this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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xkcd #3140: Biology Department

Title text:

Welcome to the Linguistics Department - It has been [2] [DAYS] since someone noticed that the Biology Department sign has a one-day-long singular/plural disagreement after it resets.

Transcript:

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Source: https://xkcd.com/3140/

explainxkcd for #3140

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[–] pyre@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

that's amazing because I'm pretty sure he probably based it on real life; there are tribes that count very similarly to this (also covered in Ifrah's book). there are languages with words for one, two and many, or 1-4 and many, but they can use combinations like two-one to mean three and two-two to mean four etc.