1256: Does It Matter How Many Words You Know? May 18, 2018
Shakespeare is often lauded for his immense vocabulary in his literature, but does this matter? In a previous post from Word Facts, it was discussed how many rappers would have equivalent or even larger lexicons than Shakespeare, even if they aren't thought of that was necessarily, but an important followup-question to that is: so what?. Reportedly, an average issue of The Sun—which for the sake of this post will be assumed to be considered lowbrow—contains roughly 6000 words per issue (this does not include repeated words). For reference, the both immensely longer and more academically renowned The King James Bible contains roughly 8000, though it is regarded as incredibly well-crafted and prestigious. People make this same point about US Presidents, stating how Wilson used around 1000 words in his addresses whereas those of George W. Bush could have around a mere 250, but as is hopefully clear from the first example, the number of distinct words really has no correlation with intellect, and there are also many more factors to eloquence.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYX2heE0T0
1255: I Before E Except after C? May 17, 2018
"I before E except after C..." is not only prescriptive and irrelevant, because English spelling is particularly arbitrary, but also usually wrong. There are in fact more exceptions to the rule than words which conform to the rule, in fact, there are 21 times as many words where "I before E except after C" is broken than those that conform. Reportedly, there are 923 words where this is the exception, including 'species' and 'weird'. Even extending the rule "...except when it says [ei] like in 'neighbour' and 'weigh' ", the rule is very much in the minority of relevant words. Indeed, this has recently stopped having been taught at schools, but for a very long time this was the norm in lower education.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYX2heE0T0
1254: Prawo Jazdy: be careful with translation May 16, 2018
In Ireland, the Garda reported a criminal with a long list of speeding-tickets and parking-fines from all over the country, but each time it was under a different address. There was nothing else on his rap sheet, so this raised a lot of red flags about the need for false-identities. Prawo Jazdy was in the system for more than 50 offences, until someone pointed out that 'prawo jazdy' means driving license in Polish. This was a big embarrassment for the Irish police, but the Polish residents reportedly found this very amusing.
1253: The King James Bible Didn't Speak Its Greek May 15, 2018
Those translating The King James Bible (KJV) weren't familiar with Koine Greek: the language it was written in; at the time people didn't know it existed. This may sound impossible: how do people translate from a language which is unknown?
Well, it is not as if the translators for the KJV were only familiar in English (or even ecclesiastical Latin) and translated from no background, but at the time, people believed that Koine (common) Greek, as what they were all familiar with: Classical Greek. In fact, up until more scrolls and other documentation was found, it was thought that the Greek used in the New Testament was unique, and moreover a divinely-inspired dialect. This was proved false in the 17th and 18th century by the existence of thousands of items in Koine Greek, mostly on papyrus. So while the translation is one of the most-trusted, it was beyond the grasp of the translators, and should—more than most translations of other things—be taken with more consideration.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYX2heE0T0
1252: Triple Entendre (bei mir bisti sheyn) May 14 2018
People often talk of double entendres (except the French who don't use this French phrase). This only means that a word or phrase has two meanings but it isn't too difficult to find words with three or more meanings. For instance, the Yiddish song "Bei mir, bisti sheyn" (בײַ מיר ביסטו שײן) is easily translated into German "Bei mir bist du schön" but notoriously hard to translate into English. Though it is usually written "to me you are beautiful", "bei mir" means all of "to me", "by me" (i.e. "beside/near me"), and also "compared to me". While the final meaning-option is least likely given the context it is still a consideration. This makes the phrase "bei mir" a triple entendre. If you can you think of other triple or quadruple entendre, in any language, write it in a comment.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYX2heE0T0
1251: The Nuance of Proof May 13, 2018
There is no harm in seeing that words can have multiple and even conflicting meanings, though there are some words for which a misunderstanding can lead to communicational problems with deep social and cognitive effects. The word 'proof' for instance has the sense of sounding as if it means something has been confirmed as a fact. Indeed, often this is the way in which the word is used, but as is evidenced (proven?) with the statement and expression "the exception that proves the rule", if 'prove' meant "confirm as factual" then the statement would not make sense, as exceptions make rules invalid. Instead, what 'prove' means 'to test'. To say this is all it means though would be prescriptivist; due to past misunderstanding and misinterpretation, the word has gained a more objective sense of sounding infallible, and this may lead people to be critical of the uncertainty of proof. At this point however, all one can do is to be mindful of both.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYX2heE0T0
1250: How Turkish Words Get So Long May 12, 2018
Turkish and Finnish agglutination were brought up in the latest the latest Word facts video, but no example was given. In the video it showed how Germanic languages allows for compounding of terms within a single lexical class (e.g having strings of nouns acting together as one word) and polysynthetic languages can attach affixes to indicate meaning that connotes ideas that would belong to multiple lexical classes, but synthetic languages are somewhere in the middle. Turkish, for instance, can pack a lot of information into one word very similarly to polysynthetic languages. As you can see in the chart below, shows that affixes, particularly suffixes (and then infixes) can be added to one word in order to indicate meaning which in English would have to involve prepositions (which is also true of less agglutinative languages like Latin), verbs, and adjectives. There are still more limitations to this than in, say, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), but are still more productive than in English
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too:
1249: Semantic Diversion: verklemmen, farklempt, and clam May 11, 2018
To see effect of time and culture on language, loot how one root develops in two languages; this is best exhibited with English's 'black' and French's 'blanc' (white) coming from the same origin. Less directly than that, though still notably, the Germanic 'klammjan' lead to the Modern German 'verklemmen' meaning 'to jam/press', the Yiddish 'farklempt' (ווערקלעמפּט) meaning 'grieving' (although in Jewish English it only means 'emotional'), and the English 'clam'. All of these go back to a root that meant 'block', but were taken different ways. The original meaning was probably closest kept in German, but in English it was applied to an animal with a tightly shut shell. The meaning in Yiddish, however, emphasizes the emotional side to this word, and it is by no means the only one; other terms in English such as 'choked up', or indeed 'clam up' convey the sense of having a sort of emotional or mental blocking up. Ironically, there is the expression "happy as a clam".
1248: contronyms May 10, 2018
A contronym (also contranym) is a word that has two opposite definitions, and there are two main reasons how these come to be. Sometimes this is due etymology; the word 'cleave' means to split apart—leading to the knife, 'cleaver' and also 'cleavage' (via geology)—but also it means 'to stick together'. They both have different participles 'cleaved and 'clove' respectively, and come from different words in Old English: 'clēofan' and 'cleofian' respectively. In the case of 'inflammable' and 'unlockable', this comes down to morphology; 'inflamable' can mean "not able to be flammable' or "able to be inflamed" and depends upon which affix would be added first. If you know other contronyms, write it in the comments.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYX2heE0T0
1247: Parenthetical (Nonrestrictive) Clauses
Whats the difference between:
"The man, who I met earlier, is funny...
The man—who I met earlier—is funny...
The man (who I met earlier) is funny" ?
In effect: nothing really. All of these have examples of a nonrestrictive clause, meaning that it is modifying clause nonessential to the rest. The difference is that commas are used to separate many types of clauses, including generally main clauses from subordinate clauses. However, m-dashes also are used for this, though more specifically for parenthetical clauses when the information can be thought to interrupt the rest of the speech, and moreover, parentheses are used for—obviously—parenthetical clauses. Since the sentence cannot be rearranged to be "the man is funny who I met earlier" because that sounds odd, so the parentheses aren't as jarringly parenthetical as they could be, but there is some overlap in usages. There will, however, be editorial preferences when writing.
Check out the new video: /stonewordfacts/2018/05/whats-word.html
1246: How are Sounds Related?: [t] and [k] May 8, 2018
It is hard to judge the two most similar pairs of sounds in English. Looking at the place of articulation for sounds, it could appear that [p]/[b] is a lot closer to [t]/[d] than [k]/[g], with the former two being pronounced at the front of the mouth (lips and teeth respectively) and the latter produced towards the back, but there is a higher frequency of eggcorns produced from confusions over the sounds [t] and [k] than with [p]. This can be evidenced with 'buck naked' being misheard as 'butt naked'.
Make sure to watch the video out tomorrow: What's a word? on the Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNofHfYEoM2l7fu2340gsDQ
1245: Phonetics of Loan Words May 7, 2018
Spelling is not a motivator for major linguistic change, but does contribute to some phonetic variation. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that English spelling no longer matches up with pronunciation, but neither do are English speakers known for bending over backwards, so to speak, in order to accommodate for the pronunciation of foreign words. For instance, the Catalan word 'paella' is pronounced /pajejə/ in US English (and Spanish and Catalan), whereas in the UK it is produced as [pajelə]; this however does not make speakers in the UK 'wrong', that is unless they try to use it in Spanish or Catalan that way, because words change when they enter another language. This of course also happens both ways, with English loan words changing to accommodate for other languages' phonetic rules or normalities, such as how 'merry christmas' changes in Hawaiian, or how the country 'Kiribati' (pronounced /kiribas/) comes from the name 'Gilberts'.
1244: Lack of Salish Lexical Classes May 6, 2018
Yesterday it was discussed how Salish does not distinguish between nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Salish does have the actual lexical classes—although nothing is impossible—there are not the same contextual limitations like in every other known language. What this means is not that the language relies on guessing, but for instance there is no distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs, every element of those four categories can take verbal suffixes, nominal suffixes etc., and no contexts in which one word from those categories cannot be placed, for examples. This is not true of all dialects of Salish though, as for instance there is evidence to suggest that Klallam Straits Salish distinguishes between verbs and adjectives in the predicate, but this still acts as enough of an argument against Chomsky's notion that all languages have nouns and verbs.
1243: Lexical Limitation May 5, 2018
The word 'back' is an adjective, verb, and noun; this sort of productivity is not possible in all languages, but even English has limitations. The uses of 'back' depend upon linguistic context, and that can be given in merely one other word; to make it a noun, add a determiner (e.g. 'the back'), for a verb, add a determiner phrase (e.g. 'I back [the company]), and for an adjective: a noun (e.g. 'back pain'). However, this means, this means that there are contexts in which back cannot exist. For instance, back cannot follow a preposition like "in back" (though "out back" is a phrase on its own), nor can 'back' be a noun and follow determiner phrase, although this is true throughout all of English and should not be terribly special. One could argue that this is only because word-order is so foundational to English grammar, but languages with more inflection tend to have less of this kind of productivity anyway. There is (at least) one language in which there is no such limitation, Salish, and this will be discussed tomorrow.
1242: Pronouns versus Anaphors in English May 4, 2018
English doesn't have a 4th person for verbs, and indeed most languages don't. However, it is with the 4th person that Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) distinguished between when a third person object of a third person subject (e.g. 'him' in "he loves him") is referential or not. Instead, English uses 'himself' and 'him' to show when one is referential and the other is not. Therefore, any direct object pronoun of a third person subject will refer to another person; in “Brian loves him”, ‘him’ can only refers to someone else, always. Where this gets tricky in English but wouldn't necessarily in Greenlandic is when there are multiple clauses, e.g. "Brian said that she loves him" where 'him' could refer to anyone except for the 'she' in question, because even though 'himself' exists, it cannot appear here *"Brian said that she loves himself". These are rules which any English speaker knows without being aware of necessarily.
Today there was a new Word Theory on the Patreon, so check it out: https://www.patreon.com/posts/de-pressed-word-18598896?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=postshare
1241: History through Prefixes: 'ver-' / 'far-' / for-' May 3, 2018
Looking at other, related languages' evolutions can offer great insight into their history; indeed, this is why so little is known about Basque, which has no known relatives. However, there is a lot to see with the history of Germanic languages. For instance the prefix 'ver-' in German 'vergessen' ('forget') or Dutch 'verliezen' ('lose'), the English 'for-' as in 'forgive' or indeed 'forget' and even the Yiddish 'ver-'/far-' depending upon how it is written in the Latin script, or '- ווער' when it is written in Assyrian letters, as in 'farklemt' (both emotionally 'depressed' and physically 'pressed') all come from the same origin. The root for all of these had the effect of adding intensive force, semantically speaking, in the same way that 're-' does in 'remember'. Nevertheless, in all four languages 'ver-'/'far-'/for-' gained a negative connotation, and will express renunciation such as in 'forgo', prohibition as in 'forbid', or simply undesirable things like with 'forlorn'. Only looking at this in English [4], it could be thought of as an English phonomenon, but looking across languages we see that this pattern is much older.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://youtu.be/T18K38h2ZHc.
1240: clamber: From a Strong Verb May 2, 2018
In Appalachian English, people do not say 'climbed' and 'had climbed' but will opt instead for 'clamb' and 'clumb'. This word belongs in strong verb class 3, which you can learn about more in the most recent Word Facts video. However, this fact is not just something fun to say at parties, but also helps to understand an etymology which more people are probably familiar with today: clamber. The word 'clamber' is thought to ultimately derive from 'climb', but the reason that the word in question is not 'climber' is that it comes from 'clamb'. "Why did it come from a participle?" you might ask: no one knows; linguistic innovation is not always logical, whether that is in minority dialects or standard forms.
1239: Tense vs. Aspect: 'Do' and 'Have' May 1, 2018
The auxiliary verbs 'have' and 'do' (which is extremely rare outside of a few languages, having been borrowed from Cornish) have similar functions on the surface, but are extremely different. The difference between "I did [verb]" and "I had [verb]" is that while both 'do' and 'have' are often used to indicate past action instead of (or in addition to) conjugating the main verb, they show different grammatical aspects. Simply put, 'do' is for when the action is continuous or perhaps habitual "I did run" which is the imperfect aspect whereas 'have' only refers to that which has (had) an end, "I had run", which is the perfect aspect. This all becomes trickier considering the present tense "I have run" is the present tense but takes place in the past, and "I do run" is clunky; most people opt for simply 'I run' and only use 'do' for the negative form, or for emphasis.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://youtu.be/T18K38h2ZHc.
1238: I Forget/-got What to Call This Apr 30, 2018
It is not uncommon to forget a word at all, but we have some interesting ways of phrasing that; if you want to learn about Tip of the Tongue, check the link. The question today is, what should the tenses be with "I forget/-got what it is/was called". For the same reason that English teachers tend to dislike the use of the past tense in essays, logically it ought to be 'forget' since the act the speaker is describing is, presumably, in the present, and moreover, if what is being forgotten is the name for a proper noun or otherwise something specific, then it still would be called it in the present too. With all that being said, it would stand that the only sensible option would be to say "I forget what it is called", but this is not always the case, in some form or another. One explanation for this is that the speaker will be thinking back to the time of remembering the name for whatever is in question and will use 'was'. Looking at the reasons for 'forgot', this could be as simple as that it is a shorthand for the perfect construction 'have forgotten' to indicate not tense but rather aspect, but this is debatable.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too: https://youtu.be/T18K38h2ZHc.