2760: Bird Sparrow Camels Jul 11, 2024

It is a frequent occurrence, especially among natural features, that compound words that cross linguistic boundaries will pick up redundant elements, such as the famous River Avon in Wales (afon is ‘river’ in Welsh). While this is not uncommon among physical features wherein people groups move around them, occasionally it is also seen in other words, such as ‘ostrich’. It comes from the Greek στρουθίων (strouthíōn), itself shortened from στρουθιοκάμηλος (strouthiokámēlos) literally “sparrow-camel” but the O- at the beginning of ‘ostrich’ comes from an addition in Latin. When Latin adopted it as strūthiō, the word ‘avis’ (‘bird’, hence ‘avian’) was added resulting in ‘a(u)strithio’ for a sort of “bird sparrow” translation, though obviously not literally. This is true for the Spanish/Portuguese ‘avestruz’ of the same meaning, where more of Latin’s ‘avis’ is preserved.

2293: Secondary Stress Mar 27, 2021

Much like with personal matters, words can have not only primary but also secondary stress, especially in certain environments. As the name implies, there is a level of stress that most languages have that introduces phonetic distinctions, but there can also be a secondary level which is less extreme in its change of volume/pitch, but still has a function. In some languages like Hawai'ian or Estonian, this is a part built into every word or at least sentences no matter what, and is therefore predictable. In English, this not predictable, but common in certain structures such as with compounds where the first syllable has primary stress as in:

laundry-cleaner, where the first syllable of 'cleaner' has secondary stress. This makes it easier to determine when listening that there is indeed a compound rather than two distinct words.