1320: The H in Pittsburgh Jul 23, 2018

For 20 years, between 1891 and 1911, the city of Pittsburgh, PA was spelt as Pittsburg. Originally named by Gen. William Forbes, a Scotsman after William Pitt, he opted for the Scottish variant of the English 'borough' or German 'burg'. At this time it would have been pronounced as /pɪtsbərə/, following the pattern of 'Edinburgh', but due to association with the far more common '-burg' this changed to what it is now. However, to standardize the many variants for cities over the United States named by various ethnic groups, the United States Board on Geographic Names was established and decreed that the spelling would be 'Pittsburg' to keep in line with the rest of the many German-based names for cities. The change had limited effect on unofficial proceedings, and in 1911 was changed back.

1319: New York's Melting Pot Jul 22, 2018

New York City is the most linguistically diverse city in the entire world, with an estimated 800 languages spoken therein. Originally too, the term 'melting pot' was first used to describe the Lower East Side neighborhood in Manhattan, which has always had a high immigrant population. Most of the languages that are spoken are done so by small groups of people relative to the total population however, as English and then Spanish are spoken in large numbers. In the outer boroughs though, and especially in Queens, English is less spoken than elsewhere.
Check out the newest Word facts Video: https://youtu.be/gXIq8o668Fw, and give your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

1318: Habitual Morphology in AAE Jul 20, 2018

The so-called “habitual be” in African American English (AAE) that allows for simple and continuous action to be discussed in the present tense without changing the aspect in the traditional way as has been reviewed here before may be fairly famous, but it is not the only way this happens in AAE. Stemming from the 3rd person singular –s, that same sound can be added to other non-3rd person singular present verbs to indicate habitual effect, and would look something like: ‘I always sits with my friends at lunch’ ‘That’s just how it bes’ ‘Every day he haves to go to work’ Notably again, this is for a specific effect, and is not interchangeable with its own omission. Furthermore, a non-habitual the 3rd person singular present verb would likely not have any –s ending in AAE.

1317: Gaps in Germanic Compounding Jul 19, 2018

Germanic languages are often praised for their proclivity to allow the creation of new terms through nominal, or occasionally verbal compounding, and whether or not this is fair, compared to other language families like the Romantic ones. This reduces the total number of elements necessary, and so is easier to memorize, but means that individual words become shorter. This can be seen with the German calque ‘Treppenwitz’ compared to the original French ‘l'esprit d'escalier’, or with the German for gloves as ‘Handschuh’, literally ‘hand-shoe’. There are exceptions to this however, such as with the Yiddish for ‘toe’ which is usually ‘finger’, but is in fact short for ‘finger fun fos’ (פֿינגער פֿון פֿאָס) or ‘finger of the foot’. This could have been something like ‘fosfinger’ but neither that, nor something similar to the German ‘Zahn’ for ‘toe’ as a unique word exists. This is all from luck and convention though, not grammar.

1316: False Cognates Jul 18, 2018

Cognates, in related languages, are a great tool to help people learn and retain vocabulary when learning another language, but false cognates, sometimes affectionately called "false friends" are conversely a hinderance. There are plenty of words which just coincidentally happen to sound like others, such as the translation for native word [dog] in Mbarabam meaning 'dog', but usually these are unrelated. On a few occasions, such as the Indonesian 'air' translating to 'water', these can be opposite, or at least very different. In a stranger case yet, the Georgian word for 'father' is მამა (pronounced mama), which is not only opposite, but also generally dissimilar to most languages which use a [d] or [b] for fathers. No matter what, there are challenges, but these can just feel like a bit extra on top of that.

1315: Misunderstood Loan Words: vokzal Jul 17, 2018

While there are plenty of loan words taken for words with no previous single translation, sometimes they are adopted out of confusion. The Russian word for a central rail station is вокзал (vokzal) which takes its name from the London Vauxhall, though it is debated why this is. Some will say that this is from a Russian delegation who went to Vauxhall station on the London Underground and misinterpreted it to mean 'central rail station', but Russian public rail line had opened a few years before this could have happened, so unless the station were somehow renamed later, this is unlikely. Otherwise, the word comes from the gardens nearby the station in London; the Russians created their own version, and the name of the Vokzal gardens were then mistakenly applied to the station. Either way, there was some misunderstanding when it came to the English-to-Russian transliteration and later translation, but over enough time and contact, this is bound to happen to between any two languages.
Check out the newest Word facts Video: https://youtu.be/gXIq8o668Fw, and give your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

1314: How to Preserve a Language Jul 16, 2018

One of the greatest challenges in the field of language revitalization is knowing where to put time and resources, specifically between working with communities to make the language-use more viable or whether it should be recorded along with the grammar and any other ethnographic resources. The former is obviously preferable because it allows the community to maintain its language and give other researchers time to study, but there are a few problems with this. Namely, it is more costly both in time and money, and requires not only a good linguist but a good community-organizer. Moreover, the community must be willing to work with people who are presumably outsiders, and this is not always the case for reasons of pride, economics, or if there are simply not enough speakers, either for accessible or total population. Because of these factors, and many others, while most linguists—and people generally—would probably prefer to make the maintenance of a minority language feasible, there is also a very real concern sometimes that within a matter of years or decades, the given language will be dead, and so should be recorded as a last ditch effort; the question becomes when that call needs to be made.
Check out the newest Word facts Video: https://youtu.be/gXIq8o668Fw, and give your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

1313: Linguistic Continuity: Bo Jul 15, 2018

One of the best ways to preserve a language is for its speakers to have a low population and live in relative isolation. Icelandic is a famous example of a language which has gone with very few changes over a thousand years, but other islands are home to even older languages. Bo is a language that was spoken on the Andaman Islands, off the coast of India, from pre-Neolithic times—several thousand years—up until 2010 when the last fluent speaker died. Many languages are spoken in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, many of which are endangered, but often they remain relatively preserved over long periods of time due to relative isolation and low population, which keeps the chances of change minimal, as those are two of the greatest factors for linguistic changes.

Check out the newest Word facts Video: https://youtu.be/gXIq8o668Fw, and give your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

1312: German Calques Jul 14, 2018

German tends to be more flexible in allowing for English loan words than French for cultural reasons, but there are instances when this changes. Indeed, when people have attempted to create Anglish—an all-Germanic remodelling of English—they often just look to Modern German. For instance, French and English both use the word 'television' (or at least 'télévision') but in German the word is 'Fernseher'; the German word comes right from the same French word, at least sort of, as all of them mean 'far' 'seeing', but the French uses Greek and Latin roots whereas German just used a Germanic calque.

Check out the newest Word facts Video: https://youtu.be/gXIq8o668Fw, and give your support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts

1311: Counting Languages Jul 13, 2018

The vast majority of languages are undocumented, so not only are any estimates about the number of languages at best good guesses, but also, since languages change so much over time, by the time that any censuses may be completed, some may be dead, or morphed. This is certainly problematic for looking at languages with low populations of speakers, and or those in frequent contact with other languages, but this is especially difficult in regions wherein hundreds of languages are spoken. The 4 most linguistically diverse countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Nigeria, and India, and they have so many languages—both documented and undocumented—that it is even a challenge to know what is a dialect and what is a language. For more on looking at languages from all over the world, check out the newest Word facts Video: https://youtu.be/gXIq8o668Fw

What's a Word? Pt 2

1310: Stroke as a New Conjunction Jul 12, 2018

If you say the Word Facts post about 'slash', you would know that it it extremely rare to find examples of new conjunctions simply because there are only so many ways they can be used, but it is possible. In addition to 'slash' as a conjunction which has same effect as 'and' but tends to connect less related ideas, there is also the conjunction 'stroke' which is also relatively new, only from the last decade or so. This tends to be used in similar ways to 'slash', though it may be more common to connect words, not on a clausal level. It is also more popular in the United Kingdom, as opposed to 'slash' which is more common in the US. As you may have guessed, both of these new conjunctions come from the punctuation mark: /, which does go by several different names.

1309: samuel Jul 11, 2018

While plenty of names from Biblical Hebrew changed and morphed in different ways to create a diverse array of derivatives such as with John and 'Jacob'. Others, however, have changed relatively little over the millennia and through different cultures. 'Samuel', for instance, either comes from שם האלוהים (Shem Alohim) or שמע אלוהים (Sh'ma Alohim) meaning "G*d has heard" or "name of G*d". This same shift from [ʃ] to [s] is also a factor with names like 'Simon'. Similar names to 'Samuel' exist all over Europe with very little difference, unlike those aforementioned others. However, it is unclear where the probably related Samantha comes from, though likely it is a Greek compound.
Make sure to check out the new Word Facts Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTKKSf35LSE&t=10s. Support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.

1308: Stomp vs. Stamp Jul 10, 2018

With the exception reference to postage-stamps, the verbs 'stamp' and 'stomp' are more or less interchangeable; this is even true of phrases such as "stamp/stomp out" or "stamping/stomping grounds", which is much rarer of synonyms. The reason for this is that 'stomp'—even though it is more widely used—only came to be as variation of 'stamp' in the 19th century, and so all of those phrases with such interchangeability have used both. It is likely that soon 'stomp' will be included in more of its own senses, both as an ordinary verb and as part of a phrase, but 'stamp' is still widely used today, particularly outside of the US. Which would you use in those phrases?

Make sure to check out the new Word Facts Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTKKSf35LSE&t=10s. Support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.

1307: Name-Variation (Jacob and Séamus) Jul 9, 2018

There are many names which are thought of as being distinctly regional in parts of Europe but are not unique, and share a biblical origin. This even happens with names that sound nothing alike, such as 'John' and 'Iwan'. This is true of many others as well, such as all the descendants of the Hebrew יעקב (Yaʻaqov). There are many common sound-changes which result in these names, such as the change from [j] in Hebrew to [dʒ] in English (usually written with Y and J respectively) such as in John from Yohanan, or Joseph from Yusef too. In Irish this sound usually becomes [ʃ] (like SH), in this case the other derivative: Séamus, similar to the difference in Sean and John. Usually, the Irish names are related to the French which helps to understand where this similar sound comes from, but also in this case the [m] in Séamus as well as the [s] comes from the Iacomus, which was a French variation of the Latin name Iacobus. [m] and [b] don't sound that similar, but actually they are pronounced with the same configuration in the mouth, only [m] is nasalized.
Make sure to check out the new Word Facts Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTKKSf35LSE&t=10s. Support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.

1306: gardyloo Jul 8, 2018

People are not very good at simply adopting a word into another language without any kind of change; either spelling will influence how people speak (e.g. 'paella' in Britain), or more often accent and stress change. This is particularly common when a phoneme or combination thereof exists in one language but not another. When the French phrase "gardez l'eau" ("mind the water") was adopted as 'gardyloo' into Scottish English as an exclamation one would say before emptying a chamberpot out of a window (which was common-practice until as late as the 1940's), the pronunciation changed in many key ways. Scottish and French have different iterations of what is represented with the letter R—[r] and [ʁ] respectively—but also, English doesn't end words on the sound [o] on its own, and will use the sound [u]. The middle-vowel changes as well, but only slightly. There are countless examples of the way in which sounds change across even just these two languages, especially considering how much of English vocabulary comes from French (usually Old French) origin. Notably, 'gardyloo' is not related to 'loo' as in 'toilet'.

Make sure to check out the new Word Facts Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTKKSf35LSE&t=10s. Support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.

1305: Hebrew Grammar is Increasingly Analytical Jul 7, 2018

It has been discussed on this blog how some Indo-European languages are becoming less synthetic over time, which is to say that less morphology is used, and this is instead replaced with markers, such as things like modal or auxiliary verbs instead of affixes. This is because, in part, it is thought that Proto-Indo-European was very synthetic, and there's only one way to change therefore. However, this trend, while not ubiquitous, is also present in languages of other language families, such as Modern Hebrew. A notable quality of Hebrew as well is that it tends to resemble Indo-European languages in a way Biblical Hebrew did not, with changes to word-order, but also morphosyntactic features, following this same trend as mentioned before. There are any number of reasons for this, but some have speculated that Modern Hebrew has gained this influence in part from contact with other languages with new learners and creators, as it is a historically new language in many ways.

1304: Dense Phoneme-inventories: Archi Jul 6, 2018

In general, languages tend to not have too many similar sounding phonemes, because it makes sounds difficult to differentiate. However, some languages have a lot of phonemes; Rokotas has 11, English has 45—though this can vary when including different accents—and Archi has between 100 and 108, which is not the most of any language, but it is a lot. What separates Archi from !Xóõ which is considered to have the most phonemes is that !Xóõ has tones and clicks, which increases the variety for what is allowed in words, and therefore would lower confusion. For instance, Archi has a strangely high amount of velar lateral fricatives, which is essentially an L but pronounced with your tongue in the position to produce a K; if you aren't used to it it may be an uncomfortable feeling. Moreover, there are either 6 and 6 of these depending upon if one also counts the similar ejectives, and these only differ very slightly, though it will affect the meaning of a word. So, with its over 1.5 million derivations from each verb, and unusually large phoneme inventory, Archi is not a language you might want to try to pick up quickly before a holiday.

1303: Archi Verbs: 1,502,839 Derivations Jul 5, 2018

Not many language-learners enjoy writing out the various tables for the morphology of more inflected languages. Some languages are certainly worse than others, and morphological structures which also use infixes in a compounded manner such as you can see with Turkish are a particular nuisance. And while there are some tough languages to understand therefore, perhaps none use such complex morphology as Archi, which for 1,502,839 forms may be derived from any given verbal root. Practically speaking these will not all be used, but due to problems like this, the question of what a word is becomes even more complicated; English is said to have the largest lexicon, with between 300,000 and 500,000 words, and though, again, most will not be used by any given individual, this is not even a third of what can be derived from any one Archi verb. Ultimately, what a word is comes down to the individual language at times.

1302: Philosophical Languages Jul 4, 2018

People may regard philosophy today as full of niche jargon, and rather exclusive therefore, but there was a time in history when people invented whole languages for it. These philosophical languages were developed, primarily in the 17th century and into the 18th as a way to create something which would be universal, though at the time European intelligentsia would all use Latin anyway, so a language which no one spoke natively was already used for academic use. Further irony was added by the fact that people constructed many different "universal" languages, including Leibniz, Bacon, Wilkins, Kircher, Comenius, and Dalgarno. Nevertheless, these philosophical languages were not supposed to make cross-cultural dialogue easier ultimately, but instead it was usually supposed to use symbols and other graphs in order to represent ideas more concisely. These, obviously, did not catch on for long, but there are hundreds of thousands of pages with examples of this.

Make sure to check out the new Word Facts Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTKKSf35LSE&t=10s. Support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.