171–180 of 247 posts
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I was amazed to discover that oranges used to be called "noranges" but "a norange" was corrupted into "an orange".
Oh! That suddenly makes the Spanish "naranja" seem way more connected!
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what do you suggest instead: naif, nife, nyve ..?
Move to a phonetic alphabet. E.g. Arabic.
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The W is called "double-u" because it dates from the era when U and V were the same letter (the consonant and vowel versions diverged) and there was no W letter, but only a doubled-U. The phrase, "I want a veal sandwich on Tuesday" would have been spelled, "I uuant a ueal sanduuich on Tuesday" (or, alternatively, "I vvant a veal sandvvich on Tvesday"). This is also why u, v, and w are consecutive in the alphabet. Thi…
In Swedish, V and W were treated as the same letter and mixed together when sorting (in the phonebook, in database software, etc) until 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet#Uncommon_lett...
(Finland is bilingual, and the characters sets, keyboards and sorting rules are same both for Finnish and Swedish.)
Worse imho is the "glasses", "pants", "pliers", "scissors", etc thing. Single object with plural name just because it happens to be made of two similar parts. Most objects are made of multiple parts though and they get a singular name just fine. That and the "double u", why not "we"??
Grammatically plural nouns denoting single objects is something that occurs in multiple European languages (and perhaps others), not only English. English French Slovak pliers pinces kliešte pants pantalons nohavice scissors ciseaux nožnice All plural. The singular "kliešť" exists, but it refers to an insect: the tick. The word "nohavica" is used when referring to just one of the pant legs. (E.g. one being rolled up,…
pants -> Finnish "housut", scissors -> "sakset"; there is no singular "housu" or "saksi" in that meaning. As above, there is the singular "saksi" but it means a Saxon.
I can't believe they discussed plurals in English and missed the most interesting piece! The -s endings came after Norsemen conquered England, and the introduction of it was from their language, connected to old French. This also is why in English, you have words like "ox/cows" and "beef": the Norsemen who were nobles essentially influenced the English to use their words for the animals since they were served as food…
I can't believe they discussed plurals in English and missed the most interesting piece! The -s endings came after Norsemen conquered England, and the introduction of it was from their language, connected to old French. This also is why in English, you have words like "ox/cows" and "beef": the Norsemen who were nobles essentially influenced the English to use their words for the animals since they were served as food…
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Yes, which is why the & character is supposedly called the "empersand" in Scotland, for "'et', per-se 'and'".
> "'et', per-se 'and'" I'm having trouble parsing this. What was the meaning of this phrase?
A mondegreen of "and per se and", meaning "and (the character) '&' by itself", which is how the symbol (&) was originally referred to in English. This formulation is due to the fact that in schools, when reciting the alphabet, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself ("A," "I," "O" and, at one point, "&") was preceded by the Latin expression per se (Latin for "by itself"). Also, it was common practice to add at the end of the alphabet the "&" sign, pronounced "and". Thus the end of the recitation would be: "X, Y, Z and per se and." This last phrase was routinely slurred to "ampersand" and the term crept into common English usage by around 1837.
I can't believe they discussed plurals in English and missed the most interesting piece! The -s endings came after Norsemen conquered England, and the introduction of it was from their language, connected to old French. This also is why in English, you have words like "ox/cows" and "beef": the Norsemen who were nobles essentially influenced the English to use their words for the animals since they were served as food…
I think you are mixing up Norsemen and Normans. Norsemen (Scandinavians, sometimes called Vikings) spoke a Germanic language (called old Norse, the ancestor of current Scandinavian languages), while the Normans spoke French. English have been influenced by both, but the Norman invasion was later. Beef, veal, mutton etc. are from french.
They tried to conquer England for the best part of a millennium, failed, conquered parts of France and Italy instead - by war and diplomacy - and then conquered England.
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OP seemed to be referring to Normans. The whole cow (English) -> beef (French) is a classic linguistic example to cite with regard to them.
How come the same situation is present in other languages(e.g. French, Serbocroatian)? Improbable that it were always the Normans.