Dr Danny Bate
@DannyBate4
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Linguist and broadcaster. PhD in syntax and old languages. Prague-based purveyor and podcaster of language and etymology facts. Opinions mine, not of @CRozhlas.
Joined September 2015
Enthused by recent conversations, I treated myself to a lovely evening of linguistic research and writing. So, for February: my case for why the word order of Proto-Indo-European was not 'SOV', or any other basic arrangement of subject, object and verb.
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My girlfriend and I don't often speak Czech to each other, but we always speak Czech to the cat, who is not Czech, and also a cat.
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Latin: aqua.Spanish: agua.Portuguese: água.Italian: acqua.Catalan: aigua.Romanian: apă.French:
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I didn't realise until today's walk around Peebles that I could have a favourite road sign.
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European cities: we call this railway system 'the metro', from the French 'chemin de fer métropolitain', ultimately from the Greek mētrópolis, meaning 'mother city', from mḗtēr 'mother' and pólis 'city'. London: WE CALL IT THE TUBE BECAUSE TRAIN GO IN BIG TUBE.
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Nobody asked for this, but here's an etymological diagram showing how the word 'fascism' is related to the word 'fajita'.
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Italian: Venezia.English: Venice.French: Venise.German: Venedig.Greek: Venetía.Polish: Wenecja.Irish: Veinéis.Czech: :).Italian: oh no.Czech: :) :).Italian: what have you done now.Czech: Benátky.
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even the Eurovision voting system makes more sense than this.
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Me: I would like to find paper X. JSTOR: would you like to read a review of X?.Me: no, I just need X. Is this it here?.JSTOR: yes, absolutely. Just click on the link. Me: wait-.JSTOR: HA! IT'S ANOTHER REVIEW YOU FOOL. REVIEWS OF REVIEWS, ALL IS ENDLESS REVIEWS.
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Since I've been told off before for tweeting about the cat without providing a photo, here is the angelic creature in question this morning. Not sure how much longer we'll be hosting him, so enjoy him while you can.
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"'Ha ha' and 'he he' signify laughter in Latin and in English, because they are cried out when laughing.". Wonderful evidence here in Ælfric's Grammar that 'ha ha' has been the sound and spelling of laughter in English since at least the 11th century and the Old English period.
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English has many pairs of words where '-th' was once added to make a noun out of the other, like 'width' and 'wide'. My favourites are the ones for which the link may not be obvious now, like:.- 'mirth' and 'merry'.- 'drought' and 'dry'.- 'filth' and 'foul'.- 'sloth' and 'slow'.
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Turkic: okay, we'll give you our word 'aslan'. It means 'lion'.Slavic: thanks, we'll simplify it to just 'slonъ'.Turkic: cool.Slavic: cool.T: you know what a lion is, right?.S: of course, an animal.T: yeah.S: in Africa.T: yeah.S: four legs.T: yeah.S: long nose.T: wait-.Slavic:
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history book: ". Venice was ruled by the doge. ". my brain:
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I'm assuming that the Ancient Greek verb for 'to get a cat's attention' is ψψψψψειν.
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Danish: København.English: Copenhagen.French: Copenhague.German: Kopenhagen.Greek: Kopenkháge.Polish: Kopenhaga.Czech: :).Danish: look, I swear to God.Czech: Kodaň.Danish:.Czech:.Danish: this is why nobody learns you.
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German: Österreich.English: Austria.French: Autriche.Greek: Afstría.Polish: Austria.Czech: ummm.German: alright, let's get this over with.Czech: Rakousko.German: oh ffs.Czech: but Slovak does it too!.Slovak: don't you DARE bring me into this.
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Spotted a further example of something you can be a 'monger' of, alongside iron, cheese, fish and war.
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Writing about how Shakespeare spelled different accents has led me down a research rabbit hole, and now I'm reading about how a 16th-century English stereotype of Welsh people was that they were obsessed with toasted cheese.
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Central Asian countries: we have no choice but to -stan.
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'Lukewarm' implies the existence of matthewwarm, markwarm and johnwarm.
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"Complete the PhD and then we'll see about getting you the Lego Colosseum" - my mum.
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Reaching high levels of Czechness today by having vývar, rohlik and a beer on a bench in a field.
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Friends, it is once again time for my joyous annual tradition of reminding Twitter of the existence of the Aldborough wolf mosaic. May its lupine ludicrousness be a blessing over the coming year.
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So, no one asked for this, but I went and plotted British place names that come from the Old English word strǣt 'street' (in red) with known Roman roads (in blue). Turns out, the connection between the two really is impressively close!
There's a neat idea that strǣt in Old English was still associated with specifically Roman-made roads, not yet roads in general – because English places with strǣt in their name (Stratton, Stretton, Stratford) are on old Roman roads!.
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broke: "I didn't get the funding". woke: "they couldn't afford me, darling".
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when you learn the verb 'to be' in basically any language
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the Greek alphabet, but rearranged according to how much I like writing each letter
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My dad visited a Czech cemetery for the first time today and remarked "there's a lot of people called Rodina buried here".
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Last Sunday at church, the priest began his sermon by inviting people to complete the famous pairs of names – so he said "Morecambe and?" and the congregation answered "Wise". He then said "Marks and?", so I blurted out "Engels" while everyone else said "Spencer".
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thinking about how 'Dionysos', the name of the Greek god of wine, fertility and ecstasy, is the origin of 'Dennis'.
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A great little Latin word that I love is ēr. It means 'hedgehog' and it's the origin of the English word 'urchin'.
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The longest surviving text in Etruscan, an ancient language of Italy, was found inside an Egyptian sarcophagus, used as the wrappings of a mummy.
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Please Select Language:. 🏛 🔘 Latin (traditional). 🇫🇷🇵🇹🇷🇴 ⚪ Latin (simplified). 🇪🇸🇮🇹.
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Hungarian: we are Magyarország.English: Hungary.Hungarian: what?.French: Hongrie.Hungarian: wait.German: Ungarn.Hungarian: what is this.Spanish: Hungría.Hungarian: stop.Czech: :).Hungarian: not you too.Czech: Maďarsko.Hungarian: oh you guys.Czech: we got your back bro.
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Today is my brother's birthday. I handed him a book-shaped present. "This is not what you might expect," I said, "but I really think you'll enjoy it.". "Is it Beowulf?" he joked. The whole family laughed. Reader, it was Beowulf.
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Here's something about English that amazes me:. TH at the beginning of a word (typically) stands for one of two sounds: /θ/ as in 'thin' or /ð/ as in 'this'. The difference works according to what type of word it is: lexical TH words start with /θ/, functional TH words with /ð/!
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Hiked through part of the Pennines yesterday and met the most photogenic goat in all of Yorkshire.
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Boycotting all medieval films and TV shows until this man gets given his own franchise.
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This short inscription, found in the Catacombs of Commodilla in Rome, dates to the first half of the 9th century. It reads "NON DICERE ILLE SECRITA A BBOCE" - 'don't say the secrets out loud'. Though brief, we can say that this isn't very late Latin, but very early Italian! 🧵
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Feels a bit like the Scots had given up on naming all their lochs by the time they got to these two.
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Studying Sanskrit does absolute wonders for your knowledge of languages, namely Sanskrit and extremely dense 19th-century academic German.
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'Toe' is one of those English words that once used N, not S, in the plural – in Old English, one toe is tā, two toes are tān. Tān was also an unrelated Old English word for 'twig, branch', and confusion between tān 'twig' and tān 'toes' is likely why English now has 'mistletoe'.
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'Christ' comes from Ancient Greek khrīstós 'anointed one'. since khrī́ō 'I anoint' comes from PIE *gʰrei- 'smear, paint', I had to wonder if English inherited any words from *gʰrei-, which would be cognates of khrīstós. turns out, English does - 'grime'. Merry Grimemas, everyone.
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once again I would like to offer you all a picture of the Aldborough wolf mosaic. may it be a light to you in dark times, when all other lights go out
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It's just heart-breaking that the Roman playwright Naevius wrote plays called Testicularia ('The Testicles Play') and Triphallus ('The Man With Three Penises') and neither text has survived.
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let's not forget that there's a hamlet in Kent just called 'Ham', which lies a couple of miles south of the town of Sandwich, thus giving the world this incredible road sign:
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Came across the sentence "síðan eggjuðu þeir liðit" ('then they encouraged the army') in a passage of Old Norse today, and it's a nice reminder that the English verb 'to egg on', meaning 'to encourage', is a borrowing of this Old Norse word eggja, and nothing to do with eggs.
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'Reindeer' came into English from Old Norse, in which the word is hreindýri. This is a compound word, made up of dýr 'animal' and hreinn, which itself means 'reindeer'. So, from one point of view, a reindeer is a reindeerdeer.
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I can't prove it, but I have a theory that English's Great Vowel Shift was just a joke that got massively out of hand.
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This papyrus, dated to between the 5th and 7th centuries, is a stunning piece of history. The material? Egyptian. The script? The Armenian alphabet. The language? Ancient Greek. The text is like a phrasebook - it's key vocab and phrases for Armenians living in Hellenic Egypt!
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If anyone's wondering how things are going in the Czech Republic, the police have been offering an amnesty for weaponry and this week someone in Hradec Králové surrendered a pink tank.
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I had a spare moment, so here's a diagram to show how the word 'husband' is related to the word 'bondage'.
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What's all this about a "legal claim" to be Roman emperor? Not very Roman at all, the true emperor would do things the traditional way*. *be declared emperor by your army in Britain/Germany/Judea, march to Italy, have a big battle with another declared emperor, try not to die.
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List (in progress) of English words of possible Hittite origin:. 1) lesbian.
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'Syrup' goes back to the Arabic word šarāb, meaning 'drink, beverage' and also 'wine' and 'fruit juice'. The root of šarāb is š-r-b, which forms words to do with drinking. From this root also come, via different routes, the English words 'sherbet' and 'sorbet'.
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well, after all this time, after all the jokes, it's now actually official. I am Master Bate
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Linguists, if ever you feel like your theories are a bit too unrealistic or farfetched, maybe remember that an eminent scholar once proposed that the language spoken by Adam and Eve was Dutch.
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Currently having an afternoon beer and once again I'm marvelling at the efficiency of the Czech pub. The waitress raised her eyebrows at me from across the pub garden. I nodded back. Thus a beer was ordered.
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me: I think saying "the kraken" is tautological in a way, because the word comes from Norwegian and the -n at the end is the Norwegian definite article, so actually he's shouting "wake the the krake". my girlfriend: can we not just enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean.
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Look at this street I just walked up. Uneven pavement, ancient buildings leaning into each other, shops jammed together. Absolute Shambles.
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'Re:' in emails isn't an abbreviation of a word like 'regarding', at least in terms of etymology. It's actually a sneaky Latin word - namely rē, ablative singular of rēs, meaning 'thing, matter'. This is the same Latin word that's given English 'real', 'realise' and 'republic'.
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My girlfriend asked me to treat her like a princess . so I gave her a substantial amount of political power, evidence of which does not survive into the written record due to its unofficial nature in an androcentric society + her very own castle.
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The English modal verb 'must' lacks a past tense form. We say 'had to' instead. This is because 'must' was once itself a past tense form - of the archaic verb 'mote'. Present 'mote' and past 'must' began to lose their association in Middle English, just like 'owe' and 'ought'.
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In Ancient Greek, a pain that only affects one side of the head is a hēmikranía - a compound of hēmi- 'half' and kraníon 'skull, head'. Hēmikranía passed into Latin and then French, and, having lost its first syllable, gave English the word 'migraine'.
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I'd just like to share the Old Norse word ostmýgir, a kenning used to mean 'man', literally meaning 'oppressor of cheese'.
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Source: British Library, Harley MS 3271, page 85r. I half expect it to continue ". and lmao and lol beoþ for þingum þe ne beoþ swa funig" on the next page.
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Found an Italian mountain that sounds like it was named by some English people who were asked to name an Italian mountain
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The Donation of Mugatús to Zōólandros, Byzantine mosaic, 10th century.
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"supervising a PhD on the intersection between the 2020 killer wasps and cake memes? Sorry, that's more my colleague's field - she's an early 2020ist.".
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'Sore' is an adjective in English meaning 'painful', but it's also gained a use as an adverb meaning 'very' (as in 'sore afraid'). While this use is now rare in English, the German counterpart to 'sore' developed the same way, and has become its standard word for 'very' - sehr.
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I was inspired to make this awful meme for people also in the intersection of Latin fans and Star Wars fans. Apologies to everyone else.
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Assez is French for 'enough, quite'. Back in Old French, its final Z was still pronounced as /ts/, and in Anglo-Norman French it could have the specific legal meaning of 'sufficient property'. It's through this pronunciation and meaning that assez has given English 'assets'.
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*udrós 'water' was a PIE adjective. this led to English 'otter', as well as the words for 'otter' in Sanskrit (udrá), Latin (lutra) and Slavic (e.g. Czech vydra). but, in Greek, it became húdrā 'water snake', origin of the mythological Hydra. yes, 'Hydra' and 'otter' are cognates
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In Old Norse, the verb for 'to be' is vera or vesa (a verb related to English 'was' and 'were'). If you wanted to wish someone 'be healthy!' or 'be well!' in Old Norse, you'd use the phrase 'ves heill!' - which is the origin of the English festive word 'wassail'.
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I like that itihāsa, the Sanskrit word for 'history', is a contraction of the phrase iti ha āsa - 'thus indeed it was'.
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The best etymology I've read recently has to be that Swiss mercenaries exclaiming 'by God!' in the 15th century gave Spanish its word for 'moustache', bigote.
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can't wait for the first university to create a Chair of 2020 Studies.
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what is your favourite Latin word and why is it quamquam?.
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So, cauda is Latin for 'tail'. In everyday speech, it became cōda – from this, via Italian, English gets 'coda'. In Old French, cōda became cue – and from the Normans' word for 'tail', English gets 'queue'. Moreover, a cuard, someone who turns tail and runs, gives us 'coward'.
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My brain refuses to accept that Polycarp was a second-century bishop of Smyrna and not a Pokémon.
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Part of a 1328 statute of Oriel College, Oxford: scholars are ordered to talk together either in Latin "vel saltem Gallico" - 'or at least in French'. It's the 'at least' that gets me. It sounds a bit desperate.
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I was born on this day, which I am commemorating by looking around old Roman stuff.
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When travelling, it's important to make sure you've packed all the essentials.
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Three Czech words that I just cannot get straight in my head are modrý ('blue'), mokrý ('wet') and moudrý ('wise'). Yet again I just complimented someone on their wetness.
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The word 'calque' is a loanword, while 'loanword' is a calque.
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