1764: Articles in Country-Names Oct 13, 2019

Some countries have an article, like 'the Bahamas', but some are not official. According to the US State Department, only 2 countries are listed with an article, The Gambia and The Bahamas. This would make other places like 'the Philippines', 'the Maldives', and 'the Netherlands' technically incorrect, even though this is how they are commonly referred to. Other cases such as 'the Ukraine' are less clear; 'the Ukraine' (translated to 'the borderland') has more of a historical and linguistic precedent, but the popular usage has change over the last 2 decades or so due to Ukrainian, and particularly anti-Russian nationalism. More on articles before countries tomorrow.

1763: fetishism (LITW 11) Oct 12, 2019

In the below 1883 map of world religions shows the word "fetishists" and—though problematic in some ways—this is not entirely pejorative or even always reductive. 'Fetish' originally denoted idols, in particular from West African magic, and for a long time in a variety of languages such as English, French and Portuguese the word simply connoted general sorcerous, animistic, or idolatrous practices. The word is also related to 'factitious'.

NB: the term 'Mohammedan' (also 'Mohammedanism') refers to Islam.

For more Linguistics in the Wild, click here.

1762: tripoli's Oct 11, 2019

Tripoli may be the capital of Libya, but it is also the name of one of the largest Lebanese cities, a Greek City, a Turkish city, sort of. As it happens, the place in Turkey baring the name, with two more historically, were named by the Greeks, and the only modern Greek city with the name (though many more existed in Ancient Greece) was named during Ottoman rule. In the other two, likely more famous cities, were both named thousands of years ago when they were respectively under Greek rule; still they both have the same name in English, and also Arabic, طرابلس‎ (Ṭarābulus).

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1761: Spacing between Words Oct 10, 2019

Although a listener is able to break up words while listening, there are usually no spaces in the actual speech. There are two ways that this can be proven. The first is in the photo below which represents sound in speech, and as the arrows show, the sounds keep going one word to the next without pause. The sentence below reads "lexical segmentation i[s] sometimes really easy". The other way that this can be shown is through the fact that words are not the same in certain contexts. Consider how the [n] before a [p] in "in Paris" assimilates to an [m], just as it does in 'impossible' from the negating suffix 'in-'.

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1760: morris and mauritius Oct 9, 2019

The names 'Morris', 'Maurice', 'Moritz' and the dodo bird all have one thing in common. St. Maurice—Anglicized as 'Morris', Germanized as 'Moritz', and most importantly Latinized as 'Mauritius'—was a 3rd century martyr venerated by several different churches. He is also the namesake of the island-nation of Mauritius, from where the dodo hailed.

1759: Syllables Per Second Oct 8, 2019

Have you ever noticed that some languages seem to be spoken faster than others? There is evidence for this, measuring the syllables-per-second, but also keep in mind that not knowing where words are parsed may also make language sound faster. There are a few explanations for speed-differences, including simply cultural factors, but it is not fair to say that it is due to longer sentences compared to slower-spoken languages. Evidence suggests languages convey information at roughly the same rates, so that faster speech in languages like Spanish or Japanese—known for being spoken faster—is not because the utterances themselves are longer but is instead a choice by the speaker.

1758: ROY-G-BIV and Newton Oct 7, 2019

The reason that the rainbow has 7 colors is because of Isaac Newton. While other color-schemes had been devised since antiquity, the mnemonic ROY-G-BIV—invented by Newton—was made to describe the spectrum of light. It originally only included 5 colors: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. In addition to RYGBV making for a worse mnemonic, Newton added 'orange' and 'indigo' to make the number 7—though he could have chosen any number—in order to correspond with the number of notes in a musical scale. This is also why purple was divided into indigo and violet. Today we call Newton's blue 'cyan' and would likely call his 'indigo' 'blue', but the terms are kept due to his mnemonic.

1757: Mishearings and Language Change: "Folk Law" (LITW 10) Oct 6, 2019

Mishearings, such as that featured below, have the ability to affect spelling. Sometimes this is called an 'egg-corn' (from 'acorn') when one person misunderstands a word and replaces it with another existing one. However, this has also happened through history in a way that eventually became permanent, such as with "Elephant and Castle" in London. This is also particularly prone to happen with foreign loan words. In this case, the writer presumably meant to say 'folklore". For more Linguistics in the Wild, click here.

1756: mint (money or spice?) Oct 5, 2019

There is a myth that the word 'mint' related to money comes from the fact that the spice mint was so expensive, after all, the spice trade fueled global travels like few other commodities. This is false however. 'Mint' as the currency comes from Latin and was named after a specific place, whereas the spice, while also originally mediterranean—both etymologically and geographically—is not, with the oldest known language to have a clear word for it being Ancient Greek.

1755: Chester (Given Name) Oct 4, 2019

Discussed yesterday was how '-chester' in place-names like 'Manchester' historically meant 'castle'. Moreover though, the given name 'Chester' and likewise its nickname 'Chet' comes from the same root. However, it should be noted that this started as a surname, essentially meaning "of a town" before it became a given name. It would be practically like having the first name 'Borough' or 'Burg', which have similarly also featured in or as peoples' surnames and mean 'town'.

1754: -cester, -chester, and -ceter Oct 3, 2019

Without English spelling, we would lose a lot of obvious history. Famously the spellings of 'Worcester' and Leicester' look nothing like how they're pronounced, but they come from 'castre' meaning 'castle; fort' like in 'Lancaster' etc.. In fact, almost all of the British '-cester' are reduced to '-ster' in pronunciation. Still, there are also other ways this has developed in spelling, like '-chester' in 'Manchester', '-cetter' like 'Mancetter', or also '-xeter' in 'Exeter'.

See more on language change and English spelling: https://youtu.be/kA7mMfX3Bh0

1753: Infants Can Discern any Phoneme Oct 2, 2019

Adults can often seem to struggle more with developing new language skills than very young children, especially when it comes to pronunciation. There are lots of little reasons for adults having difficulty with grammars etc., and certainly one or two myths around it, but one thing that's easily noticeable is that adults tend to struggle with accents, while children don't, not only because they have more adaptable larynxes from not speaking in (usually) one way most of the time, but also they can actually discriminate between sounds better. Infants can hear the difference in every phoneme more or less, and lose that ability after a short time. They continue to use the ones they hear and get positive feedback for pronouncing, and drop the rest. However, babies do not necessarily discriminate between illegal syllables in the given language, but knowledge of sound constraints must logically follow from gaining knowledge of the sounds first.

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1752: heirloom Oct 1, 2019

Given that 'heirloom' is simply a contraction of 'heir + loom' it would seem reasonable to assume that the notion of inheritance would have always been part of it, but that's not entirely true. Indeed, while today we would think of a loom as only a tool for weaving, in Old English 'gelōma' referred to any type of tool, and so did 'heirloom' for a while. Technically, it referred was an article passed down in someone's will, but records show that its usage was more general. However, since the 17th century 'heirloom' has had the meaning it carries today.

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1751: frump Sep 30, 2019

Although 'frump' and its adjectival counterpart 'frumpy' now generally relate to fashion, this is a newer development. In the 16th, the word referred to bad humor or a bad temperment, believed to be from the Dutch 'verrompelen' ('to wrinkle'). Eventually the word connoted not just a bad attitude, but someone who has a such a personality, and thus the idea of a dowdy woman came after to be associated with the word.

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1750: elephant and castle Sep 29, 2019

There is a rumor that 'Elephant and Castle"—the junction in London—was named for "La Infanta de Castilla". The trouble is that no one knows which, assuming this is true. Eleanor of Castile and Infanta Maria are often mentioned, but the word 'infanta' wasn't used in English at this time. Another idea is that it refers to Catherine of Aragon, which would be more sensible chronologically, especially since she is known to have lived in the area at one time, and since it is certain that the whole area is named for a pub and inn, this is likely to be true.

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1749: -caster (doncaster and tadcaster) Sep 28, 2019

Britain has a number of cities with '-caster' in the names. Like how 'Lancaster' comes from 'Loncastre' (long castle), 'Doncaster' and 'Tadcaster' etc. come from the Roman 'castre' meaning 'fort'. In the case of 'Tadcaster', mentioned as 'tatecastre' in the Doomsday Book, it was just from the name of a person, i.e. Tate's (Táda in Old English) castle. The origin of 'Doncaster' comes from the Don River, but after that the origin is a bit less certain. If there is another '-caster', leave a comment and it may be the subject for another post.

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1748: plummet (and plumb) Sep 27, 2019

Of course, a pound of feathers weighs as much as a pound of lead—from the classic riddle—but lead is famous for being heavy. Indeed, the word 'plummet' comes from the word 'plommet' (diminutive of 'plomb') meaning 'small lead'.  Initially, the noun meant a steep drop, like it does now, but also was the nominal form of 'plumb', meaning 'to measure depth' i.e. 'plummet' was a measurement of depth. The word has only been used as a verb since the '30's, though this is now quite popular.
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1747: eleven (and twelve) Sep 26, 2019

The word 'eleven' comes from a root meaning 'one left', or 'one after'. This is not a reference to numerals—that wouldn't make sense anyway—or subtraction, but rather just from an old way of speaking. Most of the numbers follow a base-ten pattern, but 'eleven' from the Old English 'enleofan' (literally "one leaving") follows a more colloquial pattern. Old English kennings were euphemistic idioms made from compounding nouns, so like how "darotha laf" (lit. "spear leavings") connoted 'retreating warriors', the roots for 'eleven' and 'twelve' both just meant "one/two after ten". This is the same for most Germanic languages. There will be more on this tomorrow.

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1746: Dominical Letters and Music Sep 25, 2019

Musical notes are written in a scale denoted with letters A-G, but this could have been with numbers, or tonic sol-fa (do, re, mi...). Indeed, many other systems have been used through history. Given that other terms like 'octave', 'third' and 'fifth', now for music originated for calendars, it may not be surprising that the most popular, now-ubiquitous system was one from the calendar. Letters used to denote with which day of an 8-day week a year or month started was already in use, called dominical letters, so the pattern would have already been familiar to many.

1745: Dominica and Dominical Letters Sep 24, 2019

'Sunday', in Romance languages like French and Spanish is 'Dimanche' and 'Domingo' respectively, which compared to English is the most different etymologically, and moreover it is the only day in French not to end in '-di'. This comes from 'dominus' meaning 'Lord' (i.e. Christ's day), but it was also very significant to the Romans. Dominical letters were a way of relating the date to the day of the week. The Roman denoted the days A-H (there were 8 days in a Roman week). In an A year, the 1st of January would be a Sunday, and so on, so knowing the dominical letter would make it easy to know what day of the week any date was. This is still used to calculate the date of Easter, but to learn how it influenced music, make sure to stay up to date tomorrow.