Sometimes I get frustrated in German when I want to say something like "I'm taller but he's bigger than me." I usually respond by saying Ich bin größer als er [vertical hand movement] aber er ist größer als ich [expanding in all directions hand movement] and people always tell me I should say schwerer but, like, I'm not talking about weight so much as volume. If I were talking about weight, I'd say that. And I'm not talking about fat or being muscular ... just ... bigger.
And yeah, I don't think it's just a gay thing. Long is pretty specifically horizontal or for a measurement of something which is much longer in one direction than any others as long as that dimension isn't by nature the vertical dimension. (I complicated this just to make it clear that, say, a string or a snake is still long rather than tall even if it happens to be vertical at a particular point in time ... it's not inherently vertical like humans are* and trees etc.) so if you ask someone "how long are you" there's kind of only one thing that logically works for that. I mean, you could just go "Ah, non-native, they mean 'tall'," but if it comes from a native, I'd definitely assume they mean penis length.
*Yeah, I know humans lie and sit a lot too. Crashing at a friend's place once, we took off the cushions off chairs so I could sleep there and her flatmate thought three cushions was enough and my friend said "No, he's definitely four cushions long."
And I know some people say "high buildings" and "high mountains" in English, but to my idiolect it just feels wrong. To me, high is for location (distant from the ground, above not below) and tall is for vertical extent, so the plane is high, the mountain is tall, and if the plane is long and happens to stand on its nose, it is still long and not tall.
Deep is a funny word because it can be vertical extent, location or front-to-back extent!?
Nilitaka kuandika kwa Kiswahili, lakini ... sitaki kuandika hiki chote chini! I wanted to write in Swahili, but ... I don't want to write all of that up there!
_________________ Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = , ACS / ICS = , GDV = , SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific ________
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