1407: Why People Use Phrases Oct 18, 2018
There are lots of reasons that people might use phrases, some of which may seem contradictory. People could use it to convey an idea quicker, but other phrases take longer to say; "a stitch in time saves nine" is longer to say than just "don't procrastinate" but moreover phrases like "he's cute as a button" are not only longer in total but actually build off the initial idea (i.e. here it could just be "he's cute". The difference is that the phrase conveys an image that might stick better in the listener's mind than to just state the concept, because language is fundamentally about conveying ideas and images, and the more colorful the better.
1406: Affirmation in Latin: Where is it? Oct 17, 2018
Many people who study Latin may not know the word for 'yes', but while Latin is not usually taught conversationally, that is not the reason why. Unlike in many languages now, Latin didn't have a distinctive exclamation or interjection for affirmation. Instead, people would reiterate the main verb to express agreement, or for an even greater effect would say 'etiam' meaning 'same'. This is why many Romance languages have very different words for 'yes', which will be explored tomorrow.
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1405: Pretzel and Bretzel Oct 16, 2018
Certain unaspirated sounds can often sound the same; there is no reason why why write 'stop' as such and not 'sdop', but they are are always remarkably similar. This is true of [t] and [d], [k] and [g], and [b] and [p], but all of these (though less [k] and [g]) therefore get confused over time. For instance, the word 'pretzel' is 'Bretzel' in Swiss-German, as it was in all german dialects before it was bastardized, as will inevitably happen to words over time. Originally this comes from the Latin 'bracchiātus' ("having branches or arms"). Notably, 'brachial' and 'brachiosaurus' also share this root, but all of these words have a [b].
1404: The Birds and the Bees Oct 15, 2018
Just because a phrase like "the birds and the bees"—as it relates to sex—does not have one definite origin does not mean the information we do have is useless. There are a plethora of theories as to where this expression comes from, but while the written sources date from the 17th to the 20th century, none of them use the phrase as it is said today, and instead may include ideas of birds or bees separately, or very vaguely; this is the nature of euphemism after all. But this is still useful because it is likely that this phrase, and many others, did not come from thin air, but would have developed gradually over time anyway.
1403: Standard Yiddish Oct 14, 2018
When the question of a standardized form of a language comes up, it is usually about nationalization. After all this is the reason most languages have a standard form, if they have one at all: most don't. However, there has never been a state run by Yiddish-speakers, and yet there is a "Standard Yiddish". Like with Standard British English or Standard American English, the majority of Yiddish speakers today do not speak the standard or "neutral" variety, and so this is somewhat controversial since this is what is taught when taught as a second-language usually, but unlike with the Englishes above, Standard Yiddish was created more as as amalgamation of features from a few major dialects. Even so, what is considered standard is based off of what was used for the majority of literature, as writing usually is a larger basis for what makes up a language's standard form than just speech.
1402: Difficulty with Phrases Oct 13, 2018
It is much harder to find the etymology from phrases as compared to individual words. In part this is because informal phrases don't show up as often in writing, but writing is the best—and historically only—way to record language. Moreover, because phrases are usually not as necessary as individual words, they often emerge suddenly out of only one language and can disappear easily, and unless the phrase comes from something like a book or a play, there won't be enough data to make a conclusion on origin. This does sometimes happen, but in the case of a phrase like "mind one's p's and q's" there may list several possibilities.
1401: Exceptions to Word Order: Mongolian
In discussions of word order, it might seem that there must be consistency for languages to be able to be categorized, but this is not always the case. Disregarding the fact that some languages don't have subjects (see more here), exceptions to word order still exist in many languages. These appear in English in some contexts, usually due to pronouns, and other Indoeuropean languages have small exceptions here and there, but in Middle Mongolian this was very different. In this language, the order consistently depended upon whether the subject was a noun or a pronoun; in the former case, the order was subject–object–predicate, but when the subject was a pronoun, the order was object–predicate–subject. This may be similar in concept to an ergative-absolutive language, but not quite the same.
1400: Other Voices: Mongolian Oct 11, 2018
Yesterday, it was discussed how there are other voices outside of just the active and passive for verbs. To understand these better, you can watch this video. However, Classical Mongolian has some extras in addition to one's discussed before. The reciprocal voice shows a relationship between two nouns that are both the agent and the patient (not quite the object) such as would be indicated by 'each other's' in "Adam and Billy cook each other's dinners". The other of these two is the cooperative voice which shows cooperation between two nouns, but this is very similar to the reciprocal voice or even just a plural verb in everything except the fact that there is a distinct suffix.
1399: Other Voices: Hebrew Oct 10, 2018
In the video published yesterday, the idea of the middle voice was discussed. However, while the passival this is the only way that the active and passive voices are subverted in English, many languages have other options. For instance, Hebrew and Ancient Mongolian both have 5 voices but not all of these are the same; they both have active, passive, and causative (i.e. the verb indicates causation) but Hebrew has what are called the intensive and reflexive voices to indicate intensive force on an object and indicate when a subject is an object as well (like in "he shaved") respectively. Ancient Mongolian has two others as well, but these will be discussed tomorrow.
1398: Mergers and Splits Oct 9, 2018
To describe differences in vowels among accents, people often will describe mergers and splits. A merger is when two sounds that began as distinct in certain context begin to sound the same. For instance, the so called PIN-PEN merger present in Southern American English means that the pronunciation of those two words that are distinct in Standard American English sound the same before a nasal sound. A split has the same effect, but the opposite chronology. The FOOT-STRUT split is now more common than the opposite, wherein the vowel in those two words sounds different, but originally these would have been the same.
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1397: Hypocorisms Oct 8, 2018
On this blog, there's been a great deal of discussion about diminutives, but these are usually historical, from other languages, only able to be applied to certain words, or all of the above. However, hypocorisms as they are called can be far more flexible. The term includes diminutive affixes like '-ling' in 'duckling' but also other alternate forms of words such as nicknames. For instance '-ie' or '-y' to the given name 'Rose' to make it 'Rosie' isn't exactly diminutive, and this is especially the case when names are reduced first, such as 'Jonathan' to 'John' to 'Jonny'. However, while these aren't proper diminutive suffixes, they are far more productive—i.e. they can be added to more words—than is the case for any other diminutive suffix in English at the moment.
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1396: spanish flu and WWI Oct 7, 2018
It is only due to politics that the Spanish Flu has the name it does. There is no disagreement that the influenza outbreak of 1918 was exacerbated by the First World War, but that even had linguistic impacts. The disease is thought to have been brought over from Northern China to North America, or originated in North America by itself (although there is no real consensus) and in either case could have just remained more localized. However, both America and the British Empire had extremely strict censorship of the press, and no reports of this flu were aloud to be announced for fear that it would lower morale. Even when it had infected most of Europe, most governments censored their presses except for Spain, which was neutral. As a result of this, while the virus was spreading to all inhabited continents and killing millions, the only people that wrote about it were in Spain, so people assumed it began there.
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1395: facebook Oct 6, 2018
1394: Singular of Genitalia? Oct 5, 2018
There are plenty of words for which are plural in construction but (often) singular in usage. 'Physics' is one such word, and often so is 'bacteria' or 'data', the singular of which is 'bacterium' and 'datum respectively but people don't often bother to make the distinction. Indeed, a common pluralizing suffix in Latin was '-a' as exhibited in the above two words, but also in others such as 'genitalia' for which no singular form exists in English. The word comes from the plural of 'genitalis' but because for both men and women multiple organs act together in tandem, people will simply refer to specific organs such as the cervix or the testis if the singular is desired.
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1393: Memes are Changing English (LITW 7) Oct 4, 2018
Memes are changing the way that people speak. A formula for a common type of meme is to start with the phrase "me, when I [do such-and-such action]' followed by a picture or video illustrating the point hyperbolically. The meme in German below says just that, translating as "me, when I must go out all day acting like a [decent] person". However, in German, it begins with 'ich' which is used for subjects whereas English uses the object form 'me'. From a grammatical standpoint this makes no inherent sense, but consider that people also say "it was me" in English all the time, and do use the wrong case for the pronoun at times, but memes are certainly adding to that to the point that people have begun to speak in this way as a way to signal informality and camaraderie.
This is another instalment of Linguistics in the Wild.
1392: On "That's What She Said" Oct 3, 2018
Phrases like "that's what she said" are generally not thought of as particularly respectable. In part this is because it is fairly crude by nature, but it is more linguistically complex. The whole point that someone would use a double entendre is to hint at meaning without mentioning something overtly, so when the reverse happens—i.e. when meaning is drawn out where it is not intended—not only does this make obvious something that was supposed to be understood to be discrete as would happen with a purposeful double entendre, but it derailing any conversation because it consciously inverts any intended meaning.
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1391: Why Man Becomes Men Oct 2, 2018
English has a lot of features that don't maybe make immediate sense, but understanding the history can help. 'Man' pluralizing to 'men' doesn't make immediate sense, and moreover it doesn't necessarily help even to look at related strong nouns like these but looking at German can help. In German there is essentially the same vowel-shift from 'Mann' to 'Männer' (pronounced with a roughly similar vowel as in 'men'), however in German this change is a lot more consistent. Not all vowels are changed in this way, but the ones that do usually morph regularly. This is a lucky coincidence in some ways, but historically Germanic languages only indicated change in things like pluralization or tense by changing the vowels, so this would have been the norm. For more on this, see: https://youtu.be/T18K38h2ZHc
1390: history and story (and Geschichte) OCt 1, 2018
The German word 'Geschichte' is the term used to mean 'story' and 'history'. This is not a post about the possibility that people considered history as subjective necessarily—that would be for a Word Theory which you can find at patreon.com/wordfacts—but it is true also that the English word 'story' comes from a bastardization of 'history' too. This is fairly peculiar given that even 'history' is from the Romance language family, not Germanic, originating from Latin and brought to English via French; 'history'—because it is from a totally different root in French—is not related to 'Geschichte', even though the fashion term 'chic' of all things is. In this way, the two terms originate from different places, but share a sort of common history, as it were.
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1389: Voynich Manuscript Sep 30, 2018
While languages have many exception to any convention or rule, ultimately they are systematic. In the video "How Writing Began", it was discussed that despite all of the many ways writing appears, it is always going to be systematic; only 1 language on earth is known to use some sort of synergy. There is one book however, the Voynich manuscript, that is written in an unknown language that looks to use Latin letters with a few unknown ones as well. No one knows what it says or even what language it would have been from. Many people thought the person who discovered it had fabricated a book, but carbon dating proved it to be real, or at least if it were a scam, the person who discovered it wouldn't have known for sure. The tricky thing about that too is that it is systematic, with endings and other letter-combinations showing up regularly together. Some people have taken this to mean it is its own language, while others believe it is a code, but no language is completely random.