In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Romance languages acquired 2 sets of words for points of the compass: some languages spoken in areas with Atlantic coastlines had nautical terms borrowed from English, via French into Spanish and Portuguese. other languages had words used in the Mediterranean, originating in Italian and spreading to Provençal, Catalan…… Continue reading North, south, east and west
Month: March 2026
I don’t know if ‘whether’ can survive
It often irritates me when people use if when they could have used whether. What annoys me? It is the fact that using if in those cases can cause ambiguity. That is because in English if has 2 meanings: as a synonym for whether expressing a condition In many cases the context makes it clear…… Continue reading I don’t know if ‘whether’ can survive
‘Syntactic doubling’ of Italian consonants
Single Italian consonants become pronounced as double (long) consonants (‘geminates’) if they follow: a stressed vowel some short unstressed words The Italian name for this process is raddoppiamento syntattico (‘syntactic (re)doubling’), or sometimes rafforzamento fonosyntactico (‘phonosyntactic stregntening’). ‘Syntactic’ refers to the fact that the doubling crosses word boundaries, unlike in word-internal geminate consonants as in [gattto] ‘cat’…… Continue reading ‘Syntactic doubling’ of Italian consonants
Why did two Spanish sibilants end up as /θ/ and /x/?
I’ve often wondered why standard European Spanish (Castilian) pronounces the letters written<c> and <j> as /θ/ and /x/. Penny (2002) and Alkire and Rosen (2010) explain that this comes from the history of sibilants in Spanish. Old Spanish sibilants In the 15th century, Old Spanish had 7 sibilants (table 1). Table 1. Old Spanish sibilants…… Continue reading Why did two Spanish sibilants end up as /θ/ and /x/?
Hungarian and Finnish share more words than you might think
Hungarian and Finnish are both members of the Uralic family of languages but separated around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. https://languagemiscellany.com/2024/01/the-uralic-languages/ Some Hungarian and Finnish words still sound (and look) quite similar. Indeed, Hajdu (1975) points out that it is possible to construct complete (albeit artificial) sentences using words of similar form, for example: Kala…… Continue reading Hungarian and Finnish share more words than you might think
Conjunctions must conjoin items of the same kind
The following quote from something I read recently illustrates a common writing error: ‘a proper conception of language will enable us either to solve or dissolve these problems’[emphasis added] Diagnosis The discontinuous conjunction ‘either … or needs’ to conjoin items of the same kind. Let me call them A and B. So, the following is…… Continue reading Conjunctions must conjoin items of the same kind
Where did Russian words come from (4)?
In earlier posts, I looked at 134 words that Russian inherited directly from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the presumed ancestor of the Indo-European family of languages: 27 adjectives, 3 adverbs and 5 numerals. https://languagemiscellany.com/2026/01/where-did-russian-words-come-from/ 43 verbs https://languagemiscellany.com/2026/02/where-did-russian-words-come-from-2/ 56 nouns https://languagemiscellany.com/2026/02/where-did-russian-words-come-from-3/ In this post, I cover 36 words not inherited by Russian directly from PIE but mostly inherited…… Continue reading Where did Russian words come from (4)?
Medieval sources of some French words
I picked up last year a useful book, aimed at a general audience, about the medieval origins of over 100 French words and phrases. The book is Les mots du Moyen Âge, Fabienne Calvayrac, Marion Vialade (2011, nouvelle edition) I’ve summarised below some that caught my eye. If you are interested, the book has a…… Continue reading Medieval sources of some French words
Reporting with attitude (and without)
In my working life, I often had to review draft reports by colleagues summarising responses we had received to public consultations. One of the most common things I had to improve was wording that unintentionally implied the writer’s attitude: whether the writer agreed (or did not agree) with a respondent’s comment. What I wanted people…… Continue reading Reporting with attitude (and without)
Avoiding dissimulation that would create new similarity even closer
I’ve mentioned before a dissimulation affecting the English suffix -al. A regular dissimilation from Latin – Language Miscellany I’ve recently come across an explanation of a further detail of this process. As I reported before: the derivational English suffix -al forms adjectives from nouns and is related historically to the Latin derivational suffix -alis.…… Continue reading Avoiding dissimulation that would create new similarity even closer