1724: Extra Runic Letters Sep 3, 2019
1723: Months were Adjectives: Calends and Ides Sep 2, 2019
1722: nundinae Sep 1, 2019
Although we think of a week as 7 days, for the Romans, it was 8. This, along with their 38 weeks, left an unorganized series of 50 days in the winter—and no, the math doesn’t work out with that*. The Romans were weird—by modern standards—about time-keeping. Even with these weeks of 8 days, they were also in another sense weeks of 9, because this unorganized period of 50 days were considered, culturally speaking, to be the ninth days of the week even while they were all clustered together in the winter, hence their name ‘nundinae’. The name comes from the Latin for ‘ninth day’ (nōnus and -din-). This, along with ‘nones’ are examples of a Roman preoccupation with categorizing days by series of nines, but as explained yesterday, this was not always the same as actually counting 9.
*The nunidae was actually 50 days, meaning that the standard year was about a week and a half shy of 365 days, and this is also why February is so short. The Romans would periodically add the days in February from the 23rd; even now the leap-day is technically added as the 24th day of February, not the 29th.
1721: Inclusive Counting Aug 31, 2019
Numbers, and therefore counting, may seem to be fixed, but this is only half true. Numbers are objective, but there are multiple ways of counting, and there is evidence to suggest that inclusive reckoning (i.e. counting, usually days, including the first and/or last day) was more common in the past than the alternative. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Israelites all counted like this, which we know from written works, mostly describing time. A clear example is with the 'nones' (from the root word of 'nine') of the month being the 8th day, or that the period between Olympic games, which happen every 4 years, was called the pentaeteris, from 'pent' ('five'). This also shows up in the Bible and in musical notations, which will be explored over the next few days. If you know of any yourself, write a comment.
1720: Esperanto's Name Aug 30, 2019
1719: NATO Phonetic Alphabet Aug 29, 2019
1718: idaho Aug 28, 2019
1717: Pronunciation of ע (Accents over Time) Aug 27, 2019
It is typical for any language for some of the sounds to change over time. You can see more about this regarding English in the video released today. This is one of the reasons (among many) that the Hebrew alphabet not only multiple pairs of letters able to represent the same sounds, but also 3 letters representing no sound, sort of. One of these letters, now often mistakenly likened to a vowel in Hebrew, and acting as a vowel for Yiddish and Ladino, ע (ayin) but traditionally this sound was a glottal fricative, having a similar oral posture (position of the mouth) as with [s] but produced at the back of the throat. Now it is most often a glottal stop. In Arabic, it still usually retains this pronunciation, but it varies in different regions.
1716: Esperanto Money Aug 26, 2019
1715: Diminutive Suffixes in German Dialect Aug 25, 2019
About 80% of Yiddish vocabulary is from German, more or less depending on dialect, but when it comes to grammar the number is harder to discern. For instance, it is common for Yiddish to have the diminutive suffix -l (ל-), even using this in place of the word for small 'kleyn' (קליין) as is the case in German. For instance, 'city' in German is 'Stadt' (pronounced like SH-t [ʃt]), and in Yiddish it's 'shtot' (שטאָט), but a town—when not a village—is sometimes 'Kleinstadt' or just 'kleine Stadt' in German but 'shtetl' (שטעטל) in Yiddish. However, this Yiddish feature is Germanic, not Slavic or Hebraic, and does appear infrequently in some dialects. For instance, the Austrian town Neustadtl an der Donau (literally: New Little Town on the Danube) uses this convention, which is not really standard for German.
1714: copper metal Aug 24, 2019
While 'copper' for 'policeman' might not be related to metal, the history of the term for a metal is much richer. The word may ultimately come from Latin in the form of 'cuprum', but the whole thing comes from Cyprus, insofar as that Latin was a contraction of 'Cyprium aes': Cypriot metal. In fact, the first ever man-made metal alloy, 'bronze' is made partly from copper, and was originally made in that part of the world. It was so common that the words for 'copper', 'bronze', or even metal objects— particularly cash coins—were at times indistinguishable in Latin, simply referred to as 'aes'. Eventually 'cuprum' meant the distinct copper we know today, and 'aes' became 'ore' when it entered English.
1713: copper Aug 23, 2019
There's a belief that the term 'copper' for police officer comes from copper badges, but this is folk etymology. Instead, it comes from the verb 'to cop', meaning 'to seize' referencing their arrests. This root is very old however, and it is also related to the modern word 'cheap', since the root word (something like 'kap-') meant 'to grab' and in other languages derivative terms sometimes mean 'to buy'.
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1712: sjikker (Dutch) Aug 22, 2019
Following from yesterday, there looks like at least one exception to the Germanic patter of words similar to 'siker' meaning 'safe; certain', and that's the Dutch 'sjikker' meaning 'drunk'. This is actually not related at all, and comes from Hebrew rather than Latin like the others ultimately. Dutch and Hebrew—neither Biblical nor Modern—were in much contact, so 'sjikker' comes from the Hebrew שִׁיכּור (šikkōr) meaning 'drunkard' via Yiddish שיכּור (shiker). This Yiddish word has in turn also led to the German 'schikker' and the English 'shikker' (alcoholic) but these are both fairly dated.
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1711: sure and secure Aug 21, 2019
1710: czar and tsar Aug 20, 2019
The titles of 'kaiser', 'caesar', and 'czar' all mean 'emperor' in different languages, but 'czar' can also be spelt 'csar', 'tzar' or 'tsar'. The word in Russian is царь with ц representing the 'ts' (ь is the symbol for softening consonants). It is not uncommon for a single letter to represent this double-articulation; German orthography does this with Z and the Hebrew alphabet has צ as an equivalent, but the difference here in spelling from using the increasingly standard Ts/Tz for English words broadly, and was adopted later. Cs/Cz is older was introduced into English by a Slovenian, Sigismund von Herberstein, who used the convention used by many Slavic or other Eastern Europeans for writing that sound generally.
1709: Robert the Bruce Aug 19, 2019
While 'of Arc' was a name and not a title for 'Joan of Arc', 'Bruce' was a title and a name for Robert the Bruce. For the Scottish king known as both Robert I and Robert VIII de Bruce in Scotland, he actually follows a line of men named Robert de Brus that went back at least 200 years before his birth. The change from 'de Brus' to 'the Bruce' was not ubiquitous at the time, though it mostly is now, but it was simply a misinterpretation of the French 'de' (of). 'Bruce'—both here and as the modern first name—comes from the Norman city 'Brix' meaning 'the willowlands'. Scotland was close diplomatically to the French, and most nobility used 'de', like his contemporary Sir Roger de Kirkpatrick of Closeburn.
1708: Joan of Arc pt. 2 Aug 18, 2019
Joan of Arc's name wasn't 'of Arc' (d'Arc in French) as discussed yesterday, but it is even more complicated than this. For one thing, her name wasn't Joan as it is in English, or even really Jeanne as it is rendered in French, but Jehanne as she spelt it. It was rendered as Joan in English because there was no other equivalent at the time, though now there are many female forms of John. Also, her father's surname was something like Darc (though there are many other possibilities) but in Medieval society, a woman took her mother's name; in Joan's case her mother's was 'Romée' but she also went by Isabelle de Vouthon. Last names weren't universal in Medieval France though, and she mostly was called "la Pucelle d'Orléans" (The Maid of Orleans).
1707: Joan of Arc pt. 1 Aug 17, 2019
In European societies, it was typical for the titles of nobility to include place-names, but with "Joan of Arc" or "Jeanne d'Arc", this was not the case. She was not born in Arc but Domrémy. Moreover she was a peasant and this was her father's name, so it definitely wasn't for nobility. It is believed instead that this comes from a misinterpretation of 'Darc' or 'Dars' or something like this. French elides its vowels so 'de' before places with vowels it is now written d', but the apostrophe was not always part of French spelling.Since the apostrophe would not be used until later in French, and because surnames were not universal then, it was miscorrected after her death. There will be more on her name tomorrow.
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1706: (Art)ificial Aug 16, 2019
The word 'artificial' often has connotations towards 'insincere' or 'unnatural', but like 'artifice', this is not what it originally meant. Initially, it just meant 'hand-crafted', although certain phrases like 'artificial intelligence' use 'artificial' this way, since 'art' used to mean 'craft; skill'. This is even exhibited in the German word for 'artificial intelligence' is 'künstliche Intelligenz'; in German 'Kunst' is 'art' so while not a loan word, the pattern is still the same.
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