allthingslinguistic:

missalsfromiram:

prudencepaccard:

jdragsky:

missworthing:

zombiekittensandmadscientists:

One of my favorite linguistic phenomena is rebracketing, which is when a word or words is/are redivided differently, either two words becoming one, one word heard as two, or part of one word interpreted as part of the other.  This frequently happens with articles, for example:

• apron was originally napron, but “a napron” was interpreted as “an apron”
• newt comes from ewt by the same process
• In the opposite direction, nickname comes from Middle English nekename which in turn came from ekename (an ekename -> a nekename) where “eke” was an old word meaning “also” or “additional” (so basically “an additional name”)
• ammunition comes from an obsolete dialectal French amunition, which came from munition, the phrase la munition being heard as l’amunition.
• the nickname Ned comes from Ed, via “mine Ed” being heard as “my Ned” (in archaic English, “my” and “mine” had the same relationship as “a” and “an”), same with several other nicknames like Nell
• The word “orange” ulimately derives from the Arabic nāranj, via French “orange”, the n being lost via a similar process involving the indefinite article, e.g., something like French “une norange” becoming “une orange” (it’s unclear which specific Romance language it first happened in)
• in the Southern US at least (not sure about elsewhere), “another” is often analyzed as “a nother”, hence the phrase “a whole nother”
• omelet has a whole series of interesting changes; it comes from French omelette, earlier alemette (swapping around the /l/ and /m/), from alemelle from an earlier lemelle (la lemelle -> l’alemelle)

Related to this, sometimes two words, especially when borrowed into another language, will be taken as one.  Numerous words were borrowed from Arabic with the definite article al- attached to them.  Spanish el lagarto became English alligator.  An interesting twist is admiral, earlier amiral (the d probably got in there from the influence of words like “administer”) from Arabic amir al- (lord of the ___), particularly the phrase amir al-bahr, literally “lord of the sea”.

Sometimes the opposite happens.  A foreign word will look like two words, or like a word with an affix.  For example, the Arabic kitaab (book) was borrowed into Swahili as kitabu.  ki- happens to be the singular form of one of the Swahili genders, and so it was interpreted as ki-tabu.  To form the plural of that gender, you replace ki- with vi-, thus, “books” in Swahili is vitabu.  The Greek name Alexander became, in Arabic, Iskander, with the initial al- heard as the article al-.

Similarly, the English word Cherry came from Old Norman French cherise, with the s on the end interpreted as the plural -s.  Interestingly enough, that word came from Vulgar Latin ceresia, a feminine singular noun, but originally the plural of the neuter noun ceresium!  So a Latin plural was reinterpreted as a singular in Vulgar Latin, which in turn was interpreted as a plural when borrowed into English!

The English suffix -burger used with various foods (e.g., cheeseburger, or more informally chickenburger, etc.) was misanlyzed from Hamburger as Ham-burger, itself from the city of Hamburg

This can happen even with native words.  Modern French once is used for the snow leopard, but originally meant “lynx”.  In Old French, it was lonce (ultimately from the same source as lynx), which was reinterpreted as l’once!  In English, the word “pea” was originally “pease”, but that looked like it had the plural -s on it, and so the word “pea” was created from it.  Likewise, the adjective lone came from alone, heard as “a lone”, but alone itself came originally from all one.

One of my favorite personal examples is the old Southern man who would come into work and ask me if I was “being have” (as opposed to the more usual “behaving”).

the word editor predated the word edit - editor was reinterpreted as edit-er, so clearly someone who edits!

when your open borders advocacy extends to morpheme boundaries

Don’t forget the Swahili kipilefti (”roundabout”), from English keep left, with a plural vipilefti - and in reverse, singular kideo (”video”) with plural video.

In Arabic, the plural is often formed by changing the vowels around the basic three consonants. So the plural of “fals” (money) is “fuluus”. When English words with three consonants are borrowed, they’re often reanalyzed, so when “bank” was borrowed and its plural became “bunuuk”. 

jadagul:

wirehead-wannabe:

mailadreapta:

thathopeyetlives:

I’m somewhat confused by all the hatred for lawns – people saying that they are useless. 

I don’t disagree that they are costly in terms of water and some kinds of maintenance. A better material culture would have fewer of them and there seem to be some perverse expectations (even regulations sometimes) that various landscaped areas should have lawns rather than other, more appropriate plants or landscape. 

However, it’s totally obvious what lawns are for, to me. They’re for kids to play on or to play soccer or run around or sit for a picnic or whatever. And I don’t see why people don’t get *any* of that. 

These people don’t have kids. Furthermore, children are so removed from their social circle and frame of mind that they don’t even think about what they would use the lawn for if they did have kids.

(Or they live in dense urban areas where playgrounds are no more than a few blocks away.)

I think it’s more the latter, but even a bit further. The broader model people are using here I think is “suburbia is cancer,” which I think is accurate even (especially?) if you have kids. It gets you suburban-brand Safety at the cost of making you into a suburbanite. Like yeah, there are reasons people make that tradeoff, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t an example of widespread civilizational inadequacy. @sinesalvatorem @michaelblume back me up here.

This also strikes me as wrong because of the specific connotations of “lawn”.

Kids play outside, in the grass. In the yard. Generally in the backyard.

Calling it a “lawn” implies (to me, at least) that it’s carefully cultivated and primarily to be looked at. It’s not a place for people to play because that would ruin the look.

This is why you always yell at the kids to get off your lawn.

There’s an additional angle, which is that many locations in suburbia actually require a certain amount of front yard/lawn, so you need a boring, wasteful lawn in lieu of something functional, like (a) more house, or (b) more backyard.

Besides ice cubes, what recipe modifications would be needed to turn a “Bloody Mary” into a “Blood on the Rocks at Shayol Ghul”?

binghsien:

A fancy word for “headcanon” is “heresy.”

(via gruntledandhinged)

I am a week away from submitting my PhD dissertation in physics and have been toying with a wonderful/terrible idea. What if, on the final version I upload, I include the Complete Works of Hilbert and Sullivan. Nothing possibly could go wrong there!