Origin of languages

Slavic languages or Slavonic languages

Slavic languages or Slavonic languages
Which is right to use Slavic or Slavonic languages when referring to such languages as Russian, Polish, Ukrainian etc?  Slavic is American English, which is used in about 70% of situations, while Slavonic is UK English used in about 30% of the world (at the very most some estimates are as […]

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Neanderthals and language

Language and the Neanderthals
Neanderthals  had  the capacity to speak just as Modern humans do, at least that is what their genes tell us.  According to Johannes Krause and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute, in Germany who were part of a European team that studied the Neanderthals genome.  The specific gene is FOXP2, and is known […]

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Linguistic evolution of verbs

Verbs evolve linguistically different
Commonly used verbs are less likely to change
A verb that is used often will change verb slowly, whilst a verb that is used less frequently will change less. This is according to a Harvard University team lead by Martin Nowak. Nowak is not a linguist but rather a professor of mathematics and […]

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Origin of the expression ’son of a gun’

Origin of the word idiom ’son of a gun’
I love the origin of words, they help me learn new words in a foreign language by adding richness to the word I am trying to learn.  Here is an English word origin that is interesting.   In English we say ’son of a gun’.  The origin […]

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Origin of Berlin

Berlin
Berlin was a Polish city or at least western Slavic in origin.
Berlin was actually founded by Western Slavic fishing tribes.  They built a reasonable size city until Eastward expanding Germans launched a series of offensives against them.  Slavic tribes were able to retake the city, but were more peaceful fishermen and tradesmen and were no […]

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Origin of southern dialects in the USA

Southern dialects in the USA
Scottish highlands in the Appalachian mountains
Did you know that many of the southerners, especially in the Appalachian Mountains still have words and accents that are connected to their origins? That is the Scottish highlands. Its amazing if you go down to the back parts you can still almost hear this accent.
Southern […]

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French kiss

French kiss
Origin of the term French kiss
The term French kiss dates back at least to the 1920s. I think it has something to do with the specific culture of France in the roaring 20s. The States had the Great Gatsby and decadence expressed in materialism, while the French had a decadence expressed as […]

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What the Mayan language reveals

Mayan language
The Mayans were the only perhaps the only indigenous peoples of the Americas that had a written language. And what it revealed was a powerful civilization marked my rituals and blood.
The Language
Mayan languages were written in the Maya hieroglyphic script. Some of the script were sounds and others words. The surviving body of written […]

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Ancient Slavic god Perun

The ancient Slavic people, by church and Byzantine accounts and archeological evidence had one supreme god, which ruled the heavens.  The ancient Slavic god was named Perun.  Perun battled the evil enemy Veles and sent him to the underworld. This god Perun was the supreme god of all and his rule was manifest in lightning […]

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Origin of the word Slav

What is the origin of the word Slav? The Slavs or Slavic people are obviously most of the people of Eastern Europe, the Poles, Czechs, Slovakians, Ukrainians, Russians, and Serbians etc. Their languages and cultures are very similar.

The word ‘Slav’ or ‘Slowianin’ comes from the Slavic term for word; ‘Slowo’.  ‘Slowo’ means ‘word’ (słowo in Polish letters but pronounced […]

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