124: linguistics and language Apr 11, 2015

The words 'linguistics' and 'language' originate from the same Latin word, 'lingua', so it might seem odd to have such different sounds from each other. The reason why 'language' sounds, and looks, different to its Latin origin is not only that more common words change faster than less commonly used words, but also, the word 'language' sounds different because the word 'linguistics' came more directly to English from Latin, but 'language' came to English via the French word 'langage'.