Stimulating Conversation

In Medieval Europe many cities were made out of wood, and in order to prevent the fires from going out of control while people slept people were often forced to cover their fires by a certain time. The French word meaning to cover is “couvrir”, and the French word for fire is feu. Eventually couvrir-feu turned into the English word “curfew”.

--Written Chinese vs English--

[ID: A comic titled "Evolution of Written Chinese vs English". On the left, emperor Qin Shi Huang holds up a scroll and angrily points an ink brush at the viewer and shouts, "There should not be seven different ways to write 'horse'. Starting today everyone will use the same characters-- or else!" On the right, William Shakespeare laughs gleefully while holding a skull and quill and exclaims, "The first rule of English is to have fun and to thine own self be true!" Every word uses a non-standard spelling. Below the cut are full versions of the the panels and a blank version of the Chinese one. End ID]

I'm fascinated by the evolution of chinese and english "spelling." I grew up on hard-to-read Ye Olde English, and assumed all languages were like that. Imagine my shock when I discovered the chinese language had been standardised since 221BC, and I can read words written in the Han Dynasty.

full versions:

notes under the cut

Maroon comes from the French word for Brown

Mauve is named after the mallow flower a light pinky purple

But this is English the great bastard language so they can and are interchangeable Mauve tends to be more gray based thus matte while Maroon tends more brown based and often glossy, but there is no hard rule.

More info Mauve

The synthetic dye mauve was first so named in 1859. Chemist William Henry Perkin, then eighteen, was attempting in 1856 to synthesize quinine, which was used to treat malaria.[7] He noticed an unexpected residue, which turned out to be the first aniline dye. Perkin originally named the dye Tyrian purple after the historical dye, but the product was renamed mauve after it was marketed in 1859.[8][9] It is now usually called Perkin's mauve, mauveine, or aniline purple.

Earlier references to a mauve dye in 1856–1858 referred to a color produced using the semi-synthetic dye murexide or a mixture of natural dyes.[10] Perkin was so successful in marketing his discovery to the dye industry that his biography by Simon Garfield is simply entitled Mauve.[11] Between 1859 and 1861, mauve became a fashion must have. The weekly journal All the Year Round described women wearing the colour as "all flying countryward, like so many migrating birds of purple paradise".[12] Punch magazine published cartoons poking fun at the huge popularity of the colour: “The Mauve Measles are spreading to so serious an extent that it is high time to consider by what means [they] may be checked.”[13][14]

But, because it faded easily, the success of mauve dye was short-lived, and by 1873 it was replaced by other synthetic dyes.[15] As the memory of the original dye soon receded, the contemporary understanding of mauve is as a lighter, less-saturated color than it was originally known.[16]

The 1890s are sometimes referred to in retrospect as the "Mauve Decade" because of the popularity of the subtle color among progressive artistic types, both in Europe and the US

Maroon

Here it is out of its storage box when I was setting up last year's vintage clothing exhibit (sorry the picture's a little crooked; it's the only one I could find quickly):

It's faded in some places, but the color is pretty vibrant in a few spots. Here's the sleeve cuff, which is pretty close in color to that swatch above:

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

I sleep in the attic. Thou sleepest in the attic. He sleeps in the attic.

I love pickles. Thou lovest pickles. He loves pickles.

I go to school. Thou goest to school. He goes to school.

The -(e)st ending is only added to one word in a compound verb. This is where a lot of people make mistakes:

I will believe it when I see it. Thou wilt believe it when thou seest it. He will believe it when he sees it.

NOT

*thou willst believest it! NOPE! This is wrong

If you’re not sure, try saying it in the third person and replacing the -(e)st with -s:

*He will believes it when he sees it. ALSO NOPE! 

In general, if there’s one auxiliary, it takes the -(e)st ending) and the main verb does not. If there are multiple auxiliaries, only one of them takes -(e)st:

I could eat a horse. Thou couldst eat a horse. He could eat a horse.

I should go. Thou shouldst go. He should go.

I would have gone. Thou wouldst have gone. He wouldst have gone. 

You can reduce the full -est ending to -st in poetry, if you need to drop a syllable:

thou sleepst, thou lov'st.

In some common words–mostly auxiliary verbs, or what you might have learned as “helping verbs”–the ending is always reduced:

I can swim. Thou canst swim. He can swim.

Sometimes this reduction takes the last consonant of the stem with it:

I have a cow. Thou hast a cow. He has a cow. 

Or reduces the -st down to -t:

I must believe her. Thou must believe her. He must believe her.

I shall not kill. Thou shalt not kill. He shall not kill.

However! UNLIKE the third-person singular -s, the second person -(e)st is ALSO added to PAST TENSE words, either to the past stem in strong (irregular) verbs or AFTER THE -ed in weak (regular) verbs: 

I gave her the horse. Thou gavest her the horse. He gave her the horse.

I made a pie. Thou mad’st a pie. He made a pie.

I wanted to go. Thou wantedst to go. He wanted to go.

This is different from the third person!

*He gaves her the horse. He mades a pie. He wanteds to go. SO MUCH NOPE!

It’s not wrong to add -(e)st to a long Latinate verb in the past tense, but it’s unusual; it’s much more common to use a helping verb instead:

I delivered the letter. (Great!)

Thou deliveredst the letter. (Not wrong, but weird)

He delivered the letter. (Great!)

I did deliver the letter. (Normal if emphatic, or an answer to a question; otherwise, a little weird.)

Thou didst deliver the letter. (Great!) 

And a couple last things:

1.) Third-person -(e)th is mostly equivalent to and interchangeable with third-person -s:

I have a cow. Thou hast a cow. He hath a cow.

I love her. Thou lovest her. He loveth her.

I do not understand. Thou dost not understand. He doth not understand.

HOWEVER! Third-person -(e)th, unlike -s but like -(e)st, can, sometimes, go on STRONG past-tense verbs:

I gave her the cow. Thou gavest her the cow. He gaveth her the cow.

This never happens with weak verbs:

*He lovedeth her. NOPE NOPE NOPE!

And even with strong verbs, from Early Modern (e.g., Shakespearean) English onward, it’s quite rare. But you will see it from time to time.

2.) In contemporary Modern English, we invert the order of subjects and auxiliary verbs in questions:

Will I die? I will die. 

Has she eaten? She has eaten.

If there’s no auxiliary, we add one–do–and invert that:

Do you hear the people sing? You (do) hear the people sing.

In Early Modern English, this process was optional, and mostly used for emphasis; all verbs could be and were moved to the front of the sentence in questions:

Hear ye the people sing? (Or singen, if we’re early enough to still be inflecting infinitives.)

Do-support was also optional for negatives:

I don’t like him. I like him not.

Thou dost not care. Thou carest not.

She does not love thee. She loves thee not.

3.) Imperative verbs never take endings:

Hear ye, hear ye!

Go thou and do likewise!

Give me thy hand. Take thou this sword. 

4.) Singular ‘you’–that is, calling a singular person by a plural pronoun–arose as a politeness marker; and ‘thou’ fell out of use because it eventually came to be seen as impolite in almost all contexts. In general, once singular ‘you’ comes into use, it is used for addressing

people of higher social status than the speaker

or of equivalent status, if both speakers are high-status

strangers

anyone the speaker wants to flatter

‘Thou’ is used for

people of lower social status than the speaker

family and intimate friends

children

anyone the speaker wants to insult

It is safer to ‘you’ someone who doesn’t necessarily warrant ‘you’ than to ‘thou’ someone who does.

5.) And finally, that ‘ye’? That’s the nominative form of you–the one that’s equivalent to ‘I’ or ‘we.’ 

I  → thou → he/she/it  → we → ye → they

Me → thee → him/her/it → us → you → them

My → thy → his/her/its → our → your → their

Mine → thine → his/hers/its → ours → yours → theirs

Any time you’re using ‘thou’ for the singular, the second person plural– ‘y’all’– declines like this:

ye:  Ye are all a bunch of weirdos.

you: And I love you very much.

your: This has been your grammar lesson.

I remember a reader was annoyed by my use of the phrase "the column of her throat" once and I suddenly realised not everyone reads copious amounts of fanfic or historical romance growing up, either. I always loved that phrase: "column of [her/his/their] throat." It makes you imagine marble smoothness. Annoying if overused, sure, but a well-placed one is evocative.

They're simply shorthand for various creative expressions or nice images. Darkened: dangerous or horny. Softened: fondness, vulnerability. Snarled: animalistic anger (v. useful if you're writing a dragon character in human form). Writers need to have physical reactions and emotional beats for rhythm, pace, and flow, no? If you say the emotions too straightforwardly, the writer gets dinged for "telling, not showing."

This being Tumblr, the reader rants I see most often tend to be either anti-assigned reading ("How dare teachers make us read stories that contain any kind of dated worldview or uncomfortable content!") or anti-authors trying to support themselves by selling their work ("I'm a 'pure' reader who only reads fanfiction or unpublished original fiction instead of published works, because down with capitalism!"), or sometimes a combination of the two. But even among mainstream fiction readers, there are those who never stray out of a particular genre or subset, whether that be historical romance, or themed cozy mysteries, or YA fantasy, or whatever specific thing they like. There's certainly nothing wrong with having a favorite genre or author, but in ANY extremely narrow sampling of works, you're going to see certain trends in writing style. Within a micro-genre, scenes of a certain nature may be described in one (1) set of terms only, and readers get in the mindset of "X kind of scene must use Y words/writing technique and no other" because they aren't being exposed to a broad spectrum of writers and genres.

You can see the flip side of this phenomenon by tracking the viral spread of writing errors through a fandom or amateur writing community. When words or phrases get misused in one story, all the writers who primarily base their writing on peer works rather than professionally edited works start using those same things incorrectly.

Example: I cannot count the number of fics I've read where the verb "to don" is used as a substitute for "to wear" -- e.g. He was donned in a black leather jacket, or She walked down the stairs, donning a blue dress, black stockings and a mink stole.

But "to don" actually means "to put on," as in the actual process of putting your body parts into clothing (She donned her coat as she ran out the door). It is the antonym of "to doff," meaning to remove (He doffed his hat when he entered the church). On/off, don/doff, it's so easy to remember! Except now we have a whole generation of fanfic writers/readers who are using the word wrong and probably don't know what "don we now our gay apparel" means when they hear the Christmas carol "Deck the Halls."

Another example: In a smaller fandom I was involved with, a popular writer made a mistake and used "lowly" as an adverb, intending it as a replacement for "quietly" (he spoke lowly). Soon other fics appeared containing the same error. If a reader read nothing but fanfiction in this one fandom and were never exposed to other writing, they probably wouldn't understand "lowly" when correctly used as an adjective meaning "inferior" (he was a lowly peasant).

The same thing happens with common expressions used to describe characters or their actions. Over on my English grammar blog (@vivaciousvernacular), I had a request a while back to do a post on the different words used to describe smiles, because readers were getting sick of everyone and their kid brother "smirking" in entirely inappropriate situations.

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

do they mean it’s that spicy cinnamon tea

(Sidenote: prototype theory means that people think of the most prototypical instances of a thing before they think of weirder types. For example: list four kinds of birds to yourself right now. You probably started with local songbirds, which for me is robins, blue birds, cardinals, starlings. If I had you list three more, you might say pigeons or eagles or falcons. It would probably take you a while to get to penguins and emus and ducks, even though those are all birds too. A duck or a penguin, however, is not a prototypical bird.)

“Chai” means tea in Hindi-Urdu, but “chai tea” in English means “tea prepared like masala chai” because it’s useful to have a word to distinguish “the kind of tea we make here” from “the kind of tea they make somewhere else”.

“Naan” may mean bread, but “naan bread” means specifically “bread prepared like this” because it’s useful to have a word to distinguish between “bread made how we make it” and “bread how other people make it”.

We also sometimes say “liege lord” when talking about feudal homage, even though “liege” is just “lord” in French, or “flower blossom” to describe the part of the flower that opens, even though when “flower” was borrowed from French it meant the same thing as blossom. 

We also do this with place names: “brea” means tar in Spanish, but when we came across a place where Spanish-speakers were like “there’s tar here”, we took that and said “Okay, here’s the La Brea tar pits”.

 Or “Sahara”. Sahara already meant “giant desert,” but we call it the Sahara desert to distinguish it from other giant deserts, like the Gobi desert (Gobi also means desert btw).

English doesn’t seem to be the only language that does this for places: this page has Spanish, Icelandic, Indonesian, and other languages doing it too.

Languages tend to use a lot of repetition to make sure that things are clear. English says “John walks”, and the -s on walks means “one person is doing this” even though we know “John” is one person. Spanish puts tense markers on every instance of a verb in a sentence, even when it’s abundantly clear that they all have the same tense (”ayer [yo] caminé por el parque y jugué tenis” even though “ayer” means yesterday and “yo” means I and the -é means “I in the past”). English apparently also likes to use semantic repetition, so that people know that “chai” is a type of tea and “naan” is a type of bread and “Sahara” is a desert. (I could also totally see someone labeling something, for instance, pan dulce sweetbread, even though “pan dulce” means “sweet bread”.)