1523: Linguistic Diversity in California Feb 13, 2019

Just because most of North America had no independent writing systems as discussed yesterday, doesn't mean that there wasn't a rich linguistic history in that region. In fact, it is quite the opposite situation. In the region of what is now California alone, there is more linguistic diversity than Europe, with 27 distinct language families that don't seem to relate to each other very much. This should not be too surprising however, since the same factors that tend to lead to writing systems—large trade-networks—would lead to closer linguistic contact, and over time would not allow for groups to as easily become cut-off from contact and thereby naturally develop further linguistic distinctions.

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1522: (Basically) No Writing Systems in North America Feb 12, 2019

North of Mesoamerica, there are no independent writing systems from before European contact in the Americas. For reference, the Greek island of Crete has two writing systems unique to that bit of land, and the section of North America in question is about 2 millions times bigger. This deficiency however, is true of many cultures that lacked large-scale trade and dedicated systems for storage. Indeed, increased trade after the arrival of Europeans, both with other tribes and with the Europeans led to the creation of several native writing systems, ranging from hieroglyphs to alphabets and syllabaries.
Watch more about the creation of writing here: https://youtu.be/dntJLHmkfhw
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1521: (Some) Reasons for Official Writing Systems Feb 11, 2019

Classifying something as a language can be political at times, such as with calling Croatian and Serbian distinct, but this is also true of writing systems. A whole system of writing can change the way that people consider a language. For instance, to make Kazakhstan less culturally russified, the government decided to use a Latin-based script instead of a Cyrillic one in the last few years, whereas China uses the same writing—let alone writing system—for all Chinese dialects even if they aren't really mutually intelligible. Sometimes this is done more-or-less accidentally however as is the case with Laotian and Thai, which are mutually intelligible but have different writing systems.
See more on censorship in the new video: https://youtu.be/IFwACamZhmM

1520: Why Dutch isn't spoken in the DRC Feb 10, 2019

The history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is often discussed as if it was colonized by Belgium, but this is not entirely true, and the linguistic makeup of the DRC and its government represents this. In 1885, what is now the DRC was colonized by King Leopold II as his personal property, but even after he gave over control to the Belgian government decades later, Flemish (Dutch) was barely recognized as a language in Belgium, even though it is spoken by half the population. Today, Belgium has 3 recognized languages: French, Flemish and German, but because French was favored for much of Belgium's history, only French is the official language of the DRC. For more on this theme, watch the video about how anthropology intersects with linguistics: https://youtu.be/oqmZCCXL_Hg.

1519: North Korean Censorship Feb 9, 2019

Watch the new video on censorship here.

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In North Korea, there are huge limitations on what gets into the country, but in the age of the Internet, this also means a monitoring on what gets out. For instance, there are only 28 websites registered with the .kp handle, which means that Internet in North Korea not only can be easily regulated by the government, but basically all media is controlled to stop communication. As a result, both of Internet and of everything else in terms of isolation, there are many terms and other linguistic signals that are used in South Korea that North Koreans have reported not understanding. For more on censorship watch the new video.

1518: cricket and croquet Feb 8, 2019

Although the practice of the sports themselves are quite different, the words 'cricket' and 'croquet' both come from the same root word. It is not a case in which one was brought about by the other, but the type of batting tool used both come from the same origin as 'crook' as in staff. For more on sports, see yesterday's post.

1517: pitch Feb 6, 2019

Pitching in baseball basically refers to any type of throw, but this did not used to be so. Although both 'pitch' and 'throw' generally denote propelling, in this case, a ball, in other sports like cricket or golf it is necessary that the ball hits the ground. In cricket this is area of the ground is called the 'pitch' and this style of throwing gave rise to the distinction of this word in the context of sports over 'throw', and but in more modern baseball, the term stuck but the practice has not.
https://youtu.be/E8wxfur1HwI

1516: Regional Phrases in the USA Feb 5, 2019

While American grammar is overall remarkably similar, city-to-city and region-to-region, there are a few areas in which people really differ. Although not especially syntactically significant, terms like "(standing) on line" or "in line", or "calling in sick" compared to "calling out sick" often have regional variants. There aren't hard-and-fast rules for any of these things, but generally there are 4 regions where these sorts of divisions can be seen across the US: the Northeast, the Midwest, the Southeast, and the West, and there isn't only one that is always the odd region in every case.
Make sure to watch the new video about how genetics has helped linguistics, and vice-versa: https://youtu.be/oqmZCCXL_Hg

1515: Classical Music Feb 4, 2019

'Classical' as in 'classical music' differs from other forms of the word. Whereas usually it means 'of ancient Greece and Rome', such as in 'classical architecture', classical music in general is associated with the period between 1700 to say 1830. The difference here is that the music is being referred to as 'classical' as in 'timeless', as a contrast to later forms of music that was not held in such high regard, like romantic music or jazz.

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https://youtu.be/oqmZCCXL_Hg

When Linguistics Crosses with Genetics

1514: El Dorado Feb 3, 2019

The famed city of El Dorado has inspired many myths, theories, and movies, but a bit of knowledge about the name would have cleared that up. The translation of 'el dorado' from Spanish is 'the golden', which doesn't make much sense by itself, but actually this is because the first account of the tale was from the phrase 'el hombre dorado', or 'the golden man'. This is because the legend comes from a right of passage ceremony for the local chief of dumping gold in a lake to appease their Sun deity.
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1513: Pitching or Throwing a Fit Feb 2, 2019

Often, words will have definitions that are petty straight forward, but these won't always follow a clear pattern. This is true a lot of prepositions, such as how an alarm will go 'off' before it is turned 'off', but also some words just don't make a lot of sense. For instance, 'throw' and 'pitch' are used in a lot of the same scenarios, including 'throwing' or 'pitching' a fit, and while those words can relate to making something, like throwing a party or pitching a tent, the fact that they can mean that at all, at the same time as they both mean to propel a ball doesn't make a lot of sense. In fact, while the phrase "having a fit" can be dated back to the 17th century, 'pitching' or 'throwing' one isn't attested for until about 200 years later, even though it is all just a continued process of stretching a word's already plentiful definitions.

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1512: 'Expat' vs 'Immigrant' Feb 1, 2019

The terms 'expat' and 'immigrant' hold a huge amount of extralinguistic connotations, but looking at how academics use those terms could help to diffuse some of those problems perhaps. There is a popular belief that "expat is only for white (or generally privileged) people", but this isn't quite true. In technical senses, an expat is any person who lives in another country for economic reasons but holds citizenship to another with no intention of giving it up; usually this will be someone moved by his or her company. An immigrant refers to anyone who has moved to another country, usually in search of another job and or citizenship to that foreign country. Often these terms can overlap, and especially get confused due to migration agreements in places like the European Union, but, in an academic sense, these are not simply based off of class; in popular usage this might have extra connotations however.
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1511: "I'll be home in 3 days; don't wash" Might be False Jan 31, 2019

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It is very easy for misinformation to spread so long as there is a grain of truth to it, such as the line of 'let them eat cake', which was probably never said by Marie Antoinette. Another such disputed quote is "I return in 3 (or 5 or 8) days; don't wash" said by Napoleon to his wife Josephine. This quote is more likely to have been written than that attributed to Antoinette as he did often write her love letters, but many of the original lines from which the now-famous quote could have been drawn are often contradictory or not so reliable.

1510: Why Bar Mitzvah not Ben Mitzvah Jan 30, 2019

Although it is usually translated as 'son of the commandment' the term 'bar mitzvah' (בר מצוה)—the term for a Jewish boy's coming of age ritual—does not use the Hebrew word for son, 'ben' (בן), as found also in names like 'benjamin'. This is furthermore in contrast with 'bat (or bas) mitzvah' (בת מצוה)—the equivalent for girls—which does use the Hebrew for 'daughter'. Instead, the word comes from an Aramaic word that originally meant 'outside', but later in Hebrew began to mean 'ability', i.e. in this case "someone who is able to fulfill commandments".

For more on Hebrew's influence on Hebrew, watch this.

1509: Right-to-Left Lyrics in Sheet Music Jan 29, 2019

Although there are many frustrations of writing in a non-Latin-based script in todays world, as discussed in the last two posts, but this is not only true of digital media. When it comes to writing music, which is traditionally written left-to-right, this poses a problem for those who write lyrics in a writing system does not follow that pattern. What people who write with Hebrew characters tend to do is to break up the word into syllables; each syllable is written right-to-left but the whole line is written left-to-right. However, those who write with Arabic letters—which by itself is a significantly larger population by up to hundreds of millions—will often, though not always, instead write the notes and every other musical notation right-to-left.
See the last related two posts here:
CrazyFont
Arabizi
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1508: Arabizi Jan 28, 2019

Following yesterday's post about innovative use of the Latin Script, not only do some people use this writing system as a non-standard alternative for the sake of accessibility, but also now for slang. Arabizi is the name given to Arabic written in the Latin alphabet for online or text purposes predominantly. This started because there was for a long time no way to write in Arabic digitally, but even after progress was made there, Arabizi continues to be used for the purposes of conveying slang, and providing a more informal appearance. Here is how it looks with the Arabizi compared to the International Phonetic Alphabet standard:

Arabizi: kif/keef sa7tak, chou/shu 3am ti3mel?

IPA: [kiːf ˈsˤɑħtak ʃuː ʕam ˈtɪʕmel]

(Arabic: .كيف صحتك، شو عم تعمل)

Example from Wikipedia

1507: CrazyFont Jan 27, 2019

There are plenty of writing-systems around the world, each suited in some way or another to a language. However, due to the standardizations from mechanical writing in both printing and now also digital typing, many people are limited in access, especially in comparison to the universality of a pen. Cyrillic is used by hundreds of millions of people, but only in parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia; outside of that, access to a specific keyboard isn't always easy. People are fairly innovative however, and many Russian speakers or other users of cyrillic will use what is sometimes called "CrazyFont": writing the words out in the Latin script—which is far more dominant on the Internet—and spelling Russian somewhat phonetically. It is non-standard, but fairly common.

There will be two more posts about the problem of typing over the next two days.

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1506: Effects of Grimm's Law to Linguistics (g.l.7) Jan 26, 2019

Over this last week with the special series on Grimm's Law, it's definition, it's ramifications in linguistics and wider society, and its shortcomings, but it is still notable, not just as a precursor to Verner's Law, but as the start to historical phonology as a branch of historical linguistics. The basic explanation—that observations between the use of [p] in Latin and [f] in German suggests how languages naturally shift over time—albeit perhaps over simplified is straightforward enough, but these sorts of ideas which laid the groundwork for much of historical linguistics as it is used today. Theories that are now widely accepted as common knowledge today were either small-scale or fringe before the publication of Jacob Grimm's 'Deutsche Grammatik'. This is the final instalment in the Grimm's Law series, but make sure to follow for more content every day.

Watch more on Historical Linguistics here.
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1505: Verner's Law (g.l.6) Jan 25, 2019

According to Grimm's Law, plosive consonants, particularly as the onset of a word first first become stops, and then become fricatives, like:
b^w -> p -> f
but looking to modern Germanic languages, this is not always true. There is one major exception, wherein looking at counterparts in Latin, Greek, and or Sanskrit, the Germanic equivalent was a b, d or g, which only changes voicing but does not become a fricative as expected. Karl Verner, however, posited that this would relate to other features he outlines, including word-initial stressing. This addition was a very important one, but it relied on the assumption that any sound-law would have to be without exception, which is a matter of theory in some regards as well.
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