2702: 'Bus' comes from ¾ of a Latin Ending May 14, 2024
When it comes to motor vehicles, lots of words have been abbreviated to form used today, but not in the same ways. The word 'auto' common in many languages is shorted from automobile, but the prefix 'auto-' is common enough and stands on its own as a morpheme at least. In the case of 'bus' however, this is from omnibus which is a Latin word meaning “for all”, as the dative plural form of omnis (“every; all”). In shortening it, not only was the word abbreviated, but it implies the root is made of “omni-” plus “-bus” but the suffix in Latin is “-ibus”, and unlike say “auto + mobile”, “omn(i)-” would anyway not stand on its own, at least not with the same meaning.
Later, words like “autobus” emerged to refer to mechanical omnibusses (no sensible plural would exist using just Latin morphology), but by this point it had lost any originally intended meaning it might have had.
2602: Echo Languages Jan 29, 2022
Latin famously doesn't have a word for 'yes', but this is not unique. Other Goidelic languages don’t have words for either 'yes' or 'no', and just repeat the verb of the question back. This would appear like
"Do you run every day"
"I run" [yes]
These are known as "echo languages". Finnish, and Chinese do this as well, as did Latvian until they got 'ja' from the Germans. Likewise, Romanian had this quality until it got the Slavic affirmative ‘da’. In addition to echoes, Latin would also employ lots of adverbs like 'sic', 'certe' (certainly), 'sane' (healthy), planē (plainly), or for negative responses, 'minime' (least).
2526: mediterranean Nov 12, 2021
The name for the Mediterranean is from Latin, but it isn't what the Romans called it. They called it Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) or occasionally Mare Internum (Interior Sea) but never Mediterraneum Mare, which is from Late Latin, after the collapse of the empire. 'Mediterraneus' anyway doesn't specifically refer to water and literally means 'middle of the earth', so if the term was used by the Romans, it could have had a broader understanding. This was adopted into English via French, and beforehand the Old English 'Wendelsæ' was used, named for the Germanic Vandals who occupied the area of the former Western Roman Empire.
2518: Penultimate Stress Rule Nov 4, 2021
Languages often have inbuilt rules for how each word will take stress, such as Finnish or Proto-Italic were stress is indefinitely on the first syllable, but other times it is dependant on other factors in the environment. Even in Classical Latin, which is slightly more standard, the penultimate stress rule states that if the penultimate syllable is naturally long or if it ends with a consonant it will have the stress accent, and otherwise the stress accent falls on the third-to-last syllable. There are some exceptions, especially around sounds that have been elided or historically syncopated (or of course, doesn't have enough syllables), but this will cover the vast majority of Latin words, and words of other languages.
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.
2513: I Longum: ꟾ Oct 29, 2021
Latin vowels used to be written with apexes, which looked more like traditional accent mark than the macrons used for writing out long vowels in Latin today. This was the only form of punctuation, if it can even be called that, sine historically Latin had no lower-case, no spaces words or breaks for sentences. The only other variable in this system was 'i longum' or 'long i', written as ꟾ which represented the long vowel but didn't take the accent mark. While it is true that J developed from I, it is more accurate to say that J developed from ꟾ. Moreover, in Latin orthography, if two i's would be written together, the second would be ꟾ to distinguish it from N or even U (V). Likewise, in Dutch, there is a common digraph for the long [iː] sound written as IJ, and often further stylized with a smaller i in front, sometimes written as Y, though the Y was not related historically.
2511: Common Words with Etruscan Origins Oct 27, 2021
Just because words are basic and have cognates in other, related languages, does not make the word indigenous, though it would suggest that the term is very old. For instance, 'person', 'populous' and 'military' all came to English, and many other European languages, via Latin, but these are not native Latin words. Instead, these are generally seen as having an Etruscan root, making them pre-Indo-European. 'Persona' in Latin was an actors mask, and likewise that would be in Etruscan 𐌘𐌄𐌓𐌔𐌖 (φersu), eventually replacing the native English 'wight'. 'Populus' in Latin, was thought to relate to 'plēbs' (commoner; plebeian) but the root here means 'to fill' and an Etruscan root might make more sense. 'Milēs' has a normal construction for Latin grammar, but the perceived connection to 'mīlia' (thousand) is not a given.
2510: etruscan and tuscany Oct 26, 2021
Often, etymologies for English words list that they are from Latin, and end there, but many Latin words had relatively ancient foreign origins of their own. A number of their words entered from the pre-Roman civilization of Etruscan who spoke a totally unrelated, non-Indo-European language, most obviously name of the region of Tuscany. This is from 'Tuscus', earlier 'Truscus', and even earlier 'Etruscus', but that doesn't exactly give the etymology. Rather, this is uncertain, but some surmise it is related to the Ancient Greek Τυρρηνός (Turrhēnós), from τύρρις (túrrhis) meaning 'tower', which itself is not of Indo-European origin. Alternatively, it has been noted among pre-Indo-European groups that they gave themselves names with -sk-, also seen in 'Basque' and 'Vascones', which is believed to mean 'water' and relate to seafaring peoples. Other explanations have traced to Celtic origins, or even to compare it to 'Troy', but these do not hold up as well. It has even been suggested that this was not the endonym, but rather 𐌓𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀 (rasna) was what they called themselves, meaning 'the people'.
2508: Ōs & Os: Two Very Different Destinies Oct 24, 2021
Latin differentiates between long and short vowels for distinguishing words, such as 'os' (bone) and 'ōs' (mouth). The other forms of 'ōs', including the genitive 'oris' is where 'oral' or 'orifice' get the R. Conversely, English has many derivatives like 'ossify', 'ossific', 'ossiferous', none of which have R in the root, because there was none present in any Latin form. 'Ōs' has far fewer derivatives outside of these other forms—except the use of 'os' as a medical term in English—including in Romance languages, relatively speaking. Consider too than 'mouth' is 'boca' in Spanish and Portuguese, 'bocca' in Italian, and 'bouche' in French, all of which come from Latin 'bucca' (cheek) itself likely from a Celtic origin, likely related to 'pouch' of Germanic origin, and possibly related to 'puke'.
2505: duel & bellum: √; duel and dual: X Oct 21, 2021
The word 'duel' may seem unassuming, but it's actually a preserved version from Archaic Latin, used before the 1st century BC. The word morphed into the Classical Latin 'bellum' (war), but the form was revived in Medieval Latin from its perceived association with 'dualis' (of two) and 'duo' but this is not accurate. The word is from the Proto-Italic *dwellom (to injure; destroy) related to other words like the Ancient Greek δαίω (daíō) meaning 'to burn' or δύη (dúē) for 'pain'. In fact, this 'du-' to 'b' transformation led to 'bis' from 'duis' meaning 'twice', further complicating that medieval folk etymology. This is also seem in Archaic Latin 'duonus' to 'bonus'.
2491: republic Oct 7, 2021
There is a prefix 're-' used either for repetition ('reshape'), negation ('react'), or intensity ('resound'), and while 'public' is a word 'republic' fits none of those above categories. This is because it comes from a Latin phrase, effectively a compound from 'rēpūblicā', the ablative form of 'rēspūblica'—the nominative [subject] form—meaning 'matter/thing of the people'. The loss of -S- is because 'rēspūblica' is two words, which are both being declined separately, and the -S- of 'rēs' (thing) doesn't appear in the form borrowed into other languages.
2480: Latin Vowel Length: Different Vowels? Sep 26, 2021
Latin, like many languages but unlike English, distinguished between long- and short-vowels. In some languages, these are merely the same vowels but said for roughly double the amount of time, which affects things like meter and syllable length. In Latin, even with Classical pronunciations, these vowels were qualitatively different. For instance, the letter I would be realized as [iː] (the symbol ː just indicates lengthening) when long like the vowel in 'seat' but long, whereas when short it was realized as [ɪ], like the vowel in 'sit'. Indeed, for all the basic letters vowel AEIOU, only A was qualitatively the same vowel, just lengthened [aː] and [a].
2471: lemon & citrus Sep 17, 2021
Around Europe, two different basic terms for 'lemon', or alternatively 'citron' are used, both very likely of Semitic origin though this is not certain. Ultimately, 'lemon', also found in Portuguese 'limão' and Spanish 'limón', along with a number of other Semitic and Nilo-Saharan languages comes from Arabic لَيْمُون (laymūn), itself from Persian and likely with a connection to the Sanskrit word for 'lime'. 'Citron' on the other hand, as in the French 'citron', German 'Zitron', or Italian 'cedro' is via the Latin 'citrus' from Greek, likely from a Mediterranean, pre-Greek root akin to the Arabic قَطْرَان (qaṭrān), which may have been used to describe the resins and only later the fruit itself. More on how limes fit into the story tomorrow.
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'.
2464: C-K-Q were Redundant, Even in Ancient Times Sep 10, 2021
In English C, K, and Q may seem redundant together, but this is not actually new. Etruscan used C before front vowels, K before the vowel [a], and Q before back vowels. Effectively, this would be as if English used two different letters for the T in 'tail' as compared to 'trail', which also changes due to the linguistic environment. These Etruscan letters were therefore not phonemic—the sounds, if theoretically used in each other's places would not have changed the meaning of any word—and were in that sense basically redundant even back then. In Etruscan this may have been phonologically redundant, but there is a very minor, allophonic change that happens going from [ki] to [ka] to [ku] in where the consonant is pronounced in one's mouth. You can try this out yourself.
In Latin, which inherited these letters but did not distinguish between back and front vowels in its spelling, this redundancy was present, and some writers commented on it at the time even. Eventually C morphed into a fricative before E and I, like how it is found in Spanish or Italian today. This therefore made the letter K relevant to distinguish when one wanted to indicate the [k] sound in any context, but still it was not terribly useful.
2451: Re-Latinization of (Vulgar) Romance Languages Aug 27, 2021
The modern standard Romance languages associated most as descendants of Latin would include French, Spanish, and Italian. Of those, each has varied over time to different degrees, but one of the reasons that Italian has diverged less than French for instance is that there were simply more, usually educated people who over time re-latinized the language. For instance, usually in French the 'al-' becomes [o] and this happens too in Spanish, such as 'alter' (Latin for 'other') becoming 'autre' in French, 'otro' in Spanish, but 'altro' in Italian. Even medieval Spanish is less like Latin in certain phonological ways than today due to similar efforts to transform Castilian in particular which is why some medieval text will use the form 'oto' for the Modern Spanish 'alto', from Latin 'altus' (high) but in French it is still 'haut(e)'.
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.
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2112: augur Sep 26, 2020
Today, the word 'augury' refers to anything which is a sign for the future, or in particular a sort of omen, whether seen to be good or bad. 'Augur' is now used as a verb but it started as a noun as the '-y' suffix suggests, denoting a specific Roman official who observed signs in nature to predict the future. Most especially this would depend on birds, and though it is uncertain some suggest that 'augur' comes from the Latin 'avis' (bird) and 'garrire' (to talk). Otherwise, it could be related to 'Augustus' meaning 'growing (in might)'.
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