Hawaiians got around. The Arctic whaling pidgin spoken on Herschel Island in the Yukon had many words from Hawaiian, along with Inuit, Danish, Portuguese, and Chinook Jargon
Greek ποταμός “river” has an unclear etymology. The root is *peth2- “spread, fly” > “fall” but the semantic route is murky.
Yet, compare διι-πετ-ής “fallen from heaven/Zeus”, a Homeric epithet of rivers. A common Indo-European trope is that waters fall from a heavenly reservoir
A few comparative examples:
In Grímnismál 26 (tr @germanicgems), all rivers originate in the water dripping off a heavenly stag's horns.
In Aban Yast in the Avesta, the goddess Anahita personifies the heavenly river which is the source of all others
Got surnamed-filtered today. Heard that “Greek Tragedy” by H. D. F. Kitto was a good introduction to the subject. Oh, how interesting that a Finn wrote such an important work! Nope, English scholar. Of Finnish descent in England? Nope. Cornish surname. What?
Some early Greek loans in Latin showing confusion about voicing & aspiration:
gubernō < κυβερνάω kybernaō
amurca < ἀμόργη amorgē
cotōneum < κυδώνιον kydōnion
purpura < πορφύρα porphyra
colpus < colaphus < κόλαφος kolaphos
struppus < στρόφος strophos
bracchium < βραχίων brachiōn
Talkie’s personal heroes: Napoleon, Cromwell, Charlemagne, Luther, Peter the Great, and Alfred the Great
New work with @DavidDAfrica:
We reproduced emergent misalignment and subliminal learning in talkie, a model trained on pre-1931 text.
Oh look at that it's Odysseus and the Cyclops smushed into an existing story about Sosruquo (playing Prometheus).
The fun thing about Caucasian folklore is you can't tell if this is a source of the Greek myth, garbled Classical contact, later knowledge, or pure coincidence
Renderings of original /ɬ/ in English:
ll: Lloyd
fl: Floyd
ls: balsam
kl: Tlingit
bl: kabloona
thl: Thlopthlocco
shl: Hluhluwe