1303: Archi Verbs: 1,502,839 Derivations Jul 5, 2018
Not many language-learners enjoy writing out the various tables for the morphology of more inflected languages. Some languages are certainly worse than others, and morphological structures which also use infixes in a compounded manner such as you can see with Turkish are a particular nuisance. And while there are some tough languages to understand therefore, perhaps none use such complex morphology as Archi, which for 1,502,839 forms may be derived from any given verbal root. Practically speaking these will not all be used, but due to problems like this, the question of what a word is becomes even more complicated; English is said to have the largest lexicon, with between 300,000 and 500,000 words, and though, again, most will not be used by any given individual, this is not even a third of what can be derived from any one Archi verb. Ultimately, what a word is comes down to the individual language at times.
1302: Philosophical Languages Jul 4, 2018
People may regard philosophy today as full of niche jargon, and rather exclusive therefore, but there was a time in history when people invented whole languages for it. These philosophical languages were developed, primarily in the 17th century and into the 18th as a way to create something which would be universal, though at the time European intelligentsia would all use Latin anyway, so a language which no one spoke natively was already used for academic use. Further irony was added by the fact that people constructed many different "universal" languages, including Leibniz, Bacon, Wilkins, Kircher, Comenius, and Dalgarno. Nevertheless, these philosophical languages were not supposed to make cross-cultural dialogue easier ultimately, but instead it was usually supposed to use symbols and other graphs in order to represent ideas more concisely. These, obviously, did not catch on for long, but there are hundreds of thousands of pages with examples of this.
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1301: LGBTQ-linguistics: An Overview Jul 3, 2018
In sociolinguistics, there is an entire field called LGBTQ-linguistics which looks into the different ways that people of that community speak dialectically. Originally termed 'lavender lexicons', this fielded is focused on looking at differences between people in the LGBTQ-community's speech, and the social conditions which cause them. For instance, gay men use what is called the 'gay lisp' wherein /s/ and /z/ are produced for longer and at a higher frequency, as well as certain vowels being produced by raising the tongue higher than a straight man would tend to. Notably, lesbians tend to do the opposite, but the difference is less pronounced for women in general. These differences have often been attributed to having social-groups composed mostly of women in the case of gay men and vice-versa for lesbians, but also, like any dialect, it is used for identification, to show one's belonging to a certain group. There is much more to say on this topic, including transgender speech as well as lexicon, politicization, and how these traits change over time, but this is just a brief outline.
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1300: New Modals: finna Jul 2, 2018
As has been discussed on the blog before, there are certain categories of word which tend themselves easily to the creation of new terms, and others which don't. It is usually easy to make new verbs that become widely used, but some types of verbs, such as modal verbs especially relevant for today are not. These verb include 'would', 'could' and 'might', and have very clear and deep-rooted Germanic links, changing little over time. A new word however, 'finna' is an example of a rare, new modal verb. The origins of the word come from 'fixing to' in African American English as an equivalent to 'going to', and indeed morphed into 'finna' on the same pattern as 'gonna' and 'wanna'.
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1299: What is the Closest Descendant of Latin? Jul 1, 2018
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1298: california Jun 30, 2018
Looking at old map of the Americas, Spanish speaking colonists originally believed California (including Baja California) was an island, after sailing up only part of the Gulf of California. For a very long time, this was the accepted geography, and while there are certainly interesting cartographical ramifications, that is for another blog. What is relevant is that because it was considered to be an island by the Spanish, and the name 'California' was given based on a fantasy-island in the popular romance novel "Las Sergas de Esplandián'. In the island in the novel, the island was one east of Asia, and populated by black women, similar to the Amazons in this mythology way. This was not the case of course, but the name stuck.
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1297: Oligosynthetic Languages pt. 3 (ConLangs) Jun 29, 2018
In this third and final post in this short series about oligosynthetic languages, which you can see more about in the link. All Oligosynthetic languages classified as such are all invented languages, generally with the idea of simplicity in mind. A few examples of these include Ygyde, Sona, and Newspeak. Toki pona is a language developed with only 120 words, though now an additional 3 have been added. This language relies on a great deal of inferences, context, but also compounding such that a word like 'coffee' might appear as something equivalent to 'hot brown liquid'. This language however was created not in order to be for complicated communication, but for easy-to-learn language for business and other activities like that.
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1296: Oligosynthetic Languages pt. 2 (In Nature) Jun 28, 2018
It was discussed yesterday how the highly, even unrealistically minimalistic variety of languages known as 'oligosynthetic' could probably not exist in natural languages, but there was a time when some thought otherwise. Languages including Nahuatl, spoken by the Aztecs and their descendants, as well as Blackfoot, also known as Siksiká, have at one time or another been claimed to be oligosynthetic in some way or another. These ideas are now discredited, and these languages, like most in the Americas, are considered to be polysynthetic. Polysynthetic language may appear from first glance to be opposite to oligosynthetic languages, given that they have extremely complex morphosyntactic systems, but actually both rely on a level of compounding which would put German or Turkish to shame.
Examples of what could be considered oligosynthetic languages will be the topic for tomorrow.
1295: Oligosynthetic Languages pt. 1 Jun 27, 2018
Depending upon how much information can be added to words in a given language morphologically, for example with verbal suffixes that show the information about the subject such as in Spanish, a language is places on a scale; if a language is analytic then there is little morphology, and the most a language can be is polysynthetic. However, there is one group which uses even less morphology, but these only exist in made up languages. A so called oligosynthetic language is one with very few morphemes whatsoever, but it is necessary to point out that this also includes words, as well as affixes and anything else, so a language like Mandarin, with almost no affixes is still not oligosynthetic because it has many words that exist on their own. Oligosynthetic languages are therefore considered to be only theoretically possible, and would require a level of compounding which is not necessarily practical for day-to-day usage, as this might amount to even more combination than using a polysynthetic language!
There will be more about this tomorrow, looking at some examples.
1294: Exonyms: Ruotsi and Ryssa Jun 26, 2018
While a few places, by historical coincidence, have many exonyms (i.e. what a place is called by other peoples) when the differences are very stark, as with 'Germany', Deutschland', 'Allemagne' and 'Niemcy' all referring to the same place in different languages, there are usually historical reasons. Another example is that the Finnish name for 'Sweden' is 'Ruotsi', but rather than being from Finnish, as you might imagine would be the cause for this difference, it actually just derives from another (Old) Swedish word. 'Ruotsi' comes from 'roþs-' which related to rowing, and even in Old Norse the area was called 'Roþrslandi', which means 'land of rowers', relating to the Vikings. Moreover, this 'roþs-' is where 'Rus'—the base for 'Russia'—derives, which is consistent with the history of many early slavic states being controlled Germanic raiders.
While the history of a region is usually important for understanding exonyms, this is not necessarily the case, as with 'Austria'. Also, many of these vastly different exonyms are centred in Europe, as with 'Switzerland', but it is true of places elsewhere too, like 'Japan', which in Japanese is 'Nihon'.
1293: zuchetto and zucchini Jun 25, 2018
Make sure also to check out Word Facts' analysis of Arrival: /stonewordfacts/2018/06/the-linguistics-in-arrival.html
1292: Goals as an Adjective (LITW 5)
Slang has turned the noun 'goals' into an adjective. If you've missed this in the last couple of years, people have been using the word 'goals' in structures only fit for adjectives. In the photo below "her British accent is goals af", 'goals' is a predicate adjective (i.e. it follows the linking verb 'to be'. Notably, while someone can say 'her...accent is goals' or theoretically 'her accent is pretty', there is not the option to say the 'goals accent' in the same way as 'the pretty accent', at least for the time being. Moreover though, it precedes 'af' [as fuck] which is only possible for descriptors. It is also notable that while 'goals' is plural when a noun, as an adjective it has no grammatical number. This is the fourth segment on Word Facts entitled Linguistics in the Wild (LITW), and you can see the rest here.
1291: liberal Jun 23, 2018
There are many words which have evolved over time to mean something completely opposite, and while in contronyms like 'peruse'—which meant to read thoroughly and now means to skim—are not very important, some are. One such word is 'aryan', discussed here before, but one with less baggage though still relevant is 'liberal'. The original sense of the word is still preserved in 'libertarian', and espoused the notion that all people are free to have their own ideas and opinions in spite of external conditions, which merely influence the individual. Indeed, many derivatives of the Latin 'liber' relate to individualism, however today the idea of 'a liberal' tends to evoke ideas of someone socially leftist, who would believe that there are systems in place which necessarily influence action and thought, whereas libertarians and others on the right are no longer called 'liberals', but use liberal ideas in the traditional sense.
1290: Magyarab Jun 22, 2018
There are many old theories about sites in Africa having built by European travellers rather than natives which are Eurocentric and racist, so the idea that a Hungarian man by the name of László Almásy discovered a lost Hungarian tribe in Africa would seem to fit into this type, but actually it is thought to be true. The Magyarab tribe, the name of which is strikingly similar to Magyar is estimated to be descended from 16th century Hungarians who travelled to southern Egypt and Sudan when the Ottoman Empire controlled those lands, and some stayed, intermarrying with the Nubians. Genetic information, as well as many loan words, suggest that these people were in fact from central Europe, though today they speak Arabic. The name comes from 'Magyar' (Hungarian) and -Ab which is Nubian for 'tribe'.
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1289: Zuni and Japanese: Related? Jun 21, 2018
There is a great deal of genetic evidence to suggest that Native Americans are related to East Asians, but there is also some controversial evidence linking certain groups linguistically. The Zuni language spoken in the Pueblo area is a linguistic isolate, like Basque, and it is not considered related to any other American language, and even though most American ones are polysynthetic (leading to extremely long words) opposite to the analytic nature of most East Asian languages, there are some notable linguistic similarities between Zuni and Japanese. The linguistic data on its own was not enough to convince many people, but there were later genetic studies that claimed to support such a link. However, much of the explanation for this relates to the debunked theory of the Altaic language family.
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1288: Esquivalience Jun 20, 2018
Words have been added to dictionaries erroneously before, called 'ghost-words', but sometimes fake words are included to be able to later prove if there has been copyright-infringement. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) describes 'esquivalience' as "the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities", which is certainly a useful word, but it completely made up. Given that ultimately what dictionaries do is to describe the same words that every other one describes too, it can be tricky to catch when some company has stolen any entries, but both Dictionary.com and Google have had entries for 'esquivalience', indicating that they took, at least to some extent, from the OED, having fallen into their trap.
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1287 Why 'Labor of Love' Sounds Odd Jun 19, 2018
In English, the term "labor of love" is common enough to not sound abnormal, but this really is an odd phrase. However, the reason this is used is because it was taken straight out of a translation of the New Testament. If you don't believe that, look at the other lines in the same sentence: "work of faith" and "steadfastness of hope""; it sounds off. This phrase, however, would be normal in Koine Greek, which is the original language. This is because there is a level of vagueness in genitives which relate to sources rather than actual possession, similar to the interchangeability between "bread made *from* flour" and "bread made *of* flour". In Koine Greek this is fine, and even in German wherein 'von' means both 'of and 'from' this is normal sounding enough, but often translations of the Bible will sound unnecessarily clunky for reasons like this, though perhaps even 'steadfastness from hope' would have been a clearer translation.
1286: Locative Pronouns Jun 18, 2018
Pronouns, both personal (e.g. 'he' and 'you') and relative (e.g. 'that') are one of the last places where grammatical case may be found in English. Sometimes the distinction is simply subject-possessive-object such as 'I-mine-me' or 'who-whose-whom', but there is more to this. The fairly obscure and usually only literary or found in certain expressions 'hence; thence; whence' (meaning 'from where') and 'hither; thither; whither' (meaning 'to where'), which follows the same patter as 'here; there; where', are the best and possibly only cases where there is locative displayed morphologically in English. Most of the time, speakers rely on prepositions like 'to' or 'from', and this is the case with the relative pronouns to in that most of the time people say 'to there' rather than 'thither', but it is still very occasionally used.
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1285: Committee of the Hebrew Language Jun 17, 2018
Unlike French, which has the Académie Française to regular French, Hebrew did actually need a committee to figure out how certain terms would be used. This is because it was merely a literary language for over 1,600 years, and in that time, societies had developed new ideas and new objects which needed to be added to the language. The creator of Modern Hebrew, Ben-Yehuda, order the establishment of the Committee of the Hebrew Language with the specific goal of modernizing where necessary, but he insisted that the gaps be filled, both grammatically and lexically, following Semitic systems, often taking from Aramaic or usually Arabic in order to maintain a predominantly Semitic character. As a point of information, this is not the same reason why certain words changed from Biblical to Modern Hebrew, such as 'anochi' to 'ani' meaning the pronoun 'I'.
Make sure also to check out Word Facts' analysis of Arrival.