2934: Chinese Dictionaries Jan 2, 2025
The notion of alphabetical order does not have any particular bearing on language or even writing usually, but it does have a significant impact organizationally. Whether that’s shelving books, or, for our purposes, putting together a dictionary, having a set order is vital.
This poses a problem for languages like Chinese where there is no formal way to categorize the many thousands of characters. Two solutions have emerged, though neither are particularly neat. The first way is that Chinese characters are made up of radicals, to which there is a traditional stroke order. This poses a problem for quick organization as there are 214 which would complicate simple navigation.
The other way is to use pinyin, a system to use the Latin alphabet for roughly approximate Chinese pronunciation. Pinyin has in fact become so prevalent on account of its use for computer keyboards that then essentially autocorrects that many young Chinese report struggling to remember the proper characters needed regularly. This method has also become more popular to organize Chinese dictionaries since it was adopted officially in 1958.
There will be more tomorrow about Chinese typing before pinyin assisted in it.
2933: Oranges and Oranges Jan 1, 2025
The connection between the Spanish word 'naranja' (orange) and the Afrikaans 'naartjie' (clementine) is not merely linguistic, but shows a brief history of trade around India. Both words probably ultimately derive from the Sanskrit नारङ्ग (nāraṅga), which referred to the orange fruit. The term passed from Sanskrit into Persian as نارنگ (nārang), and from there it entered Arabic as نارنج (naranj), a word still used today for the fruit. The Arabic 'naranj' influenced several European languages, including Spanish, where it became 'naranja' in the 12th century, likely brought back to Spain by the Moors who had extensive trade connections with the East.
In the case of Afrikaans, the word 'naartjie' (clementine, or mandarin oranges as opposed to navel oranges) evolved through Dutch, which had its own trade routes to India and Southeast Asia, where oranges were cultivated. The Dutch likely encountered the fruit in the region in specifically southern India, likely through a Dravidian language. From Dutch, 'naartjie' made its way into Afrikaans during the colonial era in South Africa. Meanwhile, the word for ‘orange’, ‘oranje’, comes from the same Sanskrit →Persian →Arabic path as everything else.
2932: Spring Cleaning: Topics that Didn’t Make it 2024 Dec 31, 2024
Please enjoy, as a means to wrap up 2024, this collection of draft ideas, none of which were individually long enough to make into a full post or were too similar to existing ones…
•Peaches and nectarines are botanically the same and the names only reflect a commercial difference. The split in the names is quite old, however, from some time in the mid 17th century.
•There are emoji fonts, with different platforms having their own version of the same icons.
•Bread used to have a generic use as anything baked. This includes cookies like gingerbread and shortbread.
•Likewise, ‘peppermint’ was named as ‘pepper’ was just a generic term for a spice. You can read more about how ‘pepper’ became applied to so many varied species.
•The Bic brand, also known in the UK as Biro, each take the names from the inventor, László Bíró, and the manufacturer’s founder, Marcel Bich, who dropped the -H- from the company’s name to avoid its similarity to English profanity.
2931: Laryngeal Theory Dec 30, 2024
Any language with the ‘proto-’ suffix means that it is an unattested language that has been reconstructed based on working backwards based off of known shifts in the language and comparing related languages and dialects.
Laryngeal theory is a significant concept in historical linguistics, particularly for understanding the phonological evolution of Indo-European languages. It posits that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had a series of sounds, known as laryngeals—i.e. produced in the larynx—which have since disappeared in descendant languages. These sounds are thought to possibly resemble pharyngeal [ʕ] or glottal fricatives [h]. Though they left no direct trace in the written records of languages like Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit, evidence for their existence comes from irregularities in vowel shifts and consonantal patterns observed in ancient languages. Eventually, though not conclusive, it was discovered that Hittite may have preserved some remnants of these sounds. Notably Hittite was only deciphered and determined to be an Indo-European languages in the 20th century, after the theory was posited.
Phonologically, laryngeals are believed to have influenced surrounding vowels and consonants, causing vowel changes like the development of different vowel grades (e.g., short versus long vowels) or the appearance of certain consonants that don't fit typical PIE sound patterns. In some cases, these laryngeals may have caused the loss of specific consonants or the creation of new ones in daughter languages. For example, in Hittite, h1, h2, and h3 (the three proposed laryngeal sounds) are reflected in specific consonantal patterns, while in other languages, their impact is seen in vowel changes or the creation of y or w-like sounds.
This is also why in addition to the parenthesis and superscript letters—just look at the proposed root for ‘whale’: *(s)kʷálos—you will often find roots proposed with H+number for one of these presumed laryngeals.
2930: Kids Dec 29, 2024
The child of a goat, and the child of a person are both called, ‘kid’. Given its ubiquity in modern parlance, and the relative similarity between the words ‘child’ and ‘kid, ’you might assume that it always referred to people or was a dialectal form of ‘child’ but it originally only referred to baby goats just as lambs only refer to baby sheep.
This is also very distantly related to ‘kit’, as in the offspring of certain animals like foxes, beavers, and of course ‘kitten’ for cats.
2929: Leeches and Doctors Dec 28, 2024
Doctors can feel like a leech on your wallet, but that’s not why the words were related in Old English. In Old English, a hospital was lǣċehūs, literally ‘doctor-house’ (and also literally ‘leech-house’) which survived into Middle English as lechehous before being replaced by ‘hospital’. Indeed, lǣċe had widespread use in compounds, basically meaning ‘medical-’ as in lǣċeseax (medical sword*) i.e. scalpal, or lǣċedōm i.e. the field of medicine, and lǣċebōc which was a book of remedy recipes. All of these were eventually replaced, usually from Romance vocabulary.
The connection between lǣċe meaning ‘doctor and ’lǣċe meaning ‘leech’ is probably due to the widespread practice of bloodletting, though likely not directly. The root seems to have originally meant ‘doctor’ or perhaps more generically ‘healer’, but was reinforced by another root meaning ‘to tear; to suck’ that was applied to the bloodsucking parasites.
*Seax is a particular type of sword and the namesake of the Saxons, both of Britain and of Saxony in modern Germany.
2928: Deduce / Deduct Dec 27, 2024
Something produced is a product, but ‘deduce’ and ‘deduct’ do not have the same relationship, and notably are both verbs. Both come from the Latin ‘dēdūcere’ (‘to lead away’). Likewise, the sense of ‘induce’ as in to cause and ‘induct’ as in to admit do not seem to correspond.
The sense of ‘deduce’ comes from a figurative sense thereof of being led from an idea, but also used to have a more general meaning of “infer; argue; prove”. Meanwhile, ‘deduct’ went in a different direction, taking on the meaning of drawing one thing away from another, and then gaining the sense of subtracting (subtract also having come from Latin meaning ‘draw under/ out’).
Indeed, the amount of Latin-based doublets with completely different meanings, especially with varied prepositions, is immense. Here are just a few from the Latin ‘dūcere’ (to draw; drag):
Reduce
Induce
Produce
Seduce
Deduce/deduct
Abduct
Conduct
2927: “Russian Mountains” in Western Europe Dec 26, 2024
The Spanish term for 'rollercoaster', ‘montaña rusa’, translates directly to 'Russian mountain'. This is also true in French, Italian and Portuguese. This term originates from the 17th and 18th centuries when sleds were used to glide down artificially constructed ice-covered slopes in Russia, particularly in St. Petersburg. These early amusements were highly popular and came to be associated with any sort of artificial, thrilling descents. When similar attractions were introduced in Western Europe, they retained the association with Russia, and the name persisted. In Russian, meanwhile, they are known as американские горки (amerikanskiye gorki) meaning ‘hills/cliffs of America’.
In German, and similar in Dutch, the term is ‘Achterbahn’ meaning ‘rail attraction’ (loosely translated) and in Polish this is also simply descriptive, ‘kolejka górska’ (literally ‘queue-rail’) and in much of southeastern Europe they simply borrowed 'rollercoaster' as in Serbian and Romanian.
2926: F-V-W: Not So Clear Dec 25, 2024
Looking through old documents, lots of letters one would expect to be used are swapped entirely. Often these spelling choices would be on display with multiple variants in the same document (see more here). Aside from the far more prominent use of the letter <y> in the middle of words, there were not clear distinctions about the dividing lines between <f>,<v> and <w> which both acted as the [w] sound like it is today, or [v]. This is not only a matter of spelling choices, but settling on which sounds were used at all. In Modern German the spelling <w> represent the sound [v], but s <f> and <v> are less clear. Usually <f> is [f] and <v> represents the voiced approximant [ʋ] but depending on the context each can represent [v] also*.
This variability and interchangeability is common, especially in Germanic languages, particularly before standardized spelling. Most English words with these letters—especially those that settled on spelling with <v>—can be found in Middle English and Early Modern English with each of those spelling choices. For instance, you will find ‘venom’ as ‘venim’, ‘wenim’, ‘fenim’, with the <o> becoming standard later.
*In certain contexts [f] sounds in some dialects acts as a lenis, unvoiced /v̥/ after particular vowels.
2925: New Castle - Geordie Dec 24, 2024
The demonym ‘Geordie’ for people from Newcastle upon Tyne has an untraditional history. It's believed to have originated during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 when Newcastle was a key supporter of the Hanoverian government. The term ‘Geordie’ was initially a pejorative nickname used by Scottish rebels to mock supporters of King George II. Over time, however, the people of Newcastle embraced the term with pride, reclaiming and transforming it into a badge of honor.
2924: Giraffe: Persian→Arabic→Persian Dec 23, 2024
An older English word for the giraffe was a camelopard, literally “camel + [leo]pard” in reference to its vaguely camel-like shape but also vague leopard-like print. Most European languages now use a word like ‘giraffe’ which they all got from the Arabic زرافة (za’arafa). This isn’t originally an Arabic word though, as it came from the Classical Persian زُرنَاپَا (zurnāpā), a compound of زُرنَا (zurnā) meaning ‘flute’ and پَا (pā) for ‘leg’. This was then reborrowed into modern Farsi (i.e. Persian) as زرافه (zarafeh).
This is unrelated to the Ge'ez ዘራት (zärat), Amharic ጅራተ (ǧəratä) or other of the similar sounding words found around Ethiopia, which come from a Semitic root meaning ‘thin tail’.
2923: Dieresis Dec 22, 2024
The diacritical mark known as the dieresis, represented as two dots placed over a vowel (e.g., ü), serves to indicate that the vowel should be pronounced separately from an adjacent vowel rather than forming a diphthong or being silent. Its history traces back to Ancient Greek and Latin, where it was used similarly to aid pronunciation and syllable division where there were difference in stress or pauses. In modern usage, the dieresis persists in various languages such as German and French, where it alters the pronunciation of vowels, distinguishes between homophones, or clarifies syllabic stress. Beyond its phonetic function, the dieresis occasionally appears in poetic or archaic contexts to maintain the original pronunciation of borrowed words or names, though it occasionally is used in cases of clarifying prefixed, like coöp, instead of ‘coop’, though these can also be solved with a hyphen (co-op).
2922: Possessive Form in Dutch Place Names Dec 21, 204
Many Dutch cities, such as 's-Hertogenbosch, 's-Gravenhage, 's-Heerenberg, and 's-Gravendeel have spelling that looks impossible to an English speaker. The 's beginning is a contraction of the genitive definite article ‘des’, meaning "of the" indicating that these places were once lands or settlements owned by dukes, counts, or lords. For example, 's-Hertogenbosch means "the forest of the duke," and 's-Gravenhage means "the enclosure of the count". Alternatively these places are now more commonly known as Den Bosch and Den Haag (“The Hague”) respectively, which use the dative form (not the subject).
This is a snapshot of fairly old Dutch. In Modern Dutch, this form of the genitive is hardly used, and 's-Hertogenbosch would be “Bos van de Hertog” even in more recent, 19th century Dutch this would have been “Bosch des Hertogs”.
2921: The [City Name]: Uncommon Articles Dec 20, 2024
There are a handful of specific place names in the US and UK beginning with ‘the —’ but these are almost always reserved for very small towns or villages; the only large example seems to be “the Bronx” which is not its own city per se, but the next largest, the Dalles, Oregon, US, has a population nearly 1000th the size. If you can find others that are larger, please write in.
Even in a language like French that includes definite articles for continents and provinces/states, for instance “j'adore l'Europe, mais je déteste la Californie” (“I adore [the] Europe but I hate [the] California”), French does not add articles before cities.
Meanwhile, this practice, while far from the default, is found more commonly in Dutch, most notably in The Hague or Den Haag natively, population 550K. Officially, it's 's-Gravenhage (more on that next post) but it's joined by Den Bosch population 160K and Den Helder population 56K. These places are all named usually after historical estates of wealthy landowners and just describe the land such as ‘den haag’ (‘the hedge’).
2920: Tadpole Dec 19, 2024
The word ‘tadpole is as unrelated to ‘frog’, etymologically, as ‘cub’ does to ‘bear’, yet the connection isn’t as random. ‘Tadpole’ comes from Middle English ‘tadpolle’ that combines tadde, meaning ‘toad’ with ‘poll’, meaning ‘head’. The reason is pretty clear—they only appear to have the head and a fin in the early stage—but ‘poll’ as a word for head, there is simply no word like it now in English. ‘Poll’ in the sense of a tally of heads does exist, but this is no longer clearly linked to heads except metaphorically.
Cognates in a few rare dialectal forms of other Germanic languages, but those too have mostly faded. Rather it used to refer to any top or dome, from there it referred to the tops of trees—unrelated to 'pole'—and also took on the context of ‘head’ in certain places.
2919: Arabic Typewriters Dec 18, 2024
Some alphabets lent themselves to type writers relatively easily, for example Greek, Cyrillic, Latin, and Hebrew because all the letters are separate and can be rendered with minimal complication for monospaced fonts. Others, like Arabic, were enigmatic for many years.
Arabic’s writing system presents several notable challenges. Each of the 28 letters usually takes 4 forms, whether it's at the beginning, middle, or end of a word, or standing alone, which would lead to far too many characters to reasonably fit. Compounding that is that since it is a connected, cursive font, the letters need to be able to line up with each other, and need to at times both go above or below the line of type. Further complicating the matter is that of width, though an automatic double-space was comparatively not hard to solve.
In the end, there were many attempts in the years around the turn of the 20th century, but the most successful patent was filed by Selim Haddad. Earlier attempts had tried cylinders—like how later electric typewriters would work—but this proved ineffective. Rather the arabic typewrite from Haddad used a simplified form of the 4 letters: connected that also served as word-initial, or disconnected which also served as word-final (for instance: سـ connected, and س disconnected). Lacking capital letters, this was performed similarly to what was done for English with the shift key. The point of connection was made level for all letters. A few exceptions had to be made where the final forms and isolated forms were too distinct to reuse and required two separate keys, but these were paired on keys with other exceptional letters that don’t have a connected form. Diacritics, while traditionally always included in Arabic writing, were by and large ignored. This reduced Arabic from requiring, by various estimates, at least 638 to merely 53 keys, compared to 44 on an English typewriter.
2918: Cyanide Dec 17, 2024
Cyanide gets its name from the vibrant blue pigment known as Prussian blue, one of the first synthetic dyes, discovered in the early 18th century. The pigment, made from iron salts and cyanide compounds, was widely used in art and textiles. The name ‘cyanide" is derived from the Greek word κύανος (kyanos), meaning ‘blue’—hence ‘cyan’.
To be clear, that is the usual translation of κύανος, but when dealing with historical descriptions of color it is not usually cut and dry.
It was probably not the dark, Prussian blue, but also not certainly a light greenish blue evoked with the English ‘cyan’ either. It most probably was linked to the color of a copper patina based off of ancient descriptions as well as related words in other languages, but other historical descriptions compare κύανος to darker or even slightly reddish blue hues. In modern Greek it represents the slightly lighter blue-spectrum compared to the darker μπλε (blueh): between sky blue and azure, but not necessarily with the green tint ‘cyan’ connotes.
2916: Mine and Mineral Dec 15, 2024
The words ‘mine’ and ‘mineral’ trace back to a common, Latin origin. This might not seem so surprising—they are semantically and phonetically quite similar—but unlike say ‘mine’ to ‘miner’ these do not have any morphological connection ‘mine’ → ‘miner’ → ‘mineral’. Rather, the word in Latin was ‘minera’ meaning ‘ore’ which in English became ‘minera’ + ‘-(a)l’, and now refers to anything naturally inorganic from the ground, not necessarily mined, while ‘mine’ comes from the Latin ‘mina’ of the same meaning.
2915: Potatoes Around the World: Surprisingly Diverse Dec 14, 2024
For a newly discovered food—potatoes were only brought to Europe in the 16th century and were only commonly eaten by people centuries after that—there are a remarkable amount of different etymologies for words for the potato in the Old World. In some regions, including Swedish, English, European Spanish, Turkish and Arabic, the word comes from a Taino word referring not to a potato but a sweet potato, ‘batata / batana’, botanically unrelated. Other languages like French, some Southern German dialects, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian use a term meaning “apple of the earth”. The last major group is usually something like the German ‘Kartoffel’ from the Italian ‘tartufolo’ meaning ‘truffle’, in reference to its being grown underground, and this includes also Russian, most Caucasian languages and Kurdish.
Some other languages have completely unrelated words to any others; Czech’s ‘brambor’ and Hungarian’s ‘borgonya’ refers to ‘Brandenburg’ and ‘Burgundy’, with the former being introduced specifically by a Prussian policy from Frederick the Great, encouraging commoners to eat potatoes in the War of the Bavarian Succession, so as to not deplete wheat stores. The Hungarian etymology is unclear. Finnish uses a word, ‘peruna’ meaning ‘pear’, from Swedish, even though Swedish uses a different word.
Meanwhile, no European country uses the native Quechua word ‘papa’ which actually means potatoes, natively, but that word is used in Spanish of the Americas. No other language adopted a native word that actually referred to a potato, but many did take words referring to sweet potatoes, apples, pears, and even more widespread, truffles.
2914: Solder: L or Not Dec 13, 2024
Solder is pronounced differently, regionally. In general, Americans pronounce it without the L, /sɑd.əɹ/ while those in the UK say /sɒl.dɚ/, with the L. This is a classic case of letters being added in to align with Latin but not with how people were actually pronouncing it as English spelling was being standardized in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In Old French records, before it influenced English, it appears as both ‘soldure’ and ‘soudre’ (among a few others) but it was a time in which the L was being phased out; now the word is ‘souder’. Re-Latinizing the word to connect it back to its origins of ‘solidare’ (hence ‘solid’). Despite the spelling being altered to reflect the etymology in the 15th century, and further losing the U from ‘soulder’ to ‘solder’ in the 17th century, it only lost its traditional pronunciation in Britain in the last century or two.