The English suffix -al is one of the derivational suffixes that forms adjectives from nouns. It is a non-native suffix, related historically to the Latin derivational suffix -alis. One oddity of this suffix is that it has different form -ar when applied to some words (or bases) containing /l/. An example is lunar. This type…… Continue reading A regular dissimilation from Latin
Month: March 2025
Is the English language just French in disguise?
Bernard Cerquiglini’s 2024 book bears the provocative title «La langue anglaise n’existe pas» C’est du français mal prononcé (‘ “the English language doesn’t exist.” It is badly pronounced French.’) The title is from a quip by Clemenceau (presumably French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 1841-1929). Cerquiglini emphasises that it is a quotation by putting quotation marks…… Continue reading Is the English language just French in disguise?
More words distinguished only by tones
I posted recently about 4 words in Mandarin and 6 Vietnamese words, each pronounced ma, but distinguished phonetically (and phonologically) by bearing different tones. Some words distinguished only by tones – Language Miscellany I’ve now come across a list of 4 Burmese words, each pronounced ma, and also distinguished by bearing different tones. Burmese…… Continue reading More words distinguished only by tones
Two sounds merging in Lëtzebuergesch
Lëtzebuergesch has (or used to have) 2 similar but distinct sibilants post-alveolar /ʃ/ and palatal /ç/, but those sounds are now well on the way to merging into a single alveolopalatal sound /ɕ/. A recent paper examined the nature and spread of this change (Conrad, 2023). The paper concludes that: this change is almost complete among…… Continue reading Two sounds merging in Lëtzebuergesch
We could acquire language 135,000 years ago
When did a capacity to acquire language first appear in modern humans? A recent (short) paper tries to answer that question. The paper is Linguistic capacity was present in the Homo sapiens population 135 thousand years ago, Shigeru Miyagawa, Rob DeSalle, Vitor Augusto Nóbrega, Vitor Augusto Nóbrega, Remo Nitschke, Mercedes Okumura and Ian Tattersall in the journal…… Continue reading We could acquire language 135,000 years ago
The vowels are going back in Abrdn
The asset manager Standard Life Aberdeen attracted widespread derision in 2021 when it rebranded itself as Abrdn and announced that the name would be pronounced … Aberdeen. https://languagemiscellany.com/2021/07/standard-life-aberdeen-becomes-abrdn/ The company has evidently had enough of this now. It has decided to rename itself aberdeen group plc. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9nkeg79gyo The announcement is buried in the latest financial…… Continue reading The vowels are going back in Abrdn
Importing a foreign consonant into Finnish
I found an interesting little example about foreign loan words in Finnish in New Perspectives in Historical Linguistics, Paul Kiparsky, in The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, edited by Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans (2014). The example is on foreign words containing /f/. I summarise below what Kiparsky says about 2 strategies for dealing with…… Continue reading Importing a foreign consonant into Finnish
English is now the USA’s ‘official language’
By an Executive Order dated 1 March 2025, US President Donald Trump designated English as the official language of the United States. The order states that: a nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society, and the United States is strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in…… Continue reading English is now the USA’s ‘official language’