{"id":11935,"date":"2015-12-15T17:31:36","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T17:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=11935"},"modified":"2015-12-15T17:31:36","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T17:31:36","slug":"ditties-dictation-and-digits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=11935","title":{"rendered":"Ditties, dictation and digits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <strong>ditty<\/strong> is a short, simple song, like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/songs\/sager\/mysongs.htm\">the ones I write<\/a>. It comes from the Old French <em>dite<\/em> (composition), from the Latin <em>dictatum<\/em> (something dictated), from <em>dictare<\/em> (to dictate), a frequentative of <em>dicere<\/em> (to say, speak), which is related to <em>dicare<\/em> (to proclaim, dedicate), from the Proto-Indo-European root <em>*deik-<\/em> (to point out).<\/p>\n<p>Some English words that come from the same root include dictate, diction, and digit, which came to be related to numbers as a result of counting on fingers. Other words that developed from this root include the Latin <em>digitus<\/em> (finger), the German <em>zeigen<\/em>, the Greek <em>\u03b4\u03af\u03ba\u03b7 [d\u00edk\u00ea]<\/em> (custom, right, judgement), and quite a few more.<\/p>\n<p>The word teach also comes from the <em>*deik-<\/em>, via the Old English <em>t\u00e6can<\/em> (to show, point out, declare, demonstrate; to give instruction, train, assign, direct; warn; persuade), from the Proto-Germanic <em>*taikijan<\/em> (to show).<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/index.php?term=ditty\">Online Etymology Dictionary<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oxforddictionaries.com\/definition\/english\/ditty\">Oxford Dictionaries<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.utexas.edu\/cola\/centers\/lrc\/ielex\/R\/P0325.html\">Indo-European Lexicon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A ditty is a short, simple song, like the ones I write. It comes from the Old French dite (composition), from the Latin dictatum (something dictated), from dictare (to dictate), a frequentative of dicere (to say, speak), which is related to dicare (to proclaim, dedicate), from the Proto-Indo-European root *deik- (to point out). Some English [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,15,45,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-latin","category-proto-indo-european","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}