2395: Odd Soviet Names Jul 10, 2021
Russian names, especially during the Soviet era can reflect a lot about the culture. For instance, электростанция (elektrostantsiya) and индустриализация (industrializatsiya) meaning 'power-station' and 'industrialization' respectively were (and to a lesser extent still are) girls' names. Others existed like 'Vilen' as an acronym of (V)ladimir (I)lyich (Len)in. Much of the time this was to show one's dedication to the Communist Party, and many last names in this style were taken as well.
2390: family Jul 4, 2021
Family is not a choice, and neither is slavery. In Latin, 'familia'—the source of many derivatives in languages around the world—most specifically referred to the domestics of one house or estate, and this would include relatives but also servants. An earlier 'famulus' exists as a word for 'servant' or 'slave'. For the sense of family across generations it was more common in fact to use the word 'domus', which has its own very interesting set of derivatives in English. The English word 'family' also referred to the household staff even into the 16th century, though by the 17th the word came to mean 'parents with their children'. This replaced the Old Enlgish 'hiwscipe' which had a similarly broad meaning as well as 'ham' (as in 'hamlet') leading to the word 'home' but originally meaning 'village'.
2365: Abnormal Syllabic Consonants Jun 9, 2021
There are syllabic consonants, which are syllables without vowels, but there are certain constraints on how most languages use them, such as how most are sonorants and especially nasal ([m] and [n]) and liquids ([l] and [ɹ]). English does have others, which is pretty rare across most languages, but in syllabic fricatives such as in 'shh'. These paralinguistic elements are not really words nor are these found as parts of other words as with syllabic consonants normally. For instance, the longest Czech sentence without vowels and only syllabic consonants is 25 words:
Škrt plch z mlh Brd pln skvrn z mrv prv hrd scvrnkl z brzd skrz trs chrp v krs vrb mls mrch srn čtvrthrst zrn.
(Stingy dormouse from Brdy mountains fogs full of manure spots firstly proudly shrank a quarter of handful seeds, a delicacy for mean does, from brakes through bunch of Centaurea flowers into scrub of willows)
2364: Czech's Vowelless Tongue-Twister Jun 8, 2021
The Czech language has a nasty tongue-twister without any vowels:
Strč prst skrz krk
This is notably as well because it is totally grammatically sound, meaning 'stick your finger through your throat': quite fitting too. Indeed, those words are all fairly normal, and are among many without vowels. The way this is possible from a syllabic point is that each word has [r] which is acting as a so-called syllabic-R. English also has syllabic consonants such as the [m] in 'column' wherein a consonant is a whole syllable. This is very common in Slavic languages too, especially around [r], [l] and sometimes [m] hence the word čtvrtsmršť (a type of measurement).
2315: Italy, Włochy, and Olaszország—How Are These Related? Apr 19, 2021
Many names for Italy follow a similar format: Italien, Italia etc. Some clear exceptions to this exist however in the Polish Włochy and Hungarian Olaszország. In the case of Polish, this word actually has an old Germanic root, despite Germanic languages by and large not using this anymore for 'Italy' from *walhaz meaning 'Roman; Romance', and having the same root as 'Wales' and 'Wallonia'. Similarly, 'Olaszország' is also ultimately of this same proto-Germanic, and proto-Slavic root, possibly related to the Latin 'Volcae', the name of a Celtic tribe. At any rate, only the first half of this comes from the 'Vlasi' root, and the rest is a suffix, as can be seen in Hungarian's related word 'Oláh' for a Romanian.
2186: How Pluralization Can Affect Meaning: 'Oczy' vs. 'Oka' Dec 9, 2020
While pluralization may often be merely a necessary aspect of a language's grammar, sometimes it can have an impact on the semantics too. The Polish noun 'oko' means both 'eye' but also 'oil droplet' and while the plural for the first meaning is 'oczy', for the second it is 'oka'. The reason for this distinction is ostensibly due to the so-called dual number, a form of plural used specifically for things which come in pairs. That is why also even if it is more than 2 eyes, or exactly 2 oil droplets being referred to, the same plural forms are used. Indeed, while the dual is used primarily for things which are considered generally to come as pairs but in Polish and also Russian certain forms of nouns will have different forms for referring to 2, 3, or 4 of that noun, but this extension is limited to the genitive or nominative plural for Polish. Uses for the dual beyond this will be the topic tomorrow.
This post is the start of Pluralization Week, to celebrate the 6th anniversary of the blog.
2175: slavic Nov 28, 2020
The name for the Slavic languages comes from the native term for 'word', as seen still in Slovak 'slovo' or Russian 'слово', pronounced the same. The reason why this is, however, is somewhat contested. Some theories take it fairly literally relating the meaning of '*sluti' (speak clearly) for an articulate people; this explanation would not be uncommon considering other terms around the world. Another relates this to the root *slava meaning 'fame; glory', which again would not be so strange. Furthermore, consider that the proposed root for this would connect it to *ḱléwos (“fame”), the same as other word from Celtic to Greek to Persian meaning 'heard' or eventually 'word' also.
2137: ciao Oct 21, 2020
Especially in Italy but also around Europe more broadly thanks in part to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ‘ciao’ is a common greeting. As might be discerned from the fact that it is used for both farewells and meeting, it has a generic meaning along the likes of ‘aloha’ (love) or ‘shalom’ [שלום] (‘peace’), but in this case it comes as a variation to a dialectal form of Italian ‘schiavo’ meaning ‘I am your slave’, shortened from the Latin phrase ‘servus humillimus, domine spectabilis’ (I am your humble servant, admirable lord). In that sense, it is a gesture of humility. However, in the Italian, like ‘slave’ itself, the word also comes from the same root as ‘Slav’, but in Greek Σκλάβος (sklábos) and Latin ‘sclāvus’ the word has a [k] that is not seen in either English or Italian but is still seen in German ‘Sklave’. This is also connected with the Greek κλάβος (klábos) meaning ‘fame; renown’, which was also itself used as a greeting, but in any case in Italian [skl] becomes [sch] as with ‘ciao’ (or ‘schiavo’) . The [s] at the beginning just got dropped off.
Watch the newest video, about historical languages.
Get Word Facts Merch.
Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts
2121: Pressburg and Bratislava Oct 5, 2020
The capital of Slovakia is Bratislava, but this name only came about in the 20th century. Before 1919, it was known in Slovak as Prešporok, in German as Pressburg, and in Hungarian as Pozson; keep in mind this was all part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but most modern languages still use a variant of one of these 3 versions, except Greek which has Istropolis. Indeed, in 1918 and 1919, there was talk that the city might be known as 'Wilsonov' or 'Wilsonstadt' after American President Woodrow Wilson who campaigned for national sovereignty in the region. In the end, the name came from Pavol Jozef Šafárik's misunderstanding of the medieval 'Brezalauspurc' (Breslav castle), from which he designed 'Bratislava', though it's unclear whether the castle was actually there, and at any rate the adoption was made largely to make the name clearly Slavic. Other names which share a common root were discussed yesterday.
1947: Wanderwort: Silver Apr 14, 2020
A wanderwort is a word which has been adopted into many languages, accounting for specific language variation too, but which are not necessarily linguistically connected. For instance, the Indo-European root meaning 'silver' is actually more in line with the Latin 'argentum' (see 'Argentina') but many Germanic and Balto-Slavic words, including the German 'Silber', Russian 'serebro', or Lithuanian 'sidabras' come from this other root. It has been debated where this comes from, but it is possibly from a language native to the Iberian peninsula, predating the Romantic presence there, which was written about yesterday.
Support Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts
982: -grad (Eastern European Cities) Aug 17, 2017
There are lots of cities in the Americas with the word 'city' in the name, like Oklahoma City, the capital of Oklahoma, or Mexico City (Ciudad de Mexico), the capital of Mexico. In other parts of the word this is not so common, or at least not outright. Some European cities, particularly in places that speak Germanic languages with the exception of Strasbourg have the ending '-burg' which no longer means 'city', but historically meant 'fort' or what might have constituted 'city' at the time. Likewise, the names of cities in Eastern European countries often appear with the ending '-grad', though the spelling is sometimes slightly different. The capital of Serbia is 'Belgrade' coming from Slavic for 'white city'. There are a number of other Eastern European places whose name meant 'white city' including 'Belgorod' in Russia and 'Biograd na Moru' in Croatia. It should be noted that Croatian and Serbian are incredibly similar, and the Serbian pronunciation for their own capital city is 'Beograd': almost identical to 'Biograd'. Plenty of other places have that ending but don't mean 'white city' historically, such as 'Petrograd', the name for St. Petersburg between 1914 and 1924. In fact, 'Petrograd' was adopted as the name in 1914 instead of St. Petersburg to make it sound less German and more Slavic.
706: Diglossia Nov 13, 2016
What English-speaker—nonnative or otherwise—wouldn't have cause to complain about it's illogical and inconsistent spelling rules? It's fair to say that the writing system is confusing and has many exceptions for every rule and generalization, but other languages have or have had some writing systems which make far less sense. The East Slavic languages, Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian, are all spoken, and as one would assume, therefore written differently. Nonetheless, at one point, all of the Slavic languages had a common literary-language, Old Church Slavonic, which gave the world the Cyrillic script. As modern Slavic languages diverged from each other, there was a period of time up until the 14th century in which the ancestors of modern day Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians all spoke their own dialects of Old East Slavic, which was a different language than the one used for the writing system. This situation, called "diglossia" meaning 'bilingual' in Greek, happens on occasion when a language changes over time from the standard forms which are still enforced, such as with formal Arabic, based off of the Qur'an, and informal, spoken Arabic.
592: slav and slave Jul 22, 2016
The word 'Slav' comes from the Byzantine Greek word 'Sklabos', from the Old Church Slavonic 'Sloveninu' and is probably related to the word for "word, speech", since the name was used to describe a member of a community of speakers. The word 'Slav' itself gave English another word. Through the Old French word 'esclave' meaning ‘Slavic', Middle English gained the word, 'slave'. The reason is that some South Slavic people had been conquered in the 9th century, and the connection between the those Eastern Europeans and servitude lasted in the minds of the English.
237: robot Aug 2, 2015
The word "robot" comes from the Czech word 'robota', meaning "forced labor" denoting slavery. Although, in 2013, Internet addiction was declared a mental disorder, so think twice before thinking technology is your slave.