{"id":74,"date":"2006-05-31T16:32:02","date_gmt":"2006-05-31T15:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/31\/word-of-the-day-isogloss\/"},"modified":"2006-05-31T16:32:02","modified_gmt":"2006-05-31T15:32:02","slug":"word-of-the-day-isogloss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=74","title":{"rendered":"Word of the day &#8211; isogloss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>isogloss<\/strong>, noun = a line drawn on a map around the area in which a linguistic feature is to be found, such as a particular pronunciation of a given word<\/p>\n<p>Origin: from the Greek <em>\u03b9\u03c3\u03bf\u03c2 (isos)<\/em> &#8211; equal, and <em>\u03b3\u03bb\u03c9\u03c3\u03c3\u03b1 (glossa)<\/em> &#8211; tongue\/language.<\/p>\n<p>Other words with similar meanings include: <strong>isolex<\/strong>, an isogloss for a particular item of vocabulary, and <strong>isophone<\/strong>, an isogloss for a particular feature of pronunciation.<\/p>\n<p>The distribution of names of carbonated beverages in the USA can be divided using isolexes &#8211; in some areas the usual name for such drinks is <em>soda<\/em>, in some it&#8217;s <em>pop<\/em>, and in others it&#8217;s <em>cola<\/em> or <em>coke<\/em>. In the UK we call such drinks <em>pop<\/em> or <em>soft drinks<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The phenomenon of isoglosses is discussed in the Linguistics books I&#8217;m currently reading and I like the sound of the word. This word, and the related words, also illustrate one of the advantages of being familiar with the Greek roots of English words. Now I know that iso(s) means equal, words using this prefix are slightly easier to understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>isogloss, noun = a line drawn on a map around the area in which a linguistic feature is to be found, such as a particular pronunciation of a given word Origin: from the Greek \u03b9\u03c3\u03bf\u03c2 (isos) &#8211; equal, and \u03b3\u03bb\u03c9\u03c3\u03c3\u03b1 (glossa) &#8211; tongue\/language. Other words with similar meanings include: isolex, an isogloss for a particular [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","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=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}