Making Etymologies Great Again!
Etymologies of words and origins of phrases demonstrate a very human aspect to language. They show not only how cultures interacted with each other over time, but they also give a deep and sometimes silly insight into the creative processes that lead to a particular set of sounds to mean a particular thing. As you […]
Proto Germanic video
Hi everyone, I like working on weird and wonderful videos. I like to bring into the world things that have never been there before. So I decided that I would translate a trailer of a super hero movie into Proto Germanic. It took a while. Proto languages are reconstructions that were created by linguists and […]
What is the Japanese word for sushi?
By Rolf Weimar This question, though at first absurd, can be a great jumping off point for a discussion about language. When does a word become a part of a language? And what is a language anyway? If you went up to someone who didn’t speak Hungarian and said something in Hungarian they wouldn’t understand […]
Language learning
How are “frog” and “spring” related?
Proto Indo European is the grandfather or great grandfather of English (depending on how you count). This means that we can trace elements of Modern English all the way back to Proto Indo European which was spoken about 4000 BC. Proto Indo European, like any language, had its own peculiarities. One of them was the […]
Of woman, wives and werewolves
What does the “were” in werewolf mean? It comes from an Old English word “wer” which means “man” so it actually makes sense. A “werewolf” is a man-wolf. The word “wer” eventually stopped being used but the word “werewolf” stuck around and once the word “wer” was a distant memory people began to wonder what […]
