Origin of languages

Plenty of fish
What is the origin of the expression “plenty of fish”? Well, I have hunted this one down and as of yet unable to find the origin. Usually idioms which refer to animals come from well known sources like the Bible or Aesop’s fables. However, the exact origin of plenty of fish alludes me [...]

Continue Reading Plenty of fish

Tags: Plenty of fish

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 [...]

Continue Reading Slavic languages or Slavonic languages

Tags: Slav, Slavic languages, Slavic languages or Slavonic languages, Slavonic languages

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 [...]

Continue Reading Neanderthals and language

Tags: gene, language, Neandertals, Neanderthals, Neanderthals and language, Origin of languages

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 [...]

Continue Reading Linguistic evolution of verbs

Tags: evolution, linguistic, verbs

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 [...]

Continue Reading Origin of the expression ’son of a gun’

Tags: orgin-of-words, song-or-a-gun, Techniques for language learning, word-origin

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 [...]

Continue Reading Origin of Berlin

Tags: Berlin, origin-of-Berlin, slavic

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 [...]

Continue Reading Origin of southern dialects in the USA

Tags: American-Civil-War, Appalachian-mountains, rebel-yell, Southern-dialects

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 [...]

Continue Reading French kiss

Tags: French-kiss, French-kissing, origin-of-French-kiss

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 [...]

Continue Reading What the Mayan language reveals

Tags: hieroglyphic, language, Maya, Mayan, written

Slavic 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 [...]

Continue Reading Ancient Slavic god Perun

Tags: Perun