wirehead-wannabe:

Okay but explain “burrito”. Why am I eating a small donkey?

the-grey-tribe:

Also there are dessert tarts in English. Tart is cognate with tortellini (Italian, diminutive plural) and tortilla(Spanish, diminutive) and tarte (French).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torta

sigmaleph:

there is. it’s a masculine form of ‘mosca’ and less commonly used but if you pointed at a large flying bug and called it 'mosco’ in my dialect it would be unremarkable in casual use.

evolution-is-just-a-theorem:

The humor is not about the existence of words but about the existence of referents for those words? Unless there is a mosco I’m not aware of?

sigmaleph:

this is the opposite of my problem!

reinterpreting 'dumpling’ as a diminutive is funny because it isn’t a diminutive (and also 'dumple’ is a silly word)

'reinterpreting’ mosquito and tortilla as diminutives is just confusing, because there’s no reinterpretation, they are in fact diminutives. it’s people pointing at the straightforward etymology of words and going 'ha! wouldn’t it be silly if this were true’.

patrithebat:

This killed me.

The -ing in dumpling isn’t a diminutive, it’s a derivative. “Made of dump” or dough.

sigmaleph:

…

ok, so. imagine if someone tried to do one of those jokes about “if the plural of mouse is mice, is the plural of house 'hice’?’

and someone reblogs with like "if the plural of life is 'lives’, is the plural of wife 'wives’?”

and everyone keeps reblogging this as if it’s a hilarious joke. and you’re just staring at your screen wondering if you should tell them.

this is how i feel every time this post crosses my dash

maxeth:

trifecta

aim-and-ignights:

Same energy

hilarioushumorfromouterspace:

I’ve heard a couple of explanations.  Wikipedia suggests “because the tortilla is ‘carrying’ a lot of ingredients, the way you’d load a donkey down with stuff.”  There’s also a story about it being invented/popularized by some particular vendor who rode a donkey between villages.