Word Facts

When you hear the word 'draconian' meaning, 'excessively harsh laws' this may remind you of all sorts of things, but it should not remind you of dragons. While the adjective comes the Greek name Drakōn, the root of which is 'draco', this is not the same as the word for 'serpent'. Instead, the word comes from the name of the first recorded Athenian legislator, Draco in Ancient Greece. He is know for replacing the existing code of law that only existed orally with written laws only that could only be in a law court. Before this, people took retributive action largely individually. The laws put in place were decided by the democratic rulings but his punishments were notably severe. For more on the other sense of Draco, see this .

It can be odd to wrap one's head around the idea of consonantal clicks for those whom never grew up with certain (mostly) African languages. Clicks are consonants, and as such are still measured by how different parts of the body including the tongue, glottis, and lips prevent the flow of air. Most clicks, and all those found in African languages are ingressive, meaning that they move the air inwards. There are multiple types of clicks, and in some languages like Xhosa, these can be the most prevalent consonants. In Damin, spoken in Australia, there is one egressive click, which means that the only language outside of Africa to have clicks also has the only one produced by exhaling. Outside of these click tongues which incorporate these sounds into their standard words, anyone can produce these sounds, such as in the English, 'tsk-tsk'.

English is constantly changing, and it has a number of factors that aid in this. English has few phonological rules which you can see more about here: Hawai'ian restrictions and here: kiSwahili restrictions , so it is very easy for words to enter the language. Still, the word 'banjo' could not be adopted into the language as it originally was. The African instrument's origins are not completely agreed upon, but considering other words like the Kimbundu's related 'mbanza', the word had to be modified as to not start with a nasal, M, and a plosive, B.

Words that come from imitative origins tend to be very simple, earthly concepts. It does not mean, however, that these were going to be the earliest existing words, even if some of them can be dated back thousands of year. The verb, 'squeak' is certainly imitative, but it only entered this language in late Middle English; it took even longer for the word to be used as a noun, and likewise, 'squeal' only started at the same period. The verb 'shriek' entered a little while later as well, along with its the no longer used 'screak'. To finish off the list, 'screech' was used beginning in mid 16th century, though earlier the word, 'scritch' was used, both imitative. For more on the history and perception of imitative words, see these links. http://stonewordfacts.blogspot.com/2016/09/636-black-blanc-and-blanco-sep-4-2016.html http://stonewordfacts.blogspot.com/2016/05/276-coo-coo-sep-10-2015.html http://stonewordfacts...

Depending on what one's native language is and which language one would like to learn, it will either be easier or harder to do so based on how similar the grammar, vocabulary, syntax and other factors are. For more on the levels of difficulty a second language can be, click here . While as a general rule, languages within one family are easier to pick up, there are a few exceptions. Silbo Gomero is a Romance language, specifically it is a dialect of Spanish spoken in Gomero in the Canary Islands, but it is composed entirely whistling. Different notes replace the otherwise spoken sounds and is therefore able to be written the same as standard Spanish. The whistling can travel as much as five kilometers, and before cell-phones, this was the best way to communicate across a terrain filled with valleys and other natural obstacles. There was a decline in its use for a long time, but now thanks to local efforts, and its mandatory teaching in schools, it has made a comeback, and is quit...

Spelling rules can be confusing and feel fairly arbitrary, but much like why any government has power, we are stuck with them so long as enough people agree to the status quo. In speech, the difference between 'suppose to' and 'supposed to' is, depending on accents, little to nonexistent; an omission of the D is generally made up for with the plosive sound of the T in 'to. Still, in formal settings, it is good to know that, 'suppose' is a verb, such as in, "You suppose that Word Facts is worth sharing" whereas "supposed" is a participle and functions like an adjective, usually as a predicate, as in "we are supposed to share these posts"; although there can be other, more nuanced functions, this is common, and often may be substituted with "should". Where this can be confusing is that, 'supposed' is also the perfect form of the verb, but this is the same form for most other English verbs in this tense, so most w...

Children first learn to talk from mimicking the way that people, and parents in particular speak, evidenced with "hold you"—uttered sometimes as one single word—based off of phrases like, "do you want me to hold you". Later on, children learn to drop this and follow patterns, to a fault even; it would not be uncommon to hear one say, "I holded it"—not realizing that 'to hold' is a strong verb and conjugates to 'held'. As people grow older, a combination of both is adopted in order to understand more words. As such, rather than needing to learn every form of every word, people can gather what newer words—even invented words—mean, and terms like, 'Finlandization' which was only created fairly recently are still comprehensible without needing to be explained or formally broken down, as people assumedly know 'Finland', and that the suffix, '-ization' means 'quality of'. For more on how babies talk  click...

Words like 'extra', 'extraordinary', and 'extradition' may look etymologically similar to each other based on the 'ex-', but this is not exactly so. 'Extra', to be clear, is the most related any word could be to 'extraordinary' in that it is supposed that it was created as shortening, with similar forms existing in French and German. 'Extraordinary' itself comes from the Latin phrase 'extra ordinem' meaning ‘outside the normal daily events’. Meanwhile however, 'extradition' just means 'out of tradition', with 'ex-' meaning, 'from'; 'tradition' in this case means, 'delivery' which was historically common but now is extraordinary. For more on 'tradition', click this link ,  or for more on the prefix, 'ex-' click this link