25 karma · joined April 3, 2017
I've always loved the same thing—finding hidden connections between everyday words. I recently did this with "vain". It comes from Latin vanus, meaning "empty". More obvious with the "in vain" meaning, but the modern day comes from the idea of an exaggerated self image, with no substance behind it. It has a ton of "empty" cognates: vanish, evanescence, vanity (table), vaunt, vacuous, vacuum, vacation, void, devastate, wanton, wane
I'm fascinated by the hidden connections in our language—like "galaxy" being connected to "galactose" because of the Milky Way.
I used NLP to convert written etymology paragraphs from wiktionary into a database of words and connections.
Also interesting are the Proto-Indo-European roots, like "h₂enh₁", which is a 10k-year-old reconstructed word meaning "breath", that has about 1k modern day descendants ranging from "animate" and "unanimous" to "anemone".
For example you can see the connection between Spanish 'mano' ("hand") and English 'manufacture', 'manipulate', etc.
The most interesting thing has been finding Proto-Indo-European roots, like "h₂enh₁", which is a 10k-year-old reconstructed word meaning "breath", that has about 1k modern day descendants ranging from "nose" to "anemone".
As a plug, I'm really into etymologies as well and made EtymologyExplorer for visually navigating roots and descendants https://www.etymologyexplorer.com/
It shows word family trees in a visual layout. I made this because I'm really interested in how words relate to one another. For example "magnanimous" can be understood through its relatives "magnificent" and "unanimous"
Working on it has been both a blast and a slog (~6 years on & off). I used DL NLP (thanks fast.ai!) to convert written etymology paragraphs into a database of words and connections. The accuracy is roughly 99%. There are about 1.4M words and 1.3M word-pair-connections across 13k languages. The most interesting thing has been finding Proto-Indo-European roots, like "h₂enh₁", which is a 10k-year-old reconstructed word meaning "breath", that has about 1k modern day descendants ranging from "nose" to "anemone".
I'm just started making some revenue from sales of premium (to removes ads), which I'd like to grow. I'm also thinking of adding more visualizations to show interesting connections.
Working on it has been both a blast and a slog (~6 years on & off). I used DL NLP (thanks fast.ai!) to convert written etymology paragraphs into a database of words and connections. The accuracy is roughly 99%. There are about 1.4M words and 1.3M word-pair-connections across 13k languages. The most interesting thing has been finding Proto-Indo-European roots, like "h₂enh₁", which is a 10k-year-old reconstructed word meaning "breath", that has about 1k modern day descendants ranging from "nose" to "anemone".
I've had about 30k downloads since 2017 and I'm making a modest amount from sales of premium (to removes ads), which I'd like to grow. I'm thinking maybe another visualization style that's only available in premium? So I'd be very appreciative of any feedback at all!
Meditation helps you to see when these different modules are acting "illogically". Being run or called when unnecessary. A good example is the fear of public speaking. Whichever module is running is based on instincts learned millennia ago. Now it merely hinders us. I very strongly believe that meditation will make you (anyone) more happy and content. I haven't gone as far as I'd like to with it because of this same fear of losing my drive.