2072: A Mormon Alphabet Aug 17, 2020
The Torah is written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek, and the Quran in Arabic, but the Mormons actually invented a writing system for the Book for Mormon too. The Deseret alphabet was invented in 1847, but it was designed as a writing system for English. Over its development period however, it was believed that this more phonologically based system would help immigrants to learn the language, providing more symbols for distinct vowels, diphthongs, and consonants which are not distinguished specifically in the Latin-based script, such as 𐐟 representing ʃ (SH). In total there are 40 characters, but many are similar to the Latin script, though some visual similarities are not correspondent, such as 𐐛 which represents θ (TH as in 'thin'). Despite extensive promotion by the LDS Church, use in books and streetsigns, by the 1870s the Deseret alphabet was falling out of favor.
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2071: lyres and lyrics Aug 16, 2020
Lyres are instruments and obviously can't sing, but they are the reason why sung words are called 'lyrics'. Lyres were essentially a national instrument in Greece originally Egyptian, but by the 18th century or so, it became emblematic of lyric poetry which also bears the name. It is from this association with music in a general sense that 'lyre' gave rise not only to 'lyrics' but also a constellation in the shape of the instrument, apparently.
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2070: Language of the Inquisition: converso and marrano Aug 15, 2020
During the Spanish Inquisition, two words very came to the forefront: 'converso' and 'marrano'. These were both terms for Muslims and Jews who professed faith in Christianity, but while 'converso' describes a converted person, marranos practiced their faith in secret. This ultimately derives from the Arabic حَرَّمَ (muḥarram) meaning 'forbidden', but the word had already been adopted into Spanish. This term is also related to 'haram' in Sharia, and also 'harem' originally meaning 'forbidden place', as in a room only designated for women, forbidden to men.
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2069: Arabic Influence in Spanish & Portuguese Aug 14, 2020
The Iberian peninsula was under Muslim control to varying degrees for 7 centuries. The linguistic effects are less extreme than the French effect on English, with only about 8% of modern Spanish vocabulary from Arabic as opposed to about 30% of English's vocabulary from French, but it is still noticeable. In both however, disproportionately these are words for foods, legal terms, high culture, academia, and interjections. Examples from each in Spanish include 'arroz' (rice) and 'azeite' (olive oil in Portuguese), alcalde (mayor), 'cero' (zero), and ojalá ('let it be...') originally 'may Allah want...'. Many scientific and mathematical words eventually entered English.
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2068: baden-baden Aug 13, 2020
The German city of Baden-Baden is famous for its double name (along with its many spas), but that name has only been formal since 1931. The name has always referenced the natural springs, even in Roman times with the Latin 'Aquae' (Waters). In German, 'Baden' means 'bathing', but it is also an earlier form of 'Bäder' meaning 'baths' and it is this that the name derives. Like how there is a Bath in England, other areas with natural springs have this name in the German-speaking world, including a Baden near Vienna and one near Zürich, so not only is the duplication as a reference to a now-dissolved territory around the city (i.e. 'Baden in Baden'), but also as a distinguishing factor.
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2067: Gender in Creoles Aug 12, 2020
Creole's in general, are marked by having elements of various languages mixed together, both in the vocabulary and in the grammar, but also a lot of morphological simplification. Both Seychelles creole and Haitian creole lack grammatical gender for instance despite the fact that they are based off of French primarily. In general, analytic languages are easier for adults to understand and so language invented mainly by adults, such as creoles, will likely end up as such.
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2066: Habs: Montreal Canadiens (Hockey) Aug 11, 2020
The Montreal Canadiens hockey team logo is an H inside of a C. Many people falsely assume that the the H in the montreal hockey is for 'habs', one of the many nicknames for the team, itself short for 'habitants', who were early farmers in the Quebec area; the word today would be 'agriculteur' (farmer). Rather, the H in the name stands for 'hockey', with the official team name "le Club de hockey Canadien".
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2065: Sea Levels Aug 10, 2020
When elevation is measured from sea level, this is a different use of the phrase than when for instance people describe sea levels rising. In essence they both refer to the average placement of the surface of the water, but since sea level as a reference for elevation would be an impractical measurement if one needed to also account for the changing daily tides and waves etc which are not even consistent around the world, the ordinance data of different places will not change, even if the actual levels of the ocean shift. That is to say, sea levels are basically as constant a variable as pounds or yards.
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2064: (Some) Semitic Origins of English Letters Aug 8, 2020
The Greek alphabet which inspired the Latin alphabet was ultimately of Semitic origins. Therefore, there is a general the Hebrew writings system corresponds to the Latin alphabet in many ways. The first 4 letters for instance, א,ב,ג,ד often correspond in terms of pronunciation roughly like ABGD (G comes as a variant of C), but the 5th letter in Hebrew is ה which corresponds in appearance and often pronunciation to H, but actually the Hebrew ה gave rise to the letter E, also the 5th letter. The relations between the placement of the letters does stop after the respective 6th letters though.
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2063: Im(par)sible Words Aug 8, 2020
Certain parts of whole phrases simply can't exist on their own, outside of the syntax in which they exist. These elements, such as 'jinks' of "high jinks", 'caboodle' of "kit and caboodle", or 'kith' in "kith and kin". There are plenty more, so leave it one in the comments if you know. Indeed, in some of these cases such as with 'caboodle', there is not even a totally clear meaning, whereas at least 'kith' means 'friends' or 'acquaintances', from the Old English for 'known' or in this sense 'familiar'. Other elements (in this case words) are meaningingful even if rarely parsed, like how "room and board" uses 'board' to mean food (or literally a table set with food) but outside of that phrase people would likely opt for another word.
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2062: How the Austro-Hungarian Military Replaced Personnel Aug 7, 2020
As discussed before, the Austro-Hungarian Empire arranged its troops partly by linguistic background. This policy enacted in the 1860's proved to be difficult to maintain during the Great War however, for two reasons. The first and more obvious was that it made replacements very difficult to manage, or otherwise a troop would have different native linguistic backgrounds. The other issue is that in order for officers to be moved around they would have to learn a new language often; they were given up to 3 years in some cases but even that is often not sufficient, particularly in the case of Hungarian, but also it is a long time for an army to have to wait for proficiency.
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2061: Language Use in the Austro-Hungarian Military Aug 6, 2020
One might wonder how the Austro-Hungarian Empire ran its military in such a multilingual society. This is especially true since the military was one of the few institutions that was not run separately between Austria and Hungary. First of all, every division would be arranged by language, though this was not always true of the officers; this will be the topic for the post tomorrow. That said, because this was run centrally, there was a list of 80 or so commands all in German which every soldier needed to memorize. Indeed, while the recruitment of soldiers roughty mirrored the wider demographic makeup including about a quarter of native German speakers, a majority of the officers were native German speakers and this was the language of command more generally.
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2060: Names for Limericks Aug 5, 2020
Many different standard, poetic meters have names. Many people may be familiar with the phrase 'iambic pentameter', kept in the many people's minds still today because of Shakespeare. Another popular meter is that of a limerick, but the name for the exact series of stressed and unstressed syllables is called an anapest
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2059: Inspiration for 'Oz' Aug 4, 2020
The 1900 book "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" has a lot of silly made up names in it, like slaves of the Wicked Witch known as 'winkies', a kingdom called ‘Oogaboo’, and a robot named ‘Tik-Tok’ to name a few. However, the author stated that the name 'Oz' was inspired by a far more dull source: filing drawer labeled O-Z.
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2058: -General Aug 3, 2020
Many former colonial states have governors general, which was a figurehead appointed by the ruler of the colonial empire in order to act as a representative to that head of state. However, there were other titles notable for having the adjective follow, including governor regional, who oversaw different provinces within the colony, and of course surgeon general and attorney general who also confer information to the leader and keep certain duties in check.
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2057: Hurricanes vs. Typhoons Aug 2, 2020
Basically, a hurricane and a typhoon are the same thing insofar as they are tropical storms. The main difference really is where they originate, with hurricanes coming from the Atlantic and particularly the Caribbean, and typhoons originating in the Indian or Pacific Ocean; based on the respective colonial history, the former is more American (and Spanish) and the latter is more British. That said, if such a tropical storm hit Guam and then Hong Kong, it would not be referred to locally as a hurricane first, but a typhoon for both because it is in the Pacific.
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2056: Republican Seals, and Other Emblems Aug 1, 2020
Turkey made the news for supposedly going to make a coat of arms, but it still has not; many claim it is the only country in the world not to do so, but this is technically false. it is false in the sense that while all other countries have a sort of national symbol in use, not all of these are coats of arms. Many countries in the Americas and also France have a 'republican seal' which was designed by the Americans in revolutionary times so as to not associate this emblem with monarchy and other republican uprisings followed suit. Furthermore, some countries like Thailand, India, and Japan use individual, religious symbols—though in the former two cases it is not of the majority religion—that act as a national symbol but are neither crests nor seals.
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2055: Words for Wine across Linguistic Boundaries Jul 31, 2020
Wine is something that has been shared around the Mediterranean and beyond, both literally and also linguistically. Old, basic concepts tend to have lots of related cognated across related languages, but in the case of 'wine' it is actually shared across unrelated languages as well. 'Wine' in English comes from a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root '*uoin-a-', and there are plenty of other PIE-descended words too, like the Latin 'vinum'. Likewise, there are many related non-PIE words like the Georgian ღვინო (gvino), the Armenian գինի (gini), the Hebrew יין (yáyin), the Amharic ወይን (wäyn), and the Swahili 'mvinyo'. Of course, many of these words, including those of Africa and Northern Europe especially will be borrowed, but there is no consensus as to whether this original root is from a Semitic, Indo-European, or even Kartvelian language; some theories will be more convincing than others though.
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2054: Washington Football Team, and Other NFL Changes Jul 30, 2020
The NFL team formerly known as the 'Washington Redskins' has officially announced an interim name of the 'Washington Football Team' until another permanent name is selected. The move was done after years of calls to remove the title given its offensive and pejorative meaning. This is not the first time that a team has changed its name though without moving to a different location, such as the New York Titans to the New York Jets in 1963, or how the Pittsburgh Pirates, who shared the same name as the baseball team, became the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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2053: Chocolatine, Pain au Chocolat, or Other... Jul 29, 2020
In France, there are two main words for a chocolate croissant, neither of which are 'croissant' despite the fact that English took that word from French. In most of France, this is known as a 'pain au chocolat' (chocolate bread) whereas in the Southwest region it is called 'chocolatine' as shown in the map below. The fact that is is called a 'croissant' at all in English is a bit odd anyway considering that it does not retain the shape of a true croissant (or 'cresent'), but in any case, the pastry actually originated in Austria using the name 'Kipfel' which may themselves been an old pagan tradition, so really what does it matter‽
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