2585: Rhotacism in Latin 'esse' Jan 11, 2022

Rhotacism in Latin, a process in which [s] and [z] in Archaic Latin would develop into [r] in Classical Latin. This was not universal, and some lingering traces existed because of the oppositional phenomenon of zetacism. This led to the Archaic Latin verb 'esō' ('to be') having the 3rd infinitive form of 'esse' in Classical Latin, but the imperfect and future forms of the word all have a root with 'r', such as 3rd person future 'erit'.

2583: Latin -ere Ending Jan 9, 2022

Rhoticism in Archaic Latin did not describe the mere pronunciation of the consonant of [r] in words as that term would be used in English, but rather the process of transforming [s] and [z] into [r]. This didn't happen in every case (1), but perhaps the most notable is in the '-ere' ending, and its derivative forms -āre, -ēre, and -īre. These were originally *-ezi in Proto-Italic, reconstructed as *-esi in Proto-Indo-European.

2541: 'Sesquipedalian' and a Phobia of Syllables Nov 27, 2021

The word 'hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' refers to the irrational fear of many syllables, but it is also somewhat nonsensical. Its creation being so absurdly long was purposeful, and can be broken down into elements 'monstrum' (monster) which is an English understanding of the Latin meaning 'portent', but even more ridiculous is that the first element is from 'hippopotamus'. The whole thing really is an extension of 'sesquipedalian' which means 'polysyllabic' or more colloquially 'long-winded' from the Latin 'sesquipedalis' meaning 'a foot and a half'. In Latin, this term also related to excessive speech.

2537: "Change" in Hebrew Root Letters Nov 23, 2021

Broadly speaking, Hebrew uses a system of 3-consonant roots are modified in various ways that change the meaning etc.. It is therefore important to retain these 3 letters as the core of the word, though there are some exceptions. Roots can end with a vowel sound for instance, and that will have certain implications, but sometimes the spelling conventions will change for a less grammatical reason. The for עשאה (ʔasa'ah) meaning 'make it' exists from the root letters ע-ש-ה meaning 'to do' but the א is added only because normally it would be another ה, either of which at the end are silent, usually. In actual fact, the final ה has aspiration in some cases (as is the case here) like the H in the 'house'. To retain the silence of what would be the first ה of עשהה, it is changed to עשאה.

2535: Why 'Un-' Doesn't Assimilate Like 'In-' (Ir- Il- Im-) Nov 21, 2021

The prefix 'in-' assimilates to different sounds depending upon the context, becoming 'im-', 'il-', and 'ir-', but this is not true of 'un-', which is similar both semantically but more importantly, phonetically. For instance, 'in-' + 'responsible' is 'irresponsible', but 'un-' + 'responsive' is 'unresponsive'. This was true of the negating prefix 'in-' in Latin whence this use was borrowed, and while 'un-' is distantly related to this, it is really considered to be of a Germanic root where this does not happen.

2515: A Shift in Latin 3rd Person Endings Nov 1, 2021

In Latin, the present tense, 3rd person endings are singular '-t' and plural '-unt'. In Proto-Italic however, these were featured an [i] at the end, i.e. '-ti' and '-unti' respectively, though not always spelt that way specifically. This was probably related to the way that Greek constructed its verbs, though it did eventually drop off. There are inscriptions in Pompeii however that show 'estē' for what would be the Classical Latin 'est'. Indeed, Pompeii is a great source for popular writing as opposed to more formal, high-register, and perhaps most importantly edited writing. This alternate form might have been the source for Romanian's verb endings which look like that today somewhat.

2501: -eroo/-eroonie Oct 17, 2021

We usually think of suffixes as being grammatical in function— like how'-ed' makes something past tense or participial; '-(e)s' makes something plural or signals 3rd person present etc.—but this is not necessary. For example, '-eroo' (or its variants including '-eroonie') as in "the old switcheroo" or "We're going on a tripperoonie". This does not add anything grammatically and arguably doesn't even add anything semantically for the individual word, but it does make the overall sentence more colloquial, jovial, or familiar. In this sense, this is like a diminutive which makes things sound affectionate, or literally small, but is not exactly the same.

2497: Antipassive Voice Oct 13, 2021

People might be familiar with the active and passive voice—and fans of Word Facts may remember discussion of the passival [1]—but less likely to be acquainted with the antipassive voice. This doesn't really exist in Indo-European languages, and instead is a feature mostly of ergative-absolutive languages [2]. The reason for this is that while the passive voice deletes the agent and promotes the object to be the subject, the antipassive operates by deleting the object of the sentence, and promoting the agent. This might sound like it would just be a normal active form then—hence the term 'antipassive'—but in ergative-absolutive languages, the subject takes different endings depending upon whether there is an object of the verb. In this way, the antipassive promotes a noun that would take the ergative case to be in the absolutive.

[2] https://www.wordfacts.org/blog/2017/10/1048-no-subjects-in-ergative-languages.html

2478: Hebrew Jussive: Not Just the Future Sep 24, 2021

There is a myth that Hebrew has no jussive subjunctive (such as English "let's" or "let there be"), as in most cases this looks to be the imperfect , signifying uncompleted action. For instance, the line in the opening of the Bible:

יהי אור ויהי־אור (yahi ohr vayahi ohr) can be translated as "let there be light, and there was light" or "there will be light, and there was light". In some instances this has led to obvious mistranslations, because the truth is in most contexts, there is no difference in the form of the word between the two. There are some instances where the two would differ however—proving that there is a difference in form—such as: ישם in

ישא יי פניו אליך וְיָשֵׂם לך שלום

pronounced (yasem) for the subjective meaning "may he place" as opposed to יָשִׂים (yasim) "he will place".

2474: Hebrew's (Potential) Accusative Case Sep 20, 2021

Biblical Hebrew uses the suffix -ה (a-) to indicate motion-towards: a common feature of the accusative case, which otherwise is used to mark direct objects. Hebrew already has a direct object marker for definite nouns—‎‎את (es)—but no way to mark indefinite nouns. Historically however, it would seem that this suffix -ה (a-) would have, whether or not the noun was definite. This accusative form was mostly lost with this one lingering use and a few potential vestigial forms in vocabulary, but some have even suggested that on top of that an early variety of Hebrew had a nominative */-u/ ending for subjects, and genitive */-i/ ending for possessives, but there is less evidence here.

2470: Codex & Affix: Why Different Plurals? Sep 16, 2021

The plural of 'index' is 'indices' and likewise with 'codex' to 'codices', but the plural of 'affix' is 'affixes'. This is not in fact inconsistent, but a result of the way in which English borrows words from Latin. In the case of 'codex', this is a Latin word in the 3rd declension which had a Latin plural of 'codices'. Strictly speaking, the plural is simply '-ēs' but the 'x' is assimilated along with the vowel as seen in the rest of the forms including the genitive singular 'cōdicis'. In the case of 'affix', this is formed from the prefix 'ad-' (toward) and 'fixus', which is the participial form of the verb 'figere' meaning 'to fasten', as in 'join together'. Since English generally does not take the 2nd declension '-us-' ending, 'affixus' (the -d- was assimilated) becomes mere 'affix'.

2469: -kin, -tje, and Afrikaans 'oke' Sep 15, 2021

The Dutch diminutive suffix -kin (found in English with the borrowed 'mannequin') is highly productive, and its related form '-tje' morphs into different forms. Depending upon the sound of the word it is affixed onto, it can appear as '-je ' before a fricative, '-etje' before a sonorant, '-tje' before long vowels and diphthongs, '-pje' with stressed vowel or before [m], or '-kje' before '-ng', though then this becomes '-nkje'; some of these can appear as simply '-ie' in slang. Further, in Afrikaans slang, 'ou' (i.e. 'old') took the diminutive form 'outjie' but was reduced as 'oke' in modern slang meaning 'guy; dude; bro'. This is therefore unrelated to 'bloke' of English slang, despite similar sound and meaning.

2444: garbage Aug 20, 2021

The '-age' suffix forms nouns indicating the action of a verb it modifies (i.e. 'leverage' or 'package') or aggregates as in 'mileage' or 'percentage'. That of the word 'garbage' does not fit neatly into one of those categories. It is not entirely clear where this word even comes from, but it is akin to the Old English 'ġearwian' meaning 'to make ready' or 'adorn' leading also to 'gear', and 'garb' as in clothes. This relation, also extended to Old French 'garber' (to refine; to neaten), eventually lead to its sense as kitchen scraps, especially of bits trimmed off meat. It is also probably related to or even influenced by 'garble' which used to only mean 'remove dirt/waste from spices'.

2426: Construct State Aug 12, 2021

In Hebrew grammar, simple nouns are discussed as having three states, those being indefinite, definite, and construct. English has the first two types, at least principally, distinguished usually by articles such as 'a; an; some' in the indefinite and 'the; that' in the definite, but the construct genitive is not like anything in English, and can be either definite or indefinite. For instance, בית מדרש (beis medrash) literally 'house of learning' is constructed as a phonetically modified version בַּיִת (bayis) that indicates the following word is possessed; these constructions also have a unique plural form. Traditionally, an article on the definite form would be placed before the possessed word, so in this case בית המדרש (beis hamedrash) meaning 'the house of learning' and was considered that the article was part of the word. In Modern Hebrew however, it is not completely uncommon for the article to be placed in front of the possessor הבית מדרש (habeis medrash), which complicates these distinctions of states, to a degree.

2424: Hebrew Definite Attributive Articles Aug 10, 2021

In Hebrew, the definite article ה־ (ha-) not only applies to nouns but to attributive adjectives leading to the difference in

"a small boy" ילד קטן (yeled katan) compared to "the small boy" הילד הקטן (hayeled hakatan).

Part of the benefit of this system is that it distinguishes these attributive adjectives from being understood as a predicate adjective (i.e. "the boy is small"). This would still be a function when there is no definite article marker, such as with proper nouns. This is one argument for the idea the ה־ prefix is a semantic and morphological feature, rather than per se a definite article in its own right, though this could be contested.

2421: Mesoclitics Aug 7, 2021

It is not difficult to imagine clitics—the shortened half of a contraction—at the beginning or end of a word, but they can also exist in the middle. While this is by no means the most common manner for a clitic to take, so-called mesoclitics are when the clitic is found between the stem (or 'host') and an affix. For instance, Portuguese and many other Western Romance languages will insert forms of object pronouns in between verbs and the verbal suffix, such as perhaps most prominently Portuguese:

"Escrever-te-ei uma carta" (I will write you a letter)

where the object pronoun 'te' ([to] you) is placed within 'escreverei' (I will write), which itself is made from the verb 'escrever' + the ending '-ei'. Here also, it affects the stress. It is also theoretically possible that having a clitic within a root itself exists, but reports of this are still novel. If confirmed, these would be known as 'endoclitics'.

2417: Functionality of Ge- in German Aug 3, 2021

Like German, Old English frequently used the prefix 'ge-' for a variety of purposes. Indeed, while most Germanic language use this—a feature lost in Modern English—it wasn't used in all the same ways. While both Old English and Modern German use this for participles and to indicate association like the modern 'co(m)-' prefix derived from Latin, in Old English this was also used as an intensifier, especially indicating a completed action of a verb. The prefix could also be used to form nouns and verbs indicating a result.

2415: Clitics Aug 1, 2021

Contractions of words can occur from a shortening at the beginning, known as an proclitic or at the end of that word, known as an enclitic. These are considered then to join with the following word, such as 'you' shortened to y' in 'y'all' or to the preceding word, such as 'will' to 'll in 'he'll'. Both of these types of elements are produced from a general lack of emphasis and often stress, making them phonetically dependant on the words to which they attach, even if syntactically it is a whole word. This is why in orthography, different languages have many varying ways of treating clitics.

2409: Functionality of Ge- in German Jul 26, 2021

The prefix 'ge-' in German has a wide variety of meaningful, grammatical functions, though this is on the decline in some. One use is to form collectives, such as 'Gebirge' (mountain range) from 'Berg' (mountain), ‎'Gewässer' (body of water) from 'Wasser' (water). It is also used for nouns from verbs to express frequency and repetition, like '‎Gerede' (chatter) from '‎reden' (talk). It is used quite commonly and fairly ubiquitously for forming past participles from verbs, especially with '-en' or '-et' suffixes, though this last point is contentious about how distinct 'ge-' is if would require these suffixes. Aside from these, it is also used to express the terminitive case in certain regional dialects—e.g. 'geleiten' (escort) from 'leiten' (lead)—along with referential nouns formed from verbs—‎'‎Gelege' (clutch of eggs) from 'legen' (lay). Finally, it is used to indicate union, like the Latin-based 'co-and 'com-' do in English and indeed certain German loan-words.

2386: Chinese Morphology Jun 30, 2021

To say that Chinese is morphologically simple is an understatement. There is no verb tense, no voice (e.g. active; passive), and has no form of pluralization. All of these functions which in other languages are typically carried out through morphology are instead reliant on particles which indicates things like aspect and mood. This concept is not so foreign to English, which itself has no future tense, and relies on particles too.