yvanspijk

yvanspijk, 1 day ago to random

'Thursday' comes from Old English 'Þunresdæġ', literally "Thor's day".

While the modern god name 'Thor' was borrowed from Old Norse 'Þórr', the part 'Thurs-' in 'Thursday' directly descends from the genitive case of the Old English counterpart 'Þunor'.

Click the video to listen to how the day name evolved. The Middle English to Early Modern English stages are based on the dialect of the region of London.

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yvanspijk, 4 days ago to random

'Tuesday' comes from Old English 'Tīwesdæġ', literally 'Tīw's day'.

'Tīw' was the name of the Germanic god that's also known by his Old Norse name 'Týr'. Both names stem from Proto-Germanic *Tīwaz.

Listen to how the day name evolved from Proto-West Germanic via the dialects of the London region to modern British English:

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yvanspijk, 5 days ago to random

In Standard English, 'Wednesday' is pronounced without a /d/. Then why's it written with a d?

The word comes from a West Germanic name meaning "Woden's day", Woden being the god that's nowadays most often called Odin.

D-less forms such as 'Wennesdai' are attested from the 14th century.

Click the video to hear how the word evolved between the second century AD and now.

The Middle English to Early Modern English stages are based on the dialect of the region of London.

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yvanspijk, 9 days ago to random

Why is 'laugh' written with -ugh while it ends with an [f] sound?

It's because the spelling 'laugh' reflects how the word was pronounced in Late Middle English, some 500 years ago.

Click the video to listen to a phonetic reconstruction of how this verb evolved from 3rd-century BC Proto-Germanic to modern-day Standard English.

The Middle English to Early Modern English stages are based on the dialect of the region of London.

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yvanspijk, 13 days ago to random

The word 'bairn' (child), which is used in Scots, Northern and Scottish English, is closely related to 'born' and 'to bear'.

These words all come from a root meaning "to carry".

When a baby is born it's been carried to term.
The infant is then carried around.

Zoom in for more:

yvanspijk, 16 days ago to random

'Duke' comes from Latin 'dux' (leader).

It's related to 'dūcere' (to lead; to pull), whence '-duce', e.g. 'to seduce' (i.e. to lead astray).

The 2nd part of German 'Herzog' (duke) is cognate to 'dux'. It's related to 'ziehen' (to pull), cognate of 'dūcere'.

Old English had cognates of both words.

Its counterpart of 'Herzog' was 'heretoga' (army leader). Middle English 'heretowe' would've become *hartow.

The Old English cognate of 'ziehen' was 'tēon'. This verb would've become *to tee.

yvanspijk, 19 days ago to random

'Right' and 'rectum' have a common origin. 'Right' comes from Proto-Germanic *rehtaz (straight; right; just).

This word shared a common Proto-Indo-European ancestor with Latin 'rēctus' (straight; right; just), from which the medical term 'rectum' (straight terminal part of the large intestine) was derived.

My infographic shows more:

yvanspijk, 21 days ago to random

'Knight' sounds like 'night' but it's written with a K.

That's because it used to start with a [k] sound, just like German 'Knecht', which has the same Proto-Germanic origin.

The letters GH used to be pronounced as well.

Here's the evolution of 'knight' from Proto-Germanic to Southern British English - with sound:

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yvanspijk, 25 days ago to random

'Dear' means "valued; precious; beloved".

However, in certain expressions it also means "expensive", such as in 'to cost dear'.

This meaning, inherited from Proto-Germanic, became dominant in cognates of 'dear', such as Dutch 'duur', German 'teuer', Swedish 'dyr'.

Here's the whole story:

yvanspijk, 1 month ago to random

In certain dialects of Old English, there were two ways to express 'his' and 'her'.

Beside 'his' and 'hire', there was 'sīn' (pronounced ‘seen’), but this pronoun was reflexive: it could only refer to the subject of the sentence.

My new infographic tells you the whole story.

On my Patreon, everyone – including free members – can read a detailed explanation (1200 words) of this system. If you subscribe to tier 2, you can listen to the reconstructed pronunciation of all historic words.

yvanspijk, 1 month ago to random

Am, are, is, was, were, been

• how can the verb 'to be' have so many different forms?

'To be' is actually a mix of four different verbs. Over time, they came to constitute one verb.

Here's how 'to be' and its sister verbs in other Germanic languages evolved from Proto-Germanic:

yvanspijk, 1 month ago to random

French 'il est' (he is) comes from Latin 'esse' (to be), whereas il était (he was) comes from 'stāre' (to stand; to stay).

In languages such as Spanish, the descendants of 'esse' and 'stāre' both came to mean "to be", but they remained separate verbs with their own functions: 'ser' is used to describe essences while 'estar' denotes states.

Old French had a counterpart to each of these two verbs - 'estre' vs 'ester' - but they merged before a meaning difference could crystallise.

Here's more:

yvanspijk, 1 month ago to random

The Romance verbs for "can; to be able to", such as Spanish 'poder', Italian 'potere' and French 'pouvoir', stem from Latin, but not from Classical Latin 'posse'.

Instead, they come from Popular Latin 'potēre', a regularised version of highly irregular 'posse'.

The whole story:

yvanspijk, 1 month ago to random

'Primavera' means "spring" in Romance languages such as Spanish and Italian, but it originally meant "early spring" (literally "first spring").

Later it came to mean just "spring", pushing the earlier words for "spring", such as Spanish 'verano', to the summer.

Here's more:

yvanspijk, 1 month ago to random

Curious to hear how the reconstructed pronunciations of Proto-Germanic, Old English, Latin, or Old Spanish words sound?

On my Patreon you can now subscribe to tier 2 and get an audio file with future infographics.

The audio file of the graphic below is a little welcome gift.

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yvanspijk, 1 month ago to random

The word 'Lent', which denotes the Christian abstention period of 40 days preceding Easter, used to be the default word for springtime.

Its Dutch cognate 'lente' still is the word for "spring", while German 'Lenz' is now archaic.

They all come from a word meaning "long-day":

yvanspijk, 1 month ago to random

While I wouldn't say it's a good thing Dutch high schools spend 80% of German classes on combining prepositions with the correct case forms, there are certain mistakes you'd rather not make when speaking German:

yvanspijk, 1 month ago to random

English is part of a large language family that includes French, Welsh, Polish, Persian, Greek, and Albanian.

They stem from a common ancestor reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European.

The cardinal numerals from 1 to 10 illustrate their relationship well. Click for a selection:

yvanspijk, 1 month ago to random

The word 'bone' has the same origin as German 'Bein', Dutch 'been', and Swedish 'ben', which mean both "bone" and "leg".

These nouns are thought to stem from an adjective meaning "straight". It lives on in Icelandic 'beinn' and Norwegian 'be(i)n' (straight; right).

Here's more:

yvanspijk, 2 months ago to random

'Foreign' is etymologically related to 'door'.

'Foreign' stems from Popular Latin *forānus (outsider), a derivation of Latin 'forīs' (outside).

It got its silent G because people believed it had something to do with 'reign'.

Latin 'forīs' is a cousin of 'door'. Here's more:

yvanspijk, 2 months ago to random

French 'voir', Italian 'vedere', and Spanish 'ver' (to see) are related to German 'wissen', Swedish 'vet', and Dutch 'weten' (to know).

Their common root was a word meaning "to see". Its perfect tense took on a resultative meaning: "I have seen" became "I know".

Here's more:

yvanspijk, 2 months ago to random

'Former' was formed by combining Middle English 'forme' ("first") and '-er', so at the time it literally meant "firster".

'Foremost' is peculiar too: it used to be 'formest' - 'forme' plus '-est', so literally "firstest" - but the part '-mest' was replaced by unrelated 'most'.

Here's more: