Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 327 other subscribersOctober 2025 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Category: Linguistics
What is the difference between Illocutionary act and Illocutionary force?
Per Illocutionary act and What is an illocutionary act? , it’s always been messy. One take is: The illocutionary act is a speech act: something that the speaker does by speaking. It often expresses an intention that the world matches what the speaker says—that their assertions are accurate, their promises sincere, their commands obeyed. But […]
What is the etymology of “archetypal”?
As the Googles will tell you, from Greek arkhetypon (ἀρχέτυπον): arkhē, meaning start, beginning, and typos, stamp, impression (originally: a blow). Literally: an initial stamp, an initial impression. And the meaning the word had was pretty close to “archetype” from the beginning: LSJ Adjective: “first-moulded as a pattern or model, archetypal”, used by Philo to […]
Why is the word “all” spelled this way instead of “aal”?
Billy Kerr’s answer to Why is the word “all” spelled this way instead of “aal”? is right, but lemme add a bit to it. While English spelling looks pretty random, there is a predictability to it if you assume that it used to make sense in Middle English. So through a particular vowel change in […]
What are the pros and cons of the Erasmian pronunciation?
For this answer, bear in mind that there are three current pronunciations of Ancient Greek: Erasmus’ reconstruction of Ancient Greek phonology, as modified in practice for teaching Greek in Western schools: Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching The scholarly reconstruction of Ancient Greek phonology: Ancient Greek phonology Modern Greek pronunciation applied to Ancient Greek (“Reuchlinian” […]
What is the name for the ‘condition’ that sometimes occurs when people wake from a coma and can speak a foreign language without any prior study?
There is indeed Foreign accent syndrome . And the simplest explanation is the easiest: people wake up with a kind of speech disorder, which listeners match to whatever accents they are familiar with. It does not mean they are speaking a different languages, or that they have been exposed to another accent natively. Pareidolia, the […]
How can I translate “talent” into Ancient Greek?
Well… Talent as is in the ancient coin is τάλαντον, as Haggen Kennedy said. Talent as in being talented, not so much. The googles tell me that the modern sense is Mediaeval Latin, with an allusion to a parable in the Bible: Online Etymology Dictionary . As far as I know, that metaphorical extension did […]
What does the Romanian language sound like to a foreigner?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUnFDbRClBI My prejudice going in, as someone exposed through Greek linguistics to written Aromanian language (which I know is not quite the same thing): Too many diphthongs Central vowels? How odd It’s Romance, it’s just got some odd sound changes My prejudice on hearing this: Too many diphthongs. I can’t hear the Romance at all. […]
If the compound words, “insofar,” and “inasmuch” require that they be followed by “as”, why haven’t we made the leap to “insofaras,” and “inasmuchas”?
Constituency. If people are going to run words together, they don’t so randomly. They run words together when the words form a syntactic grouping. And the stop running words together when they run into a syntactic break. A clause like “in so far as I am able” is analysed syntactically as: [in [so far]] [as […]
Was Latin spoken in the Byzantine empire, even though the official language was Greek? And did Byzantines study Latin texts?
What Steve Theodore’s answer to Was Latin spoken in the Byzantine empire, even though the official language was Greek? And did Byzantines study Latin texts? said, and what Steve Theodore’s answer to Were the medieval Byzantines familiar with the famous figures of Roman antiquity, like Cato the Elder, Scipio Africanus, or Cincinnatus? said. In particular, […]
Which countries keep their native languages pure and uninfluenced from foreign languages?
What Tomasz Dec’s answer to Which countries keep their native languages pure and uninfluenced from foreign languages? said. Icelandic is likely the most successful, as the poster-child of conservative intervention in language change in general. Lots of European languages have had bouts of this. German fought the good fight for a fair while, and their […]