SILLY LINGUISTICS THE MAGAZINE FOR LANGUAGE LOVERS

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THE MAGAZINE FOR LANGUAGE LOVERS : ISSUE #43 : DECEMBER 2021

 TABLE OF
CONTENTS

03 An Honest Mistake
By José Pedro Pinto Vieira

06 Diary of a (student) teacher

By Giulia Raus

09 How to always be right [Guest: Schopenhauer]

By Valentin Pradelou

FOR THE PROSPERITY GLORY OF THE COUNTRY

13 MOTHERLAND: How communism shaped modern
language
By Joana Atanasova

17 How Long Does It Take To Learn A Language

By Mike Simpson

19 Words are more connected than you think

By Steve the vagabond

Cover and content page photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

This week's page numbers are in Vietnamese!

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 3 \ ba

An
honest
mistake

By José Pedro Pinto Vieira

When you live abroad, one of the things you particularly

miss is your mother tongue (at least if you’re anything like
me). When I moved from Portugal to the UK to do my PhD,
I was lucky that I was able to speak Portuguese with my
girlfriend (now my wife), who came at the same time to do
her own PhD. I’d still miss using my language in other
quotidian contexts, but at least I could still use it daily.
There was, however, a catch: most of this was over the
phone, as we were living far apart in the UK.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
4 \ bốn
I was studying in Sussex, and my
girlfriend was studying in Nottingham.
This corresponds to a distance of about
300km – or roughly the distance
between Braga and Lisbon, which was
the term of comparison we actually used
in our heads. This was close enough that
we could be together every weekend,
but on weekdays this was generally
impossible. Like with the mother tongue
situation, it was bad enough to sting, but
still far better than many people’s lots. At
any rate, we naturally developed
independent social circles, and with the
frenzy of plans every fresher wanted to
pack their weekend with (us being no
exception) it took a while for us to
properly get to know each other’s new
friends.
At the time my girlfriend was lucky
enough to make friends with a relatively
large and tight-knit group of Brazilian
students. At a time of constant cultural
shocks and linguistic withdrawal, it was a
blessing to have such a large group of
friends with whom she shared a
language and broad cultural traits. (Not
to mention the attitude towards food;
please don’t get me started about how
Brits just don’t understand the social
importance of food.) She’d spend lots of
time with them, and I’d hear about them
constantly. As you’d expect, it was only a
matter of time until we all got together for
a big meal.
We arranged to have a big dinner with
everyone on a Sunday night – just before
I had to leave to catch my coach back to
December 2021, Issue #43
Sussex. I remember having a great time,
revelling in the opportunity to speak
Portuguese in such a lively context,
complaining about English people,
poking fun at each other’s countries,
etc. I certainly left for Sussex convinced
I’d made a good impression and all
pleased about how well everything had
gone.
Imagine my shock, then, when my
girlfriend told me that as soon as I was
gone they all gathered around her very
concerned asking her if she was alright,
with some of the girls explicitly
expressing their indignation: “he treats
you so badly!” “What?”, was essentially
the reply she managed to muster in the
face of this unexpected turn of events.
“He kept calling you rapariga!”
Oops. To be honest, this is partly my
fault. I did know at the time that the
word rapariga, a common word for “girl”
in Portugal, is used to refer to a
prostitute in Brazil. I just didn’t recall this
information during dinner, and – oops –
I addressed my girlfriend as rapariga
throughout the whole thing! Oops.
(In case you’re worried about my
reputation, do not fuss: the
misunderstanding was quickly cleared
and we all went on to get along just
fine.) So what’s the deal with rapariga?
As it turns out, most likely the same as
with a better-known word from
Portuguese and Spanish: puta (the most
stereotypical expletive that denotes a
prostitute or a promiscuous woman).
Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 5 \ năm

Originally, the word puta (or the

masculine puto) would be used to refer
to any small child. (Apparently the word
came from the Latin puer, for “child”.)
Not only was it not a dirty word, but it
actually carried a connotation of childish
innocence. Over time, through
widespread ironic use – possibly by
unfaithful husbands and regular clients
who wouldn’t want to refer to their
mistresses by pejorative terms – it ended
up acquiring its modern meaning.

Although, interestingly, the masculine

form was spared: the word puto is still
widely used as a neutral term to
designate a young boy in Portugal.
(Which often a time led me to commit
the embarrassing faux-pas of
accidentally referencing undefined past
times when my sister was little with the
unfortunate expression “When my sister
was a puta...”. Look, it’s hard to avoid
that one when the masculine form is in
your head and you need the feminine
right away!) Rapariga most likely
followed a similar trajectory, only after
Brazil was colonised. There is a saying
(at least in Portugal) that the Portuguese
language is treacherous. That day, I
found out just how much!

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
6 \ sáu

Diary of a

(student)
teacher
By Giulia Raus

One of the hardest things to explain to English students in

secondary school is how, most languages have different
articles for different genders. Let’s consider French for
instance, no word in the language is gender neutral. Each
word in French has a specific gender, in this case
masculine or feminine. As someone who studied French
through the medium of Italian, I never really questioned
the “gender issue” as I already knew it myself as Italian
has word genders too and, most of the French words
have the same gender used in Italian.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 7 \ bảy

There are some exceptions of course: flower in Italian is considered masculine

“il fiore” but in French it’s feminine “la fleur”, it is the same for the word colour
“il colore” in Italian and “la couleur” in French. But aside these exceptions I
wouldn’t say we Italians struggle much on the “gender” topic. Don’t get me
wrong, I struggle when I have to decide which article to use in German but
that’s another story!

My point is, that English doesn’t have genders or different articles for each
gender, to be more precise, inanimate objects don’t have genders and are
indicated with the pronoun “it” while people of course can decide to use the
pronoun “he/him” for male “she/her” for female and “they/them” in the case
they don’t recognize themselves in both the two genders aforementioned.

For young adults who study grammar and languages in general at university, all
these rules are basic and quite clear. Nevertheless, for an eleven-year-old
English speaker, born in a period of revolution, of Prides and fights for
acceptance, the idea of having only two genders for people it’s harder to
accept making it harder in general to study because they have to start from
scratch trying to remember for each object if they are masculine or feminine.

So, there are two issues, the first one is merely grammatical, they struggle to
remember the gender for every new word they learn and then the idea of
“agreeing” adjectives to the noun (and verbs and the direct and indirect object
pronoun…someone please call an English teacher!!!) the second is more
political. Nowadays, one cannot take for granted that everyone around you
falls into the two genders, so whenever I explain this rule in class, I have the
classic question “so what if someone was gender fluid?” or “so in France they
don’t have gender fluid people?” I knew from those questions that my lesson
was over, forget grammar and forget French, they are starting a debate. Which
don’t get me wrong I love, I love the idea of students fighting for something
and being curious, but it disrupts the lesson for sure and takes them far from the
main point I wanted to make. The thing is, they need an answer, the same
curriculum in languages says that students not only should learn a foreign
language, but they should also get to know the culture of that language.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
8 \ tám

I decided then to go and read as many sources as possible to understand what

they are doing in France for gender neutral people and what or if they call
themselves differently and if there has been any grammatical change in the
language.

What I discovered is that in October 2021 the dictionary “Le Robert” decided to
introduce the new pronoun “iel” in their pages, which is a mix between the two
French personal pronouns “il” and “elle” which has been created by the LGBTQ+
community for those who don’t feel as though they are represented anymore by
those two pronouns.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to inanimate objects, they keep their gender
because, I mean, they are objects! To my students it doesn’t matter though, they
also don’t understand why objects should have a gender, English doesn’t have
genders for objects, and it works perfectly. What they don’t know is that
English used to have genders but stopped using them during the Middle English
Period. Categorising objects doesn’t only mean they have to be male or
female, some languages categorise them into “animate” or “inanimate” for
instance. However, this doesn’t really interest them as they know that nowadays
their language is easy to learn and to speak and they are still angry that they are
forced to study a second language that makes “their lives miserable” as they like
to remind me.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 9 \ chín

How to
always be
right
[Guest: Schopenhauer]

By Valentin Pradelou

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
10 \ mười

Have you ever dreamt to be always right? Whenever you'd have to go

into an argument or a debate, you’d be able to defeat your opponent
easily? Of course you have, and I think a lot of us actually have. Everybody
knows this situation, you're lying on the bed and you're thinking about
everything you should've said in this debate years, months, weeks, hours
ago. Well, guess what? Arthur Schopenhauer is here for you. He has
written 38 ways to win an argument. I've selected some that I thought
relevant, but the book in itself is very interesting. I suggest you to take a
peek at it to get all the tips.

Arthur Schopenhauer :
The art of being right

Let's start with the presentations. Arthur Schopenhauer is a german

philosopher. He was born in 1788 and passed in 1860. He has written
and thought about a wide scale of subjects such as psychology, morality,
metaphysics, etc. He was a pretty fun human being, as his work is
considered "an example of philosophical pessimism".

In 1831, he writes that book we're discussing today, "The art of being
right". In French, it's translated by L'art d'avoir toujours raison, literally "The
art of being always right" (read the title again). He draws a myriad of
manners to win a debate, and we will talk about some of them now. I've
only selected three techniques, each one is worth introducing and
analyzing, but it'd need a lot more pages. Let's get on with it.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 11 \ mười một

How to always be right?

Some techniques
Before we talk about the tips, let's recall something important. At the
beginning of the book (in a very specific use of language), he states that
"being right" and "tell the truth" are not the same thing. You don't win an
argument by telling the truth, you win an argument by being the most
treacherous human being on the face of planet Earth (okay not exactly,
but we come close). The objective is not to describe the world as it is, but
to make the other one think you're right whether you're telling the truth,
or not...

Let's start with the argument ad hominem. This debate technique is pretty
well known, it consists in targetting not the subject of the debate, but the
opponent. This type of argument comes when people don't have much to
say about the subject anymore, and must find a way to keep talking. Let's
imagine an example. Let's say two people are talking about Economic
decisions in a country. The first one says that the decisions aren't good
because it creates a gap between poor and rich. The other one, feeling he
doesn't have much to reply about the actual subject, pelts his opponent
and not his arguments. He replies something like "Why do you even talk?
You don't pay any taxes". It has a certain link with the subject, but the
speaker attacks personally his opponent. It's not really fair, but it's worth
using it (according to our dear Artie).

The second one is a little fairer, it aims to generalize the other statements.
If someone asks you to discuss some of his affirmations and you happen
to not have anything to say: generalize. Schopi tells us to open a new
general debate, able to counter the affirmation. An example: if you're
blocked with someone knowing too much about Physics, open a new
debate on the fallacious human knowledge and back this up with
examples. Once again, the central flaw of all that is the following: you
don't want to tell the truth and describe the world as it is really, but you
want to make the other think it is. And most of the time, by using these
strategies, it's not.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
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And I've saved the best till last. In his list of 38 techniques, this one comes
in 38th position, as it's meant to be used very rarely. I'd even say not at all.
If MC Schops has chosen this way to win an argument, it really (really,
really) shows that being right is not saying the truth. Indeed, it's a part of
the argument Ad hominem (even if treated differently by Schopenhauer). It
still consists in targeting the other individual and not the subject of the
debate, in a mean way.

Artie calls it "become rude, personal insulting". No need to provide

examples, but Schopenhauer claims that if you feel you're getting
surpassed, just become rude and insult your opponent (please don’t). The
only interesting element is the following: if you're ever reduced to use this
debate "technique", it means you don't have anything left to say about the
actual subject. But the objective is to get the other one angry, to make
him feel he's lost the debate (we all know he hasn't). Once again, nobody
has to do that, it's just pretty fun to see such cynic ideas inside philosophy
books.

Conclusion

These were some tips to win an argument (do not use the third). The book
has a lot more to say, and provides really interesting elements. Maybe
we'll try to see other interesting debate techniques in future articles. The
only flaw is about the ethics, most of the techniques are just ways to
make the other think he's wrong, even though he's maybe right. However,
it offers a good book and a valuable reading session. Take a peek at it! But
remember, with great power comes great responsibilities…

Thanks for reading!

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 13 \ mười ba

OANA ATANASO
J VA
BY

FOR THE
PROSPERITY
GLORY OF THE
COUNTRY
MOTHERLAND
How communism shaped modern language

Photo by 绵 绵 on Unsplash
December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
14 \ mười bốn

N o, I’m not talking about censorship here, though yes, that was a problem occurring in
that particular regimen, as you may suspect, however today I’ll be leaving politics
aside, and focusing on talking about a very interesting phenomenon that’s occurred in
Bulgaria back when the Eastern Bloc existed. Alongside with the “iron curtain”, isolating
all non-communist countries from the horizon of Bulgaria (and the rest of the Eastern
Bloc), the party discouraged foreign anything really — music, art, poetry, books,
clothes, and encouraged local such things with disregard to the quality. Surprisingly (or
maybe not so much) that behaviour transferred itself into language as well. New words
were suddenly created, replacing their foreign-rooted counterparts, all products had
Bulgarian names or were transcribed in Cyrillic, music and movies that did manage to
pass the iron curtain from the outside did so with the condition that everything had to
be either dubbed (for movies) or translated in text format (for music) in Bulgarian.

A Bulgarian journalist named Ivan Bogorov — a man who was born before the freeing
from Ottoman Slavery, a renowned “purist” fighting his entire life against the
adaptation of foreign words in Bulgarian language, was assigned to assist the party
and rid the Bulgarian language of all foreign-rooted words, and create original and
fully Bulgarian ones. Sounds great in theory, yeah? Well yes and no, really. While on
some instances the results were great, some of them still being used widely even today,
some were a real hit and miss. And I mean in a hilarious way.

The Bulgarian communist party wanted the nation to be proud of its language and have
a word for everything that is solely Bulgarian, forged in our ancient and rich language.
Sounds great, right! Yeah. Let’s take the word “matches” for instance — the type where
you flick and produce fire with. Bulgarian doesn’t really have a word for that, hence
one had to be created. Great! But none of the roots used for “fire” or “strike” or
anything like that with an ancient Bulgarian root worked, instead they decided to name
it “strike-and-light-stick” драсни-пални-клечица [drasni-palni-kletchitsa].

Hence people insisted the word be used, and you can imagine the kind of headache
putting all those words on a small match box did for printers and factories back then.
New words were thought up for “electricity”, “hotel manager”, “newspaper”,
“hydrogen”, and the list goes on and on. How were they introduced you ask? Bogorov
wrote a journal called “Purely Bulgarian anvil for foraging sweet-talkery” Чисто-
българска наковалня за сладкодумство [Chisto-balgarska nakovalnya za
sladkodumstvo] where he published his works and forgery for all to see and read, he
also wrote a few textbooks and all in all did whatever he could for popularising his
creations.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 15 \ mười lăm

Hilarity aside, most of the words that were created by Ivan Bogorov are still used today
(not the matchstick one, thankfully), and their creation, along with the words that aren’t
used that much anymore, were thought up and created with indeed the thought of our
language being rich and having its own word for everything. The fact that it went a
little overboard is a different topic.

Aside from creating and insisting on its own unique and new words being used, the
movies and music that were accepted to be shown in Bulgaria during the communist
regimen, all had to be translated in Bulgarian in order to reach the market and be
available to the public. All foreign brands like “Marlboro”, “Coca Cola”, etc. had to be
transcribed in Cyrillic too, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to get a license to be on the
market at all. I absolutely can’t say that’s a bad thing, because some really beautiful
designs were created that way.

Here comes the hilarious part — when cassette tapes with music started being a thing,
they had along with the actual cassette, a list of songs and some of them even had the
lyrics printed on the back. I’m sure that that’s no surprise to any old fart like myself, but
back during the communism, like aforementioned, everything had to be translated or
transcribed into Bulgarian. Even the western music that came in. Try imagining “The
Beatles” lyrics in Bulgarian — not poetically translated like you would with literature, but
a word for word translation. So “Here comes the sun” would be “The Sun is coming” and
so forth and so forth, but the cherry on top of the icing would be the translated lyrics —
how the hell are you going to sing that like it is in the song if it’s in Bulgarian? Sure, you
understand what they mean (sort of), but you can’t sing it in English, because you just
do not know what to say, leaving said text on the back of the cassette completely
pointless.

Was it a leftover from the communist regimen, or did people just get used to everything
being translated in their language (not necessarily a bad thing), but when the regimen
fell in 1989, along with the iron curtain, and people started to get things like VCR
players, the first VCR tapes that came out, didn’t have subtitles at all, they were
dubbed in Bulgarian, by one guy at first! He voiced everything — men, women, kids,
animals, it was absolutely out of this world, but it worked! It was much much later that
subtitles were introduced, around the time when DVDs came to be.

The trend with translating and transcribing everything into Bulgarian remained until the
early 2000s, when it slowly died down. Was it out of laziness, did people start learning
English, or perhaps people just wanted to eradicate every trend left behind from the
communist regime — I can’t say, but facts are that today, very little things on the
market feel the need to be transcribed for whatever reason. However, it’s safe to

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
16 \ mười sáu

say that the same people that translated movie titles back in the communist regimen,
continue to do so today, as more and more outrageous movie titles, that have nothing to
do with the original movie title, keep popping up in movie theatres.

As you may suspect, the discourse between whether or not we should continue having
unique words for everything, and whether or not products, movies, music should be
translated is evergreen in Bulgaria, especially now with social media and the vast and
unlimited access to internet rendering more and more young people into slipping English
words into their everyday Bulgarian speech. Did communism set a good example for
language preservation, or did it annoy people to the point where they jumped to the far
other side? It’s been 30 years of democracy so it’s a bit early to say, so just like in the
Lenin Mausoleum — remains to be seen.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 17 \ mười bảy

How L ng Does It
Take To Learn A
Language
BY MIKE SIMPSON

T his is the big secret of the polyglot and why any amount of clickbait is ineffective and

almost nonsense. You can’t learn a language overnight. You can’t study a language and

expect to be fluent in three months. Sure you might be conversational or can understand

a lot. But how many hours did you put in for the language? How often did you sit down

and do intensive listening exercises or immersed yourself in the language?

This is going to make or break your ability to

get from level to level. I have provided rough

planning for you to follow and I believe that,

if you follow the plan through, you will get

from A1 to B2 in 1 year, and then B2 to C2 in

one more year, depending on which

language it is.

It all depends on three factors: the

language difficulty, time spent in

the language, and what your

mother tongue is.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
18 \ mười tám

The Foreign Service Institute has a masterlist of languages, ranking them by difficulty

and how long it should take to develop skills in the language down to the hours they

have calculated with the help of linguists. The list depends on you already being a

native speaker of English. I will link a full breakdown of the languages based on levels.

For Category IV languages, such as Russian, Macedonian, and Khmer, it will take

approximately 1100 hours. For Category I languages, such as Portuguese and

Norweigan, it can take approximately 600 hours. At the time of making this video, I am

at B2 in Portuguese and have studied for approximately 320 hours, give or take. That

means I am about halfway to the C2 level. I went from A2 to B2 in approximately 6

months using a rigorous method of 5 hours of immersion every day to get there.

For Mandarin and Arabic, FSI says it will take approximately 2200 hours to be fluent.

That is a lot of time. If I spent the same amount of time I did with Portuguese I probably

would be at the A2 level or still struggling to get there. The two languages are both

immensely complicated and very different from English. So radically different that I

absolutely must put in 3 and a half times as much work to learn it.

However, that was only a rigorous method. If you only study about 1 hour a day for an

entire year you can MAYBE reach high B1 or low B2 in any of the Category 1

languages.In Russian you might reach in about two years with only one hour a day. But

let’s say you do it for 2 hours a day instead. You cut that time in half. It really depends

on how much time you put into it.

If Belarussian is your native language will it still take the same amount? I highly doubt it.

The list changes based on your native language! Cantonese is your mother language?

Mandarin should take a lot less time for you! German is your mother tongue? Afrikaans

and Dutch should be far simpler and may take even less time the FSI calculates!

Do you want to reach B2 in 6 months? Then you better

buckle in and be prepared to put in a lot of time every

day! Want to reach it in a year or two years? Then you can

slow down and take a breath. It really depends on you and

your goals.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 19 \ mười chín

Words are more

C O N N
3 1 1
1
E 1
C T 3 1
E 3 D 2

than you think

By Steve the vagabond

When I was growing up, words just seemed

random. That was a dog, this was a cat and I
just got on with life. It was only much later
that I began to notice that the words in other
languages seemed strangely familiar. If a
word in another language is similar, how did
it get like that? Did they take our word? Did
we take their word? Or is there another
explanation for what’s going on?

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
20 \ hai mươi

Have you ever watched a really old movie? Like a movie from the 30’s or 40’s? Everyone talks
differently. Not differently enough that you can’t understand them, but the difference is
definitely noticable. Now think about how people spoke in Shakespeare’s time. “Wherefore art
thou Romeo?” Each word is a bit different than you might expect. “Wherefore” is not a fancy
way of saying “where”. It actually means “why”. Juliet is asking why Romeo is the way that he is.
Why did her love have to be in the family and situation he is in. You can analyse the word as
meaning “what is it for”, like “What is this thing for”.

“art” is only used with the second person “thou”. Over time people started using “you” more
because “thou” implied a certain level of intimacy. In a rapidly changing society, it was never
clear when such informality was appropriate so people defaulted to using the second person
plural “you” and it eventually stuck. The reason I am telling you this is to give examples of how
languages change over time. These are small changes. But the changes can get much, much
bigger.

English is grouped by linguists into the Germanic group of languages. Dutch is another
Germanic language. In Dutch the word for “where” is “waar”. “house” in Dutch is “huis”. In
German it is “Haus” and in Swedish it is “hus”. All these languages have a similar word for the
same concept. They have changed a lot over time, but they still contain the same essence.

Speech patterns change. Sometimes a little, like British and American English. And sometimes
a lot, like English, German, Dutch and Swedish. But where did it all start? Well, if they
diverged over time, then we should reverse the clock and see what they all looked like hundreds
of years ago when they must have been closer together.

This is the Canterbury Tales from 1392

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

Linguists call this Middle English

Notice “whan” and “hath”. In Modern English these would be “when” and “has”. Over time
people start pronouncing the “a” in “whan” more like an “e” and “hath” got replaced by a
dialectal variation of “hath” which is “has”.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
 21 \ hai mươi mốt

But look at the words for “when” in other Germanic languages. In Dutch it’s “wanneer” (which
originally meant “when before” or “when previously” (“eer” is related to the “ear” in “early”) and
eventually just came to mean “when” and in German it’s “Wann”. Very similar to “whan” in
Middle English. I didn’t include the older versions of the Dutch or German words because they
stayed the same.

Ok, now we have a collection of words that all mean the same and look the same. Since all these
languages are spoken in a similar area and are quite similar to each other, they are probably
related. Let’s hypothesize about a language that was spoken 2000 years ago. Let’s call it
Language A just for simplicity’s sake. The Germanic tribes were living in Scandanavia at that
time and had just started migrating into Central Europe.

So let’s say the Germanic tribes spoke Language A. Their word for “when” was probably
something like “wann”. But the English word has an H in it? I wonder why. It’s probably not
random. Have you ever heard (particularly older people) say when, which, or what with an
extra almost whistle at the beginning. There is also a cartoon character who likes to say “Cool
whip” with an exaggerated h at the beginning of “whip”. Well, there’s a reason for that. It was
the original pronunciation of all these words that started with “wh”. Different dialects dropped
them at different times. In contemporary English its almost entirely gone but can still be heard
among older speakers. So if its a feature in English and not in other Germanic languages does
that mean it got added to Language A “wann” or was it in Language A all along and English kept
it and the others lost it?

Well, this is where we go back to our sources. Can we find other Germanic languages
descended from Language A that use an h with a w like English does? Well, in fact you can.
Gothic used a word that sounds like “hwan”, and Old Norse (the language spoken by the
Scandanavians) “hvenær” (which means “how near”). The original form of the English word
used the combination “hw” too. Later English scribes changed it to “wh” because they liked the
look of it more apparently. Ok, so Gothic, Old Norse and Old English all used “hw” (w becoming
v is a common change). So we can say the word for “when” in Language A was probably
something like “hwan”. That was fun!

What we just did was something linguists do all the time. It’s called “comparative
reconstruction”. You gather as much information you can about all the words in the group and
adding to it knowledge about how languages change (like knowing the the “v” in “hvenir” was
probably a “w” at some earlier point) you can make very reasoned guesses as to an unwritten
past.

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
22 \ hai mươi hai

It is fascinating what we can do with a bit of resources and some effort. I called it Language A
just so I could make my own example but it’s not what linguist call it. It is known in linguistics
as Proto-Germanic. A ton of work has been done on Proto-Germanic and linguists have
reconstructed a lot of words. What’s super cool is you can then go from the Proto-Germanic
form and move forward and see how well your guess meets the evidence. If Proto-Germanic
has a sound in one place and that sound doesn’t show up in a descendant language then it may
be a clue that a descendant language did something different with that sound.

Languages are wild and wonderful and sometimes strange things happen. But they are not as
random as we might previously have thought. Thanks for reading!

December 2021, Issue #43 Silly Linguistics: The Magazine for Language Lovers
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