945: Multiple Pronunciations of -s and -ed Jul 11, 2017

Standard English spelling is strange and at times confusing. For every rule such as "I before E except after C unless it says A (/ei/)" there are exceptions, including in this case, 'foreign'. Nevertheless, there are some ways in which English spelling is more simple than English speech. The suffixes '-(e)s' and '-(e)d' are used to represent the majority of plurals for nouns or past tense form of verbs respectively, however it is not pronounced the same always. Indeed, for both, there are three ways in which the same affix will be pronounced for different words. With pluralizing suffix, in 'churches', 'birds', and 'cats', though they all use the same letter, the pronunciation of that ending becomes /ɪz/, /z/, and /s/ respectively. Likewise, with the past tense ending '-ed', in 'biked', 'braved', and 'beloved', it appears as /t/, /d/, and /ɪd/ in speech. Therefore, even though the pronunciation varies somewhat, the spelling is more simple. There is not necessarily consistency concerning the pronunciation of all words, but the examples used before should be true for people speaking with the Standard American English accent, and most others.

944: Spelling Conventions (with IPA) Jul 10, 2017

It shouldn't come as any surprise that English orography is not only inconsistent but arbitrary. Many people complain about certain things including the amount of silent letters, and the fact that the same combinations of letters will not necessarily represent identical sounds, but the issue is far bigger than that. This problem of arbitrary, or at least somewhat arbitrary spelling exists to some degree within the international phonetic alphabet (IPA). For example, the sound /k/ like in /skɪp/ (skip') is indistinguishable in terms of pronunciation from a /g/ in that word. This is not the case for every instance when a /k/ would appear, such as /kɪʔən/ ('kitten'), but in general, when preceded by an /s/, there is no reason except for convention that the word could not be spelt with a /g/ as in 'sgip'. This is also true of the /t/ in 'stop' which could just as well be a /d/, and the /p/ in 'spring' which could be a /b/.

943: -er (Agentive) Jul 9, 2017

In English, for the most part, different parts of speech are fairly distinct. It is possible to have one word that belongs to multiple lexical classes, e.g. 'water' in "one waters plants with water" is a verb and noun respectively, but alternatively various derivational suffixes can work to modify a word in a way that changes the part of speech to which it belongs. The suffix '-er', among its many other uses, can be added to most transitive verbs, i.e. ones that take direct objects, to become a noun indicating that someone performs said action. In this way, "she walks (dogs)" can become "the walker (of dogs)". There are a few exceptions however, such as "he knows many facts" would likely not become "the knower (of many facts)". It is not impossible to have that sentence, and it would probably be understandable to most people, but this would sound odd.

942: knickerbocker Jul 8, 2017

Places in New York, all over the state and especially in New York City, gained a lot of names the Dutch. Sometimes this was from originally Dutch words like 'Staten (Island)' coming from the word for 'States', while others came from people's names, such as the origin of the Bronx. The word 'knickerbockers' is quite prominent, and has been applied to all New Yorkers, exclusively Dutch settlers of New York and their descendants, the underwear more commonly called 'knickers', a New York sports team, and is the name of several buildings and streets. You might think that this was from some Dutch family perhaps, but actually it was from the pen name, Diedrich Knickerbocker, (actually W. Irving) who wrote "A History of New York". The only connection to the Dutch is that 'knickers' is thought to have originated from an association with the Dutchmen's breeches in the illustration in the book.

941: a- Jul 7, 2017

In terms of its vocabulary, English is something of a hodgepodge with large percentages coming from different languages, notably Latin, French, and Greek. It is for that reason that the prefix 'a-', which is used in four different ways, can come from four different languages. First, it can be added to words, usually adjectives, to mean 'not', such as 'atypical'; this comes from Greek. In other words such as 'asleep' or 'afoot' the prefix can be replaced fairly seamlessly with the preposition 'in' or 'on', and indeed this form of 'a-' derives from the Old English 'on'. The word 'aloft' has a similar prefix, but it is ultimately Old Norse, and only found as part of a few words specifically. Third, it can mean 'utterly'  such as with 'abash', deriving from the Old French 'es-' with the same meaning. Finally, 'a-' is sometimes found as a form of the Latin 'ad' meaning 'toward' such as in words like 'aspire'.

940: Espresso Jul 6, 2017

For all grammar Nazi's, or any other grammatically far-right leaning prescriptivists, it may be quite vexatious to hear people say 'espresso' as /εkspɹ‎εso/ (like 'express-o'), which likely started from some phonological association with 'express'. This happens often enough to the point that to almost any native speaker of English it should be understandable, especially in context. All languages change in this way; variants arise, and after enough time and with general understandability, they become normal and acceptable. Indeed, even with this variation of 'espresso', people often will even spell it as 'expresso', though in formal contexts this should be avoided. As a bonus for those who dislike the way in which 'espresso' is used, the term 'espresso-bean' doesn't mean anything different from 'coffee-bean'; 'espresso' only refers to the preparation of coffee, literally 'pressed' in Italian.

939: aloft, aloof, and alow Jul 5, 2017

Plenty of words from various trades end up making their way into day-to-day speech. 'Aloft', which now can refer to anything raised up, was originally a sailing-term denoting the top have a ship. That and the word 'loft' both come from an Old Norse word 'lopt' meaning 'air'; derivatives appear in other places, in fact in German the airfare is called the 'luftwaffe' and 'balloon' is 'luftballoon'. 'Aloof' as well was once a nautical terms that originally meant "the direction of the wind" but now used almost exclusively relates to people, and probably cats. 'Alow', however, is one nautical term that did not enter casual speech, but it still refers to the lower half of a ship, and is also related to the word 'lie'.

938: peregine and pilgrim Jul 4, 2017

The word 'peregrinate' meaning 'to wander' as well as the word 'peregrine (falcon)' both come from the same root; unsurprising perhaps since they look and sound so similar. The two terms entered Middle English directly from the Latin 'peregrinus' meaning foreign, traveling', ultimately from the elements 'per-' ('through') and 'ager' (field). For 'peregrine' this name was not given to the free wanderings of the bird, or else a lot more might have had this name, but instead because unlike many other birds captured in the nest when very young, peregrine falcons were captured while flying. Nevertheless, for a very long time this word tended to denote foreignness just as much as traveling, which led to the word 'pilgrim' in English as well, though via Provençal first.

937: widdershins Jul 3, 2017

The adverb 'widdershins' mostly is used now as a synonym for 'counterclockwise'; this term has had that meaning for a few centuries, but earlier definitions included "in the opposite direction" (not just of a clock or circle) and plainly 'wrong' or 'bad'. Unlike with many other derivatives, the modern sense is in some ways closer to the original meaning, in this case from the Middle High German 'widersinnes', meaning 'against' ('wider') and 'direction ('sin') or 'travel' when the element appeared as 'sinnen'. The Middle High German 'sin' is also related to the Scots 'sin' meaning 'sun', and as it happens, 'widdershins' was often used to denote, among those other things, movement in the opposite direction as the Sun goes across the sky. The word 'sinister' also relates to the direction left historically, as well as things that are morally bad: a fairly common Western view for a long time.

936: Real Estate Jul 2, 2017

In English, there are the terms 'estate' and 'real estate' that both relate to property, though we don't necessarily think of the two as needing to be distinguished from each other now since the contexts in which they are used tend to be different. Moreover, the 'real' would seem an unlikely retronym in this case as the other 'estate' is not fake nor abstract. Nevertheless, 'real estate' was used for the purposes of differentiation: immovable property as opposed to personal. Other uses of 'real' in this way also include the slang phrase 'get real', and 'real time' referring to the period of time when an action takes place, not when it had been recorded.

935: Long Words, and Compounding Jul 1, 2017

When most or all of a languages' syntax is derived from affixation, individual words tend to get longer, which is why Mandarin words, which structurally posses little built-in syntactic meaning individually tend to be shorter than others like in Hungarian. Not all word-length can be attributed to grammar though, as compounding affects this too. While in English we say 'bus-stop', this is more typical of Germanic languages than Romance ones, so in French people say 'arrêt de bus' (stop of [the] bus). Likewise in Estonian—a language related to Finnish and Hungarian—not only is it agglutinative such that syntactic meaning is built-in with many affixes, but is is common to form words from compounds rather than creating a new word, making them even longer. For example, 'ebajumalakummardamine' is the Estonian word for 'idol-worshiping'—which is also a compound in English, to be fair—literally meaning 'non-God-worshiping'.

934: Sapir's hypothesis on Eskimo Jun 30, 2017

Observations related to or based off of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis have led to some interesting conclusions, including why there would be so many Inuit words for 'snow'. Nevertheless, the hypothesis which states that the language one speaks is directly linked to the way someone thinks is sometimes used hypothetically. Sapir himself stated that “it may be suspected that the highly synthetic and periodic structure of Eskimo would more easily bear weight of Kant's terminology than his native German”. The concept that different aspects of language ranging from vocabulary to syntax determine cognition and perception can be interpreted in such a way that anything from colors to Kant relate to language would relate to language, and should not always be trusted.

933: noon Jun 29, 2017

If asked to meet someone at noon, it would be understood that that means twelve o'clock. Nevertheless, 'noon' comes from the Old English word 'nōn' denoting "the ninth hour from sunrise", though this didn't mean nine o'clock in the morning either. Instead measuring from six in the morning when the sun rose, 'noon' referred to three in the afternoon, as we would say now. The Old English word came from Latin, and is related to the ecclesiastical noun 'none' (or nones), not to be confused with the pronoun and adverb which is Germanic in origin, denoting a time of prayers and customary meal. Up through the 12th century this is all the word would have meant, but then while the customary time for these became earlier around the 14th century, the word did not. This same shift occurred in Dutch with the word 'noen'.

932: What Makes a Phrase Jun 28, 2017

After three days of discussing what makes a word a word, the question arose of what makes a phrase a phrase. While a phrase and a hyphenated word are similar in that they convey a single concept through a combination of other elements, a phrase is made up of syntactically distinct elements. In the same way that a word can not be split apart while still being intelligible, a phrase must be delivered as one unit in order to convey the intended meaning. "Needle in a haystack" is an idiomatic phrase, and in the sentence "it was like finding a needle in a haystack" the phrase communicates one, metaphorical concept which furthermore could not really be split up, such as "it was like finding a needle shiny in a haystack" as that would mean something else more literal, describing the quality of the needle. Not all phrases need to be idiomatic though, such as a prepositional phrase like "in the house", though everything mentioned before still holds.

931: Number-Arrangement Jun 27, 2017

Above the number twelve, all numbers in English are a combination of different numbers raised to multiples of ten, e.g. four-hundred-thirty is four times ten raised to the power of two, plus three times ten raised to the power of one. Almost all numbers in English are said with the highest place first, and then all smaller values next. The exception to this is with the -teens: thirteen through nineteen. While those terms no longer contain the word 'ten', the ending '-teen' used to be just that, so fourteen would be, in essence, like 'four-ten'; notably however 'forty' would as well. This style of forming cardinal numbers, by putting the number in the ones place first, is increasingly rare in Modern English, but in Old English and Middle English it was quite common, or even standard to form number like this, such as the line in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: "Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye" ("Some nine and twenty in a company") meaning 'twenty-nine' as we would say now. In German, and plenty of other languages, this is still the way that numbers are formed, such as "ninety-nine balloons" which is "neunundneunzig luftballons" (a famous song released in 1983), literally "nine and ninety".

930: What Makes a Word (pt. 3/3) Jun 26, 2017

This is the third and final post on what makes a word a word for now,  though you should make sure to look at the posts from yesterday and the day before. It was stated then how words are distinct from other morphemes, such as affixes, because they can be moved around somewhat freely in a clause. It is for that reason that long words in certain other languages, especially in polysynthetic ones, are not simply a collection of little words said together. In Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic) the meaning of a word is built into it in such a way that it can be its own whole clause theoretically. For example, 'tikilluarit' means 'welcome' and 'tikilluaritsi' means 'you are welcome' or 'tikilluaqquavusi' means 'you have just been welcomed'. It should be noted that some affixes are subtractive and will reduce parts of the stem or other affixes. In the case of 'tikilluaritsi', the ending that indicated second-person cannot be moved around to different places in the clause and is a suffix, not a word, even though in English 'you' is a word.

929: What Makes a Word (pt. 2/3) Jun 25, 2017

This is the second part to the post yesterday about what makes a word a word. As alluded to then, an affix is not a word for the reason that it does not carry its own meaning; but additionally this is so because it is bound to the word it modifies. In spelling this is quite clear as there is no space between an affix and the stem, also called a 'free morpheme'. Nevertheless, there are words like 'will' or 'may' that modify the meaning of a word in a similar fashion to the past-tense suffix '-ed', so it might seem that those should not be considered words, but they are. There are two reasons for this. First, English does not technically have a future-tense, so 'will' does not change the tense per se, but the mood and is therefore not comparable to other tense-changing suffixes necessarily; second—and more importantly—it can be moved around in a clause and does not need to be put with the verb. One could say, for example, "I will pay" or "I will, in a while, pay" but while one could also say "I payed", "I pay soon -ed" is not grammatical". Some constructions like 'un-fucking-believable" allow for this sort of separation, but in this case 'fucking' is a rare kind of infix.

Tomorrow these ideas will be compared with other languages.

928: What Makes a Word (pt. 1/3) Jun 24, 2017

Except by linguists, the questions of 'why is a word a word?' or 'what even is a word?' may be seldom asked. The answer to this is debated occasionally, but in a general sense the word 'word' is used to describe any discrete "meaningful element" (i.e. it conveys meaning unlike an affix which only affects syntax) but this is vague. It may seem easier to determine to understand what a word is because it is separated by spaces when printed, but this is misleading. The term 'passive-aggressive' is a compound of two words, but is only one; while it usually spelt with a hyphen, though not always, this is not the reason it is not two words: it's because when modified into being a noun, only the latter half is morphed. If this were not the case, it would become 'passivity-agression' or 'passiveness-aggression'. There is much more to this topic, and that will be explored tomorrow.

927: randy Jun 23, 2017

English has a myriad of words that denote to sex itself—either for actual description or sometimes for swearing and other purposes—but there is another group of words that only relate to sex, and these two groups are often not so dissimilar. With words like 'sodomy' or 'orgy' that denote sexual acts, for example, the original meaning of these terms etymologically did not relate to sex at all, but eventually took on the meaning because of—in this case—the Catholic Church. Other words as well also often first connoted something bad or immoral in a general way, but then were later applied to things relating to sex because of popular opinions. Likewise, with the word 'randy', which does not denote sex itself but does relate to it tangentially is thought to have come from a word meaning 'to rant' but eventually gained its modern connotation from another association to someone who would 'rand' as it were. Moreover, in Scots, the word 'randy' used to describe a rude person, but eventually took on the sole the sense of 'aroused'.

926: Tank Jun 22, 2017

Modern tanks were first used during WWI by the British. When they were employed the goal was to surprise the Germans and break through the front line, but they didn't want the Central Powers to know what they were. For that reason, some people have claimed that if the Americans invented the tanks first that they could have been called 'barrels', but not because of gun-barrels or anything like that. Instead, this is due to the fact that 'tank' in 1915 and 1916 was the code-word used to denote the war-machine, as it was hoped that the British might fool the Germans into thinking that they were simply vehicles for transporting water at first. At the time, the term 'tank' and 'barrel' were synonymous, much like today, but 'barrel' was more common in the United States to describe what would be called a 'tank' in Britain.