So in Slavonic linguistics, there’s a sound change known as the Slavic liquid metathesis, which is what gives us South Slavic forms like grad (town) as in Belgrad, as opposed to East Slavic forms, like gorod, as in Belgorod.
The reconstructed ancestor of gorod and grad is *gord (in historical linguistics, an asterisk indicates a reconstructed form). Due to changes in syllable boundary rules in the Slavic language of the day (roughly 8th/9th century AD), you could no longer have two consonants at the end of a syllable, so *gord had to change. In East Slavic, this was solved by adding an extra vowel to break up the consonant cluster, giving us gorod. In South and West Slavic, this was done by moving the /r/ sound to the onset (start) of the syllable (and the vowel was also changed), giving us grad. The “liquid” part of the name refers to “liquid” sounds, /r/ and /l/, since this particular process applied to them.
It almost looks like this is what’s going on here, although not quite. It would have to be gulgulg > gluglug to count as liquid metathesis, but the l and u switched around, which is good enough for me. Plus there’s the pun with liquid and water.
Hopefully that at least somewhat explains the joke. I don’t know if it’s very clear.
Slavic liquid metathesis moment
Please explain
So in Slavonic linguistics, there’s a sound change known as the Slavic liquid metathesis, which is what gives us South Slavic forms like grad (town) as in Belgrad, as opposed to East Slavic forms, like gorod, as in Belgorod.
The reconstructed ancestor of gorod and grad is *gord (in historical linguistics, an asterisk indicates a reconstructed form). Due to changes in syllable boundary rules in the Slavic language of the day (roughly 8th/9th century AD), you could no longer have two consonants at the end of a syllable, so *gord had to change. In East Slavic, this was solved by adding an extra vowel to break up the consonant cluster, giving us gorod. In South and West Slavic, this was done by moving the /r/ sound to the onset (start) of the syllable (and the vowel was also changed), giving us grad. The “liquid” part of the name refers to “liquid” sounds, /r/ and /l/, since this particular process applied to them.
It almost looks like this is what’s going on here, although not quite. It would have to be gulgulg > gluglug to count as liquid metathesis, but the l and u switched around, which is good enough for me. Plus there’s the pun with liquid and water.
Hopefully that at least somewhat explains the joke. I don’t know if it’s very clear.
Not only explains it but I learned something. I appreciated.