Mezzofanti: A Master of Languages

Wednesday marks the date when Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti died. He was famous for being one of the world's most prolific polyglots, supposedly mastering dozens of languages during his lifetime.

Mezzofanti was born in Bologna on 19 September 1774. As a child he learnt Greek and Latin words he overheard from a priest's lessons. When the priest found out, he put Mezzofanti into a religious school and later exposure to Spanish-speaking priests helped him learn Spanish. During that time he managed to master his Greek and Latin as well as pick up Arabic, Hebrew, German, French, and a few other languages.

Upon completing his studies, he became the professor of Arabic at Bologna University and was ordained as a priest. When he lost his job for not swearing his allegiance to the Cisalpine Republic, he started tutoring rich families.

When the Austrians arrived in Bologna to drive out Napoleon, Mezzofanti learnt Hungarian, Polish, Czech, and Russian from the soldiers at the hospital where he worked.

Supposedly he taught himself a language overnight when he found out that two criminals needed confession. He continued to learn different languages and eventually spoke nearly 40 languages fluently. He was also familiar with many other languages.

While the rumour mill and hearsay may have exaggerated stories of Mezzofanti, any language learner should appreciate that he managed to learn a lot about foreign languages without ever leaving his country!

Anglish: The English Language at its "Purest"

The English language has been on one hell of a journey. It's a Germanic language, but it's got plenty of loanwords from other languages. Over half of the vocabulary comes from French, Latin, and Greek. But what if it didn't? What if the only words we used came from Germanic and Anglo-Saxon roots?

This is how we get Anglish, English but without any "foreign" words. Sometimes it's also called Root English, as it's English going back to its roots. The thing is, Anglish can't be elegent, it can only be swanky. So how did we get here?

Some Greek and Latin words entered Old English thanks to Christianity and the Norman invasion in the 11th Century meant the upper echelons of society spoke French, giving words with French roots more prestige than their Anglo-Saxon equivalents.

This didn't become an issue until the 16th and 17th centuries when Middle English was becoming Modern English. Some writers at the time borrowed words with Latin roots, since Latin was used in academia, in order to sound fancy. Other writers hated the pointlessness of using words that already had perfectly adequate English equivalents with Anglo-Saxon roots.

Of course, some of the words borrowed into English around this time are still commonly used, like dismiss, celebrate, encyclopedia, commit, capacity and ingenious. Others disappeared from use as quickly as they were introduced, such as expede.

A fine specimen for birdlorists.

In the 19th Century, the writer William Barnes went so far as to create his own Anglo-Saxon words as counterparts to the commonly used Latin ones. Barnes preferred using the word birdlore to ornithology and was much more bendsome (flexible) in his use of a pure English language. Overkill, perhaps?

George Orwell wasn't a fan of writers using Latin words either. In fact, he went so far to say that "Bad writers [...] are haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones".

Personally, I don't think we need to avoid all Latin and Greek words, the English language has some beautiful words thanks to these languages (and their derivatives). However, I don't automatically think you're fancy because you use Latin words, there's nothing wrong with Anglo-Saxon and Germanic words, either!

What do you think? Shall we keep English "pure" or do you like our elegant Latin and Greek words? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

The Etymology of the Olympics: Part 2

Before the weekend, we started looking at the etymologies of Olympic events. Today we'll finish up with the remaining events.

Pentathlon

Much like the Olympics themselves, this term has Greek origins. Since the pentathlon includes five events, it's a merger of the Greek word pente (meaning "five") and athlon (meaning "contest"). However, it used to be called the pentathlum, using the Latin name.

Rowing

This event gets its name through Proto-Germanic roots and lent itself to a variety of Northern European languages. When it arrived in Old English, the verb "to row" was rowan.

Rugby

Like "badminton", this sport gets its name from where the sport was first played. Rugby should really be called "rugby football". Rugby is a town in Warwickshire, England, if you were wondering.

Sailing

Like rowing, this sport's name also originates from Proto-Germanic. In Old English, the word was seglinge, but became sailing when the Old English word for "sail" changed.

Shooting

Shooting comes from Proto-Indo-European roots, and was scotung in Old English before referring to the sport as of 1885.

Swimming

Interestingly, the verb "to swim" was swimman in Old English, but "swimming" comes from making "swim" a verbal noun.

Taekwondo

Like judo, taekwondo is a way of doing something. In Korean, do is "a way or manner", tae means "to kick", and gwon means "to punch", so taekwondo is literally "the way of kicking and punching".

Tennis

Tennis comes from French; Old French, to be precise. In fact, it comes from the Old French verb tenir, which means to hold, receive, or take. The imperative form of this verb was tenez, which entered Middle English as tenetz and tenes. This evolved into the "tennis" we know today.

Triathlon

Remember pentathlon? The term triathlon is almost the same, but with pente being replaced by tri, meaning three, instead of five. It only has three events, rather than five.

Volleyball

The word volley comes from Latin volare, meaning "to fly", and then French volée. It eventually referred to the act of volleying the ball in tennis in the mid-19th century before combining with the word "ball" to give us the term "volleyball" that we use today.

Water Polo

The word for the game "polo" came from the Balti word for "ball", polo. Polo was played in Asia long before it made its way to England and was adapted for the water, at which point it became known as water polo.

Wrestling

Wrestling came from the Old English term wræstlung, while referring directly to the sport itself was the verbal noun of wræstlian.

Well, that's the remainder of our Olympic etymologies! We hope you enjoy the games as much as we surely will.

The Etymology of the Olympics: Part 1

As we said on Wednesday, we're pretty excited for the Olympics. With that in mind, we thought we'd look at the events in the competition and how their names made their way into the English language.

Archery

The term "archery" came from the Anglo-French archerye and Old French archerie. These words, of course, came from the word for "archer". All the words surrounding archery inevitably have their roots in the Latin for bow, arcus. The root of arc comes from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and meant "bowed" or "curved".

Athletics

Linguistically, "athletics" refers to the events in which "athletes" participate. In Greek, athlos was a contest and athlon was a prize. So basically, athletes compete in a contest to win a prize. Sounds about right, doesn't it? The term athletes in Greek was a prizefighter. This made its way into Latin as athleta and into English in the early 15th century.

Badminton

The racket sport of badminton takes its name from where the sport was first played. Badminton House was in Gloucester, United Kingdom. Its name came from the Old English Badimyncgtun.

Basketball

It's a sport using balls and baskets, what more do you want?

Boxing

Boxing takes its name from box, a 14th-century verb that meant "to beat" which later meant "to fight with the fists" and gave us "boxing".

BMX

BMX is short for "Bicycle Motocross". We'll get to "cycling" in a bit.

Canoe (Slalom and Sprint)

The sport is named after the boat used. The word for that boat, canaoua, came from the Arawakan language used in Haiti in the mid-16th century. Many variants made their way into English, but by the 17th century it was established as "canoe".

Cycling

The term "cycling" refers to riding a bicycle, but "cycle" comes from Latin and Greek. In Greek, the work kyklos referred to many circular things and motions. This became cyclus in Late Latin.

Equestrian

Equestrian events involve horses, and the term itself means "relating to horses". However, the term eques in Latin was a horseman or a knight, and equus, of course, means "horse".

Fencing

"Fencing" is technically a shortened form of "defencing", the act of defending oneself. Just like you have to do in this swordsman's sport.

Football

Football obviously comes from putting the words "foot" and "ball" together. However, if you're from one of the countries that calls it "soccer", the term comes from the shortening of "association football".

Golf

After a century out of the Olympics, golf is back. The sport gets its name from Scottish in the mid-15th century; the term gouf came from the Middle Dutch term colf meaning a "stick", "club", or "bat". Nowadays, you can only play golf with a club, though.

Handball

Another obviously named ball sport. "Hand" + "ball" = "Handball".

Hockey

The term for hockey is thought to have come from a Middle French term for a shepherd's staff, the hoquet, since hockey sticks are thought to resemble the staves and crooks used by shepherds.

Judo

The martial art of judo, which originated in Japan, unsurprisingly has a Japanese name. In Japanese, judo means "gentle way", as ju means "gentle" and do means a "way" or "art". What you see is what you get.

As we're halfway through the Olympic events, we'll continue our look at the rest of the games on Monday, when we'll be even more excited as the competition will be in full swing!

Pseudo-Anglicisms: Loanwords English Doesn't Need Back

A great bit of footing.

In the past, we've looked at loanwords that have made their way into English from many different languages, including Russian, Hawaiian, and Malay. Of course, plenty of languages have also borrowed English words with varying degrees of success. These words sometimes remain unchanged from the original English version and keep the same spelling and meaning. However, there are also loanwords that have nothing to do with their English incarnations, which are known as pseudo-anglicisms.

Today we're going to show you a few of our favourite words that went from English into another language and got a bit lost along the way.

If you speak German, you might be familiar with the world Air-Condition. While it's clear that this word means "air-conditioning", it still sounds very peculiar if you speak English as your first language. The same goes for shampooing in French, which is not a verb, but rather the noun for "shampoo".

French, just like Romanian, likes to use baskets to refer to trainers or sneakers, whereas Spanish and Portuguese borrowed the English word "tennis" and changed it to tenis and tênis respectively.

While basketball is quite popular, borrowing the word in its entirety is not. Several languages, including French, have taken "basket" to refer to the sport. Footing is also a popular pursuit in French, Italian and Spanish... Never heard of it? In English, we call it "jogging".

Some tents in a camping.

When you go camping, you stay in a campsite. If you go camping in a country that speaks Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, or Spanish, you stay in a camping. Do you want to park your car in a "car park" or a "parking lot"? In Arabic, Flemish, French, Swiss German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish, it can sometimes simply be called a parking.

The trend of adding the -ing suffix to English words doesn't end there. Lifting actually refers to a "facelift" in a number of different languages. Arabic, German, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish also sometimes use marketing to refer to "advertising", which is of course related to marketing, but doesn't cover all types of marketing.

A number of a languages like to call a tuxedo or suit jacket a smoking. This comes from the English term "smoking jacket", but does away with the most important part for English speakers, with "smoking" developing its own meaning in its new language.

My last pseudo-anglicism is zapping, I absolutely love this word. It means channel-hopping or channel-surfing in Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, and Swedish and has given rise to a number of TV shows that replicate that very idea without you ever having to touch the remote!

What are your favourite pseudo-anglicisms? Are there any words from your language that English has borrowed in a nonsensical way? Tell us about them all in the comments below!

English Pronunciation: Beware of Greek Bearing Words

The English language's weak relationship between spelling and pronunciation is fairly well known. In fact, English is highly non-phonemic, which means that graphemes (letters) don't tend to have a direct link to pronunciation (phonemes).

There are multitude of reasons why this relationship is so poor. English vocabulary comes from a multitude of sources. While over half of the language's vocabulary is from Latin and French and around a quarter is from Germanic languages, there's a part of the English lexicon that can cause plenty of problems (especially for non-native speakers) when it comes to pronunciation: the words from Greek.

While Greek words account for only 6% of English vocabulary, the Greek language is the 4th largest contributor to the English language. While there aren't enough Greek terms to make speaking English seem impossible, there are enough to ensure that you can trip up over their pronunciation from time to time.

Unsurprisingly, Greek words, much like the Greek language, are written using the Greek alphabet. When these words made their way into English, the Greek letters had to go and the Latin alphabet ended up being used. When this happened, the Latin letters used didn't always line up directly with the pronunciation you would expect.

A fine example is the Greek letter Χ (chi). This letter tends to make a sound we often associate with the Latin letters C and K. However, in many words of Greek origin, this is written as ch. Words like this include architecture, chaos, chemistry, character, mechanic, and monarch.

The letter Φ (phi) gave us plenty of words that use ph when you would think that the letter F would suffice. This led to words like alphabet, blaspheme, dolphin, emphasis, orphan, philosophy, photo, and physics.

Then there's Ψ (psi), which gives us those words that use ps with a silent P and sound just like S. Examples include the Greek word for spirit and soul (ψυχή - psych), which is found in psychedelic, psychology, and plenty of other psycho words.

Of course, we love the interesting diversity the Greek language brought to English. You just have to be careful about their seemingly weird spelling, at least in comparison to words with more common roots. Just make sure to be careful when you pronounce them!

The Sorry State of Languages at GCSE

Here in the UK, yesterday marked the day that children in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland received their GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) grades. The results for the Standard Grades, the equivalent in Scotland, were published earlier in the month.

For those not familiar with the UK education system, the GCSEs are the qualifications generally taken by students over their final two years of compulsory education (between 14 and 16 years old). This is the time of year when regardless of the results, people will complain.

If the trend is that grades are getting worse, then it is assumed that kids today are not as smart as those who studied before them. If the results are better, then the exams must be getting easier. I don't subscribe to either of those opinions because it's almost impossible to standardise the exams each year and the percentages for each grade given are fairly arbitrary.

Over a decade has passed since foreign languages were removed as compulsory subjects at GCSE, and the trends for foreign language education in the UK are not looking good. It seems every year the number of students taking a foreign language at GCSE decreases, and this year is no exception.

Declining Numbers

Perhaps one day all of these new Portuguese students
will be able to understand a performance at the
Municipal Theatre of São Paulo in Brazil!

In 2013, around 332,000 students were taking foreign language GCSEs. This figure dropped in 2014 to 321,000 students. This year it dropped yet again by an even greater amount to just over 300,000 students. It goes without saying that as a language lover, this doesn't feel great.

Those who do choose to study a modern foreign language at GCSE are also moving away from languages traditionally taught in the UK, such as French and German. Spanish has dipped in popularity this year, but this does follow nearly a decade of increasing popularity. Mandarin is doing well, with the number of students studying the subject increasing by nearly a fifth. More students have also been choosing to study Portuguese, Polish, and Arabic.

Some figures have suggested that foreign languages are being squeezed out by what I would call "modern" subjects, such as ICT (information and communications technology) and computing. It's hardly surprising that students are opting for these subjects given the world we live in and the increasing use of computers.

However, I don't think these two types of subjects are in competition. In fact, I believe the spread of telecommunications is the reason that languages are more important than ever. As the world becomes more and more connected, we've seen a rise in the demand for both communication technologies and foreign language abilities; it's just that the latter seems to have gone unnoticed by a number of students taking their GCSEs.

Easy "A"s (or "A*"s)

There are also stories going around that an increased number of migrants are taking the foreign language GCSE of their mother tongue. There have been suggestions that students are being encouraged to do this to either boost their school's performance or their own. While I suppose this isn't really in the "spirit" of taking a foreign language qualification, it would balance out having to take a number of other GCSEs in your second language.

The beautiful countryside and mountains of Crete, Greece.

This trend has also been said to be the reason for the increase in some of the less-common languages, such as Polish, Urdu, Turkish, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Farsi, Modern Greek, and Modern Hebrew.

The Reaction

Obviously, few are calling any of this a good thing. Negative adjectives are being thrown around as they seem to be every year. The UK is miles behind so many countries across Europe and the world in terms of foreign language education, and it's not going to close the gap if things continue as they are.

I find this all pretty abhorrent because it's certainly not caused by the teachers who are constantly given more bureaucratic hoops to jump through, more work to do, less pay, and yet still attempt to impart their knowledge upon the teenagers of this country.

What I find even worse is that although several groups with a bigger voice than me have spoken out about these disappointing trends, little seems to be changing.

What are your thoughts on the decline of foreign languages at GCSE? Any ideas on how to improve the matter? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Opa! - Interjections, Exclamations, and Ejaculations

If you've visited Greece or have done anything remotely Greek in the past, you're probably familiar with the expression "opa!" (or "Ώπα" in its native writing system). I recently spent some time pondering the meaning behind the word and discussing it at length with a number of people who all struggled to explain exactly what it means. Everyone seemed to know when to use it and the general sentiment it was expressing, but nobody could really pinpoint a definition.

When I looked the word up online, Urban Dictionary provided the following definition: "A word that Greek people use for no apparent reason at all". While this definition amused me, it certainly didn't help me at all.

Mount Ida in Crete, Greece. The kind of landscape that helps
inspire interjections as positive as "opa!".

It turns out that "opa!" is both an interjection and an exclamation. Interjections are used to express an emotion or feeling on behalf of the speaker and are often exclamations (since emotion has that kind of nature). However, not every interjection is an exclamation. For example, filler words such as uhm and er are also considered interjections. Interjections generally have no syntactic relationship to other words.

Exclamations are emphatic interjections and strongly express emotions. Thanks to the existence of the exclamation mark "!", exclamations are generally very easy to spot when written. In speech, the volume of the utterance tends to give them away.

In linguistics, a short exclamation such as "opa!" is actually known as an ejaculation. Sadly, this is a very difficult linguistic term to safely search for on the internet since Google's algorithm tends to provide a very different type of results to the linguistic ones I was looking for.

The difference between exclamations and ejaculations is that ejaculations don't usually need to follow the grammatical rules of a language and are used independent of clauses and sentences. However, there are some ejaculations that do make use of grammatical elements, which are known as either clausal exclamations (if they contain a subject and verb) or phrasal exclamations (if they contain other grammatical elements of speech).

Another Greek landscape to make you exclaim "wow!".

Some English ejaculations can express a wide range of emotions. The exclamation "ouch!" denotes pain, while "yay!", "woohoo!", and "hooray!" are used in celebration, just like "opa!" in Greek. "Wow!" can indicate amazement and wonder, while "phew!" is used to express relief.

If you're interested in ejaculations, exclamations, and interjections, I would highly recommend checking out the wonderful work of James Chapman on his Tumblr. You might also be interested in our recent post on whimsical interjections like "Good gravy!".

Do you speak a language other than English? If so, what are your favourite interjections, exclamations, and ejaculations in your language? Tell us in the comments below and don't forget to provide an explanation!

Luck and Languages: Superstition Around the World

As today is the 13th, an unlucky number for some, I thought I'd delve a little deeper into how fortune and luck differs across languages. It seems that numbers play a huge role in superstition, and since there are plenty of countable objects that we deal with in everyday life, numbers seem to have made their way into the superstitions of almost every culture.

I won't get through them all today because almost anything can be considered lucky or unlucky, so I thought I'd just pick out a few of the most interesting numbers associated with luck.

4

Numbers are everywhere when it comes to fortune and misfortune. The number 4 is considered to be terribly unlucky in the Chinese culture and gives rise to tetraphobia. In Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Hakka, Min Nan, Japanese, and Korean, the pronunciation of the number 4 is very similar to the word for "death".

The luckiest garden ever.

Those aware of the superstitions related to the number 13 in Western cultures (which I'll get to shortly) will be familiar with the practice of avoiding specific numbers. In the cultures where the aforementioned languages are traditionally spoken, particularly South East Asia, the number (and even digit) 4 is avoided when possible, especially when numbering floors, doors, parking spaces, etc.

Despite 4's misfortune in Asia, in Irish and Celtic cultures, the four-leaf clover is said to be a sign of considerable fortune.

7

The number 7 is often considered to be very lucky, especially in prominent world religions. The Old Testament frequently references the  number 7, such as the creation of the world in 7 days in the Book of Genesis. In Judaism, the menorah has 7 branches, while in Islam, the earth is composed of 7 layers. Japanese mythology also features 7 lucky gods. The list goes on and on...

8

Just as the number 4 in Mandarin sounds like the word for "death", the number 8 also has a similar-sounding counterpart. However, unlike the number 4, the number 8 is considered to bring about good fortune. This is because the number 8 in Mandarin sounds like "fortune" or "prosper", following a rule can seemingly be applied to a whole host of numbers in Chinese.

The luckiness of the number 8 also dictates all kinds of behaviours by both people and companies, who love to use the digit "8" in any way they possibly can. For example, Sichuan Airlines paid a hefty sum for a phone number that consisted only of 8s, and the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games started on the 8th August at 8 p.m. local time.

13

In many English-speaking cultures, 13 is considered to be an unlucky number, so much so that it has its own phobia, triskaidekaphobia. The term itself, like most fears and phobias, is named using Greek words. There are a number of suggestions as to why 13 is considered to be unlucky, including the number of people at the Last Supper, the date of the arrest order for the Knights Templar, and the number of full moons in a year.

However, this superstition goes even further, especially in several Western cultures, if the 13th day of the calendar month coincides with a Friday, making the dreaded Friday the 13th.

Friday the 13th

It is suggested that Friday the 13th is considered to be unlucky due to the number's prominence in the story of Jesus: 13 people (12 disciples and Jesus himself) were at the Last Supper, plus the fact that Jesus was killed on the Friday. If you are inexplicably terrified of Friday the 13th, you may have paraskevidekatriaphobia.

Tuesday the 13th

While I grew up with the knowledge that Friday the 13th was an unfortunate day, if you grew up in a Spanish- or Greek-speaking culture or country, you'll probably consider Tuesday the 13th to be the unlucky day.

What numbers are considered lucky and unlucky in your language or culture? Tell us about them and the reasons why they're lucky or unlucky in the comments below!

The Languages Behind US Place Names: Part 2

On Wednesday, I started a little linguistic journey looking at the languages that helped name places around the United States. Today I'll be looking at a few more languages that were used to name settlements, towns, and cities across the 50 states.

Latin

The Olentangy River Bridge, Columbus, Ohio

The European "discoverer" of the New World has lent his name to many things in the US. However, as an Italian working for the Spanish monarchy, Christopher Columbus probably never referred to himself using said name. His actual name was Cristoforo Colombo in Italian and Cristóbal Colón in Spanish. However, the Latinised version of his name came into popular use for naming states and cities in the US.

Take the D.C. in Washington D.C., for example. The D.C. stands for "District of Columbia", and "Columbia" is a New Latin term derived from Columbus' name. Of course, Columbus, Ohio, is also named directly after the man.

Greek

A number of settlers used Greek suffixes to name cities. Indianapolis, for example, uses the Greek suffix -polis (meaning "city") at the end of the state name of Indiana. However, Indiana takes the word India and adds the Latin suffix -ana, which designates a place name. This would confusingly make Indianapolis the "city of the place of Indians". Minneapolis is another populous example of this suffix in use.

German

The Angel Stadium, home to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

While Germanic settlers were common across the US, particularly the Midwest, Germany has had a more lasting effect on food in the States than place names. However, there are a few interesting place names that have taken the language as inspiration. As I mentioned on Wednesday, Charlotte, North Carolina, was named after the German-born British Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. I suppose that can count as both English and German.

In terms of other cities with German names, Anaheim, California takes its name from the Spanish word "Ana", from the Santa Ana river, combined with the German word "heim", an older German term often used in place names to mean "home".

There's also the city of Schaumburg, Illinois, which was originally called Sarah's Grove, until a meeting in 1850 when somebody slammed their fist on a table and screamed "Schaumburg schall et heiten!" (English: "It will be called Schaumburg!") and seemingly the name stuck!

That's all for now. Are there any languages that you think we missed? Tell us the city and the language that helped name it in the comments below.

December 26: The Possible Origins of Boxing Day

Here in the UK, today is known as Boxing Day. The term is also used in a number of other countries including Australia, Canada, Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and South Africa.

In other English-speaking Christian countries, the day is also referred to as St. Stephen's Day, which is obviously a religious holiday named for the man commonly known as the Church's first martyr. In fact, as a Greek-speaking saint, Stephen comes from the Greek term Στέφανος (Stephanos), which means crown.

While the etymology of St. Stephen's Day is far too obvious to be of any interest to us, we are interested in why we'd refer to this particular date as something as odd as Boxing Day.

Research seems to indicate that the boxing in Boxing Day sadly has nothing to do with the sport. Instead, the word refers to the container. It's said that on this day tradespeople would receive their gifts in the form of a Christmas Box.

It is also thought that due to the common practice in Europe of donating to the poor, the name is a reference to the alms boxes that were common in churches throughout the Middle Ages.

On this date in the UK, more items are returned to shops than any other day of the year. Even though this doesn't affect the name, it seems that the tradition of putting stuff into boxes is continuing even today. Hopefully your Christmas presents were to your liking and you won't be taking anything back to the shops today. Take care!

The Etymology of Colours: Part 2

On Wednesday we looked at the origins of words we use for colours, focusing on the first three colours of the visible light spectrum: red, orange, and yellow. Today we'll be going through the remaining colours.

Green

In Middle English and Old English, the colour green was grene. In Proto-Germanic *gronja- was the root of green, grass, and grow, as well as the root of the word for green in a number of other related languages such as Dutch, Danish, Old Frisian, Old High German, Old Norse, and Old Saxon.

Earlier, the term in Proto-Indo European (PIE) languages is thought to have been *ghre-, which means grow, since green is the colour of most vegetation.

Blue

The story of blue is fascinating. The word comes from the Old French term blo, which generally referred to a range of colours and shades including what we would now consider blues, greys, blonds, and other pale colours. The term is thought to have evolved from the Proto Germanic term *blæwaz, which gave rise to the term in a huge number of languages.

While in PIE languages the term for blue is fairly widespread, what really makes the colour fascinating is the lacunae it has left in other world languages. While in English the colours green and blue are fairly distinct, there are plenty of languages where the two colours are referred to by one term. Several languages in Asia, including Old Chinese, Old Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese did not distinguish between the two and refer to a concept of a blue-green range that doesn't really exist in English.

The term for blue is thought to be a latecomer to the vocabularies of many languages since the dye is so difficult to make, while autumnal shades such as reds, oranges, and yellows were easier to make and therefore required terms sooner.

Indigo

For many English speakers, designating the colour between blue and violet seems arbitrary and difficult to define. Its presence in the spectrum is thought to be a result of Sir Isaac Newton's superstition against the number six.

The colour chosen by Newton was none other than indigo, a term whose origins can be found in the Greek name for the colour dye which came from India. The Greek word indikon (ινδικόν) became indicum in Latin before inspiring indico in Spanish and endego in Portuguese, which are considered to be the root of the Dutch word indigo. The Dutch term entered the English language in the 16th century.

Violet

The last colour in the rainbow is violet. The term came from Old French by way of Latin where it was viola in reference to both the colour and the flower. It is thought to have come from a PIE language somewhere in the Mediterranean. During the 14th century, the term came to Middle English from the diminutive of the Old French viole.

After the weekend, we'll be back to look at the terms for some of the colours outside of the visible light spectrum.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

The Languages of Separatists in Europe: Part 1

Yesterday Scotland went to the polls to vote on their independence from the United Kingdom. We don't write this blog to promote a political agenda, just the agenda that languages are awesome and we love them. Since there are plenty of separatist movements in Europe, we thought we'd take a look at which ones speak a language different to the prominent language or languages spoken in the country that they are seeking to separate from.

While we're trying to keep language and politics apart, you'll quickly see how difficult defining a language is when politics gets involved. For the most part, we have attempted to go with a linguistic consensus rather than a political one, but if we've slipped up and missed something, please tell us in the comments. We're not indicating that every speaker of these languages is a separatist either. Finally, we're only covering a few select separatist movement in Europe with languages that fascinate us.

Albania

Northern Epirus is part of a historical region that is currently part of Albania. The people in this region speak Greek, which as you can guess, is not the majority language of Albania. That title belongs to the Albanian language.

The canal in Brussels, a battleground for Belgium's two separatist groups.

Belgium

As you may know, Belgium has two main languages. 56% of the population speaks Dutch or Flemish, while 38% speak French. However, the "separatist" movements in Belgium have another element to them: some wish to join other countries.

The Walloons, the French-speaking inhabitants of Wallonia, have a movement to join with France or to make Wallonia its own state. On the other hand, the Flemish and Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Flanders wish to separate from Belgium and make Flanders its own state, with a small minority wishing for the region to become part of the Netherlands.

Cyprus

The separatist movement in Cyprus already has its own sovereign state, if you happen to be the Turkish government. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is primarily inhabited by the ethnically-Turkish peoples of the region and considers Turkish its official language. The region declared its independence from Cyprus in 1983, though Turkey was the only nation to recognise it.

Denmark

The Faroe Islands are inhabited by the Faroese people, who also happen to have their own language, Faroese. There are around 66,000 speakers of Faroese in the world, with nearly three quarters of them residing on the Faroe Islands.

France

It appears that almost every minority language spoken in France has its own separatist movement. The movement to make the Basque Country a sovereign nation is complicated as it is currently an international region that is part of both France and Spain. Of course, Basque, the language isolate, is the main language of this movement.

The separatist movement in Brittany has the Breton language, a Celtic language more closely related to Scottish Gaelic and Irish than the national language of France, French.

The official language of the Catalan separatism movement is Catalan, a Romance language. The proposed nation that unites Catalans in this group is made up of the Països Catalans, an international region in northeast Spain and southwest France, the Rousillon region in particular.

Germany

The Bavarians in Germany have a separatist movement to make the Freistaat Bayern its own sovereign state. The Bavarians also have a few dialects and languages of their own: Bavarian, Swabian, and East Franconian German.

East Frisia has ambitions of becoming its own nation. The native language of the region is Saterland Frisian, a language in decline with an estimated 1,000 native speakers.

Italy

There is a movement for independence on Italy's island of Sardinia. The island is home to the Sardinian language, which while being a Romance language, is incomprehensible to speakers of Italian.

Certain people in Veneto also feel the region would be better off if it was its own sovereign state. The Venetian language has around 2 million native speakers in Veneto, the surrounding regions, Slovenia, and Croatia.

Netherlands

Much like East Frisia in Germany, Frisia in the Netherlands has both a language and a separatist movement that seeks to make the region independent from the Netherlands. In addition to the Saterland Frisian language spoken in East Frisia, the Frisians in the Netherlands speak the other closely-related varieties of the Frisian language: North Frisian and West Frisian.

We'll be back after the weekend with more separatist movements and their languages. If there are any fascinating languages favored by European separatist groups that we missed, please tell us about them in the comments below.

Independence Day: The Languages of Djibouti

Today the nation of Djibouti celebrates its independence from France, so we thought we'd take a look at the linguistic makeup of the country. Djibouti can be found on the Horn of Africa and, like many African nations, was once colonised by France. However, on this day in 1977, Djibouti gained its independence from France. Although there are certainly remnants of France's influence on Djibouti, the country speaks much more than just the French language.

While French does hold official language status in Djibouti and the country's motto, "Unité, Égalité, Paix" ("Unity, Equality, Peace") is in French, it also grants official language status to Arabic. Having French and Arabic as official languages is hardly surprising given Djibouti's colonial past and the dominance of Islam within the nation, with Muslims accounting for 94% of the population.

Lake Assal, a crater lake in Djibouti

Linguistically speaking, the makeup of Djibouti is much more diverse. Neither French nor Arabic are the majority language in terms of native speakers, as the most-spoken language is actually Somali. Nearly 300,000 people in Djibouti speak the Afro-Asiatic language of Somali. As the total population of Djibouti is just 800,000, this means that nearly 4 in 10 people in this country speak Somali. The Somali language is also considered to be native to Djibouti.

Another of Djibouti's native languages is also the second largest in terms of native speakers in the nation. Afar, which is spoken by just under 100,000 people in Djibouti, is also an Afro-Asiatic language. Even though there are 1.4 million speakers of Afar in the world, Eritrea is the only nation to have granted it any sort of official language status, and recognises it as an official minority language.

The standardised form of Arabic is often used for official matters whilst the local variant of Arabic, known as Ta'izzi-Ideni Arabic (or Djibouti Arabic), is spoken by 36,000 people in Djibouti. In fact, the Omani Arabic dialect, which originated in the Oman mountains, is spoken by 38,000 people, making it more popular than the local variant.

Much like Arabic, the French language is used for official matters and for tuition. Outside of its official capacity, the French language is only spoken natively by around 10,000 people in Djibouti. 

A number of languages other than French and Omani Arabic have also made their way into use in Djibouti. Amharic, Greek, and Hindi are also spoken in this linguistically-diverse African nation.

Etymological Investigations: Friday the 13th, Fears and Phobias

For some, the 13th day of the month occurring on a Friday strikes fear into their hearts. We thought today we'd look at the language of fears, phobias, and superstition. It should be noted, however, that the superstition of Friday the 13th is not a global phenomenon. In Spain, Tuesday the 13th is the unlucky day , while Italians consider Friday the 17th to be unlucky.

The day is undoubtedly the most feared day of the year in English-speaking cultures and studies have even be shown to prove this. However, as I believe superstition to be nonsense (until England play their World Cup matches), we're going to look at the language behind fears and phobias.

Phobia is obviously the best place to start, and this word comes from the Greek phobos, much like the moon. Though it originally referred to "flight" in Homer, it later evolved to refer to fear, panic, and terror. As a suffix, -phobia arrived in the English language from the French language, which had taken the suffix from Greek.

As the suffix is originally Greek and the English have a love-hate relationship with the French, phobias have generally followed a Greek naming convention. The following are some of the most common phobias and their origins.

We wouldn't be so cruel as to put a picture of an actual spider!

Arachnophobia

Despite the Greek naming conventions, the most common phobia in the world, arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, comes from the French word arachnide coupled with the Greek -phobia suffix. However, this is because the term was coined by a French biologist and he clearly didn't want to play by English rules.

Ophidiophobia

The term ophidio is thought to have come from the Modern Latin term ophidia, which is technically a Latin neologism that was created just so taxonomists could name snakes in Latin following the naming convention they had decided upon. However, the term has its roots in the Greek term for snake, ophis. If you haven't guessed yet, it's the term for the fear of snakes.

Acrophobia

The term acrophobia is the correct term for an irrational fear of heights, though it is likely that the idea of falling is more terrifying than the actual altitude. The Greek term akros, meaning "at the top" or "at the end" was used in conjunction with -phobia by Italian Dr. Andrea Verga to describe the condition that he himself suffered from. This phobia is often wrongly referred to as vertigo, which actually refers to dizziness and is a Latin term which comes from the verb vertere, meaning "to turn".

Agoraphobia

The fear of open spaces and difficult-to-escape situations comes from the Greek term agora, which, unsurprisingly, means "open spaces". Simple.

Cynophobia

The term cyno in this phobia has its origins in the Greek term kynos, meaning canine. Despite the prevalence of dog ownership in a number of countries, cynophobia is still one of the most common fears.

Astraphobia

While this prefix comes from the Latin term for the stars, another common name for the condition is brontophobia, from the Greek term bronte, meaning thunder. That's right, astraphobia is a fear of thunder and lightning.

Trypanophobia

The term for a fear of injections is unlikely to ease anyone's worries once they know the origins of the word. The Greek term trypano refers to a "borer", someone or something that pierces or bores into something. Sounds like a perfectly rational thing to fear.

The launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia,
which disintegrated during reentry.

Pteromerhanophobia

The biggest burden pteromerhanophobes about to embark on long distance flights face isn't the risk of delays, it's the fear of flying. The ptero part of the fear is the Greek term for feather and pteron refers to a wing. The terms aerophobia and aviatophobia are both used as well, referring to aero (air) and Latin avis (bird). Some believe that this fear is caused by a multitude of fears, such as claustrophobia, the fear of enclosed spaces, acrophobia, and agoraphobia, as it is difficult to escape from a plane in flight.

Mysophobia

Mysophobia is the fear of dirt, germs, and uncleanliness. Myso means "uncleanliness" in Greek and rounds out our most common phobias.

Xenoglossophobia

While not one of the most common phobias, we felt this one deserved a special mention. If you are aware of xenophobia, then you should know that xeno- comes from the Greek for "foreign". The glosso part is also Greek, meaning "tongue". Xenoglossophobia is the fear of foreign languages, which we certainly don't suffer from.

Do you have any interesting irrational fears or know anyone who does? Tell us about them and their etymology in the comments below.

The Japanese Words that Shaped an English Subculture

Today is the last day of E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and I've been loving it. While there wasn't a huge amount of Japanese cultural export at this year's event, it would be silly to ignore the huge cultural and linguistic influence Japan has had on video games and other media. The Japanese language even has a name for the geek and nerd subculture. The term otaku refers to those who have an obsession with a particular interest or hobby, particularly Japanese anime and manga. The otaku subculture is even referenced in the video game Metal Gear Solid, by Dr. Hal Emmerich, who identifies as an otaku and gives himself the codename "Otacon" as a tribute to his nerdy fondness for Japanese culture.

Of course, it would be foolish to assume that everyone who likes anime and manga automatically loves video games. However, in the interest of being topical, it isn't foolish to realise there is a substantial overlap between those who enjoy anime and manga and those who enjoy video games.

During the '80s, those who made an unfortunate choice may have enjoyed watching recorded anime on Betamax. While the term Betamax is of Japanese origin, it is a proprietary name invented in the dark recesses of a marketing meeting.

The otaku movement is considered to have been born at the same time as the anime boom following the popularity of anime shows such as Mobile Suit Gundam, which features fine examples of mecha (メカ), an abbreviation of the word "mechanical". Technically, as an abbreviation of mechanical, the term mecha is an abbreviation of an English loanword which has its own roots in Greek and Latin.

Of course, Japan's history with martial arts means that the word dojo is known by most people who watch anime and read manga. They are fully aware that if you are in a dojo, you should get ready to practice some martial arts, particularly judo.

This exchange of nerdiness in Japanese culture obviously lends itself to the internet. The word emoji comes from the Japanese for "picture", e, and moji, meaning "letter" or "character". It does seem that this word is becoming more popular than the term "emoticon", from the English words "emotion" and "icon".

When you have this cross-pollination of anime, Japanese culture, and the internet, you inevitably get the type of content the internet is rife with, porn. The term hentai refers to pornographic anime and while we won't include pictures, if you are really interested in finding out what it is, a quick search will yield more results than you ever wanted to see.

A word we keep hearing more and more in spoken English is the word kawaii. The Japanese term for "cute" is often used to describe Japanese things that are cute, but is increasingly used by gaijin (the Japanese term for foreigners) for non-Japanese things that are also cute.

A Japanese word that hasn't quite made its way into popular use is hikikomori. However, the Japanese term for shut-in, recluse, or someone who will attempt to avoid any type of social contact, is growing in popularity as sadly, the issue is becoming more and more common in contemporary Japan.

However, while I have painted a picture of a one-directional linguistic relationship with Japan, this is barely the case. There are also otaku words of English origin that have made their way into Japanese, such as fan fiction (ファン フィクション) and fan service, (ファンサービス), to give a couple examples.

Day of the Finnish Language: Part 2

On Wednesday, we celebrated the Day of the Finnish Language with a look at Mikael Agricola, the Finnish clergyman who is considered to be the founder of literary Finnish. While the celebration of the day coincides with the death of Mikael Agricola, it also coincides with the birthday of Elias Lönnrot, a Finnish physician and philologist. We feel a birthday is a much better reason to celebrate than somebody's death.

Sammatti, Elias' birthplace.

Elias Lönnrot was born in 1802 in the Grand Duchy of Finland. He studied his first academic year in the very same place that Agricola was acting bishop. However, the fire of Turku destroyed the university, forcing Lönnrot to move to Helsinki and graduate from the newly established university there which replaced the one in Turku.

He studied medicine and became a district doctor in Kajaani, in eastern Finland. Sadly, he was the only doctor for a population of around 4,000 people who lived across the length and breadth of a wide geographical area.

While his work in medicine seems depressing, it was really his work in linguistics that earned Lönnrot his fame. Lönnrot loved the Finnish language and collected folk tales in the language. He was a founder of the Finnish Literature Society in 1831 and as a result received financial support for his work.

He often took leave from his work as a physician to tour areas of Finland, including Lapland (where Santa lives) and part of Russian Karelia. His travels led to the writing of several books, and he was appointed to the Chair of Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki thanks to his work preserving Finland's oral traditions.

He worked on the the Finnish-Swedish dictionary between 1866 and 1880, compiling over 200,000 entries in the process. Thanks to his experience with Finnish poetry he was considered a respected figure when it came to the Finnish language. Many of his translations had never been seen before and he coined many of the translations seen in the dictionary. Lönnrot also coined a number of neologisms when it came to scientific terminology with Latin or Greek roots.

Lönnrot's work with Finnish language is the second reason Wednesday was the celebration of the Finnish language. The work conducted by both Agricola and Lönnrot has been incredibly influential in the history of the Finnish language, and that is why Finland celebrated both of these great men in their efforts to preserve their mother tongue.

Part 1 | Part 2