Link Haul - YouTube Edition

Hello! December was a very busy and personally important month to me. While I am still working on some very big stuff behind the scenes, nothing is quite ready for publishing. What is ready is some interesting finds I've made. We've got a wide variety of languages covered today!

If you're a millennial, you may recall the direct-to-video sequel "The Lion King 2," which featured a song titled "Upendi." One of the characters asks whether "upendi" means love, though she doesn't receive a response. I looked it up and it turns out that "upendo" is the Swahili word for "love", but "upendi" is not a Swahili word:

We need some basic grammar here. The Swahili root -pend- means "like, love". The root -pind- means "bend". The most basic form of a verb is the imperative singular, which is just the root and the most general verb ending -a, so penda means "love/like!" and pinda means "bend!" (addressed to one person). The infinitive prefix is ku-, so you might also see verbs listed with that: kupenda "(to) like/love".

The imperative plural changes the ending -a to -eni: so pendeni "love/like!" (addressed to two or more).

Subjects are indicated by prefixes: nipenda "I love/like", tupenda "we love/like". The second person singular prefix is u-: upenda "you (sg.) love/like". This is the simple or general present, which has no tense marker. Other tenses have a prefix between the person and the verb: ninapenda "I am liking", nilipenda "I liked", etc.

The negative is basically formed with the prefix ha-. The verb ending changes to -i, so tupenda "we love/like", hatupendi "we do not love/like". But there is some merger: hupendi "you (sg.) do not like/love" (for ha-u-), and sipendi "I do not like/love" (for ha-ni-). Note this is a second verb form that can end in -i; the imperative plural (above) is another. As Wazona says, this hupendi is the closest verb form to a supposed 'upendi'. (Or the subjunctive upende "that you may love".) I don't know where The Lion King got that word.

Nouns are mostly formed with prefixes, and abstract nouns usually have the prefix u-. Thus a word beginning with u- could be either an abstract noun or a second person singular verb. When verb roots are made into nouns they often take a different vowel suffix too. Thus the noun "love" is upendo (-o is a common suffix for actions), and the noun "bow" (the weapon) is upinde.

For more etymological fun, I recommend this video I found on the etymology of "Lloegyr", the Welsh name for England. Long story short, the popular folk etymology that it means "lost lands" is false. I recommend watching the video to see how it is that this etymology spread, and the danger of thinking that plausible = probable.

And rounding off fun linguistics videos, here's a video by comedian/software programmer Ólafur Waage on whether Icelandic is just the Scandinavian languages with an extra -ur on the end. He discusses how a famous Icelandic movie in Sweden led to Swedes becoming familiar with the phrase "Þungur hnífur" (lit. heavy knife). In Swedish, "heavy knife" is "tung kniv." Both words are cognate with Icelandic, with an added -ur. Ólafur investigates how deep the -ur connection goes, using the power of Python.

That's all for now! Thank you for being with me this final month of 2025.

- Karen