yvanspijk

yvanspijk, 5 months ago to random

Spanish 'de donde' means "from where".

1000 years ago, in Old Spanish, this would've meant "from from from where".

Old Spanish had 'onde' (from where), but it ended up in a cycle where it was twice reinforced by 'de' (from):
onde > donde > de donde.

Click the infographic to read how this happened:

yvanspijk, 6 months ago to random

'Lord' stems from Proto-Germanic *hlaibawardaz: "bread guardian".

This compound consists of two words:

• *hlaibaz, the ancestor of 'loaf'.
• *wardaz, which meant "guardian" and became English 'ward'.

Hear how over the course of 2500 years, its four syllables turned into one:

video/mp4

yvanspijk, 9 months ago to random

The words 'cherries', 'peas', 'skates', and 'assets' used to be singular forms.

However, they were reanalysed as plurals because they sounded like plurals. New singulars were created by removing the -s.

This linguistic phenomenon is called back-formation.

Here's how it went:

yvanspijk, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to random

The French word for a werewolf is 'loup-garou'.

Etymologically, this compound is pleonastic: 'garou' means "werewolf" and 'loup' means "wolf".

It's also hybrid: 'loup' stems from Latin 'lupus' whereas 'garou' was borrowed from West Germanic *werwulf.

Click the image for more:

yvanspijk, 8 months ago to random

If you dissect the French adverb 'aujourd'hui' (today) etymologically, you get five Latin words: 'ad illud diurnum dē hodiē' (on the day of today).

Many more Romance adverbs and prepositions were formed by combining words, already in spoken Latin or later in the history of its daughter languages.

In the infographic you see a number of stacked words that have an interesting history.

yvanspijk, 9 months ago to random

Sometimes you lend something which is then returned in an unrecognisable state.

That's what happened to reborrowings, words that traveled to another language and then back to the originating language in a different form and with a different meaning.

Two images, eight examples:

image/png

yvanspijk, 10 months ago to random

The words 'galaxy' and 'latte' are etymologically related.

'Galaxy' stems from Ancient Greek 'Galaxíās' (Milky Way), from 'gála' (milk), which has the same ancestor as Italian 'latte' (milk).

The Milky Way was named after its milky glowing band in the night sky.

Here's more:

yvanspijk, 8 months ago to random

Saying 'probly' instead of 'probably' is sometimes frowned upon, but the word 'probably' itself was shortened from 'probablely' (two L's!) by the same process.

This process is called haplology. One of two consecutive similar syllables is deleted:
-le-ly
-ba-bly

More examples:

yvanspijk, 7 months ago to random

French 'poison' and 'potion' are doublets: they both stem from Latin 'pōtiōnem' (drink).

'Poison' was inherited from spoken Latin. It underwent the sound changes that turned Latin into French.

'Potion' was borrowed from written Latin in the second millennium.

The infographic below shows fifteen French doublets.

In the next two weeks, I'll be doing similar charts for Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Catalan as well. 🙂

yvanspijk, 24 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.

video/mp4

yvanspijk, 1 year ago to random

Standard French has a two-part negation:
'Il NE vient PAS.' (He doesn't come.)

However, colloquial French often drops 'ne', thereby returning to the Old French situation: a single negation word.

The same thing actually happened in English and other languages, such as German and Dutch.

This series of changes even has a name: Jespersen's Cycle. Here's more:

yvanspijk, 5 months ago to random

German 'gegessen' and Dutch 'gegeten', past participles meaning "eaten", are quite peculiar.

German and past participles normally get the prefix 'ge-', but these words contain a doubled form of this prefix.

As 'ge-' had been obscured in earlier 'gessen' and 'geten', it was added to these forms once more.

Here's more:

yvanspijk, 20 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.

video/mp4

yvanspijk, 9 months ago to random

The endings of the future tense in many Romance languages look suspiciously like the forms of the verb meaning 'to have' in these languages:

• French 'ils finiront' (they'll finish) & 'ils ont' (they have)
• Spanish 'harás' (you'll do) & 'has' (you have)
• Italian 'darò' (I'll give) & 'ho' (I have)

Well, that's actually what they are!

Here's how this future tense originated:

yvanspijk, 1 year ago to random

The word 'very' comes from Old French 'verai', which became 'vrai' (true; real) in Modern French.

These words ultimately stem from Latin 'vērus', which has the same ancestor as German 'wahr' and Dutch 'waar' (true; real).

Had it survived, their Old English cognate 'wǣr' (which has only been attested once) would've become *wair in Modern English.

yvanspijk, 6 months ago to random

Dutch 'hangmat' and German 'Hängematte' come from French 'hamac' (hammock).

Seeking to rationalise this opaque word, people associated it with their words for 'to hang' and 'mat' and changed it.

Here are more Dutch and German examples of this type of change: folk etymology.

yvanspijk, 4 months ago to random

Why is 1/60 of a minute called a 'second', just like the ordinal number that goes with 'two'?

It's because a second is the second subdivision of an hour, a minute being the first.

The word 'minute' in turn simply comes from the Latin word for "small (part)".

Here's the entire story:

yvanspijk, 5 months ago to random

The Romance words for "self" and "same", such as French 'même', Spanish 'mismo', and Portuguese 'mesmo', don't come from the Classical Latin words for "self" and "same".

Instead, they stem from Popular Latin *metipsimus: "the very same", or literally "self-selfest".

The infographic shows how it went:

yvanspijk, 4 months ago to random

The word 'language' stems from the same root as 'tongue'.

'Language' comes from an Old French derivation of Latin 'lingua' (tongue), which was 'dinguā' in Old Latin.

'Dinguā' was a distant cousin of the Proto-Germanic ancestor of 'tongue'.

See the graphic for more information:

yvanspijk, 4 months ago to random

The French adverb 'très' means "very", as in 'très grand' (very big).

It comes from the Latin preposition 'trāns' (beyond; across).

What happened in French was different from Spanish, where 'trāns' remained a preposition, 'tras' (after; behind; beyond), and Portuguese, where it became 'trás' (behind).

Here's more:

yvanspijk, 3 months ago to random

The word 'island' and the names 'Jersey', 'Scandinavia', and 'Batavia' all contain a descendant of the same Proto-Germanic word:
*awjō: "land in or close to a body of water".

This infographic - which I had a lot of fun designing - shows how these words (and others) are related:

yvanspijk, 3 months ago to random

The Proto-Germanic ancestor of 'thing' and its cognates 'ding', 'ting' etc. meant "folk assembly".

The Latin ancestor of French 'chose', Spanish and Italian 'cosa' etc. meant "legal case".

Both words underwent a series of meaning shifts that resulted in the meanings "matter; thing".

Here's how:

yvanspijk, 3 months ago to random

The words 'year', 'hour' and 'horoscope' all derive from the same root.

'Year' was inherited from a Proto-Germanic word that came from the same Proto-Indo-European root as Ancient Greek 'hōrā' (year; time; hour).

Via Latin and Old French, 'hōrā' became 'hour'.

Here's the whole story:

yvanspijk, 6 months ago to random

'Cockroach' stems from Spanish 'cucaracha'.

When 'cucaracha' was borrowed, it was opaque to English speakers. Trying to rationalise it, they associated it with the familiar words 'cock' and 'roach' and changed its pronunciation.

This type of change is called folk etymology.

More examples:

yvanspijk, 6 months ago to random

'Lady' stems from a compound meaning "bread kneader".

It consisted of West Germanic *hlaeb (bread), the ancestor of 'loaf', and *daigijā (kneader), a derivation of *daig, the ancestor of 'dough'.

In Old English it had become 'hlǣfdiġe', meaning "mistress of the household".

Hear how it changed in 2500 years:

video/mp4