1282: Language Families: Altaic Jun 14, 2018
Certain terms, such as 'language family' can often be vague; it is often unclear when it refers to groups of languages as specific as West Germanic of which there are around six, and others like Indo-European, which includes scores of languages. Another proposed large family of language-families was the now-discredited Altaic languages, including Turkic, Tungusic, and Mongolic families, as well as the disputed Koreanic, Japonic, and Ainu languages, thus covering most of central and northeastern Asia. The former three families are inarguably more similar to each other than to the others, but even so, people have claimed that the similarities are only due to geographic relation and cultural contact, rather than having common origins, citing the fact that earlier forms of all the languages are quite dissimilar. Even though the theory has virtually no support from linguists today, the theory is still often cited in writings about languages such as Turkish or Mongolian by non-linguists. Nevertheless, it is sometimes hard to know where to draw distinctions among various languages and families thereof.
Make sure also to check out Word Facts' analysis of the film, Arrival.
1281: Determiner Phrases: Greek Proper Nouns Jun 13, 2018
In English, there are no determiners which agree with proper nouns overtly; unlike nouns such as 'table', no words such as 'the' are necessary with names, so "Mike saw Ike" is fine, but one would need to include a determiner in "Mike saw the table". This is discussed in one of the Word Facts Video. However, in some languages such as Greek, this is necessary, such as in the transliterated:
Irthe o Pavlos kai o Giannis sto
wherein 'o' in front of "o Pavlos" and "o Giannis" literally means "the Pavlos [Paul]" and "the Giannis [John]". Other features like this have historically made certain translations clunkier and less colloquial than necessary, though for some contexts such as religion, this may be desired.
1280: Critical Period Jun 12, 2018
Children have an astounding ability to learn languages. Not only are they better at discerning between sounds in a way those over the age of around 5 can, their neuroplasticity allows them to learn—theoretically—as many languages as they are exposed to. This period of around 4 to 6 years is known as the Critical Period, and though it affects most areas of learning, it has been found that as one ages, languages are not stored in the brain in the same way, and that one's first languages will often be linked to emotions, whereas the languages one learns later, especially well into adulthood, tend to rely on following systems and logic. Of course, this is somewhat of a generalization, but you can certainly expect that should one curse in pain, that will likely be in her first language.
Make sure also to check out Word Facts' analysis of Arrival: /stonewordfacts/2018/06/the-linguistics-in-arrival.html
1279: Non-Human Pronouns: Pirahã Jun 11, 2018
As was discussed during Gender Week, the assigning of gender to nouns usually is just an extension of the words for what determiners and adjectives agree with the words for 'man', 'woman', and possibly other objects, but these often get even more specific. For instance, many languages have specific pronouns and gendered declensions for water and other aquatic things, or commonly food. Pirahã has, essentially, 3 pronouns which translate into English as 'it'; one for animate non-human non-aquatic things, one for animate non-human aquatic things, and one for inanimate things. While grammatical gender tends to be framed in terms of nouns, (and adjectives and determiners), or in verbs Afro-Asiatic languages, the main focus in non-linguist English speakers is pronouns, but looking at other languages, there is an incredible amount of variability.
1278: Stress in Language Jun 10, 2018
Although there are ways to predict the stress on a syllable from phonology, a lot of that process also comes from the conventions of the language itself. In a 3-syllable hypothetical word that existed in Finnish, French, and Hebrew, it is extremely likely that the stress would be on the first, second, and third syllable respectively, because this is how those languages place stress in a polysyllabic word most of the time. In fact, this is less predictable in English, but because it is often the case that the words from Old English are stressed on the first syllable today, whereas those deriving from Old French or Latin will be stressed on the second syllable. The reasons why a language will have this stress-pattern is not exactly clear.
1277: Affixes on Loan Words: -ous Jun 9, 2018
There are a lot of affixes in English which are able to attach them selves to a lot of words, but some are less productive. For instance, the suffix '-ous' can affix itself to words like 'danger' or 'courage', but this is not always where it will be present. In this situation, it is a suffix, but many if not most of the word where it is found cannot be parsed because those words were adopted wholesale from French (mostly Old French), and Latin, such as 'horrendous', 'enormous', or 'tremendous'.
Make sure also to check out Word Facts' video which came out today with an analysis of the film, Arrival.
1276: The Vowels of 'Rhythm' (LITW 3) Jun 8, 2018
There is a rumour " 'rhythm' is the longest English word without a vowel" and disregarding the 'y', it does show the way that English-spellers view vowels. 'Rhythm' is two syllables not one, so assuming the 'y' represents the sound [ɪ], there would seem to still need to be another vowel somewhere in pronunciation to make the middle of the second vowel. This comes down to what is called 'syllabic consonants', and this can be thought of like the [ə] in words like 'the' or 'gum' (sort of). However, in words like 'rhythm' and 'column' the vowel is even shorter and less prominent, such that it it thought of as only being a byproduct of moving from one consonant to the next while still breathing out. So, while the number of syllables doesn't change, there is some truth in saying there are fewer-than-expected vowels, though certainly not zero.
1275: Fusional Languages Jun 7, 2018
There are many languages which derive the majority of the grammar from one language, and possibly the vocabulary from it too, but have many influences from other languages, but are not quite as mixed as creoles. These are fusion languages, and these include Germanic languages of English and Yiddish, among many others, the former containing many words and affixes from French Latin and Greek, and the latter having influences from Hebrew, Aramaic, Polish, Russian. Other languages like Icelandic and Hebrew have relatively little influence from outside sources.
Check out some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. and to see the latest Youtube video: https://youtu.be/tY6_zs7-k5I
1274: Truly Untranslatable Jun 6, 2018
While it has been discussed on this blog before than no concept is truly untranslatable, there are certain phrases which will not have the same sort of significance in one language as it will in another. Words in this group include 'apartheid', which directly translates to 'separation' (lit. 'apartness') or 'shoa' which is Hebrew for 'catastrophe' but is a common synonym alongside 'holocaust' found in English. There are more lighthearted ones too such as names for holidays, like 'Ramadan', which here comes from a word meaning 'be hot' but obviously has a lot more meaning than 'be hot' conveys in English. This is all the case because those terms have value in a way that does not carry over, and so even though the translation for those words is not possible in order to capture the full gravity, they can always be adopted.
1273: Participles: Versatility Jun 5, 2018
Participles are one of the most versatile lexical classes in English, and can contribute to or act as nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and prepositions. Words like 'running' in 'running is fun' for this reason are even sometimes called verbal nouns because grammatically it acts like a noun, but could be replaced with 'to run'. Moreover, because of their adjunct-like qualities, they can act as adjectives such as in 'the running man' and combine with nouns to form compounds like 'groundbreaking' or in the case of KFC "finger-lickin'". Some, as mentioned before, can act like prepositions; this happens when the relative pronoun is omitted from a relative clause, such as "the box containing (i.e 'with') the supplies" as an alternative to "...which is containing" or "which contains"
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video: https://youtu.be/tY6_zs7-k5I
1272: Global Languages: English and French Jun 4, 2018
There are two reason that while more than twice as many people speak Russian natively than French (254M to 118M), and likewise there are more than double the number of Chinese speakers—when including all dialects—to native English ones (1.4B to 547M) as of 2015, both English and French are considered more international than Russian and Chinese respectively. Of course there is nuance to this, Arabic, Russian, Hindi-Urdu and Chinese and to a lesser extend Spanish are lingua franca over large regions but not so global as English. This is changing as certain economies grow, but the fact that English and French are still official languages somewhere on 6 continents makes it more global, and will more often be the common denominator, so to speak. Moreover, although Chinese dialects may be a more common first language, English is still the most-commonly taught second language in the world, and French, particularly in Africa and Southeast Asia, is close behind.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video out yesterday: https://youtu.be/tY6_zs7-k5I
1271: National Languages: Colonies Jun 3, 2018
Historical reasons for picking a national language have been discussed here before, but there are also other dimensions which former colonies had to grapple with. Some former colonies chose to stick to the language of the past colonial power, as with Nigeria or India, because there were so many languages spoken that it acts as a lingua franca; this is similar in Malaysia where, though the majority speak Malaysian, the government did not want the Malay to be unequally powerful, and all three countries use English. In other countries, such as Indonesia, having a distinct national language was deemed necessary in order to promote national unity against foreign powers, even though at least hundreds of languages are spoken there. Some countries opt for no official language, and will allow for more regionalism, or will use a de facto national language, such as is the case with the US.
Check out the video released today: https://youtu.be/tY6_zs7-k5I
1270: Aizkora Controversy Jun 2, 2018
The Basque language is mysterious in that no one knows its origins, and it has no relatives, but this is true of the genes of the native speakers. Studies of the DNA of Basque people show that they likely predated any other native Europeans, with signs that they mixed heavily with Neanderthal. Where this crosses over linguistically is that it was observed that there is a word family of terms deriving for the word for 'stone' that relate to different tools, leading linguists to theorize that this feature of Basque dates back to the the Stone Age. This is now very contested, but the so-called aizkora controversy which states that words including the following all go back to the word 'haitz' (stone) for prehistoric culture:
(h)aizkora (axe)
(h)aitzur (shears)
(h)aitzur (hoe)
aizto (knife)
(h)aiztur (tongs)
Word Facts' Podcast, only for Patreon patrons, came out today, so why not support Word Facts and get even more?: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts
1269: Types of Compounds Jun 1, 2018
There are two types of compounds that are found in English. The first are the most common, and also they are the easiest to create on the spot. Synthetic compounds are words made up of the meaning of the sum of their elements, such as 'bookshelf' which is a shelf for books, or even German's famous rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz which is just a string of nouns (beef labelling regulation and supervision law). On the other hand, idiomatic compounds are made up of parts which only make sense as a whole, such as 'butterfly'. This is similar to how idiomatic sentences like "it's raining cats and dogs' only make sense when looked at as a whole.
1268: Irregular Spelling: Yiddish May 31, 2018
There are a lot of reasons why english spelling is so irregular, but one of them is that historically some words were adopted in (more or less) their original forms but not pronounced the same as in the native language. This happens still, especially with place-names. Nevertheless, English is by no means the only language to do so. While some languages such as Finnish borrows a lot of new words from English, the spelling always changes to fit the orthography, in other cases, such as Hebrew loan-words in Yiddish they retain their original spelling. In fact, because of this, the letter ת (taw) in Hebrew is usually pronounced as [t] but in Yiddish its an [s] among other differences, such as אמת (true) pronounced 'emet' in Hebrew but 'emes' in Yiddish. This is also a problem for reading Yiddish, because while Yiddish always represents vowels, Hebrew does not often.
Word Facts' Podcast, only for Patreon patrons, came out today, so why not support Word Facts and get even more?: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts
1267: The Origins of Literary Finnish May 30, 2018
One thing which is often overlooked is that while there are a number of languages which are privileged in being taught more frequently than others, this is partly for practical reasons. Less than 10% of all languages have a standard written form, and far fewer have any sort of literature. This is an ongoing problem for man researchers now, but it means that sometimes, a language's literary history can be said to begin with only one person. This is true of professional linguists now, but in the past this was the work of proud writers, often poets, as is the case for Modern Italian, Modern Estonian, and Finnish. In the latter case, it was not just the case that people were originally using older form of the language as with the other examples, but that people were only writing in Swedish: a language not even related to Finnish. This changed in 1870 with the book Seitsemän Veljestä by Aleksis Kivi, who ironically has Swedish parents.
1266: Why 'Go' is Irregular May 29, 2018
The two most commonly used irregular verbs in English are 'to be' and 'to go', but both of them have conjugational forms derived of multiple words. Many so-called 'irregular verbs' are regular within less common systems of conjugation (see the video below here), but 'go' to 'went' follows no system. In fact, 'went' was originally the perfect form of 'wend' which is related to 'wonder' and 'wind'. It follows the same patter of 'lend-lent' and 'bend-bent', meaning that 'wend' is a regular verb, but 'go', which used to be regular too, no longer is. For a comparison with the even-stranger "be-am/are/is-was/were-been" click the link here.
1265: the bees knees May 28, 2018
There are a lot of theories about where the phrase "the bees knees" referring to something outstanding, but as with many folk etymology, there is a bit of logically weeding to be done. One theory is that it comes from Italian immigrants to America saying 'business', but this doesn't work for two reasons: the phrase has been around for far longer than Italians were coming to the US, and it originally had the meaning of 'a small thing' so 'business' would not make sense as an derivation for it. Other theories include things such as how it would be related to the collection of pollen, and other biological ideas, but these don't hold up for similar reasons. The prevailing theory is that it went from meaning something small to something great on the pattern of other phrases like "the cat's pajamas", 'flea's eyebrows', 'the canary's tusks', and "the cat's whiskers", though not all of these slang terms from the 1920's have lasted the test of time.
To see some hypothetical Word Facts, visit Patreon.com/wordfacts. Check out the latest Youtube video too:
