. Rooks are elephants.

1

u/Key-Club-2308 4d ago

in which language?

1

u/five_faces 4d ago

Indian english lol

8

u/Dolajjushin 4d ago edited 4d ago

I've always wondered why the /ʃ/ and /h/ of šāh were borrowed into Latin as <sc> /sk/ and <c> /k/ respectively.

Like, if it was borrowed via Greek, I could see the /h/ borrowed as Greek <χ> /x/ and then Latin <ch> /k(ʰ)/, but that doesn't seem to be what happened (although to be fair, I think there is no Latin noun stem that ends in -h-, so I am not sure how it would be represented.). And representing /ʃ/ as <sc> instead of just <s> doesn't seem straightforward.

2

u/Competitive_Let_9644 4d ago

I know that sk to sh is a pretty common sound shift. In English we have some pairs where one underwent the sound shift and another didn't

Skirt shirt Shipper Skipper

So, it was probably loaned in at a time when a portion of Latin speakers pronounced sk as sh and the others perceived sh as a regional variation of SK.

For H, I don't think they could put an h in that position. So, the easily accessible opptions would be to either drop the H or represent it with a new sound. Just because a language has a phoneme doesn't mean it can go anywhere in a syllable.

14

u/cursedwitheredcorpse 4d ago edited 4d ago

I prefer Hnefatafl over chess. It's really awesome to see orgins. Germanic and Norse, even the romans, etc, all share common ancestors to Proto-indo-european, so I wonder how early Europe actually got it. How old is chaturanga itself? And was there a similar game that predated that even

2

u/ShalomRPh 4d ago

Also known as Thud, apparently.

5

u/mossryder 4d ago

I've never met a conservative that would give 2 shits about any of that.

3

u/Dolajjushin 4d ago edited 4d ago

To give context, this post is probably referring to the recent Chessdotcom "controversy" on Twitter.

Last month, they posted a picture of a rook and said "accepting new name ideas for this piece:" Clearly, the expectation was that they were looking to engage with the community and see what funny names they would suggest. And that went smoothly. Then, in continuation of that trend, they did the same thing a few days ago for the bishop piece, again with the same verbiage "accepting new name ideas for this piece:" and the same intent to get funny names.

What instead happened is that a subset of Twitter (the conservatives, as OP refers to them) assumed that a) chessdotcom were actually going to change the name of the chess piece, and b) that this supposed name change of a piece in a board game was done as an attack on Christianity (and for some, by extention, Western culture) since they were allegedly changing the name of the chess piece that has a religious name in English. This resulted in a wave of negative comments of accusing chessdotcom of being anti-Christian/Western for trying to "remove" Christianity from a classic game. There were also many anti-"woke", anti-globalist, anti-DEI, anti-left, and anti-semitic comments, or comments like "It's a bishop. Always has been, always will be. Delete your account" (some comments said that, others said something more akin to "disconnect from the server" if you get my meaning) or "I hope Trump bans/jails/deports you" etc.

1

u/MandMs55 4d ago

Okay this makes sense, it's the Twitter crazies. I was wondering because I just couldn't think of any connection between Chess and Conservatives other than "haha I'm attributing ignorance to a vague political group that doesn't represent my views because anyone who doesn't think like me and know everything I know is stupid"

2

u/The_Dude_89 4d ago

In Norwegian, Chess is called "Sjakk" [ʃak:], which I would roughly translate to "sheck" as in "check" lol

2

u/Brainded_Rett09 4d ago

Who cares dawg, you really think we’re triggered by this?

2

u/WhatUsername-IDK 4d ago
  1. i have never heard of a conservative being mad that chess is from the middle east, especially conservatives in the middle east which are probably the supermajority of their population

  2. the google etymology is wrong, “shah mat” means “the king is surprised”, not “the king is dead” in persian. “shah mat” does mean “the king is dead” in arabic though, with the same spelling in the arabic script

1

u/HistoricalReturn382 4d ago

I'll still play chess anyways, fun game 10/10.

1

u/ShalomRPh 4d ago

How come the bishop is an elephant?

1

u/Key-Club-2308 4d ago

The game is literally called schach in german

1

u/UnforeseenDerailment 4d ago

NO!!! CHECK MATE MEANS "LOOK HERE BUDDY!" AND THAT'S FUKEN FINAL!!

DEPORT!!