997: Pronunciation of -(E)S Sep 1, 2017

The majority of English nouns are pluralized with the letter '-(e)s', but this is pronounced three different ways: /s/ as with 'cats', /z/ as with 'dogs', or /ɪz/ (or /əz/ depending on one's accent) as with 'beaches'. This is not random but is based off of the sound that comes before it. In general, if a consonant precedes it and is unvoiced like /p/, /t/, or /k/ the suffix will be /s/ but if it is preceded by a voiced consonant like /b/, /d/, or /g/, or a vowel it will become /z/. There is a chart below showing voiced and unvoiced consonants, you can also feel the difference if you make the unvoiced /p/ sound and then /b/ that uses more air. There are certain sounds that act as an exception to that rule, including /s/, /z/, /tʃ/ (‘like church’), /ʃ/ (like ‘rush’), /ʒ/ (like in luge), and /dʒ/ (like in 'hedge'), because when the pluralizing suffix '-(e)s' follows those it becomes /ɪz/.

The chart is from http://gawron.sdsu.edu/intro/course_core/lectures/SSAE.html

996: Exceptions are Universal Aug 31, 2017

The English language has a great deal of exceptions in the way that words are formed and arranged, which will be true of almost any general rule people might make. It can be frustrating for sure, but this is going to be the case in every language, both in descriptive rules, which reflect on how language is used, such as "adding '-er' to a verb makes it a noun indicating the agent of said verb", and prescriptive rules, which try to force people to speak in a certain way, such as "don't end a prepositional phrase with a preposition". Indeed, even Latin—the language which provided the base for many prescriptive rules in English—would have just as many exceptions. The only languages that will not have exceptions to rules nor irregular forms—such as the conjugation of 'to be'—are ones that are invented, such as Esperanto, though some people who make up languages will include exceptions and irregulars in order to give the illusion of being authentic and natural. Given enough time, and given enough use, Esperanto will also develop exceptions to its rules, as that is one of the many ways languages evolve.

995: Homophones Aug 30, 2017

There are some homophones in English that are spelt differently, such as 'your' and 'you re', ''they're', 'their', and 'there', 'two', 'too', and 'to', or 'due', 'do, and 'dew', as well as many more that are spelt the same but still have different origins—called 'homographs'—such as 'limbo' referring to a dance and a synonym for 'purgatory', as well as 'bear'. All of the homophones that are not homographs listed above still do contain all of the same consonants however, but this is not always the case. As spelling does have an element of arbitrariness, and because speakers pronounce individual sounds differently depending upon the sounds that precede and follow them. Some words like 'disgust' and 'discussed' are indistinguishable, as are 'prints' and 'prince'. There will be more on this tomorrow, but if you think of any yourself, write it in the comments.

994: disgust Aug 29, 2017

As discussed yesterday, and as any native English speaker would know, there is no positive form of 'disgust', which would resemble something like 'gust'. Unlike other words like 'disk' or 'distich' for which the 'dis-' is simply coincidental, etymologically 'disgust' contains 'dis-' which indicates reversal, but in English there is nothing being obviously reversed. This is by no means the only words where this occurs—it happens fairly frequently with other words including 'distort', 'disguise', and 'dismiss'—especially as English has so many words adopted from other languages completely, or sometimes only as parts of a whole word. In the case of 'disgust', it comes from the Latin word 'gustus' meaning 'taste', and while there is no 'gust' or even 'gustus' in English, the word 'gusto' comes from the same root. Nevertheless, even when a word does start with the historical prefix 'dis-', it does not mean that there should, or even could be a positive form, as with 'discuss' in which the 'dis-' does not negate the root-word, but simply means 'apart'.

993: Indifferent and Different Aug 28, 2017

English has a few words like 'butle' which come from back-formation—the process of making words by removing what are affixes in other words— but a fairly large group of words like 'gust' from 'disgust', or 'evitable' (or 'evit, for that matter) from 'inevitable' simply don't exist in any vernacular. Unlike 'inevitable' though, which does not have a positive form as its negating prefixes indicates, the word 'different' does exist, but not as an antonym of 'indifferent'. This is because the word comes from 'differ' in the sense that something is changing or, in other words, becoming different. In Middle English, 'different' could also mean, in a general way, 'partial', so 'indifferent' came to mean 'unchanged' or 'impartial'.

992: Levant Aug 27, 2017

There are plenty of names for countries or regions that originate from geographical relation to other places. The words 'Austria' and 'Australia' both etymologically derive from the Latin for 'south', and 'the orient' as well as the German for 'Austria', 'Österreich', both etymologically derive from words meaning 'east'. Likewise, the 'Levant', denoting the area east of the Mediterranean Sea, comes from a French word that gained the sense of 'east'. Initially however, the French 'levant' meant and continues to mean 'rising' as a participle of 'lever' (which is where English gets 'lever') meaning 'to lift'. It is from the understanding that the Sun rises in the east that 'levant' became associated with lands to the east, at least in relation to France and England. Indeed, the meaning of 'to rise' relating to the Sun is the same that lead to 'orient' and 'orientation', from the Latin 'oriri' meaning 'to rise'.

991: Pronunciation of Lieutenant Aug 26, 2017

Depending upon whether you pronounce words as people do in the United States or in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth you would pronounce the word 'lieutenant' as either /luːˈtɛnənʔ/ (as if it began with 'lieu' by itself) or as /lɛfˈtɛnənʔ/  (as if it became with 'left'). The first element 'lieu' has the same Old French origin as 'lieu' when it appears on its own, as in "in lieu of", except in that case both groups would pronounce it the same way, phonologically anyway. As for the difference in the way that 'lieutenant' is pronounced, no one is quite sure the cause, but generally it is thought that the /lɛf-/ is from a variation in Old French or Middle English, as spellings indicate that there was a rare form or the word that was in Old French 'leuf'. Another, less likely explanation is that there was confusion concerning the spelling of the word with a U or a V, as for a long period—due to standards from Latin—these letters were indistinguishable. It's possible that none of that matters too much, however, as in certain naval traditions, such as that of the Royal Navy, the pronunciation is simplified to /ləˈtɛnənt/ (as in what the 'lu-' represents in 'lung').

990: Dying Languages and New Accents Aug 25, 2017

Many people lament that languages are dying out at a rate that has been estimated to be as many as one every two weeks, but is more likely to be around once every two to three months. Regardless of the exact numbers, it is true that most people speak only a small percentage of the world's languages, and dialects and accents are becoming less distinct largely because of an increasingly global economy, as well as technologies that allow people to connect with others far away, and necessitate a lingua franca. Not all hope should be lost, however, for while many languages are losing speakers, and dialects are disappearing, new ones are emerging. It is easy to discern when a language has become extinct because no people, or only one person can speak it, but it is much harder to determine when a new one is formed. Much about various standards are political, such as how to classify the difference between Norwegian and Swedish, but also natural changes to dialects that will eventually become new languages over time can be hard to spot. For example, some of the vowels have changed subtly in American English spoken in the South West due to influences from Spanish, but while this is only a change in accents, it is changes like those that eventually become new dialects and new languages, as happens with phonemes often. Also, it should be noted that the majority of languages are poorly documented at best, so exact numbers of languages, and even general knowledge of whether something is a language or a dialect can be hard to assess accurately.

989: Assimilation of N Aug 24, 2017

The prefix 'un-' that negates certain words like 'unmanageable' or 'unlockable' does not change based on the word to which it affixes. The prefix 'in-' on the other hand appears in all sorts of ways before some sounds, such as 'il-' in 'illegal' or 'im-' in 'impossible' when it is used to negate the meanings thereof. In fact, this also happens when the prefix is used to indicate 'in' or 'into', as this phenomenon is due to phonology. As it happens, when written, it will almost always appear as 'il-' before the letter L, 'im-' before a B, M, or P, and as 'ir-' before the letter R, as in 'irrespecitve'. Indeed, the sound changes in speech too of course, but not only does this occur when 'in-' appears as a prefix, but also when it is used as its own word. It is much less work for the /n/ sound to be produced like a /m/ before certain aforementioned sounds like /p/, and because /m/ and /n/ don't sound especially different, particularly when there is context, everyone will understand. For example, the sound /n/ in 'in' will assimilate to an /m/ in "I spoke French in Paris" as it precedes a /p/, but will not in "I spoke French in France" in ordinary speech. Certainly, though, it is possible to pronounce the word with an /n/ if you are thinking about it.
See yesterday's post for more on this here.

988: insure and ensure Aug 23, 2017

Anyone who had to learn how to read in English probably has been frustrated by the inconsistencies, and while there is no reason that they had to exist in the first place, we can still look over orthographical oddities and explain why. The prefix 'en-', as explored yesterday, can indicate several meanings including "in something", but so can the prefix 'in-'. Indeed, while these variations usually only necessitate some memorization of what words use which letter, sometimes it can alter the meaning of a word. In the case of 'insure' and 'ensure', there is some overlap in the two meanings; while, 'insure' tends to have the sense of financial compensation for certain problems like health-concerns or property-damage, both words, often followed by the word 'against', mean "protect against or prevent a possible problem". In that case, it is often interchangeable, especially in American writing. As it happens, most often the only difference between words with 'en-' and words with 'in-' is that the former come from French or Spanish, while the latter derive from Latin or Italian, though some may come from Germanic languages, or other ones entirely. In this case, 'insure' is just a variation of the earlier 'ensure' which was adopted from Anglo-Norman French. These words are also related to the English 'assure' and 'secure'.

987: elipse and eclipse Aug 22, 2017

Yesterday, there was an eclipse that was visible in the continental United States, leaving out those from every other country. Fittingly perhaps, the word comes from the Greek 'ekleipsis' and ultimately 'ekleipein' meaning ‘fail to appear', but more literally 'leave out' ('ek' means 'out' and 'leipein means 'to leave'). English also gets words related to this, 'ellipsis' and 'ellipse'. Both of these ultimately come from 'elleipein' meaning 'leave out', except here the K /k/ is not present. In this case, the Greek prefix was 'en-' usually meant 'in' not 'ek-'. This might lead you to believe that the meaning would have been 'leave in', but the prefix 'en-' or sometimes 'in-' depending on from where it is borrowed can be used to indicate several things, including that something is "made to be", such as with the word 'endear', but also the prefix can become an intensifier. Therefore, even though the prefix is sometimes modified when it precedes certain sounds and so it is no longer present as 'en-' in 'ellipsis', it does not mean "to leave in" but indeed "to leave out".

986: shambles Aug 21, 2017

There are lots of reasons why a word will disappear, but most commonly it is the case that a language will lose a word if there is a new, more popular word that replaces it, or if there is no need to use it. Every language will have examples of the latter, such as 'squiriferous' which meant "having the qualities of a squire" in English a few centuries ago, but due to a lack of squires nowadays, it is not used. The word 'shambles' is still used, mostly in the phrase "in shambles" or "in a shambles" to mean things are disorderly, but it had first meant 'butcher's' or 'meat-market'; I'm sure if you can imagine a medieval meat-market you can understand the logical jump to the modern sense. Nonetheless, the original meaning of the word was replaced eventually by the more popular 'butcher's' and only survives in place-names, such as Shambles, in York, one of the most famous streets in Britain.

985: teem and team Aug 20, 2017

There are plenty of reasons why multiple words can sound similar. First, the words could all come from a shared root, and be related in what they mean, either now or what they historically meant, as well have similarities in how they appear audibly. Second, the words could have been pronounced differently, or had different connotations in the past but then later gain similarities that had not originally been present. Third, every association could be completely coincidental; for example the word for 'dog' in the Australian language Mbabaram is 'dog' /dag/, but this is just luck. With that in mind, it may appear due to differences in standard spelling and a lack of relation in meaning that 'team' and 'teem' in English are not related and are simply arbitrarily pronounced the same, but this is not the case. Neither they, nor another related word 'tow' have the same root in Old English, but all of them relate to pulling or pushing something historically. 'Team' and 'tow' still carry this sense somewhat in relation to animals pulling carts and other things, but 'teem' meaning 'full of' used to mean 'give birth to' or 'become pregnant'.

984: Submodifiers Aug 19, 2017

In general, English allows for flexibility when it comes to the part of speech of a given word. The word 'paint' for example can be a noun, a verb, or an adjective such as in "they paint a scene with red paint, but it left an unpleasant paint smell". Additionally, an ad for the company Hulu read "come TV with us", using a well-established noun as a verb in a way that is still understandable to a native English speaker. Nevertheless, some words do not have such flexibility. In addition to other parts of speech such as determiners or conjunctions that cannot be used as other lexical classes, not even all kinds of adverbs can be used in the same ways as each other. There are several types of adverbs that linguists identify, but submodifiers—the group that refers to adverbs that modify only adjectives and adverbs such as 'very' or 'quite'—can not only not be used as other parts of speech, but cannot even substitute for any given adverb. It should be noted that not everything in other classes like nouns is interchangeable, for example 'milk' which cannot be quantified with numbers or the word 'a' (except when referring to types of milk) cannot substitute for a noun that can, like 'book'; nevertheless, there is still more flexibility here, generally.

983: Past Tense of Screenshot: Strong or Weak? Aug 18, 2017

This post is more of a hypothesis than a fact, so please do not rely on this as your only evidence if you wish to explore the topic. If you find you would like more theories like this on Word Facts in the future, leave a comment.
As discussed on the Word Facts post about ablauts, strong verbs are almost always conjugated with the present tense featuring a high vowel like /ɪ/ in 'spring' or /eə/ in 'wear' that becomes a mid or low vowel like /æ/ in 'sprang', /ə/ in 'sprung', or /oə/ in 'wore' in the past tense. For more on types of vowels, see the image below, from speechmodification.com. This is one of the many conventions that people will follow naturally, even in words that are newly created, but it does pose a few problems. 'Shoot' for example is a strong verb that follows that same pattern, going from a high vowel /u/ to a low vowel /a/ in its past tense for 'shot'. In compounded words where a strong noun, strong verb, or irregular word happens to be at the end, speakers tend to modify the compound in the same way as they would if it appeared on its own, so 'mailman' becomes 'mailmen' not 'mailmans'. However, the past tense form 'shot' appears at the end of 'screenshot' which is used as a present tense verb, i.e. meaning "to take a screenshot", so even though this is a strong verb as the final element of the compound, there is no way for there to be a lower vowel. In fact, the only other low vowel in English is /æ/ as in 'cat' or in this case, possibly, 'screenshat'. That would be the only reasonable past tense form of 'screenshot' if we take it to be a strong verb, which is why people might be drawn towards the alternative, weak form 'screenshotted'.

982: -grad (Eastern European Cities) Aug 17, 2017

There are lots of cities in the Americas with the word 'city' in the name, like Oklahoma City, the capital of Oklahoma, or Mexico City (Ciudad de Mexico), the capital of Mexico. In other parts of the word this is not so common, or at least not outright. Some European cities, particularly in places that speak Germanic languages with the exception of Strasbourg have the ending '-burg' which no longer means 'city', but historically meant 'fort' or what might have constituted 'city' at the time. Likewise, the names of cities in Eastern European countries often appear with the ending '-grad', though the spelling is sometimes slightly different. The capital of Serbia is 'Belgrade' coming from Slavic for 'white city'. There are a number of other Eastern European places whose name meant 'white city' including 'Belgorod' in Russia and 'Biograd na Moru' in Croatia. It should be noted that Croatian and Serbian are incredibly similar, and the Serbian pronunciation for their own capital city is 'Beograd': almost identical to 'Biograd'. Plenty of other places have that ending but don't mean 'white city' historically, such as 'Petrograd', the name for St. Petersburg between 1914 and 1924. In fact, 'Petrograd' was adopted as the name in 1914 instead of St. Petersburg to make it sound less German and more Slavic.

981: New Strong Verbs Aug 16, 2017

Anyone who reads Word Facts often will have heard plenty by now about strong verbs. There are relatively few of these, and they tend to follow the pattern of '-i-, -a-, -u-', but historically there was a great deal more variation, as one can still see with words like 'dive, dove', and 'tear, tore'. Moreover, nearly all of these are Germanic, coming from Old English for the most part, but there are a few words which were historically weak verbs and then became strong verbs. Among them are 'dig, dug' and 'fling, flung'; they happen to be Germanic in origin coincidentally, and the modern strong past tense form is somewhat invented. With those words, as well as others like 'wear, wore', even though they developed different forms than they had originally, they still followed the same patterns of words that they resemble in sound to some extent. Nevertheless, while it is true that English has gained some new strong verbs, more often they are lost; the word 'climb' used to become 'clumb' in the past tense rather than 'climbed' as it is for most people now, but that original form is still used in some parts of Appalachia.

980: aryan Aug 15, 2017

 The concept of the Indo-European language family—the idea that most languages of Europe and India, as well as Persian, all descended from a single language—was a notion proposed in the late 18th century which helped to create the field of linguistics as it is known today. That language, and the idea that there was a single people who connected almost all Europeans, and certain Asians, genealogically soon gained political and social importance when it was used to support a sense of European identity. Many names were initially proposed for this, but the "Aryan language family" became quite popular. Even though the word 'Aryan' is originally Sanskrit and therefore not necessarily European, some linguists at the time believed that this was how the speakers of Proto-Indo-European referred to themselves. There's little substantial evidence for that, as the only people who used this term belonged to the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European, though some people claimed that it was European as well, drawing from examples in Greek and Latin or in the case of German linguist Friedrich Schlege, said it was related to the German word 'Ehre' meaning 'honor'.
 It should be noted that Nazis, especially academics, did not really prefer the term 'Aryan' because even though it distinguishes from Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic, it denotes too many peoples such as Slavs (and German-speaking Jews), and as anti-semitic German nationalists this was too inclusive. This term became more popular in America among neo-Nazis because white Americans tended to have ancestors from all over Europe (not necessarily Germany), as 'Aryan' suggests with its pan-European connotations. As side-note, the name for the country Iran is related to 'Aryan', and the Persian language belongs to the Indo-Aryan family.

979: Pluralizing Irregular Compounds Aug 14, 2017

There are many words that people consider to be irregular for different reasons including how it is conjugated or pluralized, but whether or not that term is fitting for all of them, the so called irregulars can make speech tricky at times. 'Tooth' is held by many to be irregular because it changes internally, even though it pluralized to have an /i/ sound with 'teeth'; arguably this is not irregular and just less common, as the same process happens with other words like 'goose, geese', 'foot, feet', and 'mouse, mice', even if they have come to differ slightly over the years. Nevertheless, it may make things confusing when these words come at the end of compounds, such as 'sweet-tooth'. In general, the conventional way to tackle this problem is to pluralize (or however else modify) a word in the way it would be when on its own, such that 'sweet-tooth' becomes 'sweet-teeth', but it would not be impossible to hear 'sweet-tooths', because the -S is the most common way to pluralize words, including new words when they are added to English, and people tend towards trends with which they are familiar.

978: Double Negative Aug 13, 2017

In the outside world, two wrongs don't make a right, and likewise in the world of English grammar, two negatives do not necessarily equate to a positive concept. For starters, using the word 'not' before a negating suffix like 'un-' such as with "I am not unhappy" does not necessarily communicate the same meaning as would "I am happy" without any word negating another, because both the speaker and the listener, assumedly, understand that there are more than two, in this case, emotions. Moreover, even if a sentence contains two instances of the word 'not', they only relate to each other if they appear in the same clause and in the right circumstances. Therefore, in the sentence "I'm not saying that I do not (don't) like you", the result is largely the same as with "not unhappy" in that the understood meaning would be somewhere in the middle between, in this case 'like' and 'do not like'. Additionally, some dialects of English as well, like Southern American English or African American English use a double-negative for emphasis, such constructions that use the phrase "ain't nobody", which is absolutely grammatical for the dialect.