Dr. Linguo

Unexpected cognates

The word town shares its origin with German Zaun (‘fence’) and Dutch tuin (‘garden’), even though their forms and meanings are quite different. They all stem form Proto-Germanic *tūnan, whose meaning is reconstructed as ‘fenced area’. Over the course of 2000 years, they’ve grown apart.

My new graphic shows nine unexpected but true cognates in English, German, Dutch, Frisian, and Swedish.

Queens, queans & gynes

The word queen is distantly related to the first part of gynaecology and the second part of misogyny.

It’s also related to Norwegian kone (wife) and kvinne (woman), but they’re not full cognates.

Probly haplogy

Probably is often pronounced /probly/. The syllable ba is deleted because it’s followed by another syllable starting with a b. This is called haplology – or haplogy if you will.

Some people have an issue with /probly/, but what they don’t know is that their beloved form probably is the result of haplology too: in Middle English, it was probablely: probable + ly. The part le was lost because it was followed by ly.

Haplology can be found in all ages and places. My new infographic shows cases from English, Latin, French, Greek, German, and Portuguese.

Ambiguities in PP attachment 💁‍♂️