this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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Memes

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A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.

An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.


Laittakaa meemejä tänne.

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[–] CaptainBlagbird 39 points 6 months ago (3 children)

How else would it be pronounced, how is the anglicised pronunciation?

(Serious question by a non native speaker)

[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"Anglicized" is probably not the best way to think about it. The Latin letter "v" was pronounced "w" through the classical period, but had shifted to β or v (fricative) by the third century, long before English existed. V was pronounced v (voiced labiodental fricative) for many centuries. And though we do tend to give the classical period a lot of prestige, it was just one phase for Latin.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Funny part is, the same shift happened in a lot of languages. I think some more obvious examples are modern German and Polish, where letter W corresponds to the V sound. Although I believe that the shift happened in German and then Polish borrowed the letter with the new pronunciation.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Thanks so much for pointing this out. As a native German speaker I still had no idea what's going on until this comment made me question what a W sounds like in other languages. It's literally a double-U in English, how come I never stumbled upon that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

in swedish i think we've just gone from "fv" to "v", somehow

very common example since it's in old surnames: hufvud > huvud

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago

Veh-soo-vee-us.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

With "v" sounding like it does in other English words like valve.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago