2424: Hebrew Definite Attributive Articles Aug 10, 2021
In Hebrew, the definite article ה־ (ha-) not only applies to nouns but to attributive adjectives leading to the difference in
"a small boy" ילד קטן (yeled katan) compared to "the small boy" הילד הקטן (hayeled hakatan).
Part of the benefit of this system is that it distinguishes these attributive adjectives from being understood as a predicate adjective (i.e. "the boy is small"). This would still be a function when there is no definite article marker, such as with proper nouns. This is one argument for the idea the ה־ prefix is a semantic and morphological feature, rather than per se a definite article in its own right, though this could be contested.
2423: Is 'Taurus' (Bull) Semitic? Aug 9, 2021
The Latin 'taurus', Greek ταύρος (tauros) and Lithuanian 'tauras' all could come from the Proto-Indo-European PIE *tau-ro- meaning 'bull', but this could actually be Semitic. The Aramaic for 'bull' is תור (tor), in Hebrew שור (shor), and Arabic ثور (thawr) and so on throughout the whole Semitic family. Meanwhile, many Indo-European languages do not have a word descended from this root, such as in many Indo-Iranian languages, or other related languages spoken further the East. Some notably may have exceptions to this, as in Persian or Avestan with a similar word for horses, or Sanskrit sthura- (thick; standing firm) related to the Old English 'steer'. It could be that those missing cases are simply lacking data, or that this is a wanderwort.
2422: orca, killer whale, and grampus Aug 8, 2021
Killer whales named because they are whale killers. This observation was made even in ancient times, and among their multiple, varied names, the Spanish 'ballena asesina' literally means 'whale murderess' (it is grammatically feminine), since sailors noted that they would hunt in packs to kill whales. Both English and Spanish also use the alternative 'orca' from Latin but this isn't much less fearsome. This name comes from mythology of the underworld, and the Roman deity 'Orcus', also the namesake of ogres and orcs. Thus, the scientific name 'Orcinus orca' would translate as "orca [evil deity], of the kingdom of the underworld". Perhaps the nicest names are now mostly out of fashion, including grampus (literally 'fat-fish') and 'blackfish'.
2421: Mesoclitics Aug 7, 2021
It is not difficult to imagine clitics—the shortened half of a contraction—at the beginning or end of a word, but they can also exist in the middle. While this is by no means the most common manner for a clitic to take, so-called mesoclitics are when the clitic is found between the stem (or 'host') and an affix. For instance, Portuguese and many other Western Romance languages will insert forms of object pronouns in between verbs and the verbal suffix, such as perhaps most prominently Portuguese:
"Escrever-te-ei uma carta" (I will write you a letter)
where the object pronoun 'te' ([to] you) is placed within 'escreverei' (I will write), which itself is made from the verb 'escrever' + the ending '-ei'. Here also, it affects the stress. It is also theoretically possible that having a clitic within a root itself exists, but reports of this are still novel. If confirmed, these would be known as 'endoclitics'.
2420: trifle Aug 6, 2021
The English cake 'trifle' comes from a French word meaning 'deception', but no one is entirely sure of where it came from. The French word ' truffe' (deception) can't be reliably traced back further, but after this point its meaning softened to merely that of 'mockery', and eventually just 'idle; unimportant'. This is likely where the cake's name comes in, as at that point the idea was only of something taken lightly. Eventually it came to mean something of insignificant value, or just small.
2419: Read: Unique Germanic Evolution Aug 5, 2021
English is thought of as being unusually different to its European relatives because of its borrowed (usually Romantic) words, but this is not always why. 'To read' for instance is a Germanic word meaning 'advise; counsel' that developed differently to any other. *rēdaną, also led to the German 'Rat' (council)—also borrowed in some Slavic areas for political divisions—and Dutch 'raden' (to advise; guess), and this root eventually came to mean 'to interpret' in English and then specifically 'to interpret a letter' hence 'reading'. This now exclusive meaning is unique, but it should be noted that the Scots word 'rede' can also mean both 'to advise' but also 'to decipher', also from Middle English.
2418: Hallstatt Aug 4, 2021
Hallstatt, Austria was the location of Johann Georg Ramsauer's discovery of multiple Bronze Age and Iron Age, Celtic settlements which helped to understand the vast pre-Roman civilizations. Coincidentally, both now and historically, the area was known for its important salt-mines, and even the modern German name for the town 'Hallstatt' is derived from the Gaulish word for 'salt', related to the Welsh 'halen', Cornish 'haloin' and Breton 'halen', all P Celtic (Bretonic) languages. In Q Celtic (Goidelic) languages an [s] is retained instead of an [h] such as Irish and Scots Gaelic 'salann'.
2417: Functionality of Ge- in German Aug 3, 2021
Like German, Old English frequently used the prefix 'ge-' for a variety of purposes. Indeed, while most Germanic language use this—a feature lost in Modern English—it wasn't used in all the same ways. While both Old English and Modern German use this for participles and to indicate association like the modern 'co(m)-' prefix derived from Latin, in Old English this was also used as an intensifier, especially indicating a completed action of a verb. The prefix could also be used to form nouns and verbs indicating a result.
2416: Particles Aug 2, 2021
In grammatical terms, a particle is a function word associated with word without any lexical meaning of its own. These would include terms like 'not', 'oh', and 'to' (as a marker for infinitives) since these are integral for overall meaning and syntactic structure, but cannot be defined independently. In this way they are considered to be in their own lexical class, though in older definitions a particle was just anything that could not be inflected and could be part of other lexical classes like articles, conjunctions, prepositions, and even adverbs. Since particles indicate grammatical relation between words, language with lots of inflection tend to have fewer, and languages with little to no inflection, like Mandarin, will use particles instead of things like affixes to indicate grammatical functions.
2415: Clitics Aug 1, 2021
Contractions of words can occur from a shortening at the beginning, known as an proclitic or at the end of that word, known as an enclitic. These are considered then to join with the following word, such as 'you' shortened to y' in 'y'all' or to the preceding word, such as 'will' to 'll in 'he'll'. Both of these types of elements are produced from a general lack of emphasis and often stress, making them phonetically dependant on the words to which they attach, even if syntactically it is a whole word. This is why in orthography, different languages have many varying ways of treating clitics.
2414: Sun- and Moon-Letters Jul 31, 2021
In Arabic and Maltese grammar, there are letters known as 'sun letters' while the rest are 'moon letters'. This is a direct translation of the Arabic حروف شمسية (churūf shamsiyyah) and حروف قمرية (churūf qamariyyah) respectively. The distinction is that sun letters see the [l] of the definite article الْـ (al-) assimilate with the following letter, such as in 'the sun' which is الشمس (al-shams) but assimilates to (ash-shams) with a geminated consonant, while 'the moon' القمر (al-qamar) remains as such, hence the names. There are equal numbers of overall sun and moon letters in Arabic including ﻝ [l] which means [l] gets assimilated by [l], but Maltese there are more moon letters including L [l].
2413: room Jul 30, 2021
While some of the meanings of the word 'room' have stayed consistent since Old English, but the meaning has also narrowed down. 'Room' is from the Old English 'rum' (space) which like the modern 'space' related to either distance or time. As an adjective the word meant mostly the same as its descendant 'roomy' but as a verb—which is no longer viably found from 'room'—the Old English form meant 'to make room' or in other words 'clear space', as opposed to 'lodging' which is meant with 'to room'.
2412: Words for 'Green' and Plants Jul 29, 2021
Lots of languages, unsurprisingly perhaps, have words for 'green' that relate to plant growth, particularly of young ones. The Germanic 'green'—also related to 'grow' and 'grass'—which after taking on the meaning of the color eventually led back to meaning 'plant life' in the form of 'greenery'. In Romance languages the Latin 'virere' (to sprout) led to 'viridis' and descendants including the Italian 'verde'. Before this an earlier word for green (galbinus) and yellow (gilvus) developed from the same origin and would have been the same. This pattern holds up in Semitic languages as well such as the Hebrew ירק (vegetable) and ירוק (green), but the same Semitic root led to the Tamazight [wriɣ] meaning 'yellow'.
2411: Language-Specific Names for Germany Jul 28, 2021
There are a number of etymologically distinct names for Germany around the world—far more than other countries—that are shared by at least a few languages, but others too went another way. Particularly North American native tribes made these names, like Lakota's Iyášiča Makȟóčhe (Bad Speaker Land), Navajo's Béésh Bich’ahii Bikéyah (Metal Cap-wearer Land); Cree has two different names both meaning roughly the same as those. Other languages like Sorbian, Silesian, and Medieval Greek took their names from different Germanic states, not so dissimilar to the practice of ancient languages taking their names from tribes. Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda, uses 'Ubudage' or just 'dage' thought to derive from the 'guten Tag' greeting during the days of the German colonial presence. Old Norse used the term 'Suðrvegr' literally 'South Way', which is effectively opposite to 'Norway' (Norþweg). Medieval Hebrew went another way and used the biblical name אשכנז (Ashkenaz), thought to be the ancestor of the Germans.
2410: Standard Etymologies for Germany Around the World Jul 27, 2021
Around the world, there are roughly 7 etymologies for the country of Germany where various languages derive their exonyms, along with a few exceptional cases. Those would be:
•From Latin 'Germania' as seen in English and Russian
•From 'Alamanni' tribe as in French (Allemagne) and Arabic
•From Germanic ‘Diutisc’ as in German (Deutschland) or Chinese
•From the Saxon tribe, as in Finnish (Saksa) and Romani.
•From Slavic němьcь as in Polish (Niemcy) and Hungarian
•From Prussia, as in Tahitian (Purutia) or Silesian
•A root found in Baltic states without clear origin, like Lithuanian (Vokietija) or Latvian (Vācija)
Some of these roots have applied to different Germanic states too, like Austria or the Holy Roman Empire in various languages. Notably this list means the term used in Romantic French and Spanish is Germanic, and the term used in Germanic English is Romance based. More on the exceptional cases next.
2409: Functionality of Ge- in German Jul 26, 2021
The prefix 'ge-' in German has a wide variety of meaningful, grammatical functions, though this is on the decline in some. One use is to form collectives, such as 'Gebirge' (mountain range) from 'Berg' (mountain), 'Gewässer' (body of water) from 'Wasser' (water). It is also used for nouns from verbs to express frequency and repetition, like 'Gerede' (chatter) from 'reden' (talk). It is used quite commonly and fairly ubiquitously for forming past participles from verbs, especially with '-en' or '-et' suffixes, though this last point is contentious about how distinct 'ge-' is if would require these suffixes. Aside from these, it is also used to express the terminitive case in certain regional dialects—e.g. 'geleiten' (escort) from 'leiten' (lead)—along with referential nouns formed from verbs—'Gelege' (clutch of eggs) from 'legen' (lay). Finally, it is used to indicate union, like the Latin-based 'co-and 'com-' do in English and indeed certain German loan-words.
2408: Renminbi Jul 25, 2021
The currency of China is known as the Yuan, a name shared or associated with other currencies of East Asia, but actually this is not its official name. It is actually known as the Renminbi, abbreviated RMB, spelt as 人民币 in simplified Chinese; it means 'people's currency'. As such, a yuan only a basic unit of the renminbi despite that being the basis for the currency as a whole and not actually a subdivision, though it is divided by the fen and jiao. This distinction between the name of the currency and the currency itself is also seen in '(pound) sterling' and 'pound'. with the currency of the UK, though not for the same reason.
2407: Alternative Comparatives & Superlatives Jul 24, 2021
Comparative and superlative adjectives are in some languages are used for purposes outside of comparison. For instance, comparatives are used in English to convey tendency, such as "Bob is the more humorous type" which does not compare between people as might be assumed with this subject, but between his other characteristics. Likewise, superlatives are often used emphatically: "he's the dumbest"; "she's the prettiest" which has the effective meaning of "very dumb/pretty".
2406: palace & palatine Jul 23, 2021
The term 'palace' may connote certain specific architectural images, but technically it doesn't have to be any sort of building, so long as the head of state is established there. The term originates with the Latin 'Palatium', the name for the Palatine hill of Rome, which is here the emperor happened to live. This is also where the English name of the German Palatine region (today the state of Rhineland-Palatinate) arose, since this was the title of the ruling family during the days of the Holy Roman Empire. In German those this state is known as Rheinland-Pfalz.
2405: Chateau of Versailles... Jul 22, 2021
The Palace of Versailles is huge: 8.2 km². Still, the French name is 'Château de Versailles' (Chateau of Versailles), and not something like 'Palais de Versailles' (Palace...). The difference is fairly minute, but 'Chateau' in this case is not used how it was taken on to mean in English which is usually of a smaller estate especially for wine. Still, the word comes from the Old French 'chastel' which has the same root as 'castle'.