Word Facts

Linguistics—like any discipline—is a subject to bias and agendas. It has been discussed before how many early philologists tried to relate Hebrew, Greek, and Latin for religious reasons, but scholars also tried to relate New World languages to other European languages. By comparing selectively chosen words and few aspects of grammar, some early linguists made claims that some of the early inhabitants of the Americas were, for instance, Norwegians. While is some historical basis for this idea, this is not true to that extent, and is simply Eurocentric in nature. Most linguists at the time dismissed many of these types of idea, however.

Like the quotation mark , the symbols (.) and (,) in mathematics used for separating numbers visually are used differently in different cultures, even though it was not always this way. In most parts of Europe, the (,) is used to separate decimals from whole numbers, and the (.) is used to separate groups of 3-digits to make long numbers easier to interpret; in the US and Britain this is the exact opposite. The reason for this is that  multiplication sign (•) was commonly confused for (.), but since English people still largely used (X) for showing multiplication, the British continued with this practice, as is typical for most places outside of Europe.

As mentioned the other day , adjectives can be placed after a noun in English for various reasons. Sometimes is structural but sometimes it's lexical, such as in the difference between 'a special someone' (adjective first) and 'someone special' (adjective final). This level of flexibility is unusual, given that nouns are not often modified this way, and relative and personal pronouns aren't modified at all usually. There are a few theories as to why this would be, but given that this is true for similar pronouns like 'anyone', 'everyone', and 'everything', it is generally chalked up to the relative dissociation that people feel to these compared to other nouns.

Nice or sweet things historically are often corrupted lexically to refer to women, and are often demeaning. 'Sweetie', and 'sweetheart' are good examples, and even even the word ' whore ' is related through an Indo-European root to the Latin 'carus' meaning 'dear'. 'Tart' might seem as if, like 'honey' or other words for things that taste sweet, the word was applied to women as related to the food, but it is actually believed to be a shortening of the word 'sweetheart', despite initial similarity. To see a Patreon exclusive about the word 'dear' and 'darling (and much more), you can become a patron and see it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/dear-darling-8-15775404?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=postshare

Phonetically, the words 'scents' and 'sense' can be difficult to distinguish, but this is also characteristic of the words' history. The word 'sense' comes from the Latin 'sensus' (participle of 'sentire') meaning 'feeling', originally denoting touch but then being expanded to all senses. 'Scent' also comes from 'sentire'—which explains the [t]—but in Old French it came to mean 'to smell'. No one is quite sure why there is a C in the spelling. Throughout history, smell has taken a backseat to other senses, which you can learn about in the video below. https://youtu.be/3zz9Hf2KUbg

The order of adjectives in English is usually talked about as a mostly consistent process, and no matter what, the adjective comes before the noun; the few exceptions like 'attorney general' are all from French. This idea is usually true, especially in simpler constructions, but it is not difficult to find structural ways around this. First, there are linking verbs; "the dog is happy", but other verbs have similar abilities, such as 'declare' "he declared the situation safe". This is only a sample of the way that exceptions to this idea exist in English, and this will be explored further over this next week. Check out the latest Word Facts Video (or the other 14): https://youtu.be/4eUju3z57Ng and support Word Facts on Patreon for a podcast and even more about language: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

With words to describe observation in English (e.g. 'smell'; 'look'; 'feel') there is an unusual ability that they can describe both the action of the observer and the observed. For instance, "he felt the cloth" uses a standard sentence-structure, but "the cloth felt soft" refers to the man feeling, but is not grammatically passive. Compare this with "the man touched the cloth" but not *"the cloth touched soft" and you will see just how strange this quality is. This is another example of the passival , a type of voice that is active in construction but passive in meaning.

English usually has a pretty strict order for its sentences, but adverbs and other adjuncts can move about just about anywhere in a sentence. Sometimes this changes the meaning , such as in the famous example: "only I love you" versus "I only love you", but in most sentences where the meaning is unaffected, the tendency is to place only as early on as possible, usually right before the verb. However, as was shown clearly above, there can be varied meanings and misunderstandings are bound to occur. Generally, adjuncts are most effective and clearly understood when placed just before the emphasis. In "I saw her only once" versus "I only saw her once", the former indicates that there was only one occurrences of seeing her whereas the latter allows for the possibility that she was perceived in other ways: heard, felt, or otherwise. Check out the latest Word Facts Video (or the other 14): https://youtu.be/4eUju3z57Ng and support Word Facts on Patre

Lexical and syntactic ambiguity have been discussed here several times, but there are ways for a sentence to be syntactically ambiguous but only have one essential meaning. In the sentence, "I went out to lunch", it is not clear necessarily whether 'lunch' is a verb or a noun. In this case 'to' can indicate that 'lunch' is an infinitive verb, or be a preposition and refer to 'lunch' as a place where lunch is eaten. There is no way to be sure, but ultimately it is the same meaning.

A language can be considered dead when only one native speaker remains. This may seem like nothing more than a technicality, but the somewhat-counterintuitive idea highlights a great deal about how language is used. While that last speaker—or anyone else for that matter—could teach the language to others this wouldn't be natively learned and would therefore be approached with a level of dissonance; it wouldn't be the language of one's thoughts. Moreover, languages are principally for communication, so not only can this no longer be achieved fully, but there could be no reasonable expectation for change in the way that truly living languages morph over time. Read more about this here: https://stonewordfacts.blogspot.com/2018/01/1138-rate-of-language-change-jan-20-2018.html Check out the latest Word Facts Video (or the other 14): https://youtu.be/4eUju3z57Ng and support Word Facts on Patreon for a podcast and even more about language: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

German is known—fairly or unfairly—for having long nominal compounds. These are by no means the longest words possible in a language, nor are they any different from English compounds grammatically, but they do allow for something which does not happen in English. Occasionally, certain German compounds will insert an extra sound, often [s], [e], [n] or a combination of the, in between two elements being compounded together. For instance, 'Maus' and 'Falle' become 'Mausefalle' ('mousetrap'), 'Bauer' and 'Brot' becomes 'Bauernbrot' (farm-bread), and 'Staat' and 'Polizei' becomes 'Staatspolizei'. Although these are sometimes inconsistent, they do make it easier to pronounce frequently-used German compounds rather than inserting a glottal stop as would likely happen otherwise. Check out the latest Word Facts Video (or the other 14): https://youtu.be/4eUju3z57Ng and support Word Facts on Patreon for a podcast

The kiSwahili phrase that was popularized in the West by The Lion King, "hakuna matata" does mean "no worries", but if one were to try and translate 'no' into kiSwahili, the word might appear as 'hapana'. This is because some languages distinguish between 'no' for quantities, and as an exclamation, such as in the German 'nein' ('no', the exclamation) and 'kein' ('no' for quantities), or the above example from kiSwahili where 'hakuna' is only for quantities. Other languages, like English (no) and Finnish (ei), use the same word for both. Check out the latest Word Facts Video (or the other 14): https://youtu.be/4eUju3z57Ng and support Word Facts on Patreon for a podcast and even more about language: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

In the United States, and other places with deep-rooted colonial histories, the names for towns, cities, and other areas come largely from either being named after somewhere older , native names , or being named after the physical geography (e.g. there are as many as 41 places in the US called 'Springfield'). However, there are also 26 Salem's, most notably of the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts, and the capital of Oregon. While there are places in Europe with this name, these are few and all with small populations. Rather, 'Salem' comes from Genesis, said to be another name for 'Jeruselum' and from the same root as 'shalom': 'peace'. In the mid-19th century, the Baptists and Methodists began using the term to refer to their meeting places, and so the name stuck in a few towns and cities, almost all of which are in America. Check out the latest Word Facts Video (or the other 14): https://youtu.be/4eUju3z57Ng and support Word Facts

If one were to look up the etymology of the phrase "wild goose chase" by looking into the word 'goose', that would probably be a wild goose chase of its own. The term actually referred originally to a sport in which a line of horsemen would follow one rider, in a way that was thought to resemble a flock of geese—or other birds—that fly in a way to utilize wind-drag. Moreover, the 'wild' in question is a bastardization of the earlier 'wold', which referred to a type of woodland. Check out the latest Word Facts Video (or the other 14): https://youtu.be/4eUju3z57Ng and support Word Facts on Patreon for a podcast and even more about language: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

Even though the Norse were never colonized by the Romans, there was still linguistic influence that the Romans had on the West and North Germanic tribes. In the early centuries of the Dark Ages in Europe, Latin—or recognizable variants thereof—was still spoken in former provinces of Rome. The Norse people were in close contact with some of these peoples, most notably creating the Normans : French speakers descended from Vikings. This is how the title ‘ Kaiser ’ is the Germanic title for an emperor (and not ‘König’) has roots in Old Norse—‘ keisari’—but comes from the Latin ‘Caesar’, with related words in Middle English and Dutch too. Check out the latest Word Facts Video (or the other 14): https://youtu.be/4eUju3z57Ng and support Word Facts on Patreon for a podcast and even more about language: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

The conjunction 'but' is now used is so many ways that to define it any other way than as simply 'introducing clauses to be contrastive'. The word originated in Old English as 'be-ūtan' meaning 'without' or 'except', and it took a while for it to be used to introduce new clauses with the frequency it can now. The line in Shakespeare's Macbeth that ends with "that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all here, but here, upon this bank and shoal of time, we’d jump the life to come" contains the two usages in question, the former sounding far more archaic and perhaps rarer than the latter, but in its early-days, that was the more common sense. Check out the new Word Facts Video, out today: https://youtu.be/4eUju3z57Ng

Of the top 10 most commonly used verbs, all of them are either irregular or strong verbs . Some of the ones on this list: be ; have; do; say; get; make; go ; know; take; see; come; think have been discussed here before, but notably 'have', 'make', and some others only became strong later, going from 'haved' and 'maked' becoming 'made' and 'had' respectively. The regularity of regular verbs requires less memorization and allows for easier adoption from other languages, but strong verbs that are used often enough for the forms to be simplified and reinforced are some of the most constant and reliable verbs in English. https://youtu.be/T18K38h2ZHc

The word 'woke' as a pejorative has become fairly popular in the last decade, and in particular with the widespread use of the Internet, but it's use as a term for social awareness dates back much further. The earliest-known use is from 1962, found in a list of words one might come across in Harlem at the time. This indicates that 'woke' in this sense was used in presumably black communities even earlier, though at that time, there was much less of an ability for the word to enter popular lexicon than there is now. Check out the Word Facts Patreon to get even more, like this new Podcast , out today.

The first entry for 'math' in many dictionaries begins with the definition as a verb meaning 'to mow' rather than 'mathematics'. By frequency 'math' as 'mathematics' is used more often, but there are more words derived from the meaning as 'to mow', so it is number one. Included in these would be 'day's math', 'undermath' and 'lattermath', all of which are nouns, and all are fairly rare. The only one that is more common is 'aftermath', which is not related to 'mathematics' at all, and refers to a field after it has been mowed. Check out the newest Word facts Video: https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs , and give your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

The production of coins goes back millennia, and it is because of these old traditions that certain currency-related words exist as they do today. Even though they do not look particularly similar, both 'money' and 'mint' (as in coining) come from the same word; originally named after the goddess 'Juno Moneta', because it was in a temple to Juno where coins were minted. Each word evolved somewhat divergently, but there is still some notable resemblance. Check out the newest Word facts Video: https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs , and give your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

Latin, especially Ecclesiastical Latin, is often associated with Christianity, but it took a non-Roman to do it. Back in the early centuries of Christianity, the religion spread throughout all of the Roman Empire, and this included Berbers of North Africa. The Roman elites at the time stuck with Greek as the liturgical language, but in the 2nd century North Africans used Latin. The 14th Pope, Victor I (pope 189-199) was a Carthaginian Roman, and in many ways introduced Latin to Christianity, which subsequently became the dominant liturgical language in Europe for more than a millennium. Check out the newest Word facts Video:  https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs , and give your support on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

There are a lot of similarities between initialisms and acronyms , but also there is sometimes confusion between those and acrostics too. While all of them take the first letters (or slightly more) from a series of words and create a mnemonic, what separates them are the outcomes. Initialisms are the simplest wherein only the letters are said, such as F.B.I. and acronyms make up their own words. Acrostics are very similar to acronyms in that it makes a word, but only one that already existed.

Historically, leeches were an animal that doctors and physicians often used medicinally. In Old English in fact, the word for 'doctor', 'remedy', and 'leech' were all the same: lǣċe. This is only because a word thought to approximate *lēgios was the Proto Indo-European for 'doctor' or 'medicine', and this was then applied to the animal 'leech', as these were a popular type of medicine. Indeed, while similar-sounding words for doctor crop up over lots of these such Indo-European words today, in most Germanic languages and Romanian, the name was applied to the animal.

People have all sorts of shorthands for laypeople to express the less-usual psychological processes that one may experience, including ‘déjà-vu’, ‘ tip-of-the-tongue ’ or ‘ baader-meinhof phenomenon '. Related to all of these is the less-commonly used ‘jamais-vu’, which describes the feeling of familiarity to something completely new. This is not strictly linguistic, and is sometimes associated with amnesia and epilepsy, but often people will describe this sense as it relates to newly learned words, or words repeated ad nauseam.

The best ways to preserve a language spoken by a population are to have relative isolation and institutions to support it. This is how Welsh is still spoken in a Patagonia, where the community has resided for 150 years. In the towns of Trelew and Trevelin there are three schools taught at least partly in Welsh, which gives the community a boost in terms of making sure that the language won't simply die out, and will have some more practical uses. While it is true that just about all of that community also speaks Spanish, the relative separation that that region provides from larger areas also makes the language less likely to be abandoned by that one community, unlike what may happen in a larger city. Check out the newest Word facts Video:  https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs , and give your support on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

People change the way they speak to fit in with small groups, as was described yesterday , but the reverse happens as well. If one way of speaking, be it pronunciation, lexicon or whatever else, those overtly prestigious variables can help to make anyone sound of higher status, whatever that might mean in the context of the conversation. Going back and forth between manners of speaking is called ‘code-switching’. Women are far more likely to chance the way that they speak to use overt prestige than men, as traditionally there were fewer ways for women to elevate their statuses if they were not in the workforce. Check out the newest Word facts Video: https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs , and give your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

Accents are relatively easy to impersonate, but they also change subconsciously. As people move around in different groups, be it by age, gender, socioeconomic, geography, etc., the way they would speak changes to become more accommodating. The variable here is "covert prestige": when way of using language is seen as more useful in a certain group. Politicians are often criticised for modifying their accents or lexicons depending upon where they are, but most of the time this goes on unnoticed by the speaker. Another key factor for triggering this switch is formality, and this will be talked about tomorrow. Check out the newest Word facts Video:  https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs , and give your support on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

As this is the 1331st Word Facts post, the focus of today is on palindromes. Conceptually these are pretty straightforward: something with the same spelling read in either direction; it is usally a word, but can refer to numbers, music, etc.. There are also other forms of constrained speech which use lines of symmetries, such as word-squares, which is an acrostic that reads the same left-to-right as up-to-down. One famous example found in Pompeii even depicts a word-square that is also a meaningful palindrome from Latin, generally thought to mean something to the effect of "the farmer uses a wheel for his work". SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS Normal palindromes, however, can be single words, like 'civic', phrases like 'racecar', numbers such as 1331, or be whole sentences, such as Peter Hilton's "Doc, note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod". To see more about the etymology of this word, check out  this link . Chec

Some linguists have tried to argue for the existence of a proto-language labeled Proto-World that has lead to all subsequent ones, but this is mostly not believed. Somewhat less extreme conclusions from less academic sources however, are often displayed as being fundamentally human in some way or another, and researchers often try to clarify that. Even researchers who make observations such as the rarity of words for first person singular pronouns to contain consonants like [p], [b], [t], [s], [r] and [l] are qui, for instance, will make it clear that when this happens, usually certain words are older or that the research is only looking at selective words, and shouldn't be taken to be consistent across the board. Check out the newest Word facts Video:  https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs , and give your support on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts .

People are naturally very good at spotting patterns without even trying too much. In addition to all of the anagrams , palindromes , and other such patterns, there is the so-called 'semordnilap'; these are words with a different meaning when spelt backwards, and the name was chosen by Martin Gardiner as it it the reverse of 'palindromes'. An example of this is the word 'stressed', which is 'desserts' spelled backward, and of course 'semordnilap' is a semordnilap itself. Comment some of your own favorites. Check out the newest Word facts Video:  https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs , and give your support on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts .

A fiancé(e) may be a special someone, but linguistically it is special as well. Most of the time in English, when there is an option for a word to be either masculine or feminine, the option will be masculine, as has been discussed here before  and is evident in the ongoing use of words like 'actor'. However, both fiancé and fiancée (masculine and feminine respectively) are pronounced the same in English, and the pronunciation is in-line with the French pronunciation for the French form. This could be a matter of English readers being confused by the accent mark, or luck, but this option is certainly rarer. This is also true of words like 'blond(e)' which takes the French feminine pronunciation, but that word has existed in English for 400-odd years before 'fiancé(e)'. Check out the newest Word facts Video: https://youtu.be/2u5SP0tg6Fs , and give your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts .