2084: novel Aug 29, 2020
The adjective 'novel' and the same word's use as noun have seemingly very different meanings. In German, French, and Dutch a novel is called 'Roman' from the French 'romanz' meaning 'common language'. In English, 'novel' in both senses (at least originally) meant 'new' with the book coming from the Italian 'novella storia' (new story) but the generic nominal form was eventually replaced by 'novelty'.
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2083: Im-parsable Verbs Aug 28, 2020
There are certain instances when a contraction can’t be used, such as at the end of “that’s just the sort of nice man *he’s”. The reason for this is because there are multiple uses of certain types of verbs including ‘have’, ‘do’, and ‘be’. It is not for that same principle though in the reverse as to why it doesn’t work. The imperative verb ‘don’t’ in “don’t you dare!” cannot be parsed further into “do not you dare” because it is idiomatic, but in “do not/don’t go in there!” this makes no difference. The reason is actually because imperative verbs, verbs that give a direct command, don’t have a subject, and to include a subject one would need to add a different, modal verb “you must not dare”. Dare is actually somewhat of an exceptional verb, so check out more here.
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2082: A Reason for Long Hawai'ian Words Aug 27, 2020
English has more distinct words than just about any other language, depending upon the metrics, and that fact alongside more flexibility with consonant clusters means that compared to Hawai'ian—with a relatively short vocabulary, fewer letters, and an inability for two consonants to appear together—the words in English can more easily be shorter. For instance, the word for 'zoo' in Hawai'ian is 'kahua hōʻikeʻike holoholona laka ʻole' meaning something like "lockable animal display site".
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2081: Frolic is a Verb... Aug 26, 2020
The '-ic' suffix is used for forming adjectives and certain nouns such as 'psychic'. That sound-combination exists in other places of course, but those will typically have a -k, making a word like 'frolic' look slightly exceptional. Indeed, 'frolic' was originally an adjective, from the Dutch 'vrolijk' meaning 'merry' or 'cheerful', though these days it is usually a verb, or the noun associated with that verb meaning "to move joyously".
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2080: Digraph Capitalization Aug 25, 2020
Usually words will not have multiple capital letters outside of acronyms or certain surnames, but digraphs are not treated uniformly. English has plenty of digraphs like CH and TH and so on, treated as one letter for the sake of pronunciation, but two for everything else including capitalization. In Dutch however, digraphs like ij, often even written like ÿ, are both capitalized often, such as with 'IJsland' as opposed to 'Ijsland'. Each language will have its own rules, but usually only one is capitalized. In South Slavic languages which alternate between both Latin and Cyrillic scripts, a Latin digraph—written as only one letter in Cyrillic—will also only capitalize the first Latin letter.
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2079: guadalupe Aug 24, 2020
The name for 'Guadalupe' in Mexico comes from Spanish, sort of. Any further than that, there is some debate, though most experts would say that is is from the Arabic وَادِي ال 'wadi' (valley from a dried up river) and the Latin 'lupum' (wolf). This combination was then applied for the patron saint of Mexico. Some others may say however that it was originally from a Celtic hydronym, i.e. a name for a waterway. A disproportionate amount of European river names are from Celtic, and it was possibly borrowed from one of these.
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2078: maudlin Aug 23, 2020
Along with the name 'Madelyn', the Biblical character of Mary Magdalene gave rise to the word 'maudlin'. These days, it cas come to mean tearful or sentimental, but in the past it meant 'weeping'. It is from that sense that the modern definition arose, and it comes from the understanding of Mary Magdalene as weeping in repentance, often depicted as such in art. At one point in time, 'maudlin' also meant 'drunk'.
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2077: Biblical Origins of 'Madelyn' Aug 22, 2020
Other names like 'Jocelyn' and 'Kaitlyn' have the '-lyn' ending as a sort of Germanic feminine suffix, but this is not the case with 'Madelyn', or indeed ‘Madeline'. This name actually originates from 'Magdala'. In English, there is a Biblical figure Mary Magdalene, but in Latin this is Maria Magdalena, or literally 'Maria from Migdal' (a city in Israel). The given name 'Madelyn' as such originated as with many other modern ones as a surname.
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2075: ẞ & ß, or: The Limits of Lower Case Aug 20, 2020
European alphabets in use today like the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets are all bicameral, meaning they have both upper and lower cases. However, there are some exceptions to this. For instance, the German ß representing SS (or technically SZ) did not have a capital form ẞ until 2017 because it only appears in the middle of words, and would only be used for all-caps use; this therefore is still pretty rare and not accepted everywhere. There will be more on capitals tomorrow.
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2076: Troy Weight Aug 21, 2020
There are lots of systems for measurements, often with internal variations. For instance, there are long and short versions of both hundreds and hundredweights. There are also Troy weights, which are an alternative weight system alongside avoirdupois called Troy weight, started in Troyes, France, but used officially in England in the 15th century until 1824. All of the weights were based on the grain like the current Imperial system, and indeed, most of the terminology was the same, so it does mean that even though writing from the past may reference similar terms, there will be slight discrepancies.
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2074: Sign Language for 'Shut Up' Aug 19, 2020
Lots of languages have phrases meaning "shut up", relating to mouths, and in American Sign Language, this is not so different. Even though sign languages by nature do not involve speaking, the cultural connotations to (vocal) speech as communication led to the association with the sign for 'shut' covering one's mouth, and likewise the sign for 'shh' is the index finger in front of the lips. Of course, not all or even most signs in ASL—nor any other sign language for that matter—are related visually to the meaning they convey.
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2073: The Shavian Alphabet Aug 18, 2020
Along with the Deseret alphabet of the Mormons, there was another somewhat and temporarily successful phonetic alphabet designed for English, and also Esperanto. The Shavian alphabet, designed by Bernard Shaw—a member of the BBC's Advisory Committee on Spoken English—has 40 letters that correspond 1:1 with some English phonemes and diphthongs. It has no visual correspondence with the Latin alphabet but does use its own logic based around the height and shape of the letters, and often will represent related sounds with a rotation of the basic symbol. It also has no capitals, but does have a diacritic which functions with the same purpose. As can be discerned with the fact this post is not written in that system, and that the Shavian alphabet needs to be explained, it was never terribly successful, but it has been used in several books and newspapers.
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2072: A Mormon Alphabet Aug 17, 2020
The Torah is written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek, and the Quran in Arabic, but the Mormons actually invented a writing system for the Book for Mormon too. The Deseret alphabet was invented in 1847, but it was designed as a writing system for English. Over its development period however, it was believed that this more phonologically based system would help immigrants to learn the language, providing more symbols for distinct vowels, diphthongs, and consonants which are not distinguished specifically in the Latin-based script, such as 𐐟 representing ʃ (SH). In total there are 40 characters, but many are similar to the Latin script, though some visual similarities are not correspondent, such as 𐐛 which represents θ (TH as in 'thin'). Despite extensive promotion by the LDS Church, use in books and streetsigns, by the 1870s the Deseret alphabet was falling out of favor.
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2071: lyres and lyrics Aug 16, 2020
Lyres are instruments and obviously can't sing, but they are the reason why sung words are called 'lyrics'. Lyres were essentially a national instrument in Greece originally Egyptian, but by the 18th century or so, it became emblematic of lyric poetry which also bears the name. It is from this association with music in a general sense that 'lyre' gave rise not only to 'lyrics' but also a constellation in the shape of the instrument, apparently.
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2070: Language of the Inquisition: converso and marrano Aug 15, 2020
During the Spanish Inquisition, two words very came to the forefront: 'converso' and 'marrano'. These were both terms for Muslims and Jews who professed faith in Christianity, but while 'converso' describes a converted person, marranos practiced their faith in secret. This ultimately derives from the Arabic حَرَّمَ (muḥarram) meaning 'forbidden', but the word had already been adopted into Spanish. This term is also related to 'haram' in Sharia, and also 'harem' originally meaning 'forbidden place', as in a room only designated for women, forbidden to men.
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2069: Arabic Influence in Spanish & Portuguese Aug 14, 2020
The Iberian peninsula was under Muslim control to varying degrees for 7 centuries. The linguistic effects are less extreme than the French effect on English, with only about 8% of modern Spanish vocabulary from Arabic as opposed to about 30% of English's vocabulary from French, but it is still noticeable. In both however, disproportionately these are words for foods, legal terms, high culture, academia, and interjections. Examples from each in Spanish include 'arroz' (rice) and 'azeite' (olive oil in Portuguese), alcalde (mayor), 'cero' (zero), and ojalá ('let it be...') originally 'may Allah want...'. Many scientific and mathematical words eventually entered English.
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2068: baden-baden Aug 13, 2020
The German city of Baden-Baden is famous for its double name (along with its many spas), but that name has only been formal since 1931. The name has always referenced the natural springs, even in Roman times with the Latin 'Aquae' (Waters). In German, 'Baden' means 'bathing', but it is also an earlier form of 'Bäder' meaning 'baths' and it is this that the name derives. Like how there is a Bath in England, other areas with natural springs have this name in the German-speaking world, including a Baden near Vienna and one near Zürich, so not only is the duplication as a reference to a now-dissolved territory around the city (i.e. 'Baden in Baden'), but also as a distinguishing factor.
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2067: Gender in Creoles Aug 12, 2020
Creole's in general, are marked by having elements of various languages mixed together, both in the vocabulary and in the grammar, but also a lot of morphological simplification. Both Seychelles creole and Haitian creole lack grammatical gender for instance despite the fact that they are based off of French primarily. In general, analytic languages are easier for adults to understand and so language invented mainly by adults, such as creoles, will likely end up as such.
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2066: Habs: Montreal Canadiens (Hockey) Aug 11, 2020
The Montreal Canadiens hockey team logo is an H inside of a C. Many people falsely assume that the the H in the montreal hockey is for 'habs', one of the many nicknames for the team, itself short for 'habitants', who were early farmers in the Quebec area; the word today would be 'agriculteur' (farmer). Rather, the H in the name stands for 'hockey', with the official team name "le Club de hockey Canadien".
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2065: Sea Levels Aug 10, 2020
When elevation is measured from sea level, this is a different use of the phrase than when for instance people describe sea levels rising. In essence they both refer to the average placement of the surface of the water, but since sea level as a reference for elevation would be an impractical measurement if one needed to also account for the changing daily tides and waves etc which are not even consistent around the world, the ordinance data of different places will not change, even if the actual levels of the ocean shift. That is to say, sea levels are basically as constant a variable as pounds or yards.
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