In this post, I look at words inherited by both Welsh and Irish from: Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the presumed ancestor of the Indo-European family of languages (52 words). Proto-Celic, the presumed ancestor of the Celtic languages (8 words). The information comes from the IE-COR database—a database of cognates for 170 words (lexemes) in 109 modern and…… Continue reading Where did Welsh and Irish words come from?
Tag: French
That stitched thing from Bay-you
The airwaves are full of reports and interviews about the imminent exhibition of the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum. I’m surprised how many British speakers have been calling this embroidered cloth the Bay-You /beɪjuː/ Tapestry. I’ve always called it the /baɪjɜː/ Tapestry, and I always thought everyone else did too. I checked what the…… Continue reading That stitched thing from Bay-you
Enjoyable history of English letters
Danny Bate’s recent book Why Q needs U: a history of our letters and how we use them (2025) is an entertaining guide to the histories and shapes of the letters in the modern English alphabet. It contains 26 chapters (‘numbered’, unsurprisingly, A to Z), and an introduction and an epilogue. Content Each chapter address…… Continue reading Enjoyable history of English letters
The Indo-European Lexicon project
The aim of the Indo-European Lexicon (IELEX) at The University of Texas at Austin is to collect the individual words of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the common parent of the Indo-European (IE) family of languages. No documents of PIE exist because it predates the invention of writing. Historical linguists use the ‘comparative method’ to reconstruct elements of…… Continue reading The Indo-European Lexicon project
Italian places and their inhabitants
Italian place names generally have related adjectives. Many of them are formed in fairly predictable ways by just adding a suffix to the place name (eg romano from Roma, Milanese from Milano and Napoletano from Napoli). Common suffixes used in place names include (in the masculine plural form) -ani, -tani, -esi, -ensi, -i, -ali, -giani,…… Continue reading Italian places and their inhabitants
Some French false friends
The French language has many faux amis (French for ‘false friends’)—words looking like English words but having different meanings. Here are a few of many false words listed in Thody & Evans (1985) or Worth-Stylianou (1992). All are words I have come across in France or when I lived in Luxembourg. French wordMeaningCommentsActionshare (in a…… Continue reading Some French false friends
Odds and ends: English
This post deals with some small aspects of English, grouped under the following headings: Spelling pronunciation meanings mass noun or count noun? word or phrase word histories 1. Spelling 1a. Bookkeeper Bookkeeper (and related bookkeeping) is one of the few English words with 3 double letters in a row: oo-kk-ee. https://whenyouwrite.com/ points out: an English…… Continue reading Odds and ends: English
North, south, east and west
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
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
Where did Russian words come from (2)?
In an earlier post, I looked at 35 words that Russian inherited directly from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the presumed ancestor of the Indo-European family of languages. Those words were 27 adjectives, 3 adverbs and 5 numerals. https://languagemiscellany.com/2026/01/where-did-russian-words-come-from/ In this post, I look at 43 verbs inherited by Russian directly from PIE. In future posts, I will…… Continue reading Where did Russian words come from (2)?