About
Oh, hi.
This is called a blog. A blog is a type of online website that is updated with a regular schedule. A website is a location connected to the Internet, and the Internet is a global computer network. A computer is an electronic device, like the one I use to write this blog. If you want to learn the etymology of the word blog, click here to read about it.
If you already know what a blog is and you're confused about words, keep clicking.
This is called a blog. A blog is a type of online website that is updated with a regular schedule. A website is a location connected to the Internet, and the Internet is a global computer network. A computer is an electronic device, like the one I use to write this blog. If you want to learn the etymology of the word blog, click here to read about it.
If you already know what a blog is and you're confused about words, keep clicking.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language and its structure. Etymology, a subcategory of that, is the study of how words change over time. This site will try to help immerse you in both, but specifically the latter.
There may be some confusing languages referenced on this site, and I'd like to make this as clear as I can. Whenever I refer to PIE, I am talking about Proto-Indo-European, the mother tongue of almost every single language in Europe and India. This includes English, which falls into the subcategory of Germanic languages. Click here to see the linguistic evolution of the English language.
But Indo-European languages aren't the only ones out there. In tracing English etymologies, you may also come across Afro-Asiatic languages, Sino-Tibetan languages, and other language families you can view here. It's immensely difficult to describe how many languages and their families there are, and you can view an infographic I made about Proto-Indo-European if you click here.
There may be some confusing languages referenced on this site, and I'd like to make this as clear as I can. Whenever I refer to PIE, I am talking about Proto-Indo-European, the mother tongue of almost every single language in Europe and India. This includes English, which falls into the subcategory of Germanic languages. Click here to see the linguistic evolution of the English language.
But Indo-European languages aren't the only ones out there. In tracing English etymologies, you may also come across Afro-Asiatic languages, Sino-Tibetan languages, and other language families you can view here. It's immensely difficult to describe how many languages and their families there are, and you can view an infographic I made about Proto-Indo-European if you click here.
I may be referencing some unusual linguistic terms. For your benefit, I've indexed several key etymological words below:
If I think of anything I missed or need to add, I'll let you know. If you're still confused about something, leave a comment on my blog and I'll answer it quickly.
- Affixation is a way of creating new words, through the addition of prefixes or suffixes.
- Anthimeria is when a word changes from one part of speech to another, like from a noun to a verb.
- Aphaereseis is the loss of an unstressed initial syllable.
- Apocope is the loss of a syllable or letter at the end of any word
- A calque is the direct translation of a term into local words. This normally applies to phrases.
- Clipping is when a word is shortened but the meaning stays intact.
- In English, diachronic linguistics are fun and incorporate etymology. Synchronic linguistics are boring and I won't mention them.
- Doublets are two words with the same root that are spelled differently and developed differently.
- Enantiosemy is the combination of two contradicting definitions in a word.
- An etymon is a word that is the origin of a later word.
- Folk etymology is the popular but erroneous conception of the transition of some words.
- Functional shift is basically anthimeria, when an existing word gains a new grammatical use.
- Grimm's Law is super important for Germanic languages. It describes blanket transitions that occurred from Proto-Indo-European, specifically on voiced stops.
- Homonyms are words that sound the same but have different definitions.
- A loanword is exactly what it sounds like: a word from another language with minimal alteration.
- Metonymy is a curious language quirk which pops up quite a bit in etymology; it's when one word develops from another word about a similar thing (like how jock came from jockstrap), and where a whole represents a part (like for White House).
- Morphology is the study of the forms of words and a morpheme is a word that morphologists decide can no longer be divided.
- Nonce formations are words created for a specific use only
- A neologism is a newly made word.
- The word pejorative is a fancy language word that describes another word that is meant in an offensive manner.
- A phoneme is a unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another (like letters in the English language).
- Polysemy is when multiple meanings exist in a word.
- Pragmatism in a nutshell is the belief that language is arbitrary and up to the speaker to determine.
- Prescriptivism is the implication that certain grammatical structures are correct, while others are not. It's kind of like political conservatism and the opposite of pragmatism; prescriptivists want to keep old linguistic traditions. That's the word for the whole who/whom rumpus.
- Proto-Indo-European is the mother language of basically all languages in Europe. Any language with the term proto- in front of it means that we don't have written records of it and it's an old hypothesized tongue.
- Semantics is the branch of linguistics concerned with definition and meaning; this crosses over into etymology occasionally.
- Syncope is the loss of sounds in the middle of words (like how colonel became kernel in pronunciation)
- Transliteration is kind of like translation, but it's used when you're trying to translate some obscure character which doesn't really fit well into English.
- A word in the zero grade is the absolutely reduced form of a Proto-Indo-European word, in which no vowels are included.
If I think of anything I missed or need to add, I'll let you know. If you're still confused about something, leave a comment on my blog and I'll answer it quickly.
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Hi, I'm Adam Aleksic, your local etymology enthusiast.
I'm a student at Harvard College with a large interest in anything nerdy, especially language and history. Since etymology is a combination of both, I particularly took to it, and I've been running this blog since November 2016 to teach myself more about it and spread my love of language to others. I consider myself fortunate to have an excellent knowledge of a Germanic language (English), be a heritage speaker of a Slavic language (Serbian), and have a rudimentary knowledge of two Italic languages (Spanish and Latin). This allows me to understand Indo-European languages fairly well, and I try to impart inter-lingual connections whenever I can. At Harvard, I co-founded the Undergraduate Linguistics Society, which brings in guest speakers, facilitates fun language exercises, and tries to promote linguistic awareness on and off campus. I am pursuing a joint concentration in Government and Linguistics, possibly with a secondary in Classics. I have other interests as well. I'm active in some debating and board gaming organizations and am constantly trying to learn more about stuff. In my free time, you can find me playing Avalon with my friends, conlanging, mapmaking, biking, reading FiveThirtyEight, or trying to get the flag of my hometown changed. I may or may not be a secret agent working for the government of Tajikistan. |
Okay, so I'm a bit of a cheater. I don't do fancy programming stuff; I just leave the domain stuff and server technicalities to Weebly, the website maker I use. To be fair, I am trying to learn HTML and CSS so I can improve; it's just that I spend most of my time on content and programming is really too much of a hassle. I've had my friends Leo Fried and Jia Lin help with some coding stuff here and there.
Typically, I log in to Weebly to create a new blog post, then go through any and all Internet sources I can find on my word du jour. Etymonline, the Oxford English Dictionary, and Wiktionary are probably the most frequent websites for me. I then try and combine all the etymological research I found into one coherent blog post, usually with any anecdotes I can find. If my blog posts are too short, I use Google NGram Viewer to talk about usage over time.
A lot of people ask me how I pick which word to write about each day. I prioritize word requests (which you can make on the blog page), and then I keep a running list of a bunch of cool origins I've stumbled across in the past. This always gives me ideas to draw on, and of course I might be inspired by current events or something I found out that same day.
I use MS Paint to make the infographics (embarrassing, I know) and iMovie for the YouTube videos.
Typically, I log in to Weebly to create a new blog post, then go through any and all Internet sources I can find on my word du jour. Etymonline, the Oxford English Dictionary, and Wiktionary are probably the most frequent websites for me. I then try and combine all the etymological research I found into one coherent blog post, usually with any anecdotes I can find. If my blog posts are too short, I use Google NGram Viewer to talk about usage over time.
A lot of people ask me how I pick which word to write about each day. I prioritize word requests (which you can make on the blog page), and then I keep a running list of a bunch of cool origins I've stumbled across in the past. This always gives me ideas to draw on, and of course I might be inspired by current events or something I found out that same day.
I use MS Paint to make the infographics (embarrassing, I know) and iMovie for the YouTube videos.
Some helpful graphs
Now that you (hopefully) know all the important base languages, you can see the phylogeny (evolution tree) of the modern ones!
(charts lifted from Wikipedia)
(charts lifted from Wikipedia)
The history of Indo-European languages:
You only really need to know this because of Hungarian, Estonian, and Finnish:
Understanding Chinese languages:
A note to linguists
You may have noticed that my blog posts don't use IPA standards. This is an intentional decision meant to make the site more accessible to people who don't know as much about linguistics. You may also find errors or subjective material on this site; if you wish to correct me, please do so in the comments. I am still new to the field and do make mistakes sometimes.
Still confused?
That stinks. I had hoped I was being helpful. Anyway, you can ask a question in the comments sections of my blog or, even better, check out these awesome online resources or etymology books:
Or, if I did do a good job, you can go right back to the home screen and enjoy my site from the beginning:
Why are you still here?
