Category: Language

Script Families

By Simon

Languages are classified into families, meaning that all the languages within a particular family are known to have or thought to have developed from a common ancestor.

Language family

For example, the Romance languages, such as French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian, all developed from Latin. They are one branch of the Indo-European language family, along with Germanic, Slavic, Celtic, Baltic, Indo-Aryan and other languages. It is believed that they all developed from a common ancestor known as Proto-Indo-European, which has been reconstructed.

Some languages have no known relatives and are known as language isolates. Examples include Basque, Ainu and Hadza.

Writing systems can also be classified into families. For example the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets all developed from the Phoenician script, which developed from the Proto-Sinaitic / Proto-Canaanite script, which was based on the Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic and Hieratic scripts.

Language family

In fact, most alphabetic scripts in use today come from the same Ancient Egyptian roots, or were inspired by or based on scripts from those roots.

Sometimes there is some debate about which family writings systems belong to, and whether they can be considered separate scripts, or variants forms of one script.

For example, there are many variants of the Latin script, such as Roman Cursive, Rustic Capitals, Basque-style lettering, Carolingian Minuscule, Fraktur, Irish Uncial, Merovingian and the Visigothic Script.

There are also many different scripts that are or were used in the Philippines. Some are considered regional variants of the Baybayin / Tagalog script, while others are considered separate scripts. For example, variants of Baybayin include Badlit, Kulitan and Basahan.

Are they separate scripts, or different versions of the Latin/Baybayin script? Does it matter? Who decides?

I’m putting together an index of writing systems on Omniglot arranged into families. It’s not quite finished yet though.

Kiki

By Simon

Have you ever been to a kiki? If you live in Florida or Hawaii, maybe you have. The rest of us, probably not.

According to a post on Crossword Solver about slang words in the USA, kiki is the most popular slang word among members of Gen-Z (those born between about 1997 and 2012) in Florida or Hawaii.

Gen-Z slang

The Urban Dictionary defines kiki as:

A party including good music and good friends, held for the express purpose of calming nerves, reducing anxiety and stress and generally fighting ennui. May involve locked doors, tea and salacious gossip.

Sounds like fun! More details about the origin of this word.

Another slang word popular with Gen-Z that I’ve never heard of is finna, which apparently is an abbreviation of “fixing to” and means “going to” or “about to or in the process of doing something”. For example “I’m finna go da’ sto” (I’m going to go to the store) [source]. More details about the origin of this word.

Then there’s poggers, which is apparently popular in California and Iowa and means:

A twitch emote typically used to express enthusiasm, enthrawlment or other sophisticated emotions of happiness and dopamine.

Other definitions include: “a word to describe excitement, joy, or to hype”, “A word to describe something as good” and “something/someone that you find absolutely amazing” [source]. The related word pog is apparently “used as an exclamation of approval, especially in video game chat” and means “excellent, cool, awesome” [source].

An emote is “A term used in MMORPG’s such as World of Warcraft which describes an action your character can perform which is usually accompanied by sound and sometimes even an animation”. Examples include /poke, /cheer, /moo and /insult [source].

Have you heard/read any of these words? Do you use any of them?

Falling Apples

By Simon

A friend asked me to look into the origins of the saying An acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. I can only find a few examples of this saying online, but lots of examples of the apple never falls far from the tree and similar sayings. It refers to the idea that people inevitably share traits with or resemble their parents or family.

Apple Tree

According to The Phrase Finder, the origins of this saying are uncertain. The earliest known example of its use in English appears in 1830 in Benjamin Thorpe’s translation of Rasmus Rask’s Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue:

Traces still exist in the daily language of the Icelanders, for instance in the proverb, eplit fellr ekki lánt frá eikinni the apple falls not far from the tree (the oak!).

In a letter by Ralph Waldo Emerson published in 1839, he quotes the German proverb ‘der Apfel fällt nicht weit von Stamm’ – “As men say the apple never falls far from the stem.”

In 1843, The Bible in Spain by George Henry Borrow includes the line:

“The apple”, as the Danes say, “had not fallen far from the tree;” the imp was in every respect the counterpart of the father, though in miniature.

According to English Language & Usage, a Welsh version of this saying appears in A Dictionary of the Welsh Language, Explained in English:

Ni fell zygwyz aval o avall
The apple will not fall far from the tree

The spelling here is unusal and non-standard: z = dd and v = f, so in modern standard spelling it would be “Ni fell ddygwydd afal o afall”, I think.

There are also versions of this saying from Turkish – Iemisch agatsdan irak dushmas (The apple does not fall far from the tree), and Old English – Se æppel næfre þæs feorr ne trenddeð he cyð hwanon he com. (The apple never rolls so far that it does not make known whence it came.)

子狐

I also found an idiom with a similar meaning in Japanese: 狐の子は頬白 (kitsune no ko wa tsurajiro), which means “fox cubs have white cheeks” [source].

Do you know of examples of this saying in other languages?

Ietsiepietsie

By Simon

I learnt a cute Dutch word today – ietsiepietsie. It means a little, a little bit, teeny tiny or a teeny tiny bit, and is also written ietsie pietsie, ietsje pietsje or ietsjepietsje [source].

Itsy Bitsy Katydid

You could also translate it as itsy-bitsy, itty-bitty or teensy weensy Do you know any similar expressions in English or other languages.

It is a reduplication* of ietsje (somewhat, a little bit), a diminutive version of iets [its] (something, anything), which comes from the Middle Dutch iet (something, anything, to any degree, a little, somewhat, sometimes, perhaps), a contraction of iewet, from the Old Dutch *iowiht, from the Proto-Germanic *ne (not) plus io (ever) plus *wiht, from *wihtą (thing) [source].

*Reduplication is “a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.” They’re not very common in Dutch. Other examples include taaitaai (gingerbread), tamtam (fanfare, grapevine) and bla-bla (blah-blah, talk) [source].

They’re more common in English. Examples include easy-peasy, hoity-toity, hurdy-gurdy, raggle-taggle, tut-tut, chit-chat and knick-knack [source].

Kissing Day

By Simon

The 14th February is a special day for some – Valentine’s Day, or in Scottish Gaelic Là nam Pòg (“Kissing Day”), which I think is a fun name for the day. Do any other languages have interesting names for Valentine’s Day?

Act Like You're my Valentine

Apparently the practise of sending loved ones cards on Valentine’s Day became popular in the late 18th / early 19th century, in the UK at least, and really took off after 1840, when postage stamps were invented. In 1868 the chocolate company Cadbury started making heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for Valentine’s Day, and the giving of chocolates quickly became popular on this day [source].

By the way, a nice term of affection I learnt recently in Scots is ma wee scone (my little scone). Have you ever heard or used this or something similar? Have you compared your loved ones to other types of food?

Other Scottish Gaelic terms I’ve learnt recently for special days include Là na Gogaireachd (April Fools’ Day – 1st April) and Oidhche na Taigeise (Burns Night – 25th January), or literally “Night of the Haggis”.

The word gogaireachd means a fool’s errand or the act of making a fool of someone. Là na Gogaireachd is also translated as All Fools ‘Day, Gowk’s Day or Hunt-the-Gowk Day. A gowk is a cuckoo or fool in Scots and northern dialects of English. It also means to make foolish or stupefy, and comes from the Old Norse gaukr (cuckoo), from the Proto-Germanic *gaukaz (cuckoo), from the Proto-Indo-European *gʰegʰuǵʰ- (cuckoo) [source]. April Fools’ Day is also Là nan Amadan (Idiots’ Day) in Scottish Gaelic.

The word taigeis (haggis) was borrowed from the English haggis, which comes from the Late Middle English hagis (haggis), from hag(gen) (to chop, cut, hack), from the Old Norse hǫggva (to hew), or from hakken (to chop, hack dice, mince), from the Old English hēawan (to chop, hew; to dice, mince), both ultimately come from the Proto-Indo-European *kewh₂- (to hew; to beat, strike; to forge) [source].