1331: Researchers' Caution about Proto-World Aug 3, 2018

Some linguists have tried to argue for the existence of a proto-language labeled Proto-World that has lead to all subsequent ones, but this is mostly not believed. Somewhat less extreme conclusions from less academic sources however, are often displayed as being fundamentally human in some way or another, and researchers often try to clarify that. Even researchers who make observations such as the rarity of words for first person singular pronouns to contain consonants like [p], [b], [t], [s], [r] and [l] are qui, for instance, will make it clear that when this happens, usually certain words are older or that the research is only looking at selective words, and shouldn't be taken to be consistent across the board.
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1330: Semordnilaps Aug 2, 2018

People are naturally very good at spotting patterns without even trying too much. In addition to all of the anagrams, palindromes, and other such patterns, there is the so-called 'semordnilap'; these are words with a different meaning when spelt backwards, and the name was chosen by Martin Gardiner as it it the reverse of 'palindromes'. An example of this is the word 'stressed', which is 'desserts' spelled backward, and of course 'semordnilap' is a semordnilap itself. Comment some of your own favorites.
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1329: Feminine as Neutral Aug 1, 2018

A fiancé(e) may be a special someone, but linguistically it is special as well. Most of the time in English, when there is an option for a word to be either masculine or feminine, the option will be masculine, as has been discussed here before and is evident in the ongoing use of words like 'actor'. However, both fiancé and fiancée (masculine and feminine respectively) are pronounced the same in English, and the pronunciation is in-line with the French pronunciation for the French form. This could be a matter of English readers being confused by the accent mark, or luck, but this option is certainly rarer. This is also true of words like 'blond(e)' which takes the French feminine pronunciation, but that word has existed in English for 400-odd years before 'fiancé(e)'.
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1328: Early Linguistic Anthropology Jul 31, 2018

Before certain achievements in the fields of anthropology and archeology, were developed, linguists would study languages and draw conclusions about migration patterns and other history. To be clear, this happens today as well, but usually in tandem with genetic information and anthropology. Some outrageous claims, even for the time included the ideas that Germans settled Ethiopia, or that Norwegians settled in North America. The latter happens to be true, however, both of these were tested in the early 17th century based upon lists of "core vocabularies" (familial terms, numbers, natural features, etc.) and other more superficial relations, which were quickly disregarded by academics. The explanations they had will be discussed tomorrow.

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1327: wifi Jul 30, 2018

In addition to 'SOS', there are plenty of words which are neither acronyms or initialisms, but are popularly though to be. Sometimes this happens from in folk etymologies, such as the fabled origins or 'posh', but some words can be misleading. 'Wifi' is neither an acronym nor initialism, but many people believe that it is from the phrase "wireless fidelity". In fact, it just comes from a shortening of 'wireless' and the 'fi' was added on from the pattern of 'hi-fi', but is meaningless. In fairness, 'hifi' in music is short for 'high fidelity', so in a roundabout way, the mistaken etymology of 'wifi' is not so far off.

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1326: chief and chef Jul 29, 2018

Even though both 'chief and 'chef' come to English via French, French doesn't distinguish between the two quite the same way. As can be seen with the Anglicized pronunciation of CH in 'chief', that term has existed in English longer and has had more time to be assimilated, coming from Old French, while 'chef' is only two or so centuries old in English. 'Chef' however comes from "chef de la cuisine" ("head of the kitchen") and so is associated with food in English, but in French it is just synonymous with 'boss' or 'head', or, if you will, 'chief'. The term 'chief' may now have the sense in English of a tribal leader, but this is completely unrelated to any French intentions or origins.
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1325: Spelling and Loan Words: Countries Jul 28, 2018

Spelling is extremely influential to the way that people speak. This occasionally happens when words are loaned from language to another, and was especially true before audio-recordings were readily available. This is why the country Laos is often pronounced with an [s] at the end, even though neither the French colonists nor the locals ever did so, yet Kiribati—only called such since 1979—is known to be pronounced with an [s] at the end even though it is spelled with none. In both cases, the spelling is from non-English orthography being adopted directly, Laos from French which often has silent terminal letter, and Kiribati, which is from the native language whose alphabet has no S and instead uses TI.
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1324: The Oddity of "Aren't I?" Jul 27, 2018

In general, people tend to be pretty good at following rules of grammar, with the exception of phrases. There are a variety of ways that English speakers opt for conventions over rules, but with such little morphology, there aren’t so many occasions to use incorrect verb-forms anyway. However, in the utterance “Aren’t I…?” the verb clearly does not agree with the subject; this is not the case for the statement “I am (not)”, or the affirmative question “Am I?”. This really is because people are quite used to contractions in this type of situation, but for some reason “amn’t” did not catch on outside of a few regional dialects, and moreover the typical contraction “I’m” is in the wrong order for here. It is thought that one of the many causes for “ain’t”—as there was more than one factor—was the elision of the older “amn’t”. Check out the new video, out today: https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs

Why People Have Accents

1323: trousers Jul 26, 2018

There are lots of uses for the '-er' suffix, including indicating agents or actions, but other times it is completely coincidental. There are a few cases however, which are a bit harder to discern. One such term is 'trouser', because while there is no word meant by 'trouse' today, there did used to be. Related to the rare word 'trews', which is a Scottish regimental pant, 'trousers' comes from the Scotts 'triubhas'. The '-r' then is clearly not to show agency of any kind, and is instead thought to have been added due to its relation to the word 'drawers'.

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1322: Kidnapping and Intercontinental Interpretation Jul 25, 2018

Some of the earliest linguistic observation was by missionaries, but some of the earliest intercontinental communication was by kidnappers. The likes of Columbus—who brought with him an Arabic interpreter—and Cortéz, when they first made contact in the Americas, would have had to use drawings and ad hoc gestures, but since it takes a long time to learn a language, especially one with no relation whatsoever, it would be a lengthy process to learn the language form anyone. However, for children, this process took slightly less time, and children would probably be less resistant in general, so all of these early explorers and conquerors tended to kidnap a local child who would soon act as an interpreter for the linguistic area. This was especially useful in Mesoamerica wherein one language could be spoken over a large region, and it is because of the success of these interpreters who could communicate with many tribes that the region was conquered so quickly and totally.

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1321: The Effects of Babel Jul 24, 2018

Like any science, linguistics has been used for various agendas. For instance, some people used to believe—and tried to prove—that Hebrew was the world's first language, but while the Afro-Asiatic family dates back farther than just about any other, it is certainly not the first. Moreover, many early scholars attempted to show that Hebrew, Latin, and Greek were all related, even though Hebrew is completely different structurally. Both of these early attempts tried to relate what was known about languages at the time to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and was a hotly contested issue from the start to the finish of the Enlightenment period. These were attempts to make sense of language and linguistic history were early attempts at philology and what would later become the field of linguistics.

Read more about this topic here.

1320: The H in Pittsburgh Jul 23, 2018

For 20 years, between 1891 and 1911, the city of Pittsburgh, PA was spelt as Pittsburg. Originally named by Gen. William Forbes, a Scotsman after William Pitt, he opted for the Scottish variant of the English 'borough' or German 'burg'. At this time it would have been pronounced as /pɪtsbərə/, following the pattern of 'Edinburgh', but due to association with the far more common '-burg' this changed to what it is now. However, to standardize the many variants for cities over the United States named by various ethnic groups, the United States Board on Geographic Names was established and decreed that the spelling would be 'Pittsburg' to keep in line with the rest of the many German-based names for cities. The change had limited effect on unofficial proceedings, and in 1911 was changed back.

1319: New York's Melting Pot Jul 22, 2018

New York City is the most linguistically diverse city in the entire world, with an estimated 800 languages spoken therein. Originally too, the term 'melting pot' was first used to describe the Lower East Side neighborhood in Manhattan, which has always had a high immigrant population. Most of the languages that are spoken are done so by small groups of people relative to the total population however, as English and then Spanish are spoken in large numbers. In the outer boroughs though, and especially in Queens, English is less spoken than elsewhere.
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1318: Habitual Morphology in AAE Jul 20, 2018

The so-called “habitual be” in African American English (AAE) that allows for simple and continuous action to be discussed in the present tense without changing the aspect in the traditional way as has been reviewed here before may be fairly famous, but it is not the only way this happens in AAE. Stemming from the 3rd person singular –s, that same sound can be added to other non-3rd person singular present verbs to indicate habitual effect, and would look something like: ‘I always sits with my friends at lunch’ ‘That’s just how it bes’ ‘Every day he haves to go to work’ Notably again, this is for a specific effect, and is not interchangeable with its own omission. Furthermore, a non-habitual the 3rd person singular present verb would likely not have any –s ending in AAE.

1317: Gaps in Germanic Compounding Jul 19, 2018

Germanic languages are often praised for their proclivity to allow the creation of new terms through nominal, or occasionally verbal compounding, and whether or not this is fair, compared to other language families like the Romantic ones. This reduces the total number of elements necessary, and so is easier to memorize, but means that individual words become shorter. This can be seen with the German calque ‘Treppenwitz’ compared to the original French ‘l'esprit d'escalier’, or with the German for gloves as ‘Handschuh’, literally ‘hand-shoe’. There are exceptions to this however, such as with the Yiddish for ‘toe’ which is usually ‘finger’, but is in fact short for ‘finger fun fos’ (פֿינגער פֿון פֿאָס) or ‘finger of the foot’. This could have been something like ‘fosfinger’ but neither that, nor something similar to the German ‘Zahn’ for ‘toe’ as a unique word exists. This is all from luck and convention though, not grammar.

1316: False Cognates Jul 18, 2018

Cognates, in related languages, are a great tool to help people learn and retain vocabulary when learning another language, but false cognates, sometimes affectionately called "false friends" are conversely a hinderance. There are plenty of words which just coincidentally happen to sound like others, such as the translation for native word [dog] in Mbarabam meaning 'dog', but usually these are unrelated. On a few occasions, such as the Indonesian 'air' translating to 'water', these can be opposite, or at least very different. In a stranger case yet, the Georgian word for 'father' is მამა (pronounced mama), which is not only opposite, but also generally dissimilar to most languages which use a [d] or [b] for fathers. No matter what, there are challenges, but these can just feel like a bit extra on top of that.

1315: Misunderstood Loan Words: vokzal Jul 17, 2018

While there are plenty of loan words taken for words with no previous single translation, sometimes they are adopted out of confusion. The Russian word for a central rail station is вокзал (vokzal) which takes its name from the London Vauxhall, though it is debated why this is. Some will say that this is from a Russian delegation who went to Vauxhall station on the London Underground and misinterpreted it to mean 'central rail station', but Russian public rail line had opened a few years before this could have happened, so unless the station were somehow renamed later, this is unlikely. Otherwise, the word comes from the gardens nearby the station in London; the Russians created their own version, and the name of the Vokzal gardens were then mistakenly applied to the station. Either way, there was some misunderstanding when it came to the English-to-Russian transliteration and later translation, but over enough time and contact, this is bound to happen to between any two languages.
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1314: How to Preserve a Language Jul 16, 2018

One of the greatest challenges in the field of language revitalization is knowing where to put time and resources, specifically between working with communities to make the language-use more viable or whether it should be recorded along with the grammar and any other ethnographic resources. The former is obviously preferable because it allows the community to maintain its language and give other researchers time to study, but there are a few problems with this. Namely, it is more costly both in time and money, and requires not only a good linguist but a good community-organizer. Moreover, the community must be willing to work with people who are presumably outsiders, and this is not always the case for reasons of pride, economics, or if there are simply not enough speakers, either for accessible or total population. Because of these factors, and many others, while most linguists—and people generally—would probably prefer to make the maintenance of a minority language feasible, there is also a very real concern sometimes that within a matter of years or decades, the given language will be dead, and so should be recorded as a last ditch effort; the question becomes when that call needs to be made.
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1313: Linguistic Continuity: Bo Jul 15, 2018

One of the best ways to preserve a language is for its speakers to have a low population and live in relative isolation. Icelandic is a famous example of a language which has gone with very few changes over a thousand years, but other islands are home to even older languages. Bo is a language that was spoken on the Andaman Islands, off the coast of India, from pre-Neolithic times—several thousand years—up until 2010 when the last fluent speaker died. Many languages are spoken in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, many of which are endangered, but often they remain relatively preserved over long periods of time due to relative isolation and low population, which keeps the chances of change minimal, as those are two of the greatest factors for linguistic changes.

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