False cognates are pairs of words that seem related, but aren’t. Here are some of these amazing linguistic coincidences. What are False Congates? If you read my last post, Dizzying Doublets, you’ll see that sometimes words that seem totally different, like “nation” and “king”, or “gonads” and “genius”, can be distantly related. Words like this, […]
Linguistics
Dizzying Doublets
Have you ever wondered why the word ‘language’ sounds so similar to the word ‘tongue’? Probably not, because those words sound totally different. So you may be surprised to know that both come from the same origin, a word used around 6000 years ago in a language called Proto-Indo-European (PIE). That word was something like […]
Hausos: The Original Dawn Goddess
This is number 2 in a series I’m writing about Proto-Indo-European deities. For part one, click here: Perkwunos: the Original Thunder God The Anglo-Saxon, Lithuanian, Roman, Greek and Hindu dawn goddesses are (probably) all related, and descended from an ancient goddess worshipped 6000 years ago. Hausos: The Proto-Indo-European Dawn Goddess We have no writing or records […]
Linguistic Prescriptivists Make Terrible Zoologists
If you love language, be a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist!Remember:Just because a word isn’t in your dictionary, doesn’t mean it isn’t a word. Just because a dialect is different from the standard language, doesn’t mean it isn’t valid. Just because someone uses a word in a way you aren’t familiar with, doesn’t mean they are wrong.And, however you […]
100 British Words for Rain
In the UK, we talk incessantly about the weather. In a recent study, 94% of British people admitted to having talked about the weather in the past six hours, and 38% in the last hour. There are a few reasons for this obsession; The first is that we have a LOT of weather. In my hometown […]
Every Native British and Irish Language
There are hundreds languages spoken in Britain and Ireland. However, only a handful are native languages, which have evolved in the region over hundreds of years. For my full post mapping the history of languages in the region, click on the link below: A Brief History of British and Irish Languages I made this post […]
A Brief History of British and Irish Languages
Two charts and seventeen maps, showing how the languages of Britain and Ireland have changed since the Roman rule of Britannia ended 1600 years ago! First, check out this GIF I made! When most people think of the languages of Britain and Ireland, they probably think of English. It’s the language pretty much everybody speaks, […]
Vietnamese Fruits and Vegetables, Literally Translated
See also: Vietnamese Animals Names Literally Translated
