1673: Too Many King Edward I Jul 14, 2019

In the history of England, there are two kings both called Edward I. The first Edward I ruled from AD 939-946, and in fact follows the line of an earlier Edward: Edward the Elder. He was an Anglo-Saxon king, after him, there were two more Anglo-Saxon Edwards, but in 1271, when the next Edward became an English king, he chose to base his lineage off of William the Conqueror, and not the Saxons. Therefore, there are at least four extra "King Edward's" before Edward I, and two of those considered themselves also the first with the name.

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1672: Linking R Jul 13, 2019

It is easy to see that one sound can affect another in a single word—just listen to the difference in T between 'tail' and 'trail'—but this happens between different words as well. One example from English in the British sphere of influence is the linking-R. While an R at the end of a word like 'car' in London English is not pronounced (though the [a] is lengthened), but if the next element begins with a vowel, either a suffix like '-ing' or another word like 'alarm' for instance, then the R is pronounced clearly. There will be a video that gets further into this later this week, so make sure to subscribe here: Word Facts on Youtube

1671: Lack of Universality for Cree Syllabics Jul 12, 2019

The Cree Syllabary is a writing system developed to efficiently write North American languages without the Latin alphabet. Not only was this system more suitable, making words much shorter because the symbols represent whole syllables and not each sound, but for many Cree it was emotionally preferable because it did not relate to the languages of colonizing peoples. However, this did not catch on everywhere in the rest of the region; notably, Inuktitut of Northern Canada uses a variant of this system, but the very similar Kalaallisut of Greenland does not. Part of this has to do with geography, but also because the syllabaries required whole new machines for typing but little real demand, it proved easier for some to use the Latin writing system.

1670: How L Changes Vowels Jul 11, 2019

Although it is commonly known about the difference between the American R and the English R in terms of pronunciation before a consonant—otherwise known as rhoticity—what may be less known is the way in which L before a vowel affects pronunciation in certain dialects. For instance, in New Zealand English there is what's called the "salary-celery merger", meaning that those sounds before the L—[æ] and [e] respectively—become the same, and those two words for instance are not distinguished in terms of pronunciation. This can also happen to different vowels and other such sounds in other dialects in every English-speaking region of the word, but the differences are more subtle than the total absence of R in certain English dialects.
There will be more on rhoticity in a Word Facts Video, to be released next week.

1669: -o in Australian English Jul 10, 2019

English varieties differ all over the world, within small regions and across oceans. While not a major grammatical change, there are in some ways countless options in Australian English for abbreviating a word and adding -o, such as in 'arvo' for 'afternoon' or 'garbo' for 'garbage collector'. There could theoretically be thousands of these, and while a few have carried over into British English for instance, it is in Australian English in which this feature is so productive.

Check out the new video on grammars here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-6K99Jz9hY&t=1s

1668: 2 and ב Jul 9, 2019

While the numerals used in Western society, are from India , there are some links to closer cultures. For instance, many systems use letters, such as Roman numerals or Hebrew numerals. For instance, the second letter in the Hebrew is ב. This historically was used to represent 2, and many believe it also had an influence on the development of the numeral. Although they are called Arabic numerals by some, the Arabic version for 2 is much different: ٢.

Check out the new video that's out today on grammaticality: https://youtu.be/g-6K99Jz9hY

1667: customs and customers Jul 8, 2019

A people can have their own customs, stores want customers, and boarders have custom-officers, but those things are not really related at first glance. This is because in the 14th century, the word that became 'customer' meant a 'tax collector', but then got applied to people who did business in guilds generally. This lead to the sense of that word as someone who is an official inspector, and someone who buys things, but it was later in the word's history later that came to refer to someone doing something habitually, and the idea of a 'custom' followed, but eventually stopped describing the act of regular business transactions.

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1666: Sea of Galilee and Other Names Jul 7, 2019

The Sea of Galilee, though known to many people worldwide is not actually a sea. It is, however, a lake known today as both 'Lake Tiberias' and 'Lake Kinneret', and the name has been different through history, depending upon who controlled the area. The first of those names comes from a nearby town named after the Roman emperor Tiberius, but it has existed alongside 'Galilee' since that time, even in the Bible: "the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias" ("θαλάσσης τῆς Γαλιλαίας τῆς Τιβεριάδος"). 'Kinneret', the modern name, shares a name with an ancient city mentioned in the Bible, but no one knows which was named after the other one.

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1665: Aesthetic Jul 6, 2019

The word 'aesthetic' is an old one, but doesn't have a very old meaning. It used to mean ‘sensation’ until Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten used the term in philosophy in his book "Aesthetica" (1750), it really did not relate to art or beauty. Now, however, the word means “concerned with beauty” in a philosophical sense, and then it also gained the meaning of ‘pleasantly appearing’. It is not typical that a word would shift so suddenly, but given as it opened new avenues in philosophical expression, it was evidently substantial enough. 
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1664: 'Fire' in Movies Jul 5, 2019

It is no surprise to the average film-goer that movies take creative license, on even decidedly historical ones. Nevertheless, this has led to misunderstandings that keep goin on. The military command 'fire!' only relates to, as it happens, firearms, but not archery, and yet this is fairly common for movies that take place during the Middle Ages. This doesn't make much of a difference, but it forgets what 'fire' actually relates to: the spark igniting gunpowder.
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1663: Exonyms and Tzarfat Jul 4, 2019

While there are a number of odd exonyms, i.e. names for places not akin to the native name (particularly with the multitude of names for Germany), usually there at least is some similarity or historical connection. With 'Japan', which in Japanese is Nihon, it comes from the older alternative form 'Nippon' for instance. Some places are not even close to the mark though, such as the Hebrew name for France, 'Tzarfat' (צרפת) which comes from the name of the Phoenician city Sarepta. However, this was a site in what is now Lebanon.

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1662: The -O in Avocado and Tomato Jul 3, 2019

It is well-known that 'avocado' comes from a Nahuatl word for 'testicle', but what is less amusing, but more linguistically interesting, is that both 'avocado' and 'tomato' come from the same language and both end in the name sound there too: '-tl' ('ahuacatl' and 'tomatl' respectively). This '-tl' was one of if not the most common ending in Nahuatl, but the sound represented here by the L, or in IPA: ɬ, does not exist in English or Spanish (link to audio example below). Rather than becoming a [tl] sound though, such that 'tomatl' would rhyme with 'throttle', it became an [o] in both cases, which is totally different. This suggests that the Spanish—who had contact there before the English—did not like such a consonant cluster at the end of words, but they ended with a schwa ('tomate'). The '-o' then comes from an English approximation of a Spanish approximation of a sound neither language contains.

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Wikipedia audio reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveolar_lateral_fricatives

1661: Congo and Zaire Jul 2, 2019

It is very common to see a nation state named after the people, or nation, who inhabit it, such as with 'England'. This was not always the case in colonies though, which often include many people-groups. Many names have changed over the years, such as Burma to Myanmar to be more inclusive, but other times such as Zaire to (the Democratic Republic of the) Congo, the change is not particularly different. 'Zaire' is simply the Portuguese name for the Congo River, which comes from the native 'nzere' of the Kongo people. For a long time in English, the two names for the river, and even the country, were interchangeable. The name was eventually changed to reflect the largest people-group.

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1660: Old Texts and Referencing Problems Jul 1, 2019

A frequent problem with translating old texts is that of references. For instance, a problem with Roman texts describing the British Isles often do not specify names for bits of land or bodies of water. Sometimes this is a frustration for historians only, but at other points it is historically important, such as how Agricola was said to have crossed a body of water from England to conquer Hibernians. This could be the Irish Sea to get to Ireland or the North Sea to Scotland, both of which had tribes who lived in both areas, such as the Scotii who are the namesake of Scotland but who lived in the North of Ireland too. Ultimately, neither area was successfully conquered, but it would be historically and archeologically significant to know how contact with Ireland was established.

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1659: (Non Terra) Plus Ultra Jun 30, 2019

Spain's national motto is "plus ultra" ('further beyond'). This might seem like a statement about innovation or culture etc., but actually it is about geography...sort of. The original phrase was "Non terrae plus ultra" ("no land further beyond") as a reference to ships passing out of the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar. When it was discovered that there was land further beyond, i.e. the Americas, the phrase needed to change,  though it took 24 years to do so. It is thought to allude to the Reconquista, and more desired Christian expansion as well. The phrase was originally in French ("plus oultre") but was translated due to hostility with France.
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1658: The Affirmative: 'Right?' Jun 29, 2019

In writing, punctuation helps to clarify breaks in speak, tone, and other things that might be lost without the natural pacing of speech, but that suggests that speech would have a sort of conversational comma, for instance. The most obvious way this happens is with literal pauses, but speech is much sloppier and more convoluted than writing tends to be, so other cues emerge. One of these is the use of certain words, such as 'right?' after a statement, which does a number of tasks, in between two utterances. One is to give the speaker a moment to think without interruption which a normal pause does not necessarily allow, but unlike 'um', which also serves that function, 'right?' draws focus to the first statement, by asking the listener to agree, before making a connection thematically to a following statement, thus lending more weight to the speech. This is a tactic frequently used in political interviews, for instance.

For more on 'um', see here.

1657: History of Letter-Divergence Jun 28, 2019

The history of typography, and specifically what led to the modern English alphabet, is well known, but the history of each letter is often messier. For instance, many of the letters used by the ancient Phoenicians have a one-to-one correspondence with what developed into the letters we use today, but some only became distinct later, such as C and G, which were the same until the Romans adopted the system, similar to how I and J split after the Romans. More strangely perhaps, F shares an ancestor with Y and U, and by extension V and W. This was long enough ago however—far older than even the C-G split—that the sounds they represent have separated greatly. Scholars of Latin will know though that even then there was a great deal of overlap in the pronunciation of U and later V, and there was no difference then in spelling.

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1656: Rhoticity and Women Jun 27, 2019

As a general sociolinguistic rule, when linguistic changes begin to occur, it is women who are leading the change. This was noticed by sociolinguists in the 1970's and 1980's, but evidence of this goes back much further. For instance, British English used to be rhotic—i.e. did not delete R from the ends of words etc.—and while the change was gradual, there is evidence to suggest that women were employing this much more than men. Starting in the 17th century, signs of non-rhoticity began to appear in writing, mostly in personal letters, and of those mostly from women. Rhoticity will be talked about in depth soon, (see more below) but this process can be said about many more changes, even those going on today in many cases.
See more on rhoticity here: /stonewordfacts/2018/10/1412-rhoticitys-relationship-with.html

1655: Hell is Other Words Jun 26, 2019

The word 'Hell' is an old word, related to 'color', and sharing its name with a goddess and place in Norse mythology. Indeed, not only is there a connection to Germanic mythology, many Germanic languages used the older form that became 'Hell' and took on a different meaning. In Old English alone, the word was used in compounds like 'helle-rúne' meaning 'sorcery' which later developed into 'rune' like the writing system, and 'helle-wíte' meaning 'torment' (literally 'understanding Hell') is theorized to be the source of 'witch'.

To read more about a possible Egyptian influence on 'Satan', you can check that out on the Word Facts Patreon here.

1654: horse and carriage Jun 25, 2019

In the old days, automobiles were called 'horseless carriages', but there's some irony to that. The same root that horse has relations to many other words related to running or moving, including 'course', 'chariot', 'hurry', and of course, 'carriage' and 'car'. It also has plenty of cognates in other languages, like the French 'courir' (to run), and the Welsh 'car', meaning 'wagon'. See more about horses, see yesterday's post. 

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