1533: earth-apple and chamomile Feb 23, 2019

As has been covered a few times here before, 'apple' has given its name to many different varieties of fruits and vegetables in many different languages around the world, from 'apelsin' meaning 'orange' in Swedish literally translating to 'china-apple', as well as both 'pomme de terre' in French and תפוח אדמה in Hebrew translating literally as 'apple of the earth' but meaning 'potato'. However, this is also true historically of things that don't even have the same shape or size of an apple at all. The word 'chamomile' comes to English via French and Latin from the Greek 'khamaimēlon' (χαμαίμηλον) which also means ‘earth-apple’. In this case however, it is not from a visual resemblance, but because the flowers apparently spelt like apple. For more about the difficultly in describing smells, watch this video: https://youtu.be/3zz9Hf2KUbg

1532: Singular and Plural Agreement for Collective Nouns Feb 22, 2019

In American English, collective nouns (i.e. nouns that refer to groups of things like 'family' or 'committee') are almost always treated as a singular, but this is not always the case in British English. In British English, collective nouns do usually have singular agreement (e.g. 'family is' not 'family are') but this is only when the group is being referred to as a whole. At other times, if one wanted to emphasize the individual parts of said group, one using British English conventions would opt for plural agreement, such as 'the family is convening' but perhaps 'the family are quarreling'.
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1531: y'all, yous, and yinz Feb 21, 2019

Even in the few forms of a second-person plural English pronoun, such as 'y'all', 'yous' and 'yinz', they pretty much all originate from combinations. While there are dozens of varieties of English, the main two sort of standard models are the Standard American and Standard British styles; neither of these have a distinction between the singular and plural forms for the second person pronoun but the other pronouns worked their ways out of this same word. 'Y'all' is just the elision of 'you all', and 'yous' comes from the '-s' form for general pluralization. 'Yinz' comes from 'you -uns'. which is shortened form of 'you ones'; originating in Ireland, it follows the same pattern as 'youngin', but gained greater popularity in Appalachia and the Midwest in the 19th century.

1530: pica Feb 20, 2019

Following yesterday's post about the unit of 'pica', it should be noted that this is a term used in printing, but also medicine, in which it denotes a tendency to eat non-food items. While it may be considered a serious term insofar as it is jargon for two professions, both of these terms originate from a Latin word for 'magpie'. The reason why this would have the meaning it does in medicine is fairly easy to understand, but in printing this makes less sense at first. However, it is believed that it comes from the appearance of piebald (a word that also comes from 'magpie') appearance of a printed page, compared to hand-written and illustrated ones.
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1529: Why 12-Point Font Feb 19, 2019

On many word processors, the default font-size is 12 points, nowadays, for whatever the font. This number may seem random, but—within the imperial system—it makes a lot of sense. Using standard measurements, a point is one-twelfth of a pica, which is just about one-sixth of an inch. Traditionally, all fonts would need to be measured not only to fit the page, but also measured against each other, so these numbers were important and 12 became standard. With digital printing however, many fonts will be larger or smaller than stated, no longer actually using points as a form of standard measurement.
More on fonts here.
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1528: -ing in English Names Feb 18, 2019

While the suffix '-ing' meaning 'small' noly appears at the end of a few words like 'duckling', 'gosling', or 'fledgling', it used to be quite a bit more popular, and it shows today. Many British surnames also come from this root, but this can be harder to discern, because another Old English word meaning 'people of' now resembles this today, such as in the city of Reading, England.

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1527: 'Arab World' Feb 17, 2019

Since discussions in the domain of geopolitics often relate to huge amounts of land and millions of people, a lot of generalizations need to be made. For instance, when people speak of the 'Arab world', this usually relates to parts of North Africa and West Asia that have predominantly Arab-speaking populations. However, this then includes many millions of speakers of language like Berber or Kurdish that don't resemble Arabic at all.

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1526: City of Lights Feb 16, 2019

Paris might have been the first city to light up a street with gas lamps, but the nickname 'City of Light(s)' is much older. In popular use, the phrase 'City of Light' or 'La Ville–Lumière' comes from Paris' status as a place of education during the Enlightenment Era. However, this nickname has been around for much longer and across languages. During Islam's Golden Age, Baghdad—once the world's premier center of learning—was called the city of light.

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1525: Conservative use of English in Pakistan Feb 15, 2019

The widespread use of English, especially in legislative purposes, is due in large part to colonialism, though there are some major exceptions such as in the EU. In all overseas territories, there will be a collection of words and phrases that are completely different to that of the home-country, but also some that are conserved. In Pakistan for instance, where English is an official language but also very widespread and prized among average citizens, there is a noticeable influence from the native Urdu, but also plenty of words and phrases conserved from older forms of English like 'into' to mean 'multiplied by' such as in "3 into 3 is 9", or '(in) tension' to refer to nervousness. Overall, this happens in every form of English around the world.

For more on how languages evolve watch more here

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1524: Sprachbund Feb 14, 2019

It was discussed in the post from yesterday how languages on the west coast of North America are extraordinarily diverse, but just because the languages do not have one clear linguistic ancestor does not mean that they have no relation whatsoever. No matter what, languages in proximity to one another will share some similarities, even if it is just in some vocabulary or basic sound-structures but not enough to warrant the title 'language family'. These are sometimes called a 'Sprachbund' or 'linguistic area', and they help to explain what could be misleading similarities.

See more about that here: https://youtu.be/oqmZCCXL_Hg

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Find yesterday's post here.

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.

Check out the new Word Facts Video:
https://youtu.be/oqmZCCXL_Hg

When Linguistics Crosses with Genetics